Beneath the Thorns of Thrace

Three hundred years under the thorns. One woman who was not afraid. Dorian has ruled Thrace from an obsidian throne since the night the curse took him. The vines grow through his flesh, not decoration but punishment, a living reminder of the rebellion that cost him everything. His court fears him. His people endure him. He has spent three centuries learning to want nothing. Then Elara arrives. She comes from the surface world, with a mission she won't name and a look in her eyes that does not belong to someone who frightens easily.
She should fear him. Everyone does. Instead, she watches the thorns grow and asks him if they hurt. No one has ever asked him that. The kingdom of Thrace is dying. The blight spreads from the borders inward, and the cure is bound to the same curse that has kept Dorian prisoner for three hundred years. He does not want her help. He does not want her presence. He does not want the way the vines loosen when she is near, as if even the curse knows something he is not ready to admit.
But the blight does not wait for readiness. And neither does she. A lush, slow-burn dark romantasy retelling of Hades and Persephone, set in an underground kingdom of thorns, shadow, and a love that took three hundred years to find its way home.