Of Salt and Sovereigns (Drowned Court #1)

The sea takes what it’s owed. This year, it wants her.

For twenty-two years, Maren Sael has kept the tide-magic under her skin, because in Cinderhollow a salt-witch is a debt the village drowns before the Court can. But when the tithe falls short and the sea comes to collect a life, Maren does the one thing she swore she never would: she offers herself.

Bound for a year and a day to Aerec Vol — the cold, centuries-old Sovereign whose laws let the sea take her mother — Maren is dragged down into a drowned palace of impossible beauty and quiet knives. The Court sees her as a curiosity. A target. A pet on a leash.

None of them know what she is. Aerec does. And the bond sealed between them reads her as clearly as she reads him — every lie, every want, every reason she should hate him and doesn’t.

To survive a coup, a smiling traitor, and a drowned god waking in the deep, Maren will have to stop hiding her magic — and decide what she’s willing to burn to keep a man she was never supposed to want.

Some debts aren’t paid. They’re chosen.