Queen of the Ebb

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At the equinox the seat is tried. Three women will be asked what they'll give. Two of them mean to give everything. THE SALT COURT · BOOK THREE Wren Balfour has three weeks until the spring equinox, and the council wants to drive 340 metres of steel along Leith Shore, straight across the door of the Salt Court. The seal folk beneath the harbour cannot touch iron. Then her mother walks into the fish bar downstairs, twenty-two years after she walked into the sea at Portobello and left a seven-year-old on the sand. The empty seat under the Shore knows three women now: Morvoren, who has held it too long; Mairi, the true queen come home; and Wren. At the bottom of the first spring ebb after the equinox moon, each will sit, and the Forth will ask what she will give. Mairi says she has come to lose. Ronan Seil, who cannot lie, knows how carefully salt folk choose their words. And six hours after the trying, the biggest surge since 2010 is coming up the Forth. • Contemporary romantasy set in present-day Leith and Edinburgh, told by both of them. • Sensual, not explicit. A mother and daughter, a hero who cannot lie, and a heroine who fights for a sea wall with a spreadsheet. • Book three of five. Start with A Court Beneath the Forth. For readers who love selkie legends, fated bargains and slow-burn love with teeth.