The Salt Crown

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On the longest night she carries the crown. Someone she trusts will open the door. THE SALT COURT · BOOK TWO Two months after Wren Balfour stopped a flood and saved the Salt Court beneath Leith harbour, Ronan Seil's sister washes up on the slipway at Burntisland, grey from the roots after twenty-two years as a hostage under a Pentland reservoir. She says the Hollow let her go for nothing. On the longest night of the year Wren is to carry the Salt Crown across the court's hall, as her grandmother did before her, so that the Firth of Forth will say yes to the court for one more year. And Ronan, who cannot lie, suddenly has something he cannot tell her. Then the lights go out, and the crown is gone. To hold the Forth together until the full-moon tide, Wren will have to choose the court over the man she loves. She will have to sit in a seat she never wanted. And, on Christmas Eve, she will have to do the one thing she has never managed: put on her own skin and go into the Hollow's water. • Contemporary romantasy set in present-day Edinburgh and the Pentlands, told by both of them. • Sensual, not explicit. A hero who cannot lie, a promise he cannot break, and a heroine who builds sea walls. • Book two of five. Start with A Court Beneath the Forth. For readers who love selkie legends, fated bargains and slow-burn love with teeth.