Salt for the Veil

Salt for the Veil is a ferocious, romantic fantasy about a city that refuses to be tidied—and the two enemies who learn to love it, and each other, the only honest way: out loud, on the record, with the knots showing. Sera of Lantern Court has a talent for misbehaving things into virtue. Bells wait for coffee because she tells them to; coins stop purring when she rubs them in soot; treaties bite after she stains them with truth. When House Rul unveils a miracle of order—a shining causeway that would "civilize" the sea and every life tied to it—Sera answers with rope, wit, and a blue ribbon that teaches straight lines to sulk. Her problem is Aren, the winter-blooded sentinel whose quiet palm can steady wood, stone, even the hour itself. He's been sent to hold the city still. She was born to keep it moving. What begins as a campaign of sabotage and procedure becomes something hungrier. As House turns weather into law and rumors into weapons, Sera and Aren fight, bargain, and finally choose the one vow neither can file away: ask me first. Together with a reluctant rival who prefers accuracy to obedience, a tide-singer with a biting boat, and a market that claps on the wrong beat, they must teach beauty to carry and power to pay—before the neat story swallows the true one.