A Debt of Salt and Ruin
By Marlowe Ivory
She was born owing nothing. The sea intends to correct that. Nyra Vess is the most accurate debt collector the Ledger House has ever owned. In Caldresh, magic is borrowed against your life, and when the bill falls due a Reckoner arrives to take the years out of your body. Nyra takes them cleanly. What no one knows — what would see her drowned on the steps of the Salt Throne if they did — is that she takes nothing at all. She was born owing the world nothing, and for six years she has quietly paid strangers' debts out of a channel that costs her not one hour of her life. Casimir Drayle knows. The Drowned Lord has bought eleven thousand years and spent every one of them on something he refuses to declare, and he has been looking for a woman exactly like Nyra for eleven of them. There is a door under the sea. Only a debt-free hand can hold it shut. Then the Ledger House calls in Drayle's holdings in full — and hands the warrant to Nyra. Everything is borrowed. Everything comes due. A Debt of Salt and Ruin is the first book in The Drowned Ledger, a dual-POV adult romantasy of morally grey bargains, drowned gods and slow-burn devotion — for readers who like their love interests dangerous, competent and hopelessly honest. Dual POV, enemies-to-allies-to-lovers Morally grey immortal love interest Touch-based magic with a body cost Heist, court intrigue and a drowned eldritch creditor Ends on a cliffhanger — Book Two, A Crown of Tide and Teeth, follows Content note: explicit sexual content, on-page violence, bereavement, and endangerment of children (off page).