The Tell of the Tide

In the harbor town of Saltwind, Wren Cole crews salvage for the only family she has ever had and works the dice floors when the coin runs thin. The sea taught her the one law she trusts: you are worth what you can take and fight for and outlive. Nothing comes owed to you. Nothing owns you.

Then a night at the dice table goes impossibly right — and the luck that has kept her alive since she was small turns out to be the thing that can find her. Somewhere on the coast, a patient man carries a mark that quickens whenever she wins too well. He does not know her face. He only has to follow the light she cannot stop throwing.

As the net draws in around her crew, Wren runs south to Gull’s Throat, where the tide funnels in loud and the lost go to disappear. But what waits at the bottom of the tide is not the escape she has fought for. It is a truth — closing in from every side, and spoken by the last people she trusts.

A multi-POV epic fantasy of salvage and secrets, found family, and a name someone killed to bury.