the Salt COURT: Book One of Court Trilogy

She was sent as a formality. He wasn't supposed to want her at all.Wren was never meant to matter. A human liaison traded to the Salt Court as a hostage dressed up as diplomacy - expendable enough to send, unimportant enough not to matter if she never came home.She was never supposed to matter to the dragon.Vashtiel has bonded to the Salt Court's ruling bloodline for three generations, exactly as law and magic both demand. Dragons do not choose outsiders. They cannot. Until the moment he abandons a sacred ceremony in front of two courts' worth of witnesses to claim Wren instead - and shatters everything both kingdoms believed about the order they were built on.Kastian, heir to a throne he never wanted this complicated, has spent his whole life being exactly as controlled as his position requires. He didn't ask for a scandal. He didn't ask to want the woman at the center of it. But his dragon chose her, freely, outside every rule that was ever meant to make choosing safe - and Kastian finds he isn't nearly as interested in undoing that choice as duty says he should be.Because the bloodline law was never natural. It was a working - imposed, generations ago, to lock dragons to the bloodlines that rule them. And now it's failing.Someone wants what Wren and Kastian have enough to kill for it. Someone wants their bond - freely chosen, forbidden by every law either court still pretends to believe in - badly enough to burn archives, murder allies, and bring two kingdoms to the edge of war to get it.Wren came to this court as a hostage with nothing to lose.She's leaving it as something no fae court was ever built to survive.A full-spice, slow-burn romantasy for readers who want their dragons dramatic, their courts politically treacherous, and their forbidden bonds to actually burn.Enemies-to-allies-to-lovers, Forbidden bond, freely chosen, Dual POV, alternating chapters, Fae court politics with real teeth, Book One of a planned trilogyPerfect for fans of Fourth Wing, dragon-rider fantasy, and romantasy that doesn't flinch from the politics or the heat.