The Covenant of Salt and Bone

A condemned alchemic engineer. A ruthless empire that weaponizes “mercy.” A forbidden bond strong enough to break a world built on obedience.

Mara Vane was never meant to be powerful—she was meant to be useful. In the coastal dominions, alchemy isn’t art, it’s infrastructure: the lattice that holds back the sea, stabilizes cities, and keeps millions alive. The Choir controls it all. They regulate pressure, ration safety, and enforce loyalty at the level of the body. If your magic can serve the system, they’ll own it. If you resist, they’ll rewrite you until you don’t.

When a catastrophic failure threatens to drown the coast, Mara is sentenced into service and offered a choice that isn’t a choice: submit to Choir control and stabilize their collapsing network, or refuse and watch thousands die. But Mara discovers what the Choir never intended anyone to become—a living interface inside the lattice itself. A hinge. An engineered point of transformation that can reroute power without worshipping authority. It’s salvation and sentence in the same breath, because once the system learns your shape, it doesn’t forget.

Caldris is the Choir’s most feared enforcer: disciplined, dangerous, already bleeding from a war the empire refuses to name. He should be Mara’s jailer. Instead, he becomes her most volatile variable—the one man who doesn’t demand obedience, only consent. Their connection is sharp-edged and forbidden, forged under constant threat, pulled taut by trust neither of them can afford. In a world where control is enforced through biology, intimacy becomes leverage, desire becomes a threat vector, and love is something the Choir will use as a weapon the moment it realizes it exists.

The hunt that follows isn’t loud. It’s surgical. A master Voice named Halvren doesn’t chase with armies—he hunts with kindness. He offers relief that feels like rescue, stability that tastes like rest, and a quiet so seductive it could convince Mara to surrender her future for a single breath of peace. Every encounter forces Mara to evolve in real time: rewriting her anchors, stripping the Choir of the seams it can exploit, and learning that freedom isn’t a single act of rebellion—it’s an ongoing refusal to be owned.

This is dark adult romantasy with teeth: slow-burn fantasy romance, enemies-to-allies tension, forced proximity under life-or-death pressure, a morally gray protector who chooses her autonomy even when it destroys him, and a powerful heroine who refuses to become anyone’s property. Expect high-stakes political fantasy, an addictive engineered magic system, brutal choices with real consequences, and chemistry that builds like a fuse.

Because the deeper Mara runs, the clearer the truth becomes: the Choir doesn’t have to break her to win. They only have to force a choice between what she loves and what the world needs. And beneath the waves, the sea-floor anchor—the oldest stabilizer ever built—waits in darkness, indifferent and absolute. If Mara binds to it, she can rewrite the rule beneath everything and end the Choir’s monopoly forever. But the descent is irreversible. The power is permanent. And the price may be becoming the law that holds the world together.

Perfect for readers who crave dark romantasy, adult fantasy romance, forbidden romance, intense slow burn, ruthless villains, a strong heroine, a dangerous protective hero, and a story that doesn’t flinch from consequence—this is a tale about power, consent, and what it costs to stay yourself when the world demands you become a tool.