Liselotte Teufel

Saoirse Vane has no magic in a kingdom built on it - and on her eighteenth birthday, that absence becomes a death sentence. Chained and released at the Drowning Shelf, she expects the ocean to take her. Instead, it delivers her somewhere else entirely. Thalassir is a sunless kingdom of bioluminescent stone and ancient tides, slowly losing a war against the light bleeding down from a celestial conflict above.
Its king, Calder Mourne, has ruled for sixty-three years. He is precise, exhausted, and in need of exactly one thing: a Void-Born to anchor the city's failing defenses. The arrangement he proposes is practical. Three months. A marriage in name and magic only. Then she goes home. Saoirse agrees - because she is curious, because the ocean floor turns out to be extraordinary, and because no one in her entire life has ever asked her what she might be for.
What she finds in the archive changes everything. What she and Calder find in each other changes more. A Crown of Salt and Starlight is a slow-burn fantasy romance featuring a marriage of convenience, hidden powers, a grumpy immortal king who makes terrible soup, and an ending that earns every word of its light.