Sea Stone

"You said your name was Seth, right?" Brynner asked. "Tell me Seth- what happened between you and this girl?"
Seth had begun to step forward. He froze. "What do you want to know?"
Brynner adjusted his weight on the sand. "She said one thing when I pulled her out of the sea--" His voice dropped. "Your name."

The ship had become Seth's prison. As Captain's heir, he finds himself crushed under the weight of his father's expectations.
He isn't the son his father wanted, and his betrothal to Tamar, the girl he knew since childhood, doesn't feel right. Their union only proves to Seth their stark difference.
She was unflinching beneath her steel blade; He was detached, too caught up in pondering the creatures lurking in the depths to become the heir the Temptation's Wake needs. Seth longs for a breath of fresh air.
A chance encounter with a Nepti--one of the humanoid scaled beings beneath--gives him exactly that. Only now he's thrown into a war between conflicting ideals and cutthroat organizations. As Seth becomes tangled in this net of conspiracy, he finds his fate interwoven with those of spies, royalty, and murderers. No one is how they seem, and Tamar only reaches after her own ambition. Seth wants to believe in something, but nothing is solid. He finds solace in remembering that Tamar hadn't always been this way.

Forced to uncover the terrifying secrets kept hidden from him aboard the Temptation's Wake, and as he finds family where he least expects, he is pressed into answering the one question he dreads: Did he ever really love Tamar?

What to expect:

fantasy with heavy themes such as loss, overcoming trauma, manipulation, and learning your own identity

Tight action, complex characters, slow burn romance