Salt in the Blood: A Gutter-Gothic Dystopian Romantasy (The Siphon Trials Book 1)

In the Sunken Spires, breathing depends on blood—someone else's. Talla Rook is a scavenger surviving in Low-Tide, a vertical city sinking into a caustic ocean. When forbidden Inverse-Siphoning power erupts from her skin, she is conscripted into the Obsidian Citadel, an elite military college where students serve as living batteries to power the city's anchors. Inside the Citadel, survival is brutal. Cadets are ranked, used, and discarded when their magic depletes. Talla's rare ability to draw magic inward rather than bleed it out makes her the most dangerous asset in the Spires—potentially able to save the city or destroy it. Commander Soren Valek, the Citadel's instrument of order, is tasked with training Talla into a weapon. Cold, hyper-logical, and lethally attractive, he stands between her and the machine designed to consume her. But in a school built on sacrifice, can she trust the man trained to keep her in chains? This is the first book in a high-heat Gutter-Gothic epic.