Tidebound

Five horses stood where six belonged. She counted them three times.

Wren Baker came to Saltmarsh to bury her grandmother and stayed for reasons she has stopped trying to write down. She knows what stands in the Preserve barn at night. She has never once said it aloud, on this island or anywhere.

Then the Song goes wrong at first light, machines come up the old logging path, and the golden stallion at the head of the Herd does not come home.

She walks out onto mud that swallows grown men, and it holds her up, and something buried under it says here with every step.

What she pulls out of that marsh is a man who cannot get warm, an ancient bargain fraying at its worst seam, and a bill neither of them saw coming. Every reason Clyde Cooper has to stay a man is a reason the horse will not come back.

Can he keep her and keep himself? Or does the covenant collect what it is owed? Boots on. Walk the shell line in Tidebound.