The Maid and the Crocodile

Small Sade needs work as a maid in the city of Oluwan. She wants an employer who will not stare at her unusual appearance or worry about her bad luck. Before anyone hires her, she accidentally binds herself to the Crocodile, a powerful god whom the city fears and who is rumored to devour pretty girls who cross him.

Sade does not run. She tells him her own secret instead: she is a Curse Eater, and she can change a person's fate just by cleaning their house. The Crocodile warns her that their destinies are now tied together.

Sade slips away anyway. She takes a post as the resident Curse Eater at a fashionable inn and tries to stay ahead of the god and of a past she would rather not discuss. Meanwhile the Crocodile is quietly nursing revolutionary ambitions, and Sade is still keeping secrets of her own. Both pull the two of them back toward each other.

This is a fantasy romance set in the world of Raybearer, and it works as a standalone novel. The relationship between the two leads gives careful attention to power, consent and found family. Readers new to the world need no earlier book to follow it.