Devour the Snake (Devourer #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

HOOK

A hand-painted map of the Seven Isles spans the entire back wall of the Portage Hall.

Winterland at the northwestern edge, the biggest island by far, dominating the sea, with its snowcapped mountains the farthest north.

Next is Darkland, the second largest, with all of its many ports.

Followed by Neverland, Everland, Summerland and Pleasureland across the rest of the map, the land masses slowly making their way south.

Lostland is nowhere to be found, of course.

It exists somewhere, but none of us know how to reach it.

We’re currently discussing reports of a pod of sirens just off the coast of Summerland.

Years and years ago, Smee and I found ourselves surrounded by sirens at the very beginning of their mating season.

Thankfully, we’d been warned by one of the anthropological experts on Summerland and had hired a lute player who played his music nonstop while we skirted their territory.

We’d been warned that had we been just a few weeks later, no amount of music would have fought them off.

And thinking of Smee now makes my head hurt.

I haven’t spoken to her since I left Neverland the first time.

I don’t think I’ve ever gone this long without seeing her.

Sometimes I find myself absently turning to her, as if she’s there in the room with me and then my heart sinks when I remember she’s not.

We were always together and I realize now that I took her presence for granted.

“Time is always of the essence,” Yal Mertz says. “We stay the course.”

He’s the Darkland Portage Minister, in charge of all importing and exporting. I met him a few weeks back when I wandered into the Portage Hall out of curiosity. It’s hard to keep me out of the places where ships are discussed.

“You’re in the middle of the siren mating season,” I argue. “You need to shift the shipping lanes farther north if you want any ships to return.”

As the minister, Yal is responsible for all charts and schedules.

Not knowing the mating seasons of all the sea creatures is not only poor form, it’s downright irresponsible.

How he’s made it this far in the job, I’ll never know.

If I wasn’t concerned about being labeled a nepo boyfriend, I’d call for his firing.

Some of the men are already whispering about the amount of influence I have in the Merchant District, considering I’ve only been on Darkland a little over two months.

But I have experience. Real fucking experience! Who cares who I’m sleeping with?

Though I will admit, fucking the future king of Darkland is a potential conflict of interest.

It’s not like I’m being paid for my work, though.

“I’ve never seen sirens in the Loarring Strait,” Yal argues. “How do we know they aren’t being controlled by…someone?”

The way he says this leads me to believe he’s insinuating it’s someone in particular. The Loarring Strait is not far off of where Lostland is supposed to be and rumors have started to swirl about my connection to the Myths, despite the fact I’m very clearly a victim of their meddling, not an ally.

I haven’t been able to confirm it, but I think the Myth Makers were already planting rumors before Roc, Wendy, and I arrived here.

Rumors that I have Myth Maker blood coursing through my veins.

Never mind the fact that it was a Myth that was trying to take control of Roc’s body, install him as king, and overthrow the Darkland court.

Technically, they should be thanking us for saving them.

Otherwise, they’d all be living under a Myth Maker banner right now.

“How does one control a siren?”

The voice rings out over the Portage Hall, cutting through the noise of us arguing.

Hearing the Crocodile makes the hair lift on the back of my neck.

Will I ever grow accustomed to him? To the way he smells, the way he feels, the way he sounds?

We all turn to the open double doors to Roc standing in a slant of sunlight, hands in his pockets, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

He’s wearing a black shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing all the swirls of black ink on his pale skin.

The room goes silent.

All breath is held.

Roc takes a hit from the cigarette as he walks forward, then pinches the end between his thumb and index finger, pulling it out so he can exhale as he comes to a stop in front of Yal Mertz.

The smoke billows around the man.

Yal winces.

“Tell me, minister,” Roc goes on. “If you can control a siren, I’d very much like to know how.”

“Well…I don’t know…me personally…I’m sure there are ways.”

“Mmmm.” Roc looks at the map and the second his gaze is off Yal, the minister exhales with relief.

“How much time do we lose if we move the shipping lanes farther north?” Roc asks.

Yal looks at some of his men. The one with dark, wavy hair, Manuel I think his name is, whispers to his desk mate. They nod. Then Manuel says, “Fourteen hours, give or take.”

Roc takes another hit, blows out another jet stream of smoke. “So would you rather lose twenty-eight hours or your life?” This, directed at the minister.

Yal’s nostrils flare. He blinks in quick succession. “Twenty-eight hours for every trip, over the course of the season, amounts to the loss of several thousand dukets and we—”

“Then you helm the ship.”

I’m watching Roc and Yal, but I sense the widening of eyes around us, the silence hanging on every word spoken.

“Uhhh…Your Grace?” Yal says.

“If you’re so concerned with money,” Roc says, “then you helm the ship. Take it through the Strait. Do not deviate.”

“But…I…we should—”

Roc closes the last few feet between them. Because he has a half foot of height on the minister, he makes a show of ducking down, putting his line of sight level with Yal’s.

But the minister is looking everywhere but at Roc. “I apologize, Your Grace,” he stutters. “I’ll adjust the lanes and—”

“Do. Not. Deviate.”

Yal swallows so loudly I think the next room hears.

“Very well.”

“Good.” Roc steps back and the tension immediately fades. “Captain?” he calls and turns for the door.

I don’t know why I feel bad for Yal. If he follows Roc’s orders, he’ll be dead soon, lured from his ship by a siren. It’s impossible to escape the call once it’s on the wind.

But Christ, he should have known better. Roc is…well, Roc, and now he’s a duke, soon to be king. It’s one thing to disagree with a ruler, but to argue with him? Just to defend your pride?

Poor form, indeed.

I follow Roc out of the Portage Hall. We pass several pages filing paperwork in the annex, and two clerks in the front.

Everywhere Roc goes, he is watched. Watched and ogled and fawned over. I’ve always wondered how he does it, how he allows himself to be perceived at every turn without running from it.

I think that’s why I took to pirating so well—people don’t fawn over pirates. They run from them.

One of the pages drops several files when she bumps into a cabinet. In the outer office, both clerks whisper to one another while Roc holds the door for me.

“Have a good day, Your Grace!” the young man calls.

“Yes. A wonderful day!” the woman adds.

“It is promising to be a good and wonderful day,” Roc says back, and the clerks turn to one another and giggle into their hands.

As soon as we’re outside beneath the barreled roof of the Portage Hall, I give Roc a shove.

“What?” he says to me, smiling, his teeth flashing. He knows what. He fucking knows.

“First of all, you’ve just sentenced that man to death.”

“Oh. Pity for him.” He makes his way down the marble steps. “He should have listened to you. Why you let him dismiss you is truly a mystery.”

“I’m not in charge here. And you must know what they’re saying.”

“No. I don’t.” He’s still smiling, like yes, he does know what they are saying.

“I don’t want them thinking I’ve slept my way to the top.”

“Oh, no. We can’t have that.”

“Stop smiling at me. Where are we going, anyway?”

We step into the street.

“Would you prefer I scowl at you instead?” he asks, ignoring my question.

The joy drops from his expression and is replaced with a brooding scowl that sharpens the lines of his face, and makes him ten times more attractive in a fucking instant.

My stomach dips. My cock takes notice.

“No. Stop that, too!”

He laughs. “I can’t win with you, Captain. I’m just trying to have a good and wonderful day.”

I grumble. “I must be a glutton for punishment to endure this torture.”

He reaches over, grabs me by the back of the neck and hauls me close, his mouth at the shell of my ear. “The way you choked on my cock last night says yes, glutton indeed.”

“Bloody hell,” I mutter as he steps away and smiles at a passerby as if he did not just whisper filthy things into my ear, leaving me flushed and hard.

The Crocodile brings me to a cliff overlooking the main port of Darkland. It’s a sunny day, the weather warm, the breeze enough to tousle his hair.

He lights another cigarette and stops at the cliff’s edge. Beyond him, smoke billows up from the Factory District, while the sunlight burnishes the coast, and all of its little shops and houses, in swathes of gold and yellow.

It’s a romantic spot.

I eye him, wondering what has brought him here, and why he’s brought me.

Last night notwithstanding, Wendy and I have barely seen him these last two months.

He’s spent it assembling a council, then filing all of the paperwork to reclaim his title.

He was finally awarded Duke of Maddred two weeks ago, then he and his council quickly turned to the business of claiming the throne.

He’s to be crowned soon.

Now, the coronation planning has dominated his time and his attention, leaving me and Wendy to entertain ourselves.

Wendy, it turns out, has found joy in healing others and volunteers at the hospital when she’s able.

I’ve found use for myself in the Merchant District, helping to plot shipping lines and better organize the harbor schedules.

Some nights, while I lie in bed with Wendy in my arms, while Roc burns the midnight oil in the office attached to our room, I have to poke myself with the sharp tine of my hook just to remind myself that it’s all real.

At any given moment, I expect it all to pop like a bubble, that voice in the back of my mind trying to convince me that I still don’t deserve it.

“I want to tell you something,” Roc says after he blows out a breath of smoke.

“Okay.”

“I’ve asked Wendy to marry me.”

The air catches in my throat and then my mouth is dry, my tongue thick.

I’m panicking. Even though I don’t have all of the information. This doesn’t mean what I think it means…

Maybe this is it. Maybe the bubble is about to burst.

“Oh,” I hear myself say. “What did she say?”

“She said yes, of course. Do you blame her? I’m rather handsome and charming.”

I snort. “I loathe the moment that crown sits atop your head. Your ego will be insufferable.”

“I do believe I warned you, Captain.”

“So you did.”

He takes another hit. When he exhales next, he says, “I would like to ask you the same.”

I frown at him. “Ask me…what, exactly?”

“Marry me, Captain.”

It pulls me to a stop. “What?”

He smiles. I think he’s amused by my surprise and by his ability to still catch me off guard. “Marry me,” he repeats.

“But…what about Wendy?”

“What about her?”

“You…you can’t marry both—”

“Says who? I’m to be king. I marry who I want. If I say I want to marry a bratty pirate captain and a Darling girl, then I will marry both.”

I scoff. “You’re teasing me.”

The smile slips from his face. “I’m not.”

“We…you…you hate commitment. What if you grow bored? What if—”

“Do you want me to beg, Captain? Do you want me to get down on one knee and declare my love for you? Because I will. If that’s what you want.”

“I would never ask you to do something you didn’t want to do.”

He laughs and takes a final hit of his cigarette before dropping it to the uneven rocky slope, crushing the ember beneath his boot. The wind swoops in, carrying several embers on a draft, and the bright gold swirls around him.

Even now, when I’ve had all of him, his body, his soul, his secrets, when I’ve witnessed him at his worst and seen him vulnerable, I’m still overwhelmed by his power and his beauty.

He is a dark storm that cannot be contained. The only option is to brace for the force of him and pray you survive to the other side.

And so I am always braced. Holding on for dear life.

He takes a step toward me, then crouches down onto one knee.

My stomach sways, the earth shifting like water beneath me.

He turns his head up and squints against the sunlight. His eyes, that liquid green, glint in the light.

“Will you marry me, James?”

My heart races in my ears and my eyes are burning even though I will not cry.

He used my name. He never calls me by my name. Names are a sore spot for him, his the sorest of all.

Will you marry me, James?

I know I love him. Maybe deep down, I always knew.

But it hits me now, especially now. Hits me like a gale force, and threatens to buckle my knees.

I love him in a way that feels a little reckless and violent.

If the ocean tried to steal him from me, I would declare war on it. When the sun pools at his feet, I am loathe to steal its place.

I am terrified of how much I love him.

How every hour of his absence feels hollow and dark.

I can’t imagine one single moment without him by my side.

“Yes.”

The wind almost swallows the word.

But of course, he hears it.

When he looks up at me again, dark hair windblown, the smile returns.

“Good,” he tells me and then he rises to his full height, closes the distance between us, and pulls my mouth to his.