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ChapterOne

FIADH

“Don’t look, Fiadh,” Anna said, emphasizing the fee sound of my name and breathing out the uh like a sigh. “But one of the shitheads just pointed at our table.”

The sounds and sensations of the room buffeted my brain, overwhelming me with stimulus like it always did, drowning out my friend's words for a few moments. Low, muffled hisses and clanks drifted in through the double doors at the far side of the commons, but nearer to me, the air vibrated with sharper sounds: chairs scraping against marble, utensils tapping porcelain, and dozens of overlapping conversations. Aromas of toasted peanuts, tamarind, and fresh lime mingled with the warmth of bodies. The sweet smell of cake filled the air, floating over the aroma of Thai food.

They had cake.

I tore my mind away from the sudden awareness of the cake, focusing on what my friend had just said to me.

“Glitter bombs,” I cursed under my breath. I clenched my fist around my fork, the cool steel edges pressing into my palm, and fixed my gaze on the glossy noodles cooling on my plate. I had been halfway through eating what I assumed was pad thai—no labels marked the dishes that servers ferried out from the unseen kitchens. “Why look at us? The Kings just put on a big enough show that no one should be paying attention to us.”

A few minutesago one of the Princes, or the shitheads as we liked to call them, had gone up to the Kings table and gotten his ass handed to him. It didn’t bode well for us mundanes. Shitheads always took out their anger on those who couldn’t fight back and there was no way that Uthred wasn’t angry after getting stomped like that.

I liftedthe bite up to my mouth, making sure none splattered on the book I had open on the table.They didn’t teach us anything useful in class, so I raided the library on a regular basis.

I eyed the cake that was out on the central table.

Dinner first, then I was going to get some. That was the only saving grace of this hellish place. They never skimped on the desserts or restricted portions. There was always an abundance of food. I could take a whole cake if I wanted to, and no one would bat an eye.

I eyed the cake with the hard chocolate frosting and the ring of strawberries along the top and gave the thought some serious consideration. I bet the shell on the outside would crunch when cracked open, revealing a gooey center inside.

I’d rather focus on cake than the fact that the Princes were looking at us.

Being the target of their attention could only lead to bad things.

“I heard something happened to Uthred last night,” Anna said, her voice low. Her tone dropped even lower as she leaned into me, practically whispering in my ear. “I heard he was caught with one of the Kings.”

I shot her a glance.

“Like, with with?” I asked.

She widened her eyes and nodded.

“That isn’t in ‘Proper Order’,” I whispered back, glancing around to make sure no one was listening to us. We could be punished just for talking about something like that. Two people of the same sex being intimate with each other was punishable by death here, and if anyone overheard us even implying that, especially of a Prince and a King… it would put us at risk.

“They might be looking to use a mundane to help dispel that rumor,” Anna whispered. “You remember what Becky said?”

Disgust rose up in me, and I swallowed it down like bile.

This place was evil.

I didn’t like to think about that, so I focused on the sensations around me.

Sunlight filtered through the towering glass geodesic dome overhead, fracturing into shifting rainbows that slid across dark mahogany tables carved with looping runes, filling the room with a soft, idealistic glow. Students in varied academy uniforms leaned over plates piled high with unlabelled dishes, steam curling around their whispers and casual gossip alike. All the students near me wore different shades of red, the color of the mundanes. The ‘Proper Students’ wore a myriad of different colors, silver, green, violet, or different colors assigned based on their year or their ranking. The end result was a room filled with beautiful colors and beautiful people, all acting as if they hadn’t seen someone be tortured to death in this room when they first got here.

I could feel my heartbeat increase inside my chest and I closed my eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath as I tried to drag my thoughts away from anything that wasn’t a sensation. I failed.

I had known nothing of this realm until the Order Academy brochure arrived in the mail, revealing that people from this world called mine the Mundane because it was bereft of the magic that saturated the Magic Realm like humidity in the tropics. Magic didn’t work as well in the Mundane, so to learn it was essential to come here, to this school.

I thought that I was going to learn real magic.

Instead,I learned the meaning of hell.

They are planningto take you into the Dungeon,my familiar, Nibblet, chirped in my mind as she put a small paw on my leg. She was sitting next to me on the bench. Anna, myself, and a few other mundanes who had survived the last Blood Moon were all crowded together in a clump on a few tables this time. There were a lot more empty lunch tables around the room.

I didn’t wantto think about that either.