Page 1 of Hard As Cake (Chaos God Sugar and Spice Companion Shorts #1)

Chapter One

FIADH

“D on’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 minutes ago 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 lifted the 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 planning to 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 want to think about that either.

Focusing on the empty lunch tables that used to be filled with first year mundanes wouldn’t help me. Panicking about whether or not they were going to take me with them wouldn’t help me. Running I knew for a fact wouldn’t help me.

There was nowhere to run in a closed off Caldera that they couldn’t find me.

I rested my hand on the open book in front of me on the table and looked down at Nibblet. She was about the size of a rabbit but looked like a field mouse and a chinchilla had a love match and played roulette with their genetics. She has huge, fluffy white ears that were almost as big as her body, and a lovely, silky, fluffy tail. I barely got to see her nowadays, as she spent most of her time working in the school farm fields.

“Are you sure?” I asked her.

I knew the room was a bit noisy for her, but she tilted her ears back to the Princes’, focusing on their conversation as best she could.

“Careful,” Anna murmured, keeping her eyes focused on her plate in front of her. “If they think you’re using your familiar to eavesdrop, it will be worse for us.”

“How much worse can it get?” I asked.

I shouldn’t have said that.

“Don’t ask that,” Anna whispered, her voice hoarse.

I tightened my grip on the fork, its polished tines imprinting faint crescents in my fingertips. The tremor persisted, so I exhaled, placed the utensil beside the plate, and flattened my palms on the tabletop. Focus on the sensations that so often overwhelmed me. Focus on my breath going in and out. Focus on all the things that were interesting to look at or feel that didn’t matter. Cool lacquered oak met my skin, the grain rising in fine ridges beneath a glass-smooth finish. Even the cheapest of the tables were finer than what I had back at home. Along the edges, sterilization runes formed interlocking rings; the wood silent as the sigils waited for the magic to power them, ready to cleanse the surface.

That was the one thing they taught me—how to power other people’s spells.

A muted clang of trays echoed from the kitchens beyond the double doors, while nearer at hand, chairs skidded, cutlery chimed, and low voices overlapped beneath the dome’s crystalline vault. Warm air carried the scents of tamarind, toasted peanuts, and citrus oil, mingling with the faint bite of ozone from activated spellwork.

I was a glorified battery.

Even with my hands braced against the table, a tremor quivered in my forearms. This was my second year; of the students who had filled my first-year lectures, more than half were dead.

It was made clear to us all during first-year orientation that we were all disposable.

I looked up.

I didn’t look at the Prince’s table. Their table was on the same level as ours, set apart in the outer ring of tables where all the ‘Proper Students’ sat, a little fancier with chairs instead of benches, but not much different from the other high-ranking student tables. The only table in the room that was vastly different was the King's table, which was elevated, raised above the rest of the room on a platform. There should only have been five chairs there, but there were eight now, and only a few of them had Kings in them. I tore my eyes away from them.

Not that they would save me from the Princes.

None of the so-called ‘Proper Students’ had ever lifted a finger to save a mundane. The Kings and the Princes, only two of whom were actual royalty, served merely as titles for the dungeon-diving crews, ranked by their triumphs in the weekly contests that unfolded on the sprawling, emerald school fields. The first afternoon I witnessed those matches, I stood on the bleachers and watched bodies and spells arc through the air. Their shields cracked like thunder, blades rang against conjured stone, and the sweet reek of scorched turf drifted on the wind. Their power, both physical and magical, rivaled scenes I had only ever believed possible with clever cinematography back in the mundane world.

My admiration dimmed the moment I realized that women were vanishing.

Not all women…only the mundane ones.

I’d noticed but hadn’t understood the pattern until Becky, after her first shift in the damp, brine-scented fish hatchery, explained to me in graphic detail what exact type of hell hole this place was. Thanks to her warnings, I’d managed so far to avoid the fate of the others.

Becky had died three days ago, torn apart by a Thutar.

My heart rate jumped again as anxiety dug its claws back into me.

I had to focus on something else.

Some of the monsters around me were attracted to fear.

I rested one palm on the runes carved along the tabletop’s edge, their grooves cool beneath my fingertips. Steam coiled from the plates of noodles beside me, mingling with the sharper aromas of citrus polish and sweat clung to the high-vaulted dome shaped room. I glanced over at the volume propped open beside my plate. On the vellum page sprawled an ink illustration of a pulsing mound of flesh, its tentacles flailing, its circular maw lined with needle teeth, the Thutar. Thick strokes of sepia ink suggested the creature’s slick hide; tiny cross-hatching hinted at mucus sheen.

I had never set foot inside the Dungeon myself because when I enrolled, women were barred from entry. That rule changed this year, after the Goddess awoke.

I put my hand on the page and flipped it to a different one, a familiar one.

The page I kept coming back to.

I felt my heart rate calm in my chest as I stared at the long sinewy tail of the monster on the page in front of me. There were four skulls on the page, a clear indication of just how dangerous he was, but even so, when I looked at the strong lines of his body sketched out onto the page, it made everything melt away.

They’re planning a dungeon dive, Nibblet said in my mind. They want Uthred to prove himself. I don’t know what for, but they… they’re coming over here.

That melty calmness solidified back into the jagged edges of terror.

I reached out and took a steak knife from where it rested on the table, sliding it into my lap.

Anna looked at me with an expression I knew far too well. Fear sits on a bed of exhaustion, like a horse forced to run too many miles, stumbling one hoof after the other towards the end. We couldn’t run. The school was in a massive caldera, with a fortress built at the only opening to keep us trapped in here. Even if we got out of here, none of us knew how to make a portal to get back to the mundane. The only fate that was left for us was to try to survive here.

Survive long enough to learn enough to find a way out.

“You, mundane, what is your name?” a voice came from behind me.

I hunched my shoulders and I looked back over one of them to see what I feared had come true. The Princes were behind me, standing around our table, and they were all looking at me. They weren’t wearing their blue jackets that marked their ranking at the school. Instead they were dressed in Dungeon diving attire, different types of armor based on their role in the party. I didn’t know most of their names; there was only one of them I really paid attention to, one whose exceptional cruelty was whispered about around campus, and he was the only one who had a small crease in his forehead, like he didn’t understand what was going on.

Except for Uthred who was dressed like he was going to a party that was both casual and high end at the same time.

He had red sweatpants that had black stripes following the lines of the pockets, zigzagging back and forth, like they were supposed to be designer pants instead of just plain old sweats. He had paired them with a black tank top, and a pair of gold sneakers. He also had a gold chain around his neck.

Uthred towered over the rest of them, a good foot and a half taller than the rest. It was normal for lycans to be big and bulky, but he was the biggest one I’d ever seen, built like he was born to wield an ax and pillage the shores of distant countries. He was tidier than I was used to seeing him, having buzzed his hair and trimmed his normal five o clock shadow. My stomach dropped at the sight of him.

Uthred had a bad reputation, even for a lycan. That reputation wasn’t improved by the fact that he had just challenged one of the Kings and gotten his ass handed to him in front of the entire commons room. Everyone just witnessed his humiliation just a little bit ago.

I suddenly realized someone had asked me a question.

It hadn’t been Uthred.

One of the other princes, the shortest one with sandy brown hair and more freckles than was reasonable on a person, was sneering down at me, the smile on his face a sickening accompaniment to his look of disdain. What had he said? Did he ask my name?

“I’m Fiadh,” I said, hoping that was the right answer to a question I didn’t pay attention to.

“Feeeuh?” he asked, both his eyebrows shooting up. “What kind of dumbass name is that?”

I didn’t respond.

I knew better than to talk back.

In my first month here at the school, I’d seen a 'Proper Student' cut their initials in another student’s cheek because they didn’t like the way they spoke to them. Mundanes were never considered ‘Proper Students’. To be a 'Proper Student', you had to have been born in the magic realm and grown up in their messed-up school system.

Being imported meant you didn’t matter.

“Look at what she’s reading,” The blond man said as he leaned forward over the table, his cracked lips curling into a twisted grin that showed too many teeth. My eyes flickered over the details of his appearance. His hair was cropped unevenly, as though hacked with a dull blade, and strands of it fell over his pockmarked forehead.

I’d noticed that some of the ‘Proper Students’ didn’t seem to know how, or didn’t care to take care of themselves. They were ragged looking.

The worn leather of the ragged blond man’s vest creaked as he pressed his weight on his scarred, calloused hands, the dirty nails tapping on the open page of the book. “We have a wannabe monsterfucker.”

I sucked in a harsh breath at the label.

He wasn’t wrong.

I’d rather bang the monster on that page than any of the monsters standing in front of me.

“Which one is she dreaming about boning, Rorik?” The redhead to the right said as he crossed his muscular arms, his scarred knuckles ridged and raw from some recent fight. His tangled curls looked stiff, as though they hadn’t seen water in weeks, and his hollowed cheeks gave his face a feral, hungry look.

The crusty blond, Rorik, straightened as he dragged the book off the table, hitting me in the shoulder with it as I flinched to the side. I took the opportunity to grab another napkin off the table, dropping it on top of the dirty steak knife I had in my lap. He held it up, and four of the five of them looked at the page that was open.

“This little monsterfucker wants to ride a snake,” Rorik laughed. “Looks like you picked the right one, Uthred.”

Uthred’s face twisted in disgust as he glanced from one to the other.

“There is no point to this,” Uthred said, rolling his shoulders as if his own clothing was causing him discomfort. “Leave her alone.”

I blinked.

I never, in a million years, thought I would hear Uthred of all people say that. Why would he tell them to leave me alone? From what I’d seen, they were a unified team of shitheads. The thought that Uthred would try to corral in his buddies simply made no sense at all from my understanding of him.

“You’re not sounding like yourself, Uthred,” the last man said.

I jerked my attention over to him, focusing on his appearance.

The last man had sandy hair and a bony frame, and a perpetual scowl pinched the skin above his brow. The glass filtered sunlight spilled across his coat, revealing a dozen mismatched patches of cracked leather coated in flecks of grease.

Behind him, a spoon rang against a metal bowl, the note echoing off the vaulted stone, jarring my attention and smacking away my thoughts with its sharp sound. I lifted a hand and rubbed my temple, close to my ear.

Rorik tossed my book on the table next to me.

I glanced at the open page.

The monster on the page was gorgeous, a muscular handsome man with the lower body of a giant snake. He was the kind of monster who didn’t hide who he was behind the vestiges of humanity. He was a predator, plain and simple.

The Chaos God had made far too many of his monsters beautiful, and the naga was no exception, with hard lines of muscle and deceptively gorgeous faces. Yet at the same time, the men who surrounded me were physically fit and could be considered attractive, but the weight of their attention made my skin crawl.

The only monsters I’d met at this school were the ones who wore the forms of men.

“Well, maybe I’ve had a spiritual awakening and had a complete change in personality,” Uthred said, crossing his arms. “It could happen, buddy.”

“My name is Thorne, not buddy,” the sandy-haired Thorne said.

“What are the rest of our names?” the short, freckled one asked, his eyebrows narrowing in suspicion.

“Garrick, Rorik, Bram, and Thorne,” Uthred said, pointing at each one. “Now what the fuck are we dicking around here for. Let’s go to the dungeon.”

Garrick put his hand on my upper arm, his fingers wrapping around to dig into my flesh with a painful grip as he dragged me off the bench with no other warning. The steak knife clattered to the ground as I stumbled to keep from falling.

Bram, the redhead with stiff, dirty hair, bent down and picked it up.

“You don’t need a knife to have meat for dinner,” he grinned at me, showing off the thick yellow coating of teeth that hadn't seen a toothbrush in far too long. He slapped it down on the table next to Anna, who winced. “We’ll make sure you’re well stuffed on our dungeon dive.”

“For fucks sake, Bram, stop being so gross,” Uthred’s mouth twisted in disgust.

“This is for you, Uthred,” Rorik muttered. “You’re the one who started this whole thing. We’re just trying to remind you what you really love in life.”

Uthred hesitated, looking at him.

“Fine,” he said. “But no one hurts the girl.”

Nibblet crouched, as if she were about to jump over to me.

“Nibblet, stay here!” I gasped out, panic rushing through me.

But you need me, she said, hesitating as her huge ears flicked back and forth.

“I need you to stay alive,” I whispered.