A Thousand Recipes for Revenge (Chefs of the Five Gods, #1)

by Beth Cato

The Five Gods have graced people with dominion over land and sea, and designated that which we may eat and be empowered by. Magical powers are imbued through food alone. To scorn what the Five have granted us is to be a guest insulting the host.

Among Chefs, a select few have empathetic talents; they can perceive food as others would taste it and customize dishes to their preferences, whether they work with ingredients common or magical.

Overseer of fermentation, yeast, molds, even infections—things that often begin as or remain invisible or strangely small yet are powerful. Gyst feeds on secrets.

Hester is the warmth and coziness of home—but also an entity of crackling rage. After all, the same hearth fire that cooks meat to make it edible and delicious can also raze the building to the ground.

Loving and beloved matron of new mothers and infants, human and otherwise. Spring is her season, care and compassion her emphases. Around the world, Lait’s Houses care for orphaned and abandoned children, and Lait blesses those who donate food, especially milk and cheese, to help those in need at her Houses and to the temple-kitchens known as pentads.

Sugar beets, honey, ripe fruits, and even a loved one’s kisses are under Melissa’s regard.

A God fluid in nature, equally of the salty ocean and the briny wetland and the high-mountain cave crusted with crystalline deposits.

rogue Chefs such as herself were usually caught after committing at least one of three critical errors: they either revealed their Chef skills to untrustworthy people, displayed kitchen intuition beyond the ability of mundane cooks, or were entrapped while utilizing illicit magical ingredients.

“There are a thousand recipes for revenge, and every one of them tastes like scat.”

Flavor was only one part of the equation. Digestion—that was what granted a person energy or illness, or endowed magic through epicurea.

The insults had made her sob a few times, but her cousins and friends—quite a few people, really—had been enraged on her behalf and done all they could to bolster her confidence. The malicious whispers no longer made her cry. They made her angry.

Solenn understood three important, complicated, and terrifying things at once. She had just perceived flavor like a Chef, like one with a peculiar empathetic ability, endowed by Gyst. Chef skills ran in families. The royalty of Braiz had had none in five hundred years of tracked lineage. That meant her family had somehow concealed their Chef skills—which seemed highly unlikely—or one of her parents was not truly her blood parent. And right here, right now, someone was attempting to murder Rupert by poison. She could not warn him verbally, or he—and soon afterward, all of court—would know the truth of her family, be that the presence of hidden Chefs or Solenn’s illegitimacy. The imminent marriage would fracture, and with it, the alliance that Braiz needed to stand up against Albion.

some people are burned at the stake, others do the burning, and far more watch.”

Don’t suppose I should mention the old ‘a thousand recipes for revenge’ line for you.”

All her life, she’d been told that Chefs knew everything about magic, that such power was the Gods’ ultimate blessing upon humankind. Chefs made it sound so straightforward. A matter of graciously accepting a divine gift. The truth was anything but simple.