HIS SPORES BENEATH HER SKIN

Mara sells morel flowers and is in the shower when Lucian's blue and gold spores spread over her, and moonlight mushrooms open on her skin. Lucian is the mushroom king who rules underground from the Root Palace, and the mark is the royal one. The whole city can smell it and knows what it means. Her older sister Celeste spent seven years training to become queen, and she wants the spores off Mara. Strangers pile on Mara online. She scrubs at the mushrooms and cuts the threads of them away, and every injury she gives herself lands on Lucian down in the Root Palace. The royal matriarch tries to break the link between them with silver veils that shut out light and with salt rain that kills the roots. Mara finds a warm gold light of her own, makes peace with Celeste, and the two of them go to bring down the Clean Root Tower. Then she goes to the Root Palace to be loved as an equal.