No Saints in the Sporeways

By: Betty Biggs-Qaaqer

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Nettle, a goblin spore-witch, has always been wrong for the warrens.

Down in the Underhollows, goblins survive by keeping their heads down and their mouths shut while knives, quiet coins, and strange spores move through the tunnels. Nettle was born with ears that hear too much and a stubborn streak that won’t let her ignore the way the mushrooms whisper of hidden bargains… and something listening in the dark.

When a creeping rot starts hollowing out her home and a knife-backed syndicate offers easy “solutions,” Nettle decides she’s done waiting for elders and councils to grow a spine. Her choices put her in the path of Corin—a human whose voice does impossible things, and whose body is just another line in someone else’s ledger.

The mushrooms are very sure their songs are tangled.

With a sarcastic, wing-cracked fairy who reads emotions like weather, a stolen root-charm that hums with forgotten power, and a price on her head, Nettle is pulled into a wider web of shadow-markets and unsettling devotions—a place where pain and rest are both for sale, and something unseen is very interested in how quiet a mind can be.

To survive, Nettle and Corin will have to:

• Turn a dangerous kind of closeness into both blade and shield
• Learn which comforts heal—and which quietly take everything
• And decide whether two stubborn, breakable people can carry the same weight without becoming saints, symbols… or something much worse

No Saints in the Sporeways is a dark, sensual romantasy set in a bioluminescent underworld of mycelial magic, knife-glittering politics, and cults of comfort. Expect:

• A sharp-tongued goblin heroine who hears every mushroom in the room
• A captive singer who refuses to stay a holy instrument
• A fairy mentor who thinks saints are a terrible idea
• Slow-burn, intimacy (mental and physical) between adults who are very bad at self-preservation
• Fungal magic, volatile mind-bonds, broken systems, and a love determined not to be turned into a rule

Perfect for readers who want inclusive, emotionally intense fantasy romance with lush worldbuilding, fungus magic, and a relationship that smolders through danger, bad decisions, and very good almost-kisses in very dangerous places.

Content note: Adult romantasy. Contains trauma, body- and mind-altering magic, and on-page heat between consenting adults.