Page 20 of Magical Mayhem

“What are they? And why didn’t anyone warn me?” My voice pitched higher than I meant, but the question burned in me like fire.

Yet again, the secrets only revealed themselves when I walked right into them.

Nova turned back to me, her expression steady but heavy. “It never occurred to me they would come back. They were thought to be gone, wiped away when the Wards first fractured. None of us believed they would bloom again.”

I swallowed hard, throat dry. “So what… what are they?”

“They don’t affect animals,” Bella said firmly, her voice carrying that sly fox-edge even when she was serious. “That’s why I shifted. I could walk through the clearing and feel nothing. But for witches…” She glanced at Nova, then back to me. “They give off particles. A kind of spell in the air. You breathe them in without even knowing it, and the effect is… well.” She gestured at me.

I wrapped my arms tighter around myself. “Hallucinations.”

“Not exactly hallucinations,” Nova corrected, her tone more careful. “The spores are old magic. It takes a lot of practice to avoid their temptations. They seek your mind’s weakest thread. They pull forward your worries, your fears, and make them flesh. Not truly, not fully…but real enough to make you doubt what you know.”

“And you managed to avoid the pull?” A shiver traced down my spine.

Nova gave a quick nod.

Nova’s staff tapped against the ground, deliberate, commanding. “Who were you hearing, Maeve?”

I closed my eyes. The voice rang in my memory again, curling around my name, soft and sharp at once.

“At first…” My breath shook as I forced the words out. “At first, I thought it might be Keegan. It was softer, almost warm. But then the pull felt stronger, heavier. Like Gideon. Or worse, Malore.”

Ardetia’s eyes widened slightly.

Nova’s green eyes narrowed, her concern slipping through the cracks of her usual composure. “And you believed it?”

“It felt real,” I admitted, my voice cracking. “Not just a whisper. It was in me. It pulled at me, Nova, like a hook set in my chest. I could feel it in my bones.”

The air thickened between us, and Nova stepped closer. “That’s the danger. The spores weave sound and sensation so tightly into your fears that you cannot tell where truth ends and illusion begins.”

“But it wasn’t just an illusion.” My hands shook as I lifted them. “It was real enough to drag me into the cemetery. It was real enough to make me think…” My throat closed around the rest.

Nova studied me.

Finally, she exhaled. “It was the Sillipa mushroom grove. A rare kind. Found in very few places in the world. Always deep within wild magic.”

The name landed heavily in my chest. “Sillipa.”

She nodded. “They are not of darkness entirely, nor of light. They simply… are. But their gift, if you can call it that, is cruel. They do not invent fears. They reveal what is already within youand dress it in flesh. They make you walk to the edge of your own mind and wonder if you will fall.”

The words sank like stones in my gut.

Bella placed a hand on my shoulder, gentler now. “That’s why I shifted. Animals aren’t tangled in human fears. The spores have nothing to cling to. But you,” her voice softened further, “you carry a lot right now, Maeve.”

My throat closed. Gideon. Malore. Keegan. All swirling in my chest like a storm.

Nova’s eyes flicked toward the glow of the mushrooms still visible through the trees. “It is troubling they have returned. Troubling, and deliberate.”

Ardetia’s voice was soft, lilting. “Deliberate?”

Nova nodded once. “The Sillipa do not bloom without reason. Something in the Wilds wanted them awake again.”

Her words crawled over my skin.

I forced myself to meet her gaze, even as my heart pounded. “Then what I heard… it was only the mushrooms?”

Nova hesitated just long enough to make my stomach flip.