When, after over four-hundred years of marital bliss, Death unilaterally decides to open their marriage, Adeline escapes to the Human Realm devastated and with a new abhorrence for springtime. Just as she risks succumbing to boredom, a prophecy implicates her in this Realm’s infamously deadly Trial, and with nothing much better to do, she agrees to compete.

But the Trial is more dangerous than she had anticipated, and as the game unfolds and Death’s apparent betrayals compound, she is forced to question whether prophecies are even real, and if there might be more to Death’s uncharacteristic cruelty than she had been led to believe. ***Many years before Adeline was ejected from her home with Death, Skie was enjoying his reign as King of the Upper Kingdom, father of all of humankind, and the god of all gods, although he did wish that the humans and his other inferiors would take better notice of his many titles.

In order to convince the world - and possibly also himself - that he is greater than his brother Death, King of the Lower Kingdom, he needs to take Adeline down, and has been plotting her demise since long before she was born. But when Adeline threatens to decide her own fate, Skie’s hunger for power may just start a war neither Kingdom is prepared to finish.

. .