The Oxidized Garden

Morta, eldest daughter of the Duke of Fate, has a dreadful, thankless job. She splits hairs, cuts seams, and trims tapestries, severing the threads of destiny with a knife sheathed in her throat, quoth the raven inscribed upon the hilt. Cardiac hemorrhaging, acute acidosis, and a loose lateral bypass-she doesn't get to choose how people die, only that they must. Adrift in the wreckage of a white-star ocean liner moments after impact, Morta carries out her grim duty, despised by those she serves. But adoration was never something she craved.

Her younger sisters, Decima, the serpentine princess of love, litany, and life, and Nona, the half-blooded heiress of fertility and pain, are her only tether to tenderness. Morta adores them both, though after a botched corneal transplant, she no longer quite sees eye to eye with them. She teases Nona, the halfbreed, who bleeds at a pinprick. But when Nona suffers a devastating injury, Morta faces an impossible question: can a deity die, and if so, will she be the one to cut the cord?