Bitterest Winter

In Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy series, the Bitterest Winter is the name given to a disastrous season in Terre d'Ange; heroine Phèdre nó Delaunay is nineteen or twenty years old at this time.
It begins with the Longest Night on which Melisande Shahrizai contracts Phèdre to attend a masque with her. The winter snows hit hard and deep, and plague strikes the nation, decimating the City of Elua. The plague begins with white spots appearing on the back of the tongue; when Phèdre and Joscelin Verreuil return to the city late that winter, the guards check their tongues and are interested in little else about them.
Among the victims of the plague are Anasztaizia, mother of Hyacinthe, who dies, and Thelesis de Mornay, who takes the fever but lives through it.
The greatest impact of this winter is that during these months, Waldemar Selig assembles his massive Skaldic army and plots his invasion of Terre d'Ange. They wait only for the spring thaw before they begin to march into Camlach. Phèdre and Joscelin spend this winter in Skaldia, slaves first to Gunter Arnlaugson and then to Selig himself; they escape before the winter is over, and spend endure some of the harshest weather of the entire season out in the Skaldic hinterlands, making their way slowly back to Terre d'Ange.

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