Wintersong (Wintersong, #1)

by S. Jae-Jones

“What day is it?” “The day the old year dies.” Another shiver up my spine. My grandmother still kept to the old laws and the old calendar, and this last night of autumn was when the old year died and the barrier between worlds was thin. When the denizens of the Underground walked the world above during the days of winter, before the year began again in the spring. “The last night of the year,” Constanze said. “Now the days of winter begin and the Goblin King rides abroad, searching for his bride.”

I wanted. I wanted what Käthe took for granted. I wanted wantonness.

After all, I was not a child of beauty; I was a child of the queer, the strange, and the wild.

The night was clear, and the air had the breath of winter upon it, death and ice and slumber.