Queen of Hearts: Volume Two: The Wonder

by Colleen Oakes

  Dinah was embarrassed. “I’m sorry. It was my fault… Wardley… he saved me. He put me on Morte and unlocked the stable gates. He gave me his sword and told me to stab him. I would have lain down and waited for the King if it wasn’t for him.” She wiped her nose on the corner of her sleeve.

  The Spade’s lip turned up in a half smile. “So I figured. Yeh don’t strike me as a warrior. Yeh strike me as a terrified princess, denied of her kingdom, neglected by her father, a shell of a girl—one who has seen her brother murdered and her half sister crowned Queen.”

  Dinah jerked her head up. “Vittiore?”

  “You must have fathomed that she would take yer place.”

  Yes, Dinah had imagined it, but it was always a waking nightmare, her worst fear come true, something that she reasoned with herself would never happen. Vittiore, walking up the aisle of the Great Hall as her court bowed before her. Vittiore, her long golden curls pressed down as the beautiful twisting crown that Charles had made was lowered onto her head. My father has taken everything. In her mind, she saw Vittiore, sitting in the heart throne next to her father, ruling Wonderland when she was nothing better than a piece of rotten fruit from the mountain villages. Dinah let out a blunt, angry cry and kicked the rotting log below her into the fire.

  “That whore will never truly be the Queen. She is a pawn in my father’s game, a tool that he used to push me out. She knew that my brother would be murdered and did nothing.”

  Dinah saw the flicker of a smile pass over the Spade’s dark features. “Indeed. But she is beloved by the people. They are grateful that she survived the Rebel Queen’s murderous rampage. The talk amongst the common people is that you tried to murder sweet Vittiore but couldn’t get into her room.”

  “That is a LIE,” whispered Dinah intensely. “I was never anywhere near her room that night. I only went to Charles’s room, where I saw my brother….” Her voice broke, a mix of anger and grief. “I saw his broken body lying on a slab of stone. The stars were as dark as his blood that night and his eyes looked at nothing.”

  The Spade was silent, and for a few minutes there was nothing but the crackle of nightfire and the sounds of steam hissing out of Morte’s nostrils.

  Finally, the Spade cleared his throat. “There’s nothing to be done now. Vittiore is Queen and sits beside your father. There is unrest in Wonderland because the King raised taxes to justify increasing the number of Cards and weapons. Many people in the kingdom are starving as he reinforces the Cards. When we left, turrets were being built around the perimeter of the iron walls.”

  Dinah wiped her tears away and worked at keeping her voice steady. “The Iron Gates? Did we break them?” She vaguely remembered the sides of the gates clipping Morte’s shoulder before they were thrust open. The Spade laughed.

  “Well, the King doesn’t feel that the Iron Gates were enough to keep his traitorous daughter in, so he is strengthening them to make sure he keeps her and everyone else out.”

  Dinah gave a wry laugh. “To keep me out? What an idea. I have no intention of ever going back there. I’ll be killed the moment I appear in Wonderland proper! I will never see the palace again.” Or Wardley, she thought with sadness. Or Harris. Or Emily. Or the beautiful stained-glass heart that sits outside my mother’s room, the one that shades the world in red.

  The Spade took a last inhale of his pipe before dumping its contents into the fire. “Perhaps. But I think the King fears more than just the return of the Princess.”

  “The Yurkei?”

  “This is the end of your answers for tonight.”

  “There is nothing more to tell me of Wardley?”

  “No. His shoulder still healing. He spends his days in the stables, wiping the dung off of his face that is thrown at him by orphans.”

  But he is alive, thought Dinah, he is alive. She absently rubbed her hands together. More blood on my hands, she thought, more consequences because of my actions. And Harris, and Emily—what had happened to them? Had her father chopped them down as easily as he had Lucy and Quintrell?

  She began to raise her voice when the Spade turned slightly, his ears pointed at the sky. “BE SILENT!” he whispered. Dinah froze in place. Without making a sound, the Spade ran over to his pack and withdrew a bow and arrow. Her heart thudded in her ears. What was he doing? Maybe he worked for her father. Perhaps he was an assassin sent her to kill her silently and bury her deep in the woods, where her body would simply disintegrate into the dusty ground. She looked around, taking in the moss-covered rocks and the thin white trees that ringed their nightfire. There are worse places to be laid to rest, she thought. At least I’m here under the bright stars, though… if he wanted to kill me, she reasoned, he would have killed me while I slept. He could have pulled that knife across my throat before I had even understood what was going on.

  The Spade lifted the bow, his muscled arms quivering as he tracked something that Dinah couldn’t see across the dark sky. Finally, he exhaled and released the arrow. Dinah heard a thwap, followed by the sound of something falling through dried leaves. The Spade darted into the woods. Dinah stood. Now, she thought, now would be the time to run with Morte, her legs shaking. Go! she told herself, but her legs didn’t move. She stayed. There was something about this Spade, she reasoned, something different. Besides, the food was almost gone. And he was right—she didn’t have a plan. Defeated, she admitted to herself that she had been wandering aimlessly through the forest, and it was a miracle that she had survived. Now she had help, or at least someone who wanted something from her, which in some cases was as good as help. He wasn’t a friend, but she didn’t sense danger radiating from him either. She paused, thinking of the rage on her father’s face as she stood shadowed in the trees. “But you can’t trust that,” she whispered to herself. “You can’t trust that feeling.” She never would have dreamed that her father would try to murder her, or throw her brother out of a window. Feelings meant nothing. Whom could you trust when your own family turned against you?

  She quickly sat back on the rotted log, which gave a creak underneath her. The day I find out what he wants, she told herself, is the day I will leave him behind in the dust. There was a rustling from the trees and something landed with a sickening crack at her feet. It was the hawk, the tracking hawk, its beautiful deep red feathers mottled with black blood, an arrow through its neck. Dinah looked up at the Spade—and the admiration written across her face deceived her.

  He gave a laugh at her surprise. “Chicken, Princess?”

  For the first time in weeks, Dinah slept long and deep, without dreams of bloody Heart Cards or anything else that woke her in terror. It was late morning when she woke to a loud clanging. She shielded her eyes as she sat up. The Spade was clanging his swords together and watching how the blades ran over each other. Dinah was understandably unnerved by this.

  “Morning, Princess.” The Spade tossed a small loaf of bread in her direction and Dinah tore into it with ravenous bites. “Not very delicate, are yeh?”

  She made a face in his direction.

  “Now, get yerself up so I can begin yer training. Yeh need to learn how to fight, how to defend yerself. I’ve seen eight-year-old girls that can wield a sword better than yeh.”

  “I highly doubt that,” replied Dinah, brushing the crumbs off of her cheeks. She handed a small piece of her bread to Morte, who almost bit her fingers off.

  “On the contrary, I was raised in a village where every child could defend themselves.”

  Dinah was curious about this man. “Where was your village? And what makes you think your children could defend themselves?”

  The Spade didn’t answer and was silent before moving swiftly across the distance between them. Before Dinah could breathe, he had wrapped his thick hand around her arm and shook her roughly. “Don’t speak of things yeh don’t understand. If my daughter had survived, she would best yeh in a second.”

  “Let go of me!” she snapped, yanking her arm out of his grasp. “I
thought Spades weren’t allowed to have families. Your daughter is probably nothing more than your most fancy boy soldier—”

  She didn’t have a chance to finish. The Spade swept both of her feet out from under her, and Dinah landed hard on the small of her back. All the air rushed from her lungs. She barely had time to react before the tip of his sword drew a line across her cheek. He bowed before her. “Now we have matching scars.”

  Dinah leapt up and flung herself against him, and they both tumbled to the ground. The Spade easily flipped her face down into the dirt and then proceeded to keep her down with his boot, standing on top of her. Though his actions were quick and rough, his tone remained calm. “Yeh’ll not say one word about my daughter, understand? Now, are yeh ready to learn?”

  Dinah writhed under his foot before shouting at him. “Get off of me. I order you to stand down! Obey me! I command it!”

  The Spade’s gruff laugh echoed off the rock faces around them as he continued to balance on top of her. “Ah, Princess. Before yeh can learn to fight, yeh must let go of the idea that anyone in Wonderland gives a care about yer fate. Yer no longer a royal playing sticks with the stable boy. Yer no longer a princess, or anyone, for that matter. Yer a wretch, a wanderer in the forest. Think about it. Are yeh her, are yeh that girl, the girl who would be Queen?”

  Dinah considered for a moment, her face bleeding into the dirt. He was right. She was no longer the princess who loved to watch pink snowflakes swirling down from the cloudy sky, one who could command the bowed knee of every person in the room. She was here, in the middle of the wilderness. She was starving, she was broken and bleeding, and there was a Spade literally standing on her back. All this and yet, Dinah felt more in control of her fate than she had the past few months at the palace. There was a freedom in having nothing to lose.

  “Let me stand. I said, let me stand!” She rolled over quickly, which caused him to lose his balance. Then she grabbed hold of the Spade’s leg and dug her teeth into his calf. He let out a yell and hopped away. “Yeh bit me! Who bites someone?”

  Dinah shuffled to her feet, unsteady, bleeding from the lip and covered with dirt. She spat on the ground. “C’mon you dirty Spade—teach me to fight.”

  He rubbed his beard. “Ah, there’s the girl that slapped me for a toy, I knew yeh were there somewhere.” He tossed Wardley’s sword at her, and Dinah managed to catch it without slicing her hand open. This, however, was to be the highlight of her day. The rest of that morning was spent getting bruised, hit, and cut open by the blunt end of Sir Gorrann’s sword. Every strike was deflected and every move of her body was dissected in an effort to find her weaknesses, which turned out to be everything.

  As he flew around her, his voice never stopped lecturing. “Any move off balance and yeh belong to the enemy. A good swordsman can tell when his opponent is off balance and will use it to his advantage.”

  Dinah tried to maintain perfect balance while wielding the sword but it never worked—she was always tipped slightly to one side or the other. The Spade continued to knock her to the ground with ease, but after a few times she leapt up quickly, at the ready to fight again.

  “That was good. Work on getting up. Getting back in the fight. Yeh aren’t used to getting knocked down. Yeh must learn to expect it, to respond quickly when yer down. It can make the difference between victory and defeat. Every good fighter gets knocked down now and then. Now, give me back yer sword. We’ll try again tomorrow to correct yer balance, but until then yeh do not deserve it.”

  Dinah clutched Wardley’s blade close to her chest. I have earned the right to this blade, she thought, I will not give it up so easily. She felt bold. “Come and take it!” she declared.

  He did, and left her lying on a rocky ledge, out of breath, with a bloody nose. Once the morning ended, Sir Gorrann erased all traces of them at the campsite and they continued to weave their way deeper and deeper into the Yurkei Mountains. The terrain was ever changing. The ground rose and fell in rocky slopes, like waves of rock that crested and broke upon the valleys, spilling their huge boulders upon gorgeous green valleys before rising again. It was a physically exhausting climb, and Dinah periodically looked longingly at Morte, only to have him ignore her completely. Only once, when Dinah slipped on a rock and tore her shin open from top to bottom did Morte pause and lift his leg. Dinah wearily climbed up onto his massive back while Sir Gorrann watched with fascination.

  “Thank you,” she breathed to him, letting her hand run over his smooth neck before he nipped at her. She loved the rhythm of Morte’s muscles beneath her, the ocean of black that coated his whole body. He climbed easily through the jagged peaks with which Sir Gorrann’s brown mare, Cyndy, seemed to increasingly struggle. The air became thinner and cleaner, and Dinah relished the sharp, cold breaths that cleared her mind.

  They stopped to camp for the night, and Dinah was allowed her one question as the Spade stoked his nightfire. She asked about Harris, and learned that he had been imprisoned in the Black Towers. He was part of a group of prisoners being forced into slave labor, helping to reinforce the Iron Gates, and so Sir Gorrann said that Harris was outside for a few hours most days. He confessed that the old man looked broken, weary and sad. He was often covered with bruises and cuts inflicted by the Clubs. This news broke Dinah’s heart, and there wasn’t a day after that that she didn’t think of Harris’s kind face and soft hands. He had delivered her from her mother’s womb, loved her the way her father should have, taught her everything she knew, and now he was in pain. It was unforgivable, and the white-hot rage she felt toward her father could have burned the Twisted Wood to the ground. To her devastation, she learned that Emily had been beheaded in a shabby public execution, based on the testimony of Nanda and Palma, Vittiore’s ladies-in-waiting. The Spade didn’t talk to her for the rest of that evening, and Dinah was grateful. She stared out at the Wonderland stars, bunched together in small clusters, and didn’t bother to wipe the tears that dripped down her face.

  Each day that followed in the next few weeks was the same. She woke sore but rested. Together, they gulped down a quick breakfast of bread and game before her training began. After days of working on balance, Dinah finally got her sword back, and with it her pride. She was covered in bruises, but each one had taught her a painful lesson, one that she would not soon forget. Pain cemented things in the brain the way reading did not. After sparring, they continued to make their way east, going painfully slowly as they navigated their way over pebbly ground and fields of strewn boulders. The Yurkei Mountains were upon them now, and the farther they got from the Twisted Wood, the less she feared her father finding them. The rocky outcroppings and grooves in the earth provided minimal protection once they reached the tree line, but there was no one around. The Spade had delivered them from the King’s hands, as promised. In the evenings, Sir Gorrann would tell her of the politics and rumors swirling around Wonderland, some she knew and some she did not know. He told her dark stories of the Spades, stories that entertained while making her blood curdle. He never spoke of his own past, which made Dinah even more curious about where he had come from and why he was here. When she pressed him for answers, he simply walked away, leaving her in uncomfortable silence.

  When the stars appeared, they watched with fascination as strange shades of light played over the mountain face, shifting swirls of every color, flickering like a flame as though they were reflecting an invisible sunset. It was beautiful, ethereal, and terrifying all at once. The light seemed to hover over one specific peak. She had never seen anything like it. Dinah did not relish turning her back to the lights, and slept facing them only to awaken facing the plain gray mountainside in the morning. Through it all the Spade remained, and with his training Dinah grew lean and strong. Another week passed. Thoughts of leaving his side slowly faded, and in the clear cold nights she was grateful to have a friend, if that’s even what he was.

  Chapter Six

  After their morning lesson—which consisted o
f repeatedly striking targets that Sir Gorrann had marked with charred wood—they started their hike early due to the abundance of ominous clouds in the west. The weather had turned in the last few days. Cheerful and glossy spring had changed into sopping warm rains and foggy nights. As she was almost constantly damp, drenched, or drying, Dinah had never known that being wet could be so miserable.

  As they circled their way around boulders that resembled hulking granite giants, ones that even seemed to dwarf Morte, Dinah felt a question alight on her tongue. The Spade had shared so little about himself, and her curiosity grew more potent every day. Some days she felt as though she knew him better than anyone else; other days she was following nothing more than a shadow—listless, hard to pin down. Today had proved the most challenging climb so far, and both were exhausted from the rocky switchbacks that led up a nearly sheer cliff face. In a shocking twist, Morte had allowed Dinah to lead him with a leather rein that the Spade had given her. It was a cruel joke, thought Dinah. If Morte pitched off the side of the mountain, then she wouldn’t be able to do anything to help him. She would plummet down with him, and both of their bodies would be broken on the rocks below. Just like my brother. Still, a physical connection with Morte helped calm them both as they walked and tried not to look down.

  Hoping that the discomfort and distraction of the climb would ease his fury, Dinah dared to speak the question: “Sir Gorrann, what happened to your family?”

  The Spade flinched as he nicked his arm open on a sharp rock outcropping. “Damn! Look what yeh made me do. Been dying to ask, have yeh?”

  Dinah shrugged, the motion giving Morte’s leather reins a shake. “Perhaps. Yes. It’s either that or tell me where we’re going.”

  The Spade took a deep breath and stared aimlessly at the sky with his dark gold eyes. “Fine. I’ll tell yeh. But not without some parameters. What I’m about to share cannot be repeated, understand? And once I tell it, yeh may not ask any questions about it. I’ll not have you pestering me for feelings that I’ve long buried.”