Wardley swallowed. “Yes, but… what if he doesn’t? What if he puts on a helmet and I don’t recognize him in the battlefield? What if I…?” His words faded on his tongue. A few moments passed as they both remained silent. “What are you afraid of?” he whispered.
Dinah swallowed before lowering her voice to a murmur. “Everything. I’m afraid that the men will see that I am just a girl who was rejected by the King. I’m afraid I’ll die silently and quietly, like the flame blown from a match, and I’ll be nothing more than a child who played at war. I’m afraid of losing you, or Sir Gorrann, or even Cheshire. I’m afraid of letting down the Yurkei people.” Dinah lifted her foot and watched droplets of water roll off her muscular calf. “Mostly I’m afraid that I’ll die, and it won’t matter if I have a crown on my head or not. I’ll die the same as other men, with a bloody sword through my chest, one final breath lost in the madness.”
A sword. What had the Caterpillar said to her? “You will pierce the heart of one man and…”
Her memory was there, but then it was gone again, the way a butterfly would land on her hand but leave the moment she glanced at it. “I’m even afraid of what happens if we are victorious. I’ll be Queen. Can I rule? Will I be a good ruler, or a terrible one, like my…?” She stopped. “Like the King of Hearts. If that even happens. If we can get through the gates.”
Wardley absently clasped her hand in his, their palms slick with comingled sweat.
“Do you believe we can win, Wardley?”
He stared out at the small pond. His face was ruddy and flushed from the walk, and for a moment he reminded Dinah of the boy with the stolen tarts. But then she saw the stubble creeping up his cheeks and the way his sculpted muscles tensed under his shirt. He had become a man since she had seen him last. He sighed and rubbed his face with his other hand.
“We can win, but it’s not in our favor as it stands right now. The King has us outnumbered almost two to one and that means the odds are against us. The iron walls are perfectly round, which means that to surround them, we will be stretched thin in all places. We have the Spades, which will help, for they are ruthless in battle, but he has the Heart Cards, who are the most-skilled fighters in Wonderland. He has Xavier Juflee.” He gave a laugh. “We have an exiled princess, the King’s horse, an army of wild natives, and the Spades. And even if we win, once we are inside the gates, the people of Wonderland Palace will not welcome us with open arms. They loathe you, do you realize that? The people fear you, Dinah, and for good reason. You are bringing death and war upon this city, a city that has never seen a battle. Almost every man in the kingdom is a Card, and the King will deploy all of them to his defense.”
“Yes, but we have the Yurkei….”
“The Yurkei have never attacked a city. What do they know of walls and iron gates and a palace made of stone and glass? The mounted Heart Cards will smash against the Yurkei on the north side, while we battle our way through a sea of Hearts, Clubs, and Diamonds, all while the Fergals rain arrows down around us.” Wardley shook his head. “If we are captured, our fate will be much more terrible than dying quickly on the battlefield. They will throw us into the Black Towers to rot, until we become one with the tree, or worse. The King of Hearts is a hateful man.” He looked over at Dinah, his brown eyes gazing with adoration and sadness over her drawn face. “I swear to you this day, here in this place, that I will kill you before I let the King torture you. And I hope you will do the same for me.”
Dinah smiled back at him, knowing that she would never be able to take Wardley’s life. No, not even to save him. Love had made her impassively hard and needlessly soft at the same time.
“I keep thinking,” he muttered, “that this might be the last time I do anything. The last time I eat bread. The last time I dip my foot in a pool. The last time that I get to speak with you as a friend, and not as a commander to his queen.”
Dinah felt her heart start to gallop within her chest. It raced so fast she felt it might explode. Despite all the oxygen running through her veins, she was frozen in place. Wardley seemed oblivious to her discomfort. He leaned back onto the mossy ground, stretching his arms above his head.
“Tonight could be the last night that I watch the stars simply to remember my place in this world. Everything that we have can be taken away. It will be taken away for many men that rest in those tents, maybe from you, maybe from me.”