If her father had understood this, he would never have locked Morte up in that iron pen in the stables, in the dark. The animal had grown resentful in the pen, which explained why he hadn’t killed Dinah and Wardley that day when Wardley tossed her on his back. This would never happen now, Dinah was sure of it. Morte had been waiting for a chance to run free, and he sensed that something important was happening. The sprint from the palace that had lasted almost a day would probably never happen again—that had been a combination of adrenaline and his need for freedom. She was fairly certain that Morte would not kill her, but she wasn’t going to press her luck. Every night she slept a bit closer to his warm side, but she never touched him, nor allowed herself to sleep close to his bone spikes or huge mouth. When she closed her eyes, she could still see him burying his face in the bear’s belly, his maw wet with black blood. It was a sight she would not—nor should she—ever forget.
Morte slept the nights away without a care, and Dinah watched him enviously as he slipped into the depths of slumber. Sleep did not come easily for Dinah anymore. At night, her thoughts wandered into dark places or even darker memories. Charles’s body, lying broken on a stone slab. His beloved servants, Lucy and Quintrell, their throats open and bloody. The sound of the trumpets blaring from the castle and the Cards who had swarmed out of it, so ready to kill their Princess. The stranger, his black figure silhouetted in front of her balcony, the way his hand had wrapped around her mouth, truly the most terrifying moment of her life. She thought about Wardley and his brown curls. Wardley, who had saved her, Wardley who was probably in the Black Towers, black roots twisting into his body, into his brain, hollowing him from the inside out.
When she finally did fall asleep, she drifted from one bizarre nightmare to another. She would be in the Black Towers one minute and her father’s chamber the next. The night before, Dinah dreamt that she had awakened to the sound of someone crying softly just beyond the trees. Curiosity propelled her forward, and she came to a large clearing in the trees, where one of the Heart Cards she killed sat on a log, softly playing a lute, a cat lounging lazily on his shoulder. Dinah had sat at his feet and listened to his weeping song as blood flowed down his chest, a crimson river creeping closer and closer to her white nightgown. She woke up screaming, covered in a cold sweat, and was unable to fall asleep until dawn began its slow rise.
Another week passed. Out here in the untamable wood, she thought a lot about her mother. Dinah had always tried her best not to think on Davianna. Her father had forbidden her to speak Davianna’s name in his presence, so Dinah, young as she was, thought it was best if she just pretended her mother never existed. In a way she was grateful to him for the excuse—it was easier than facing the raw grief, the gray wave of nothingness that would roll over her if she turned her back for just a moment. But here, she was at the mercy of her memories during endless hours of walking. There was no one to talk to except Morte, and Dinah didn’t want to upset the delicate balance they had formed by suddenly becoming very chatty. The good thing about Morte was that he didn’t care if Dinah wept as she walked, or if she spent an hour staring off into the hazy woods. Allowing herself to remember Davianna was a gift that Dinah gave herself—she needed to feel close to someone out here in the wilderness. And so she delved deep into her mind, into Davianna.
Her first memory of her mother was the tips of her fingers, trailing over Dinah’s face, tracing her cheekbones and lips with absolute devotion. Her mother had loved to be touched and to touch others—she was constantly resting her hands on the shoulders of those below her—Cards, lords, ladies, merchants, or even commoners from Wonderland proper, the town that surrounds the Wonderland Palace. They were originally struck by her beauty, but the touch of her hands left them overwhelmed by her grace. Davianna had been born the child of the Duke and Duchess of Ierladia, the largest and richest township on the Western Slope. Ierladia lay just south of the Todren and was the Wonderland stronghold in the North.
Like Dinah, Davianna was never allowed outside of her palace, though she was afforded every possible luxury. Negotiations between Dinah’s grandfather, the King of Hearts at the time, and Davianna’s father ensured her place at the throne, and from the time she was born, Davianna was groomed to be wife of the King of Wonderland—the Queen of Hearts. This accounted for the way she could float through a room full of the court’s highest born with nary a thought, or how she commanded loyalty wherever she went. She was bred and raised on the idea of being a queen, much like Dinah. But unlike Dinah, Davianna loved her studies and dance lessons, whereas Dinah had mostly been thinking of ways to sneak out of them.