“I COMMAND IT!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “OBEY ME!”
He turned away from her, making his way to the edge of the clearing. “I’ll be waiting for you tomorrow morning as we ride north.”
She shook her head, holding back the cruel words that longed to drip from her tongue.
Wardley turned back to her for a moment, his face wrenched with guilt before he finally disappeared into the bramble.
Dinah waited until she couldn’t hear his footsteps, then collapsed into gut-wrenching tears. An empty hopelessness overtook her, and she lay beside the pool, barely breathing through the ache. The thought of being with Wardley had kept her alive all those cold nights in the Twisted Wood, all those warm afternoons in Hu-Yuhar. She had always envisioned him sitting on the throne beside her, his hand in hers as they led Wonderland into a glorious and peaceful future. Now there was nothing, only blackness and despair. What would she fight for? What would she live for?
Waves of anguish and rejection washed over her, and she let herself drown, glad to feel anything against the numbness that threatened.
She thought of his face, and how just moments ago, his lips had been on hers. She bit down on them so hard that she tasted blood.
For hours, Dinah lay beside the pool, her heart throbbing over each word he had said.
He didn’t love her. He never would. He never did.
She was undone.
When the night finally settled around her, she heard someone calling her name. Wardley? She listened again. No. Sir Gorrann. With trembling hands, Dinah pushed herself to her knees and splashed the clear water of the pool on her face. Opening her black eyes, she stared at herself, hardly recognizing the face in the reflection. She had left Wonderland Palace an idealist, a naive girl who dreamed of an easy crown and ruling beside a man who would understand and love her heart.
Now a jilted woman stared back at her, a forgotten child, a bitter warrior. The ends of her long black hair, her mother’s hair, dripped in the pool. Her mother. Even when her mother had everything—a crown, a husband, children, and all the riches of Wonderland Palace—she had still been unhappy. But unlike Dinah, at least her mother had had the man she loved. Dinah wouldn’t even have that. She was alone. Hands clenching with rage, Dinah picked up her dagger. With two short tugs, she was able to cut off most of her hair, so that it hit her right at the chin. Without a second thought, Dinah tossed her braid into the pool and turned to meet Sir Gorrann. He ran up to her, his eyes filled with concern, his voice raining curses down on her that she didn’t hear. The pain was still alive inside her, consuming and insatiable.
The Spade gave her a hard shake, and Dinah’s glassy eyes finally connected with his.
“Yer Majesty! Dinah! What’s happened?”
Her lips trembled into an ironic smile. “He doesn’t want me. After all this time.”
Sir Gorrann’s eyes filled with sympathy, and he let Dinah lean against him. “I’m sorry, Yer Majesty. He’s a bloody fool. Come on, let’s get you back to your tent.”
She felt raw inside, stripped, and she followed without thought. Only the anger was left behind, and it was a raging current, Dinah helpless in its flow. She let Sir Gorrann help her through the bramble back to where Morte waited for her. He pawed the ground impatiently until she mounted him.
With a click of her tongue, they were flying over the landscape, leaving Sir Gorrann trailing far behind. With each pound of Morte’s hooves, she felt her sadness turning to anger. Her rage was boiling over, spilling out until she seethed with fury. She clutched Morte’s mane, driving him harder, faster, until the two of them moved over the earth in a blur of blackness. Disjointed thoughts began to twist in her mind, shadowy tendrils of skewed reason.
A dark smile crept across her face as she let the rage she had held back for so long consume her.
If she could not quench the fire burning within her, she would set Wonderland ablaze.
The Black Towers
Water dripped down from a small, rotted hole in the ceiling, trailing down the stone walls and into a tiny rivulet between two roots. The harmonic sound of the water was soon interrupted by a scream, spiraling up from the depths of the Towers. Harris shuddered, his shudder leading to a coughing fit that racked his ribs and left him heaving. Shackles of iron slinked across the floor as he made his way toward the tiny little puddle in his cell. His ancient fingers, once used to turn the pages of glorious books of history and language now struggled to fold a tiny piece of paper that a guard had dropped earlier. It was nothing, just a wrapper, but here in the Towers, an unexpected gift.
“Curses!” he mumbled out loud. There was no reply, not from another prisoner, not from even a guard. A voice would have been so welcome, even if it were full of menace.
He focused back on the task at hand, consoling himself with his own voice. “Remember, my dear, it’s not the size of the paper, but the size of your skill that matters.” He folded the top of the paper down until the edges aligned with the bottom of the paper and his withered fingers creased it. He continued to work, licking his dry lips from time to time as he struggled to remember what he had taught her all those years ago.
He remembered her sitting in the crook of a tree as he tried to teach her history, rolling her dark eyes and fiddling with the bark. “Harris, how long is forever?” she had asked.
Harris had smiled. “Sometimes, just one second.”
He folded the paper wings down so that they were perpendicular to the body, crest, and tail, and then with a final flourish, he creased the head. Harris smiled and held his creation up in the waning light of the Towers before setting it down in the dirty puddle of water. The crane stared back at him, bobbing slightly.
The queen was coming. He knew it. That was not the question.
The question was who would she be when she got here.
Acknowledgments
In every novel, there is a point where the author must bridge the cavernous gap between the magical, bright-eyed beginning of the novel and the exciting, steely-eyed ending. I remember feeling inadequate as I moved into what would turn out to be the second novel in the Queen of Hearts series, wondering if I could connect the beginning to the bloody ending that loomed in my future.