War of the Cards (Queen of Hearts Saga #3)
Colleen Oakes
Dedication
To all the girls with dark hearts and those who dare to love them
Epigraph
“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir.
Because I’m not myself, you see.”
— Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
One
Dinah chased a white rabbit, just beyond her reach. It turned and veered under rosebushes and vertically stacked tables piled with teacups. She turned a corner. It was gone. She turned again. A wave crashed over her, only instead of being wet, it was made of fire, a fire that thundered in her heart. The rabbit was there again, taunting her. As she watched, it swung its pocket watch back and forth, hypnotizing her. The rabbit’s ears began to shrink down into its head before her. Its eyes were swallowed by its changing face, which was becoming elongated and sharp. Feathers blossomed out of its back as it turned into a white peacock. It opened its mouth to speak. Its voice was high and sweet, the disembodied voice of Faina Baker. “Keep your temper, Queen of Hearts. . . .”
“We’re here, Your Majesty.” The gentle voice of her Yurkei guard jerked her out of sleep. Dinah’s eyes blinked open as Morte came to an uneasy stop.
It was unbelievable to her that she had fallen asleep while riding this temperamental animal, but there was something so lulling about Morte’s gait. That, and she was exhausted. They had been marching toward Wonderland Palace for many days, and sleep had not been a frequent visitor to Dinah’s bed. All her dreams of late were filled with nightmarish images. In the dawn hours just before she woke, her mind was battered with images of Wardley, the love of her life, who had fractured her heart into a thousand jagged pieces. Wardley, naked and glistening with sweat. Wardley, kissing her as red rose petals fell around them. Wardley, an old withered man, dying in her arms, his heart a hardened black shell that beat outside his body.
It wasn’t just him visiting her sleep. There was the dead farmer that she had found as she outran the Cards in the Twisted Wood, an arrow quivering in his back. There was the Heart Cards she had killed on her way out of Charles’s room, their blood chasing her down an endless palace hallway.
These nightmares made for poor sleep, and Dinah awoke each morning with a pounding head and a heavy, jaded heart. She would sit up and slowly pull on her clothing, reminding herself why she was here: because she was the rightful Queen of Wonderland and she had come to conquer her kingdom. Most mornings, the thought was enough to motivate her. Other times, she lay in bed wishing that she was anywhere but here, in a damp tent that smelled of the Spades.
After pulling on her tunic, cloaks, and boots, Dinah would sit on the edge of her bed and clutch at her chest, hoping to smother the black fury inside her. The fury whispered to her that she would never be loved and made her mouth water at the mention of blood.
She would slowly push the rage back inside and struggle to control it. Then she would put on her crown, emerge from her tent, say good morning to her Yurkei bodyguards, greet her advisers—Sir Gorrann, Cheshire, Starey Belft, and Bah-kan—and climb on her devil steed. Her army would continue making their way north.
Each calculated, queenly step was exhausting. Her waking hours were filled with both longing and hatred for Wardley. She carried the weight of her love for him on her shoulders and in her chest. As they had marched north from the Darklands, he rode behind her, his eyes never leaving her back for long. Everywhere she turned, he was there, and each time their eyes met, Dinah was flooded with fresh pain.
They hadn’t spoken since that afternoon beside the waterfall, when he had broken her heart into pieces. But it wasn’t for Wardley’s lack of trying. Every afternoon, he greeted Dinah with a tray of lunch and awkwardly attempted to explain himself to her. She brushed him off without words, leaving him in the tent with the tray of bread in his hands. He was desperate for her forgiveness, and she would not give it, not now when the sight of him made her physically sick. Dinah knew that he wished for her to know he still cared for her. What he couldn’t understand was that for Dinah, it was torturous to see him. Two nights ago, when she awoke to him sitting on the edge of her bed and staring at her, Dinah finally forced her mouth to form the words.
“Wardley.” Her voice was barely a pleading whisper, choked with a restrained sob. “Please, leave me alone. I can’t bear to be near you right now.”
Wardley reached for her hand, but Dinah turned away and buried herself under a Yurkei feather blanket.
“If you care for me, you will leave.”
Finally, when it became apparent that she would not speak with him, Wardley sighed and stood. “Please don’t cut me off from you.”
“Go!” she snapped.
“Fine. I’ll do as you ask now. But I will not leave your side once the battle begins, so don’t ask me. I don’t care what you command. Do you understand?”
Dinah finally gave a slight nod, praying that he would leave before her tears overtook her. She heard the tent flap open, and when she turned around he had vanished into the early morning darkness, leaving her alone with a shattered heart.
Days had passed since then, and the pain was as fresh as an open wound.
“It’s good to take a break, Your Majesty,” muttered Ki-ershan, one of her two Yurkei bodyguards.
Dinah blinked in the sunlight. Morte stamped impatiently. She took a minute to shake herself awake and glanced behind her. The sight was staggering. Thousands of men were spread across the plains, like an ominous shadow that passed over the land. A hundred yards behind her, her advisers rode in an unregimented clump. Behind them, a line of two thousand Yurkei warriors on their sleek steeds moved smoothly as if they were of one mind. From up here, she thought, you would never know that they were a mostly peaceful and pleasant people. From here, they looked like a dark blot of death. Dinah swallowed hard.
As they would be, for those who fought for the king.
Almost half a mile behind the Yurkei marched the weary Spades and rogue Cards, a large horde of cantankerous and brutal men clothed in black that inched slowly across the grass-blown plain. They were all fighting for Dinah, but they fought for their own reasons: the Spades because of their unequal status within the Cards, the Yurkei because of hundreds of years of violent grievances with Wonderland Palace. A vastly larger group of Yurkei soldiers led by their chief, Mundoo, marched their way to Wonderland Palace from the north. Dinah and her motley bunch were to meet them there on the day of battle.
They would crush the larger Card army from both sides—Mundoo attacking from the north side of Wonderland Palace, and Dinah’s much smaller troop coming in from the south—with the idea that two armies would be a bigger psychological as well as a strategic threat.