Queen of Hearts (The Crown)

by Colleen Oakes

  The Twisted Wood gave a loud groan behind her, followed by the creaking of the trees consciously shifting their wide branches. Every time Dinah blinked she could see her father, the rage on his face, the Heartsword raised above his head, the bloody look in his eyes. He would have killed her if he had caught her, and he would kill her now if he caught up with her. Dinah quickly got to her feet, her thighs aching and raw from clenching them around Morte’s neck. The King of Hearts would be coming back, with horses and Cards and trackers. Several of the Spades were trained in tracking, and they would find her easily out here.

  Dinah took a look around to fully understand her situation. They were on the edge of the Twisted Wood, only three hundred feet of field before the trees—giant colossal trees that looked angry and unwelcoming. The clearing was lovely, a hilly field that hid a small creek bed, its rocky ground covered in spotted purple wildflowers and yellow shrubs. As Morte munched on wild grasses, the scene was almost picturesque—a rural fantasy, something she would paint in her art lessons. The raw beauty of the moment mingled with Dinah’s lingering terror and she clutched at her chest. The King would return; in fact, he was probably already on his way. She had to think, had to move. She didn’t have time to linger on what had happened—this was not the time to grieve. Dinah scurried over to the bag. The stranger had packed clothing, along with a few tools and food—two white linen tunics, brown wool pants, a belt, one heavy black dress, and deep-red riding boots—the boots of Heart Cards, she noted. Looking around sheepishly, Dinah pulled the thin white nightgown off over her head and shivered in the cool spring air as the breeze caressed her bare body. She pulled on the brown pants and a white tunic, and shoved her feet into the red riding boots. They fit perfectly. Moving quickly, she rolled up the nightgown and her wool cloak and shoved them back into the bag, both hands stinging with the effort.

  I have to think differently now, she thought. I can use these things later; look how I needed them for my hand. She gingerly unwrapped the linen from her palm. The wound was ugly: a thick black and bloody slash that ran the length of her hand. She rewrapped the cut before splashing a palm full of creek water on her face. The sun was paused high in the sky, and the warmth on her skin made her sleepy. I have to focus, thought Dinah, as the wind blew her hair around her face. I have to be smart or they will find me all too easily. I can’t think about things like sleep right now.

  She bit her lip. Her father was brave, a man of massive physical strength. He was not, however, terribly clever. No, he left that up to Cheshire. It wasn’t her father she had to outmaneuver, it was Cheshire. What would he do? He would expect me to go north, she thought. The Twisted Wood was full of dangers and mysteries, but most importantly, it was the outlying land of the Yurkei tribes. The Twisted Wood would only bring death, but in the North there were scattered towns in which she could take refuge, hide out, change into someone else. He would expect her to find her mother’s family, who lived on the northern tip of the Western Slope, in Ierladia.

  Behind her, the Twisted Wood groaned again, the trees simultaneously turning their branches to the sky by some unspoken command. Past the Twisted Wood lay the topless Yurkei Mountains. That was the least-safe place for the Princess of Hearts, for it was a place of wild Yurkei, bent on the destruction of Wonderlanders. It was the last place her father would expect her to go. Perhaps that’s why Wardley had suggested it. She looked fearfully at the wood as it moved slightly, alarmed by the unsettling feeling that she was being watched by the trees. Few men had lived to tell the tales of the Twisted Wood, but even fewer men had gone up against her father and survived. The decision was made. Morte nickered softly in the wind, seemingly enjoying the breeze on his face.

  Dinah took note of the ground. We are all over this place, she thought. Both she and Morte had spilled blood here, left footprints, pieces of themselves. Any tracker worth his snuff would surely see that they had rested here. Dinah kicked a petrified piece of wood in frustration. It splintered into tiny shards. Then lead them away, she thought. I have to lead them away from here. She looked at the sky. By her best guess, her father would have half a day’s ride back to the castle and then half a day’s ride back to this spot. She had been unconscious for maybe three hours, judging by the sun’s location when she woke. Dinah cursed herself for never paying attention to Harris’s sun-tracking lessons. Sure, it was a gamble, but one she must take. She had to escape, and to do that, she had to lead the trackers away from her trail, confuse them. She had to act differently than they would expect her to. It might not work, but she had to try.

  Dinah picked up her bag and began walking northwest. Her feet groaned with each step, and both hands throbbed with sharp pains. Dinah found herself dreaming of sleep, of lying down in the thick grasses, which looked now as comfy as her down-filled palace mattress. She let her thoughts wander wildly as she staggered along. Who was the stranger? There was something familiar about him, but yet, she wasn’t even sure it was a man. The way the stranger had wrapped a hand around her mouth, the way the whisper had washed over her, it was all so absolute. Powerful. The more she thought about what had happened, the more frustrated she became. The night was a blur of intense fear and wild emotion, and she found her memory of the whole thing very blurry and filled with gaping holes. Had there been anyone else in Charles’s room with her? She hadn’t even thought to look. Was his head wound from the fall, or was it by a sword? How had she gotten from his room to the courtyard? What had happened to Wardley when she galloped out of the stable? Why hadn’t he come with her? Why had Morte not listened to her father?

  Overwhelmed by the questions, Dinah stumbled over a rock, her knees hitting the ground with a hard thud. Her mind collapsed inward. Was she responsible for Charles’s death? She let her tears fall unabashedly for her beautiful brother, for Lucy, for Quintrell. All innocents, all slain by her father’s hand. It was her fault that they were dead, her fault that Charles had sailed out an open window in the dark, starless night. Had he been afraid? Did he scream? Dinah offered up a silent prayer that he hadn’t understood what was happening, that his last moments were peaceful and unaware. Had Lucy and Quintrell been killed after him, or before? She choked on a sob. Did Charles see their murder and run up the stairs to escape? Oh gods. Dinah covered her mouth, afraid she would be ill. She couldn’t stay here, kneeling in this field, but she couldn’t will herself to move either. She was paralyzed by her grief, sobbing. After a while, a tiny pebble near her hand wobbled and then rattled over the dirt. Hooves. She heard them. The ground vibrated with the sound of horses and Dinah lowered her head.

  The thudding of hooves slowed as they approached and then stopped. Reluctantly, Dinah looked up, expecting to see the shiny reflection of a Heartsword. Instead, Morte stood beside her, his great head lowered so that Dinah could look straight into his huge black eyes.

  “You followed me,” she whispered, reaching out her damaged hand to stroke his nose. Morte jerked back in alarm and brought a hoof down very close to her head. Dinah cowered. Not yet, she thought, not yet. He could have killed me for that. Do not forget that he is not a horse. That was a stupid decision. Wiping her eyes, her body shaking with the effort, Dinah rose to her feet and continued walking. She glanced behind her in amazement as Morte followed her, even when she slightly changed directions. His massive presence still unnerved her—she was duly aware that he would find joy in killing her, but it was nice not to feel alone.

  Plodding forward ever so slowly, they walked for a few more hours, Dinah swallowed by her thoughts, Morte enjoying the sun on his dark hide. After careful consideration, she tossed him an apple from her bag and he swallowed it whole, not even bothering to chew it. Reaching in her bag, Dinah found a piece of dried bird meat and gnawed it hungrily as she fantasized about a steaming raspberry tart and a warm cup of tea. Before she even tasted it, the bird meat was gone. I have to quit eating like this, she thought. What will I do when the food in the bag runs out? It’s only been a day.

  The
view around her was changing and Dinah wondered how far she had gone. The sun simmered low in the eastern sky, and dusk would be upon them in hours. Low plains covered with wildflowers still continued on as far as Dinah could see, the view interrupted every now and then by a white tree dripping with silvery moss that drifted even when there was no breeze. Dinah realized that it wasn’t the landscape that had changed so dramatically since they left their little creek—it was the color of the landscape. The wildflowers that had been thousands of different colors when they started out had begun subtly changing their hue the farther she walked. Clusters of delicate pansies, daffodils, thick delphinium, stalks of tall liatris, roses, and tulips were all beginning to shift their rich colors into cooler shades. Red larkspur began taking on a bluer hue the deeper she went. Yellow daffodils bleached white then turned into a light blue, then lavender. The color change seemed to stem from the stamen itself, a swirl, just a hint of a different shade, triggered the metamorphosis.

  Her feet caressed the flowers’ changing hues, field after field. It was so incredible that Dinah momentarily forgot how exhausted she was. It was miles of the same breathtaking, flat landscape before a large knoll rose from the ground before her, carpeted in mountain-blue flowers. It reminded Dinah of every picture she’d ever seen of the sea, a wave cresting just as it reached its highest peak. Looking up, Dinah could see that the color changed again just slightly on its peaked curve. Somehow the top of the hill was a different color than the base.

  She dropped her bag with a thud. Forgetting everything, she ran swiftly to the top of the hill. Her movement startled Morte, who gave an alarmed buck, his hooves pounding the ground with irritation. When she reached the top, Dinah let herself collapse into the bed of flowers, gazing out at the most magnificent sight she had ever beheld, its beauty sucking all the air from her lungs. It was blue. The deepest blue she had ever seen, deeper than the cornflower blue of Vittiore’s eyes, richer than her sapphire jewels. The most beautiful gowns in the kingdom could never capture this blue, this multi-layered azure, pure blue that stretched out as far as the eye could see. Every hill, from here to the north horizon, was covered in blue flowers, all one shade; one perfect, deep blue spread over a thousand different types of flowers. She watched in amazement as a wind rippled through the valley and the blue shimmered from end to end, rolling in wave after wave.

  As Dinah’s mouth fell open in awe, a particularly strong gust swept through the valley, and she watched in wonder as the color shifted into palest powder blue, instantly overtaking one flower after another, as if the flowers were whispering to each other. It was so fast that she could never catch its origin, see the first flower to change. Breath after breath, the flowers shifted their colors: turquoise to lavender, lavender to midnight blue so dark it was almost black. Dinah had never seen anything so beautiful. This was the Ninth Sea, a darkened area in the center of the Wonderland map, a name Dinah had written a hundred times in lessons. On the map it appeared as a body of water, but that was wrong. There was no water, only an ocean of blowing flowers—an endless expanse of blue against the darkening sky. Dinah realized with a start that not only had she gone far enough; she had gone too far north. She had lost track of time in her wandering, and nightfall was near.

  Wonderland’s stars began to appear in the sky; tonight they would be hanging directly overhead, low in the sky, but centrally clustered. They seemed brighter out here than from her palace balcony. She squinted east, her breath catching again as the flowers changed to a startling, striped blue. Yes, she had gone too far; they were beginning to inch away from the end of the Twisted Wood. Past the Ninth Sea was a huge expanse of nothingness, which ended at the Todren, exactly the direction her father saw her riding last, and the direction she wanted him to follow. It was time to walk back. She gave one long, lingering look at the Ninth Sea rippling in the wind, the colors shifting from breeze to breeze, never the same blue twice. I could stay here all day, she thought, just fade into the blue, disappear. I wish Charles could see this.

  She picked a flower near her feet to toss back into the sea, but it withered and died in her hand. Dinah released the dust instead, and it danced in the wind over the shifting waves of lapis. She let out an exhausted sigh and turned around. Morte looked confused as Dinah carefully backtracked, but soon he followed suit, placing his hooves into the prints they had made just a few hours ago. Dinah was stumbling frequently now, her exhaustion made dreadful by the overwhelming ache in her right hand and the stabbing pain of her left hand. She was so tired, so very tired. I won’t make it, she thought, I won’t make it back. Her heart felt like it was pounding outside of her chest, its beat thrumming in her ears. She stumbled over her feet again and again. Every other step ended on her knees. Finally Dinah stayed down, closing her eyes to the bright stars above. I’ll just rest, she thought. Just for a moment. Morte stood impatiently over her until he finally nudged her roughly with his huge nose, the steam from his nostrils singeing the hairs on her arm. With a punishing effort, Dinah pushed herself up, her legs obeying when her mind could not. Morte lifted his hoof and brought it down hard on the ground, repeating the gesture again and again.

  “What do you want?” she pleaded angrily. “Let me sleep!”

  Morte stared at her blankly until it occurred to her: he wanted her to ride him. The thought made her glad, but she was unsure how to get onto him. She sometimes had a hard time mounting Speckle, and Morte was twice his height and had no saddle. Using his mane to get up seemed a sure way to die a painful death, plus she could never muster the energy to pull herself up. Morte lifted his hoof again and held it aloft, then brought it down with a resounding thud.

  Oh. Her body trembling with exhaustion, Dinah laid her hand against Morte’s side. She could feel the monstrous heaving of his ribs, the pounding of his strong heart. He lifted his hoof. She gently placed her boot on the end of the spikes, balancing ever so carefully, aware that the spikes could easily impale her foot if the weight wasn’t distributed right. Eyes closed, she mumbled a tiny prayer and stepped up. The spikes pushed deep into her boot as Morte lifted his leg. Dinah flew up, up, up until she was at the right height to pull herself onto Morte’s back. His expansive back was comfortingly warm. The muscles of her legs gave a painful throb as they resumed their position straddling Morte’s thick neck, but she could not have been more grateful to be sitting. Dinah raised her voice to command him and then thought better of it. She sat quietly until Morte broke into a quick trot back in the direction they came. It was not the mad sprinting that had brought them here, but it was three times faster than Dinah would have gone if she had been able to sprint the entire way. The motion cradled her, and Dinah closed her eyes, resting her body against his large head. She fell asleep quickly.

  The striped Wonderland moon was high in the sky when the ceasing of Morte’s trotting woke her. She looked around and let out a happy sigh when she recognized the field, the creek bed where they had originally begun. How quickly this had come to seem like a safe place, this tiny valley. She slid down Morte’s side, unsure of how else she would get down from his towering height. Her leg brushed one of the bone spikes, which left a thin scrape down the length of her shin. Morte took deep gulps from the creek and Dinah filled her waterskin for the second time. She found her sword lying on some mottled leaves and strapped it over her bag, which was hiding behind a leafy bush. Dinah heaved both onto her shoulders. It was time to move; her father was probably closing in on them. She had walked too far, but hopefully it was enough, enough to throw off the trackers, enough to fool Cheshire. She said a silent prayer that they would take the bait.

  Dinah began limping toward the woods, relieved to hear Morte’s heavy footsteps following her. Several of the colossal trees guarding the edge of the wood twisted their trunks slightly in her direction as she walked past. Dinah let her hands play across her sword hilt, reassured by its presence. I will not be afraid of this wood, she told herself, because my fight to live does not begin now. I have
been fighting all my life, I just didn’t know it. My fight began when I was born to my father, who feared the day I would assume the throne, and I am safer in these woods than I ever was in his palace. I did not die today, so I will not fear death tomorrow. The thought gave her courage, though she doubted that her courage would remain. She looked back at Morte, following several hundred yards behind, his ears pressed flat against his head. Even the deadly Hornhooves feared the Twisted Wood. Fear churned the insides of her stomach. Dinah drew her sword, and with that, the former Princess of Wonderland and her black devil steed disappeared into the Twisted Wood, leaving nothing behind but a false trail and the distant whiff of a crown.

  Enjoy a Sneak Peek of the Rest of the Queen of Hearts Trilogy:

  The white roses were painted red. That was the first thing Dinah noticed as she strolled proudly toward the execution platform, her crowned head held high. The white garden roses, the ones she had lovingly planted with her mother so long ago, were spotted and slashed with deep ruby. Blood was splattered across the white-and-black cobblestones, a deep crimson arching across the palace’s sidewalks and gardens. The roses had gotten the worst of it, as evidenced by the many bodies that lay curled against the vines, as if these men were merely taking a nap in their fragrant blooms…

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to the wondrous people who made this novel possible:

  Ryan Oakes: for his endless feedback, support, and the sheer power of his belief in this novel, which propelled it from a vague idea into a tangible reality. Thank you for your unflagging love, your creative thinking, and your amusing knowledge about fantasy and fight training. Thank you for giving me the strength to stay true to my instincts and story.