Morte let her ride a bit longer that day. The more Dinah observed him, the more she understood why he had not heeded the king that day as her father had bellowed out Morte’s name in a blind rage. Morte wasn’t anything like a normal steed. He didn’t come when called, and he wasn’t to be coddled and loved, as he wouldn’t give it back. Sure, Dinah gave him any apples that she ran across, but only from a distance—tossed in the air. When her father rode him into battle, he had made the mistake of thinking Morte was fighting for him—he never understood that Morte wanted to fight for himself, that he had no loyalty to the man.
Morte slept the nights away without a care, and Dinah watched him enviously as he slipped into the depths of slumber. 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. The night before, Dinah dreamed that she had awakened to the sound of someone crying softly. Curiosity propelled her forward, and she came to a large clearing in the trees, where one of the Heart Cards she had 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.
Dinah’s days, however, in the untamable wood were consumed with thoughts 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. 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 lingered on her feelings for just a moment. But here, she was at the mercy of her memories during endless hours of walking. 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 wood. Remembering Davianna was a gift that Dinah gave herself—she needed to feel close to someone out here in the wilderness.
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, but especially children, whom she adored. People 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 Lake Todren and was the Wonderland stronghold in the North. Negotiations between Dinah’s grandfather, the King of Hearts at the time, and Davianna’s father, ensured her place on the throne. From the time she was born, Davianna was groomed to be the Queen of Hearts, much like Dinah.
As a child, Dinah got the distinct impression that her mother loved being queen. She wore the crown with ease. As a mother she was gentle and loving, patient with her precocious daughter who was always yanking on her crown and smudging her dresses with chocolate-covered hands. Their relationship had changed when Charles was born, but Dinah never felt neglected; rather, she saw the large amount of care that Charles took and longed to be included. And so she was. Instead of croquet or watching ostrich riding, Dinah and her mother would feed and bathe Charles, or spend the day trying to teach him to walk, or take him outside on the balcony so he could watch the ever-changing stars. Dinah didn’t see her father from age three to five, when he was off fighting the Yurkei wars, and in that time she grew fiercely attached to her mother and Harris, her adviser and teacher.
Unfortunately, as Dinah grew older, she spent more time with Harris and less and less time with Charles and her mother. There were so many things to learn before one became queen, but every night Harris and Emily, her servant, had looked the other way when Dinah slipped out of her bedroom door and ran past the Heart Cards all the way to the Royal Apartments to tell her mother about her day.
Davianna would always be preparing for bed, brushing her thick black hair with her pink shell comb and staring at herself in the mirror, her tear-filled blue-black eyes staring back at her. Dinah knew she had a secret. She could see it in her eyes, in the way she held her body. Together they would climb across Davianna’s heart-shaped bed and her mother would pull her close and listen as Dinah whispered to her all the tiny details of her day—what Harris wore, what Emily said, the things she had learned, how she had cried after she broke a one-hundred-year-old teapot. Every night would end with her mother whispering softly,
“Someday, my love, you’ll understand everything.”
Dinah’s father had returned from war a changed man. He was angrier and increasingly cruel toward them both. She saw less of her mother, and when she did, Dinah was alarmed at her shrinking figure and the dark circles under her eyes. The care of Charles was taken from her and given to Lucy and Quintrell. Dinah would still occasionally visit her mother’s chambers at the end of the day, but Davianna would often be sleeping, unable to take her visits, and Dinah would be sent back to her room like a child without supper.
On the eve of her ninth birthday, Dinah stumbled across a scene that she would never forget. Her daily lessons in the library had been cut short due to the sneezing of Monsignor Wol-Vore, the language tutor, and the princess found herself with a few free hours. Running happily down the hall, her pink dress in tatters behind her, Dinah made her way to her mother’s apartment. The Heart Cards who normally stood guard at the queen’s door were oddly absent, and the door was cracked open a few inches. As she laid her fingers on the cool knob, Dinah could hear her father’s angry voice. She paused at the door.
“How dare you? You are nothing more than a common whore, lowborn trash that washed up from the sea on the beaches of Ierladia! I am the King of Wonderland, and I will not be made a mockery of. Is this how you repay me? Who is he? Tell me! I should take your head for this!”
Dinah heard the sound of something crashing—dishes, perhaps. Something hit the door with a loud thud and Dinah leaped back, afraid. She could hear her mother murmuring, attempting to calm her father.