Queen of Hearts Complete Collection: Queen of Hearts; Blood of Wonderland; War of the Cards. Colleen Oakes

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       Three

      Winter in Wonderland was Dinah’s favorite time of year, aside from her father’s yearly departure for the Western Slope. Pink snowflakes circled down from a gloomy gray sky as Dinah walked quietly across the snow-covered courtyard. Her fur boots left behind huge footprints as the wind blew tiny swirls of the rosy snow around her ankles. Dinah blew out a breath of cold air and watched it freeze in front of her and fall to the ground with a soft tinkle. A seventeen-year-old shouldn’t find such simple things amusing, she told herself, but then she did it again with joy.

      Two Heart Cards bowed low as she walked past them, but she saw the mocking smiles that played across their faces. She didn’t care—not today. Her black wool cape snapped in the wind as it billowed out behind her. The scent of horses entered her nostrils, and she began to hum happily.

      The circular Wonderland stables lay between the iron walls and the palace, on the southwest side, housing every kind of steed imaginable. Despite the stable being immaculately clean, you could smell the manure and wood shavings upon approach. Out from a large, reinforced, center hub stall circled more stalls with spokelike channels between them. Horse after horse slept, ate, and trained in the labyrinthine maze of stalls, indoor riding rings, and tack rooms filled with weaponry and gear. It was designed to keep horses from escaping, and the maze provided a deterrent to those who would attempt to steal any of its pampered inhabitants. Dinah sniffed the frosty air again as she made her way through the maze of stalls. Men, hay, and horses—her favorite smells, because they reminded her of him. At the core of the wheel, there was a palpable change in the air. This stall was unlike all the others, with three-foot-thick wooden doors towering over Dinah’s head.

      She looked up with a shudder as she passed and saw the three Hornhooves staring at her, their apple-sized eyes filled with a thirst for death. She kept her head down and stepped as quietly as she dared. The Hornhooves scared her; they scared everyone. More creatures from hellish depths than horses, Hornhooves stood head and shoulders above the other steeds, the height of two horses combined, with leg muscles thicker than a man’s head. Their deadly hooves were covered with hundreds of spiked bones, each one unbreakable: instruments of a painful death for anyone who stood in their way. They were the king’s pride and joy, especially Morte. Morte—the bringer of death.

      It was Morte who stared down at Dinah now as she passed, steam hot enough to burn skin hissing out of his nostrils. Generous muscles danced under his shimmering black hide—so black it was almost blue. He was larger than the other two white Hornhooves and was rumored to be a particularly bloodthirsty beast—relentless and crueler than most of his kind. The Yurkei tribe had tamed them for generations, and they were bred to be fearless soldiers—the ultimate war horse, virtually unstoppable and very rare. Many a man had died under their hooves, either torn to pieces on their spiked hooves or crushed by their awesome weight. The beasts were so massive that Dinah’s spread hand could be swallowed by one of Morte’s cavernous black nostrils.

      Morte walked to the end of his stall as she moved past, his heavy hooves shaking the ground beneath him. The Hornhooves made Dinah nervous, and she walked faster toward the stables’ outside rim, where the lame and the weak horses were kept, still useful for plowing or load bearing. She clicked her tongue and waited for Speckle to come to the edge of his stall.

      As a child, Dinah had named him—her black-and-white spotted gelding—Speckle, for he reminded her of a speckle of rain upon her window. He was a kind and gentle horse. Rarely did he do more than trot happily, eat heartily, and bestow sloppy kisses across Dinah’s hand. He gave a joyful whinny upon her approach, and she produced an apple from under her cloak. Speckle snatched it up with a happy neigh, his soft horse lips dancing over her hand.

      “Do you think I came just to see you?” she whispered to Speckle, scratching his ear. “Sweet horse.” She gave him a friendly pat and headed deeper into the outer ring. Poor Speckle, she thought, he is definitely not the reason I visit the stables this day and every day. An unsteady blush blotched its way up her pale cheeks. Wardley now spent most of his time training the horses and the Cards; therefore, Dinah was spending more and more time with the horses as well.

      Wardley Ghane was training to be the next Knave of Hearts—a fancy title for the commander of the Heart Cards, but to Dinah, he was so much more than that. Tall, with long brown curls that brushed the top of his bold eyebrows, Wardley Ghane was as devastatingly handsome as he was skilled. He rode his ebony saddle as if he had been born atop a horse, and he could pull a blade from his belt with the greatest of ease. He was a fearsome warrior, a proud bearer of the king’s coat of arms, and a deft Card who could navigate the politics and pitfalls that would inevitably come with ruling over the Heart Cards at such a young age. He was being trained by Xavier Juflee, the current Knave of Hearts, who was widely known as the best swordsman in all Wonderland.

      Wardley was the king’s favorite of all his young Cards, and maybe someday, Dinah hoped, something much more. She longed to make Wardley her husband, which would make him the King of Hearts beside her. The line of succession decreed that when a king and a queen ruled on the throne, they ruled until death, or until they gave up their throne. If a king or queen died while ruling—as Davianna had—then the firstborn child of that union, upon his or her eighteenth year, would rule beside the widowed parent until the child married. At that time, the older king or queen would give up the throne, and the newly married rulers would take the throne together. Gazing at Wardley’s face, Dinah longed for the day when her father would step down to her husband. Much to Dinah’s surprise, it seemed the day she turned sixteen, Wardley began to make her heart clench in want with each lazy smile, each friendly hug. She looked at him and wanted more of him—she wanted all of him. The change in her demeanor generally bewildered him, so she tried to keep her fawning to a minimum when they were together; but at night she lay in her bed, imagining his lips on hers, the weight of his body pressed against her. His name was always on the tip of her lips, her desire for him unbridled. She loved him and, in a way, always had. He waited for her now, munching on a handful of berries in the shadow of the palace, already mounted on his dazzling white steed when Dinah emerged from the stalls.

      He deftly adjusted his cloak and armor, as he was already suited up for his training with the Cards. On the breast of his white uniform sat a red square with a black heart upon it, the king’s blazon. Corning, his blindingly white horse, gave a slight buck as Dinah’s black cloak leaped in the winter wind.