Queen of Hearts: The Crown (Queen of Hearts Saga #1)(9)
Dinah grew more and more aggravated as she paced the area, scuffling dirt and wildflowers aside, until she resorted to searching with her fingers through the low grass, illuminated only by the light of the stars. Finally, her fingers found an unnatural groove in the grass and she gave a yank. Nothing happened. Using all the strength left inside of her, Dinah heaved. The door didn’t move. A trace of fear flashed in Dinah’s brain. Something was wrong. She pulled again. Her fingernails cracked and broke as the door shuddered and snapped back into place. It wouldn’t budge. It was locked. Dinah stared at the door. The wind died down just for a moment, but it was enough. She heard a faint sigh followed by a ragged breath. Light from a torch flared between the door cracks—a tiny sliver of light escaped. Someone was down there. Someone had locked her out. Her breath caught in her lungs. Someone was waiting for her. The Twisted Wood gave another loud moan, the sound carrying for hundreds of miles. Dinah backed away from the door slowly and ran as fast as she could toward the palace gates.
Two years had passed since that dark night, and Rinton and Thatch, Heart Cards in the King’s service would—when bribed over wine—tell the tale about that evening. The evening when Dinah, the future Queen of Hearts, was found outside the palace walls, dressed only in a lady’s slip. She had no recollection of how she got there, no answers for how she escaped through the palace gates without being seen. She was in shock, shivering and deeply afraid. It was the night, they recalled, that the King had introduced the lovely Vittiore, and pondered whether it was a coincidence that it was the night that Dinah, Princess of Wonderland, proved to be a little odd—just like her brother, the Mad Hatter.
Chapter 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 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 spoke-like 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 center of the wheel, there was a palpable change in the air as she neared the center stall. This stall was unlike all of 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 a creature from hellish depths than a horse, 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, was her father’s favorite steed.
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 unbreakable spiked hooves or crushed by their awesome weight. They 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.