The Wonder (Queen of Hearts Saga #2)(47)

It had been a hellish march south—they had lost several Yurkei along the way, between the hidden bogs and the strange poisonous creatures that seemed to lurk under every rock. Disturbingly, the Twisted Wood seemed downright tame compared to the Darklands. As she dug her hand into her steed’s tangled mane, Dinah hummed a song softly under her breath, a song her mother taught her so very long ago. A song, she now knew, Davianna had learned from Cheshire. The landscape was brutal, but even with danger surrounding her on all sides, Dinah felt stronger than ever. Her crown rested on top of her head, its rightful place, and Dinah felt powerful in the high saddle. Her stomach grumbled loudly. She was hungry, as she had been ever since they started their march southward. Moving a small army required much food, and there was never enough, it seemed, to satisfy everyone. Everyone could eat at least five times more, even the future Queen, who slept in a battered tent, curled around her sword. Dinah was still humming when Sir Gorrann’s trotted up next to her on Cyndy.

“Sir Gorrann, good morning.”

He didn’t waste time with pleasantries. “Yer Highness, there is a conflict between two of the warriors. Ju-Kule and Freyuk are about to come to blows. Yeh must come quickly—their quarrel will surely end in even more divided loyalty amongst the Yurkei.”

Dinah nodded her head and with a click of her tongue sent her steed galloping toward the camp—a small city of circular white tents that held a thousand Yurkei warriors and, so far, about three hundred rogue Cards. Wonderful, she thought, another problem, another small battle. Planning a war, it turned out, was very complicated and took months to prepare. She bit her cheek nervously as she thought back on all the conflicts that had followed her down from the mountains.

The night she had accepted her fate as Queen, after she had descended from the Yurkei Mountain, she had, along with Sir Gorrann and Cheshire, climbed up into Mundoo’s tent. The fear had returned when she stared up at the ladder, but this time she had something other than survival at hand—she had reasons to live: vengeance and the throne. As the ladder billowed out behind her, Dinah forced herself to climb without fear. I am the Queen. Almost immediately after they began their tense discussion, it was very clear that each member of the war council entered with their own agenda. Mundoo longed for his people’s complete autonomy and independence from Wonderland Palace. In return for his people’s support in battle, he demanded the release of all their former lands back to the Yurkei, all the way north from the Ninth Sea up through the Todren and to the East, from the Twisted Wood until the end of the Yurkei Mountains. He also decreed that a representative of the Yurkei people was to sit on the Queen’s council, once established, and would have a vote in Wonderland’s affairs that both did and did not concern the Yurkei. It was a steep price to pay for her army, one that she would surely feel later if she was indeed crowned Queen. Part of the Yurkei lands included Ierladia, her mother’s hometown, the largest Wonderland stronghold in the North. The negotiations over Ierladia had taken three days, but in the end, a compromise had been reached. Mundoo agreed that the citizens and buildings of Ierladia would remain unharmed under Yurkei rule. While the Yurkei would ultimately own the city, Ierladia would still function as it always had—by doing trade and commerce with Wonderland Palace. The Yurkei would then reap a hefty portion of their taxes as the owners of the city. Tax was a strange concept to the Yurkei, but eventually they seceded to Cheshire’s plan.

Dinah’s newfound father came with his own set of demands: he would take his seat as the Queen’s main advisor, and the head of her council, and he would remain in charge of all of the Cards, as well as the acting Diamond Card in charge of the treasury. His powers would increase to include a seat on the Yurkei council and he would have the power to hold or release prisoners at his will. Without expressly saying so, Cheshire made sure that he would be the most powerful person in the palace, aside from the Queen. Bah-kan wanted lands within Yurkei territory and a royal pardon for his desertion of the Cards, and he would have it, but only if he agreed to be Dinah’s personal bodyguard until she was crowned. Sir Gorrann said that he would negotiate with Dinah alone, but so far he had remained silent and impassive, wanting nothing apparently.

After the negotiations were signed and sealed, four swift horses bearing Yurkei riders were sent to store the documents in the four corners of Wonderland, so that there might always be one treaty that remained safe, even if the rest were destroyed. After the documents were sent on their way, Dinah nervously prepared for the ancient Yurkei sealing ritual. Wearing little more than a few feathers, Dinah stood perfectly still for hours as the words of the treaty were painted on her body with white paint by silent Yurkei women. The words trailed down from her eyes in straight lines to the edge of her toes, and by the end, there wasn’t an inch of her skin unmarked with white paint. The words of their treaty trailed from her cheeks, her belly, her fingertips. Mundoo had the same treaty inscribed down his immaculate body, and when they were done, both Dinah and Mundoo were led into a ringed circle of fire, a subdued crane tied to each of their wrists. The Yurkei rose in song, an unnerving wail that resonated through the narrow valley.

For hours they sang as Dinah and Mundoo stood perfectly still until their legs trembled beneath them. Finally, with a desperate shout, the two parties neared each other as the stars swirled above. When they were close enough to touch, the cranes leapt from their wrists and flapped toward each other. Mundoo and Dinah were yanked together as the strings holding their cranes twisted and tangled while the birds fluttered and fought. The warm words written on their bodies smeared together, the melting paint mixing with their sweat and tears as they struggled against one another. Finally, a Yurkei priestess gave a shout and they both released their birds into the sky. The words were now one, their sweat was one, and their heat was one. Dinah’s black eyes met Mundoo’s shimmering blue irises as they stood silently, surrounded by the roaring fire. What she had seen in them both reassured and frightened Dinah. Mundoo was hard, resilient, and she saw a passion blazing in his eyes that was not unlike her own. She was a queen and he was a chief. They were the same. A pact had been made, a promise sealed. Dinah had never felt more alive and gave a shout to the sky, her head thrown back in glory.