She looked down at her toes and wiggled them in the wildflowers blooming around her feet. Somewhere nearby, just inside the gates, the great Julla Tree creaked in the wind, and then a high-pitched wail rippled through the air, alive and intense all at once. It seemed to be laughing at her. Dinah faced the castle and willed herself not to fear what lay unseen in the open fields behind her. She began walking slowly away from the tunnel.
She had never been beyond the gates of Wonderland Palace, and she gazed upon her palace now, an outsider looking in. It rose out of the fields of red flowers like a beacon of blinding hope. Its golden spires twisted and pierced the sky, the turrets and raised rose gardens adding beauty to its numerous walls, white bridges connecting one tower to the next. Dinah knew that below the turrets, stretching out from the Royal Apartments, was the Croquet Lawn—an endless expanse of green turf, perfect for picnics, croquet, or ostrich riding. Parallel to the Croquet Lawn on the other side of the castle was the Checkered Courtyard. This was where the Spades and Heart Cards lined up for training, and where traitors were executed, their blood spilling across a long, white marble block.
From where she stood, she could barely see anything except the gates and the towering heights of the Royal Apartments. She spied her own bedroom balcony and waved, thinking for a moment that maybe Harris could see her. But he could not. No one knew where she was, and she certainly couldn’t tell them about her secret tunnel to the outside. Perhaps, she thought, Cheshire didn’t know about the tree tunnel that led to the outside. It was hers alone. There had been no other footprints inside that tunnel, and dust didn’t form overnight. There must be another tunnel down there, she thought, one that led to the Royal Apartments. That’s where Cheshire had been taking her.
With a smile, Dinah took in the view of the palace one last time. Her castle was a beauty, a fierce and formidable fortress, lovely and dangerous all at once. One day, Dinah thought, this will all be mine.
I will be the Queen of Wonderland. I will be the queen, and Vittiore will only be the duchess. The thought was enough.
Her knees gave a shake as she stared up at the castle, and Dinah realized that she was exhausted. Her bedchamber seemed very appealing, and the low moan that rose from the Twisted Wood sent shivers down her spine. Dinah took a few steps back to the tunnel entrance, only this time she couldn’t find the opening. She knew it had been near some herb plants and a thick, gnarled bush, but it was gone.
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 tug. Nothing happened. Using all the strength left inside her, Dinah heaved. The door didn’t move. A trace of fear flashed in Dinah’s brain. 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. 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.
Six months 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 same night that Dinah, Princess of Wonderland, proved to be a little mad—just like her brother.
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