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War of the Cards
Colleen Oakes
Dorothy Must Die meets Alice in Wonderland.This is not a story of happily ever after – it’s the heart-stopping conclusion in the twisted YA origin story of the infamous villain, the Queen of Hearts.Dinah has lost everyone she ever loved. Her brother was brutally murdered. The man she believed was her father betrayed her. Her loyal subjects have been devastated by war. And the boy she gave her heart to broke it completely.Now a dark queen has risen out of the ashes of her former life. Fury is blooming inside Dinah, poisoning her soul and twisting her mind. All she has left is Wonderland and her crown, and her obsession to fight for both. But the war rages on, and Dinah could inherit a bloodstained throne.Can a leader filled with love and rage ever be the ruler her kingdom needs? Or will her all-consuming wrath bring Wonderland to its knees?
First published in the US by HarperTeen in 2017
HarperTeen is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers
Published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2018
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
HarperCollins Publishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins website address is:
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Text copyright © Colleen Oakes 2017
Jacket art © by Ruben Ireland 2018; Jacket Design by Jenna Stempel
Colleen Oakes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008175450
Ebook Edition © 2018 ISBN: 9780008175467
Version: 2017-11-03
To all the girls with dark hearts and those who dare to love them
Epigraph (#ulink_26ca9e2e-f6c5-5e5b-a5a1-0db51a8a944f)
“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir.
Because I’m not myself, you see.”
—Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Contents
Cover (#u1b6c2209-1c5f-5a09-bf69-d1cd21abfc54)
Title Page (#ufb7c25e0-444f-507a-a03a-3b5d43988ea1)
Copyright (#u66e0f416-50fb-58ad-a580-ef4e88ff0085)
Dedication (#ub2b53fca-1369-52cc-bd30-566d51ddaa4b)
Epigraph (#uedca38b1-b58f-599b-9b27-ec0fc5b6e481)
Chapter One (#u8209e2fe-bc7e-51b5-9823-95ebe86de0da)
Chapter Two (#udd0a9ff2-71f6-562b-b5ef-f16724e67a3f)
Chapter Three (#u5a9e5c95-311e-5ed4-90fd-a9dedc33c7b9)
Chapter Four (#ueb50b86a-6ca9-5628-85cb-bb0c869c87c6)
Chapter Five (#u0765414f-30f4-5a07-8b3e-252e114f52a8)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Epigraph (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
Have you read them all? (#litres_trial_promo)
Books by Colleen Oakes (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
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Dinah chased a white rabbit, just beyond her reach. It turned and veered under rosebushes and vertically stacked tables piled with teacups. She turned a corner. It was gone. She turned again. A wave crashed over her, only instead of being wet, it was made of fire, a fire that thundered in her heart. The rabbit was there again, taunting her. As she watched, it swung its pocket watch back and forth, hypnotizing her. The rabbit’s ears began to shrink down into its head before her. Its eyes were swallowed by its changing face, which was becoming elongated and sharp. Feathers blossomed out of its back as it turned into a white peacock. It opened its mouth to speak. Its voice was high and sweet, the disembodied voice of Faina Baker. “Keep your temper, Queen of Hearts …”
“We’re here, Your Majesty.” The gentle voice of her Yurkei guard jerked her out of sleep. Dinah’s eyes blinked open as Morte came to an uneasy stop.
It was unbelievable to her that she had fallen asleep while riding this temperamental animal, but there was something so lulling about Morte’s gait. That, and she was exhausted. They had been marching toward Wonderland Palace for many days, and sleep had not been a frequent visitor to Dinah’s bed. All her dreams of late were filled with nightmarish images. In the dawn hours just before she woke, her mind was battered with images of Wardley, the love of her life, who had fractured her heart into a thousand jagged pieces. Wardley, naked and glistening with sweat. Wardley, kissing her as red rose petals fell around them. Wardley, an old withered man, dying in her arms, his heart a hardened black shell that beat outside his body.
It wasn’t just him visiting her sleep. There was the dead farmer that she had found as she outran the Cards in the Twisted Wood, an arrow quivering in his back. There was the Heart Cards she had killed on her way out of Charles’s room, their blood chasing her down an endless palace hallway.
These nightmares made for poor sleep, and Dinah awoke each morning with a pounding head and a heavy, jaded heart. She would sit up and slowly pull on her clothing, reminding herself why she was here: because she was the rightful Queen of Wonderland and she had come to conquer her kingdom. Most mornings, the thought was enough to motivate her. Other times, she lay in bed wishing that she was anywhere but here, in a damp tent that smelled of the Spades.
After pulling on her tunic, cloaks, and boots, Dinah would sit on the edge of her bed and clutch at her chest, hoping to smother the black fury inside her. The fury whispered to her that she would never be loved and made her mouth water at the mention of blood.
She would slowly push the rage back inside and struggle to control it. Then she would put on her crown, emerge from her tent, say good morning to her Yurkei bodyguards, greet her advisers—Sir Gorrann, Cheshire, Starey Belft, and Bah-kan—and climb on her devil steed. Her army would continue making their way north.
Each calculated, queenly step was exhausting. Her waking hours were filled with both longing and hatred for Wardley. She carried the weight of her love for him on her shoulders and in her chest. As they had marched north from the Darklands, he rode behind her, his eyes never leaving her back for long. Everywhere she turned, he was there, and each time their eyes met, Dinah was flooded with fresh pain.
They hadn’t spoken since that afternoon beside the waterfall, when he had broken her heart into pieces. But it wasn’t for Wardley’s lack of trying. Every afternoon, he greeted Dinah with a tray of lunch and awkwardly attempted to explain himself to her. She brushed him off without words, leaving him in the tent with the tray of bread in his hands. He was desperate for her forgiveness, and she would not give it, not now when the sight of him made her physically sick. Dinah knew that he wished for her to know he still cared for her. What he couldn’t understand was that for Dinah, it was torturous to see him. Two nights ago, when she awoke to him sitting on the edge of her bed and staring at her, Dinah finally forced her mouth to form the words.
“Wardley.” Her voice was barely a pleading whisper, choked with a restrained sob. “Please, leave me alone. I can’t bear to be near you right now.”
Wardley reached for her hand, but Dinah turned away and buried herself under a Yurkei feather blanket.
“If you care for me, you will leave.”
Finally, when it became apparent that she would not speak with him, Wardley sighed and stood. “Please don’t cut me off from you.”
“Go!” she snapped.
“Fine. I’ll do as you ask now. But I will not leave your side once the battle begins, so don’t ask me. I don’t care what you command. Do you understand?”
Dinah finally gave a slight nod, praying that he would leave before her tears overtook her. She heard the tent flap open, and when she turned around he had vanished into the early morning darkness, leaving her alone with a shattered heart.
Days had passed since then, and the pain was as fresh as an open wound.
“It’s good to take a break, Your Majesty,” muttered Ki-ershan, one of her two Yurkei bodyguards.
Dinah blinked in the sunlight. Morte stamped impatiently. She took a minute to shake herself awake and glanced behind her. The sight was staggering. Thousands of men were spread across the plains, like an ominous shadow that passed over the land. A hundred yards behind her, her advisers rode in an unregimented clump. Behind them, a line of two thousand Yurkei warriors on their sleek steeds moved smoothly as if they were of one mind. From up here, she thought, you would never know that they were a mostly peaceful and pleasant people. From here, they looked like a dark blot of death. Dinah swallowed hard.
As they would be, for those who fought for the king.
Almost half a mile behind the Yurkei marched the weary Spades and rogue Cards, a large horde of cantankerous and brutal men clothed in black that inched slowly across the grass-blown plain. They were all fighting for Dinah, but they fought for their own reasons: the Spades because of their unequal status within the Cards, the Yurkei because of hundreds of years of violent grievances with Wonderland Palace. A vastly larger group of Yurkei soldiers led by their chief, Mundoo, marched their way to Wonderland Palace from the north. Dinah and her motley bunch were to meet them there on the day of battle.
They would crush the larger Card army from both sides—Mundoo attacking from the north side of Wonderland Palace, and Dinah’s much smaller troop coming in from the south—with the idea that two armies would be a bigger psychological as well as a strategic threat.
She hoped it would work.
It was all Cheshire’s planning.
Dinah rode Morte out front, alone. She didn’t have much use for company lately. Silently, she watched as Wardley raised his arm and the brigade came to a sudden halt. The sound of the men’s obvious relief reached Dinah’s ears. I must remember that no matter how tired I am, I am not as weary as my men. Wardley brought Corning up beside her, with Bah-kan following grumpily at his heels.
“Why did we stop?” Bah-kan bellowed. “We are almost to the villages of Wonderland proper.”
Dinah cleared her throat and looked away from Wardley. The sight of his face made her heart twist so painfully that she almost lost her breath. “Please communicate to the army that we are camping here for the night.”
Wardley’s eyes lingered pitifully on her face before he spurred Corning off to aid the Spades with setting up camp.
Bah-kan growled in Dinah’s direction. “The Yurkei won’t be happy about this.”
“Thank you for telling me,” replied Dinah coldly. “I will keep that in mind.”
He was right, of course. The Yurkei were a thousand times more physically fit than the Spades, but more important, they rode horses that never seemed to tire. The Yurkei’s wild herds were miraculous beasts, and the Spades appeared quite taken with them. The warriors from Hu-Yuhar had mistakenly assumed they would be marching straight to Wonderland with very little time to stop and camp. The vast majority of the Spades were walking, and so they rightly required more breaks. This had led to an ever-growing discontent that only inflamed the two groups’ hatred for each other. In addition to this, the long march to Wonderland Palace had taken a deep physical toll on the men. While they had expected the march to take upward of two weeks, Dinah was surprised at just how difficult it was to move her small army.
Getting the Yurkei south had been easy compared to this. Returning the Spades back to where they’d just come from was an endless litany of negotiations, disappointment, and hunger. Most of them were not completely at ease with a woman leading them and directed their questions and complaints to Starey Belft, Cheshire, or Wardley.
While she at times quietly doubted her own ability to lead, she didn’t want her men doing it. Because of this, Dinah begrudgingly made it a point to interact with the men as much as possible. She joined them for dinner, watched their sparring bouts, and attempted to engage them in casual conversation. She made sure to personally thank each one for his loyalty. Yet despite all this effort, they still looked to Cheshire for answers. Around Dinah they acted shy but respectful. There was a lot of staring.
Dinah apparently wasn’t the only one being stared at. Yur-Jee, her fierce Yurkei guard, was staring with seething hatred at a Spade soldier who was attempting to feed one of the Yurkei steeds a piece of bread. Yur-Jee’s hand clutched his bow as he gestured frantically to the Spade.
“Lu-yusa! Ilu-fre!” He stumbled for broken Wonderlander, finally finding the word. “No!”
The Spade, a husky man with a giant black beard and red-rimmed eyes, stepped back.
“What the hell is he going on about now?” he grumbled.
Yur-Jee was climbing off his horse, tight, lean muscles tensing as his feet hit the ground. The Spade reached for his ax.
“Stop! Ja-Hohy!”
Both men wisely paused at the voice of their future queen. Dinah carefully dismounted Morte, sliding down half his body as her calloused hands clutched his red leather rein.
“Idiots!” she quietly whispered to herself as she closed the space between them. When she reached the men, she calmly took the bread out of the Spade’s hand and tossed it on the ground before meeting the Spade’s eyes. She heard a familiar nicker behind her from Cyndy, Sir Gorrann’s mare. She was reassured by his quiet presence.
Altercations like this seemed to happen every other hour, and she was learning to deal with them one by one. Ruling, it turned out, was terribly tedious and made up of a dozen small decisions every day that seemed to always upset someone. She smiled kindly at the Spade, who stared at her unnervingly.
“The Yurkei only let their horses eat wild grasses, did you know that? This special diet is what we believe gives them their endurance.”
