All your letters in the sand

The next morning you begin bleeding, cramping, expelling. You are left in bed to rest. Salem brings you elaborate outfits you don’t wear and nightgowns you hide under the covers in. Charm brings you pills and hot water bottles, but you don’t use them; instead you gaze up at the ceiling where shadows roam and wonder—as cramps split through your belly and your pelvis—what it must have felt like to be impaled on metal spikes, or to choke to death in the sandstorm, or to drown in quicksand, or to be bludgeoned by a hammer, or to realize the pyramid was poison and the only anecdote was to kill.

Peacekeepers lurk in corners and doorways. Voices drone out in the common area. You sleep, and drift, and stare, and every once in a while you get up to brush your teeth and bathe, and you get in the tub and let the nozzles pummel you with hot water so you’ll hear the roar of the bubbles rather than the shrieking of stones and metal. Then you crawl back into bed again.

You know you’ll have to leave this room eventually, but you have a little more time. The Capitol gives its victors a reprieve to be scoured cleaned, stitched up, rejuvenated, composed. Because when you step out into the daylight again, you’ll need to be whoever they want you to be. Commodore would have been monstrous, not like a beast, like a mythological creature that awes and captivates. Roosevelt would have been sharp and funny and clever. Brookie would have been beautiful and arrogant, but well-trained like a dog that bolts when you whistle, as is expected of a District 1 tribute. Isla would have been sweet and strategic, tougher than she looks, a dark horse who plucked flourishing young lives like peaches from the trees. But none of them survived, you did, and what the Capitol expects you to do is sparkle.

Aemond brings you sandwiches, cakes, pineapple juice. At each mealtime he arrives with a tray and two servings, sits at the edge of the bed, eats with you without saying much. What is there to talk about? The past is bloody. The future is heartbreaking. But you want him to know how grateful you are, even if you can’t fully express it, even if your voice is flat and your skull is thrashing with sand and screams.

“You got me exactly what I wanted,” you say as you eat what he’s brought you this time, a tuna melt, fish from home and toast that’s warm beneath your fingerprints. “Thank you.”

Aemond studies you in the dim light, his right eye searching, his sapphire glittering. After a while, he asks gently: “Are you alright?”

You scoff. “Are you?”

Of course he isn’t, and he hasn’t been for ten years. But now he has a chance to be free.

You hear the bedroom door open and assume it’s Salem, or Charm, or Aemond. Someone flicks the light on. Footsteps on the floor, a foreign floral miasma. You peek blearily out from under the blanket and gasp when you see him, his hair grey and his suit red, a white rose pinned to the lapel, eyes that are icy and yet transfixing.

“No, no, don’t get up,” President Snow says pleasantly as he sits beside you on the bed. You glance to the Peacekeepers standing in the corner—as if they’d help you—and retreat from him until your spine is stiff against the headboard, clutching the blanket to your chest. Your nightgowns here are always silk, and flowing like water, and leaving very little to the imagination. But President Snow’s crystalline eyes stay on your face. After a moment, he grins. “Still abed, are you?”

“I’m tired, I’m not…” Angry, bitter, broken, hateful, treacherous, useless. “I’m just tired.”

“Yes, the Games can be taxing. Particularly when they’re played well.” He looks boredly around the room, his hands clasped together. “You’ll have a place better than this, you know. In whatever style you prefer. A glass house like Aemond’s, or something less sanitized, perhaps. Roman, Persian, Byzantine, Gothic, Baroque, Beaux-Arts, Art Deco. You don’t strike me as a minimalist. Misty makes décor out of sailing knots, doesn’t she?”

“What?” you say, startled. Why would he threaten me? I’ve done everything they wanted.

To make sure you keep doing it, of course.

President Snow smiles, as if he’s an old friend. “At this very moment, your family is moving into the Victors’ Village in District 4. Mags is there to welcome them and give them a tour of the grounds. Your father and your siblings will each have their own spacious accommodations. Your father, aging as he is, will only ever venture out on the sea to fish again if and when he chooses to.”

“And I’m so grateful for the Capitol’s generosity,” you say eagerly, frantically. “I know I’ll have to make appearances soon, there are interviews and parties, and then the Victory Tour later, and I have every intention of fulfilling those obligations—”

President Snow chuckles and shakes his head. “This isn’t a test. I find it beneficial to check in on my victors, to make sure they’re comfortable and aren’t in need of anything in particular. And to ensure their minds are…untroubled.”

You still don’t know what he wants. Your heartbeat thunders in your chest like cannon fire. You stare in horror at his pale interlaced hands, thinking: Will he touch me? Will he buy me? Has he paid already? “That’s so thoughtful.”

“Not everyone has the proper temperament to thrive here,” he says, studying you closely now with his cold spellbinding eyes, and he unclasps his hands and rests a palm on the bed in the space between you. “Sirena didn’t, unfortunately. But Jack does. Jack has done very well.” There is suddenly profound fondness in his voice, like one would have for a loyal dog, and you realize: He doesn’t enjoy hurting people. He enjoys making them his pets. “You strike me as someone who has a remarkable presence of mind, and that is a great asset. You quickly identified your strengths and enhanced them. You were gracious to our beloved citizens here in the Capitol. You gave them a wonderful performance in the Games, and you even did your kills in the correct order, telling a story for the audience, a reluctant tribute, a hero’s journey. First bludgeoning poor little Babylon in self-defense, which left you clearly bereft. And then betraying Isla by sending her to the pyramid when you knew it was toxic. Then you put dear Roosevelt out of his misery, he who had committed violence with such competence and yet discernment, sparing you and his other companions. And finally you fully succumbed to the primal brutality essential to winning, and you struck down Commodore—your teammate, your kinsman—with cunning and ferocity and showmanship.”

You wish he would stop talking, but you can’t make him. You tell yourself you’ll have to get used to this: letting men talk, letting men touch, letting men cut and bruise their way inside.

President Snow grins, showing his teeth, too white and pristine to be real. For the first time, his gaze drops to where you are still covering yourself with the blanket. “And you even managed to strip down to your underwear while doing it. You really know what men like.”

You ask before you can stop yourself: “Do you ever place bids?”

You don’t expound further, but he knows exactly what you mean. His smile dies and his face goes stony. “I have a wife and children. And grandchildren now too.”

“Which means you are strictly monogamous.”

“Which means that if I was to partake in such arrangements, I would expect the victor to exercise the utmost discretion.”

“Of course,” you say, and bow your head in contrition. “I didn’t mean to offend you. Please accept my apology.”

For a long while he does not speak; the only sounds are the freezing breath of the air conditioning, the distant swishing of running water, the zooms of trains going by outside. He is waiting. Slowly—hoping he’ll tell you to stop—you lower the blanket until it rests in your lap, and you look away, shivering in your silk nightgown that clings and reveals. His glass-sharp eyes pass over you, but he doesn’t seem all that interested, honestly. Maybe you’re not his type. Maybe he just wants you to know who holds the leash, who locks or opens the cage.

At last, he sighs, businesslike again. One of his hands still rests on the mattress; as you watch, forcing yourself not to flinch away, he lifts it and places his palm instead on where the blanket still, mercifully, covers your thigh. “It came to my attention some time ago that Aemond was hoping to purchase his…” He hesitates as he decides on the right phrasing, not freedom or autonomy or second chance. “Withdrawal from public life.”

Immediately, you are rapt with attention.

“I’m inclined to grant his request,” President Snow continues, his tone almost cavalier. “He’s served the Capitol faithfully for a decade. And it’s good for morale. If victors know that their loyalty is rewarded, that if someday they wish to…expand their horizons…” He waves his other hand through the air, a bird taking flight, a gull or a vulture. “Then they’d be able to, that would discourage certain self-destructive tendencies, I think. Although, Aemond is very popular here. His loss would be felt acutely. I would feel better about his departure if I was reassured that someone would be there to fill the void of his absence.”

You’re nodding. You can envision it. You see the mirage solidifying until it becomes real, something you can reach out and touch like a glimmering stone, something that soaks your skin like blood.

“You, Jack, and Mags could represent District 4 well,” President Snow says. “You would help train tributes, perhaps you’d even be ready to act as an official mentor next year. That would make the viewers very, very happy, I suspect. And if you resided here in the Capitol full-time instead of secluding yourself in the quaint little Victors’ Village by the sea, you’d be able to maintain closer relationships with sponsors and Gamemakers. And with your clients, of course.”

You cover President Snow’s pallid, cold hand with your own, warm and shaking. “I understand exactly what you’re asking for, and I’ll do it. I won’t complain. I’ll work hard. But please let Aemond go.”

He smiles and removes his palm from your thigh. “What we require from our victors…it isn’t too much, is it? You receive fortune and fame that is unimaginable to anyone in the districts. Your family is provided for. Any children you bear will grow up healthy and safe and educated and happy. You will live to a hundred years or more. All we ask in return is for a small taste of whatever exceptional quality helped you win the Games. So for someone like you or Aemond…a few nights a month…a little discomfort, a little mess to clean up afterwards…is it really such an imposition?”

“No,” you say, almost a whisper. “No, it isn’t too much.”

President Snow beams, cold inanimate radiance like moonshine. Then he stands and pats your head affectionately. You too could be like Jackline Humboldt, beloved and immune from pedestrian sorts of pain; you too could find a home here in the metal and the gold and the marble and the chill. He turns to leave.

“One more thing,” you say, and he pauses, a red pillar in your grey cage of a room. “My escort Charm was invaluable to me and Commodore over the past few weeks. She’s nearing retirement, but she’s been hoping to represent either District 1 or 2 since her career began. She’s been working tirelessly to help entertain the audience for all these years, and to keep her assigned tributes calm and compliant. If you believe loyalty should be rewarded, perhaps you would consider giving her a promotion. Particularly after that mishap on the platforms at the start of the Games. Someone on the District 2 team should have seen that coming.”

President Snow ponders you, perhaps a little taken aback. Then he’s proud. You really do understand how to survive here. “Let me consider it.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll see you at the party.”

“I’ll be there.” I’ll be sparkling.

He crosses though the doorway, and you climb out of bed.

“Well, good morning, victor!” Charm trills when you emerge from darkness and silence, like the ground thawing after winter. She is flitting around the dining room table, pouring juice and drizzling syrup. “Come have breakfast with us. There are two waffles left, one blueberry and one chocolate chip, and bacon, caviar, sweet city ham and salty country ham, some delicious deviled eggs—do you like those, dear?—and apple, pineapple, and orange juice, and plenty of cake for dessert, of course!”

You look at the television, where journalists are interviewing people in District 4, waves rumbling in the background and the sky blue and infinite: kids you went to school with, Aemond’s younger brother Daeron, Misty as furniture is being unloaded from moving trucks behind her, Mags and her husband and children. You glimmer like an emerald in an outfit inspired by seaweed, long sweeping ropes forming the skirt, a beaded halter top that stops at your navel. You’ve misted your exposed skin with fragmented constellations, drawn glinting crescent moons under your eyes.

Charm yanks out a chair, rather frenetically. “Sit, sit!”

You drop into the chair as she piles deviled eggs onto your plate. Aegon is here too, swigging orange juice, his unbuttoned shirt patterned with palm trees and his linen shorts green to match. Beside him, Sunfyre swims in lazy circles around his glass bowl. Aegon raises his eyebrows at you, like he’s asking so what’s new? You stare at the seat where Commodore should be, but he isn’t because he’s dead and you killed him.

Charm notices this and deftly redirects. “You have so many people waiting to see you!” she says brightly. “Crowds out in the streets cheering and waving signs. Personal trainers, dance tutors, fashion designers, company representatives with advertising campaigns, dog breeders, real estate agents hoping to show you houses…” She picks up your fork and raps it against your plate. “Eat!”

You take the fork when she offers it to you. You cut a deviled egg in half and eat it without much enthusiasm as Charm serves you the blueberry waffle as well. “Dog breeders?”

“They help,” Charm says. “With the nerves. A lot of victors get a dog or two.”

“Aemond has Salukis.”

“Gorgeous creatures. So elegant! Would you like some?”

“Maybe I can have his,” you say. “When he’s gone.”

“Yes.” Charm smiles, and she seems so sad but proud too. Commodore’s Loch Ness Monster pin is gone from her chest, tucked away in a drawer, collecting dust in a closet. She wears a silver jumpsuit now, the same color as the sparkles that misted your skin during the Games, and during your interview with Caesar Flickerman, and so many other times under camera flashes and ravening eyes. Charm pats your shoulder with unmistakable tenderness, her green eyes shimmering. You are a part of the team now. You are permanent. “That’s a fine idea.”

Aemond’s bedroom door opens, and he appears in a black suit like the one he wore during the Games, the color of mourning, elegant and guarded and unflinching. His hair is straight, and half of it is neatly tied back by a small obsidian clip. He startles when he sees you, like he hadn’t expected you to be up yet. Then he just stares for a few seconds, and he’s been doing that since you met, and you’ve never figured out what he’s staring at. “You look nice.”

“Salem is the artist, as always,” you say. “Which waffle do you want, blueberry or chocolate chip?”

“I have to go.”

Where? you almost ask, but then you know and you feel sick.

“I’ll be back late,” Aemond says. “Don’t wait up.” He slips his red mobile phone out of his suit jacket, furrows his scarred brow as he reads the screen, types something briefly. He departs from the suite and as soon as he’s gone the place feels empty, not just the room but the whole world too, and you can’t touch him now because you belong to a man who hasn’t bought you yet, and you won’t be able to touch him after because he’ll be far away in someplace like Mexico, or Tanzania, or Egypt.

You push your food around on your plate, then give up and take a sip of pineapple juice instead, ice-cold, saccharine, good for inflammation. You used to drink it with your friends, but now they’re all dead and they’ll never eat or drink anything ever again. Your gazes catches on the new scar on your forearm. Aemond sent me so many gifts. And now he has to pay for them.

Aegon’s suitcase is already packed and waits upright beside the table for his imminent departure back to the sun and the surf. He looks at you and says, like it’s something that terrifies him: “I don’t think he’ll leave if you don’t tell him to.”

You close your eyes and nod, knowing what you have to do next.

Charm, chatting energetically and periodically administering herself sniffs of white powder from her compact, takes you down to the gymnasium to meet your personal trainer. The space is otherwise deserted: no one running on the treadmills, no one stretching on the floor, no one playing catch with the bean bags, no one racing through the obstacle course. Every footstep and word echoes. The air is grey and cold.

Your new personal trainer takes your measurements and jots down notes about where you need to be bigger, smaller, tighter, more supple. They grin ceaselessly and laugh too much. They say you should rest for a few more days, then your customized lessons will begin. You’ll start here in the Tribute Center; once you have your own mansion, they’ll ensure a private gym is added to the premises if there isn’t one already. They say you’ll have a one-hour session with them each morning. You ask for how long. They laugh and say forever.

Charm escorts you to a meeting with people from a perfume company, who want you to choose a fragrance to be your signature scent. You siphon drops from various glass bottles: coconut like the clear liquid your sparkles are suspended in, vanilla and a hint of earthy darkness—which you now identify as amber—like Aemond wears, his cologne or his aftershave or something, you’ve never learned which and you never will. You add a single drop of smoke, and the company representatives rave and applaud.

“Oh, it’s spectacular!” a woman says. She has cherry-red hair and bejeweled eyeglasses and skin like a sand dollar, smooth and ivory. “Sweet but so rich! It smells like toasted coconut s’mores!”

You are puzzled. “What are s’mores?”

They giggle at your rustic upbringing. “We’ll get you one,” the woman assures you, and then combs her fingers through your hair to admire the texture. People keep touching you without asking. You are public property, a park bench or a strip of asphalt, and you try not to wince because soon it will be worse.

Then there is the soda company, and the sunglasses company, and the shoe company that thrusts fifteen different pairs of high heels onto your feet. Over lunch in the cafeteria, a rotation of real estate agents show you virtual tours of available houses on the glowing rectangular screens of tablets. They are beautiful, and rambling like a maze, but all you can think about is where you would put your own case of treasures in each of them, your gemstones and relics piled up to the lofty ceiling.

In ten years, I could have my own trove of gifts in my luxurious tomb. In ten years, I could leave Panem and meet Aemond someplace where we could both be free.

That would mean abandoning your family, never seeing Misty or Daddy or any of the others again, and deserting the District 4 tributes who will be reaped ever after. And—you grasp with dawning terror—it would mean forsaking any children you conceive over the next decade.

I don’t think I could do it, you realize. If Aemond leaves now, I’ll never see him again.

But you can’t keep him here. You can’t repay him for saving your life by sacrificing what’s left of his.

A servant brings you a s’more on a small bone china plate, and when you bite into it warm charred marshmallow oozes out from between the graham crackers. The taste is delectable but the consistency, thick and viscid, reminds you of the entrails of a skinned camel, the maroon soup of clotting blood, the rattling of failing lungs. You say it’s delicious but you can’t eat any more. The real estate agents chuckle and say you’re such a good sport, already concerned about keeping your figure.

At midafternoon, Charm takes you to your pod, where your prep team gives you your first thorough polishing up since the Games. You are there for a long time—plucking, waxing, scrubbing, rinsing, moisturizing, massaging—but you can’t enjoy any of this, because all you can think about is when it will happen: the sale, the service. There are moments when you wish it was right now so it would be over with and you could stop feeling so afraid. Then you are yanked back into denial, and you can’t imagine it at all, and you are sure there must be some escape. But there was no escape from the Games, and twenty-three kids died, and if that horror was real then why wouldn’t this be too?

They paint your nails with silver glitter. They chemically treat your hair. One of the women working with the prep team pauses her gossip just long enough to jab a cotton swab between your legs. You feel a pinch and endure it without complaint. She notices you watching her as she secures the swab in a plastic tube.

She smiles as she says: “It’s just to make sure you’re healthy and comfortable.”

“Of course,” you reply, thinking: It’s just to make sure I’m clean before some man pays to rip me open.

Charm collects you and leads you back upstairs to the District 4 suite as you pad along in your robe and slippers. Aegon is on his way back to the coast, and Sunfyre the goldfish too. Aemond is still out in the city. Commodore is nowhere.

But dinner isn’t lonely: Salem arrives to show you sketches, silhouettes of gowns and jewelry pieces for you to wear to the party that will be held in your honor. Charm marvels at the designs as the three of you eat bleeding lamb, a gory red wine reduction, fluffy potatoes and green beans slick with salted butter. You make your selections and Salem hurries off to stitch them to life. Charm finds a documentary about blue whales for you to watch on tv. You watch the front door instead.

Aemond told you not to wait up, but this is a rare occasion when you don’t listen to him. Once Charm retires for the evening, you get ready for bed and then return to the couch in the common area, flip through the channels, game shows and wildlife documentaries and weather and interviews. In District 2, Roosevelt’s mother is sobbing as she responds to a journalist’s questions. In District 12, Pluto’s ex-girlfriend Mallory is weeping as she confesses she should have said yes when he proposed. She watched him die on tv. She heard him calling for her from the ruins of the desert.

I’ll have to speak to them during my Victory Tour, you think as Peacekeepers lurk in the shadows, here and yet not here, silent guardians of your life and your virtue. And how do I say that I’m sorry for their loss, but I wanted to live more than I wanted to be humane, or honorable, or gentle, or unviolated, and that I’m glad I won even if it means that I never leave the valley of death? How do I say that I let their loved ones die in the arena and it gives me agony and nightmares but I’d do it over and over again?

You hear the front door open. You turn to see Aemond returning in the dim blue-white glow of the television, his shoulders low, his suit rumpled, his long silver hair hastily braided as if he did it himself in an elevator or the back seat of a car. He observes that you’re still awake and sighs, rubbing his scar with one lithe hand. It must be causing him pain.

Aemond says when you get up to meet him: “Don’t come near me, I’m…”

He’s filthy with them, whoever they were: perfume that isn’t yours, cologne that isn’t his. Your lungs pull in sweat and other salt as well, and you think of the desert, minerals and decay and suffocating heat and an expanse that goes on forever. But you don’t keep any distance between you. You touch your palm to Aemond’s scar, kiss his other cheek. “I’m glad you’re home.”

“Me too,” he says, bewildered.

You take his hand. “Come with me.” And he follows, like a sun towards the west.

You lead Aemond through your bedroom and into the bathroom, where you peel away his layers like a snake’s skin as the Peacekeepers lurk just outside; you keep your own clothes on so they can see there is no nefarious intent here, not even in your black silk nightgown, not even when you remove his suit jacket, unbutton his shirt, unbuckle his belt. You start the water and let the shower run until it is hot enough and steam fills the room, then you step under the downpour and beckon Aemond inside.

You lather him with the weightless, pearlescent froth of soap, rinse him clean, do it again. Beneath your palms, his muscles slacken and his scar tissue ceases to ache. In the haze of soap and steam, you make him believe that it’s the other way around: what the Capitol does to him is the mirage and only this is real, and he’ll have it forever, and it won’t cost a thing. He smiles when you kiss his cheek again, not hungrily, only hushed and kind. He laughs when you have to stand on your tiptoes to wash his hair, and then his eye begins to drift to where your black silk clings to your skin, and you press yourself against him as if he could ever have you. His lips find your forehead, your temple, your mouth. He goes hard in your hand as you cleanse him.

But you can venture no further, and when the water runs clear you turn off the faucet, and when you get out of the shower your black silk nightgown drips riptides onto the cold tile floor.

Aemond hangs the knife from your throat by its silver chain, and then you’re ready. The crowd roars when you step out onto the stage, the beam of light following you to where Caesar Flickerman waits, clapping as he stands beside his chair. He seizes your hands and squeezes them vigorously, then swoops in to peck both of your cheeks. He gestures for you to sit, and only after you do does he take his place in his matching chair, huge and violet and velvet. You cross your legs and wave to the audience. Your silver gown, covered with crystals, casts scintillations like stars in an indigo sky. Your skin glitters; you are wearing your new signature fragrance.

“How about that, folks?” Caesar says, beaming. “Our sparkling victor from District 4! Let’s give her another round of applause!” He doesn’t need to convince them. They haven’t stopped cheering since you appeared. “Tell me, my dear, what have you been up to since we last saw you in that pyramid, drenched in blood and half-naked? I mean, what a cinematic finish!”

The crowd whistles. You grin and shrug rakishly. “You know I can never keep my clothes on.”

Caesar cackles. “Yes, it’s a bit of a problem for you, isn’t it? From the very first time we saw you at the Tribute Parade!”

“I hope you’ll forgive my transgressions.”

Caesar simpers flirtatiously and kisses the knuckles of your right hand. From just off-stage, Aemond watches, his suit a glistening silver to match your dress. There is no green light at the edge of the platform to help you keep track of time. You are the feature event tonight, and you can take as long as you want. “I think I speak for many, many people here in the Capitol when I say we love you all the more for them.”

“And I love you back,” you swear like a vow. “Let’s see, what have I been doing? Well, I had to have all the blood scrubbed off, of course.”

“Of course,” Caesar agrees. The audience is laughing.

“And then I enjoyed some very scrumptious meals.”

“No locusts?”

“Not a single locust.”

“Didn’t get a taste for them?”

“I didn’t, no, but maybe you would. Does anyone have a locust Caesar could try?”

“No, no!” he protests as the crowd howls with laughter. A sound effect of buzzing wings is played and Caesar yelps in faux alarm. His suit is desert themed: sand-colored and patterned with sequined camels, cactuses, obelisks, and pyramids. “No thank you!”

“And I’ve been meeting all sorts of fascinating people,” you continue. “For example, I have a new dance tutor who’s been torturing me so I don’t embarrass myself at President Snow’s party tonight.”

“They don’t do much dancing in District 4, huh?”

“The closest we ever get is waltzing with a fish on the other end of the line.”

“Speaking of fish and your talent at gutting them,” Caesar says, indicating your knife. “Didn’t that sheath used to have pretty little fish on it?”

“It did.” You hold up your weapon so the audience can see, so the cameras can zoom in. In your peripheral vision, you glimpse your knife magnified on the screens on either side of the stage. “The old sheath was lost in the arena before I could get my hands on it, but Aemond had a new one made for me. Instead of fish, this sheath has twenty-three silver hearts, one for each of the other tributes in the Games. And nestled in every heart is a different gemstone to represent that person.”

Caesar gasps as he examines the sheath, leaning in closely. “Extraordinary! Wait, let me guess…the heart with the black stone…”

“Onyx.”

“Yes, onyx! That’s for poor Pluto, isn’t it? Black for the coal of District 12.”

Now it’s difficult to keep smiling. “Right. For Pluto.”

“And the chocolate diamond must be for Babylon. His hair was just that color, wasn’t it?”

You swallow noisily. “Exactly.” The crowd is murmuring, making their own guesses, touched by your sentimentality. From just off-stage, Aemond is nodding; this is how it’s supposed to go.

“Tell me some of the others,” Caesar prompts you, and he sounds sympathetic but you know that’s his role, everybody has one here and they must play it well if they intend to keep it. His hair is dyed a bright cloudless blue like the sky above the desert. He wears a pin there in the shape of a black vulture.

“Isla’s stone is a padparadscha sapphire like the peaches of District 11.” You point to her heart. “Then this one here…it’s an aquamarine like the water back home, and that’s for Commodore. And then…” You have to pause to collect yourself, and the audience sighs with compassion. “This heart has a ruby, and that’s for Roosevelt. Rubies symbolize protection, and power, and love.”

Caesar chuckles fondly. “Oh, I think I know Aemond’s influence when I hear it! He’s a bit of a scholar, isn’t he, folks? I’m positive he’s the person who told you about the attributes and associations of various stones.”

“He did,” you admit, and you let the knife rest against your breastbone again and you force yourself to keep smiling. “He’s taught me so, so much.”

“Yes, my dear, I wanted to ask…” Caesar pauses thoughtfully, premeditatedly. The crowd inches forward, their attention absolute. They wait soundlessly, not wanting to miss a word. “The last time we were here on this stage together, you confided in me that you feared you wanted more with your illustrious mentor, Aemond Targaryen, than you’d ever get to have. How are you feeling now? Clearly, this must be a very emotional time. He worked so hard to help you win the Games, we all watched how devoted he was to ensuring your survival. And now you are reunited, and so…?”

You open your mouth to answer, and your lips quiver. The audience makes a feeble little cry of despair, feeling the crushing depths of your longing as if it is their own. “I am in awe of him. I am irreparably linked with him. I am always searching for him when I walk into rooms. I am forever discovering new ways in which he endures life’s trials with grace and ingenuity and self-sacrifice. I’ll never be able to repay the debt that I owe to Aemond. But I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying.”

The people in the crowd leap to their feet and applaud. Caesar waves for Aemond to join you on the stage. He complies and crosses into the blinding light, meets you at the center of the stage, rests a palm on the small of your back and lifts your chin to kiss you, slow and lingering, like any time he touches you might be the very last. You stand together as photographers take pictures and video cameras roll, and you both shine like the constellations of separate galaxies.

Afterwards in the back of the car, you ask Aemond as he gazes through his nightscape window: “Was that okay?”

“You know you were perfect,” he says, still not looking at you, and that’s all.

The driver takes you to President Snow’s mansion, where the elite citizens of the Capitol are celebrating yet another successful Hunger Games. Those whose bets proved lucky toast to their good fortune. Those whose bets failed drink away their sorrow. All the mentors and escorts are present, but you are the only tribute. You keep thinking that you catch a glimpse of Roosevelt, or Brookie, or Isla, or Commodore, or Pluto and Monty joking around with Baby so he won’t be scared, but then you remember over and over again that they’re gone. Charm, dressed in a black feathered dress with wings like a vulture’s soaring up from her shoulders, watches you and Aemond warily as she sips champagne and exchanges barbs with Lapis and Citadella. Maybe, like Aegon, she’s afraid you’ll keep Aemond here too, in his gilded cage, in his poisoned air.

President Snow descends the grand staircase to mingle with his guests on the ballroom floor, white marble threaded with gold. He gives you a swift, crooked smile and a surreptitious nod, and otherwise he seems mostly disinterested in you. Aemond trails you like a shadow, his palm pressed to the curve of your spine as you are introduced to more people than whose names you could ever remember. Jackline Humboldt—his suit cool grey suede, thunderous skies, tombstones, shark skin—finds you in the throng, grins toothily but with no cruelty, shakes your hand as if you’re something like an equal.

There is an orchestra performing, and some attendees gravitate towards the center of the floor to dance, gowns and suits and gems and metal. You see two middle-aged men whirling together, laughing and murmuring, and you think: Roosevelt should have had that.

“They should dance, shouldn’t they?” President Snow announces abruptly, and with a sweep of his arm he gestures to you and Aemond. “The sparkling victor and her dutiful mentor. Would anyone like to see that? Or did she practice with her dance tutor for nothing?”

“Dance, dance, dance!” the guests concur, clapping gleefully. Aemond offers you an empty hand. You place your palm on top of his. You walk to the middle of the ornate room with him and try to recall the steps, forward, to the side, backwards, to the side again, an intermittent spin. It doesn’t come naturally to you, but fortunately Aemond is well-trained and whisks you along like a storm wind. The attendees are watching, and in so many of their eyes gleam envy and craving and violence. Men are hissing to each other, and you imagine the subject matter: what’s under the silvery glimmer of your gown, what they’d be willing to pay for you.

“I hope they don’t expect me to know what I’m doing,” you tell Aemond as you dance, low enough that no one else will hear.

“The Capitol will give you…” He grimaces. “Well, they’re called therapists, but they aren’t really. They’re coaches, essentially. They’ll teach you. But for the first time, no, you aren’t supposed to know what to do. That’s the whole point. The type of people who place bids in those auctions…they have a very specific experience in mind.”

To claim me. To hurt me. “But then I’ll have lessons, like learning to dance or to kill.”

“It’s not just the physical aspect,” Aemond says. “That’s the strangest part, sometimes. The clients…they want you to tell them a story. That you desire them above all others, even if you’re photographed with someone else, even if you’re married. That you are the character you played in the arena. That it isn’t something they paid for. You have to make them forget everything they know. You have to make them believe the mirage is real.”

You glance reticently at the leering men again. “I hate the waiting for the first time. I haven’t been told anything.”

“I think it will be next week, which will make it a little easier for you. It will be at the point in your cycle when your body is…most ready.”

“And most likely to conceive,” you say grimly.

The song changes, the strings turn haunting and mournful. But the melody is familiar. It’s the song about a train called The City of New Orleans, and the party guests gasp in delight and applaud. They remember it: Roosevelt singing softly under the stars, you humming to yourself as you trudged alone across the sand. Maybe they’d even heard it before the Games. Maybe it lives everywhere in Panem, across barbed wire fences and concrete walls, from the mountains to the forests to the fields, from the desert to the sea. Your footsteps slow. Aemond draws you closer, like cigarette smoke into his lungs.

“I could stay longer,” he says, like it’s all he thinks about. “I could stay here and help you through this as much as I can, and we could be together, even if it’s only sometimes, even if it’s complicated, and I could go with you on your Victory Tour—”

“No, Aemond.”

“I can’t stand the thought…it’s not right…I won’t—”

“I want you to leave,” you whisper as you fold into him, linking your arms around the back of his neck and resting your head against his chest, your lips to his throat, your eyes closed. “I won’t be like Sirena. I won’t harm myself. I took a spot from twenty-three other people, and I won’t waste it. But there is nothing you can do to stop what happens next. And I don’t want you to have to watch this. I want you to be free. If you’re happy, if you’re not being hurt anymore, that will give me peace. So please leave. Please, Aemond.”

His voice is choked with water and sand and time and blood. “I don’t know if I can.”

“And maybe in ten years, I’ll have enough gifts of my own to meet you wherever you are. Will you find a way to let me know where you go?”

“Of course I will,” he whispers, and you feel the heat of his tear when it rains onto your cheek.

“Please leave, Aemond,” you beg, pulling back so you can see him again. You cup his face with your palms to make him look at you; and in a room full of hungry mouths and ravenous eyes, for a few fleeting seconds the two of you are alone. “You’ve paid for your freedom. You deserve it. I love you, and I want you to be free.”

He shakes his head and can’t respond. You wonder: How many hours has he spent watching kids die? How many times has he felt the weight of a trespasser on the mattress?

“Please leave,” you say again, scorching tears glittering on your lashes. “And please don’t make me keep asking you. It’s too painful. You’re hurting me. Please, Aemond, don’t become another person who hurts me.”