Death of a Wildfire (25th Hunger Games) - Chapter VII
“No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.” — Edward R. Murrow
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I taught Rosabel to draw a bow in the Secret Garden because I could not teach the district mercy.
That was the shape of it, though I hated the sound of the thought. Mercy should have been the easier thing, something that should have lived in mothers clutching their children’s shoulders and fathers counting the heads around supper tables. It should have been waiting in the millhouses, the academy halls, the market road, in every place where people still had to look one another in the face after the voting was done.
But mercy had gone scarce that week.
So, instead, I taught Rose how to stand.
Feet apart, weight even, elbow high. Shoulders loose, though she never kept them that way for long. She carried fear there. Most people carried it in their hands or mouths. Rose carried it just beneath her collarbones, tight enough that I could see it when she breathed.
“Again,” I’d say. And she would pull.
The bow I made for her was ugly, rushed, and illegal enough to hang us both if the wrong person found it. Not my finest work, but it held its curve, and the string did not snap. That counted for more than beauty. I carved it in the dark behind the Tempest barn, shaving down the limbs by lamplight with one eye on the road and the other on my own foolishness.
Rose had stared at it the first morning like I had handed her a live snake.
“You made that?” She had said.
“It works.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.” She practically rolled her eyes.
In return, I shrugged. “It’s what matters.”
At first, the arrows landed nowhere useful. In the grass or dirt. The side of a fallen log. Once, a fern so innocent I almost apologized to it. Rose had good eyes but too much thought in her. She wanted to understand the lesson before she trusted her body with it. She wanted to know where the arrow would go before she released it, which was not how arrows worked, nor how life worked in general, though I spared her that little wisdom because I enjoyed keeping my teeth.
By the third morning, she struck bark. And the fifth? She struck it twice.
By the sixth, she lowered the bow after a clean hit and looked at the target not with triumph, but with something more cautious. Recognition. As if some part of her had understood that this was no longer practice.
I did not teach her because I believed it would be enough. A week of stolen mornings could not make a hunter out of a girl who should have been finishing essays and complaining about academy lunches. I knew that. She knew it too. Still, we went before dawn to that hidden scrap of green and worked until her fingers reddened and the sun began lifting over the grass.
I taught her how to listen for movement. Where to step where the ground would forgive her. How to tell a rabbit trail from a badger path. Or to cut her own panic down to one breath at a time.
The rest I could not give her. In a better district or a fairer world, she would’ve understood that simply in time. Instead, I gave her what my hands could make.
A bow or knife. Anything of use. Even a few dirty tricks.
The lie that preparation was close enough to protection to let either of us sleep. By the morning before Reaping Day, every child of reaping age in District 9 had been gathered into New Bisman.
That was how it had always been done, more or less. A week before the Reaping, the families from the outer farms, river settlements, mill roads, and grain stations began making their way toward town. Some came by wagon, others by horse, some even walking with bundles tied to their backs and younger children dragging behind them. For ordinary Games years, the week had an ugly usefulness to it. Children reported for collection, confirmed their ages and entries, and the clerks counted the many ways hunger had written their names into the lottery.
The district, being what it was, made a market of the terror anyway.
Vendors opened early. Traders unfolded patched canvas over crates of salt, needles, lamp oil, dried fruit, bootlaces, secondhand coats, and little paper twists of sugar meant for children whose parents could spare the coin. The butchers smoked sausages near the station road. Women sold bread from cloth-lined baskets. Men argued over tool parts and wagon wheels. Someone roasted corn over a barrel fire as if the smell of it could keep dread from gathering in the throat.
New Bisman grew loud during Reaping week. Much too loud.
That was the first thing Rose noticed as she walked toward town hall without her cousins to accompany her. Usually during collection, Waaska would be on one side and Nibs on the other.
Now, all she had was the sand in her boots.
The noise had weight to it this year. No joy nor proper bustle. It was the sound of people trying to prove they were still people before the Capitol reminded them they were numbers.
Children filled the square in dark uniforms, patched work coats, good dresses worn too early in the morning, boots scrubbed as clean as mud allowed. Some had come in from so far out that they still smelled faintly of horse sweat, straw, and cold road. Younger ones clung to older siblings. Older ones pretended not to be afraid and failed in ways Rose found almost unbearable.
A boy from the north mill road laughed too hard at something his friend said, then went quiet when his mother touched the back of his head. A girl no older than thirteen stood stiff as a fence post while her father fixed the ribbon at her collar, his hands shaking worse than hers.
Near the intake line, Waylynn Scranton was shaking like a leaf while Burr stood beside his younger brother, looking furious enough to bite through iron. The Rolette grandkids weren’t far behind, with their lips pressed thin, just like their grandfather, watching the booths as if they might disappear altogether if they looked hard enough.
Rose looked away before anyone could catch her staring.
That was the trouble. Everywhere she looked, someone was breaking. Everywhere she did not look, she felt someone watching.
The voting stations had been built outside town hall overnight.
They were not like the old collection tables. Those had been plain things, ugly but familiar; long desks, registration books, gray-faced clerks, peacekeepers standing near enough to remind everyone that math belonged to the Capitol. This time, everything was different. This had structure. Intention. A cruelty dressed up as civic order.
Three intake stations stood beneath the town hall awning, each marked by a black number and guarded by peacekeepers in polished helmets. Beyond them, a row of voting booths had been arranged beneath temporary canvas walls, each one narrow enough to swallow a child whole and return them changed. Capitol seals had been stamped across the privacy screens. Fresh ink. Fresh paper. Fresh lie.
At the first station, children gave their names. At the second, their age and district sector were confirmed. At the third, a ballot was placed into their hands.
Then they were sent to choose which child might die.
Rose tried to keep her head down. It wasn’t helping. Whispers moved faster than she did.
Not always words, though. Sometimes just the shift of attention, the brief quiet that followed her, the small pull of mothers drawing children closer, though whether from pity or resentment she could not tell. A boy from the academy looked at her and then away so quickly it felt rehearsed. One of Carrigan Killdeer’s friends leaned toward another girl with her mouth half-hidden behind her hand.
Rose continued forward.
The intake line moved slowly because no one wanted it to move at all. Children stepped up one by one and gave their names like confessions.
“Imogen Emerado. Sixteen. South mill quarter.”
“NEXT!”
“Ruth Oxbow. Fourteen. East elevator row.”
“NEXT!”
At the edge of the line, two mothers murmured over their children’s heads.
“Just write one of the jail names,” one said, voice barely low enough to pretend at decency. “That’s what we told Hayle. There are boys locked up already. Ones who’ve made trouble.”
“B-But it still counts?”
“Of course it counts! They’re eligible!”
Rose’s stomach gave a traitorous little lift. Something almost like relief… but not quite. It was meaner and horribly human. For one terrible second, she thought, ‘Then maybe not me…’
The shame came so fast after that she nearly lost her footing.
She hated herself for it. Hated the warm, instinctive flare of survival in her chest. Or that she could hear a mother suggest throwing some imprisoned boy toward death and feel her own lungs loosen. Hated that the Capitol had made even mercy competitive.
The line had finally moved, and the first intake station stood before her. The clerk did not look old enough to have such tired hands. He sat behind a ledger with two peacekeepers at his back, possibly having a Capitol official in his ear at all times. His pen hovered above the page.
“Name?”
“Rosabel Tempest-Strix.”
The pen hesitated. Only for half a breath. Rose still saw it.
The peacekeeper behind him saw it too.
The clerk cleared his throat and wrote her name. “Age?”
“Seventeen.” She calmly replied.
“Residence?”
“Tempest property, south pasture road.” Again, calm.
“Occupational status?”
Rose’s mouth dried. “Academic student. Tenth year, graduating class.”
A peacekeeper lifted his eyes. There it was again. That tiny shift. The click of one more piece fitting into the wrong story.
Graduating. University. Snow. Capitol favor. Betrayal…
Rose could almost hear the words arranging themselves in other people’s mouths.
The clerk stamped the first mark beside her name and sent her on. At the second station, her information was checked against another ledger. At the third, a woman in a gray Capitol uniform handed her a ballot.
The paper was heavier than Rose expected. That was the first stupid thing she thought. How heavy it felt. Cream-colored, clean-edged, official. As if better paper made murder more civilized.
“Proceed to an open booth.” the woman said as if she had said it a thousand times, because she had. “Any falsified names will automatically receive a fine and a recorded revote.”
Rose looked at the ballot. There were two blank lines beneath the printed instruction:
ELIGIBLE NAME(S) HERE.
One boy and one girl…
As if the district did not contain whole lives.
Like one name could be separated from supper tables, school desks, half-mended coats, favorite songs, little brothers, bad tempers, chores left undone, mothers who would not survive the grief, fathers who would pretend to…
… behind her, someone sniffled.
Rose turned slightly.
A few places back, Dido Westhope’s oldest child stood with a ballot clutched in both hands. She had always been a sharp little thing, all elbows and suspicion, but now she looked smaller than her age. Her pencil hovered over the page without touching it. Dido stood beyond the rope line where parents were made to wait, face hard, hands locked together at her waist. She did not call out nor did she guide her. She did not save her child from the choice.
No one could. A peacekeeper stepped closer to the girl.
“Write.” he ordered.
The child flinched and bent over the ballot. Rose turned away.
The booth smelled of fresh wood, ink, and canvas warmed by too many frightened bodies. Once inside, the square became a blur of shadows on the other side of the screen. A private place in public. A coffin with paperwork.
Rose laid the ballot flat. Her pencil was already there, tied to the booth by a short black cord.
She stared at the blank line. She thought of the names people had been saying all week.
The imprisoned kids? The gang kids? The girls with reputations their mothers could not wash clean? The academy children with too much privilege? The field children with too little protection? The ones whose parents had enemies? Or those whose parents had no power at all?
She thought of Waaska. Fifteen, anxious, watchful, guilty enough to fold in on herself. She thought of Nibs, too young this year, but not for another couple of years. Not always. She thought of herself, though she tried not to.
The pencil sat between her fingers.
Nothing in her wanted to move.
Outside, the square murmured and shifted. A child cried. A man coughed. Somewhere a vendor laughed too loudly, then stopped. The whole district waited in the terrible politeness of people pretending this was a process and not a wound.
Rose pressed the pencil down. The name she wrote was never one she said aloud or on paper.
Not that day. Not later. Not in the years when confession might have made it easier to carry. Maybe she simply forgot the shape of the letters or remembered too well. It could be that the guilt was less about the person she chose than the fact that she chose at all.
I never asked. There are questions that only prove you have the luxury of needing an answer.
When Rose stepped out of the booth, her face had changed and anyone else might have missed it. Her braids still lay neat over her shoulders. Her dress was still buttoned at the throat. Her chin was still lifted enough to make people call her composed if they wanted a prettier word for trapped.
Though, her eyes looked older. She folded the ballot once, as instructed, and carried it to the sealed box beneath the Capitol seal. The box had a narrow mouth. That detail stayed with her. She explained that much.
The ballot disappeared inside with hardly a sound, and just like that, Rosabel Tempest-Strix had helped choose someone.
She stood there for one breath too long. A Peacekeeper cleared his throat. “Move along.”
And she did.
Past the booths. and the intake stations. Past Waylynn Scranton, who had stopped shaking and now only stared at his busted-up boots. Past Carrigan and the little cluster of academy girls, who parted slightly as Rose approached, not enough to be kind and not enough to be openly cruel. Past the parents who looked at her with pity that felt like an accusation.
That’s where Waaska found her, near the edge of the square.
“R-Rose?” her voice slightly broke.
A month had passed with the cousins awkwardly dancing around the situation, of Waaska’s potential assistance in helping spread rumors, forever smudging Rosabel’s title. They never talked of the moment. Waaska felt too much guilt to be fully upfront about the situation. Rose, of course, knew that.
The girl, only fifteen, nervously looked on as her elder cousin approached, guilt hung over with fear as she nervously bit down on the inside of her cheek. “So… are you done? With the vote, I mean?”
The redhead came to a halt as she faced the younger girl. Her honeyed eyes glazed with fear at what her cousin would say next. Something accusatory or possibly hurt? Rose could see the treacherous fear in her face.
Rose knew it before she looked at her hands, though that was where the proof sat plainest. A gray smudge of pencil dust marked the side of Waaska’s finger. Her thumb worried at it like she could rub the whole morning away if only she pressed hard enough.
“Yes,” Rose said. “I’m done.”
Waaska nodded too quickly. “Me too.”
Neither of them asked the other for a name.
The square had not stopped moving around them. Children still entered booths and still came out changed. A man near the vendors shouted that hot cider was half-price, his voice cracking somewhere in the middle of the offer. A peacekeeper corrected a boy who had stepped out of line. Somewhere beneath the awning, the intake clerk stamped another page.
Rose could not stop hearing that sound.
Stamp. Next. Stamp. Next…
Waaska opened her mouth, closed it, then looked past Rose toward the voting boxes as if the words she needed might be sitting there beside the Capitol seal.
“I didn’t,” she said at last.
Rose tilted her head. “Didn’t what?”
“Vote… for you.”
The sentence came out so fiercely that it almost sounded like an accusation. Rose simply blinked.
Waaska’s eyes went wide, horrified by her own tone. “I mean, I didn’t. I swear on Tunka’s hands, Rose, I didn’t write your name. I would never-”
“Waaska?”
“I wouldn’t.” The raven-haired girl rapidly shook her head in desperation. “I-I swear!”
“I believe you.”
The younger girl stared at her, breathing too fast.
Rose kept her voice gentle because anything else might break them both. “I didn’t think you had.”
That should have soothed her. Yet, Waaska’s face crumpled, not all at once but in pieces. First her mouth, then her brow, then the careful hardness she had been trying to hold over herself like a roof in bad weather.
“But I did something,” she whimpered, her head shaking ever so slightly.
Rose went still. Something had sat between them for weeks, too large to step around and too tender to touch. The thing Waaska had carried in her throat every time she entered a room and found Rose already there. The thing Rose had known without being told because love made people transparent in the cruelest ways.
Waaska hugged her arms around herself. “I… I didn’t mean for it to happen the way it did.”
Rose looked at the ground between them. The dirt had been churned to powder by hundreds of boots.
Rose simply nodded. “I know.”
“No, you don’t.” Waaska shook her head, tears shining hot in her eyes. “You don’t know all of it! B-Because it’s worse than you think!”
“I know enough.” Rose attempted to comfort.
“I told everybody though! I-I told Enrique! I told-”
Rose’s fingers curled against her skirt.
Waaska saw the movement and started speaking faster, as if speed could outrun consequence. “I didn’t tell him like gossip. I didn’t. I-I was scared, and he kept asking why you were acting strange, and I said maybe it had something to do with the Capitol boy, and then she asked if I meant Snow, and I didn’t say no fast enough. Then he told his sister, and Carrigan made it ugly because Carrigan makes everything ugly when she wants to feel taller than someone else…”
Rose said nothing.
Waaska wiped her cheeks with both hands, only smearing the tears with pencil dust. “I-I tried to take it back. It wasn’t enough, b-but I tried! Honest!”
Rose wrinkled her brow. “You can’t take back a thing after people prefer the wrong version.”
“I…” Waaska’s guilt had completely overwhelmed her. “…I know.”
“And people preferred it, ya know?” Rose reinstated. “That’s not something you can help.”
Waaska’s breath hitched.
Rose looked toward the booths. One canvas flap opened, and a girl from the academy stepped out with her ballot folded between both hands like a dead bird. Her mother tried to meet her at the rope, but a peacekeeper held her back until the girl had dropped the paper into the box.
Rose watched the ballot disappear.
“Rose,” Waaska said, so softly it barely reached her. “I’m sorry.”
The words should have done something.
They should have opened a wound. Let fresh air in, loosened the hard knot in Rose’s chest. She had wanted that once, badly enough to imagine them while brushing her hair or lying awake in the dark, rehearsing the exact shape of Waaska’s confession, the tears, the explanation, the hug that might follow.
Now? Now they were here, they felt too small for the room they had to fill.
Rose turned back to her cousin. “I know you are.”
Waaska flinched. “That’s… all?”
“Well, what do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice cracked. “Something. Yell at me. Tell me I ruined everything. Tell everyone that I’m awful.”
“Waaska,” Rose chimed. “You’re not awful.”
“But… I am.”
“No.” Rose shook her head. “You were scared. And jealous, which isn’t a bad thing. Everyone’s jealous of someone. You were angry at me for leaving, even though I should’ve been the one to assure you otherwise, and you said something careless to someone cruel.”
Waaska pressed her lips together as if the accuracy hurt worse than accusation.
“That doesn’t make you awful,” Rose said. “It just means… you need to be more responsible is all.”
A tear slipped down Waaska’s cheek. Rose wanted to reach for her. Her hand twitched with the old instinct, the easy cousin-shape of comfort, but she kept it at her side. Forgiveness had come to her already. Trust had not caught up.
“I forgave you before you asked,” Rose admitted.
Waaska looked up sharply.
“Really, I did.” Rose’s voice stayed quiet. “I didn’t want to at first. It’s easy to be angry because anger feels cleaner than being hurt. But… I know you. I know your heart, even when you’re not careful with it.”
Waaska made a broken sound and covered her mouth.
“But forgiving you doesn’t fix it,” Rose continued. “It doesn’t pull the words back out of everyone’s ears.”
“I know,” Waaska whispered.
“And if they call my name tomorrow-”
“Don’t.” Waaska stepped toward her. “Please. Don’t say that.”
Rose stopped. There it was again. That same look I had given her when she spoke too plainly of what could happen. As if naming the thing invited it in. As if the thing had not already been standing among them, patient and well-fed.
“Waaska,” Rose tried again. “Listen…”
“No.” Waaska’s voice rose. A few people nearby glanced over. She lowered it quickly, but the panic stayed. “No, don’t talk like that. Please. I didn’t vote for you. And I know… families shouldn’t turn on one another. And… I’d understand if you voted me. You know?”
“I know.” Rose swallowed. “But… that doesn’t have to be that way.”
Waaska shook her head. “I deserve it.”
“No you don’t.”
Waaska simply stared at her.
Rose didn’t like the way her cousin looked then, younger than fifteen and older than childhood, standing in the square with pencil dust on her fingers and fear making a prison out of her face.
“The district is scared,” Rose assured. “Scared people don’t always choose kindly.”
“But they shouldn’t choose you.”
“They’ll choose whoever makes the most sense to them.”
At this, Waaska huffed back in frustration, her own private form of rebellion. “That… shouldn’t make sense!”
Rose almost smiled at that, though it hurt. “No?”
“No.” Waaska shook her head hard. “It ain’t fair! All of this… forcing us to turn on one another? H-How can we possibly live with this? Live with this being our only defining choice in life?”
“Waaska-“ Rose carefully looked at any nearby peacekeepers who could catch what her cousin was saying.
“We’re not…” Her voice broke before she could finish. “…we’re not just a name on paper!”
Rose’s throat tightened so quickly that for a moment she could not answer.
Around them, the square went on being the square. Somebody bought bread, before they dropped a coin. A horse stamped and a peacekeeper called for the line to move faster. Rose looked past Waaska, past the booths, past the town hall where tomorrow the ballots would become a verdict.
“That’s the point,” she admitted, remembering what Coriolanus had told her.
Waaska went still.
Rose looked back at her. “They need somebody… possibly me to be the name on that paper. It’s easier that way.”
Waaska, still wearing her defiance, argued. “No.”
“Yes.” Rose sighed. “It is.”
“No, Rose!” Her voice was so full of terror that Rose finally reached for her.
Waaska came apart the instant Rose touched her.
She collapsed forward, arms winding tight around Rose’s waist, face buried against her shoulder like she had done as a little girl after nightmares. Rose held her automatically, one hand against the back of Waaska’s head, the other between her shoulder blades.
The hug hurt, which surprised her. The hug itself did not erase all that had come before. Waaska’s tears soaked into the collar of Rose’s dress. Her body shook with every breath. Rose closed her eyes and let the noise of the square blur into something distant.
“I’m sorry,” Waaska kept saying. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want them to hate you.”
Rose simply held her baby cousin.
Waaska’s cries grew ragged. “I… didn’t want them to look at you like that.”
Rose felt her eyes misting. “I know.”
“I was mad,” The young girl hiccupped. “B-Because I thought you were leaving us behind.”
Rose opened her eyes. There, finally, was the small ugly truth beneath the bigger ugly truth. She looked over Waaska’s head at the voting booths.
“I was trying to make somewhere we could all go,” Rose softly admitted.
“I know that now.” Waaska cried harder. “A-And maybe you still can.”
Rose rested her cheek lightly against her cousin’s hair. For one moment, it was almost enough to pretend they were back at the lodge, that Waaska had only broken a dish or ruined a ribbon or said something sharp over breakfast. Something small enough that an apology could heal it before supper.
But the ballot boxes stood beneath the Capitol seal. And tomorrow, someone’s name would be spoken. Waaska pulled back enough to look at her. Her eyes were red and wide, searching Rose’s face for anger and finding something worse.
“You already think it’s going to be you,” she whispered, though her head still shook in denial.
Rose did not answer fast enough.
Waaska’s grip tightened around her arms. “Rose?”
“I think,” Rose said carefully, “that if it is me, I don’t want my last day before the Reaping to be spent pretending I didn’t see it coming.”
Waaska looked as though Rose had slapped her. “No.”
“Waaska-”
“No, don’t do that.” Her cousin’s face suddenly became stern, just like Auntie Misea’s. “Don’t make peace with it.”
“I’m not making peace with it.” Rose tried to soften the blow.
“You are. You sound like-” Waaska choked on the words. “You sound like you’re already walking onto that stupid stage.”
Rose’s stomach turned, since Waaska was either wrong. Or right.
All week, with the makeshift bow in her hands and bark splitting under her arrows, Rose had felt some secret part of herself begin moving ahead of her body. Toward the square, the stage, and to whatever hellish nightmare came after. It was not surrender, exactly. It was preparation. Or maybe the two were closer than she wanted them to be.
“I’m scared,” Rose nodded, trying her best to hold back tears.
Waaska froze. Rose had not meant to say it, at least no so soon. Especially, not with half the district close enough to see her if they looked too hard. Though the words were out now, plain and shaking.
“I’m so scared I don’t know what to do with it,” Rose whispered, a humorless smile etching itself to her features. “But if I let myself fall apart every time I think of tomorrow… I won’t be able to stand when it matters.”
Waaska’s face crumpled again. “You shouldn’t have to stand.”
“No,” Rose said. “I shouldn’t.”
No one should…
That truth sat between them, useless and complete. Waaska looked down at her pencil-smudged thumb. “I wrote… a name.”
Rose’s breath caught. “Waaska, you don’t-“
“A-And it was mine.”
The confession landed harder than Rose expected. Hearing that her cousin had done such a thing made the whole situation more real. The idea that Waaska had condemned herself to such a point where she would rather die in her family’s place… it made Rosabel’s heart sink. Neither of them was clean, no. They had still condemned a district boy regardless…
Rose reached down and took Waaska’s marked hand in hers.
“We’re… not going to talk about the names,” she finally said.
Waaska nodded, crying silently now.
“If it happens,” If they pull my name. “Just… keep strong. Don’t put on a show for them. Not for the peacekeepers. Not for the crowds. Not for whoever is whispering. Promise?”
“W-Why?”
Because I need someone to remember this is real. That I don’t know if I’ll be brave unless someone who loves me doesn’t die alongside me. That if they turn me into a tribute, I need one face in that square that still knows my name means more than death…
Rose swallowed all of that down. “Because… I will be strong for you.”
Waaska made another broken sound and hugged her again, tighter this time. Rose held on.
Above them, the town hall clock began to toll. The sound rolled over the square, iron and indifferent. One bell. Then another. Children shifted in the lines. Parents looked toward the sky, toward the booths, toward anything except one another.
When the final bell faded, Waaska pulled away and wiped her face with the heel of her hand.
Together, they stepped away from the voting booths and into the living noise of New Bisman, where the vendors still called, the peacekeepers still watched, and the ballot boxes sat full beneath the Capitol seal, holding twenty-four hours’ worth of fear in their narrow mouths.
Rose did not sleep so much as surrender to stillness. I knew because I had not slept either.
The Tempest house had been quiet through the dark hours, but not peaceful. Peace had weight to it. It settled into floors, into walls, into the breathing of sleeping bodies. This quiet was different. It waited. Every creak of timber sounded too loud or shift of wind against the shutters came like a hand on the glass. Even Wolfie, who usually huffed and scratched and turned circles before lying down, had gone still near the loft way as if he understood that any noise might tip the night into morning faster.
Morning came anyway. That was the cruel thing about it. No amount of dread slowed the sun.
By first light, Rose was awake, if she had ever truly stopped being so. She came into the kitchen already dressed in her underlayers, her hair loose down her back, auburn waves mussed from the pillow and restless hands. There were faint shadows beneath her eyes. Not deep enough to draw pity from a stranger, perhaps, but I knew her face too well to miss them.
She looked younger with her hair down. That bothered me more than it should have.
“Mornin’,” I simply greeted.
Rose glanced toward the window. The sky outside had just begun to pale. “Already?”
“Technically.” I sighed.
Rosabel glared at the skyline. “Rude...”
I almost smiled. There was porridge on the stove because my hands had needed something to do before they became fists. I had burned the first batch and scraped the pot clean before she swooped in. The second sat warming over the lowest flame, edible if no one had standards worth defending.
Rose looked at the pot. “Where’d you learn to cook?”
“Myself.” I shrugged, in halfhearted jest.
“That bad?”
I snort out a laugh. “Better at getting’ the source, thank you!”
Her mouth twitched, but the expression faded before it could become anything useful. She sat at the table, folding her hands together so tightly her knuckles went pale.
I set a bowl in front of her. She looked at it for a while.
“Eat,” I said, softer than an order.
She shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”
“Exactly.” I pushed the bowl further in her direction. “Eat.”
Her eyes lifted to mine. I did not point out that hunger had very little to do with her appetite. She understood that. That was the whole, stubborn trouble with Rose. She understood too much, and understanding had started cutting into places childhood should have protected.
She took the spoon. Three bites. Four at best.
Didn’t count after that because counting felt too close to collection.
A dress had been laid over the back of Virgil’s old chair.
Rose had brought it down before dawn, though I had not seen her do it. It hung there in the kitchen light like a memory that had not decided whether it wanted to comfort or accuse. The fabric was green with a faint warmth to it, the kind of color that passed through grass when sunlight caught it and made it look softer. Prairie roses had been stitched along the hem and cuffs in small curling clusters, their threadwork careful, old, and too lovely for a day like this.
It had belonged to Virgil and Misea’s mother, thinking back on it.
I remembered the first time I saw it. Not on Rose, but tucked away in a cedar box years before, wrapped in cloth and dried lavender. Virgil had shown it to me once when he was trying to find proper reaping clothes for a young Rose, running his fingers over the embroidery with a look on his face I pretended not to see. He had said his mother wore it to festivals before the war made festivals feel foolish. Said Misea had nearly worn it for her own wedding before deciding it was too decorative, yet delicate for a woman who intended to spend half the day hauling tables herself.
Rose had never worn it. She hadn’t quite filled it out yet… not until that Reaping morning.
She followed my gaze and said, “Auntie thought I should.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Misea’s usually right about those things.”
Rose looked back down at the porridge. “She said it would make Papa happy.”
My throat tightened.
She scraped her spoon along the bottom of the bowl. “Hopefully it’ll be… like taking a piece of him with me.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, my eyes landing on Virgil’s hat hanging near the door. “Suppose it will be.”
It was the only honest thing I could earnestly say aloud.
After breakfast, if the few spoonfuls she managed could be called that, we rode to the Mniwakan lodge. The road to the lodge felt shorter than usual. Far too quick. There should have been more distance. More dust. Maybe more time for the world to reconsider itself.
Rose rode beside me in silence, her shawl wrapped over the underdress and her hands holding the reins too neatly. Wildfire seemed to sense something wrong in her rider. The mare moved with unusual care, not skittish exactly, but attentive, ears flicking back every few breaths.
At that point, I thought back to the Secret Garden. At the possibility that… maybe we could change route. Hide Rose away until the Reaping was long over. Then, I remembered everything we prepared for up until that moment.
The bow was not with us, nor was the knife I had shaped down to fit Rose’s hand. Obviously. They were hidden where no peacekeeper had reason to look, wrapped in oilcloth and tucked beneath the loose floorboard of the Secret Garden. Useless today, maybe dangerous instead. Everything I had given her mattered only if tomorrow became worse than this one.
That thought sat like a stone in my mouth. Rose noticed me staring too hard at the road.
“Auphie,” she broke me free from my thoughts. “You don’t need to do that.”
“Doing what?”
“Think about… it.” She was referring to the Garden. “Everything’s… going to be okay.”
“Suppose.” I steer Errante away from a loose bit of shrub. “Except, we don’t have to do this, ya know?”
“Really.” Rosabel furrowed her face. “And if they call my name today and I’m not there, what then?”
“Rosabel.”
She gave me the smallest look. “Auphidius.”
“You know what I’m sayin’,” I try again. “I’m just… lookin’ out. Is all.”
“I know.” This time, her smile lasted almost three seconds. “But I’m seventeen not seven. Hope you know that.”
That was the issue. I did.
Finally, New Bisman’s rooftops began to show through the morning haze, and it vanished. The Mniwakan lodge was already awake when we arrived. On reaping day, it wasn’t as chaotic in the mornings. Rather, most of the cousins within the respective age range would remain silent. Focus on morning chores and tell their Tunka Ziibi that they loved him ten times more than they usually did.
Though, this morning, Reaping day appeared even worse.
Misea was in the main room, tying cloth bundles that did not need tying. Bread, dried fruit, a tin of salve, and a flask of water. Practical, useless things. Things a woman could place into a bag to keep from placing both hands around grief and shaking it until it answered.
Gami stood near the stove with his arms folded, staring into the fire as if he had forgotten why it was there. Tunka sat in his usual chair, wrapped in his blanket, his eyes open but distant. Nibs hovered near the table, too quiet, his hair still sticking up in the back because no one had had the heart to fuss at him for it.
Waaska stood by the window. When Rose entered, everyone looked at her. Then everyone looked away too quickly.
There was an air of carefulness. Rose felt it land on her skin like cold rain.
“Rosie,” Misea said, brisk in the way people get when tenderness threatens to ruin them. “Come here. Let me see you.”
Rose crossed the room.
Misea took her face between both hands and looked her over, not as if checking whether she was clean or properly dressed, but as if memorizing the exact arrangement of her features before the district tried to make them public property.
“You didn’t sleep,” Misea said.
Rose smiled. “Neither did you.”
“I’m old.” She scolded the girl, though not out of real reprimanding. “I’m allowed to look dreadful.”
“You don’t.” Rose’s mouth trembled.
Misea saw it and immediately busied herself with the shawl clasp. “Come on, then. We’ll finish you up proper. Can’t have the whole district thinking we let you leave the house looking like a windstorm with legs.”
Rosabel shrugged. “I don’t think 9 cares what I wear.”
“Men care about all sorts of things they pretend not to.” Misea reminded her niece. “Usually the wrong ones.”
Gami made a faint sound into his cup. It might have been a laugh, if the morning had been kinder.
Misea led Rose toward the small washroom off the hall. Waaska took one step as if to follow, then stopped. Her hands twisted together in front of her.
Rose noticed.
“You can come,” she said quietly.
Waaska’s face shifted with such gratitude it almost hurt to look at.
I stayed in the main room with the other cousins and Nibs. For a while, no one spoke.
The lodge had its usual smells with its smoke, wool, cedar, dried sage, yesterday’s bread, the faint sweetness of berry preserves cooling near the pantry. Smells of home. They felt indecent against the day ahead, as if the world had forgotten to strip the comfort out before the Capitol arrived to do its work.
Nibs sat down at the table and dragged one finger through a nick in the wood.
“You going to the square?” he asked me.
“Kinda have to.” I causally retorted.
Nibs nodded, lingering on that answer like it actually meant anything. “With her?”
“As far as they’ll let me.”
He nodded, though his jaw had gone tight. He huffed, half laughing, but close enough that Gami’s face softened for half a breath before hardening again.
From the washroom came the sound of water being poured into a basin. A drawer opened. Cloth rustled. Misea murmured something too low to catch. Then Waaska’s voice, soft and uncertain, answered.
Rose told me later that washing her face felt like the first wrong thing.
It should have been nothing. Just some cool water and soap. A cloth across the cheeks, the jaw, the back of the neck. She had done it every morning of her life. Though that day, every ordinary movement felt ceremonial in the worst way. Like preparing for judgment, as someone had taken the small private rituals of being alive and turned them into steps before a public hanging.
Misea helped her into the dress.
The fabric settled over Rose quietly, green-colored and old, the prairie roses curling around her sleeves like something stubborn enough to bloom anyway. The fit was not perfect. It had been made for another woman in another year, but Misea pinned and tucked with practiced hands until it looked intentional.
Waaska stood behind Rose with the ribbon. It was pale gold, almost the color of dried wheat when the sun caught it right. Her fingers shook so badly she fumbled the first knot.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Rose met her eyes in the little cracked mirror. “For the ribbon?”
Waaska swallowed. “For shaking.”
Misea’s hands paused at Rose’s hair. No one said anything.
Waaska tried again. This time she managed to fasten the ribbon at the end of Rose’s braid, careful not to pull too hard. Rose watched herself in the mirror and struggled to understand the girl looking back.
She looked nice. That felt horrible.
The green dress softened her. The embroidered roses made her look like someone’s daughter, someone’s hope, someone who had woken for a festival instead of a Reaping. Her twin braids lay over her shoulders, each tied neatly. The ribbon held. Her face was pale, freckles refusing to wash away but clean. Her eyes looked too bright.
She wondered, with sudden nausea, whether people would see the dress and think she was trying to look innocent. Or worse, whether they would think she was trying to look worthy of mourning.
“Boots,” Misea said, biting back a sniffle.
Rose sat on the bench while Waaska brought them over.
The white boots had sunflowers stitched along the sides in yellow thread, their petals small and cheerful. Too cheerful. Rose had loved them once. She had begged to wear them too often when she was younger, even through mud, until Virgil threatened to lock them away if she ruined the embroidery.
Now she stared at them like they belonged to another girl.
“You don’t have to wear those,” Waaska said quickly, mistaking her silence. “We can find your brown pair, or-”
“No.” Rose reached for one. “These are fine.”
Fine. What an awful little word.
She pulled them on one at a time. The leather creaked softly around her ankles. .
Misea finally finished the last button at Rose’s wrist. Then she turned away too fast. Rose saw it anyway.
Her aunt pressing two fingers beneath her eyes. Her shoulders rising once. The way she gripped the edge of the washstand until the knuckles whitened.
“Misea?” Rose said.
“I’m all right.” Misea said, her voice tight, before she admitted the truth. “I’m not. But neither are you, and we’re both standing, so let’s not get particular.”
Rose stood. Misea faced her again. For a moment, the briskness fell away. She reached out and smoothed the dress over Rose’s shoulders, then touched one of the embroidered prairie roses near her collar.
Misea smiled back, but it broke at the edges. “Virgil… he would’ve loved to see you in this.”
The name settled over the room. Rose’s smile faded.
“I wish he was here,” she said.
Misea drew her in at once. She hugged Rose like she was trying to hold all the pieces in place by strength alone.
“I know,” Misea whispered into her hair. “Oh, honey, I know.”
Soon, it was Waaska’s turn to be prepped for Reaping Day, her dress much newer, less damaged. It shined a beautiful cream tone that reminded Rosabel of wheat the moment autumn’s chill hit the fields.
By the time they came back into the main room, every conversation stopped.
I had thought I was prepared. I was not.
Rose stood in the doorway in that old floral dress, prairie roses at her hem, sunflower boots peeking beneath, her hair braided neat and tied with gold. She looked like the morning. That was the first ridiculous thought that came to me. She looked like something the district had no right to destroy.
Then she looked at me, and the thought burned up. Because she was terrified, though, it felt far more brutal than that. It wasn’t noticeable to anyone who didn’t know or understand where she hid it. Her chin was lifted, shoulders back. Her hands rested still at her sides.
But I knew. Again, I saw the fear beneath her collarbones.
Again. Again. Again.
My hands curled once before I forced them open.
“Will it do?” Rose asked, attempting lightness.
No one answered quickly enough. Then Tunka shifted in his chair.
“Come here, child,” he calmly ordered his surrogate grandchild. His voice sounded thinner than usual. Age had always lived in it, but that morning something else did too. Fear, perhaps. Or memory. Maybe both.
Rose crossed to him and knelt, though he did not ask her to.
Tunka Ziibi studied her face for a long moment. His eyes, clouded at the edges but still sharp where it mattered, moved over her braids, the ribbon, the dress, the boots. When he lifted his hand, Rose bent her head so he could rest his palm against her hair.
“You wear old love today,” he finally replied.
Rose’s eyes shone.
Tunka’s thumb brushed once over her temple. “Old love is strong. Stronger than fear, though fear makes more noise, I suppose.”
The room went very still. Rose swallowed. “Thanks but… I don’t feel strong.”
“That is because you are listening to the noise.”
Minha, who was brushing out one of her granddaughter’s hair for the reaping, hesitated. Her eyes studied her father-in-laws words. Mina, who had been fussing over Zaaga all morning had to cover her mouth. Misea and Gami, both understanding the weight of his words, knew what the implications were for their niece.
Tunka leaned closer, his voice lowering. “Listen beneath it.”
“To what?” she whispered. Rose held his gaze.
“To what remains.” He let his hand fall.
It was not enough to save her. Nothing anyone said that morning could be.
Though, Rose closed her eyes for one breath, and when she opened them, she looked a little less alone inside her own body. Gami stepped forward next. He cleared his throat once, twice, then held out a small, scented cloth.
“For your pocket,” he said.
Rose took it, before opening the cloth to reveal dark, shriveled berries. “What is it?”
“Elderberries.” Gami nodded. “The boys get Hawthorne berries, while the girls usually… they usually take them to make them smell better at the reaping.”
“That’s not the only thing, Gami!” Mina interrupted her older brother before giving Rose a comforting smile. “It’s said that carrying a batch of those berries around will grant you good fortune. That’s what the Mniwakan kids have done. Ever since our very first reapings.”
Rose’s mouth trembled into something almost like amusement. Gami gave a tight-lipped smile toward the packet. “Doesn’t matter what you do with them… just know that you still have family here to wish you the best.”
Rose folded it carefully into her pocket. “Thank you.”
Nibs had not moved from the table. His face had gone blotchy with the effort of not crying. Waaska smoothed out her cream-colored dress as she received for own batch of berries with trembling hands. Some of the cousins of reaping age threw each other nervous stares and hushed murmurs as the last of the Mniwakan pack prepared themselves for the Reaping.
Outside, the first official bell rang from town. The sound came faint through the lodge walls, but everyone heard it. No one moved.
Then Misea inhaled, sharp and practical, and clapped her hands once. “Well, we won’t give the Capitol the satisfaction of making us late.”
It was such a Misea thing to say that Rose nearly laughed. Nearly.
Coats were gathered. Buttons checked. Doors latched. Minha, who was barely keeping it together, put out the stove though nothing on it needed tending. Waaska adjusted Rose’s ribbon one more time, then pretended she hadn’t. Nibs stood close enough to touch Rose’s sleeve but didn’t quite hold on.
I stepped outside first. July morning had warmed slightly, but not by much. A thin wind moved over the yard, carrying dust from the road and the distant murmur of New Bisman already filling itself with bodies. Wagons creaked somewhere beyond the rise. Horses snorted. A dog barked once and was quickly hushed.
Rose paused in the doorway. For a moment, no one crowded her.
She looked over the yard, the rail fence, the hard pale sky. She looked toward the road that would take them to the square. Her hand brushed the pocket where Gami’s packet sat. Then, almost without thinking, her fingers moved to the ribbon at the end of her braid.
I wondered whether she was remembering the bow. The Secret Garden. The bark splitting beneath her arrow, or whether she was thinking of the ballot box and its narrow mouth.
Either way, when she stepped down from the porch alongside her cousins, she did it carefully, as if the ground itself had become something watched. The children of reaping age followed alongside their parents, aunts, uncles, Waaska, and Nibs. The only two left at home were Zibins and his father, given Tunka Ziibi’s age, which prevented him from making long journeys. As I slipped through the door, I noted Zibins, despite being the hardened man he was, bowed his head solemnly as his grandchildren made their way to the square.
The family gathered around her, but not close enough to hide her. Though, nothing could hide her now. The road to New Bisman waited. Rose lifted her chin, and the prairie roses at her hem stirred in the wind.
The walk into New Bisman felt longer than it was. That was the ugly, little thing about dread. It stretched roads, turned fence lines into miles, and made every familiar bend in the path feel like a question you already knew the answer to but had to keep walking toward anyway.
The Mniwakan children moved in a loose cluster ahead of us, quieter than I had ever seen them. Among them, Waaska walked close to Rose but not quite touching her. Nibs stayed on Rose’s other side, one hand swinging at his hip like he meant to reach for her sleeve and kept talking himself out of it.
The rest of us followed close enough to look like family and far enough to remember that, in a few minutes, family would be sorted away from children.
That was the first cruelty of the square. New Bisman had dressed itself for Reaping Day.
It was shabby at best. 9 did not know how to do pretty in the way the Capitol meant it. Still, people had scrubbed what could be scrubbed. Boots were blackened with Lacker. Hair combed, slicked back, or pinned fine enough to be considered “passable”. Dresses let out or pinned tighter. Boys wore collars stiff enough to make them look strangled, and girls had ribbons tied into hair that had probably been washed before sunrise with water still cold from the pump.
On any other morning, half those children would have been in patched field clothes, mill dust, or work boots with grain husks stuck in the seams. Reaping Day made them look too clean.
That was the rule. Dress properly. Posture straight. Do not embarrass the Capitol while it takes from you.
That rule came in after the fifteenth Games or maybe the sixteenth? The games had all blended together after so many Reapings. Some boy from an outlying district, either 6 or 8, but definitely not 9, had purposely volunteered in nothing but a hide wrap and a strip of cloth tied at his waist, and not in a bashful, frightened way as if somebody had dared him to. No, that boy was on a mission, making sure the Capitol played by his game this time. If memory serves me, the kid practically skipped on stage as the peacekeepers tried to drag him into something decent, but he’d simply laughed right at the cameras and said he’d been born nearer the earth than the Capitol and meant to die that way too.
Nearly gave the announcers fits. The whole Capitol had called it savage and ridiculous until the boy actually won. I still wished I could’ve seen the gamemakers’ faces. There was poetry in a thing like that, even if Panem tried its best to beat poetry out of everyone poor enough to understand it.
After that, the districts received wardrobe expectations. Written ones. Pressed into every mayor’s office and academy board, passed down with the same grim seriousness as tax instructions. No bare feet. No exposed underclothes. No visible work grime. No statements of political, cultural, regional, or familial provocation.
That last one was broad enough to cover anything the Capitol disliked after the fact, which was generally how the Capitol preferred its rules.
Rose knew the rule too. Everyone did. Maybe that was why she kept smoothing one hand over the prairie roses at her skirt. Not because anything was wrong with them. Simply… everything was.
The closer we came to the square, the louder New Bisman became, though not in any way that resembled life. It was a careful noise. Vendor calls cut short whenever a peacekeeper passed. Mothers whispering into collars. Wagons creaking over dry ruts. Horses stamping near hitching rails. Children breathing too fast.
And of course, people looked at Rose. Some tried not to of course. That might have been worse, though.
A woman who used to buy cider from Virgil’s place every autumn pressed a hand to her mouth when Rose passed and then turned away so quickly her bonnet strings swung. An academy boy stared at Rose’s boots until his father knocked him lightly in the chest and murmured something too low to hear. One of the mill men gave her a nod that looked almost respectful before shame pulled his eyes back to the dirt.
Too kind. Too silent. Too relieved…
Rose felt all three like hands on her back.
She had the strange thought that she could tell, somehow, who had written her name. Obviously she wasn’t certain. No one had told her, but no one had to. It was in the quick glances, the softness, the way some people looked at her like apology was already waiting behind their teeth but not brave enough to step out.
A girl from the academy smiled at her. Rose did not know what to do with that. The smile was small and trembling, but not in a scheming, satisfied way. Rather almost apologetically. Like the girl had given away a match in winter and now wanted to pretend she had not helped start a fire.
Rose looked ahead. Town hall rose beyond the market road, whitewashed and blank, its windows open to the summer air. The stage had been formulated around the great step leading up to the building, higher than usual, wide enough for officials, peacekeepers, and whatever new Capitol machinery had come to dress the Quarter Quell in ceremony. Fresh bunting hung from the rail in District 9’s dull harvest gold and Capitol red. The colors looked wrong together.
Off to one side, the imprisoned children had already been brought in. Not all of them. Just the ones old enough for the vote and important enough to display.
Peacekeepers kept them in a separate line near the jail wagon, wrists bound in front with short chains that made even standing look like obedience. The crowd gave them a wide berth. Though, not necessarily out of fear alone, but rather convenience. People liked a clean boundary around the ones they had decided could be lost.
I saw Hoel Ellendale immediately.
He stood with his shoulders hunched and his chin tipped low, dark hair falling into his eyes. One cheek was bruised yellow and purple near the jaw. The cuffs looked too large on his wrists, which made him seem younger for half a breath until he lifted his gaze and looked at the crowd with such flat hatred that the illusion broke.
He did not look ashamed. That was what I first noticed. He looked furious, like a hint of old Hoffboss managed to possess his younger brother, even in the afterlife.
Beside him, another boy muttered something, and Hoel’s mouth twitched in a humorless shape that might have been a smile if joy had anything to do with it. A peacekeeper shoved the boy beside him quiet. Hoel did not react, except to glance toward the stage as if measuring the distance between himself and every person who had helped put him there.
Then his eyes found mine. Those same brown eyes that looked too much like his brother’s. Only briefly, though. There was no recognition in his gaze to soften him. No pity. Nor accusation either, not yet.
Just… a young boy doomed by his brother to be standing present and aware, understanding that the district had been given a knife and told to call it a ballot.
I looked away first; my eyes instead fixed on Rose. I saw the way her fingers curled against her skirt after.
“Keep moving,” a peacekeeper barked near the sorting ropes.
The square had been divided by age, like always. Twelve-year-olds toward the front, small and pale and trying not to cry. Thirteen and fourteen next. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Boys to one side, girls to the other. The old arrangement of the Games. Only now the ropes looked less like organization and more like pens.
Waaska stopped when they reached the break. She had to go with the fifteen-year-olds. Rose had to go farther. For one second, Waaska looked as if she might follow anyway.
“Waaska,” Misea said gently to her daughter. The girl froze.
Rose then turned to her cousin. “Remember...”
Waaska’s face twisted at this unknown statement hidden between the two of them. She nodded, but it looked painful.
Nibs grabbed Rose then. He moved fast, before anyone could stop him, throwing both arms around her waist with the desperate strength of a child who had decided dignity was useless. Rose bent around him, eyes closing tight.
“I’ll look for you after,” she whispered to the boy, who fiercely held on tight to her dress.
Nibs, knowing that this was a lie, finally relented. “M’kay.”
“Good.” Rose’s voice still faltered.
Misea touched Nibs’s shoulder, but she did not pull him away at once. Even when the peacekeeper near the intake station began to frown.
Finally, Nibs let go. Misea stepped in next. She did not cry, which was even more heartbreaking. Her face had gone still with the effort of it, all that feeling packed behind her eyes until I wondered how a person’s skull still held.
She cupped Rose’s cheeks the way she had at the lodge. Then, her chin quivered. “Prickle briar.”
Rose’s composure wavered. Just a little.
Misea pressed her forehead to Rose’s. “Whatever happens, you are not what they make of you today.”
Rose’s eyes shone. “Auntie-”
“No. Just listen.” Misea’s voice trembled but did not break. “You are a girl born of fire, of something so strong, it terrifies even the Capitol. You will use that strength, you hear me?”
Rose nodded once.
“You are not a vote or a rumor. You are not a flame that the Capitol can designate to a candle.” Misea swallowed. “Your father wasn’t… and neither are you.”
A peacekeeper at the intake station called, “Girls of seventeen, this way!”
Misea’s hands tightened. Then released.
I hated her for letting go. Though I loved her for having the strength to.
Rose turned to me last. For all my thinking, all my planning, all my illegal bows and ugly tricks, I had nothing useful in my mouth.
She looked up at me, waiting.
I reached into my coat and thumbed at the Secret Garden’s key, wondering if I should hand it off to her. Give her a sign that she would return safely. That this key would be useless unless she lived long enough to return it back to its lock.
Her eyes dropped to my pocket, instantly understanding. Then back to mine.
“Auphie.” She sternly assured me. “Don’t.”
“Rosabel…”
“Don’t argue with me at a Reaping.” She shook her head. “People might get suspicious, you know?”
And you’ll never be able to enter the Secret Garden again, was the other thing she thought. Though those words never reached fruition.
That almost got me. I relented, letting the cool metal dip back into my pocket.
“I…” she whispered. “…don’t know if I can do this.”
There were hundreds of people around us, and still the words seemed to belong only to the space between her ribs and mine. I wanted to tell her she would not have to, that I’d could burn the stage down first. I wanted to tell her every brave, stupid lie a man tells when love has made him useless.
Instead, I bent close enough that only she could hear.
“You don’t have to know,” I admitted. “You just have to breathe until the next thing comes, ya hear?”
Her mouth trembled. “I’ll… I’ll keep breathing, Auphie.”
I gave her a small nod, her determination gave me a respectable amount of hope.
A peacekeeper stepped closer, herding Rose and Waaska to their respective stations. “Get in line-”
I looked at him. He looked at my bad leg, then my face, and must have decided whatever he saw there was not worth the paperwork.
Rose lingered for a few moments longer, before she made her way to the intake booth, confirming her name, age, and other useless confirmation details. Then she was gone into the line of seventeen-year-old girls, green dress among gray uniforms and brown work skirts, prairie roses at her hem, sunflower boots planted carefully in the dust.
The rest of the Mniwakan family were forced to stand in the very back alongside the rest of the citizens. Misea stood beside me, one hand pressed to her chest.
Waaska had joined her age group as well, but her eyes were fixed on Rose. Nibs stood rigid at his father’s side, jaw clenched hard enough to ache. Around us, families separated and re-formed into the required shapes. Children inside the ropes. Adults outside. Peacekeepers between.
Rose kept her chin lifted. Still, I could see her shoulders. I could see where she carried fear.
The stage waited at the front of the square, its bunting moving faintly in the wind. Two golden envelopes were set beside the podium, sealed and official beneath the Capitol seal. The mayor’s chair sat empty with his officials’ seats on the sides. The microphones gleamed black in the morning light.
Everything looked orderly. That was how you knew it was punishment. For a while, no one spoke into the microphones. That was another cruelty about the reapings. The waiting.
The children had already been sorted. Families already split into their proper places. Peacekeepers had found their corners and edges, standing with rifles angled just low enough to call it ceremony instead of threat.
Rose stood with the seventeen-year-old girls, third row back, near enough towards the outlying crowd that she could see her family from a safe distance and far enough that we appeared little more than a jury to a trial.
Waaska stood with the fifteen-year-old girls two sections over. She had both hands clasped in front of her cream dress, fingers locked so tightly one could practically see the strain in her knuckles even from where she blended into the crowd. Every few breaths, Waaska looked toward her.
Rose tried to look back each time. She had promised, no spectacle… or at least something close to it.
The square smelled of dust, clean soap, summer heat, horse tack, and the faint grease of food vendors still trying to sell breakfast along the far road. It was indecent, that smell. Of hot food nearby for all the district children to remember what was to come. The body remembered hunger even when the soul had gone sick.
Rose swallowed against it.
A peacekeeper near the stage lifted a hand. Then, the murmuring thinned.
Then Mayor Lancaster stepped onto the platform. He looked smaller than he ought to have. That was my first thought, watching from the back with the rest of the adults. Lancaster had always had a way of filling a room without raising his voice, not through courage exactly, but through office and momentum. Men like him knew how to wear authority until people mistook the coat for the body beneath it.
Though, that morning, standing beneath Capitol red and harvest gold, he looked like a man who had been placed somewhere and told not to move.
His suit was dark, pressed, too warm for July. One sleeve still sat a touch stiff, just like his dress collar. His face was practically erased from any hardships that 9 had unceremoniously thrown at the rest of its citizens. I could tell this was on purpose, as cameras across the square blinked and adjusted, occasionally having the lens zoom in on a child that looked particularly promising… or miserable.
Once, Lancaster had made his presence known, however, the camera crew made sure to get as many angles of the stage as possible. Some focused on highlighting the mayor’s authority and in turn, the Capitol’s as well. Though, despite all the Reaping prep for appearances, nothing could do much for Lancaster’s eyes. Those looked raw. Old. Trapped.
He approached the microphone, before raising his hands to address his people.
“Boys and girls!” His voice smoothed over the crowd as smooth as butter. Rehearsed a thousand times before, no doubt. “District 9! I am your mayor, Panis Lancaster! And as such, I would like to warmly welcome our district children for making it on this… monumental day!”
The man looked like he wanted to say something more, maybe something akin to comfort. Instead, he continued.
“As you may be aware,” He continued. “This year’s Reaping ceremony was conducted a little differently. As a civic duty to your country and your district, each child of reaping age has been required to select one young man and woman.”
I half expected there to be a riot breaking out once more. However, the fight that burned buildings a month ago seemed to be extinguished as we simply stared on, waiting for the inevitable.
“And because of this special occasion. Because of your continued cooperation of our 25th Games, President P.S. Axel himself would like to present a special message for our very first Quarter Quell.”
Our very first Quarter Quell.
That sentence didn’t sit right with me. Very first. A more optimistic version of me would like to bear that maybe this would’ve been the last of the Hunger Games, after this year. That Quarter Quell was a signal of the Games coming to an end. A bloody, horrific end, that future children could simply look back on in a history book and be relieved that they weren’t alive then.
No. The Capitol had no plans on ending the nightmare. This was merely the kindling.
Of course, when President Axel was mentioned, nobody expected the man himself to come waltzing out in his usual attire. Like he had been taken straight off of those annoying Capitol posters that the street kids like to vandalize, knowing full well they’d pay for their crimes later.
No, Axel decided to make his debut in 9 through a measly piece of paper that Lancaster unfolded before us all.
The mayor rarely spoke with a note card and hardly needed to anyway. His ability to speak on the fly was remarkable, possibly the same skill that landed him as District 9’s mayor.
This time it was different. In his hand was thick Capitol paper. All formal and printed. Stamped at the top with President Axel’s seal, no doubt.
A murmur traveled through the square when people noticed. Lancaster waited for it to die. It did not die fully, only crawled lower. He cleared his throat.
“Citizens of District 9,” he recited, the microphone dragged his voice thin across the square. “Today marks the commencement of the 25th Hunger Games and the inaugural observance of the Quarter Quell, a solemn addition to our national tradition of remembrance, consequence, and unity.”
I felt Misea stiffen beside me.
Unity. Right.
That word had never done an honest day’s work in its life.
Lancaster read on, his voice was steady enough to pass for control if a person did not know what fear sounded like when it wore a mayor’s mouth. “By the order of your acting president, Pompeius Axel, and in recognition of the sacrifices made to preserve the peace of Panem, this year’s tributes shall stand not merely as names drawn by chance, but as representatives selected by the collective civic voice of their district.”
Rose stared at him. Collective civic voice.
The phrase seemed to spread over the children like smoke. It was a fluffed-up version of chosen… condemned.
Rose’s fingers curled against the side of her dress. Around her, children shifted. A girl in front of her began crying silently, her shoulders shaking while her chin stayed lifted as though she had been told not to embarrass her family. A boy across the square made a soft, disbelieving sound and was immediately hushed by the peacekeeper nearest him.
Lancaster’s eyes did not leave the page.
“As your leader, I extend my confidence to the people of District 9, whose participation in this process reflects the enduring strength of Panem’s shared future. To those whose names are revealed today, the Capitol offers honor, opportunity, and the full consideration afforded to every tribute who carries their district’s hopes into the arena.”
My jaw tightened hard enough to ache. Honor? Opportunity? District hopes?
I wondered if Axel actually wrote those words himself or if some Capitol clerk had polished them up while drinking sweet coffee in a bright room where no child had ever been expected to die for anyone’s future.
Either way, I hated him for them.
Lancaster paused. Only briefly. His eyes lifted from the page and moved over the crowd, though not at the adults. The children.
For one strange second, the paper seemed to lower in his hand. Again, another unspoken thought that would never see the light of day.
Lancaster looked back down. “May the selected tributes bring distinction to Panem’s breadbasket. May the value of choice forever echo through our beautiful land that is Panem. May your children and those who come after understand the dedication that we, the people, hold united. And above all else…” he read, voice thinner now, “…may the odds be ever in their favor.”
The square stayed silent. No one applaused. Not even the weak, frightened kind people sometimes offered when silence became dangerous. Simple stillness was all that remained.
Lancaster folded the paper with a care that looked almost like shame.
“In years past,” he said, and now the words seemed to be his own, or closer to it, “It has been the duty of the mayor’s office to conduct the Reaping according to established district procedure.”
A few heads lifted. Everyone knew that. Everyone expected that.
Mayor Lancaster would read the names. A boy and a girl. He would do it grimly and formally, because that was what he had always done. Then the tributes would be taken inside, the train would come, and the district would begin its yearly mourning.
Though, it wasn’t Lancaster who made the unfortunate decision this year. Instead, he stepped back.
“This year,” he continued, trying his best to feign enthusiasm, “in accordance with this year’s special procedures of the Quarter Quell, the final certification and announcement of the district’s selected tributes will be conducted by official representatives of the Capitol.”
The silence changed. Rose felt it. Before, it had been dread. Now it was confusion sharpening toward fear. Lancaster turned slightly toward the side of the stage.
“District 9.” Lancaster held out a showing arm to the right side of the stage. “Please welcome, Yvette Dolittle and Threax Moss as our official representatives of this year’s Reaping ceremony!”
A woman stepped on stage first. Yvette Dolittle, walked towards the podium, as if the square had been built for the purpose of receiving her.
She wore a deep green formal military uniform tailored so precisely it seemed less sewn than engineered. The jacket clasped high at the throat, sharp at the shoulders, gleaming with brass buttons and narrow black piping, various dark metals decorated her blazer. Her gloves were black. Boots performatively over dramatic for being real combat ones. Her hair, a smooth black coil at the back of her head, held not a single loose strand.
Her skin was spotless. Not clear in the natural way some people were blessed with, but polished beyond weather, labor, or ordinary life. Gleaming, almost. Like porcelain left too long in a cabinet. Her mouth was painted a reserved shade of red, too controlled to look festive, and her eyes were green. And not like Rosabel’s green.
The color sat strangely against her face, bright and glassy, not quite belonging. Capitol work, surely. Dye or some vanity I did not know the name for. The effect made the shorter yet broad woman look half human and half like an ornament.
The man behind her appeared less certain of his own performance. Threax Moss wore the same dark green uniform, though his looked lived-in by comparison. It wasn’t wrinkled, never that, but less worshipful of its own shape. He was young, perhaps not much older than somebody like Gooseneck, with tired eyes and hair combed back too precisely from his forehead. His face held the drained patience of a man who had been given instructions he did not admire but intended to execute correctly.
He did not smile. Neither did Dolittle.
That was when I understood.
The costumes were theatrical, yes. The green uniforms, the gleaming metals, and their perfect little march to the microphones. The titles, the posture, the Capitol’s fondness for making every ordinary horror look rehearsed.
But these two were not performers. At least, not underneath.
Dolittle’s eyes moved across the crowd with assessment, not vanity. Moss stood with his weight evenly placed, hands still, shoulders alert. Military-trained, both of them. Not front-line peacekeepers, but something close enough to know discipline from decoration.
The Capitol had not sent simple fools to parade about the fact that they had been plagued by district soil. It had sent handlers.
Rose understood it too, though perhaps not in those words.
District 9 had cast the votes, but the Capitol had come to own the moment. That was the trick of it. Let the district dirty its hands and let the Capitol arrive in clean gloves.
Yvette Dolittle took the center microphone.
“Thank you, Mayor Lancaster,” she said, her voice was elegant and cold, every syllable polished enough to cut bread, but not in a solemn way like Lancaster. They had a job to do. “It is an honor to stand before District 9 on this historic morning.”
Somewhere behind me, Gami made a sound in his throat. Misea’s hand tightened around her own wrist.
Dolittle continued, “The Quarter Quell represents not simply a continuation of Panem’s most essential tradition, but its refinement. Today, the will of District 9 has been received, certified, and sealed under the tireless work of Capitol authority.”
Her green eyes moved toward the children. Rose felt, absurdly, as if the woman had looked straight at her.
“Let it be understood,” Dolittle continued, “That every properly submitted ballot has been counted. Every eligible candidate has been considered. Every selection has already been verified.”
She smiled then, however if held no such warmth. Instead, it was the kind of smile one might give to a locked door. “With that understanding… the Capitol thanks you for your participation.”
Rose’s stomach turned. Beside the podium, Threax Moss stepped to the side, where a nameless assistant held out two gold-sealed envelopes on a literal platter. He did not hurry, though he hadn’t dragged the moment out either. He moved with the efficient calm of a man opening a file.
Two envelopes.
One marked in white script: GIRL.
The other: BOY.
Rose stared at them until the words blurred.
In all the years she had watched Reapings, the names had been pulled from decorative, glass bowls, clear and terrible, filled with folded slips of paper. There had always been something awful in seeing chance made visible. The slips piled together, the hand reaching in, the tiny pause before fate became language.
This was much worse. No stupid bowl to hate nor scrambling paper.
There was no longer the illusion that luck had anything to do with it.
Only two envelopes, already sealed and decided. The district’s fear pressed flat into gold.
Moss lifted the first envelope and carried it to Dolittle. His face showed nothing. The official woman accepted it with both hands.
Rose became aware of her own breathing.
In. Out.
She was starting to remember what I had told her.
You just have to breathe until the next thing comes.
In. Out.
Across the square, Waaska was staring at her instead of the stage.
Rose noted her cousin’s concentration once... but only once. Then she faced forward.
Yvette Dolittle slid one gloved finger beneath the seal. The gold paper opened with a soft, tearing sound that seemed to carry across the whole square.
For a moment, no one breathed. They couldn’t.
Not the children standing inside the ropes, nor the parents pressed along the edges, or the distant vendors pretending their fires still needed tending hadn’t made so much as a peep. Even the horses seemed to still near the hitching posts, their ears flicking toward the stage as if they too were waiting for the district to shame itself aloud.
Dolittle withdrew the card. It was white, small, clean, innocent...
Rose watched the woman’s eyes move over it. Just once, with zero hesitation or surprise. Nothing in her face shifted to acknowledge that the card held a life instead of a word.
Then Yvette Dolittle lifted her chin to the microphone.
“District 9’s selected female tribute for the 25th Hunger Games is…”
Rose felt her own pulse move strangely in her ears, almost like a river current. Yet… separate from her somehow. In her head, she already knew. Instead of the District’s word, it was Rose who decided whose name was on that ballot. And… so did I.
I closed my eyes, allowing my ears to make the rest, and… I took my own advice. I breathed.
In… out…
Rose’s fingers brushed the side of her dress, finding the raised thread of one prairie rose stitched near her hip. Her eyes stared ahead at nothing in particular, as Dolittle smiled.
That’s when her name was called, only I hadn’t registered Dolittle’s voice properly. I all but blotted out that memory, instead, focusing on my other senses, like the smell of earthen dust, the feel of grit underneath my fingernails, the bitterness of adrenaline racing across my tongue as I finally heard the truth straight from the Capitol’s mouth.
The square did not erupt, though a part of me wished it had.
Instead, the sound came in pieces.
A sharp gasp from somewhere behind Rose. A woman’s wounded cry cut off by someone else’s hand. A murmur that moved like wind across dry grain, not loud enough to be called outrage and not quiet enough to be called grief. Somewhere, a child began sobbing. Somewhere else, someone whispered, “No,” with such practiced sorrow that I knew, with a sick little certainty, that they had written her name and were only now allowing themselves to mourn it.
A man swore under his breath. Another said, “She has a chance,” too softly for courage and too quickly for belief. Someone else murmured, “Better her than-” and stopped before finishing the sentence, knowing justifications only made things worse.
I knew Rose had heard all of it. Or maybe I only thought she did.
Maybe she only imagined the words because she had been living inside them all week.
For a second, her body forgot what it was meant to do. Her name hung over the square, repeated through the microphone’s thin echo, no longer belonging to her mouth, her school papers, her father’s voice, or Waaska calling from another room.
Rosabel Tempest-Strix. The selected tribute. The district’s answer.
Her answer, too, in some way she hated.
Rose did not collapse. That was the first thing I noticed when my eyes opened.
I knew she was afraid. I saw the fear go through her. It moved across her shoulders, through her throat, down into her hands, but she caught it before anyone else could name it. She did not cover her mouth. Did not look for me. She did not look at her aunt or even Waaska.
She looked forward. Composed, they might have called it. Brave, if they wanted to make themselves feel better. Though, I knew better, and so did Rose.
It was last piece of herself she could still keep. Control…
Dolittle stepped back from the microphone and turned toward the row of girls facing her left as if Rose might need help recognizing her own name.
“The female tribute,” she repeated, sharper this time. “May proceed to the stage, please.”
Please? That word had no business being there.
Rose’s first step was almost ordinary. One boot forward. Then the other. Sunflowers stitched in yellow thread flashing beneath the hem of her grandmother’s dress. The girl in front of her shifted aside too fast, face crumpling with relief before shame swallowed it. Another girl pressed both hands to her mouth and turned away.
Rose passed them. She kept her chin lifted. The ropes opened before her.
The path to the stage had never looked long from the crowd. In all the years she had watched other children walk it, it had seemed brutally short. A few steps through dust, a hand at the elbow, before a climb onto wood. Then gone. Now it stretched like a road out of the district entirely.
She was halfway there when-
“N-NO!”
A scream tore through the square so violently that even Dolittle’s head snapped toward it.
Rose stopped before turning.
Waaska broke from the fifteen-year-old row like something flung. She ducked under the rope before the nearest peacekeeper understood what she was doing, her skirts swishing with speed in mind, a stray piece of hair escaping her own braid. For one wild second, she looked small enough to still be running across the lodge yard after a dropped toy.
Then she was in the aisle, shoving past a stunned girl, both hands reaching for Rose.
“No, no, no, please!” Waaska cried. “Rose, no!”
“Waaska!” Rose attempted to hush her.
It was not loud enough to reach her. Waaska threw herself at Rose with such force that Rose stumbled back half a step and caught her by the shoulders. The younger girl clung to her, sobbing openly now, all the dignity Reaping Day demanded ripped out of her by the roots.
“Take me!” Waaska screamed toward the stage, toward the peacekeepers, toward anyone with enough power to pretend they had none. “Take me please! I-I wrote my name! I wrote mine, you can check! Please, you can check it!”
The square went still in a new way. A terrible way.
Rose’s hands tightened on Waaska’s arms.
“Don’t,” she said, low and urgent. “Waaska, please, don’t.”
But Waaska was beyond hearing.
“It should be me!” she cried. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Rose, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean for them to-” Her voice broke into something raw and young. “Please, take me! She shouldn’t go! She shouldn’t!”
A peacekeeper moved first. Then another. I moved too.
I do not remember deciding to.
One second I was standing beside Misea, and the next my bad leg had already betrayed me by not moving fast enough. Gami caught my arm before I could make it worse. Or maybe he saved me. I hated him for both.
“Auphie,” he said through his teeth.
“Let go!” I demanded.
He didn’t. Misea had one hand over her mouth. Nibs was crying now, silent and furious, both fists clenched at his sides. Around us, the district watched.
That was what I remember most. They simply watched.
The same people who had whispered Rose’s name into ballots, who had told their children there were worse choices, easier choices, practical choices, watched Waaska try to hand herself over in the dirt.
Watched love fail to count. One peacekeeper seized Waaska by the arm.
She twisted away hard enough to nearly fall. “No! Don’t touch me!”
Rose stepped between them without thinking. “D-Don’t hurt her.”
The peacekeeper paused, not because he cared, but because the cameras had turned. Rose realized it at the same time I did.
The black lenses fixed on her, specifically on Waaska. On the pretty girl in the green dress holding a sobbing friend who had tried to volunteer too late. On the district being made to see its own choice made flesh.
Dolittle said nothing. Moss’s face tightened, just slightly.
The peacekeeper reached again.
This time, one of the older Mniwakan cousins and Gami himself pushed through the edge of the crowd and grabbed Waaska around the wrists before the peacekeeper could drag her by force. Waaska’s father feared the repercussions of his daughter, yes, but he could understand why she had done this. They held on as Waaska thrashed against them.
“NO!” Waaska screamed, reaching for Rose over her father’s arm as he hoisted her up. “ROSIE!”
Rose’s face changed then. The composure cracked where only those who loved her could see it.
Her mouth trembled once before she steadied it. She took one step toward Waaska, and for a wild, stupid moment, I thought she might run to her. That she might forget the stage, the cameras, the rifles, the whole rotten country watching, and choose her family instead.
Then Rose stopped. She remembered.
Waaska had asked her not to make a spectacle. Rose had asked Waaska to be strong. Neither of them had known how impossible that would be.
Gami pulled her back into the family’s side of the ropes. Misea reached for her daughter at once, gathering Waaska into her arms, but Waaska simply sobbed into her mother’s shoulder, undoubtedly feeling helpless about the entire situation.
Rose walked the rest of the way alone.
Each step felt too loud. The dust clung to the white leather of her boots. The prairie roses at her hem stirred in the light wind. Her braid ribbon had loosened slightly from Waaska’s grip, one end trailing over her shoulder like a piece of torn sunlight.
When she reached the stage stairs, a peacekeeper extended a hand. Rose did not take it. She lifted her skirt just enough to climb without stumbling and stepped onto the platform herself.
Dolittle watched her approach with that locked-door smile.
“Welcome, Miss Tempest-Strix,” she said softly, away from the microphone. Rose looked at her. There were many things she could have said. None of them would have given her back peace.
So, she said nothing. She turned to face District Nine.
From the stage, the square looked different, like… a corral of sorts. Contained, a fenced thing, with rows of children lined with adults. Families pressed together and held apart. Cameras blinking like black insects in the sun.
Rose found me first. She could not help it.
I stood beside the Mniwakan family with the eerie presence of a soldier. Her cousin was folded into Misea’s arms, still crying hard enough that her shoulders shook. Nibs stood beside them, face wet and furious. Gami had one hand on Waaska’s back, as if he did not trust her not to run at the stage and get herself shot. He was right not to.
Rose’s eyes lingered. I wanted to give her something.
Maybe a nod, a smile, a command, a promise? Something poetic?
All I managed was to stand there and look back at her like a useless man with empty hands.
Rose still saw me. She saw all of us.
And for one merciful moment, the Capitol allowed silence to sit.
That was another thing they knew how to do. They liked to make their noise, sure, but the Capitol understood the usefulness of quiet after a wound. Let the district hear itself breathing, with every mother, father, cousin, and neighbor alike remembering exactly where they had been standing when the girl in the green dress climbed the stage. When they put her to death.
Then Threax Moss moved.
He stepped toward the nameless assistant with the platter and took the second envelope. The one marked BOY in clean white script. His expression did not alter as he accepted it, though his fingers lingered on the seal half a second longer than Dolittle’s had. Maybe I imagined that. A man starts inventing mercy in strangers when he cannot find enough of it in the world, you know?
Rose didn’t look over at him from the stage.
The wind tugged once at the loosened ribbon in her braid. She resisted the urge to fix it. That small disorder seemed to matter too much. Waaska had done it after all, with her hand, pulling it loose while trying to keep Rose from being taken. She wanted, absurdly enough, to leave it exactly as it was.
A mark of someone who had reached for her.
Moss stepped to the microphone. Unlike Dolittle, he did not smile.
“The selected male tribute for District 9,” he started. His voice was lower than hers, flatter, less polished. It wasn’t kind by any means, but it wasn’t notably unkind either. A voice trained to carry orders without needing to believe in them.
He broke the seal. The square seemed less afraid this time, which was what made it even more cruel. Rose could feel the difference from the stage. Her name had already torn open the morning. Whatever came next would fall into that opening.
Moss withdrew the card and read it. “Hoel Ellendale.”
The silence did not break the same way. There was no scream this time. Whatever was left of the Ellendale family, they certainly weren’t bursting through the rope.
Instead, the sound came like something being buried. It started as a low murmur. A few sharp intakes of breath. A strange, shameful exhale from somewhere near the back, as if certain people had been holding in the hope that the district had chosen someone easier and now felt relieved to have that hope confirmed.
Hoel Ellendale.
Hoffman’s baby brother. A boy from the jail wagon. The boy already half-lost in people’s minds because it was simpler to decide a prisoner had less life to take.
A woman whispered, “Well…”
Simply that. Well.
I turned toward the prisoner line before I could stop myself. Hoel had not moved.
He stood between two other cuffed boys, head low, dark hair in his eyes, a bruise along his jaw ugly beneath the morning light. For a second, I wondered if he had heard. Then his mouth twitched, with something close to satisfaction’s bitter cousin.
Of course, his face seemed to say. Of course.
A peacekeeper seized his arm, before Hoel ripped it back. The square tightened a notch.
The peacekeeper reached for him again, harder this time, but Hoel stepped forward before he could be dragged. His chains clinked once at his wrists, sharp and small, and that sound carried farther than it should have.
He walked like a boy who had spent his whole life being shoved and had finally decided not to give anyone the pleasure of seeing him stumble. People moved out of his way faster than they had moved for Rose. That too, I noticed.
Rose had parted the crowd with guilt. Hoel parted it with fear.
His eyes moved over the rows as he walked. They weren’t searching, exactly. Measuring maybe? Remembering faces? You couldn’t really tell with the boy.
Every person who looked away from him seemed to confirm something he had already known. Even those who dared look back only sharpened the anger in his expression.
When he passed the family ropes, nobody reached for him. Nobody said his name.
Maybe there was someone in the crowd who loved him. There had to be. They could’ve been too afraid to show it. Or maybe… he had learned young that love, in the Ellendale house, usually arrived with teeth.
Either way, he walked alone.
Rose watched him approach and felt something tighten in her chest. She had expected to be afraid of him, maybe. Everyone knew Hoffman Ellendale’s name or knew what his gang had nearly done to a high-ranking Capitolite like Coriolanus Snow, and what the Capitol had done to them after. It felt as though 9 had no choice but to vote for the boy.
Regardless, Hoel’s name had been dragged behind his brother’s like a second shadow. However, the boy climbing the stage did not look like a gang leader. He looked too young for that. Furious, obviously. Bruised. Dangerous in the way cornered things became dangerous, but at least sixteen. Still, someone’s child, even if the district had decided he was easier to call a consequence.
At the stairs, a peacekeeper moved to help him up. Hoel stared at the man’s hand until he lowered it. Then Hoel climbed himself.
The chains made the movement awkward. Moss glanced toward Dolittle, then toward the cameras. Some calculation passed between them without a word.
“Remove the restraints,” Moss ordered.
The peacekeeper hesitated. Then, the cuffs came off with a click.
It wasn’t that the boy looked any better without them. He was practically in glorified prison rags. Though, having a tribute being held in cuffs in front of live camera during the Reaping ceremony didn’t exactly have that “noble tribute” attribute to it. Not really. Hoel flexed his hands once, slowly, as if reminding himself they still belonged to him. Red marks ringed both wrists. He did not rub them.
He took his place a little way beside Rose but did not look at her. For a moment, the two District 9 tributes stood side by side beneath the Capitol bunting.
The girl holding her father’s unbearable legacy in her prairie flower dress, alongside loosened ribbon and white sunflower boots dusted brown. Then the boy from the jail wagon, bruised and hard-eyed, wrists freshly freed but still carrying the shape of iron.
Together, they looked nothing like victory. They looked like what the district had been willing to lose.
Dolittle returned to the microphone.
“District 9,” she said, her tone almost proud, “your chosen tributes for the 25th Hunger Games.”
The cameras clicked and adjusted. Rose heard them.
That was the first time she truly noticed the cameras as if they were alive, not just machines or in the background. They shifted like insects. They turned their black eyes toward her face, Hoel’s bruised jaw, and of course, the crowd’s guilty stillness.
It’s lens constantly taking more and more away from them.
“You should be proud of your contribution to your country’s history,” Dolittle added, her smile widened by a fraction. “May they bring honor to your district and glory to Panem.”
Rose’s hand curled. Hoel finally glanced at her. Only briefly.
His expression said nothing in particular. She hadn’t read any malice nor fear. Nothing was too noticeable at first. It was only when she looked more that she saw something like recognition stripped of comfort. You too, then.
Rose looked back at him. Yes.
She did not know whether that made them allies or only proof of the same crime.
Dolittle shifted as if to end the ceremony. The peacekeepers at the edge of the stage moved closer. Moss stepped half a pace toward Rose and Hoel, ready to guide them off, as Lancaster made his way to the podium for his usual dismissal of the ceremony. The whole square seemed to lean toward the next instruction, grateful for anything that would tell them what to do with their hands, their eyes, their guilt.
Then Rose heard herself speak before she knew she had decided to. “Mayor Lancaster?”
The words came out clear enough for the nearest microphone to catch them. A ripple passed through the square. Dolittle went still. Moss stopped.
Mayor Lancaster, who had returned near the podium, ready to speak a few more closing statements, looked up sharply.
Rose felt every camera turn. Her mouth went dry. For one breath, she wanted to take it back. Still, she kept standing.
Lancaster stepped toward her, uncertain. “Miss Tempest-Strix?”
Rose swallowed. “May… May I say a few words?”
Dolittle’s smile vanished. Slowly. Enough to reveal the mechanism beneath it.
“That will not be necessary,” she tried to intervene.
However, Rose looked at Lancaster instead. He didn’t coordinate the Reapings themselves, of course. He was just a talking piece that the Capitol needed. Still, he was District 9’s mayor, and if District 9 had chosen her, then she would make District 9 hear her.
Lancaster’s gaze moved from Rose to Dolittle, then to the crowd, then back to Rose. There was no courage on his face. Only shame. And sometimes? Shame did a poor imitation of bravery, and sometimes that was all anyone had.
“Briefly,” he nodded, ignoring any repercussions he’d probably receive for it later.
Rose stepped toward the microphone before anyone could change their mind. Hoel’s head turned slightly. His face searching for answers, confusion etching across his features. Rose did not look at him.
She placed both hands lightly on the sides of the podium. Her fingers trembled once against the wood. She pressed them harder until they stopped.
From the stage, District 9 looked impossibly familiar and impossibly far away. She could see so much, which would’ve broken down even the strongest of men. There was Carrigan Killdeer, pale and still among the academy girls. And the Scranton children, Waylynn half-hidden behind Burr. There was her aunt, Misea with one arm around Waaska and the other hand pressed to her own chest. Then Nibs. Then… me.
Rose looked at me the longest. His face had gone still in a way that frightened her. Then she faced the entire district.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say,” she began. Her voice carried strangely through the microphone, thinner than it felt in her throat. The square did not move, willing to hear her speak. “I thought about being angry… and I still might be. Later at least.”
A few people shifted.
“I thought about saying I forgive you, but… I don’t know if that would be true. Not yet.”
A breath moved through the crowd. My jaw tightened.
Rose continued, because if she stopped now, she would never start again. “I know why some of you wrote my name. I think I do. Maybe you thought I had a better chance or you thought the Capitol already liked me. You maybe thought I was halfway gone from 9 already.”
Her voice trembled on that last part, her thoughts lingering on me and Waaska. She despised it. Nevertheless, she kept going anyway.
“Maybe… you were scared for your own children, and I can understand that. Truly.”
The silence deepened. Rose looked toward the younger rows. Children stared back at her with wide, frightened eyes. Some of them had voted and would probably still remember it when they were not.
“I can’t tell you that you were right,” she said softly. “You weren’t.”
Someone sobbed once, quickly muffled.
“But I also know… what the Capitol did to us. I know they gave us a choice that was never truly a choice. They put names in our hands and told us to make fear look like duty.”
Dolittle shifted behind her. Moss’s eyes flicked toward the peacekeepers.
Rose saw it. My heart climbed clean into my throat. Careful, Rosie. Please be careful…
Rose drew in another breath. “I… I am not standing here because I want to die. I really don’t.”
The words struck the square harder than she expected. They were simple, but no one had wanted to hear her say it.
“I am scared,” she confirmed. “I am more scared than I know how to explain. And Hoel-” She glanced back at him, only briefly. “H-He should not have to stand here either.”
Hoel’s face did not change, but something in his eyes did. Rose turned back.
“But if District 9 has given us to the Capitol, then I will not let the Capitol make me ashamed of loving District 9.”
I closed my eyes.
No, I thought. No, don’t do that. Do not make their vote sacred.
Rose’s hands tightened on the podium. “So, I guess my sentiments are… that I won’t go as your mistake,” she said, voice gaining steadiness now, not because she was less afraid, but because fear had finally found something to hold. “I won’t go as your guilt or your rumor. I won’t even go as proof that the Capitol owns every part of us.”
She swallowed. “And if I die…”
Misea made a sound like she had been struck.
Rose nearly faltered, but she picked herself back up. “If I die, I will not die as District 9’s victim.”
The words came out uneven. Young. Too brave and not wise enough.
“I will die… as its martyr.”
The square seemed to lose all air. My stomach all but dropped.
Goodness help me, I hated it because I understood exactly why she had said it. She was trying to take the ugliest thing done to her and make it mean something before the Capitol could make it mean nothing. She was trying to turn the blade around by holding it through her own palm.
Though martyrdom was still a story someone else could use. After all, Rosabel was still a girl.
Rose’s eyes shone, but no tears fell. “I wish you all the best,” she said, and her voice broke there, just barely. “I mean that. I wish the children of 9 warm food and full fields and safer years than this one. I wish my family peace. I wish…” She stopped, breath catching. “I wish nobody ever has to stand here because home was made afraid enough to choose them.”
At that, everyone simply stood. There was no applause. No one could’ve even pretended. The shock held them too tightly. Rose stepped back from the microphone.
For one second, she looked like a child again in the most unbearable way. There a girl in a green dress with a loose ribbon and dust on her white boots, having used the last free words she might be allowed for a long while.
Lancaster stared at her. The man, no doubt, had a certain amount of respect for those words. Those same words that he wouldn’t even dream to utter.
Dolittle, of couse, was already moving.
“That will conclude District 9’s Reaping ceremony,” she said into the microphone, too quickly, too smoothly. “Tributes will proceed to transfer under Capitol supervision at once.”
Moss stepped beside Hoel. A peacekeeper then stepped beside Rose, as she looked once more toward the crowd.
Waaska had stopped sobbing. She stared at Rose like she was trying to memorize the shape of her standing there. Nibs had one hand over his mouth. Misea’s face had gone white. Gami looked at the ground.
And me?
I probably looked like a man who had just watched a door close and realized his hands were still empty. Rose wanted to say something to us, her family. Anything…
Though, Moss and Dolittle hastily moved in before the square could decide whether it was allowed to react. And with that, District 9’s tributes were escorted from the stage.















