wrap me in your skin and bones

As his mother's heir, Jace knew he was little more than a pawn to be moved around a board, a pawn made to enter into matches and alliances. His entire life, he had known his mother would choose his wife, and he would have little say in who that may be. His wife had been decided scarcely before he truly knew what marriage meant.  Alliances were built around him before he could even walk, but when war broke out, everything changed. The betrothal brokered between himself and Baela broke, and he was left traversing the realm, reminding lords and ladies of their oaths. Given his first taste of power and the opportunity to prove himself. And he did, he had houses pledging loyalty, support, and men. And then he arrived in Winterfell, and found himself leaving with more than the pledge of men and support, but with you as his wife. 

He had been struck by you the second he saw you, and wed you before the raven announcing your betrothal had even reached Dragonstone. Jace rationalised it easily: you were the half-sister of Cregan Stark, your mother was a Tully, and with you, not only came the North but the Riverlands too.  It was an advantageous match, and though his mother had been frustrated, she had wished to leave his hand as a leveraging tool in the war to come, she knew the alliance brought two kingdoms on her side.

The alliance was exactly what Rhaneyra needed, it brought strength, helped to stabilise her cause and made her heir happy. 

He loved you dearly. You were beautiful, a little too naive and idealistic, but Jace didn't mind that, no, he loved it. Loved how you observed everything, how you observed everything, how smart you were despite your ideals. His love for you was clear to anyone. So clear that when you arrived on Dragonback to Dragonstone, the rumours began almost immediately.

Rumours that he had only wed you after Cregan had caught Jace in your bed. Rumours that Jace had won the support of the north by sliding between your legs. Rumours that you were a northern whore. Those rumours had reached the smallfolk, including the dragon seeds of Dragonstone. 

Ulf the white had a strange sense about him. He was rude and proud and far too arrogant. He acted with a sense of entitlement, an entitlement that had only been gifted to him by the grace of his queen, and yet he took full advantage of it. Advantage enough to corner you. 

“It’s surprising Rhaenyra would keep you married to Jace,” Ulf spoke, leaning against the table of the library as he watched you closely. 

“Queen Rhaenyra, and Prince Jacaerys, ” you corrected, trying to focus on the book before you, and ignore the man and his unwelcome company “Why would she not permit me to remain married to my husband?” 

You looked up, locking eyes with Ulf, a feeling of discomfort washing through you at the look in his eyes. You searched around the room, eyes locking on the door, praying for Jace to hurry up and meet you as he had promised. Ulf smirked, his eyes trailing your body as he walked towards you, “We’ve all heard the truth, how you lured Jace into your bed.”

“That’s not true,” you gasped, standing up quickly, trying to move away from Ulf, who had seemed determined to get closer to you, “those are rumours, nothing more.” You continued to back away from him, your eyes looking to the door as it opened, revealing Jace.

Each step you took, Ulf seemed to follow, his eyes continuing to trail your body, “rumours?” He scoffed, “You're a whore,” 

“What did you just call her?” Jace demanded, his voice, the smile he had gifted you as he walked through the door long gone, as his face hardened at Ulfs words. 

“Jace-“ Ulf began, a cocky smile on his face. 

“Your grace,” Jace corrected, storming towards him, “you are acting above your station,” he spat, his voice like venom. “Now,” Jace spat, waking closer to Ulf, forcing him against the desk he had leaned on earlier. “What. Did. You. Call. My. Wife.” Jace's hand flew to Ulfs shirt, keeping him in place. 

You stood to the side watching as Ulf swallowed roughly, his cocky demeanour faltering. “I'm just calling her what she is,” he spat, leaning his head back as if to escape the glare Jace was giving him. 

“She is no whore!” Jace raged, pushing Ulf further into the table. “Apologise to her,” he spat,  his eye flickering to you, his face red from anger. 

“Jace,” you spoke, walking slowly towards him, your voice calm.

His eyes softened at your voice, but the scoff from Ulf had him turning his full attention back to you. He pushed him roughly back into the desk, “apologise,” he repeated, his hands balling into fists on Ulf's shirt. Ulf swallowed, his face flushed, but he made no effort to speak. Jace scoffed, moving back from the desk and slamming Ulf down, “Apologise or I shall have your tongue ripped from your mouth”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, his eyes darting to yours as you slowly approached your hand reaching for Jace's shoulder.

“I didn’t hear you,” Jace seethed, slamming him down again. 

“I’m sorry!” Ulf shouted, his eyes pleading as he looked at you. 

“Jace, he’s not worth it, my love”, you muttered, your hands sliding to his shoulders and easing him off Ulf. 

“Get out of my sight,” Jace spat, pushing Ulf as he stumbled out of the library. “Fuck,” he mumbled, turning to face you and pulling you into his chest. “These lowborns claiming dragons are a disgrace,” Jace muttered “, they make a mockery of us, insult us and for what?” 

“My love,” you soothed, reaching to place a soft kiss on his lips, “they will be mere footnotes in history, you need not worry about them.”

“But what if they aren’t? They question the crown's legitimacy, they question my legitimacy,” he breathed, his head leaning against yours, his breath heavy as he spoke. “And to question you, my wife.” He scoffed, “How dare he, that mongrel." 

“My love, calm yourself”, you breathed, placing a soft kiss to his lips, “you will be a king, and they mere footnotes in history, you should not worry yourself,” you placed another kiss to his lips, “don’t waste your breath on them, you are worth so much more than them,” 

He smiled softly against you, his head still leaning against yours as he reached forward to kiss you, “What did I do to deserve someone as sweet as you?” He hummed, his hands sliding to your waist, pulling you closer to him. 

“I only treat you how you have treated me”, you hummed, kissing him once more. “You are the prince every lady dreams of marrying,” you hummed, “I dreamt of a man like you every night.” 

Jace groaned at your words, turning you to sit on the desk, “too sweet for me,” he hummed, his hands moving to bunch your dress around your hips, “I’ve been thinking about you all day,” he hummed, “how sweet you are, how sweet you taste,” kissing your lips between every word, “your cunt,” he groaned, dropping to his knees as he spoke, “all I can think of is the taste of your cunt” his breath ghosted your heat, a shiver shaking through you at the feeling, “how sweet it is, how perfect,” he groaned into you, pressing soft kisses to your thighs as his thumb reached for your bundle of nerves, rubbing soft circles as it his mouth slowly made its way to your cunt, his tongue swiping a through your folds.

“Jace,” you gasped, your hand flying to your mouth, as he placed another lick down your slit. “Oh gods,” you moaned, as his fingers reached to spread your folds, groaning at the sight of how wet you were. His tongue placed another long lick across the length of your folds. His thumb still circling your clit as his tongue began to feast on you, lapping at your pussy, feasting on you, like a man starved. A loud moan tore through you, your hand falling from your mouth to grip the table as Jace hooked your legs around his head, his tongue fucking you. His hands reached to grip your waist, pulling you even closer to him. Your hips bucked into his face, riding his tongue as he feasted on you. 

Moans of pleasure echoed around the library as you rode his face, his fingers swapping with his tongue, a loud gasp tearing through you as his fingers slowly pushed into yo, “so good,” Jace groaned, his voice vibrating through your body, as a wave of pleasure began to wash over you, his fingers thrusting into you as your peak began to wash over you, your back arching off the desk, his name slipping from your lips as you came.

Jace slowly rose from between your thighs, pressing a slow, messy kiss to your lips. “I love the taste of you,” he groaned, his hands gripping your hips as he pulled you closer to him.

You hummed, your hands reaching to play with the curls on his head. “So sweet,” he groaned, “so perfect,” 

You smiled, tugging his hair to have him look at you, “You're sweet.” 

It’s the boy’s fault, the one up on the stage. They called the boy first today; they alternate each year. If they had called your name first, someone surely would have volunteered and gone to the Capitol in your place. But the boy chosen to represent District 4 in the 47th Annual Hunger Games could pick up the much-feared Jackline Humboldt and snap him in half. From across the crowd, Commodore watches you. He’s 6’4 and close to three hundred pounds, prodigiously large for an eighteen-year-old. He has deep-set brown eyes, broad shoulders, flaxen hair sheared close to the skin so nobody can get hold of it.

No one wants to go to the Games the same year as Commodore. The Careers who are sixteen or seventeen will wait for the 48th Games; the eighteen-year-olds will forgo the fantasy entirely, and learn to be content here on the shore with their boats and their nets and their stews and their salt-stinging skin.

Then your sister Misty screams and the spell breaks, the sunlit liminal haven evaporates, and the Peacekeepers march forward to collect you.

“No!” you shriek when they grab your wrists and begin to haul you towards the stage. You always believed you’d never fight, that you wouldn’t be chosen to begin with but if you ever were, you would go to the Games with dignity, and somehow—illogically, and yet certainly—you would win.

But I can’t win against Commodore!!!

So now you are yowling and writhing like a trapped animal, begging, refusing, your best sandals scraping against the splintering nail-studded planks of the boardwalk as you try to resist being dragged to your death, death by poison, death by beasts, death by blades, death by fire, death by drowning, death by a thousand different designs but death nonetheless, and weren’t you supposed to be back on Daddy’s fishing boat this afternoon? Weren’t you supposed to be eating sourdough bread and fisherman’s stew tonight, laughing with your family around the rough wooden dinner table, the lanterns glowing warmly, the waves rumbling outside?

Your other sisters are all screaming with Misty now, and Daddy is too. You are the youngest; none of your siblings can volunteer for you. You’re barely still old enough to be reaped yourself.

“No, I’ll be nineteen tomorrow!” you’re pleading with the Peacekeepers, who take no notice. Commodore observes your hysteria with a dark-eyed, impassive gaze. The Capitol escort for District 4 tributes, Charm Wesleyan, sighs and checks her glittering gold pocket watch. “I can’t go, you have to pick someone else, I can’t go, I can’t go! Please!”

Then you hear your brother Fleet shout over the melee: “Stop fighting, they’ll hurt you!”

He’s right; and they’ll hurt your family too. Your arms go still in the Peacekeepers’ iron grasps, and you walk with them to the stage, the shadow of it falling over you and blotting out the sun, the air turning cold. You ascend the steps, your knees and ankles trembling wildly, almost losing a sandal twice. The crowd watches you go, solemn and silent except for your family’s weeping. You can hear Ariel whimpering to Misty that they can’t let this happen, and Fleet tells her to shut up. Then he says he’s going to get the knife set.

The Peacekeepers position you beside Commodore and then stand nearby to intercede in the event of any further disturbances. The viewers won’t have seen any of that, of course. The footage is “live” but on a delay; any unpatriotic diversions are neatly snipped from the record, everyone knows that.

“Smile,” Charm hisses at you. She is dressed like a glistening golden koi, false fins jutting out from her gown, dangling chandelier earrings that cast scintillations. In each of her transparent platform shoes swims a petrified goldfish, encapsulated in the tall thick heel, receiving a battering every time she takes a step. Charm is in her fifties and nearing retirement, but she’s still more beautiful than most women you’ve ever seen in your life. She has been blessed from birth and can’t imagine what it’s like not to be; she has green eyes, small bones, smooth unmarred skin, short but voluminous hair that is presently sprayed gold to match her gown.

You don’t comply immediately and Charm snaps her fingers at you, as if you are a dog. You force a smile. Beside you, Commodore beams and waves at the camera. He’s already playing the game, and you need to catch up.

If I don’t give them what they want, they won’t help me win.

Oh God, you think, your throat burning, constricting, choking. How the fuck did this happen? Why can’t I go home?

You swipe away your tears and try to smile more convincingly. You swish from side to side a little bit, letting the shirt of your sundress, butter-yellow plaid, flutter in the breeze. You pose with one hand on your waist. You wave with the other, an open secretless palm.

“Give us a wink, baby!” the cameraman yells at you, and you do it, then blow a kiss for good measure. Charm and the camera crew laugh, delighted. Charm rests her hands—no wrinkles, elegant fingers with nails painted gold—on your shoulders and leans into you, as if you are dear friends, as if she’s not a glimmering angel of death. The goldfish in her shoes quiver. The crowd watches gravely, no cheers, no applause. Then they begin to disperse to go home, a place you’ll never be again.

Charm announces to the camera: “And there you have it, the District 4 tributes for the 47th Annual Hunger Games! A genuine Beauty and the Beast situation, am I right?”

The camera crew howls. The audience is no longer listening. You keep smiling, your cheeks beginning to ache, your lips twitching. You’ll need to figure out how to get better at that part.

Charm continues: “We’ll be seeing all of you again very, very soon, but in the Capitol! What adventures will our tributes have as they live in unprecedented opulence for the coming two weeks? What will they reveal to be their unique strengths and weaknesses? Who will be allies, and who will be bitter enemies? Who will receive the highest and lowest training scores from our Gamemakers? All that and more next time! Ta-ta for now!”

A little red light you hadn’t noticed before on the camera goes dark. Charm abruptly skitters away from you, earrings jangling, assaulting the goldfish in her shoes. She makes a snorting noise and whips a tiny compact out of a hidden pocket in her gown. Swiftly, she checks her hair and makeup in the circular mirror and snaps it shut again.

Charm says to the camera crew: “Let’s get out of here. This whole district smells like a fucking tuna melt.” And then, when Commodore blinks at her quizzically: “Yeah, I know you can’t tell.” She trots down the stairs with a flurry of assistants in tow, leaving you and your fellow tribute alone on the stage.

You peer up at Commodore. He looks down at you, like a heron at a flounder.

“I don’t want to be the one to kill you,” Commodore says. “So stay out of my way.”

They have you in a shack on the beach, an old storage facility used for fishing equipment. The nets make you think of being trapped. The hooks make you think of being gutted. Two Peacekeepers stand by the door to make sure you don’t try to escape or kill yourself. You have no immediate plans to do either. You have no immediate plans at all.

The creaky wooden door bangs open, and your family rushes in, Daddy and Fleet and your sisters. They are all trying to hug you at once, all speaking in the same desperate chorus. You keep telling them the same lie over and over again, because you don’t know what else to say: “I’m okay, I’m okay.”

“Maybe Aemond can help you,” Misty says, her eyes shimmering like the wave crests outside. “He gets at least one of our tributes into the final day of the Games every year, and he’s had two winners, and the girl wasn’t even a good fighter, and…maybe…maybe the District 1 and 2 Careers will take out Commodore, and then you’ll just have to…”

Have to what? Murder those same Careers?

You aren’t a killer. And Misty knows this, so she starts sobbing. You aren’t coming back.

Am I?

“Here,” she says, thrusting the box into your hands. You already know what’s inside. It’s Daddy’s filleting knife set, and it’s been in his family for three generations at least, and no one can remember anything before that. You open the box: sharp thin mirrorlike blades, opalescent mother of pearl handles, a honing rod, a scaler, a gut hook. Each handle has a small hole at the end so the tools can be hung within easy reach while working. “You’re good with knives. Aemond can figure out how to use that.”

“But if I take them with me, you’ll never get them back.”

Misty smiles, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Maybe we will.”

“That’s how you know people don’t care about nothing,” Charm says. She is gazing out the window as the train zooms east towards the border you share with District 1, and then beyond that the Capitol. She takes out her compact again, flips down the mirror, reveals another skinny compartment behind it. She scoops out white powder with her fingertip and rubs it around her nostrils, inhaling in a dainty sniff. The goldfish in her shoes are dead. “When they let their homes fall into disrepair. Look! Shutters not painted. Weeds in the yards. Lazy, lazy. Sloth is a sin, you know.”

You and Commodore sit across from her at the table, wide-eyed and afraid to say the wrong thing. The carpet is plush and white. There are marble columns everywhere, and a large rectangular fish tank sparkling with goldfish. Miniature chandeliers swing from the ceiling as the train rocks. The tabletop is made of kaleidoscopic stained glass and covered with plates of cake; you’ve placed the thin wooden box containing your knife set on the floor by your feet. There is a small long-tailed monkey on a leash affixed to one of the legs of the white leather sofa, hopping in place and grinning sinisterly.

“It’s like me,” Charm continues, increasingly animated. “There are women who don’t invest in looking their best, and then they’re resentful when their life is sad and short.” She waves a glittering hand at you. You stare back blankly. “But you must make the best of things. Districts 1 and 2, now they know how to take care of themselves. Lovely clean streets. Historic homes. Flourishing gardens. And wouldn’t I have liked to end up being the escort for tributes from a place like that? But no, I get the district with the…the…” She reaches over to frenetically pat Commodore’s massive shoulder. “The Loch Ness Monster over here. But do I neglect my responsibilities? Do I complain? No, I get on with it. And I conduct myself with diligence and dignity. And one day, who knows, one of those other escorts, Lapis and Citadella—vapid bitches, both of them, you’ll see—might get themselves in trouble, and then I’ll be next in line for a promotion.”

She stops and glares at you and Commodore, expecting a contribution.

“Right!” you say. “You deserve it!”

“Anyway, what I’m trying to express is that it’s the same way with you two.” Charm plucks the remote control off the table and turns on the television mounted to the wall. News coverage of this year’s reapings appears; there is a montage of winners standing on their respective stages across Panem. You see a terribly young male tribute from District 5, an athletic blonde girl from District 1, a wiry smirking boy from District 2 with freckles and unruly hair the color of a red dusk. “You could waste your time being bitter about the cards you’ve been dealt. Or you could have a good attitude about it. Work hard. Be productive. Be grateful. Plenty of kids younger than you have died without getting a two-week taste of paradise first.” Then she gestures frantically to the cakes, as if they will soon disappear. “Eat!”

You and Commodore—though you have to assume he’s as nauseous as you are—promptly begin taking pre-cut slices off the elevated, crystal cake plates and plopping them on the dishes placed in front of you, white and painted with scenes of a blue desert, dunes, camels, vultures picking at skeletons. Commodore opts for the strawberry and the banana cakes; you try the key lime and the blue velvet. You only recognize the flavors from broadcasts you’ve seen of prior Games. The Capitol tries very hard to keep the tributes happy. This prevents rebellions, and escapes, and free-falls from skyscraper balconies.

“Do you like the plates?” Charm asks, and then she leers at both of you, a strange grin, a little taunting, a little desperate. “They’re bone china.”

“They’re nice,” Commodore dutifully replies.

“You don’t want any cake?” you ask Charm.

She kneads more white powder into her nostrils and bolts to her feet, the dead goldfish thrashing in her shoes, pale bellies up. “Nope! I’ll go see if Aemond is ready for you yet.”

“He’s here?” Commodore says, brightening. He must idolize Aemond. Any aspiring killer would.

“Of course he’s here! He always watches the reapings from the train. Jots down his notes, plans his evil deeds.” She rubs her palms together and giggles and bounds off, vanishing through the door to the next train car.

You and Commodore are alone, except for the Peacekeepers who linger in the corners to make sure you don’t decide to try stabbing each other’s eyeballs out with your forks. There is a long awkward lull, the only sounds the squealing metal of the train and the clinking of silverware as you both eat cake you don’t want.

“Do you remember that song?” you say.

Commodore’s Neanderthal brow furrows. “Song?”

“The one about the train. The one all the old people sing. You know…” You start humming the tune, and then he recognizes it and laughs for the first time today.Commodore begins, and quietly you sing together:

“Good morning, America, how are you?

So don’t you know me, I’m your native son

I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans

I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.”

“What the heck is New Orleans?” you say, smiling and poking at your blue velvet cake with your fork, and Commodore chuckles as he shakes his head.

“I have no idea.”

Charm bursts back into the train car, winded, almost tripping in her heels, scraping her faux fins on the doorframe. “Okay, you first!” she chimes, pointing at you.

“Me?”

“Yup. One at a time. Go on.”

As you rise from the table, taking your knife set with you, Charm hobbles over to the fish tank and yanks off her right shoe. She opens a tiny trap door in the bottom and shakes until the goldfish pops out and lands in the water, limp and bobbing. She doesn’t seem to notice that it hasn’t survived Reaping Day.

Charm says when you hesitate by the door, shooing you along with both hands: “Go! Go! He won’t bite!”

You turn the knob and step into the next train car. At first, you don’t see anyone. It’s a study: some bookshelves, some brown leather chairs, taxidermied deer heads and owls, a desk with a banker’s lamp and a single notebook in which you can glimpse neat black-ink musings. By the desk, there is a door that leads to yet another train car. The room is as earthen as the dining room was pearly white. Do they each get their own color? How extravagant. How wasteful.

You sit in one of the leather chairs and rest the knife set on your lap, not knowing what else to do. You cross your ankles and anxiously smooth the skirt of your yellow plaid dress, your very best, the one you once wore to weddings and birthday parties. Then the door by the desk opens, and you meet your mentor.

You’ve never seen him in person—not that you can remember, anyway, although you might have crossed paths as children before he was reaped—only on television each year during the Games, and they can work a lot of magic with camera angles and recoloring. You’ve learned this from Victory Tours, when Capitol celebrities descend upon the districts and oftentimes are remarkably shorter, sadder, skinnier, stranger than they appear through the screen. But this Aemond Targaryen is just like the one from his posters and interviews. He is tall and methodical, long artful hands, striking face, maroon scar, a shock of silver hair. He was fifteen when he was reaped, so he’s twenty-five now. He wears a black suit and a sapphire in his left eye socket. That was the name of the girl from District 1 he killed to win his Games: Sapphire.

“How do I win?” you say immediately, and Aemond stops in his tracks to stare at you. “I don’t want to die. How do I win?”

He recovers, sighs, and sits opposite of you in one of the brown leather chairs. He crosses one leg over the other, lights a cigarette with a cylindrical crystal lighter, takes a drag. “Can you fight?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried it.”

Aemond doesn’t seem heartened. “Are you a fast runner or swimmer?”

“Not especially. I get around good in sand though.”

“Are you skilled with any weapons, like a trident or spear?”

“No.”

“What were you doing before you were reaped?”

“I worked on my dad’s fishing boat.”

“What was your job, exactly?”

“I did most of the gutting, descaling, and filleting. Daddy and Fleet caught the fish, my sisters took them to market.”

Now his eyebrows go up, one scarred, one whole. “So you know how to butcher.”

“Yes,” you say uneasily. “Fish.”

“Fish and people have a lot of the same parts.”

“Not that many,” you object. “No fins, no tails.”

Aemond smiles, soft, a bit wistful. Cigarette smoke wafts soundlessly into the still air. Afternoon sunlight streams in through the windows to glow on his cheekbones and set his sapphire alight, and you think: My God, he’s beautiful. With the lit end of his cigarette, Aemond gestures to your knife set. “What’s in there?”

You open the wooden box to show him. “They’ve been in Daddy’s family for generations. My sister Mistica…we call her Misty…she told me I should take them to the Games.”

“She was right,” Aemond says, examining the knives. He picks one up by the iridescent mother of pearl handle, turning it slowly to the left and then the right while his cigarette smolders in his other hand. Then his eye flicks back to you, a pale electrifying blue, lightning, turquoise stones, sharks. “You’re going to wear one of these.”

“A filleting knife?”

“I’ll have it put on a chain for you.” He places the knife back in the box and closes the lid. “Can I hold on to this?”

It’s odd that he’s asking. You don’t have many choices anymore. “Sure.” You pass him the box and he turns to slide it onto the desk behind him. He doesn’t have to get up to do this; long arms, roped with lean muscle. He’s killed people, you think dizzily. And I’ll have to do it too.

Aemond returns his attention to you. He finishes his cigarette, then puts it out in a gold ashtray built into the chair’s armrest. You’re surprised by the smoking. No one except old people smoke in District 4; everyone knows it’s dangerous. Aemond asks, watching you fixedly: “Are you serious about surviving, no matter what your life will look like afterwards? Because I’ve known too many victors who walked out of the arena only to commit to killing themselves with booze or drugs or violence.”

“I want to live.”

“Even if you have to sell your soul? Even if you have to sell your body?”

Sell my body? What? “I want to live,” you insist nonetheless.

“Then I’ll give you the best chance I can.” Again, he’s looking at you; not like he’s critical, not like he’s resentful of being saddled with an unremarkable tribute from an upstart district. Like he’s curious. Like he wishes he could have met you someplace else. “Do you trust Commodore?”

You startle. “What?”

“Do you believe he would be your ally in the arena?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know him that well. We never really hung out before all this and then…back at the reaping…he told me he didn’t want to kill me. But he also said I should stay out of his way.”

Aemond nods. “Then I’ll train you separately, for the most part.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Not at all. Only one of you can win.”

You swallow noisily. “That’s true.”

Perhaps with some reluctance, Aemond stands to end your first meeting. He looks troubled, or maybe he’s just distracted. Thinking. Machinating. He puts his hands in the pockets of his black suit pants as if he’s hiding them. “I should introduce myself to Commodore now.”

“Yeah, totally, of course, I just…” You aren’t sure if you want to know the answer to your question, but you can’t shake it out of your skull. Aemond waits. “What you said about…selling my body…?”

“That’s often expected of victors, and you should know it going in.”

“Oh,” you reply, your voice small, your stomach dropping. You thought victors got to do whatever they wanted. You thought victors lived in mansions with their spouses and their children and their servants, and they were never hurt, and they were never afraid. They earned their freedom. They paid for it. “You…you have to do that?”

“A few times a month. There are brokers assigned to handle the transactions. Women pay for me to do things to them. Men too, occasionally. Then once in a while a man pays to do things to me, and that’s more challenging. But we must endure.” He smiles, off-kilter, no humor. “I’m not trying to scare you. I just want you to know what winning means.”

“I’m sorry,” you whisper.

“Sometimes there is an adjustment period,” Aemond continues. His words are toneless, businesslike. But his face is sympathetic. “If the victor still looks young and hasn’t filled out yet. If they aren’t considered as desirable. If there’s something else the Capitol wants more from them. But you won’t have that luxury. You’re already an adult. And men are going to want you.”

You gaze up at him, bewildered. “Why?”

He can’t believe you don’t understand. After a moment, he shakes his head and says: “They just are.”

Then Aemond goes to the desk to jot down his notes about you, and you leave.

Home is beaches and boats and stilt houses and piers, but the Capitol is made of towers, tall white buildings that block out the sun, underground tunnels, cold metal automatic doors. But you see shades of District 4 in the people here whose designers use it as inspiration: bejeweled pendants in the shapes of dolphins and stingrays and angelfish, suits made of pelican or heron feathers, gowns fashioned from pearls and sand dollars, spiny hats like sea urchins. They admire your home from afar, or at least what they imagine your home to be, its aesthetic, its reflection, its ricochets through their television screens and magazines.

There is a riotous crowd waiting at the train station, clamoring for a glimpse of this year’s tributes. They shriek your name because they already know you. They’ve seen your Reaping Ceremony, they’ve heard the news reporting your biographical data, they’ve seen your family’s tear-streaked faces. But you and Commodore are both quickly hustled into an elevator and out of sight. It’s not time for your official introduction yet, and the Gamemakers want the audience to be rabid for the Tribute Parade tomorrow. No one is permitted to dampen the anticipation.

With Charm cantering alongside him—chatting with the other escorts she passes, big ingenuine mirror-image smiles—Aemond leads you and Commodore to a seemingly endless metallic hallway with tiny pods branching off of it like sea grapes. Each pod has its own sliding partition for privacy. You see other tributes going in and out, some having just arrived like you, others freshly scrubbed and swathed in downy white robes, their skin dewy, their eyes dazed.

The sinewy red-headed boy from District 2—you can’t recall his name, it’s something weird—comes sauntering out of one of the pods in a cloud of steam. He is wearing only a towel wrapped around his waist. He spots the female tribute from District 1, who is admiring her newly-polished fingernails, and pretends to be about to take off his towel. “Brookie, Brookie, want a lookie?”

She cackles. “I’d rather eat glass, thanks though.”

“Last chance, girl. Thirteen days from now I’ll be picking tiny little pieces of you out of my hair.”

“What are you going to do, throw a grenade at me?”

“Oh, say that louder, let’s give the Gamemakers some ideas.” They both laugh, then he whirls away from her and spots you. He winks and blows a kiss, just like you did at the camera after you were reaped. Then Aemond glares fiercely at him and the boy hurries off towards the elevators. His escort grabs his bare arm and hisses something that sounds like a reproval.

Aemond points to a pod. “You’re in that one,” he tells you, then follows you like a shadow while Charm takes Commodore to the pod next door. Inside you find a platoon of people in gloves and smocks, your prep team. They immediately swoop in to drag you up onto a cold metal platform, like a doctor’s exam table. They’re introducing themselves, but you can’t keep their foreign names straight; a blinding light is flicked on, and they’re yanking off all your clothes.

Aemond turns around to face the wall. You try to relax, but you hate the feeling of these strangers touching you. You think of the thousands of fish you’ve butchered, spilling their innards, scraping off their scales, filleting their muscles from their fragile translucent bones. Faintly, you can hear Charm complaining from the next pod: “Did you see the way Citadella acted like we’re best friends? What the fuck’s wrong with her? Everyone knows she only got the District 2 escort job because she’s the Head Gamemaker’s mistress. They should call her Clitadella, if you ask me. Hey, Commodore, sea monster, are you listening? Commodore!”

The prep team is lathering you with soap and spraying you with lukewarm water. You suspect it’s supposed to be hot—the District 2 boy got hot water, judging by the steam—but they’re so busy gossiping with each other that they haven’t noticed. They’re talking about the other tributes’ outfits and hairstyles as they assail you: plucking, waxing, measuring, deliberating, polishing, exfoliating, moisturizing, scrubbing, rinsing, scrubbing, rinsing, more scrubbing, more rinsing. Finally they seem to be done, and you wait impatiently for your own robe. Too suddenly for you to protest, a woman pries your thighs apart. You glimpse a long cotton swab, feel a pinch.

You yelp and close your legs. “What are you doing—?!”

“It’s just a screening for sexually transmitted infections,” the woman says cheerfully, smiling as she secures the cotton swab in a plastic tube.

You titter nervously, your heart still pounding. “Well, there’s no need for that.”

“Cover her up,” Aemond snaps, glancing in your direction. The prep team obediently tugs on your robe and even ties the knot for you, which is fortunate; your hands are shaking so badly you might not have been able to do it yourself. Then they slip the softest slippers you’ve ever felt onto your feet and lower you carefully to the floor, as if you are made of glass, porcelain, bone china.

“She’s ready!” one of the men announces, beaming at Aemond. Aemond doesn’t smile back. Instead he nods to you and slides open the cold metallic partition. Time to go.

When you are alone in the elevator together, Aemond lights a cigarette and says: “You and me, we don’t have any secrets.”

“Okay.”

“Because if I’m going to help you, if I’m going to protect you, I have to know everything.”

“Okay.”

“And I’ll be honest with you in return.”

“I appreciate that,” you say, meaning it. You need a friend here. You’re not in another district; you’re on another planet.

Aemond asks: “What have you done with a man?”

“Nothing.”

“What have you done with a woman?”

You laugh out of shock. “Still nothing.”

Aemond scrutinizes you. “What do you mean by nothing? You’ve had boyfriends, right? Even innocent ones? Obviously you’ve kissed somebody before. You’re freaking nineteen years old.”

You should probably be offended, but you’re not. “No.”

“Really?”

You shrug. “The boys who liked me were dumb or mean. No one I liked ever liked me back. I’m not that special, I guess.”

Aemond stares at you as the elevator ascends, and he doesn’t speak for a long time. His cigarette smolders between his fingers, forgotten. You are opposites, your benign white robe, his armored black suit. At last he says gently: “Happy birthday.”

“What?”

“Today’s your birthday, right? At the reaping you said you were turning nineteen tomorrow. Now it’s tomorrow. So happy birthday.”