wrap me in your skin and bones

The artificial light is blinding until you’ve had a moment to adjust. The walls are mirrors. Everything else is marble or gold, a sprawling countertop, two sinks, a glass-walled shower, a deep circular bathtub with little holes in the sides like horizontal spigots.

“What the heck are those for?” you mumble to yourself, prodding at them. Then as you’re bathing in endless hot water, a staggering indulgence, you notice a button on the rim of the tub. When you press it, there is an alarming racket and then bubbles come blasting out of the holes, battering you and making the whole tub churn with violent currents. You scream and hit the button again, and mercifully the water goes still.

There is a knock at the bathroom door. “Everything alright in there?” Charm asks, sounding remarkably unconcerned. You think you hear her yawn.

“There’s something wrong with the tub.”

“It’s a Swirlpool, idiot.”

“A what?”

“It’s a massage tub. The water that shoots out of the nozzles help soothe sore muscles and improve circulation and such. You’ll appreciate that later, trust me. Once you’ve bruised and bloodied yourself in the gymnasium.”

“Oh,” you reply, puzzled. You squint at the little holes again. Nozzles, you mentally amend.

“Hurry up. Salem is here with your outfit.” Then Charm abandons you; you can hear her heels clicking on the cold hard floor.

Salem is the stylist assigned to District 4, a tiny androgynous person with black hair and lightning-quick hands. They are waiting impatiently in the bedroom when you emerge in your robe, have you stripped in seconds, shove you into your clothes before you have a chance to glimpse them. Suddenly there are rings on your fingers and bracelets jangling on your wrists, all gold.

“Do you like it?” Salem asks, already wrangling with your hair. Their tone implies they don’t much care whether you do or not.

You spin around to look in the full-length mirror mounted on the wall, thinking: Why are there so many mirrors in this place? Salem has dressed you in a long flowing skirt that sits just above your navel, an off-white color like sand and patterned with royal blue stingrays. Your shirt is beaded, one large stingray to match the creatures on your skirt, its body covering your chest, its long tail cascading down your belly, its wings reaching around to meet at your mid-back. “It’s amazing! You did a wonderful job!”

“Of course I did,” Salem says. “Your ears aren’t pierced, are they?”

“No, why?”

Out of nowhere, Salem produces what looks like a small silver gun and jams it against your left earlobe. You yelp as it feels like you’re being stabbed, then Salem repeats the process on your right ear. When you consult the mirror again, you are wearing two gleaming gold studs to match your rings and bracelets. “Makeup next,” Salem says.

Three minutes later, Salem departs and you venture out to the common area. Charm and Commodore are both sitting on the couch and watching footage of this year’s Reaping Ceremonies, trying to memorize all the tributes’ names. Aemond is at the dining room table, taking notes and etching deep pensive grooves into his scarred forehead. He looks up and sees you, and for a moment he just stares.

“That Brookite from District 1 is so gorgeous,” Charm says, then glances over at Commodore. “If you end up killing her, don’t bash her face in or anything, alright? Her parents should get her back looking like herself.”

“Okay,” Commodore replies. He’s learned that Charm expects an engaged audience.

You tell Aemond, gesturing to your outfit: “This isn’t so bad.”

He chuckles. “Just wait. It gets weirder.”

“Aemond, you’re making a glare on the television,” Charm complains. She’s right: the sunlight streaming in through the windows reflects off his sapphire and scatters white dots across the screen. He sighs and goes to stand in the shadows. His suit is jade green; Charm’s short form-fitting dress is a similar shade, and accentuated by a very large hat shaped like an octopus. The beast glitters with stones of emerald, peridot, aquamarine, blue topaz. Its bulging blind eyes are ghost-white pearls.

You notice that Commodore is eating an enormous bowl of cereal, something you don’t have in District 4. The tiny pieces are in a rainbow of colors and shaped like animals: blue elephants, orange kangaroos, green alligators, red bats, white bears, others you can’t readily identify. There is a cardboard box on the coffee table labelled Polychromatic Pets! “Aren’t we headed to breakfast?”

Charm says: “You think this megalodon is going to fill up anytime soon?”

Aemond comes over to you and hangs something around your neck. It’s one of the filleting knives from Daddy’s set, the mother of pearl hilt gleaming, the blade tucked into a brand new sheath: not worn leather but silver, forged to look like a nest of seaweed and swimming fish, the sharp metal of the knife just barely visible through the gaps. Each fish has a tiny fleck of a gemstone as an eye: emerald, ruby, amethyst, onyx, opal, sapphire. The hilt is suspended from a long, thin silver chain, so that the knife rests at your breastbone.

“Oh, that’s lovely, Aemond,” Charm says, her green gaze wide.

“Is this okay?” Aemond asks you.

You take the weapon in your hand to study it and smile. “I like it. I’ll always have a piece of home with me.”

Charm snorts. “It’s not supposed to be sentimental. It’s for stabbing and slicing.”

There is a bizarre repeated buzzing sound. Aemond reaches into his suit jacket and produces a small device, red with black buttons and a little screen at the top. He peers down at it, unspeaking, expressionless.

“What is that?” you ask.

Aemond says, still reading the screen: “A mobile phone.”

A phone? That’s just for him?? That’s not attached to the wall??? “Who’s calling?”

“Nobody.”

“I thought we didn’t have any secrets,” you tease lightly.

“It’s not a secret,” Aemond pitches back, unsmiling, severe, shoving the phone into a black pocket sewn on the inside of his jacket. “I just don’t want to talk about it.”

And before you can apologize, Charm hustles all three of you off to the elevator. She smacks an adhesive nametag onto Commodore’s titan chest, and then distributes one to you as well. You stick it to your beaded stingray top, stealing timid peeks at Aemond. He stands with his hands crossed over his chest and stares at the wall, but you don’t think he’s seeing anything. Charm totters over to him in her green heels and squeezes his shoulders and yanks him around a little bit, is playful with him, tells him to loosen up, and remarkably Aemond smiles.

There is a welcome breakfast being held in the garden on the roof of the Tribute Center, not just for the twenty-four tributes but also their escorts and mentors, and some other victors as well. Among the glass-and-gold tables and the opulent blooms that resemble flowers you’ve seen before—orchids but larger, roses but brighter, glittering pearlescent calla lilies that spial around statues and fountains—you spot brawny blonde Palladium Barker from District 1, gregarious Chaff from District 11 who lost his left hand in the Games, middle-aged Mags with her grey hair and her kind face. You see Jackline Humboldt, who won three years ago, grinning as he moves briskly from table to table, his skin tan and his hair hanging in glossy dark waves.

“Jack! Hey, Jack!” the young tributes are all calling to him, beaming, waiting eagerly for their turn to shake his hand and ask for advice. But when you look to Aemond, he’s watching Jackline with a cold, wary gaze. Aemond would know him better than just about anyone. Aemond was his mentor, and Aemond helped him win.

You don’t remember much from Jack’s Games; your family always ignored them as much as possible, getting vital updates from neighbors and customers but turning away from the television screens displayed around town. But there is one part that stayed with you. You remember taking a basket of fresh tuna fillets to the marketplace where Misty was already set up, and witnessing a scene you immediately wished you’d never seen. Jack had cornered a girl from District 8 with his spear, and he could easily stab her in the chest or the throat and end her suffering quickly. But instead he jabbed his spearpoint through her belly and then left her there to die alone, the girl cowering between two boulders, forsaken in the mountainous terrain, her hands turning red as she tried to keep pressure on the wound long enough for one of her sponsors to send her a miracle.

Charm points to the gold railing along the perimeter of the roof. “There’s a forcefield, so don’t think you can jump off or anything. You’ll just get me in trouble and earn yourself a nice zap.”

“Hello, Charm!” the District 2 escort Citadella warbles saccharinely. She is standing with several other women, sipping champagne but not eating. “Oh, what an extraordinary hat you’re wearing! Isn’t that a lovely hat, Lapis? It’s so eye-catching, so appropriate for District 4, so…mollusky!”

Charm administers herself a dose of white powder from her compact and then strides off to join them. Aemond goes to say hello to Mags. She’s from District 4 as well, and she won the 11th Hunger Games ages ago; she was probably Aemond’s mentor. You and Commodore investigate the buffet. It’s a peculiar combination, half desserts and half protein. Commodore loads up two plates with lobsters, raw salmon and tuna cut into thin slivers, ribeye steak, bacon, and quail eggs. You get a few muffins and something called a crepe, like a pancake but thinner, stuffed with bananas and berries and fresh whipped cream.

With your plate in hand, you scout the tables, arranged around a shallow koi pond. Commodore goes to sit with the boy from District 1 and the girl from District 2. Their nametags identify them as Hawk and Saratoga. Hawk has sandy blonde hair; Saratoga wears her short dark curls in a practical ponytail. Commodore and Hawk must have already crossed paths, maybe yesterday when you were all being tormented by the prep teams, because Hawk greets Commodore with a big familiar smile and a firm handshake. You don’t seem to be invited.

You consider the other tables. The really young kids are sitting together: Jet from District 12, Marble from District 10, and Babylon from District 5. They’re giggling as they hurl pieces of raw fish at each other. Babylon is the youngest, only twelve years old, chocolate brown hair and bright hazel eyes. You can hear people calling him Baby.

The kids from Districts 3 and 6 are at another table, and the girl from District 5, Noria, is with them. The District 7 and 8 tributes are building a tower out of cookies. Gotha and Bobcat from District 9 are chatting about growing seasons with the boy from District 10, Jutland.

But where do I fit in?

You’ve never really had to make friends before. With as many older siblings as you have, there were always playmates and confidants around. It was effortless. It was safe, it was home.

You glance over at Aemond. He’s sipping champagne as he chats with Mags; she’s explaining something to him as he nods attentively, leaning down to hear her better, her wrinkled hands gesturing emphatically and her grey hair blowing in the breeze. Jackline Humboldt has made his way to Commodore’s table, and they seem to be getting along swimmingly.

Someone is making obnoxious kissing noises. You whirl to see the boy from District 2 leering at you from where he’s slouched in his chair, black sweatsuit, hair like fire. He’s sitting at a table with the rest of the tributes, all seventeen or eighteen: Brookite from District 1, Pluto from District 12, Isla and Montgomery from District 11. Montgomery has crossed out his name with a blue pen and written Monty above it instead. The District 2 boy’s nametag reads: Roosevelt. “You ain’t gonna hang out with the kids still learning their letters and shapes, are you? Circles, triangles, stars, hearts.”

“He’s inviting you to sit with us,” Isla says, smiling. She wears a loose silk dress decorated with oranges and her hair in a cloud-soft plume like a halo. “He’s just intellectually disabled.”

“What the fuck kind of name is Roosevelt, anyway?” Monty asks.

The redhead bristles. “It’s after a boat.”

Your interest is piqued; this is your area of expertise. “What sort of boat?”

“I don’t know, a big one! An important one. A battle boat.”

“A warship,” you correct him, dropping into the chair beside Brookite. She grins, a scrunched nose, perfect white teeth. Her long blonde hair is secured in a braid. Brookie, Roosevelt had called her yesterday.

“You shouldn’t be eating that,” Isla tells you, frowning at your muffins and crepe.

“I’m not really hungry at all,” you confess. You haven’t been since you were reaped. But it’s easier to nibble at muffins than a lobster.

“Yeah, but you need protein. Not sugar.”

“Stop helping her!” Roosevelt says, lighting a cigarette. His lighter isn’t crystal like Aemond’s, only scratched and square and metal.

“Some of these names are crazy, man,” Monty says as he cuts his steak, blood on his plate. “Roosevelt? Bobcat? Houndstooth? How do you hold an innocent baby and say ‘He looks like a Houndstooth to me’?!”

Pluto replies: “I could have sworn I heard one of the District 10 kids talking about having a sibling named Brisket.”

The others burst out laughing, and then you do too, and you think, elated: I have friends!

“No you didn’t,” Brookie says. “No way.”

“I did!” Pluto insists.

Roosevelt puffs on his cigarette. “I’d be tempted to eat a kid named Brisket.”

“There’s been cannibalism in the Games before,” Monty says grimly. “That time when the arena was a deserted island. And the one with all the snow.”

“The tundra,” Roosevelt remembers. “I loved that year. The polar bear mutts…brilliant.”

“Brisket,” Brookie marvels to herself.

“We should do the Hunger Games with just District 10,” Isla says.

“Every year,” Brookie agrees. “Until they’re extinct like the dinosaurs.”

“What are dinosaurs?” Pluto asks sincerely, and the others loudly boo him. He shows his palms in contrition. Pluto has pallid, almost sickly skin and dark hair and is tall and broad, like Monty, although they’d both look small next to Commodore.

“You don’t learn about dinosaurs in District 12?” you say.

“They don’t learn about nothing in District 12,” Roosevelt answers. “Yesterday he asked me what multiplication is.”

“But you don’t know how to shovel coal,” Pluto counters.

“Pluto, buddy, I’d rather be named Brisket than shovel coal.” Roosevelt offers you his glowing cigarette, and you hesitate.

“It’s dangerous, isn’t it?” you say. “Cancer? Emphysema?”

“Cancer?! People don’t get cancer here. And the Capitol can give you new lungs if you ever need them.” Roosevelt smirks. “And if you don’t win the Games, well…the cigs won’t be what kills you.”

“Right,” you reluctantly concede. You take the cigarette but don’t really know what to do with it. Brookie plucks it out of your hand and takes a drag instead, giving you a wink.

“That’s why Hawk volunteered,” Brookie says when she exhales smoke, her voice hushed and pitying. “He has something wrong with him, a genetic thing, and his kidneys are going bad. They’ll fail completely in the next few years. There’s nothing they can do for him in District 1, but the Capitol would get him a transplant. They grow organs in labs, they can fix just about everything. A lot of people here live to be over a hundred years old.”

“Bad kidneys, huh?” Roosevelt says as he gnaws on a strip of crispy bacon, gazing across the garden at Hawk and grinning. Brookie looks ashamed, like she has unwittingly betrayed him. She passes the cigarette to Pluto, who takes a drag and then has a coughing fit, his lungs rattling.

Monty sighs. “I should have asked that babe who works on the tobacco farm next door to be my girlfriend. Now who knows if I’ll ever see her again.”

“My girlfriend dumped me when I got reaped,” Pluto says. “Told me we had no future. Not great for the self-esteem.”

“Well my boyfriend is waiting patiently for my Victory Tour,” Brookie says.

“You didn’t break up with him before you came here?” Roosevelt asks her.

Brookie is confounded. “Why would I break up with him?”

“Because I’m going to murder you,” Roosevelt says. “But even in the unlikely event that I don’t, if you win this thing you can have anyone. Anyone in Panem. The hottest, tallest, smartest, nicest, richest guy you could possibly imagine.” That’s not true, you think, but the other tributes don’t know it yet. “Why would you want to end up with some bum from home?”

Brookie chuckles. “He’s not a bum. He’s a gemcutter.”

Roosevelt picks up his butter knife and aims the blade at her. “When I gut you, Brookite, I’ll be a gemcutter too.”

They all cackle; you suppose it’s easy to joke about the Games when they’re still twelve days away, a relative eternity, a distant galaxy. The tributes have longer to live in paradise than they’ll last in the arena. Roosevelt twists in his chair to look at you, twirling the butter knife between his agile fingers. He uses it to point to the filleting knife hanging from the long silver chain around your throat.

“Speaking of gutting, do you really know how to use that thing? Or is Aemond just working his magic?”

Monty groans. “I’ve heard he’s good.”

“He’s very good,” Roosevelt agrees, still watching you. “But I want to see if she is.”

“I know how to use the knife,” you say.

“Okay. Prove it.” He leaps up, so abruptly that everyone recoils. He goes to the koi pond, wades into it with no hesitation, juts one hand below the surface and produces a wriggling, asphyxiating fish, huge, all white, delicate flowing fins. The other breakfast attendees gasp and ogle in horror. Roosevelt brings the koi back to the table and slaps it down on your plate. “Go on. Give us a demonstration.”

In front of you, the misfortunate fish flops around in the soggy remains of your crepe. Roosevelt rests both elbows on the table and laces his fingers beneath his chin as he waits impatiently.

“Well?” he prompts.

You slide your filleting knife out of its metallic sheath. “How long do you think it will take?”

“Two minutes,” Monty guesses.

“One minute,” Roosevelt says, watching you intently with sharp eyes, so murky a brown they’re almost black.

“I’ll count,” Isla offers.

“I’ll move out of the way so I don’t get splattered with fish organs,” Brookie says as she shimmies her chair over towards Pluto.

You smile at all of them, one after the other, the knife clenched in your fist.

“Oh, sweet baby Jesus,” Brookie mutters. Jesus? you think fleetingly. Who’s that?

You grab the koi and bury the blade between its eyes, drag the filleting knife backwards a few inches. The fish goes limp. You turn it onto its side, cut just behind the gills, follow the spine to the tail, do another pass to separate the fillet from the skin. You flip the fish and repeat the process. “Fillets,” you say, laying the two pristine slabs of meat in one stack. “For stocks and stews,” you say next, piling the head, bones, tail, and innards in another.

“Eleven seconds,” Isla says, stunned. Brookie, Monty, and Pluto are gawking at you.

“Who’s next?” you quip, brandishing the filleting knife, and they laugh. You think again, beaming: I have friends.

Roosevelt shrugs, feigning indifference, chomping on his bacon. “Well, I won’t just be lying there like a fish.”

“I’ll help her catch you,” Brookie says.

You look out at the garden. The other tributes are watching you too, you realize, and the escorts, and the previous years’ victors. Charm is whispering triumphantly to a shocked Citadella. From where he’s still standing with Mags, Aemond raises his champagne glass, like he’s toasting you.

You are in a claustrophobic dressing room, and Salem is pushing and tugging at you. There is harsh artificial light. There are shelves cluttered with sprays and lotions and paints. Through the walls, covered in mirrors, you can hear the crowd outside rumbling like the ocean, omnipotent, omnipresent. You aren’t feeling too panicked at the moment. You’re almost feeling a little hopeful. I still have twelve days until the Games. And I have friends. And I have Aemond.

Abruptly, Salem stops jostling you and says something strange. “You know I have to do what I’m told, right?”

You blink at them, mystified. “Sure. We all do, I guess.”

“Good,” Salem says. Then they start for the door.

You check your reflection, and you feel sick. “Wait!” you cry, and Salem pauses. “You aren’t done, are you?”

“I am.” There is a hint of compassion in their voice, quiet but real.

“No.” You are wearing something to represent your district, just like all the tributes are expected to in the parade. You are draped in silver silk netting and peppered with bejeweled creatures sewn into the fabric, angelfish and seahorses and dolphins and octopuses. Below the waist you are relatively concealed, but the netting is sparse at your chest. Very, very sparse. The most camouflage you have is the filleting knife that hangs in a stripe down your sternum. “You can’t be done yet. It’s not finished. It’s…I mean…the audience…all of Panem…they’ll be able to see everything!”

“Yes. They will.” And the meaning is clear, and you should already know it: the second you climbed that stage and were declared a tribute in the Hunger Games, your body stopped being yours. Your skin belongs to the Capitol now. Your blood and bones will belong to the Capitol if your murder is broadcasted on their screens. And if you win—improbably, perhaps nearly impossibly—everything you are will belong to the people who pay for it.

You’re nauseous, you’re dizzy, you’re shivering so violently your teeth chatter. I’m going to cry. I’m going to pass out. “Can you get Aemond, please?”

“Of course,” Salem says, and vanishes. As soon as they’re gone, you rupture into tears, even if you ruin your makeup, even if it’s pointless and childish and weak.

Why did I think I could survive this? Why did I think I’d want to?

Aemond appears in the dressing room and clicks the door shut behind him. “What’s wrong?” he says, and then he sees your face and he understands.

“I know they’re going to kill me, but do they have to do this first? Do they have to humiliate me and put me on display like this, do they have to show all those men what they could buy someday?”

“No one is going to kill you,” Aemond says, a lie that sounds so honest when it’s colored by his voice.

“I’ve never done anything,” you sob. “And now I’m never going to get the chance to. I’ve never been kissed, I’ve never had a boyfriend, I’ve never had sex, I’ve never even had an orgasm, I’m never going to get married, I’m never going to have children, I’m never going to see my family again, I want to go home, I want to go home!”

And perhaps because he doesn’t know what else to do, Aemond catches you and wraps his arms around your waist, holds you from behind so tightly your heart and lungs are deceived into believing you’re safe, and each time you moan in horror and misery he whispers to you—shh, shh, shh—until you can breathe again and your tears drip slowly, and you aren’t shuddering but still, and for a moment you don’t hear the thunder of the crowd waiting outside to watch the Tribute Parade.

You whisper: “I don’t want them to look at me.”

“Hey,” Aemond says, your eyes meeting in the reflection of the mirror. “I’m looking at you right now. No one else is, but I am. And I’m going to help you.”

“Nothing belongs to me anymore, not even my skin—”

“Shh. We’ll fix it,” Aemond promises. “Can I touch you?”

He always asks first. He’s the only one who does. “Yeah,” you sniffle.

His hands are light, efficient, swift but cautious. First he tries to adjust the very little silk netting he has to work with above your waist. He averts his gaze as much as he can; his lithe fingers are careful not to brush your nipples. Then he realizes this is a lost cause and goes to the shelves instead. Aemond rummages through the cannisters and jars until he finds something that gives him an idea. He returns to you with a spray bottle, clear liquid in which is suspended a universe of stars, silver flecks that whirl and glimmer. He begins to cover you with it, misting your chest and your arms and your shoulders and your back. The liquid is cold and smells like coconuts; your heartbeat is thudding back into a slow, sturdy rhythm.

“They aren’t looking at your skin,” Aemond says as he works, very calm, very tender, forcing you to believe him. When you breathe, something he’s wearing fills your aching lungs, a scent that’s sweet but dark that you’re too rattled to identify. “They’re looking at the sparkles. And you’re wearing them, but they’re not you. You are beneath them, and you are safe there. Sunlight glittering on the waves. Cool hidden depths below.”

That’s why he wears the sapphire, you realize for the first time. So they see that, not him. When they force him to be a killer. When they pay for him to fuck them.

Aemond coats you repeatedly until the spray bottle is nearly empty and your body is obscured, so the light will rebound off of you and redirect ravening eyes. Then he mists his own hands and uses his thumbs to draw a gleaming semicircle beneath each of your eyes, starving moons, curved hulls of crystalline ships. When you check the mirror again, you can barely tell you’re practically naked. “Better?” Aemond asks.

“So much better,” you manage, smiling embarrassedly. After everything they’ve done to him, after everything they’ll do to me, is this really so bad? “Thank you, Aemond. I’m sorry that…I shouldn’t have…”

“It’s alright,” he says, replacing the bottle on the shelf. “You’re alright. Let’s go.”

The rest of the tributes are already waiting in their chariots, lined up in a row in a long dark tunnel that leads outside. The procession will pass through the center of the Capitol—stands set up for the audience to gawk from as they eat their pastries and guzzle their cocktails, television screens broadcasting the opening ceremony of the 47th Annual Hunger Games across all twelve districts—and end at President Snow’s mansion. The sun has set, but even from deep inside the tunnel you can see the glaring white lights of the parade route. You can hear the booming, reverberating voice of Caesar Flickerman, the host of the Games, hyping up the crowd and reminding them of the tributes’ names and ages and alleged attributes.

All of the mentors, escorts, and stylists are wearing flat black so as not to distract from their tributes. Salem is up on the chariot fixing a snag in Commodore’s netting; he is fortunate to be mostly covered by several large bejeweled sea turtles caught in the silk. Each chariot’s horses matches the tributes’ outfits; the District 4 horses are silver. The District 3 tributes parked in front of you, wearing shiny black jumpsuits embossed with neon green numbers, have glossy ebony horses. Their mentor, Beetee Latier, is making them laugh with riddles so they won’t be too nervous. Aemond goes to pet one of the silver horses while Charm checks her hair and makeup in her compact mirror.

Salem, their job complete, steps down from the chariot and beckons you to climb up beside Commodore. You do, feeling like a herring next to a swordfish. If he’s surprised by the fact that you’re covered in sparkles for some reason, he doesn’t show it. There is rousing music outside, and you recognize it from the Tribute Parades you’ve glimpsed on the televisions in District 4.

But now it’s me, you think dazedly, still wrestling with how that’s possible. You wonder if your family is watching tonight. You wonder if they’ll see you die, or if they won’t be able to bring themselves to witness it.

The chariots begin to roll forward, and Aemond and Charm move out of their way. Charm waves halfheartedly. “Good luck! Have fun!” Then she resumes analyzing her reflection.

When you cross through the archway at the end of the tunnel, the noise becomes deafening. The spotlight is so bright you can’t see anything for a moment until your eyes adjust. Then you can identify other tributes on the giant television screens mounted around the stands teeming with spectators and sponsors: Brookie and Hawk in garments made of a myriad of gemstones, Saratoga and Roosevelt wearing form-fitting, greenish-grey military uniforms with silver buttons and an eagle insignia. Then you see yourself, a constellation, a mirrorball, and the crowd thunders like a storm blowing in off the ocean.

Beside you, Commodore beams and waves to the audience, and you follow suit. Then you remember what you did on Reaping Day, and you blow a kiss too; from two chariots ahead, Roosevelt peers back to glower at you. Women cheer, men howl like wolves. Caesar Flickerman’s disembodied voice explodes through the speakers, not talking about any of the other tributes but only you.

Commodore scoops you up into his arms, and at first you’re so alarmed you scream, then you quickly recover and smile for the cameras. He spins you around three times, throws you several feet into the air, catches you easily and sets you back down on your feet. And you know exactly why he did it. Now Caesar Flickerman is talking about both of the tributes from District 4: how tremendously large and strong Commodore is, how brightly you sparkle.

All twelve chariots roll to a halt as they reach the end of the route, horses snorting and pawing at the pavement. On his towering white balcony that overlooks the ceremony, President Snow rises to the podium. He is about the same age as Mags, in his fifties and grey-haired, but there is nothing kind or soft about him. You can see on the screens that his blue eyes are clever and charismatic but icy, the lines in his face not carved by smiling but determination, fierce focus, resentment, rage. He raises a white-gloved hand and the raucous crowd falls silent.

“Tributes,” President Snow says, smiling coldly down at you and the others, his eyes lingering on no one in particular. This must be muscle memory for him, you think. After all these years. “We welcome you. We salute you. We celebrate your courage and your sacrifice. We wish you a very happy Hunger Games, and may the odds be ever in your favor.”

The audience applauds again, and whistles, and shrieks, and sponsors are murmuring to each other about the betting odds, and cameras are zooming in on the tributes for one last look tonight. Then as the chariots begin to circle back around, President Snow’s gaze falls on you. And it must not just be muscle memory after all, because he grins down through the glaring lights, and then with his pale lips and his white gloves he blows a kiss.

“What the hell was that?!” Aemond roars at Commodore when the chariots return to the tunnel. Other tributes peek over, some simply curious, some opportunistic, smelling blood in the water. “Did I say you could do that?!”

“I thought it was delightful,” Charm trills, and she has that overly-animated look she gets in her eyes when she’s snorting her white powder, and she’s shifting her weight restlessly from foot to foot, and she keeps wringing her hands and making her onyx bracelets clatter. You and Commodore dismount from the chariot. He goes to stand beside Charm; you stay near Aemond.

Aemond shakes his head, incensed. “It makes her look small, it makes her look weak.”

Charm flourishes her hands erratically. “Or it makes her look like a damsel in distress! Men love that. She’ll get sponsors.”

“That’s not for him to decide, Charm!”

“Jack said I could do it,” Commodore says.

“Jack isn’t your fucking mentor! I am!”

“She’s your favorite,” Commodore accuses bitterly, and now his deep-set brown eyes are slick, a rare show of emotion from him. “You aren’t going to help me.”

Abruptly, mortally, Aemond is wounded. “Of course I’m going to help you.”

“Well I don’t want your help,” Commodore says. “I want Jack. And Charm, and Mags. Not you.”

“Fine,” Aemond snaps, turning away. “Do whatever the fuck you want.”

As he leaves, Charm pats Commodore’s colossal bicep reassuringly. “Ignore him, my dear landbound blue whale. Tensions are high. Tempers flare. He’ll apologize in the morning…”

You follow after Aemond, and although he’s walking very quickly, he slows down so you can catch up.

It’s late, no stars outside only city lights, and their constellations glow stark and cruel. You stand at the window in your long silk nightgown, and your reflection is a cipher, dark and vague. How many tributes have stood in this same spot before they were released into the arena to be gutted, roasted, exsanguinated, frozen, flayed, mauled, macerated? There have been forty-six female tributes from District 4 before you, and how many survived? Why would you be special? Why would the odds be in your favor?

I can’t win, you think. You felt better in the daylight, but when the sun vanishes there aren’t as many distractions, and you can hear the ever-ticking countdown plummeting towards zero in your skull. I can’t kill those people.

And even if you did somehow…you know exactly what would happen next.

You glide your knife out of its sheath and contemplate the blade, long and thin and slightly curved. The mother of pearl hilt fits perfectly in your palm. Then you look down at your wrists and instantly wince. No, you don’t have the stomach for that.

Your gaze returns to the window. Tentatively, you tap the hilt of your knife against the glass. Surely the Gamemakers have already thought of that, and there is a forcefield outside and the glass is impenetrable anyway, and sure enough no spider-leg cracks appear. But still, you envision yourself breaking it, and free-falling through the cool night air, and ending your life swiftly and painlessly and on your own terms.

“That won’t work,” Aemond says from the doorway, and you startle, almost dropping the knife.

“I wasn’t going to do anything.”

“Sure,” he says, and crosses the bedroom to meet you by the window. He extends a hand and waits for you to surrender the knife. Eventually you do. Then he asks, his voice low and gentle: “What are you most afraid of?”

You’re ashamed; you look through the window instead of at him. “I guess I’m scared that I’m going to get trapped somehow, and I’ll have a horribly painful death, like I’ll get boiled alive or slowly ripped apart by mutts, and there won’t be anything I can do about it. I feel like I have no control. I feel like I’m doomed not just to die but to suffer.”

In the glass, you see Aemond’s reflection nod. He understands. “Can I touch you?”

What? Why? You turn back to him. “Of course.”

Using two fingers, Aemond feels along the side of your neck until he finds a place that is rigid and throbbing. He lays the point of the blade against your throat, then puts your hand on the hilt, just on top of his. “This is the carotid artery,” he says. “It’s not instant, and it’s not painless, but it is very quick. If you’re in the arena, and you’re absolutely sure there’s no chance, that’s your escape hatch.”

“Okay,” you whisper, grateful and horrified and realizing you don’t want him to stop touching you. He’s the only person you feel that way about here.

Aemond lifts the chain holding the sheath from your neck, slides the knife inside, and doesn’t give it back to you. “Go to sleep now.”

“You don’t get attached,” you observe. You’re not sure how he doesn’t; it seems impossible.

“Every year, children are sent here, and I try to save them,” Aemond says. “And I begin to hope even though I swear to myself I won’t do it again. Then I watch them die. Every year, it’s the same. I lost almost every single kid. One survived, not because of any exceptional talent of mine but because he was already well on his way to becoming a monster, and the Capitol has finished the job. And another made it out of the arena but couldn’t cope with what she’d done and what came next. She was a baby, barely fifteen, and it wasn’t…it was very different than it is with you. She seemed even younger than she was. She was like a little sister to me. I did everything I could to get her through the Games, and it worked, and she lasted a few years. But maybe it would have been kinder to let her go sooner. The Capitol said it was a car accident, but…” Aemond closes his eye for a moment, flinches, shakes his head. “All the rest were killed. I saw their blood flow, I heard the sound of the cannon. So yes, maintaining some emotional distance is wise.”

The nightmare never ends. Even if you win, you never leave the Games. “That makes sense.” Does that mean you could never care about me?

“Go to sleep,” Aemond says again, and then he’s gone.

There is a party being held to revel in the opening of the Games, and to give sponsors an opportunity to mingle with the tributes, to size them up, to decide whether to devour them like butchered fish laid out on ice in the marketplace. Tonight, District 4 is a seemingly united front, all in red. You wear a gown of crimson crabs and sheer silk, and a generous application of sparkles from a spray bottle so you shimmer under the lights. Now that’s something people expect to see from you.

Each year a different mentor hosts this event, often arranged to take place at a museum or a ballroom. But for the 47th Hunger Games, Aemond was chosen for the honor, and his home is opulent enough all on its own. He lives in a mansion with glass walls, rambling and immense, high ceilings, frigid marble floors. The rooms are bizarrely empty: a couch here, a table there, a bookshelf, a food dish for one of his silent skeletal dogs, each surrounded by oceans of colorless echoing space.

Charm is dragging Commodore around so the sponsors can poke and pinch at his gargantuan bones in person, but you have escaped. You hate the way the sponsors smile at you, not listening to a word you’re saying, imagining how you will be murdered, picturing you lying naked underneath them. Brookie is good at this part, and so is Isla, they’re able to endure it for a chance at a life-saving delivery to them in the arena. And they don’t really know what winning means.

You take your glass of champagne—that’s the other thing, the sponsors keep trying to get the tributes drunk—and click in your red heels through forlorn, fantastical rooms until you find one that is presently unoccupied. It’s bare except for a glass case that takes up a whole wall, all the way up to the ceiling and brightly illuminated, full of bewildering valuables: gemstones, fossils, relics, paintings, sculptures, coins, pieces of jewelry, pocket watches on chains. You are still trying to figure out what this room is when Aemond wanders in, stands beside you, contemplates his own dazzling treasury.

“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable with any of the things I said yesterday,” you tell him. “Right before the Tribute Parade, I mean. I was…well, I was really upset, obviously.”

Aemond smiles, perhaps bashfully, blood in his cheeks, his rain-blue eye on the marble floor, his hands in his pockets. He wears a maroon suit, immaculately tailored as always. “That’s perfectly alright. I’ve heard all sorts of outbursts from tributes. It’s a singularly stressful situation.”

“I’m glad I didn’t offend you.”

“No, I was just a bit surprised. By one disclosure in particular.”

You’re pretty sure you know which one. Not the never having a boyfriend part, not the never having been kissed. He knew about those already. What he didn’t know was that you’ve never had an orgasm either. I can’t believe I said that, you think, mortified. “I mean, I’ve tried.”

He chuckles nervously, still not looking at you. “I’m sure you have.”

“But no dice. And now I have less than two weeks to live and I’m not really in the mood, so…it seems pretty hopeless.”

He nods, studying the artefacts in the tall glass case, or at least pretending to. Multicolored flecks of light dart across his flushed face. “It can be tricky for women.”

“We don’t have any secrets,” you remind him so you’ll feel less embarrassed.

“No,” he agrees. “We don’t.”

To change the subject, you point to the transparent box of treasures. “These are all yours?”

“Gifts,” he says. “From fans, friends, Gamemakers, victors I’ve done favors for. And clients, of course.”

The red phone, you realize suddenly with dismay. You don’t want to make him think about that. “What’s that one?” you ask, tapping the glass where it covers a blue-violet stone the shade of a bruise and the size of a fist. Not your fist. A huge one, like Commodore’s.

“Tanzanite.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s only found in one location in the entire world, at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. That’s why it’s called tanzanite.”

“Which district is Tanzania in?”

Aemond smiles. “It’s not in any of the districts. It’s in Africa.”

“What’s Africa?”

“A place beyond Panem.” A place with no President Snow and no Hunger Games, he means, although he cannot say it out loud. Someone is always listening, even if you cannot see them. Everybody everywhere knows this. In Panem, at least.

“How many other places are there?”

“A lot,” Aemond answers.

Next you indicate a dragon head carved out of stone, large eyes that are insentient and yet expressive somehow. “How about this?”

“A piece of Aztec ruins from Mexico.”

Another place you didn’t know existed, more names you can’t attach meaning to. But you can tell Aemond is enjoying this, so you keep asking questions. “What about the skinny black creature with the big ears and the golden eyes?”

“That’s from King Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt.”

“Now you’re just making up words.”

He laughs, like he’s just a normal person and so are you, and you met on a fishing boat or in the marketplace. “No, I swear. It’s real. That’s a shrine to Anubis, the god that guards the dead. It’s over three thousand years old.”

“He’s a dog?”

“He’s a jackal.” And then, more encouragingly: “But sort of like a dog, yes.”

You ponder the relic, crouched on a golden altar. “I’d like to think there’s someone to watch over us when we go to whatever’s next.”

“It’s cursed,” Aemond says, hushed and mischievous, grinning. He’s leaning in close to you, his hands clasped behind his back. You can feel the warmth of the blood rushing beneath his skin, breathe in the remnants of his soap and cologne and aftershave, something like vanilla but darker, woodier, something that makes you think of the boardwalk from home on a scorching summer day, dry sand sieving through the splintering planks when it falls from your sandals.

“Is it?”

“The Ancient Egyptians had complex burial rituals, especially for their kings, called pharaohs. They would preserve the body and put it in a tomb filled with their earthly possessions so they could take everything with them to the afterlife. Sometimes they’d even kill their pets and servants to keep them company. And then…” He demonstrates the shape with his hands. “They’d bury the pharaoh and his treasures in a pyramid, a massive stone structure. They’d leave warnings carved into the stone: do not disturb this place, do not open this tomb, do not steal the pharaoh’s riches, if you do you will be cursed. Then thousands of years later, when explorers found the tombs and opened them to see what was inside, they died in all sorts of strange ways. They got infections. They wasted away. People called it the curse of the pharaohs, their revenge from the grave.”

Your head is spinning, and not just from the champagne. This is a lot to process. Egypt? Pharaohs? Pyramids? Curses? “How do you know about all that?”

“I read a lot. I have lunches with university professors. I enjoy history and science, and here in the Capitol, we have much more access to information than the districts.”

“Is that why you don’t live in the Victors’ Village in District 4?” you ask. “Mags does, with her family. Jack is there a lot too. And I’ve heard that your parents and siblings have lived comfortably in the village ever since you won the Games. But you never come home.”

Aemond shrugs. “District 4 isn’t my home anymore.”

“Why not?”

“The things you have to do to win the Games, and then the things you do afterwards…” He pauses, and when you look at him you can tell he’s very far away, distant, mournful. “Your family won’t understand. There are these vast, cold spaces that open up between you, even if you don’t want there to be. They watch you murder people on tv, and then they try to forget you’re a killer, but they can’t because they’re reminded of it every year. And you feel ashamed, and you want to change who you are, you want to take steel wool and scrub away all the parts of yourself you’ve ruined, but even if you tried the Capitol would just kill you and everyone you’ve ever loved. You’re not at home in the Capitol. But you’re not at home wherever you came from either. You just…” He skates his hand across an imaginary window. “Float. From year to year, from Games to Games. Surrounded by things that sparkle. Never touching what’s underneath.”

You reach over and take his hand, and at first Aemond startles, like he’s not used to it. Then he relaxes, and you offer a half-joke. “I sparkle. But you’re touching me.”

And Aemond smiles, he glows, all the way up to the eye he has left; then he is determined. “There are ways people can get out,” he says, very quietly now. “If you’ve served enough time, and you can pay. I’ve been here for a decade, I’m not shiny and new anymore. Other victors are younger. Other victors have more clients, and there’s always a new one every year to reinvigorate their fantasies. The Capitol doesn’t want me as badly as they used to. I’ve been saving up these gifts for ten years, and I almost have enough. Soon I’ll be able to buy my way onto a ship, and I’ll leave Panem, and I’ll never come back.”

You’re astonished. “You would disappear?”

“Wouldn’t you want to do the same thing?”

“That sounds very risky. That sounds almost impossible.” It sounds like a mirage, something to keep him from slitting open his blue veins in the desolate dark of the long nights. And I don’t believe the Capitol would ever let you go, Aemond.

“There’s another world out there somewhere, and I’m going to find it.”

“There is no other world. We have to make the best of this one.”

Aemond gazes at you. He’s still holding your hand. The clock ticking in your skull falls silent; the grains of sand stop tumbling through the throat of an hourglass. “I’m sorry. I lied to you before.”

“Really?”

“I do get attached.”

“What?”

“When I meet the new tributes each year,” Aemond says, a confession, a curse. “I do get attached. To some more than others.”

This proposal gave him pause, but he could not see any flaw in it. It was long time for him to take a second wife, he knew, at the least to secure his line, but for his own benefit as well. He longed for companionship and the warmth of a woman, and he thought a maternal presence would help in his son’s welfare.

“I shall think on it,” he replied, and Sabitha seemed satisfied. Those were not empty words, and he truly meant to think on the matter.

“One of the men you led to King’s Landing is upstairs,” she then said, catching him off-guard—while she had ladylike manners, she was blunt and direct, which he appreciated. “His wife, my oldest daughter, is sitting with him.”

“How is he faring?” he asked with a frown.

“Dying a slow death, the one any soldier fears,” Sabitha replied, a frown of sorrow on her face.

At that, Cregan pushed from the table and rose. “Might I visit him?” he inquired, and she rose with him, gesturing for him to step into the hallway. She guided him up a few flights of stairs, higher in the tower, and he followed. At the end of a wide corridor, she knocked on a painted wooden door, then stepped aside, allowing him to enter. 

The chamber was kept comfortably warm, a blazing fire in the hearth. At the foot of the bed, sitting in a large armchair, a young woman was falling asleep on her knitting—it looked like a shawl of some sort, in a deep forest green. You startled as you saw him in the threshold, and were quick to rise, putting your knitting aside.

Cregan gestured for you to sit, but you remained standing. “I do not wish to intrude,” he said. “I simply wanted to pay my respects to my man.”

“Forgive me, my lord, for not coming down to supper,” you replied with a sad smile. “I was told you had arrived, but I was needed here.”

Cregan glanced at the sleeping man, his chest heavy—no matter how many deaths he had seen in this war, the weight of his responsibility never eased. “No need for apologies, my lady,” he offered, and at that you finally sat again, gathering your knitting on your lap.

He recognized the shield and sword propped against the foot of the bed, although the man’s face was so gray and gaunt, he could not recognize him. “He’s one of my bannermen, sworn to White Harbor,” he said solemnly, as though the recollection would help him heal.

“He was wounded during the battle on the Kingsroad. For a while we thought he would recover, as he seemed better, but then his wound would not heal, and the fever spread,” you explained with a wavering voice. “It comes and goes, but the Maester is not certain that he’ll ever regain his strength.”

Approaching the bed, he watched the man’s face with attention. “May I be of any service?” he asked.

“There is nothing to be done but pray,” you replied. “The master says he has many wounds on the inside that only the Gods can heal.”

“Then I shall pray,” he promised.

To your greatest surprise, it was not the only night Lord Cregan came to visit. Night after night he sat with you, watching as life faded from your husband’s face. Whether it was out of guilt or a strong sense of duty, you could not tell, but you were grateful nonetheless. 

“Surely you have better things to do, Lord Stark,” you said after a week of his nightly visits. 

An armchair had been brought near the fire, at the other side of the bed from you, and the two of you spoke in whispers all through the darkness. You spoke of the ways this war had changed the realm, of your hopes for the winter and beyond, and you found a true, honest friend in him. He was younger than he appeared, and than you would have expected from the Warden of the North, but his calm presence grounded you and gave you courage.

The two of you spoke until slumber claimed you where you sat, and every morning, you woke up with a shawl draped over you, and the other chair empty. 

“Your husband gave his life for this realm under my orders, I can give him my time,” he replied. “Perhaps you would like to sleep in your own bed tonight. I shall sit with him.”

Grateful for the offer, you still shook your head. “I would not leave him when he needs me most,” you argued. “The Maester says he knows I am here, even when he is not conscious.”

It was a foolish hope, perhaps, to think that he knew of your presence. In truth you prayed that he did not feel a thing, nor understand the slow decay of his own body. It was the only way you could keep your sanity, and it seemed your nightly companion understood.

During the day Cregan saw to his men resting and gathering provisions for the journey to Winterfell and to their own keeps—it was taking longer than anticipated and Sabitha had requested that he remained longer, to oversee the matches between some of his soldiers and Riverland widows.

He could tell that the prospective marriage between him and her youngest daughter was still very much on her mind, and he knew it would do his people well if he were to return from war with a wife and a new, beneficial alliance.

Therefore one gray afternoon he lingered in the hall after luncheon, the Freys’ youngest girl having no doubt been instructed to entertain him. She was comely but barely of age, and he regretted that he had so little patience and judged her so harshly. War had not soothed his temper, if anything it had made him more severe than he used to be.

“I don't understand why she sits with him for days on end,” the young woman said in the course of conversation, taking him aback. “They were barely husband and wife before he was summoned to war.”

“She is his wife. She is living by her vows,” he replied, confused and dismayed. 

“She does not love him,” the young woman continued, and while he could not blame her for her directness, he disliked her lack of care for the fundamentals of duty. “She does not know him enough to love him, and yet she is wasting away, watching him die.”

“Love is not needed to sustain a marriage,” Cregan tried to explain. “Duty is enough.”

She did not seem convinced by his explanation, and he found himself rather disappointed by her words. Instead he rose when a servant walked past with a basket of fresh linens, and he offered to take what she was carrying to the wounded man upstairs. The young lady Frey seemed sorry that he would take his leave from her, but let him go without protest. 

Cregan entered the room as he had done every day for nearly a fortnight now, and kept his silence as he wiped the sweat from his man’s brow and pulled the covers tighter around him. “You seem upset,” he finally said, noticing how unusually crestfallen your face was.

“My sister means no harm, but she still causes it sometimes,” you replied, and he understood then what had prompted her words, and the reason why the matter had been on the young lady’s mind. “She has childish fancies. I don't hold them against her, after all she is young and she will still learn. I simply pray she does not learn through grief as I have.”

“Grief comes for all of us, at one time in our life or another,” he replied, rather clumsily, but you did not contradict him.

“No one here knows what it is like, to stand watch over a spouse at the Stranger’s door, waiting for death to take them,” you said, tears strangling your voice.

At that Cregan set the wet cloth aside and took his seat in the armchair, pondering his words before he said them. “As a matter of fact, I do know,” he replied solemnly. “I watched my own wife die of childbed fever.”

It was a terrible admission, his voice still full of pain, and yet you were soothed by it, knowing you were not alone in your sorrow. “I am sorry,” you whispered, to which he answered with only silence. “I suppose I can only be grateful I did not know him well.”

“Your sister spoke of it,” he said, prompting her to continue.

With the shadow of a smile upon your lips, you did. “We were betrothed quickly, once war was declared,” you told him. “We barely had time to say our vows that he had gone. Mere days. He served the realm, and now I serve him.”

“Duty means a lot to you,” Cregan remarked, letting his admiration show in the tone of his voice.

“Duty is everything. Sacrifice comes with it,” you replied. 

Then, as you had rarely done when he was present, you allowed your tears to flow down your cheeks, sorrow shaking your shoulders. “I have thought, at times, when he writhes in pain in his sleep, to take a pillow and deliver him of his misery,” you sobbed, and Cregan was speared by your admission, his admiration only burning brighter. “Do you think me a monster?” you asked. 

“No, on the contrary,” he answered honestly. “I have had to do it only too often on the battlefield.”

He wished to reach out and lay a hand on your shoulder, but he did not know whether his gesture would be welcome. “All any soldier wishes is to die in battle. It is unfair that he should lay in this bed and wait for death to claim him,” he mused out loud. “I pray that she comes for him quickly.”

“She?” you inquired.

“I believe in the old gods of the North. To me, death is an old woman,” he explained. “She comes and takes you by the hand into a gentle river.”

The way you looked at him then, your eyes wide and earnest, displaced something in his chest he did not know had stuck. “It sounds peaceful,” you said with a small smile.

For the next few days, Cregan braced himself for the inevitable—he could see the resolve in your eyes, the certainty of what you had to do, and were preparing yourself to. He knew it to be mercy, having watched as your husband writhed in agony, his skin gone pale and wet with fever, the wounds on his body infected beyond what the Maester could heal, or even soothe.

On the third night of this agony, near dawn, Cregan slipped into the room only to find it empty. You were not standing vigil as you usually were, and he saw it as confirmation of what he had to do. He had already seen many deaths and caused too many himself—perhaps this one would be the only meaningful one, if he could spare you the act of taking a life.

In solemn silence, he approached the bed and kissed the man’s brow. “Rest now, lad. The realm is safe, you may go in peace,” he murmured for only the Gods to hear, and did his duty.

It was only a few hours later, once dawn had risen over the two towers, that you found him outside, near the Weirwood tree, sitting in silent prayer. He raised his gaze to you, finding your eyes rimmed with red but a sense of relief in the line of your shoulders. “Thank you,” you said.

“Whatever for?” he asked, rising to meet you.

“For guiding him into the river,” you replied, your face falling in grateful sobs.

This time he did not restrain himself, taking a step forward until you were sobbing in his arms, his hand into your hair, holding the back of your head. “I took him to the battlefield. I could not let him cross the river alone,” he simply said, and somehow, it was enough.

Soon after that, the day of departure came, following the funeral ceremony of your husband, but Cregan knew he could not leave the Twins without making his intentions known. He found Lady Sabitha in her private sitting room, at her desk with a quill and ink. She looked up at him expectantly when he entered, as though she knew why he was requesting an audience.

“I have come to ask for your daughter’s hand,” he said, and Sabitha’s eyes crinkled in satisfaction. “But not the youngest,” he added after a beat of silence.

At that, she seemed taken aback, setting down her parchment. “Oh?” she asked, and for a moment he worried she was displeased with the proposal.

These few weeks sitting at your side had only convinced him that this was the right choice to make—as the battlefield bonded men that fought together, watching over your husband had shown him enough of your character for him to know he could not ask for your sister’s hand. He did not need a young woman with fancies about love, but someone who would stand on equal ground with him, and not shy away from grievous matters.

“I have seen too much of war and grief,” he explained as gracefully as he could. “Your oldest daughter knows much of the harshness of the world already, and I need someone by my side who can bear the burden of duty.”

“I pray you do not feel an obligation towards her, as her husband was your bannerman,” she said, and he appreciated her concern.

“I do not,” he refuted calmly. “She would do well in the North as Lady of Winterfell, whereas I feel your youngest too delicate for the duties that await.”

“Very well,” Sabitha said. “However she still mourns her husband, and will for quite some time.”

“I shall return when spring comes, and make my proposal then,” he offered, and Sabitha agreed.  

Time passed and he thought of you often, through the darkest and coldest months of winter. He told little Rickon of the woman whose companionship he hoped for, and that with spring a new Lady of Winterfell would surely arrive. After nearly sixteen moons, a shorter winter than he had expected, spring started to thaw the lakes, and green returned to the large fields around the castle.

Delegating his duties to the young lord Cerwyn who assisted him, he was readying to depart and ride south again in a few days to renew his proposal when he was interrupted by one of the men that guarded the ramparts. 

“There is a small party coming,” the guard told him. “A few horses carrying the Frey banners.”

Cregan was surprised by this, but suddenly hopeful that his proposal would take place sooner than he had expected. He came outside into the courtyard, and was proved right with who awaited him.

“I hope my presence is not an imposition,” you said as you dismounted your mare with ease, running a hand along the great gray horse’s side. 

Winter had changed you, he thought at first, but then realized it was the first time he was seeing you without the veil of grief. It suited your face, turning your eyes brighter. “Not at all, I believe it to be quite expected,” Cerwyn said with a pointed look before taking his leave.

“He is right. I was readying to ride to the Twins within the week,” Cregan confirmed. “I take it your mother has told you of my proposal.”

“Indeed she has,” you replied. “I have come here to accept it.”

Cregan breathed a sigh of relief at this, gesturing for you to follow him inside. “Then I welcome you to Winterfell, my lady,” he said. “If you are certain this is what you wish.”

“I have had enough time to sit with my grief,” you said as he welcomed you into the main hall where a large hearth was blazing, warmth seeping into the stones. “You carried me through my darkest time, and now I can only hope you will carry me through happier years.”

“I will,” he replied.

The rest of the day was used to show you the castle, as well as to settle you into your chambers, which were smaller than the ones you’d enjoyed at the Twins, but kept warmth far more easily. You had brought with you tapestries and your deceased husband’s shield, which you had kept as a precious token.

Once your possessions had been put away as you liked, you sought Cregan out and found him in his own room, divested of his heavy leathers and furs—it was the first time you were seeing him as a simple man, and not the Lord of Winterfell. 

The way he was looking at you, with infinite gentleness in his dark eyes, banished any lingering doubts you may have had. “I was told it was tradition for the Warden to share a chamber with his wife,” you said with a small smile.

“Indeed,” he confirmed. 

Without a word you came to him, and without any question needing to be asked aloud, walked into his arms. The tenderness he had felt for you at the Twins roared back to life, and he pulled you tighter against him, waving his fingers through your hair. Your own hands tightened into the fabric of his shirt, cradling his broad back. Never had he thought he would find the first embers of love in such a dark place as the one he had met you, but he was grateful the Gods had brought him to you.

“When I told my sister of my departure, she said you had told her you do not believe love to be necessary to sustain a marriage,” you said after a minute of blissful silence, your voice muffled into his chest.

“That is true,” he confirmed.

“I hope you might find it in your heart to love me one day, as I know I will surely come to love you,” you admitted, and at that he reached for your chin, bringing it up until you were facing him, and dipped his head to press a kiss to your lips.

“I know I will, and I would show you, if you allowed it?” he asked, to which you nodded. 

Solemnly, almost reverently if such was possible from a man of his stature, he undid the laces at your back, but you did not feel the cold as your skin was bared from its layers. Pulling his own shirt above his head, he took you into his arms once more, and you were grateful to bury your face into his skin, enjoying the soft, dark hair that grew over his chest and stomach.

The two of you shared a joyful breath as he pulled you up effortlessly, your legs wrapping around his waist, and guided you to the bed, where he set you down upon the warm furs. Looming over you, he kissed you harder, his tongue curling with yours as one of his hands explored the curve that ran from your side to your knee, hooking it over his hip.

In the cradle of your thighs, his hardness was pressing a line of heat at your core. He allowed you the time to rock back against him as you wished, content to kiss your neck and your breasts while you found your pleasure underneath him. He had missed the touch of a woman, the heady feeling of a woman’s desire against his own, and even though he knew what he felt was not quite yet love, he was certain that it would not take long. 

“Slow,” he murmured when he finally pressed his length inside of you—you arched your back and sighed as though he was soothing an ache in your body, and it made him groan aloud. Whether his instruction was for your sake or his, he could not tell. 

The extent of your mutual longing only made itself clear when pleasure took hold of the both of you. Tears came to the corner of your eyes and he kissed them, cradling you against him, your own hands digging half-moons into his broad back. “Cregan,” you sighed, and uttering his name felt like a deliverance, an oath.

Pleasure crested slow and steady, strong, anchoring you into your flesh. The weight of war and grief poured out of you and him alike, the two of you finally finding solace in each other’s touch, and in the promise that whatever fate would befall you, neither of you would face it alone.

A/N: Dividers by @/saradika. Based on a request by @multyfangirl.

Cregan taglist: @kateris-world @elleclairez @watercolorskyy @praline357 @whodis-26

@elle-28 @hb8301 @flawroses @random-shit-i-like-2 @heavenly1927

@thegeminithrone @vixemi @rockerchick05 @maniccrystalhippie @melsunshine

@siimiasoi @mxtokko @apollonshootafar @thenameswinter99 @multyfangirl

@alawnuhyawpp @arrozyfrijoles23 @r-3dlips @yujyujj @lessdepressy

@blessedbymoon @deltamoon666 @writingjourney @still-jon-snow @vampzv

This proposal gave him pause, but he could not see any flaw in it. It was long time for him to take a second wife, he knew, at the least to secure his line, but for his own benefit as well. He longed for companionship and the warmth of a woman, and he thought a maternal presence would help in his son’s welfare.

“I shall think on it,” he replied, and Sabitha seemed satisfied. Those were not empty words, and he truly meant to think on the matter.

“One of the men you led to King’s Landing is upstairs,” she then said, catching him off-guard—while she had ladylike manners, she was blunt and direct, which he appreciated. “His wife, my oldest daughter, is sitting with him.”

“How is he faring?” he asked with a frown.

“Dying a slow death, the one any soldier fears,” Sabitha replied, a frown of sorrow on her face.

At that, Cregan pushed from the table and rose. “Might I visit him?” he inquired, and she rose with him, gesturing for him to step into the hallway. She guided him up a few flights of stairs, higher in the tower, and he followed. At the end of a wide corridor, she knocked on a painted wooden door, then stepped aside, allowing him to enter. 

The chamber was kept comfortably warm, a blazing fire in the hearth. At the foot of the bed, sitting in a large armchair, a young woman was falling asleep on her knitting—it looked like a shawl of some sort, in a deep forest green. You startled as you saw him in the threshold, and were quick to rise, putting your knitting aside.

Cregan gestured for you to sit, but you remained standing. “I do not wish to intrude,” he said. “I simply wanted to pay my respects to my man.”

“Forgive me, my lord, for not coming down to supper,” you replied with a sad smile. “I was told you had arrived, but I was needed here.”

Cregan glanced at the sleeping man, his chest heavy—no matter how many deaths he had seen in this war, the weight of his responsibility never eased. “No need for apologies, my lady,” he offered, and at that you finally sat again, gathering your knitting on your lap.

He recognized the shield and sword propped against the foot of the bed, although the man’s face was so gray and gaunt, he could not recognize him. “He’s one of my bannermen, sworn to White Harbor,” he said solemnly, as though the recollection would help him heal.

“He was wounded during the battle on the Kingsroad. For a while we thought he would recover, as he seemed better, but then his wound would not heal, and the fever spread,” you explained with a wavering voice. “It comes and goes, but the Maester is not certain that he’ll ever regain his strength.”

Approaching the bed, he watched the man’s face with attention. “May I be of any service?” he asked.

“There is nothing to be done but pray,” you replied. “The master says he has many wounds on the inside that only the Gods can heal.”

“Then I shall pray,” he promised.

To your greatest surprise, it was not the only night Lord Cregan came to visit. Night after night he sat with you, watching as life faded from your husband’s face. Whether it was out of guilt or a strong sense of duty, you could not tell, but you were grateful nonetheless. 

“Surely you have better things to do, Lord Stark,” you said after a week of his nightly visits. 

An armchair had been brought near the fire, at the other side of the bed from you, and the two of you spoke in whispers all through the darkness. You spoke of the ways this war had changed the realm, of your hopes for the winter and beyond, and you found a true, honest friend in him. He was younger than he appeared, and than you would have expected from the Warden of the North, but his calm presence grounded you and gave you courage.

The two of you spoke until slumber claimed you where you sat, and every morning, you woke up with a shawl draped over you, and the other chair empty. 

“Your husband gave his life for this realm under my orders, I can give him my time,” he replied. “Perhaps you would like to sleep in your own bed tonight. I shall sit with him.”

Grateful for the offer, you still shook your head. “I would not leave him when he needs me most,” you argued. “The Maester says he knows I am here, even when he is not conscious.”

It was a foolish hope, perhaps, to think that he knew of your presence. In truth you prayed that he did not feel a thing, nor understand the slow decay of his own body. It was the only way you could keep your sanity, and it seemed your nightly companion understood.

During the day Cregan saw to his men resting and gathering provisions for the journey to Winterfell and to their own keeps—it was taking longer than anticipated and Sabitha had requested that he remained longer, to oversee the matches between some of his soldiers and Riverland widows.

He could tell that the prospective marriage between him and her youngest daughter was still very much on her mind, and he knew it would do his people well if he were to return from war with a wife and a new, beneficial alliance.

Therefore one gray afternoon he lingered in the hall after luncheon, the Freys’ youngest girl having no doubt been instructed to entertain him. She was comely but barely of age, and he regretted that he had so little patience and judged her so harshly. War had not soothed his temper, if anything it had made him more severe than he used to be.

“I don't understand why she sits with him for days on end,” the young woman said in the course of conversation, taking him aback. “They were barely husband and wife before he was summoned to war.”

“She is his wife. She is living by her vows,” he replied, confused and dismayed. 

“She does not love him,” the young woman continued, and while he could not blame her for her directness, he disliked her lack of care for the fundamentals of duty. “She does not know him enough to love him, and yet she is wasting away, watching him die.”

“Love is not needed to sustain a marriage,” Cregan tried to explain. “Duty is enough.”

She did not seem convinced by his explanation, and he found himself rather disappointed by her words. Instead he rose when a servant walked past with a basket of fresh linens, and he offered to take what she was carrying to the wounded man upstairs. The young lady Frey seemed sorry that he would take his leave from her, but let him go without protest. 

Cregan entered the room as he had done every day for nearly a fortnight now, and kept his silence as he wiped the sweat from his man’s brow and pulled the covers tighter around him. “You seem upset,” he finally said, noticing how unusually crestfallen your face was.

“My sister means no harm, but she still causes it sometimes,” you replied, and he understood then what had prompted her words, and the reason why the matter had been on the young lady’s mind. “She has childish fancies. I don't hold them against her, after all she is young and she will still learn. I simply pray she does not learn through grief as I have.”

“Grief comes for all of us, at one time in our life or another,” he replied, rather clumsily, but you did not contradict him.

“No one here knows what it is like, to stand watch over a spouse at the Stranger’s door, waiting for death to take them,” you said, tears strangling your voice.

At that Cregan set the wet cloth aside and took his seat in the armchair, pondering his words before he said them. “As a matter of fact, I do know,” he replied solemnly. “I watched my own wife die of childbed fever.”

It was a terrible admission, his voice still full of pain, and yet you were soothed by it, knowing you were not alone in your sorrow. “I am sorry,” you whispered, to which he answered with only silence. “I suppose I can only be grateful I did not know him well.”

“Your sister spoke of it,” he said, prompting her to continue.

With the shadow of a smile upon your lips, you did. “We were betrothed quickly, once war was declared,” you told him. “We barely had time to say our vows that he had gone. Mere days. He served the realm, and now I serve him.”

“Duty means a lot to you,” Cregan remarked, letting his admiration show in the tone of his voice.

“Duty is everything. Sacrifice comes with it,” you replied. 

Then, as you had rarely done when he was present, you allowed your tears to flow down your cheeks, sorrow shaking your shoulders. “I have thought, at times, when he writhes in pain in his sleep, to take a pillow and deliver him of his misery,” you sobbed, and Cregan was speared by your admission, his admiration only burning brighter. “Do you think me a monster?” you asked. 

“No, on the contrary,” he answered honestly. “I have had to do it only too often on the battlefield.”

He wished to reach out and lay a hand on your shoulder, but he did not know whether his gesture would be welcome. “All any soldier wishes is to die in battle. It is unfair that he should lay in this bed and wait for death to claim him,” he mused out loud. “I pray that she comes for him quickly.”

“She?” you inquired.

“I believe in the old gods of the North. To me, death is an old woman,” he explained. “She comes and takes you by the hand into a gentle river.”

The way you looked at him then, your eyes wide and earnest, displaced something in his chest he did not know had stuck. “It sounds peaceful,” you said with a small smile.

For the next few days, Cregan braced himself for the inevitable—he could see the resolve in your eyes, the certainty of what you had to do, and were preparing yourself to. He knew it to be mercy, having watched as your husband writhed in agony, his skin gone pale and wet with fever, the wounds on his body infected beyond what the Maester could heal, or even soothe.

On the third night of this agony, near dawn, Cregan slipped into the room only to find it empty. You were not standing vigil as you usually were, and he saw it as confirmation of what he had to do. He had already seen many deaths and caused too many himself—perhaps this one would be the only meaningful one, if he could spare you the act of taking a life.

In solemn silence, he approached the bed and kissed the man’s brow. “Rest now, lad. The realm is safe, you may go in peace,” he murmured for only the Gods to hear, and did his duty.

It was only a few hours later, once dawn had risen over the two towers, that you found him outside, near the Weirwood tree, sitting in silent prayer. He raised his gaze to you, finding your eyes rimmed with red but a sense of relief in the line of your shoulders. “Thank you,” you said.

“Whatever for?” he asked, rising to meet you.

“For guiding him into the river,” you replied, your face falling in grateful sobs.

This time he did not restrain himself, taking a step forward until you were sobbing in his arms, his hand into your hair, holding the back of your head. “I took him to the battlefield. I could not let him cross the river alone,” he simply said, and somehow, it was enough.

Soon after that, the day of departure came, following the funeral ceremony of your husband, but Cregan knew he could not leave the Twins without making his intentions known. He found Lady Sabitha in her private sitting room, at her desk with a quill and ink. She looked up at him expectantly when he entered, as though she knew why he was requesting an audience.

“I have come to ask for your daughter’s hand,” he said, and Sabitha’s eyes crinkled in satisfaction. “But not the youngest,” he added after a beat of silence.

At that, she seemed taken aback, setting down her parchment. “Oh?” she asked, and for a moment he worried she was displeased with the proposal.

These few weeks sitting at your side had only convinced him that this was the right choice to make—as the battlefield bonded men that fought together, watching over your husband had shown him enough of your character for him to know he could not ask for your sister’s hand. He did not need a young woman with fancies about love, but someone who would stand on equal ground with him, and not shy away from grievous matters.

“I have seen too much of war and grief,” he explained as gracefully as he could. “Your oldest daughter knows much of the harshness of the world already, and I need someone by my side who can bear the burden of duty.”

“I pray you do not feel an obligation towards her, as her husband was your bannerman,” she said, and he appreciated her concern.

“I do not,” he refuted calmly. “She would do well in the North as Lady of Winterfell, whereas I feel your youngest too delicate for the duties that await.”

“Very well,” Sabitha said. “However she still mourns her husband, and will for quite some time.”

“I shall return when spring comes, and make my proposal then,” he offered, and Sabitha agreed.  

Time passed and he thought of you often, through the darkest and coldest months of winter. He told little Rickon of the woman whose companionship he hoped for, and that with spring a new Lady of Winterfell would surely arrive. After nearly sixteen moons, a shorter winter than he had expected, spring started to thaw the lakes, and green returned to the large fields around the castle.

Delegating his duties to the young lord Cerwyn who assisted him, he was readying to depart and ride south again in a few days to renew his proposal when he was interrupted by one of the men that guarded the ramparts. 

“There is a small party coming,” the guard told him. “A few horses carrying the Frey banners.”

Cregan was surprised by this, but suddenly hopeful that his proposal would take place sooner than he had expected. He came outside into the courtyard, and was proved right with who awaited him.

“I hope my presence is not an imposition,” you said as you dismounted your mare with ease, running a hand along the great gray horse’s side. 

Winter had changed you, he thought at first, but then realized it was the first time he was seeing you without the veil of grief. It suited your face, turning your eyes brighter. “Not at all, I believe it to be quite expected,” Cerwyn said with a pointed look before taking his leave.

“He is right. I was readying to ride to the Twins within the week,” Cregan confirmed. “I take it your mother has told you of my proposal.”

“Indeed she has,” you replied. “I have come here to accept it.”

Cregan breathed a sigh of relief at this, gesturing for you to follow him inside. “Then I welcome you to Winterfell, my lady,” he said. “If you are certain this is what you wish.”

“I have had enough time to sit with my grief,” you said as he welcomed you into the main hall where a large hearth was blazing, warmth seeping into the stones. “You carried me through my darkest time, and now I can only hope you will carry me through happier years.”

“I will,” he replied.

The rest of the day was used to show you the castle, as well as to settle you into your chambers, which were smaller than the ones you’d enjoyed at the Twins, but kept warmth far more easily. You had brought with you tapestries and your deceased husband’s shield, which you had kept as a precious token.

Once your possessions had been put away as you liked, you sought Cregan out and found him in his own room, divested of his heavy leathers and furs—it was the first time you were seeing him as a simple man, and not the Lord of Winterfell. 

The way he was looking at you, with infinite gentleness in his dark eyes, banished any lingering doubts you may have had. “I was told it was tradition for the Warden to share a chamber with his wife,” you said with a small smile.

“Indeed,” he confirmed. 

Without a word you came to him, and without any question needing to be asked aloud, walked into his arms. The tenderness he had felt for you at the Twins roared back to life, and he pulled you tighter against him, waving his fingers through your hair. Your own hands tightened into the fabric of his shirt, cradling his broad back. Never had he thought he would find the first embers of love in such a dark place as the one he had met you, but he was grateful the Gods had brought him to you.

“When I told my sister of my departure, she said you had told her you do not believe love to be necessary to sustain a marriage,” you said after a minute of blissful silence, your voice muffled into his chest.

“That is true,” he confirmed.

“I hope you might find it in your heart to love me one day, as I know I will surely come to love you,” you admitted, and at that he reached for your chin, bringing it up until you were facing him, and dipped his head to press a kiss to your lips.

“I know I will, and I would show you, if you allowed it?” he asked, to which you nodded. 

Solemnly, almost reverently if such was possible from a man of his stature, he undid the laces at your back, but you did not feel the cold as your skin was bared from its layers. Pulling his own shirt above his head, he took you into his arms once more, and you were grateful to bury your face into his skin, enjoying the soft, dark hair that grew over his chest and stomach.

The two of you shared a joyful breath as he pulled you up effortlessly, your legs wrapping around his waist, and guided you to the bed, where he set you down upon the warm furs. Looming over you, he kissed you harder, his tongue curling with yours as one of his hands explored the curve that ran from your side to your knee, hooking it over his hip.

In the cradle of your thighs, his hardness was pressing a line of heat at your core. He allowed you the time to rock back against him as you wished, content to kiss your neck and your breasts while you found your pleasure underneath him. He had missed the touch of a woman, the heady feeling of a woman’s desire against his own, and even though he knew what he felt was not quite yet love, he was certain that it would not take long. 

“Slow,” he murmured when he finally pressed his length inside of you—you arched your back and sighed as though he was soothing an ache in your body, and it made him groan aloud. Whether his instruction was for your sake or his, he could not tell. 

The extent of your mutual longing only made itself clear when pleasure took hold of the both of you. Tears came to the corner of your eyes and he kissed them, cradling you against him, your own hands digging half-moons into his broad back. “Cregan,” you sighed, and uttering his name felt like a deliverance, an oath.

Pleasure crested slow and steady, strong, anchoring you into your flesh. The weight of war and grief poured out of you and him alike, the two of you finally finding solace in each other’s touch, and in the promise that whatever fate would befall you, neither of you would face it alone.

A/N: Dividers by @/saradika. Based on a request by @multyfangirl.

Cregan taglist: @kateris-world @elleclairez @watercolorskyy @praline357 @whodis-26

@elle-28 @hb8301 @flawroses @random-shit-i-like-2 @heavenly1927

@thegeminithrone @vixemi @rockerchick05 @maniccrystalhippie @melsunshine

@siimiasoi @mxtokko @apollonshootafar @thenameswinter99 @multyfangirl

@alawnuhyawpp @arrozyfrijoles23 @r-3dlips @yujyujj @lessdepressy

@blessedbymoon @deltamoon666 @writingjourney @still-jon-snow @vampzv