#descent

When she sees you, she stands, and before you know it her arms are around you and your tears are damp against her pale throat. She is the one who ought to be weeping, but she has never been such a person, and so she is motionless, clinging to you and humming lowly. The song is familiar, reminding you of the placid ocean and the sun beating down at you as you cast your nets over the side of your wooden boat, and something swells like a ripcurrent in your throat at the memory.

“It’s alright,” she says finally. Her voice never shakes, but her fingers dig into the space between your shoulder blades, and her heart pounds like the sea at storm. “Why are you crying? You know I’ll win.”

“But what if you don’t?” you say. Unlike her, your words crack with despair, because unlike her, you have that luxury. You can leave this room with red eyes and puffy cheeks; Hysilens, however, must remain as she always is, or else she will be preyed upon with a swiftness as soon as she arrives at the Capitol.

“I will,” she says. “I’ve even killed a shark. Don’t you remember? It was your birthday, and I bought you a cake with the money. How can this be any different?”

“They’re people. It’s not the same at all,” you whisper, because now you are remembering last year, when a girl from District Nine won her Games but lost her sanity. You and Hysilens had watched together as her mentor, still a boy himself, had dragged her to the stage and held her in place while she wailed, so disconsolate that Callictus couldn’t even manage to interview her about her victory.

“It is the same,” she says in a tone that allows no argument, and although the words are cold, you understand what she means by them. They are the same because they have to be the same. They are the same because if they aren’t, she will be unable to bring herself to do what she must. They are the same because she will die if they are not.

“Then you will come back,” you say. “There’s nobody in the world who’s better at hunting fish than you, Hysilens, so if it’s the same, then you will definitely come back.”

“Exactly,” she says. “We will swim together again, my friend. This is not goodbye forever.” 

You want to respond, to tell her that she must find a weapon, that she must not delude herself with thoughts of heroism and selflessness, only her own preservation, but before you can, the door slams open and a dark-uniformed Cleaner enters.

“Time’s up,” he says shortly, gruffly. 

“No, wait,” you say. “Wait! I need more, I need — Hysilens, Hysilens, you have to win. You have to do everything you can to win!”

“Time’s up,” the Cleaner repeats mechanically, wrenching you away from her, ignoring how you reach your arms out, your fingers skimming along her collarbones, her neck, as you are pulled from the room.

“It’s just fish!” you say frantically, because you cannot bear the thought of her losing, you cannot bear the thought of her returning like that girl from Nine, with blood in her eyes and a fog in her mind. “It’s just fish, they’re just—”

“I’ll come back!” she calls after you. “I promise—”

The Cleaner slams the door shut between you both, muttering something under his breath about District trash and their backwards customs and illogical whims, and then he lets go of you like he could not be happier to shove you away. Left alone in the hallway of the Justice Building, you sink to the ground, sobbing in earnest, because now that you are apart from her you are cold with the knowledge that you may never see her again.

One week later, Hysilens enters the arena. Another two and she leaves as the victor, which you are sure you should celebrate, but when she takes the stage and Callictus asks her how she feels about it, all she can do is shrug. Her eyes are hollow, not lively like tidepools as they once were, and when she comes to visit you for the first time since her name was called that day, the only thing she does is hold her red hands to your nose and ask you if you can smell the salt. You tell her that you are in District Four, it will always reek of salt, and then she sighs.

 I keep scrubbing and scrubbing, but it doesn’t wash out. Do you have better soaps? It won’t come off. Please help me. It won’t come off.

She’s not talking about salt from the sea, and you wonder if she might have been better off dying in the Games after all.

Hysilens was young for a victor, and two years later you are old for a tribute, but it is still strange to see her standing on the stage beside Phagousa, gloves pulled over fingers clasped behind a straight back, a frown settled on a face that is yet to lose its girlish softness, although innocence has long since fled those forlorn features. She does not meet your eyes — after the last Reaping, she told you privately that she could not bear looking at you for fear that it would enact some kind of divine will, and you suppose even now she has this superstition — but the deliberation in the act means she is as aware of you as you are of her, or perhaps more so.

Phagousa is a tall woman, and her proximity to Hysilens as well as her enormous shoes only exacerbate this, so that she appears to be as towering as any of the men from District Eleven. She’s known for it, your escort, for her odd taste in footwear, which stands out even more than the wigs that the woman from Twelve is so fond of. This year, there are tiny guppies swimming around in the platform of her heels, and you are far enough away to be unsure if they are real as well as too distrustful to assume that they’re not.

“Shall I give a speech?” she says, and although the escorts are meant to be the paragon of virtue, as members of the Capitol, in practice everyone knows she is a hopeless drunkard taken with the ecstasy and indulgence of wine. If the President found it offensive, he might’ve said something, but year after year, Phagousa returns, so no one bothers with complaining. Anyways, her speech is one you all memorize early in school, before you are turned to fishing for work and nothing more, so the less time she wastes with it, the less you must be tortured by the anticipation of the Reaping. “Ah, well. Glory to President Lycurgus and the Capitol!”

Her nails are colorful, and only when the cameras zoom in to show her hand muddling about in the glass bowl do you realize that they are patterned like fish scales. She must find it so novel, so endearing, to paint designs that mock you and call herself your representative. You have never despised her as much as you do in that moment, when she finally picks out a slip and unfurls it with those fish-scale-talons, her perfect lips parting in delight.

“For the ladies!” she says, allowing the moment to stretch on, for suspense or dramatic effect or whatever else it is that they value in the Capitol. Your mind wanders as you try to imagine who it might be, and so when she finally says it, you hardly take note. In fact, she has to repeat it once and then twice, tapping on the microphone for emphasis, before you notice the panic on Hysilens’s face and realize what she has just said. “Excuse me? Young lady, are you present?”

Of course you are present, and now you are frozen with horror. Two years ago, foolishly, you had told your mother that the worst moment of your life was when Phagousa had called Hysilens’s name in the Reaping — Hysilens, your best friend since you were so young, who you had nearly lost — but then, how could you be considered foolish for that? How could you have known then that so soon, you would experience this new tragedy, that in such a short time, it would be your own name announced in Phagousa’s Capitolite drawl?

Your legs carry you to the podium without your mind’s consent; then Phagousa is smiling at you, calling you precious, and Hysilens is so pallid it is only a testament to her will that she has not yet fainted before everyone. You stare at the distant horizon, where the ocean stretches into the sky, and you pretend like that’s all the world is, like you are not standing between Hysilens and Phagousa, waiting to hear the name of the boy who might soon die at your side.

“And our lucky male tribute is…Dan Heng!” Phagousa says, her voice a sing-song. Of course she’s happy — after this, she will go and have attendants pour wine down her throat until she is in a stupor. But how can you feel the same? Because of all of the people in District Four, of every single person that might’ve been in his place, you think it’s a special sort of unfair that the one who has been chosen is Dan Heng.

Phagousa’s words are followed by a shrieking sob. Even before the crowd parts around them, you know who it is that is crying: Bailu, Dan Heng’s little sister, whose first Reaping was this year. How relieved she must have been when your name was read off, and how that relief must have compounded into guilt and fear when Dan Heng’s name immediately followed it! Because he is the only family she has left, their parents having died when they were very young, and now she stands to lose him as well.

Even the Cleaners do not yank Dan Heng away from her when he crouches to wipe at her face with his worn sleeve. Everyone is solemn for this moment, solemn in a way they weren’t for you — you are nobody of particular note, after all, another tribute in a throng of countless, but Dan Heng is different. There’s not a person in this District he hasn’t helped, and so you are all silent as he joins you, giving you a curt nod and a smile, considerate until the very last.

“District Four, please join me in a round of applause for your tributes in the 68th Hunger Games!” Phagousa says. “Congratulations, you both, and may you bring pride to us all!”

The Cleaners usher you away to a room you have only visited once, but which you have seen countless times in your nightmares, such that it is imprinted in your memory and impossible to efface. Dust-covered windows. High ceilings. A chair for someone far larger than you in the middle. But this time you are the one sitting, not Hysilens, and it is your parents who enter and embrace you, not your despondent self.

“Hysilens did it,” your mother says, petting your hair as she did when you were a little baby. “You can, too.”

“We know it,” your father says, his hand on your shoulder awkward, unsure, but solid. “District Four will have another victor.”

To stop yourself from crumbling, you clear your throat and try to think of something, anything, that will distract you. Yet every thought that passes only brings you closer to the verge of tears, because each is a reminder that you are going and may never see them or District Four again.

“Bailu,” you say finally, for at least she is a safer topic. “You’ll take care of her?”

“Don’t worry,” your mother says. “We’ll all pitch in when we can.”

It’s hardly reassuring, but this is the most you are allowed in Four, where the Cleaners are more watchful than anywhere else. The temptation of the open ocean is too great to leave you all to your own devices, or so Hysilens muses, and thus your every move is monitored by those shadows of President Lycurgus, who take any abnormality as dissent and make every effort to quell it before it can gain water.

“Do your best to garner support,” your father says, always practical, never wasting a moment with sentimentality. “You’ve always been good with the tridents. If you can get enough sponsors, then maybe they’ll even send you one. They did it with that boy from Nine a few years ago, remember?”

He’s talking about Phainon, the youngest victor to date, who was so beloved by the Capitol during his Games that he was sent an entire sword by his sponsors — a fine one, made of bronze and steel, not the half-smithed discards that typically litter the arena every year. For a boy who had grown up in the wheatfields of District Nine, a sword was not so different from a scythe, and he had cut down the remaining tributes with a swiftness that was entirely at odds with his sweet face, earning him an easy and unprecedented victory. 

“Anything is possible,” you say, for you are sure he knows as well as you do what he has neglected to mention in this hoping — that Phainon was known, is still known, just as well for his uncommon beauty as for his youth. No amount of charm or trying will give you his silver hair or his way with the Capitolite women, who have loved him since they first saw him and who love him even more now that they can fawn over him without fear of retribution, and so such an expensive gift is not one you should dream of, let alone count on.

“It doesn’t matter what you have to do,” your mother says. “You are our daughter. We will welcome you home with open arms.”

You cannot cry, so you nod rapidly, swallowing your fit before it can come, and then all of you sit in silence until the Cleaners come to escort them away. When the door shuts behind them you suddenly think of a million more things to say to them, I love you and the current is strong today and tend the garden well, the insects are so insatiable this year, but the cruelty is that it all only comes to mind now that they are gone and you can never say any of it again.

In truth you do not expect any more visitors, so when the door creaks open and a Cleaner enters, you are halfway to standing when you realize there is a young girl with the man, the whites of her eyes and the apples of her cheeks bright like coral under the summer sun. The Cleaner tells you you have ten minutes, and then he leaves you alone to wait apprehensively for her to speak, without the faintest notion of what she might say.

“I think you’re going to win,” Bailu says before you can even open your mouth. She is so articulate it’s easy to forget that she is so young, but when she approaches you, you realize she would hardly come up to your chest if you stood face to face. “No, I am sure of it.”

“What?” you say. You had expected her to beg you to spare her beloved brother, had expected to make some empty promise about how you’d try, so you are lost for words and left fumbling. “Me? How? I’m not — the tributes from One and Two are always the strongest contenders, and even Dan Heng has a good chance, so why…?”

“Everyone knows you and Miss Hysilens are best friends,” she says. “She won’t let you die, which means you’ll win.”

Hearing it in her matter-of-fact tone is different than when the words had come from your bereft mother or your stoic father. Of course they had said so, they had to cling to empty promises like that or else they might drown in the haplessness of their grief, but Bailu…your victory must be the antithesis of her desires. There can only be one, after all, and if you are to win as she predicts, then that means Dan Heng will come home a corpse. Her brother, the only one she has left — she is telling you that she is sure he will die, for no other reason than because she is so convinced that Hysilens’s affection for you will transcend even the odds of the arena.

“Is that what you came to tell me?” you say. She looks away, pursing her lips in an expression you are sure she picked up from Dan Heng. It is severe and unlike her typically sunny disposition, although you suppose today is the kind of day that doesn’t warrant much cheer, anyways, so maybe you shouldn’t be surprised.

“I wanted to ask you something,” she says. “But it might be difficult, so if you have to say no, I understand.”

“Go on,” you say. “The Cleaners aren’t patient, and I am sure we do not have much time.”

“If you have to face my brother in the arena, and you — and you find yourself winning — can you be gentle?” she says, all in a rush. “I know I can’t ask you not to kill him, but—”

“Yes,” you say, cutting her off when she breaks down, rubbing at her eyes furiously in a fruitless disguise of her sorrow. “I’ll do my best, Bailu.”

“I asked him to do the same,” she says, her voice high-pitched and choked. “I made him promise to be really nice to you. He won’t give you any trouble in the arena, he swore he won’t, so please try to avoid him for as long as you can, and he’ll do the same.”

“I will,” you say, and it’s easy, because it was your plan all along. Wrapping your arms around her small frame, you hug her to you, marvelling at how frail she is, a fine-boned sandpiper shielded from the harshness of the world thus far by her brother, who is strong where she is meek, sturdy where she is slight. “Please go to my parents if you need anything, and don’t watch the Games on your own, okay?”

You don’t want her to be by herself if Dan Heng dies. When he dies. You can’t fathom what it will do to her and you don’t — the thought of her in their home, alone, watching her brother bleed out on the screen…it makes you so sick you want to take her somewhere far away, where she can hide from this reality forever.

Phagousa retrieves you and Dan Heng from the Justice Building, babbling on about how exciting it is for you that you are finally going to the illustrious Capitol, how much you will definitely love it, how it smells of sweets and perfume instead of kelp and rot, how the women are as beautiful as jewels and the men are so exquisitely handsome that they are beyond compare — she winks at you when she says this, and you almost ask her what her city’s fascination with Phainon is about, then, if the Capitolite men really are so illustrious. Yet you know better than to aggravate her with foolish questions, so you bite your tongue and pretend like you are fascinated, when all the while you are inching closer to Dan Heng so you can whisper to him under your breath without being overheard.

“I told my parents to look after your sister,” you say.

“Thank you,” he says, and when Phagousa squeals at her recounting of her last birthday, where a man hid inside of her birthday cake and sprung out with a dance as she tried to cut it, he rolls his eyes. It is almost endearing — perhaps in the past it really might’ve been — but then you are boarding the train and you remember Dan Heng is not a person you can afford to find endearing anymore. You have done him this one and final favor, have promised him that no matter what, his sister will be alright, and now you would do well to forget that you ever might’ve been classmates, that you ever might’ve been friends.

“Alright, then! Get some rest for now, and we can reconvene later,” Phagousa says. “It’s been an exciting day for us all, and I for one am looking forward to a shower. The air in Four is so sticky, it’ll ruin my skin if I don’t wash up as fast as I can! I recommend you both do the same. You’re a beautiful pair of tributes, really you are, and that’s going to be more of an advantage than you realize, so don’t squander it.”

Your quarters on the train are nearly half the size of the entire first floor of your house in District Four, and you are momentarily overwhelmed by the vastness of it all, by the bed which is the size of a boat, by the surroundings blurring past as the train shoots away from the home you have known for your entire life.

“I can’t believe it,” a soft voice says from behind you. You don’t need to turn to know that it is Hysilens who has entered, and just as she remained so emotionless when she was chosen, you give her that same courtesy, staying still even as she wavers. “I thought that, by getting chosen, I had managed to protect you somehow. I suppose I shouldn’t have, but I always comforted myself with it, with the knowledge that I had gone into that arena so you would never have to. The world couldn’t be that barbarous, could it? The odds could never be so unfair that it would happen to us both, and better me than you, or that’s how I always saw it.”

“But now I’m here, too,” you say. “I guess the world and its odds are just so.”

“I was a popular victor,” she says, a little desperately. “And you’re more approachable than me by far. You’ll have more sponsors than anyone, I promise, and you’ll win, too. Even faster than I did.”

“Hysilens,” you say.

“You have to agree,” she says, insistently tugging on the hem of your pale green Reaping dress, which you had inherited from your mother. “They can tell when you aren’t confident. No one will back a beached whale, so don’t be one. You have to prove to everyone that you are someone worthy of their time, their attention — their money. You have to make them see in you what I do. Don’t tell me that you can’t do this. Don’t act like you’ve lost before the Games have even begun.”

“I know,” you say. “I was just going to say that we should watch the other Reapings. For old times’ sake.”

It’s a flimsy way of hiding your morbid curiosity — the truth is that you just want to see the faces of the other tributes, that you want your first glimpses at those who might kill you and those who you might kill. But it’s true that when you were younger, you and her would always watch these official programmes together, so she takes the bait easily, or maybe she just doesn’t want to think too deeply about it.

The tributes from Twelve are covered in coal dust, as they often are, and neither of the ones from Eleven smile when their escort calls their names. The first one of note is the girl from Ten, Hyacinthia, who is so young and shining that you feel it in your chest when she beams at her escort, Aquila, like she hasn’t just been sentenced to her death.

“She can’t be too much older than Bailu,” you say softly. “A year, maybe. Two if we’re being generous.”

“There’s always tributes like that,” Hysilens says. “They never win, but they try so hard…”

When the girl from District Nine is called, a mouse-faced brunette named Livia, one of the past victors, Cyrene, is so hysterical that Phainon must lead her off of the stage with an apologetic wave to the cameras. You glance at Hysilens, wondering if she knows more now that she is one of them, and she nods grimly.

“You remember how she was,” she says. “After winning. She couldn’t speak to Callictus, even with help.”

“Yes,” you say.

“She’s very kind,” Hysilens says. “A sweet little sea hare when she has her mind to herself. But the rumors are entirely true — a part of her is stuck in a loop of watching her district partner lose his head, over and over and over. I don’t know that she’ll ever escape it. She’s just lucky to be from Nine; Phainon takes up so much of the Capitol’s attention that her madness is swept under the rug easily enough. It’s not always the case.”

The girl from District Six is younger than Hyacinthia and smaller than Bailu, with large, watery eyes, and two identical sisters who cling to her arms when her name is read off — Trianne. Hysilens actually hisses in disapproval at this, and you are about to ask her what’s wrong when you realize that she is staring not at Trianne but at one of the older victors, a stately woman with cascading red curls and a pallor cast over her aghast expression.

“It makes you wonder,” Hysilens says when Tribios embraces the girl without care for her audience, sinking to the ground and rocking her back and forth, back and forth. “Does everyone really have the same odds?”

When the feed switches to District Four, you are unsurprised to see that they spend most of the time highlighting Dan Heng. He is the admirable one, the handsome boy beloved by his entire town, the sweet boy whose little sister is waiting for him at home, and next to him you have such a plain story you all but fade into the background — or you would’ve, if the cameraman did not give you the small grace of showing Hysilens’s shock when your name was read off. What a pity, that you must profit off of her pain, but both of you know that even that slim bit of humanity you have been afforded could be the difference between starvation and sympathy, so you do not complain, even if you would much like to.

Yet of all the districts, it is Two’s Reaping which far outshines the rest, which even Dan Heng and Bailu cannot compete with, because both tributes are volunteers, and they are a class above the rest. The boy is more of a man or a statue, making even Dan Heng look scrawny and awkward, and the girl is almost as beautiful as Aglaea, the beloved victor from District One whose Games you were too young to understand fully upon watching.

Gnaeus, their escort, is far more serious and composed than Phagousa, and he announces things with a certain gravitas that is fitting of District Two, which has by far the most victors amongst all the districts. You wish that Phagousa would learn from him, but then again you think she is so dependent on drink that even the sagest advice could not save her now that she has wasted away so completely.

“Polyxia,” he says, and almost before the name has left his mouth, there is a hand shooting defiantly in the air.

“I volunteer!”

She yells in the way of one who is not accustomed to raising her voice, but there she is, a pale-haired girl with one hand on a wheelchair, standing protectively before the girl sitting in it. You can only assume that that is Polyxia, and when the volunteer introduces herself as Castorice, Polyxia’s twin sister, you understand all too well the choice she made.

“Don’t be mistaken,” Hysilens said. “She may look pretty and sweet, but the ones from Two, they’re all monsters in their own right. Don’t underestimate her, unless you want a repeat of Cerydra’s Games.”

“Yes,” you say. “I know.”

Cerydra won the year before Aglaea by using her diminutive stature to full effect, playing the part of helpless girl before turning on everyone with such viciousness that even now, her Games remain one of the least-rewatched. There’s violence and then there’s gore, and you suppose the latter is nowhere near as acceptable to the Capitolites as the former.

“Hephaestion!” Gnaeus continues after introducing Castorice as Polyxia’s replacement. It doesn’t really matter to him, you suppose, as long as there is a tribute and the ceremony can be finished in a timely manner, but after he calls for Hephaestion, the gathered citizens grow even more silent than they had for Polyxia. Maybe it is because all of them had known deep down that Castorice would replace Polyxia, and so they had never actually anticipated that the invalid girl would really have to participate, but they know that no one will do the same for Hephaestion.

He coughs as he trudges towards the stage, and although the camera pans away, it’s not fast enough to miss the shudder that wracks through his body. What a joke it is, you would say to Hysilens if you were not so horrified, that the indomitable Two inadvertently chose their weakest for this contest of strength. But instead you watch, silent and sick, as Hephaestion grows closer and closer to his doom, until he is halted by a firm declaration.

“I also volunteer as tribute.”

He is the most beautiful creature you have seen, this new boy from Two, his hair a blaze down his back, his skin the shade of sand, his eyes like dappled sunlight. Enormous and powerful and beautiful; it’s all you can do to hold onto Hysilens’s hand, your heart’s turmoil reflected on her face, reflected even on Castorice’s, for his counterpart indeed inches away when he takes his place beside her. Maybe, when Hephaestion had been called, she had had some notions of being able to defeat him and whoever might come from District One, which is the only other district aside from Two that consistently produces serious contenders for the position of victor. Yet it is obvious to anyone with eyes that he is a beast entirely apart, and she must know him better than most, having grown up alongside him as she surely had.

“What’s your name, young man?” Gnaeus says, and unlike Phagousa, who would’ve fainted from the excitement or launched into some rambling speech or another, he is brusque, professional. You would like him, you think, if he weren’t a Capitolite.

“Mydeimos,” the tribute responds. “My name is Mydeimos.”

“Well,” Gnaeus says when Mydeimos does not offer anything further. “Congratulations, Mydeimos. May the odds be ever in your favor.”

The train moves at such a blinding speed that you are at the Capitol before you know it — or perhaps it is that you wish time would slow down, that you and Hysilens and Dan Heng could remain on this journey forever, because now that you are at the Capitol you can feel it on the back of your neck, you can feel him and his immense presence with every step you take towards the room where you will meet your prep team. Mydeimos, the tribute from Two; even though you haven’t yet met him, in your nightmares your imminent death takes on his form, donning his golden cloak and pouring blood down your throat until you drown in it.

“Just go along with what the prep team says, and don’t fight,” Hysilens instructs you as you walk down the white hallway together. She’s allowed this privilege, she tells you, only because the stylists are so fond of her, and even then it’s a risk, but one she’ll take, since it’s you. “It’ll hurt, but you can bear it. Allow them to do their jobs — they may not seem like it, but they want to keep you alive in their way. There’s a lot of bragging rights involved for whoever’s tribute wins the Games.”

“Hurt?” you say nervously. Her eyes soften, and she pats you on the shoulder. 

“You’ll be alright,” she says. “Don’t worry.”

Then she’s leaving you alone, which is the worst thing, because you don’t want any moments to yourself. You don’t want to think about it, don’t want to think about the fact that in one week’s time, you will be the one leaving, the one going to the arena with such a slim chance of returning that it’s all but nonexistent.

There are three of them on your prep team, and although they introduce themselves, you are too worried about Hysilens’s warning to pay much attention to what they’re saying. They’re artificial-looking and distinct, however, much like every Capitolite, and you settle for referring to them with their most distinctive traits.

One is a woman, tall and broad, her skin leathery and her hair grey. You can’t quite figure her out, because such a description should imply elderliness, but she doesn’t seem any older or younger than the rest of her — admittedly equally as ageless in appearance — counterparts. There are designs on her nose and along her cheekbones, which at first you think are white paint, but when she leans closer to remove your shirt for you, you realize they are ivory or enamel, embedded into her face so thoroughly that they give that illusion. When she smiles at you and takes a pumice stone to the bottoms of your feet, you dub her Grey Bitch for the harshness with which she scrubs at them.

“You District Four tributes are always so lovely,” the man combing through your hair says with a dreamy sigh. There’s no tenderness in his motions as he yanks through the tangles, almost like he is determined to remove all feeling from your scalp. “Hysilens was such a beauty, as well. Half of the work is already done for us! I can’t imagine having to try and dress up those rats from Twelve. It’d be like staining the lips of — of — of a pig, and presenting it to Callictus as his next television star!”

At this, he bursts into yowling laughter, and you almost want to tell him that he is exactly one such pig, albeit far more feline, his skin a violent shade of green, his ears pointed at the tips, his pupils slitted and a cumbersome tail dragging along behind him. When he notices your gaze trailing after it, he beams at you.

“Isn’t it something? I paid thousands for it. It was almost an entire year’s salary!” he says. “I’m just glad no one else has had the idea to combine this shade of green with a tail.”

“It would be awful if you spent so much, only for your vision to be plagiarized,” the man in the corner says. He is mixing something in a bowl, and it’s only when he pours it on your legs that you realize it’s a hot wax that scalds your skin. Although he, too, is green, his mouth and forked tongue are bright red, and his teeth are filed into points that dig into his lower lip when he beams at you. “Ah, relax, it’ll be quick!”

With that, he tears away the wax and what you are sure is several layers of your skin along with it. You cannot stop yourself from yelping in surprise, leading to peals of laughter and knowing glances exchanged between the three of them.

“This is the fashion in the Capitol right now!” says the green cat of a man. “Once we’ve washed off this district filth and made you right as rain, you’ll win sponsors easily. Never underestimate how much power your appearance has!”

Maybe he’s not wrong, but it’s Hysilens’s directives that keep from flinching more than his well-intentioned but terribly-executed assistance. She seemed to believe that the prep teams really might make the difference between winning and losing, and how can you argue with that when she is a victor and you have never even been to the Capitol before? So you grit your teeth and bear it, even though you feel not unlike how a fish freshly-salted must, all raw and stinging and left to the open air to bake.

The prep team’s chatter fades into background noise for you. Their discussions are so foreign to you as to be a separate language entirely, for what do you know of liquor and enhancement and avarice? To you, the symbol of excess has always been the drunkard Phagousa, but she is nothing compared to the men and women that they refer to, men and women who eat until they are full and then vomit again and again so that they can eat more. 

You think of Bailu and Dan Heng when they mention this like an inside joke, Bailu and Dan Heng when they were children and their mother had at last succumbed to her illness. What a strange sight they had been, a boy with hollow cheeks carrying a girl on his back and eating spoiled fish to survive until he was old enough to catch his own. You wonder what the prep team would think if they had seen them then, or if they even would see them. Wouldn’t the siblings just be another instance of the very district filth they meant to efface from you at present? 

“I think you’re finally ready for Caenis,” the red-mouthed man says, wiping an affected tear from the corner of his eye. “Oh, this is definitely our finest work to date.”

“You’ll be the most gorgeous tribute in the entire parade,” says the green cat, taking the comb through the length of your hair one final time. “Even more than that boy from Two.”

“Oh, but what a handsome thing he was,” the grey woman says with a dreamy sigh, clasping her hands together in front of her chest and swooning dramatically. “Why, I wouldn’t have minded being assigned to him—”

“Watch yourself!” the green cat says, his tail lashing against the ground, which shouldn’t be possible yet somehow is. “We’re her prep team, not his. And don’t get attached to someone who might not even be a victor, or you’ll be as disappointed as you were last year, when that boy from Eleven was killed by the girl from Three!”

“Weren’t you just saying yesterday that you’d do anything for Phainon to glance your way?” the red-mouthed man adds with a snicker. “How do you expect to gain his attention when you’re so fickle? Next you’ll be saying you want Anaxagoras, too.”

The grey woman titters to herself, waving them aside shyly. “I’m only keeping my options. And Anaxagoras, honestly! Who would want that wastrel?”

Anaxagoras is a victor from District Three, one of very few, and although his Games were unremarkable enough, he has gained acclaim in the years since for his permanently bad temper and the flask ever-attached to his hip. He’s not much older than Phainon, and younger than Aglaea from One, but he’s never had their charm and thus never enjoyed their enduring popularity. Indeed, he’s only ever brought up in times like these, to be made a mockery of and nothing more.

“Just saying, just saying,” the red-mouthed man says, and they continue along with their conversation merrily, not even deigning to wish you farewell when they duck out so that you can wait by yourself to be scrutinized by this mysterious Caenis.

You expect another Capitolite in excess, so when she enters, you are surprised to see that the only sign of alteration on her entire person is the shade of her eyes, which are a slitted and snake-like blue. Yet it suits her so well that it almost seems natural, and you are so comforted by even the thought of this semblance of normalcy left in her that you cling to it as best as you can.

“Hello,” she says. She speaks clearly and precisely, without the muddled and fanciful turns of phrase that most Capitolites employ, and she doesn’t fill the silence, either, waiting for you to respond with her eyebrows raised and arms folded over her chest.

“Hello,” you say. 

“My name is Caenis, and I am your stylist,” she says. “It is my job to make you as marketable as possible, through whatever means necessary.”

“Yes,” you say. “Er, why are you saying it like that, though?”

“My partner and I have devised a pair of outfits that we are sure will be popular with the audiences, and it is your job as a tribute to wear what I give you without complaint,” she says. You had already resolved to do that, so you are nearly irritated, but then she is rummaging about in her bag to brandish your costume, and your jaw drops.

“Is that all?” you say.

“No complaints, remember?” she says.

“Yes, but, I mean, isn’t there…more?” you say. 

She smiles flatly, without a trace of empathy to the curve of her lips, and you realize that you actually recognize her, albeit barely — she had been Aglaea’s stylist as well, which makes you suddenly very grateful for what she has given you. They had sent out Aglaea in nothing but gold spray paint and tastefully placed jewels, after all; at least there is fabric to this, fabric and form if not much of either.

“It’ll be alright,” she says. “We’re very good at our jobs. Not a thing will slip, I promise.”

“If it does?” you say, not sure the answer is one you’ll prefer.

“Well,” she says. “Make sure the cameras catch it. You might get another sponsor or two for your efforts.”

The first night that all of you are in the Capitol is marked with a grand parade, which is what the prep team has been readying you for. All of you tributes will ride in chariots marked with your district numbers, wearing costumes representative of your district’s specialties — for Four, it is fish and the sea — and allowing the Capitolites their first proper look at you. This is your chance to make a lasting impression, whether good or bad, and it’s not a stretch to say that those tributes who are flashy and bold in the parade end up with twice or thrice as much backing as the ones who fade into obscurity. The Capitolites are like moths or magpies, after all, drawn to that which glitters and glows, to flashes of muscles and hints of curves, and they are the ones who have the money, the power, and so Caenis’s strategy, crude as it is, is often a winning one.

You feel a little shy when Caenis leads you through the path of chariots lined up, so you try to focus on the horses instead of your fellow tributes. They are so well trained that they don’t even need a driver, and there’s a kind of solace in the emptiness of the front box, allowing you to pretend like no one is looking at you, although you know it’s the opposite, because in truth the entire world has their eyes on you and the twenty-three others in the basement of the training center.

“You, too, huh?” Dan Heng says when you join him. He offers you his hand to help you onto the chariot, which you take and do not thank him for, and his expression when you wince is comically commiserating, like you are two friends discussing the currents instead of tributes that will be at each other’s throats in a few short days. “I guess it’s probably worse for you.”

Your entire bodies have been covered in fine gold netting, similar in structure to what you use to catch fish, but glimmering and soft instead of drab and thick like those meant for purpose. False seaweed and strands of cowries weave in and out of the knots, forming something like a skirt on you, a loincloth on him, and seashells curve around your chest, whereas his is left bare entirely. It’s beautiful and scant and alluring; in any other year, it would’ve been enough to win you both the attention of the entire crowd, to win you enough sponsors just based on aesthetic appeal that your performance in the week before you entered the arena might be meaningless. But this isn’t any other year, and Caenis’s efforts will come to nothing, you can tell even before the trumpets play, because this year, the one everyone will be looking at is Mydeimos.

The chariot for District Two is only one ahead of where you and Dan Heng  stand, and although the angle of it means that you cannot quite tell what they have dressed Castorice in, Mydeimos is directly in your line of sight, and even if he weren’t, you would’ve craned your neck just so he could be. He is the only other tribute in this entire Games that matters to you, the only other tribute that is your particular concern, the only one who is unequivocally older and stronger and better, so you suppose it’s likely it’ll always be this way. You’ll always be looking for him, measuring him against your own performance until the moment you may meet in the arena, when you will have to put the accuracy of your estimations to the test.

The crowd roars for him, and the cameras linger on him longer than anyone else, and you should feel jilted but you cannot bring yourself to blame them when you are doing the same. How can you ever tear your eyes away from that bold lash of fire as the gold horses of his chariot march him and Castorice forward? He is inescapable, unavoidable, and he has once again left the world entranced, as he did when he volunteered for that sick boy in Two.

They have leaned into that intrinsic burning, that unsettled flame of his, and so there are red designs tracing his muscles, lining his eyes, circling his throat — a target, almost, and a teasing one, at that. You might kill him if you touch it, but could you ever get so close? There’s bronze armor on his legs and gauntlets on his hands; gold bands studded with blue stones ring his arms and hang low on his chest, inadvertently shielding his heart. Crimson fabric painted with flames at the hem wraps around his waist and torso, fluttering behind him in the wind, doing little to cover him, and his expression is so solemn it’s as if he’s one of those paintings that were destroyed in the Dark Days, when the districts first rebelled against the Capitol.

In another world, it is Dan Heng receiving this adoration. In another world, it is he who captures the Capitol’s hearts with tales of his sister and his sorrow, whose pearls and netting gleam brightly enough to eclipse the rest of the tributes, whose tribute partner might ally with him until the very end, whereupon he will kill her and return the triumphant victor. In this other world, you are that very partner, and maybe there, your friendship with Hysilens and the mere clams covering your breasts will be enough to give you a fighting chance. But not here. Not now. Not in the world as it is, where Mydeimos exists and steals everyone’s hearts without so much as a twitch of his lips.

When all of the chariots finally roll to a stop beneath the sweeping balcony, President Lycurgus steps out, his hands clasped, his expression unreadable behind that mask he always wears. You have never been so close to him before, but for some reason, you find yourself more frightened than inspired. It’s sinister, the blankness of his hidden face, the coolness of his voice as he addresses you all.

“Welcome, everyone,” he says, to a round of rousing applause. “And welcome, tributes. We in the Capitol welcome you!”

Everyone cheers. The screens in the back of the stands reflect the citizens, many of whom are throwing roses at the gathered tributes and reading the names of their favorites off of their programs.

My-dei-mos. My-dei-mos. Most of the flowers fall at his feet, which gives the cameras an excuse to dally on him a little longer, but he is not the only one. There are others who they yell for, Cifera from One and Dan Heng at your side and even, to your surprise, you — though you can not manage indifference as well as the others, so you crouch and gather the ones you can reach in your arms, hugging them to your chest and hoping they can see how you beam, how sincerely you wish to thank them, though of course it’s not really the flowers you are so grateful for.

“We would like to wish you,” President Lycurgus says, raising his hands to silence the crowd, which swells with anticipation, “a happy Hunger Games! May the odds be ever in your favor.”

In the rush of the parade’s aftermath, you are separated from Dan Heng as you try to find an elevator that will take you to the fourth floor as you were instructed by Caenis earlier. You feel silly now that you are by yourself, silly and cold, too, for even though it is summer, there is a nip of chill to the night. Hugging yourself, you wish that you had grabbed onto your partner before you dismounted the chariot, or that Hysilens could read your mind and manifest next to you as she sometimes does, but sadly, none of these things happens. Your savior comes in the form of a boyish shout, which is far too casual to come from a fellow tribute.

“Hey, District Four! We have space in our elevator, if you’d like.”

You don’t even stop to question why he might be yelling for you; it’s the first familiar and friendly sound you’ve heard in the bustle of stylists and prep teams and tributes, so you run, squeezing into the elevator just as the doors are about to shut. Sighing in relief and slumping against the wall, you close your eyes, only opening them when a second passes and you still haven’t moved.

“Did you, ah, want me to push it for you?” Phainon says, his hand half-raised, pointing at the panel of buttons labelled with the floor numbers. Your face burns when you realize that they’re all waiting for you to do something, and you shake your head furiously, reaching over and pressing one labelled fourth floor, cursing yourself for being so foolish in front of another district’s mentor.

“Sorry,” you say when the elevator starts moving. He shrugs.

“It’s alright. Hysilens asked me to look out for you if I saw you, and I told her I didn’t mind. He certainly doesn’t,” he says, motioning towards Anaxagoras, whose eyelids are heavy and low, his fists clenched on the railing like he might fall without the support.

It’s the two of them, you, Trianne, and the boy from Seven — you think his name may be Chartonus, but you’re not quite sure — in there together. Trianne is clearly bewildered, shrinking into herself in the corner, and Chartonus, although he towers over all of you, Phainon included, seems even more uncomfortable than you do. For his part, Anaxagoras has probably had more from his flask tonight than most people would in a week, if his glazed-over eyes are anything to go by, and so that leaves you and Phainon to converse as the elevator crawls up at a snail’s pace.

“Your costume is quite bold,” he says, and you don’t want to be presumptuous, but there’s almost a hint of sadness in his eyes when he speaks. “You look very pretty.”

“Thank you,” you say, more than a little flustered, because hearing such compliments from Caenis and your prep team was one thing, and hearing them from Hysilens will be another, but Phainon is different. Every Capitolite wants him, so to think that such a highly-regarded man, rumored to have slept even with President Lycurgus’s beloved sister, is telling you that you are pretty — you bite the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from saying anything you might regret. “Um, you also…look…pretty…”

You trail off, because now there’s blood in your mouth and Phainon is laughing at you. He doesn’t mean it cruelly, but he’s laughing all the same, and you wish Hysilens were with you, because she’d surely have some witty comeback, especially given that they are apparently friends.

“Thank you,” he says. “I can see why Hysilens thinks so highly of you. It’s a shame, you know, about the arena and all. I think we would’ve been friends if you had been born in Nine. You’re a nice girl.”

“I swear to god, Phainon,” Anaxagoras groans, clutching his head. “Shut the fuck up. I’m too hungover for this.”

Phainon gives you a conspiratorial eye roll. “You just had your last bottle during the parade, Anaxa. How are you already hungover?”

Anaxagoras paws blindly at his belt, where his flask is hanging. Sighing with the air of one used to such tasks, Phainon unhooks it and hands it to him. Anaxagoras doesn’t thank him, only pouring it down his throat and wiping away the excess as it leaks from the corners of his mouth.

“You’re the girl from Four, right?” he mumbles out afterwards. 

“Yes, that’s right,” you say.

“Hm,” he says. “You don’t look as strong as Hysilens.”

“Anaxa, you can’t say that,” Phainon reprimands. “Sorry. Normally he’d be antagonizing Aglaea right about now, but she’s clearly elsewhere.”

Anaxa chuckles to himself. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m betting…I’m betting…I’m betting on Mydei...”

He faceplants before he can finish his sentence, and Phainon doesn’t even try to catch him, running a hand through his hair before giving you, Trianne, and Chartonus an apologetic look.

“I’m very sorry about him,” he says. 

“Is he like this a lot?” Trianne says timidly. Her voice is a mouse-squeak, and you almost move to reassure her, but then you think it will be worse if you do that now. You’ll be in the arena together soon, so giving her false hope of protection like that would be beyond cruel. Phainon, though, has no such qualms, his entire demeanor gentling until you can almost forget the sight of him when he won his Hunger Games, mud matting his hair to his forehead, his sword in his hands, dripping with blood and entrails, tears in his eyes as he—

“He can be,” Phainon says, patting her on the head. He knows she’s doomed just as well as the rest of you, and you guess he doesn’t see the point in posturing or cruelty. Even if they are stupid and talentless, the tributes from Nine will almost certainly outlive her, so what point would there be in trying to intimidate the frightened girl? “Don’t worry, though. District Three has good doctors, and the Capitol has better ones. Oh, it looks like we’ve reached the fourth floor! It was nice to meet you. Tell Hysilens she owes me one.”

The elevator opens right after he waves at you in farewell, and you dart out without a backward glance, thinking that even more time with Phainon is not worth another second in Anaxagoras’s presence, especially considering you’ve never been particularly interested in him, anyways. You can hear your prep team wailing in the back of your mind, but now that you’ve met him in person you can say for sure that there is a muchness about him, an extravagance that you can admire and understand but would never desire for yourself.

“You may not realize it, but these days of training are vital for your success in the games,” Hysilens instructs you over breakfast. You are in the training outfit the Capitol provided for you, grey pants and a grey shirt, while she is still in her nightgown, a bowl of fruit in her hands that she lazily picks at in between sentences. “Last night was your debut with the Capitolites. This is your debut with the other tributes.”

“What do you mean?” you say, pushing around something bready and soaked in syrup with your fork.

“If you’re memorably strong, or from a district like Four that’s known for healthy tributes, then in the arena, the others will either try to hunt you down or be frightened of you. Now, the latter is far more desirable than the former, obviously — but it’s dependent on the alliances you make, which in turn is dependent on your behavior in the next few days. I’ll spend today reaching out to the other mentors to see who might be open to working with you, but I need you to do your part and try to curry favor with the ones I recommend, as well as any others you might identify as strong allies,” she says.

“Got it,” you say, because it does make sense. “Who are you thinking?”

You half-expect her to start off with the obvious, Mydeimos, but she goes in a completely different direction. 

“Cifera,” she says. “The girl from One. Aglaea’s confident in her, and she doesn’t have confidence in anyone unless they earn it. There’s more to her than she’s shown us thus far, and though I don’t think you can trust her for an instant, she could be a valuable tool, especially in the earlier days of the Games.”

“I’ll try,” you say, because from what you remember of Cifera at the parade and her Reaping, she is coy and quick and slippery. It will be difficult to pin her down, and Hysilens must know this, because she rushes to continue on.

“Dan Heng is a given if you want him, and Castorice isn’t a bad option, either. Compared to that partner of hers, she may not seem like much, but the two of you together could hold your own for a while,” she says. “In fact, I’m on good terms with Cerydra, and I’m almost certain she’ll tell Castorice to reach out to you today.”

“What about him?” you say. “Mydeimos. Isn’t he just as much of a given for Castorice as Dan Heng is for me? Why wouldn’t she stick with him?”

Hysilens makes a face. “I tried talking to Krateros yesterday, at the parade. Seems like Mydeimos has no interest in alliances with anyone, Castorice included. Stuck-up ass. I wouldn’t recommend approaching him, in all honesty. Don’t worry — he’s formidable, but even setting aside Cifera, if you can come to an agreement with Castorice and Dan Heng, Mydeimos won’t be an issue. After that, it just comes down to which between the three of you will come out the victor, and that’s a fight I have faith in you to win.”

You and Dan Heng travel to the main floor of the training center in silence, each lost in your own thoughts. You almost ask him if his mentor, an older victor named Triton, has told him to ally with you, but you don’t know what you will say if he tells you no, so you hold your tongue, deciding you can discuss it closer to the day of the Games. For now, you would be better off trying to meet with the others, so as soon as the elevator stops, you peel off towards the station where spears are propped up against the wall, not waiting to see if he asks you to stay with him.

A spear isn’t terribly unlike a trident, albeit weighted slightly differently, and as you maneuver it in a set of familiar motions, you relax into that mantra which echoes throughout Four after every Reaping Day: they’re just fish. It’s just fishing, this is just a trident and your opponents are nothing more than sea bass and you can do this, really.

Then, out of the corner of your eye, you see Dan Heng showing Trianne how to tie a square knot, her fingers fumbling over the precise motions, and the spear becomes so heavy in your hands you must set it down for fear that you will drop it and make a fool of yourself entirely.

True to Hysilens’s prediction, Castorice comes up to you shortly before you are told to break for lunch. You are at the edible plants station, only because the other combat stations have been taken up by tributes you are too nervous to approach, and for a while she just stands to your left, sorting through berries with you, her eyes trained on the task but flicking to you ever so often.

“Our mentors are good friends,” she says finally. “Cerydra and Hysilens.”

“I think so,” you say.

“They’ll work well together,” she says, tiptoeing around the point before getting straight to it, “if we’re allies.”

“That’s right,” you say, because despite the advice Hysilens has given you, despite Castorice being your best chance at winning, something in the back of your mind protests it. You know that you should be ecstatic — here you are, approached by a tribute of your own skill level, and with Dan Heng all but guaranteed to join you if only you ask, your odds have never been higher. But you can’t bring yourself to be, and it takes you only a moment to understand why that is.

There he is, Mydeimos from Two, hefting a polearm in the air. To him, a spear is a spear, not a replacement for a trident, and the way he uses it is ruthless, efficient, an extension of the weapon that his very body is. He wastes no movement, the way you know you must, and even without it, he is dangerous. He is dangerous, and Anaxagoras is betting on him, and even Phainon did not disagree with him, necessarily, when he said it, which means something. Which means a lot.

That is the issue, the one you can’t even tell Hysilens without sounding ridiculous. You don’t want Castorice. You don’t want Cifera. You don’t even want Dan Heng, as horrible as that is. You only want him, you only want Mydeimos as your ally, because you feel that if you do not have him, then you will definitely lose, and nothing can change that, no matter how many other people you work with. You will die without him, this you know, which means you need him. No one else. Just him.

“Well,” Castorice says, feigning a smile at you. “Let me know.”

You smile back at her, just as false, just as bright, just as guilty. “I will.”

Mydeimos is sitting by himself, apart from the others, who have separated into their own groups already. You ignore Castorice and Dan Heng, both of whom look at you expectantly, and make a beeline for him, putting your plate across from his but refusing to sit until he deigns to look up at you.

It pins you in place, his stare, and for a second your mouth goes dry and you remember what it’s like to die at his hand. Every nightmare, every fitful dream, you think of them and remember the crush of his grip around your windpipe, the heat of his lance piercing your chest, the salt of the blood weeping from you. Such a delicate thing it is, that he can be both savior and slaughterer if you are not careful. Hysilens would not approve, you can hear her voice in the back of your mind — what happens when it’s just the two of you left? How will you kill him then? — but it’s too late now. 

“What is it?” he says. He speaks pleasantly enough, to your surprise, not cruelly, and his voice is level instead of furious at your interruption of his meal. “Speak if you have something to say, and leave if you don’t.”

“I want you to be my ally,” you say. His expression sours.

“No,” he says. “I have no interest in allies.”

“Well, you should,” you hiss, sitting in huff and crossing your arms, glaring at him all the while. “Who do you think the first tribute everyone hunts down is going to be? You’re a threat to us all, Mydeimos. I know it, and I know you know it, too.”

“So what?” he says. “I can take on any of you if I need to.”

“At the same time?” you say, and he does pause at this, so you press onward before you can cower away from it. “Castorice, Dan Heng, Cifera, and me, could you fight us all and win? Even if you did, you’d likely be left in such a state that even Hyacinthia or Trianne could finish you off.”

“You’re threatening me?” he says, raising his eyebrows but sounding mildly impressed. “If that's the case, then why don’t you go over and sit with the rest of your friends? Castorice and Cifera and Dan Heng, was that who it was? Why aren’t you with them now?”

“Because I don’t want them,” you say. “I want you.”

“Right,” he says. “But why?”

“Dan Heng,” you admit, although you don’t realize it’s true until you’re saying it. “He’s dangerous. If I ally with him, I’ll have to kill him eventually, and I don’t — I don’t think I can do that.”

How could you go home and face Bailu, face the rest of District Four? Knowing that it was you who killed him? You can’t tell Mydeimos how reliant you are on him elsewise, but this much you can share, and it’s not a lie, either. You don’t want to be the one who fights Dan Heng. You don’t want it to be the two of you in the end.

“You’re hoping I’ll kill him for you,” Mydeimos said.

“Yes,” you say, almost cringing from the bluntness of it but steeling yourself to this hard truth: either you or Dan Heng can live, but not both of you, and the one who will make it out has to be you. “I do.”

“I see,” he says. “Then am I to assume you’re offering to face off against Castorice for me?”

“If those are your terms,” you say. He cocks his head at you, inspecting you thoroughly. You don’t know what he’s looking for or what he finds, but it must be something he approves of, because he nods once, short, sharp. You hold your breath, hardly believing it, but then he places a slice of apple on your plate, a tentative peace offering of sorts.

“Fine,” he says.

“Fine?” you say.

“I’ll tell Krateros to talk to your mentor, District Four,” he says. “The old man’ll probably burst from excitement, anyways. He’s not been happy with me.”

“So you’ll be my ally?” you check.

“Yes,” he says and then, with a wry expression, close to a grin but not quite, he offers you his hand. “And you’ll be mine. I hope you don’t regret it.”

His hand is warm, and it engulfs yours when you shake once, twice, sealing the pact. Now he is yours. Now you are his. In the arena, you will fight together. In the arena, the phantom of your nightmares will be your only guardian. Your mouth tastes death and your breath comes short, but you do not falter, because in your heart, you can feel it blooming, faint and small but there nevertheless: hope.

“How was it?” Hysilens asks you when you return later that day. You are in the middle of changing, and she did not bother with knocking, but neither of you care for such things, and you hear her flop on your bed as you pull your training shirt over your head to replace it with something cleaner to wear until you can shower later. You shrug, but then you realize she’s probably not looking at you, so you clear your throat.

“Alright. I made an ally.”

“Just one?” she says. “Was it Castorice? Cerydra told me she told her to talk to you.”

“Er, no,” you say, because you feel a little awkward now. How are you supposed to tell Hysilens that you have, in essence, rejected her ideas? She’s your mentor, not just your best friend. You should be following her directives, and she specifically told you two things: that she didn’t recommend you approach Mydeimos, and that you should ally yourself with Castorice. What have you done? Exactly the opposite.

“...Okay,” she says, slowly and carefully. “Cifera?”

“Mydeimos,” you say.

“What?” she says.

“The tribute from Two,” you say. “Mydeimos. We’re going to be allies.”

She blinks at me. “Mydeimos?”

“That’s what I said,” you say, a little impatiently. “He’s having the same conversation with Krateros right now, I’d expect. You’ll probably hear from him tomorrow, but it won’t be anything new. It’ll be the two of us in the arena.”

“Just you two?” she says, adjusting to it quicker than you had anticipated. You thought she might be angrier, but she’s taking it in stride so well you almost wonder if she planned for it.

“Yes,” you say. “It seemed like that was all he was open to.”

“I see,” she says. “Alright, if that’s how it is.”

“You’re not upset?” you say. “I didn’t follow your advice at all.”

“He’s a viable option,” she says. “He’ll keep you alive for a while, at least, and you can always betray him when it’s convenient. It’ll be more difficult than if you had done as I said, but it’s not an unsalvageable strategy, and it offers its own benefits. For one, the chances of the two of you being hunted down while you’re together are close to zero, especially when there are so many weaker tributes that could be chosen. You might even be able to take the Cornucopia, and I don’t need to tell you how valuable that is.”

“Right,” you say, relieved at her detached assessment, which indicates that you haven’t made an entirely wrong decision in pursuing Mydeimos. “Does that change anything else that you’ve said to me?”

“Some of it,” she says. “Castorice, Cifera, and Dan Heng are now your greatest enemies instead of potential allies, but as for how you’ll take care of them…it depends on if any of them team up. On their own, none of them will pose threats to the two of you, but they might realize it and band together to take the two of you on.”

“What should I — we — do if that happens?” you say. 

“Kill them,” she says simply. When your face falls, she flicks your chin before pulling you into a hug, and even here, so far away, she smells like home, comforting you immeasurably. “It’s okay. Don’t forget what we always say.”

“They’re just fish,” you say. “But Dan Heng—”

“—is also another fish,” she completes for you, callous despite the fact that she knew him once, too. “You chose to ally yourself with Mydeimos. Dan Heng is not someone you can afford to worry about anymore, just like the rest of the tributes. Not if you want to make it out of there.”

Although you are now allies, you don’t see much of Mydeimos in the rest of your days training. You are still a little intimidated by him, and also worried that he will change his mind, leaving you entirely alone when you reach the arena, so you try to give him his own space, settling for wandering about the various stations, avoiding the others as best as you can. They make it easy; you suppose Cerydra must’ve told Castorice that you have rejected her offer, and Cifera has never seemed the friendly type in the first place. Dan Heng takes to your mutually agreed-upon silence well enough, and the rest of the tributes would never dare approach you anyways, so all in all it is a simple, mindless way to pass the days until your evaluations and interviews.

In order to make things easier for sponsors, all of the tributes are privately evaluated and scored for their skills, so that there is some objective method of choosing who to back — on a scale of one to twelve, those who rank higher are considered safer picks, due to clearly possessing some exceptional skills. It’s not a failsafe, as there’s only so much that can be displayed in a few minutes’ time, but at least it is something to count on for the ones whose bets are more numerically based. 

You go in order of district, as you always do. You and Dan Heng sit side by side, and you almost want to wish him luck when he stands to enter, you even open your mouth to do it, but the words die before they can take form. How can you wish him luck? You fell into an alliance with Mydeimos partially because you want the boy from Two to kill him in your stead. How can you know that and still say it with such confidence? Good luck. It’s such a joke that you remain silent until you are told the Gamemakers will see you now.

They are seated at a long table stacked with food, and although a few of them seem like they are verging on the edge of distraction, most of them watch you intently as you enter the room. The head Gamemaker, who has just been promoted to the position and apparently had ‘a lot of fun’ designing this year’s arena, if the gossip from your prep team is to be believed, nods at you. He’s a handsome man, violet haired, dark eyed, with one of those fancy Capitolite names: Veritas Ratio.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he says. 

Hysilens has told you many times over not to do anything too obscure or strange — by virtue of being from District Four, you are already guaranteed a high score, as long as you perform to expectations. All you have to do is take a spear and show you can use it; anything more is unnecessary, a waste of their time as well as yours.

It’s nothing revolutionary, but the Gamemakers must be suitably impressed, because they give you a 9 that night, the number flashing bright beneath your name. Dan Heng gets a 10, as does Cifera, and Castorice gets a 9 like you. Chartonus, the boy from Seven, gets an 8, which is a high score for someone from a generally underperforming district, and somehow Hyacinthia gets a 7, causing Hysilens to furrow her brow in confusion.

Mydeimos gets an 11. It matches him, the strict number, and you don’t think there’s a person alive that didn’t believe he would get such a designation. Hysilens looks at you when it happens, but you pretend like you don’t see her curious gaze. She must be wondering how you feel about it, but why does it matter? It’s too late now for you to take it back, even if you wanted to — which you don’t. You’re glad for it, really, glad that the highest ranked tribute is on your side, is your ally. This is just further proof that you did the right thing.

“The most successful interviews are ones where the tributes go in having an angle already determined,” Hysilens says. She’s convinced your prep team, with a bat of her eyelashes, to be allowed to sit in as they get you ready for your interview, perching on the counter and pretending to ignore their rapt attention. “Who do you want to be portrayed as? It’s something you want to be sure of, because otherwise Callictus will decide for you, and he’s only one man, with only a short time to present you to the Capitol. He won’t always pick what you want him to.”

“I see,” you say. “What was your angle?”

“They told me to go for lethal,” she says. “Seductive and lethal. I don’t know if it worked. I guess it must’ve.”

“It definitely did!” the green cat of a man currently layering your toenails in seashell pink lacquer pipes up. “Everyone in the Capitol was captivated by it.”

“Right,” Hysilens says, shifting slightly and giving you a look you cannot decipher. “Well, anyways. What do you want to do?”

“I’m not sure,” you say. “Do you have any ideas?”

She tilts her head, as if trying to see you from a different perspective. “Nope.”

“Nope?” you say. “Seriously, you can’t think of anything?”

“It’s not your fault,” she says. “It’s just that I know you so well, I can’t put you in one archetype so neatly. I can’t say you’re sexy or cute or kind. You’re all of those. You’re none of them. I don’t know. You’re everything! But how are we supposed to show that to the entire Capitol in three minutes when it’s taken me my entire life to learn it?”

“Oh,” you say. “I’m not sure.”

“If only you could be on stage with her, Hysilens,” the grey woman says. She’s smudging sparkly powder along your forehead, and she is so focused on her task that she doesn’t even waver as she speaks. “I remember when she got chosen in the Reaping and the cameras focused on you. It was the most intense moment of the entire day! Besides Castorice and Mydeimos volunteering, of course. But even then!”

“Chills,” the red-mouthed man says, miming a shiver. “Literal chills. You looked so sad, it’s really made us all wonder what your relationship could possibly be. You’re obviously not siblings, and she’s not your child, but there’s no doubt about it, you love her. It’s so amazing!”

“If the mentors were the ones being interviewed, you’d definitely make her the most popular tribute,” the green-skinned man says, his cat tail flicking. “Too bad you have to stay in the audience. Well, it’ll be good while she’s in the arena at least!”

“Maybe we should try ruling out avenues that definitely won’t work,” you say when all Hysilens offers in response is a pout. “It might lead us closer to something we could try.”

“Definitely don’t do the silent and strong thing,” she says almost immediately. “I can guarantee that’s what Mydeimos will go for. Probably Chartonus, too, and both of them will be able to carry it way better than you ever could.”

“I wasn’t planning on it, so that’s good,” you say. 

“You could just about pull off sweet and innocent, but not with Hyacinthia and Trianne in the running,” she says, stroking her chin as your prep team begins to decorate the muscles of your legs with a pattern like fish scales. “Your connection to an existing mentor is the same. Even though we’re best friends, Trianne is Tribios’s daughter. That’s a narrative we can never compete with, as much as we’d like to.”

“Why don’t you just go for the obvious?” the red-mouthed man says. You’d all but forgotten they were all there, really, so to hear the input takes you by surprise, but you motion for him to go on. After all, it’s Capitolites like him that you’re trying to impress, anyways, so shouldn’t you hear what he has to say, even if he is just a member of your prep team? “Caenis would kill us if we spoil the entire surprise, but your interview outfit isn’t that different from your parade one, if you know what I mean.”

Your throat feels a little scratchy, because you do know what he means, and then you look at Hysilens, only to find that she is pursing her lips in clear disapproval. She doesn’t like it, didn’t like the netting you were draped in then and won’t like whatever Caenis has come up with now, but the man has a point. It’s an easy way of gaining sponsors, maybe even the easiest. It worked for Phainon, for Aglaea, for Hysilens — it’ll work for you, too, because unlike the others you are competing against, you will play into this interpretation. You are not the beautiful Mydeimos or the cold Dan Heng or the sweet Hyacinthia, who have other, better qualities to sell; all you have is this, and you must lean forward and convince Callictus, convince the sponsors, that if you are not strong, if you are not sweet, you are at least desirable.

Once again, you and Dan Heng are matching, although the connection is looser this time. He is in a white suit, simple, plain, his shirt underneath sheer like seafoam, silvery shell patterns lining the bones of his regal cheeks, his hair and collarbones sprayed with something glimmering that gives the illusion of dampness, his eyelashes clumped together and his lips pink as if he has just clambered from the water. On the other hand, you are in that same white, but on you it is pearls, winding tightly around you in a semblance of a dress, forming a dripping halo that tumbles from the crown of your head to your bare shoulders. Your arms and legs reflect the glare of the cameras, golden fish-scales stamped along them, and if Dan Heng is meant to resemble someone who has just crawled out of the sea, you look like you have never left it.

Taking your place in the line before him, you turn immediately to look at Mydeimos, wondering what they have put him in — only to find that he is already looking at you, his brow low over his eyes, his mien only lightening when your gazes meet. He’s in a suit as well, dark, the sleeves of his jacket carelessly rolled back, his hair tousled and half-tied. Aside from the striking amber of his eyes, the only hint of color in the entire effect is the sapphire necklace he had worn in the tribute parade, drawing attention to the breadth of his chest, the tightness of his shirt, how it strains against his muscles even when they are at rest.

“What a show-off,” Dan Heng says, with that dry humor of his. “Triton says he’s refused any alliance proposals. I guess he’s betting that those muscles of his will be enough to win him the Games alone.”

“You wanted to ally with Mydeimos?” you say. As Callictus begins the program and calls Cifera, who as the female tribute from One is the first to go, Dan Heng hums in thought.

“Triton recommended I try,” he says. “The two of us are the strongest contenders, so wouldn’t it make sense if we worked together? Especially because you don’t have any interest in being allies with me.”

“I—”

“It’s okay,” he says kindly. “You don’t have to explain it to me. We went to school together and lived in the same district; maybe we were even acquaintances, but both of us know that none of that matters in the arena. You should make whatever choices you think are best, and I’ll do the same.”

“He’s my ally,” you say to Dan Heng, and even though it’s not a secret, necessarily, it feels like something shameful that you have to get off your chest, that you have to confess to him before you enter the arena tomorrow morning. “Mydeimos. He’s my ally.”

“I see,” Dan Heng says. “How’d you convince him?”

You can’t tell him, of course you can’t tell him, so you swallow and look away. “It doesn’t matter. But it’s true.”

“I believe you,” he says. “You’ve always been like that. It’s impossible not to be friends with you.”

“What did you say?” you say, because now, in the back of your mind, an idea is forming. You wish you had had it sooner, because you really ought to consult with Hysilens, but it’s too late now. All you can do is rely on this instinct of yours and hope that it’s correct.

“Back in District Four,” Dan Heng says, giving you a bewildered look. “Hysilens isn’t exactly the easiest person to befriend, but you did so effortlessly. It stands to reason that it was the same with Mydeimos.”

“Right,” you say. “Yes, that’s it.”

“Uh-huh,” he says, and then he smiles slightly. “I wish we had been better friends back at home.”

“I don’t know why we weren’t,” you say, and then you are so utterly, crushingly desperate that it’s all you can do to stop yourself from clinging to his sleeve the way you’ve seen Bailu do when she is nervous. “Dan Heng, it’s not too late. We can still be allies, I can talk to Mydeimos and convince him—”

“Hey,” he says. “It’s okay. I already have my two allies, and I don’t think either of them would have any interest in working with either of you.”

Your blood runs cold. Of course, you had known that it was possible, that it was likely, but to hear him all but confirm that he and Triton have made contact with Districts One and Two, that Aglaea and Cerydra have given their blessings for him to work with Castorice and Cifera…it’s frightening. It’s an excruciating reminder that you really are going to be enemies soon, that he and the other two will be your greatest threat, that Mydeimos may have to make good on his promise after all. You don’t know what you were hoping for, what you were expecting, but the cool detachment with which Dan Heng says it leaves you momentarily breathless. I already have my two allies. And you already have your one, but even still, even still. You don’t want to ever meet him in the arena, not with Bailu watching, even though you are sure now that you will have to.

“District Four, you’re up,” one of the stage attendants hisses, and then you are being ushered onto the stage, where you sit across from Callictus, adjusting the pearls so that the cross of your legs does not cause them to ride too far up your thighs.

“My, oh, my! Our lady from District Four, and what a beauty she is. Well, after the tribute parade, I guess you could say that we all knew that!” Callictus says, rousing the audience into a surge of applause and whistles. You search the crowd for Hysilens, but instead, your eyes land on Phainon, who stands out even when he is meant to be another face in a sea of the like. He is not smiling, and he does not clap, although he does offer you a slight nod in acknowledgement when he notices that you are looking at him. You wonder if he resents your popularity, if he wishes it were Livia, the female tribute from Nine, receiving this adoration instead, but for some reason you are sure it’s not the case.

When you finally do see Hysilens, tucked away over by where Triton and Phagousa are sitting, you can tell she is wearing that worried expression of hers, the one where her brow pinches together and her lips press into a tight line. She is expecting you to play into Callictus’s words, and you suppose Phainon must be, too, as well as the rest of the audience — it’s a time-tested  strategy, and one that Caenis has set you up for so nicely, so why wouldn’t you? Besides, that’s what the two of you had discussed, and no matter how lukewarm Hysilens had been about it, you both had agreed that it was the safest option, the surest. Yet instead of batting your eyelashes, instead of giggling, you smile politely at Callictus and wait for the noise to die down.

“Thank you,” you say, and then you fold your hands in your lap. “You look wonderful, as well. All of you do. I feel so lucky that I get to sit in front of you and be applauded, when I should really be somewhere wearing clothes that still smell like fish.”

“Ah, the infamous stench of District Four,” Callictus says, and then he leans closer, pretending to sniff the air before you. “Don’t worry, dear audience, I can’t smell a thing on our friend here!”

You pretend to sniff him back, and then you wrinkle your nose, shooting the crowd, shooting Hysilens, a helpless look. “Oh, but dear audience, if only I could say the same…”

The crowd bursts into laughter as Callictus’s jaw drops comically loose and he produces a spray bottle from his pocket, spritzing lavender-scented essence into the air and fanning it about. You cover your mouth with your hand so that it looks like you are laughing, when really you are just trying not to inhale the sharp, alcohol-tinged droplets that are now floating about.

How did you come to know Hysilens? Dan Heng was the one who reminded you of it. You don’t have years, as she said, only a spare few minutes, but you don’t have to seduce the Capitol to make them love you. You only have to get them to see you how she does, to befriend them as you once befriended her, and it will be enough, or at least it will have to be, because you have realized what it is that Phainon and Hysilens have been hinting at this entire time — being desired by the Capitol is a debt, and it’s not one you will want to be collected when the time comes.

“Is this better?” Callictus says, straightening his shirt and then whispering to the crowd as if you are not there. “I’m really so nervous, you all…she’s even more intimidating up close.”

“Intimidating? Me?” you say, and this time you actually do laugh, because no one has ever called you that before. “I’m the one who’s intimidated! You’re a celebrity, the entire district — country knows you, so shouldn’t I be shy? Now you even smell nicer than I do.”

Callictus pumps his fist in the air. “She thinks I smell nice!”

Everyone cheers, but you know it’s not enough. You have been lovely, pleasant, amusing, but not memorable. As soon as you leave this stage, as soon as Dan Heng takes your place, you will be forgotten, and your chance at sponsors will vanish along with your memory. You cannot let Callictus decide for you who you are going to be. You cannot let anyone decide that, not him or Caenis or Phagousa or anyone.

You don’t have a sister like Bailu or Polyxia; you don’t have a mother who is a victor or an age that will gain you sympathy; you only have Hysilens’s faith and Mydeimos’s spear to ascertain your victory. The latter you cannot speak of, but the former you must tear out of your chest and show to the world. Look, you must tell them. She is my best friend. She believes in me. Now it is your turn. Now you must believe in me, too.

“Callictus,” you saw, drawing his attention immediately. “If you don’t mind me being blunt, and if the audience doesn’t mind listening in…well, I have to ask you for some advice while I have this chance.”

“Certainly! I’d much rather talk about your problems than my odor,” he says.

“Oh, I was only teasing you,” you say before sobering. “It’s just, you know, what with the Games starting tomorrow, there’s still a few people that I’m wondering how I should say farewell to. Or, honestly, no, that’s not accurate. There’s only one, but the thing is that I can’t say bye to her.”

“Why not?” Callictus says.

“She won’t let me,” you say. "Isn't it ridiculous? I bet you if I tried right this moment, she’d say something like, don’t be ridiculous, you’ll be back in a week.”

“She sounds like a stubborn one,” Callictus says, leaning back in his chair and stroking his chin, as if you have presented him with some impossible conundrum.

“The most stubborn,” you say. “It took me a month before I could even convince her to be my friend in the first place, if you’ll believe me.”

“An entire month!” Callictus says. 

“She was the best fisher in the entire district, so it was hard to impress her,” you say. “I don’t think she even looked at me until I saved one of our classmates from drowning. We were on a boat, you see, and he had fallen off the side — he had a nervous temperament, he was prone to fits, so it wasn’t his fault, but it happened before any of us knew it.”

“Oh, dear,” Callictus says, and his speechlessness is like a victory to you, because it means that now you are the one in control of the interview.

“I dove off the side after him,” you say. “I wasn’t thinking about her or my teachers or anyone else. I’m one of the strongest swimmers in our district, so it had to be me, or that’s what I told myself. The others would die if they went after him, because someone who’s drowning will always try to drown you with them, you see. Even I might’ve, in truth — died, I mean — but instead I brought him back to the surface, despite how he kicked and clawed. After that, she told me that if I’m so determined to stay alive, to keep the others around me alive as well, then I can’t be half-bad. But there’s the issue.”

“The issue?” Callictus says. You know you’re running short on time, the interview is already halfway over if not more, and so you do not delay.

“She’s seen me defy death once,” you say. “She’s seen me defy it a million times back home. So how can she say goodbye to me when she knows I can do it again? What are the odds of the arena compared to the cruelty of the sea?”

The audience sighs as a collective, dreamy and yearning and fond. They are pining for you and this mysterious friend of yours, who gives you such wholehearted credit, and they are taken with the romance of your escape from death. This is something that the others cannot compete with — this is something memorable. There’s only one thing left for you to do, and you pray Callictus understands what you need him to ask you.

“We’re almost out of time,” he says, and when you stand, he does, too. “This friend of yours, who is surely watching, would you like to say anything to her before you go? I’m sure our viewers would love to know.”

You fight back a grin, because he has done exactly what you wanted, but you are meant to be heartbroken right now. And you are, of course you are, because it’s not just anyone you are talking to right now. It’s her, your best friend, your mentor, who without even trying has made you special.

“Yes,” you say. “But not goodbye. After speaking and reminiscing with you, I’m sure that that’s the last thing either of us wants to say to each other.”

“Then?” Callictus prompts, and now you do smile, your eyes going to where she is sitting, her eyes wide but her lips curved in approval. 

“See you soon,” you say. “Hysilens.”

The crowd screams and the timer rings; when you are escorted off the stage, it is with a perverse joy in your heart. You know even Trianne and her mother cannot compete with what you have done, because it is not Hysilens’s love for you that you have played upon — your friendship has never been like that, anyways. It is her trust that you showed the Capitol, her unwavering, unshakeable certainty. She believes in you, and she is not just any girl but a victor, so now — you are sure of it as you resume your place backstage — they do, too.

The tracker they inject into your arm is hard under your skin, a hot and angry lump that pulses long after it has settled comfortably into place. It wouldn’t do for a tribute to be lost in the arena, not when you are the entertainment, and anyways, it monitors your vitals, making it easier to keep count of who dies and when. In the chaos of the Games, especially the earlier stages, this is invaluable.

Caenis is waiting for you in the room where you will go in the tube that’ll carry you into the arena. You wish it could’ve been Hysilens, or even Phagousa, but your stylists are supposed to get you ready in your uniforms to make sure that there aren’t any issues, any contraband snuck in to gain an unfair advantage over the rest of the tributes. She’s hardly comforting as she dresses you in the lightweight jumpsuit, which is dark colored and thin, nothing like the rich, warm fabrics you have grown accustomed to in your two weeks at the Capitol.

“Do you have a token?” she says when you are ready. She’s brisk, matter of fact, but in a way it almost makes you feel better that this is not a tearful farewell. You can focus, can clear your head and think about what your next moves should be.

“Just this,” you say, showing her the ring on your index finger. It was a gift from your parents for your birthday two years ago, and when you left District Four, it was the only thing you could think of to bring with you as a reminder of your home. Caenis inspects it and then nods.

“Good,” she says. “It’s perfect. Pretty, but not too cumbersome, and you can’t be choked by it.”

“Yes,” you say, a little faint, because you hadn’t even considered that aspect. Caenis is a veteran of these Games, though, and a Capitolite notwithstanding, so she doesn’t bat an eye, only nodding at you, offering you a glass of water. You down it in a few gulps, not knowing when your next chance to drink something clean and good might be, and then you nibble nervously on the crackers arranged along a plate atop the only table in the room.

You wish you had tried a little harder to coordinate with Mydeimos in these days leading up to the Games, because you have no idea where you’re supposed to meet him, what you’re supposed to do, if you plan to rush into the Cornucopia or if you’re going to hang back — well, that’s a foolish question. Why would you not rush into the bloodbath? The Cornucopia is where the best weapons, the best supplies are concentrated, right in the center of where you as tributes count down to the beginning of the Games. As you get farther and farther away from it, the quality of weapons gets worse, the amount of food gets lower. Only the strongest tributes or the most desperate dare to brave the frenzy of that first day, when the claim on the Cornucopia is staked, but aren’t you and Mydeimos exactly those strongest tributes? Still, if only you could confirm with him once. You don’t want to charge into a death match without his support, and as it is, you are still half unsure whether you both are even still allies or not.

“I’m a senior stylist,” Caenis says when a cool, mechanical voice comes on over the loudspeaker and instructs you to prepare yourself for the beginning of the Games. “Every year, I’m given the first choice of tributes. Do you know what that means?”

“What? No,” you say, because you are more preoccupied with the way your feet have turned to a pair of twin anchors, leaden weights that you must drag behind you as you trudge towards the glass tube that will shoot you into the arena.

“I chose you,” she says. “Not Mydeimos. Not Cifera. Not Castorice or Dan Heng or Chartonus or any of the other predicted favorites. I chose you.”

“Why would you do that?” you say. You almost add something snarky like did you think I’d look the best without clothes on?, but your time is so limited that you wait, because you genuinely are curious as to her reasoning.

“When Phagousa called your name,” she says. “How horrified you were. How unmoving. But you stared out at the sky instead of crying, and when that dear Dan Heng was chosen as your partner, it seemed as if you pitied him, despite sharing his fate.”

“Well, I mean, he has his sister and all…” you trail off when Caenis raises her eyebrows at you. She has a smile like that shark Hysilens killed once upon a time, that she fished from the depths and sold to buy you a cake, all jagged-toothed and crimson-tinged and cruel.

“But does it matter?” she says.

“No,” you say. “No, it doesn’t.”

“Good,” she says. “Don’t forget that. Your destiny is different, you decided as much back then. I see it. Hysilens sees it. Even the rest of the Capitol sees it, and that’s no small feat when you’re up against such showy figures as Mydeimos, who are all flash, no substance. But you managed, you convinced them, and now all you have to do is make it true. Survive. Jump off the side of that boat, just like you did all of those years ago back in District Four, and this time, swim back to the surface alone. Do you understand? You have to make sure the others drown.”

The speed that the tube pushes you into the arena with is dizzying, and it’s only the reminder that those who fall off their platforms before the timer is up — whether intentionally or unintentionally — are blown to smithereens by the landmines laced into the dirt that keeps you steady. You have a minute before the cannons go off and the Games officially begin, and you know you have to use it wisely, so you glance around, taking in your surroundings.

You’re in a valley, a mountain on one side, an enormous dam on the other, and the Cornucopia in the middle of the ring your platforms form. Streams lace through the edge of the small clearing you’re in, which seems to be the only break in the massive pines as far as the eye can see. The sun is glaring and cruel in the cloudless sky, but for some reason, although your breath makes clouds of frost in the air and you know you should be cold, you find you’re not in the slightest. It’s the clothes, you reason, some fancy Capitolite technology to prevent all of you from dying silent, bloodless deaths.

The platforms are assigned at random, and you are between Chartonus and Trianne. Chartonus is solemn and does not look at you when you peer over at him; Trianne, for her part, cringes away from your curious stare. Neither of them hold any particular meaning for you, and as the countdown continues, you become more and more frantic. 

There’s Cifera, who winks at you playfully when your eyes meet, and Castorice, who frowns a little. But not Mydeimos, where is Mydeimos? Your ally, you need to find him, but the time is going too fast and there are too many of you and the last person you see before Callictus announces a happy beginning to the 68th Hunger Games is Dan Heng. He smiles at you, slightly, imperceptibly, and then he nods; you don’t know him well enough to be sure of what he’s saying, but you think it’s something like acceptance. Goodbye, maybe, if you are being hopeful. Try your best. May the odds be ever in your favor.

Then the cannon goes off and you are running and Dan Heng is the last thing on your mind, because it’s as Hysilens says: he is just another fish, and you cannot afford to worry about him anymore.

What you need is a spear, but the spears will be in the mouth of the Cornucopia, and you don’t think you can wade through the throng with your muscle alone. You are fast but not fast enough to get there first, either, so you settle for trying to find a weapon that will at least work in the meantime. A knife or something, anything — there! You look around to make sure that no one is near you, and then you crouch, snatching a black-handled blade from the mud —

“Watch out!” 

You’re not sure where he comes from, but with a shout, Mydeimos appears, and then he is throwing a spear at you. Your eyes widen briefly, and then you duck, allowing it to find its true target: Livia, the girl from Nine, who had snuck up behind you with a stone in her hands, aimed to smash into the back of your skull. She folds over with a breathless gasp, but Mydeimos does not hesitate, yanking the spear out of her stomach and tossing it to you lightly, the tip still glazed over with a sheen of her blood. You take it by the shaft, and once again you are reminded of the tridents you used back home, grounding you immediately. They’re just fish. Hysilens’s words echo in your mind, but they’re in Mydeimos’s voice, perhaps because he is staring at you with a strange sort of gentleness.

“Are you alright?” he says.

“I’m fine,” you say, and then you shove the spear towards him for safekeeping, lifting your arm over your head. Just fish. They’re just fish. I can do this. I know how to kill fish. Then you fling your knife towards the boy from District Five, who is rushing over towards you. It flies in an arc, quick, impossible to avoid, and it strikes true, knocking him over with its impact into his chest. “We need to get to the Cornucopia. Dan Heng is with Cifera and Castorice, and we can’t let them take it.”

“How do you know?” Mydeimos says, giving you the spear back and taking the knife from the body of the boy from Five, although really he himself is such a threat that it feels excessive. With him at your back and the spear in your hands, no one dares to approach you, and you make it through to the fighting in the Cornucopia with ease.

“He told me,” you say. “During the interviews. We need to watch out for them.”

The boy from Eleven tries tackling you, but you ram the butt of the spear into the hollow space at the base of his neck and kick his legs out from under him. You don’t know if it’s enough to kill him, but he lands with a sickening crack of his spine and does not get up, so you don’t dwell on it.

“They’re not here, at least,” Mydeimos says, his back pressing to yours as he takes another spear from the stacks in the Cornucopia, although by now there isn’t much of anyone left to challenge you. Bodies litter the clearing around the Cornucopia, and the others have fled, no doubt advised by their mentors to avoid the bloodbath, which is almost never worth it for those who are not like you and your ally.

“For now,” you say as the cannons finally begin to tally the results of this first clash. Normally, they go off at the moment a tribute dies, but the bloodbath is too quick, too brutal. There’s no sense in counting when every minute, another person is lost, so they wait until everyone disperses to collect the bodies and mark them all as gone.

“Twelve,” Mydeimos says with a heavy exhale, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That’s already half of us.”

You think about little Trianne, if she was one of the deaths, and then you wonder if Dan Heng made it out, though you dismiss the concern immediately. Of course he did, he and his ally Cifera had the highest scores in training besides Mydeimos himself. It’s the others you should think of, like that brave, beaming Hyacinthia, who had been so cheerful even as she walked up to the podium after her name had been called. They are the ones whose faces you will see in the sky tonight.

“Who can we count out for sure?” you say, more because you need something to do than out of any real need for it. Every night of the Games, the national anthem will play, and then the faces of the tributes killed that day will be reflected in the sky for those of you left to see. But you need to catalogue and list what you know, what Mydeimos knows, or else you will be sitting still for too long, and you want to avoid that at all costs.

“The girl from Nine,” Mydeimos says.

“Livia,” you say, and you don’t know where the nearest camera is, but you imagine Phainon must be watching you through it. At least one of the tributes from his district is already dead, dead because of you. How must he be feeling right now? Does he hate you? Or he is resigned to it by now, after so many years of being a mentor? District Nine hasn’t produced very many victors, after all. Himself and Cyrene are the only ones in recent memory, so you suppose he must be used to it. To watching the people he grew up alongside die.

“Right,” Mydeimos says, and he does not make fun of you as you thought he might. “Livia.”

“And the boy from Five,” you say. “The one I—”

“Yes,” he says when your voice tapers into nothing. “That’s two. I fought Chartonus for this spear, as well.”

“Did he give you much trouble?” you say.

“He might’ve, if I were someone else,” he says, which is a modest way of saying no. Chartonus was widely considered a bit of an underdog favorite for those who were interested in betting, so you are sure there are more than a few gamblers in the Capitol who are furious that he has been taken out so early, but such is the nature of the Games. He was strong, undeniably so, but it was his misfortune that the first person he met was simply stronger.

“I also got the District Eleven boy,” you say. “So that’s four between us.”

“Five,” Mydeimos corrects. “I dealt with the girl from Five while you were fighting off the one from Eleven.”

“So District Five’s out entirely, then,” you say, and what you don’t add is that it is your union, your alliance, which has done that. Mydeimos nods.

“Correct. I’m sure it’s not the only one. There’s seven other tributes that died, and we know for sure that you and I are alive,” he says.

“I guess we’ll find out tonight,” you say. “What should we do until then?”

You’re hesitant, waiting for him to suggest you go hunting, as many of the tributes from Districts One and Two often do. Anything to get the Games over as soon as possible; you understand the sentiment, but you don’t think you have the constitution to do that, to chase down the others in the vast swathes of pines and kill them on purpose. The bloodbath was different, the rush of the moment meant you had no time to think, but to plan it out…you are not ready yet. Maybe you won’t ever be.

“We’re not hunting,” he says immediately, decisively, and you could kiss him, you are so grateful.

“Good,” you say.

“Good?” he says.

“There’s no need for it,” you say. “I’m sure the others will take care of the weaker tributes for us.”

Castorice, Dan Heng, and Cifera — you can’t imagine Dan Heng doing anything like that, but the other two, it’s not out of the realm of possibility, and if he is their ally, then naturally he will have to comply. Castorice has the kind of fresh-faced sweetness that is ripe to rot in the arena, and Cifera is too sly, too cunning to hide and wait out the Games idly. You can allow them to worry about the competition, and in the meantime, as long as you defend the Cornucopia, you will keep yourselves in a better condition, so that when you do face off against them, the match goes the way you want it to.

“Then we can just stay here,” he says, his thoughts clearly going down the same path yours just have.

“Right,” you say. “For now, we should take inventory of everything. It’ll be good to know what we have so we can ration it appropriately, as well as what weapons we want to use and which we just don’t want falling into the hands of the others. The Cornucopia is easy to defend, so I don’t think it’ll be an issue if we both work on it together, at the same time, and we can get done faster that way.”

“I suppose we have nothing better to do,” he says. “Alright. Are you okay with doing the left half? I’ll take care of the right.”

“That’s fine,” you say, and as hovercrafts descend to gather the fallen tributes, you and Mydeimos settle into something of a rhythm, putting the weapons aside in stacks, organizing the food into neat piles by type and amount, splitting the water amongst the various containers you find. Luckily, water isn’t something you’ll have to worry too much about, not when the dam has so much in reserve, but who knows how clean that will be? For now, you have more than enough from what the Cornucopia has provided, and though that may not always hold true, the water from the reservoir will remain a final resort.

You can understand why tributes fight so desperately for a chance at the Cornucopia as the day stretches on, fading into twilight before you and Mydeimos are finished with your attempt at responsibility. There’s enough supplies to last the two of you for a month at the least, and more weapons than you know what to do with, some of which you’ve never even seen before. You toss the old spear you used in the bloodbath aside, taking a new one that is heavier at the point, the way the tridents of Four are, and you notice Mydeimos does the opposite, casting away his knife for a slender lance with a tip like a fishhook.

The notes of the national anthem mark the end of your progress, as both of you sit side by side on the lip of the Cornucopia, staring up at the sky. It’s a little uncomfortable, his arm against yours, smears of rust on his cheek not unlike the paint his stylists put him in for the tribute parade, but also nice, in a way. Enough that you don’t tell him to move, at any rate.

The first face is the boy from District One, Cifera’s partner. After that, it’s both tributes from District Three, and you’re both relieved and disappointed when District Four is skipped over, because for better or worse, it means Dan Heng is alive. The pair of tributes from Five  that you and Mydeimos killed show next, and then the boy from Six, who is immediately followed by Chartonus from Seven. After that, it’s the girl from Eight, and then it’s Livia, which prompts you to look at Mydeimos. He seems unruffled, though, and you suppose this does make sense. To him she is no different than the ones from Five — after all, it’s not like he’s ever met Phainon, so why would he care what a different district’s mentor might think of him?

After Livia, they show the boy from District Eleven, the one you killed with the tail end of a spear, and then both tributes from District Twelve. The anthem reprises, and then the sky is quiet, leaving you to mull over this development.

“Looks like Cifera, Castorice, and Dan Heng are still around,” Mydeimos says. “No surprise.”

“Hyacinthia from Ten and Trianne from Six, too,” you say. “They must’ve fled as soon as the cannons went off.”

“It was the only option they had,” he says, surprising you once again with how low his voice is, how melancholy. Most if not all of the tributes from Two are like mutts designed by the Capitol to kill, but Mydeimos seems genuinely bereaved by the thought of Hyacinthia and Trianne running helplessly in the arena. You almost wonder if this is some act, some front he is putting up to get you to lower your guard, but what good would it do him? You are the one who asked to be his ally. If anything, it’s his guard that needs to be lowered. You trust him already, or at least as much as you can trust anyone in this arena, which admittedly isn’t very much, but it’s more than nothing.

“That’s seven of us,” you say, counting on your fingers. “Who else?”

“Girl from Six,” he says. “And Seven.”

“Boys from Eight and Nine,” you say. “And Hyacinthia’s district partner. That’s everyone.”

“They must’ve allied,” Mydeimos says. “He’s probably looking after her, got her out of there quick enough that they didn’t face anyone in the bloodbath.”

“Most people do work with their district partners,” you say. “What we're doing is the radical thing.”

He glances at you out of the corner of his eye, measured and careful. “Regret it yet?”

“It’s hard to, when I’m sitting at the Cornucopia,” you say, keenly aware of the cameras on you. It’s not just the Capitol — your district is watching you, too. “But he would’ve been a good option as well. This is just how it worked out, him off with his allies and me with…with mine.”

“I swore to my parents that I wouldn’t have any allies,” he tells you, and although he doesn’t quite laugh, he does something very close to it, an amused exhale of sorts. “They must be sitting at home and throwing stones at their television. Stupid son, they’ll be saying right about now. Why’d you pick the girl from Four?”

You snort. “They’d rather you picked someone else?”

“Castorice,” he says. “Because we are district partners. Or Dan Heng, because it would be an easy way to get rid of what might grow to be the greatest thorn in my side. Not you.”

“Well, it’s not like you had much of a choice,” you say, leaning back so that you can rest against the walls of the Cornucopia. “I picked you before anyone else had the chance.”

“That’s true,” he says. “I guess it absolves me of some of the blame. Thank you. Yet I’m still the one who accepted your proposal, so I’m not faultless.”

You yawn. “Your parents aren’t the ones playing the Games for you. You’ll need me to keep watch, if nothing else.”

“You can sleep first,” he says. “I don’t trust you yet.”

“What?” you say, instantly alert, because his actions the entire day have indicated the opposite. He shrugs. 

“Can you blame me?” he says. “You were so eager to be my ally. Why is that? You clearly have no grudge against your district partner. For all I know, you really are aligned with Castorice, Cifera, and Dan Heng, and that’s the reason none of them have shown up to the Cornucopia yet, despite all three being more than capable enough to at least make it out with a sword or a pack. How can I be sure that the instant I fall asleep, you won’t put that spear right through my back?”

“I wouldn’t—” You fall silent when you realize he’s right, and then you offer him your hand. “When the time comes, let’s promise to end this alliance on fair terms. We’ll give each other a day to gather our things and split before we become enemies entirely. I swear to you on the name of District Four that I will uphold this oath.”

He shakes your hand, much as he did when he agreed to be your ally. “Alright.”

“I have no intentions of betraying you yet. The reason why the others haven’t come is simple: they don’t want to risk it so early. None of them are stupid, I am sure of it, and the beginning of the Games is the most dangerous time to approach the Cornucopia, which they know as well as we do. The same way we are allowing them to pick off the weaklings, they allowed us to gain control of the Cornucopia. They’ll fight us for it eventually, but when the time comes, Mydeimos, I promise I will be on your side. I won’t leave you to them alone,” you say.

“Okay,” he says. “Then, as a show of your goodwill, allow me to take the first watch.”

He’s not entirely convinced, and as you lie down in one of the sleeping bags that was rolled up in the back of the Cornucopia, you think that you don’t trust him this much, either. But what choice is there? One of you has to sleep first, and just as you extended him that branch of alliance without any idea of what his response might be, you;ll have to do the same this time.

But the night passes uneventfully enough; halfway through, a cannon sounds off, marking the death of another tribute and rousing you for long enough to convince Mydeimos to switch places with you, but that’s about it. He’s uneasy when he settles down, you can tell, but when you remind him it’ll do neither of you any good if he collapses from exhaustion, he reluctantly agrees, and then he is asleep within seconds.

Two days pass, and you’re fairly certain it’s only the deaths of the boy from Eight and the girl from Seven that have occurred since the bloodbath that keep the audience sated. They’re restless, the Capitolites, and you know that if you do not do something soon, the Gamemakers will get involved to spur you into action, and you’ve seen in previous Games how ugly that can get. You and Mydeimos are the most highly anticipated tributes of this year, and your alliance has likely only caused even more people to be invested in you, so the fact that you’ve been largely sedentary won’t be permitted for much longer.

“We need to make a move,” you say, that third morning when you are tucked away in the Cornucopia. It’s easier to defend when you only have to watch the mouth of it, so you and he spend your nights together inside that golden horn, one of you staying awake to keep an eye out for the other tributes, the other getting what fitful rest they can manage. “The interest from the bloodbath is bound to be waning, and they’re going to want us to do something soon. If we don’t decide for ourselves, they’ll decide for us, and I don’t need to tell you that that’s not something we want.”

“Who do we go after, then?” he says. You raise your eyebrows at him.

“Who else?” you say. “We might as well face them now. The earlier, the better, right? There’s no sense in having these Games drag out any longer than they should. I for one want to go home, and I’m sure it’s the same for you.”

You wait for him to question you, to tell you that maybe you should be more prudent, but he only hums. Of course he does — he’s confident, maybe more than he should be or maybe exactly the right amount — and then he crosses his arms.

“Do you have any ideas, or are we just going to wander about blindly?” he says.

“Wandering isn’t the best plan,” you say, frowning. “We’ll leave the Cornucopia unguarded, and I wouldn’t want to do that for too long, lest we come back to all of our supplies pilfered.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” he agrees. “But we’re going to have to leave it eventually, unless you’re suggesting we split up?”

“I wasn’t, but now that you mention it, it’s not a bad thought,” you say. “If you go after one of them, it’ll alert the other two that the Cornucopia is unguarded, or at least that I’m alone. They’ll be bold enough to take the gamble that they can gang up on me, and then they’ll come scuttling over like little crabs to scavenge what they can.”

“Can’t they gang up on you?” he says, and if you didn’t know better, you’d say the crease in his forehead is borne of worry, instead of just pragmatic concern. But you do know better, so you fight the urge to pet soothingly along his arms how you might have if he were a friend of yours in Four, and instead you smile at him.

“Of course they can,” you say. “That’s why I’m relying on you to have the element of surprise and defeat them when they think they have the upper hand. Be quick and come back to me, Mydeimos; I’ll just do my best to hold them off until then.”

The moment he leaves, a spear in hand and a grim expression on his handsome face, you long to call him back. In just these two days, you have developed a frightening dependence on him, which you can only see now that he has left — with him gone, you feel empty. Exposed. Like there are a million eyes watching you from between the pines, and even playing with a spear of your own cannot ward them off as well as he would’ve.

It’s the first time you’ve thought of her in a while, but suddenly you wish you could speak with Hysilens. Does she approve of this impulsive plan of yours, which places so much faith in Mydeimos it’s laughable? You doubt it; she’s probably sitting next to Krateros in the room reserved for victors, scowling and shaking her fist at you. Idiot, she’s probably saying. Who’s to say he won’t come back late?

On accident or on purpose, it’s true he could do either. Maybe it’ll take him longer to fight the others off; maybe he’ll take advantage of the situation and allow them to finish you before swooping back in to secure the Cornucopia for himself. Both of these outcomes are possible, and it’s absurd of you to hinge your survival on him like this, but then again, hasn’t he done the same? Because you could be the traitor. You could be the one who has secretly plotted with Dan Heng and Castorice and Cifera to lure him into a trap at the Cornucopia, and still he has gone forth. He has to trust you if he wants to win, just as you have to trust him, or at that’s how you would tell it to Hysilens if she were here.

He promised me, you would say, stroking up and down the shaft of your spear, the idle motion doing little to soothe your nerves. One day. We promised each other that, and until that day comes, we are allies in full, which means I have to trust him.

It’s excruciating, being the one left behind. You have no idea, no way of knowing what is happening in the depths of the forest. If only you were with the Gamemakers, sitting next to Veritas Ratio in the fancy control room, able to see everything in the arena at once! Has Mydeimos found them yet? Is he crossing spears with Dan Heng, exchanging blows with Castorice, chasing down Cifera? Who will be coming to hunt you down? If it is your district partner, will he at least have some sort of kindness, some mercy, as Bailu asked him to?

The mention of Bailu makes you remember your promise to her. If you have to face my brother in the arena, and you find yourself winning — can you be gentle? What does she think of the fact that you have, in essence, sent Mydeimos after him? The living weapon from Two. The golden-haired lionfish of a volunteer. You chose him as your ally, and now you have in essence given him permission to kill her brother, who you swore to treat gently even in your eventual enmity. She must hate you. She must really hate you a lot.

It happens all at once: a high-pitched squeal, Cifera’s cackling laugh, and then a knife, whizzing through the air and embedding itself in the heart of a girl, who collapses with her arms still stretched out towards you. Your eyes widen when you realize that it is Trianne, her red shock of hair giving her away, and then you are stumbling out of the Cornucopia and pointing your spear at Cifera, who is beaming at you and holding another knife to Hyacinthia’s throat.

“Well, well, it must be my lucky day,” she says. Hyacinthia’s breaths come fast and short, her eyes wide and panicked when they settle on you. Help, she is mouthing. Help me, please help me. “The lady from Four without her dashing knight to save her.”

“Cifera,” you say. “What are you doing? Let go of her. If it’s me and the Cornucopia you want, that’s fine, but let us fight fairly.”

“Fairly?” she says. “Why would I ever do that, when you’ve staged this elaborate trap for me? You don’t care about fairness. You’re just mad that you’re the one who’s been played for the fool. That’s right, I bet you never counted on me being faster than your precious allies and their game of pretend, huh? But here I am.”

“What are you talking about?” you say, all too aware of Trianne bleeding out in the grass and the whites of Hyacinthia’s eyes, which are growing pink from the hand holding her by the neck.

“It doesn’t matter. Sure, I’ll be fair,” she says. “Let me take what I want from the Cornucopia, and I’ll let this one live. Not sure what you all see in her, but I’m sure she has some talents, right?”

“I don’t believe you,” you say. “Where are Castorice and Dan Heng?”

“Castorice and Dan Heng?” Cifera says, and for the first time, something like genuine confusion flickers across her face, although it’s gone in an instant, replaced with smugness. “No idea where the girl from Two is, but that partner of yours is facing off against Mydeimos. I wonder who will win — actually, now I’m wondering who you want to win.”

“Let go of Hyacinthia,” you say.

“You know, I’m painting you out to be a real hero right now,” Cifera says, her voice dropping to a seductive purr that even you can hardly hear, despite your proximity to her. “I’m getting the sense you need the boost to your image right about now. Really, you should be thanking me, not waving that big old lance around like I’m your enemy!”

“Cifera,” you say. “I won’t ask again. Let her go. She’s not strong enough to harm anyone, and you’ve more than frightened her.”

“Yet she scored a seven in training,” Cifera says with a hum, although she does loosen her grip on Hyacinthia, prompting the girl to greedily inhale, coughing and hacking. You take a step towards them, but Cifera gives you a warning look, sharp enough that you halt in your tracks and glance towards the trees. Whether Dan Heng or Mydeimos, you don’t care, but one of them, you want one of them to appear, so that you are not alone in this. “How about it, little Hyacinnie? How’d you manage that?”

“I don’t — I just knew some knots and snares from working with the cows in Ten,” Hyacinthia gasps out. “Please, I promise I won’t hurt you, I’ll just take Trianne and go —”

“It doesn’t matter,” Cifera says, and beneath her snarl is a wilting desperation. “If I want to go home, you’re in my way. Nothing personal, but that’s how it is.”

“You’re the one who killed the two after the bloodbath,” you say when Hyacinthia whimpers. “The girl from District Seven and the boy from District Eight. It wasn’t Dan Heng or Castorice. Just you.”

“Enough talking,” she says, and then, in a movement like a flash, she slices Hyacinthia’s throat and tosses her aside before you even know what’s happening. A cannon booms immediately, and then, a moment later, another one goes off. “Just remember I offered you a peaceful solution. It was your own miserly nature that cost her life, so the next time we meet, don’t even think about trying to take the moral high ground. You and I, we’re just the same.”

“How could you? How could you do that?” you say, throwing your spear at her. If it were anyone else, it would’ve cleaved her straight in two, but she’s quick like a cat, that Cifera, quick and limber, dodging and sprinting away in a series of motions you could never hope to replicate. She’s canny, too — why should she bother with picking a fight when you and she are so evenly matched, and Mydeimos may be back soon to turn the tides in your favor? No, but you cannot pursue her, or you will leave your supplies unguarded, and so she runs unopposed, leaving you with Hyacinthia and Trianne and the Cornucopia looming behind you, as silent and stony as President Lycurgus’s mask.

Hyacinthia is dead, there’s no point in checking what is certain, but still you do not bother retrieving your spear, racing over to Trianne, whose fall was not marked with a cannon. You hope, in the darkest parts of you, that the second cannon was for someone else, and then you gather her in your lap, holding her to you as you would hold the younger ones in Four, when they were too frightened to swim, as you even once held Bailu, right before you boarded the train to the Capitol. She is still warm, still breathing, but barely.

“Trianne,” you say. “Trianne, listen to me. What happened?”

“Oh,” she says. “It’s you. He told us to find you.”

“Who told you?” you say, and she can barely keep her eyes open, so you feel particularly cruel in your frantic inquiries, but you also know that you have no time to spare. “Trianne, who told you to find me?”

“Dan Heng,” she coughs out. “He told Hyacine and I…if anything happens to us, we should find you, because even though you’re not our ally, he knows…he knows you’ll take care of us.”

You almost drop her. Dan Heng? Why would he send Hyacine and Trianne to you? Why isn’t Trianne frightened when she says his name? She should be frightened. He and Castorice and Cifera, she should be frightened of them, so why is she looking at you like she is pleading with you to do something?

“Why?” you whisper, and then she’s gagging on the blood coating her throat and you have to resist the urge to shake answers from her. “Why, Trianne, why would he say that? Why would he care if you’re safe or not? Why did he send you to me? Why, why, you have to tell me why!”

“He was our ally!” she says, and then she bursts into sobs, turning her face into a pink, frothy mess of spittle and tears. “He told us before the Games began, when we were training — if it were his little sister — if it were his little sister in the arena — he would want someone to look out for her  — and now he’s fighting Mydeimos alone, he told us that he can do it and we just have to find you and he’ll join us later — I want my mama, I want my mama —”

You cradle the back of her head, allowing her to muffle her tantrum in your shoulder as the world spins around you. The two allies he had mentioned on the night of the interviews, the ones who you had assumed were Cifera and Castorice…it was them. Trianne and Hyacinthia. Dan Heng, who could’ve been the victor if he wanted, who could’ve been the victor if only he had taken your offer, had instead chosen to defend these doomed girls. He could have gone home to his own sister, but he chose — he chose —

“It’s okay, Trianne,” you say, wrapping your arms around her as tightly as you can. Her sobs have quieted into hiccups, and you know she is not long for this world. Tribios must be watching, and you are ashamed of yourself for what you say next. “Your mama is on the way. She’s waiting for you. Just a few more moments, and she’ll come take you home.”

“Really?” Trianne says, but she does not lift her head or give any other indication that she is even still alive.

“Yes, really,” you say. “Really, really. She’s just running a little late, but she’ll be here as soon as she can.”

“I don’t know if I can stay awake for long enough,” Trianne admits. “Will you tell her I’m sorry when she gets here?”

“Of course,” you say.

“Tell Dan Heng, too,” she says. “We should’ve been faster…we didn’t realize Cifera was there, if only we had been faster…”

“It’s not your fault,” you say, and in truth, it’s not Cifera’s fault, either. Whether at her hand or someone else’s, Trianne’s fate would have been the same. At least Cifera gave her the mercy of a painless wound and a death in someone’s arms — both are luxuries in the Games, and it might be strange to call it a kindness, but that’s really what it is. “Dan Heng will understand, Trianne. He would never hold it against you.”

“My mama liked him a lot,” she says. “I bet she was glad that we were working together in the arena.”

“I bet she was,” you say. Her chest is barely rising, barely falling, and you have to hold back tears so she doesn’t realize that you are frightened. “She must have been so glad you had someone looking out for you when she couldn’t be there to do it herself.”

The boom of the cannon echoes like a drum, bouncing around the cavern of your skull, and you squeeze Trianne tightly, lifting and setting her beside Hyacinthia, her ally, so that the hovercraft can come collect them before the flies descend and gorge themselves. Then you curl yourself around a spear in the mouth of the Cornucopia, hugging it to you like you did Trianne, and although your eyes remain curiously dry, your lower lip trembles as if you are wailing along with the now-dead girl, who left this world in tears.

He stumbles out of the forest a few minutes later, once the hovercraft has already left: Mydeimos, the eternally victorious Mydeimos. You know what it means. You heard that cannon, the one that resounded moments after Hyacinthia fell, and you cannot bring yourself to stand and greet your ally when you already know what he is going to tell you.

Yet the closer he gets, the more you notice that there is something strange in his gait, something strange and stumbling and wrong. He is missing the spear he set out with, and his footsteps drag; before you can stop yourself, you are standing and running towards him, halting right before you reach him when you realize there is blood seeping from a puncture wound in his side, a steady river that he has half-heartedly stemmed with a wadded up handful of leaves. He makes no acknowledgement of it, though, only extending a hand to skim along your face, patting it fondly, like the two of you are old friends.

“I did what you asked,” he says. “If you don’t want to be my ally anymore, I understand.”

Then he collapses, and you hardly make it in time to catch him, hooking your arms under his, the weight of his limp figure heavy in your embrace. For a moment, you cling to him, your cheek to his heart, your fingers splayed across his back, and you think that it would be easy to let him die here. You don’t need him anymore. Dan Heng is gone. Cifera at least considers the two of you to be evenly matched. Castorice hasn’t done anything yet, and you doubt she will for a good while. For the first time, victory doesn’t seem like a far-off promise, an unattainable thing, but rather a graspable truth. All you have to do is leave him now. All you have to do is let him die, just like Caenis said you should.

But you can’t do that.

It takes a long time to drag him back to the Cornucopia, and longer for you to undo the top half of his uniform, pulling away the leaves and grime from his body while you are at it. The wound is a gaping hole in his torso, the flesh jagged around the piercing, and you have to remember to breathe through your nose so that you do not vomit at the sight. You suppose Dan Heng put up more of a fight than any of you anticipated he would, and for some reason, you are momentarily proud, although then Mydeimos is groaning and your attention is stolen.

“What are you…?” 

“Just try to sleep,” you say, standing and searching for where you have kept the medical supplies you found. This is the benefit of claiming the Cornucopia — you actually have medical supplies to speak of, not just water and iodine droplets. They’re hardly sophisticated, but if Mydeimos wins the Games, the Capitol will fix him so that it’s like nothing ever happened, and if he doesn’t, well, sporting a half-treated injury for the next few days will be the least of his problems. “I don’t know how painful this will be, so it’ll be better if you’re not awake.”

He ignores you, because of course he does, propping himself up so that he is leaning against the wall of the Cornucopia and watching you through half-lidded eyes as you rub soap into your hands and pour precious water over them. Crouching by him and ignoring his harsh exhale, you dump the rest of the bottle on his ribcage, massaging the soap along the frayed edges of his wound before rinsing it off until it is pink and clean and decidedly worse in appearance than before.

“Why are you doing this?” he says as you wind a silvery thread through a slender needle you found buried at the bottom of the pile, knowing it’s meant for mending clothes but finding you have no other options. Holding the wound closed, you murmur an apology, both for the pain and for your lackluster sewing skills, and then you begin to stitch it together, squinting in the dim light filtering through the mouth of the Cornucopia to make sure that it is even somewhat even.

“You’re my ally,” you say. He answers you with a shudder as you yank the thread through his skin; wordlessly, you rummage in your pocket for dried fruit that he can bite on. He accepts it immediately, his jaw working furiously as you continue, only pausing occasionally to wipe the sweat gathering along his forehead and at the base of his neck. 

“So what?” he gasps out, reaching for more dried fruit, which you feed to him immediately, tapping it against his lips so he opens his mouth for you. 

“So you can’t die yet,” you say. “I still need you.”

“For?” he says, bitter, humorless, and more than a little delirious. He’s slipping in and out of consciousness, and you hope he’ll make up his mind to fall asleep for good soon, because he’s only making it worse for himself at the moment. “Dan Heng is dead, and taking care of me will only burden you. I’m not going to recover from this, not fully. You know that.”

“Maybe you will,” you say, tying the end of the thread into a knot and then unscrewing the cap of a small container of ointment that you can only hope has something like antibacterial properties. It’s not only blood loss — a potential infection is just as much of a concern for him at this point, if not more so, given that his ‘doctor’ is a girl who has spent much of her life thus far in the pursuit of killing fish and little else.

“Then what will you do?” he says. “I won’t take it easy on you because we were allies.”

“I just don’t want you to die,” you say, and when you are done with the ointment, you wrap a roll of gauze around his torso. The work is sloppy and by no means best practice, but at least he is alive and bandaged and clean instead of writhing about and dying in the mud. “Not so soon.”

Not right after Trianne. Not right after Hyacinthia. Not right after Dan Heng. The tributes in the bloodbath were nameless, were your age, but Trianne and Hyacinthia were so young, and Dan Heng…

“Did he fight very hard?” you say as you unwrap food for yourself, sitting on Mydeimos’s other side, so that you are between him and the entrance to the Cornucopia, your spear standing at the ready should anyone attempt to surprise you.

“Yes,” he says. “The people of District Four are just as Krateros said. Strong. Slippery. I remember when I told him I was willing to be your ally, he shook his head and laughed. Pretty little fish-girl. Of course she tore down your defenses, they always do that. Dan Heng was the same. He found weak spots that even I didn’t know existed, and he exploited them mercilessly. In all honesty, I couldn’t even say I won because I was more skilled. It was just that I had a better weapon.”

“I see,” you say, gnawing on a piece of bread that has grown hard from overexposure to air so that you are not overcome with a fresh wave of tears. You don’t know what it is you’re mourning — half of the reason you even allied yourself with Mydeimos was so that he could kill Dan Heng for you, so what cause, what right do you have to grieve? It’s Bailu you’re sad for, you reassure yourself, Bailu who will forever return to an empty home and remember a time when there was another. You don’t miss Dan Heng yourself. It’s just her.

“What happened…here?” he says. He’s exhausted, slumping over already, but he does his best to look at you when you answer.

“We were wrong,” you say, and then you pause. “No. I was wrong. Dan Heng’s allies weren’t Castorice and Cifera. They were Hyacinthia and Trianne.”

Mydeimos is silent, but he does frown at this. You remember the first day, when you had mentioned that Hyacinthia and Trianne must have run off as soon as the Games began, how unexpectedly dejected he had been, and you think you understand him a little better.

“Cifera is the one who’s been picking off tributes while we’ve been here. I guess she took advantage of your fight with Dan Heng to chase after the other two, who he had told to — to come and find me,” you say. “She threw a knife at Trianne, and then she tried holding Hyacinthia hostage, telling me that if I allowed her to go through the Cornucopia and take what she wanted, she would let her live.”

“Did you do it?” he says.

“No,” you say. He opens his mouth to protest, but you shake your head. “She would’ve killed her anyway. You know that. Hyacinthia was always going to die.”

“I spoke to her once,” he says. “She sat with me at lunch during one of our training days. I told her I didn’t need any allies, and she told me she had no illusions of being considered as such, not by me. She just thought I looked lonely.”

“Oh,” you say, because you had never spoken to her, but you find it believable nevertheless. She just seemed like that kind of person, and anyways, Mydeimos isn’t the type to embellish or lie.

“She has a pony,” he says after a moment, like he is struggling to recall something, caught up in the recounting of this tale he must have been told by Hyacinthia herself. “Had. In District Ten.”

“Oh,” you say again, hugging your knees to your chest. You want him to shut up and never speak of her again. You also want him to brand these things into your mind forever, so that you do not forget.

“Fattest pony in the entire district. She spoils it incessantly, gives it as many treats as she can afford, and even pieces of her own dinner if she’s running low. Fed it an apple before she left and promised she would see it again soon,” he says, and then, you suppose too sore to make it to the mess of bedding he has claimed for himself, he rests his cheek on your shoulder, closing his eyes. There’s no more pretenses amongst you two, not now that you have saved his life. He trusts you entirely, because he has to. He has no choice. “I wonder if someone will tell it that she won’t be coming back for a long time. Will it even understand? Or do you think it’ll keep waiting?”

With that he is asleep, and when you begin to cry in earnest, you bury your face in his hair, so that the cameras cannot catch you doing it, allowing his silent form to shield you from the world, just this one time.

You think that you should be safe for the next couple of days — you have given the audience plenty of excitement, so the Gamemakers shouldn’t feel any need to intervene, and as for Cifera…well. It’s Dan Heng that they show in the sky, not Mydeimos, and she has no way of knowing what condition he is in, so you doubt she’ll dare to show her face, and the other tributes will be much the same.

Now that Dan Heng, Trianne, and Hyacinthia are out, the number of tributes has thinned considerably. It’s you, Cifera, Castorice, the boys from Districts Nine and Ten, the girl from District Eleven, and Mydeimos — if you can even count him in such a state. It’s the time that tributes start getting desperate, and also the time that relationships, if formed, are severed, but here you are, taking care of your ally with a faithfulness that most people don’t even afford their district partner.

“What’s District Two like?” you ask him when he wakes up the next morning. Although it took you much effort, you had helped his unconscious form to lie properly, amidst pillows and blankets, and then to busy your hands along with your mind, you had begun inspecting all of your medicinal supplies, trying to determine which ones would be the most effective in treating him.

“Huh?” he says, still dazed. Stretching his arms over his head, he immediately winces, and you’re about to reprimand him when you hear the sound of a parachute outside. Scrambling over him, you deflate only slightly when you see that it is labeled with a neat 2, meaning that it’s not for you. It’s too small to be a weapon — not that you had actually been hoping for one of those — and when you open it you see that it’s just a pill bottle, filled to the top with hard white capsules. The bottle has swirling Capitolite cursive across the front, and it takes you a second to realize that it reads Pain Medicine, causing you to grin.

“You have rich sponsors,” you say, ducking back into the Cornucopia and pressing the bottle in his hands. “Take a couple. It should help.”

He takes two and swallows obediently, without even asking you what they are. It’s such a contrast to the tribute you entered the Games with, the one who refused to even sleep for fear you would betray him, that you are momentarily amazed. He doesn’t seem to find it particularly noteworthy, however, handing the bottle back to you and blinking at you in a way you might describe as sweet, were you prone to idiocy. His lashes, surprisingly dark but still fading to gold at the tips, flutter a little when he does, and you don’t think he means to but you can’t help yourself from thinking that if you were in District Four…oh, if only you were in District Four…

“You were asking me about District Two,” he says, interrupting your train of thought as neatly and easily as that. 

“Hm? Oh, yes,” you say, shaking your head to clear the last vestiges of your daydream from it. “Your home. It must be very different from Four.”

“I’d assume,” he says. “We live by a mountain, not an ocean, and every day after school, we lug boulders from the quarry to the masons, so that they can work on them.”

“No wonder you’re all so strong,” you say, finding a newfound appreciation for the tributes from Two and their repetitive victories. When they have been surrounded by it from a young age, doesn’t it make sense that they appear as if carved from that very stone? Mydeimos shrugs.

“And it’s no wonder why you all from Four are so quick,” he says. “You fish, right?”

“That’s right,” you say. “All different kinds, whether with nets or rods or harpoons. Before her Games, Hysilens was the best spearfisher in the entire district. She even caught a shark once, my last birthday before she went into the arena, and it made her so much money I even got to have a cake. Nothing special, nothing fancy, but…I remember how happy we were that day. Like nothing could ever happen to us.”

“Hysilens,” Mydeimos says. “Your mentor.”

Although you are sure that the live feed had cut away from the two of you while you were talking about your homes — President Lycurgus doesn’t like these shows of solidarity between districts, after all — there’s no doubt that the attention is back on you now. How could it not be? What a story it is, you and the wounded Mydeimos huddled together in the Cornucopia, and you are about to speak of Hysilens, who the entire Capitol adores, whose friendship with you is the entire reason you have even gained as much popularity as you have.

“We were best friends first,” you say. “The story I told in the interview, all of it was true. She was hard to win over, but she’s that kind of person, where once she is yours you will never be rid of her entirely. When she was chosen for her Games, I was so frightened. It was —”

“—the worst moment of your life,” he completes for you when you can’t go on. When you raise your eyebrows at him, he looks away. “It was the same for me when Hephaestion was called.”

“The boy you volunteered for,” you remember. “Why did you do that? You’re old enough. This was going to be your last Reaping. You could’ve escaped the Games entirely.”

“He’s sick,” Mydeimos says. “Weak and sick. Maybe if Dan Heng took pity on him, as he did the others, he could’ve lasted a little longer than the bloodbath, but otherwise, he would’ve died faster than Hyacinthia and Trianne. You saw him in the Reaping. You know he would’ve been powerless compared to the rest of you.”

“But, Mydeimos,” you say. “He’ll die young anyways, won’t he? That kind of illness won’t ever fade. So what’s the point?”

“At least he will die with dignity,” Mydeimos says. “He’ll be home, having never killed or run for his life, and when he departs, he will be surrounded by people who care for him instead of tributes who celebrate his end. There’s a point.”

“I see,” you say. “So it’s like that, then.”

Maybe it’s the same for you. Maybe if Hysilens were sick and dying, you would’ve volunteered to give her even one more day of peace. Still, you wonder how Hephaestion must have felt watching Dan Heng’s spear drive into Mydeimos’s side. Did he think that it should’ve been him? Did he curse his friend for volunteering to delay his death, when inevitably that death will find him regardless? You would. If you were Hephaestion, you would.

The nights are growing colder and colder the longer the Games go on, and you don’t know who first suggests it, but you and Mydeimos begin to sleep together instead of apart. Really, it’s mostly him who is sleeping, caught in the eternal haze of the Capitolite pain medicine as he is, but the warmth of his feverish body pressing against you while you sit and watch the moon creep along the sky is enough to strengthen you to stay up for as long as  you can.

You haven’t told him yet, but his wound is infected, you are sure. Although you cleaned it as best as you could, you have no doubt that Dan Heng’s spear was filthy when it entered Mydeimos, and you’re no doctor, to actually be able to do anything for him. Whenever you change his bandages, you cringe at the swollen redness of it, the heat that emanates from the site, and it’s really only the bottle of pain medicine, already dwindling low, that is allowing him to persist without hunching over in constant agony.

“Shouldn’t I leave you?” you murmur to him one night. He’s asleep, curled into your side, his temple resting on your collarbone, and you are combing your fingers through his hair, more because you are afraid you, too, will sleep if you do not do something, anything. “I should, right? Your wound isn’t getting better, and it’s been a long time since anything happened in the Games. Everyone is bound to be getting impatient, and if something happens…protecting you will cost me. I should definitely leave you.”

You don’t want to, though. He continues to sleep, unaware of what you are saying, and then he sighs, as if he is content. Like this, he doesn’t look like the beast from Two, and you can hardly imagine him as he was in the tribute parade, all glorious and proud. He feels so delicate, his breaths light, his lips curved into a small smile. You hope he’s dreaming of something pleasant — maybe his home, back in District Two, where he can laugh and carry stones with Hephaestion, racing him all of the way back to where the masons await them.

Outside, in the quiet of the night, there is a soft sound. You are instantly alert, nudging him off of you and grabbing your spear to investigate, but it’s not Cifera or any of the other tributes. It’s a parachute, the number 4 written on it in white. Your first sponsor gift, and it’s no bigger than Mydeimos’s pain medicine, begging the question of what it could be, given that you are uninjured.

When you unwrap it, you find a ring. It matches the one you are wearing as your district token, and you know what Hysilens means in sending it to you — because this is a message, not a gift, and the timing of it means there’s only one thing she’s trying to impart.

Leave him. Come home. 

“Mydeimos,” you say to him the next morning, while the two of you are eating what constitutes your breakfast — more dried fruit, which is sweet and won’t upset your stomachs, and more bread, which will go bad if you don’t eat it quickly enough. “I think it’s time.”

“What?” he says, genuinely curious. It doesn’t even cross his mind, you realize, and the ring your sponsors sent you is heavy on your middle finger, where it sits loose and cold. A reminder. You hear Hysilens’s voice as clearly as if she is next to you, and it insists that you follow through, that you not let sentimentality overtake you. It is time.

“There’s only seven tributes left, including us, and since Trianne, Hyacinthia, and Dan Heng, none have died,” you say, and he still looks so confused that a lump forms in your throat, because how can you do this? It’s a death sentence. The moment you leave him, he will die, but you have to. You have to. “We can’t be allies anymore.”

He searches your face for some trace of humor, but when he finds none, he only nods, attempting to stand. You descend upon him immediately, pushing him down, and then you embrace him tightly, clinging to him, trying to memorize what he feels like, the exact timing of his heartbeats, the fire of his skin, the marble of his muscle, which even now has not yet wasted away.

“Don’t do that,” you say, your voice trembling and pathetic. “Stay in the Cornucopia. I’m the one who’s breaking our alliance, so I’m the one who should go. Just let me take what I need, I promise I’ll leave you with enough. Enough to survive until the very end, if you have to.”

“As if I could stop you from doing as you please,” he says. “Even with my full strength, I don’t think I ever could.”

You don’t ask him what he means by that. You suppose it must have something to do with what Krateros told him: pretty little fish-girl. Of course she tore down your defenses, they always do that. But you think that if you ask him, it will make leaving even more difficult, so you swallow down your curiosity and take one of the bags, filling it with food and a few knives before slinging it over your shoulder and grabbing your favorite spear, the one which has a grip worn to the shape of your hands.

Although you swear to yourself that you won’t look back, you do, one last time, right when you are at the edge of the clearing where the grass bleeds into underbrush. He’s sitting in the Cornucopia alone, a blanket in his lap, white bandages wrapped around his waist, and his eyes are closed, his face turned towards the rising sun that paints his acceptance in shades of gold. It’s almost like he’s waiting — waiting for you to come back, or for someone to kill him, you don’t know which. The longer you stare at him, the more your resolve weakens, but then his eyes blink open and in a swift motion, you turn, running as fast you can, praying Cifera finds him soon, because if you are met with the pitiful gold of his irises even once more, then you will be lost.

You wander through the forest until nightfall without running into anyone. It’s empty and eerie and the fact that there haven’t been any cannons in days makes you uneasy. The Gamemakers are planning something — the audience is almost certainly bored by now, for the other tributes are clearly avoiding one another, and whatever was happening between you and Mydeimos in the Cornucopia…it’s not something that they would understand, anyways, nor would they find particular amusement in it. A girl from Four and a boy from Two; your alliance was not unexpected, and the death of it is not, either. You are doing what so many other tributes before you have done — but sometimes you question the truth of that. Sometimes you think that your alliance was more than an alliance, though it was obviously less than anything else it could’ve been. But it’s true that that night, when you sleep hidden away under the cover of a massive pine tree, you wish he were with you, so that you could wind your limbs together for warmth and watch the horizon for those who might approach.

“It’s you!”

You’re awoken by the exclamation, and you are on your feet immediately, brandishing your spear at the girl who has manifested out of nowhere. She raises her hands immediately, her eyes wide, and you realize that it is Castorice, Mydeimos’s district partner, who had once offered to be your ally. Both of you are frozen, and then slowly, you lower your spear, though you do not drop it entirely, holding it loose by your side, scanning the area constantly in case she isn’t alone.

“Castorice,” you greet tersely.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she says. “I’m actually glad to see you alone. Did you finally break your alliance with Mydei?”

“Mydei — Mydeimos?” you say. She frowns.

“Sorry, that was his…childhood nickname. Yes, Mydeimos. Cifera told me the two of you were allies — no, no, she’s not here, I promise! We ran into each other once and agreed to let the other live in exchange for information. I told her that Dan Heng is working with Hyacinthia and Trianne, and she told me that you’re with him. But you’re not anymore, right?” she says.

“Why do you ask?” you say begrudgingly. Castorice leans closer to you, her eyes sparkling and her hands clasped together.

“If it’s the case, we should team up!” she says.

“What?” you say. “Isn’t it a bit late in the Games to form a new alliance?”

“I know Mydei,” she says. “We grew up together; you could even consider us friends, once. As long as he’s alive, none of us have a chance at winning, especially not now that Dan Heng is gone. But you and I, we could do it. I really think we could.”

It’s exactly what Hysilens had suggested before the Games — allying with Castorice, taking out Mydeimos, and then turning on her to come out the victor. But it won’t take the two of you to kill him anymore. It won’t even take one. As long as you leave him alone, he’ll die on his own, this you are sure of.

“No,” you say, and then you raise your spear protectively in front of you. Castorice is clearly puzzled, but you shake your head before she can even speak. “He is still my ally. I won’t go against him.”

Before she can answer, the ground starts to rumble, knocking you both off balance. You scramble for your things as trees begin to fall and, in the distance, the low moan of protesting stone resonates. Castorice tries to say something, but you flee, because you know what is happening: the Gamemakers have grown tired of your inactivity, and by rejecting Castorice’s offer, you have forced them to take action. Now, the arena has turned from a mere prison to a genuine death trap.

It’s an earthquake. You can’t tell if the sounds around you are cannons or boulders, and you don’t stop to think about it, either; you only have one thought in your mind, and surely Hysilens is yelling at you, but you can’t help it. It has to be you, you have to get to him, you have to, you have to. Before Cifera or Castorice. Before the Gamemakers and their creations. You never should have left him, but you did, and now you have to get back to him before he is killed.

The earth stills, but there’s that sound again, the stone against stone, grating and squealing. Then there’s a cackle in your ear, and you whip around to see Cifera perched in a tree, peering down at you with those wide blue eyes of hers. You’re not sure how long she’s been following you, if she even was following you or if this is just a coincidence, but you are relieved to see her. If she’s with you, then that means she’s not with him. That means he’s safe, it has to mean he’s safe—

“I guess we know who the most popular tribute of the year is,” she says. “Congratulations.”

“What?” you say. She’s just far enough away that you can’t reach her with your spear, and fast enough that you don’t dare throw it, freezing you in a state of permanent indecision. She strokes her chin, clearly luxuriating in this brief moment of control, and then she waves her hand in the direction of the Cornucopia, where Mydeimos is waiting for you.

“There’s seven of us left,” she says. “Maybe less. Who knows how many of those idiots were crushed in the quake itself? Well, I do wonder…how many amongst those seven can swim?”

“Swim?” you say. She laughs again, raising a finger in the air.

“Hear that? I’m pretty sure the dam is breaking,” she says. “I don’t need to tell you what will happen when it does.”

You remember that dam, how enormous it is, the vast quantities of water it holds back. If it falls, the entire arena will flood, and it’ll come down to who can survive the raging currents best. Your own words from your interview mock you: I’m one of the strongest swimmers in our district. It’s not an accident. He must find this funny, Veritas Ratio, sitting up in his control room and toying with the arena as he wishes. Are you? Are you really so strong?

“As for me, I’m going to try and find higher ground,” Cifera says, and she suddenly looks so sad that you forget she’s the one who killed Hyacinthia and Trianne. How can you even hold that against her, anyways? When you've done the exact same thing yourself? She was right — there’s nothing like moral superiority between the two of you. You’re the same. All of you tributes, you’re the same, and you can understand that only now, when they’re all set to drown. 

“Good luck, Cifera,” you say, because in the end, she’s just trying to survive, and she could’ve killed you already but she hasn’t yet. You don’t know why; maybe she senses the futility of it, or maybe she just doesn’t want to take the chance that you will kill her first.

“Running to the Cornucopia?” she says.

“How’d you know?” you say, pausing in your tracks. She cackles again, but this time you recognize it for the show of bravado it really is, nothing more. She’s not delighted or brave. She’s just as scared as the rest of you, only better at hiding it by a little.

“Better be quick, pretty little fish-girl,” she says. How much has she seen? How much has she heard? How much does she know? You’re not sure, and you doubt she’ll ever reveal her hand, secretive until the very end. Her cackle fades into a giggle, and then she sighs, a note of finality to it all. “Last I checked, that prince of yours is in no condition to be facing down a flood. Even a couple droplets of rain might be enough to kill him.”

“You—!” 

She waves at you and then takes off in the opposite direction, and you have half a mind to pursue her, but now that she’s mentioned it, you notice that the air truly is thick with the sound of the dam cracking in a million little places. It won’t hold for long, and you need to find him before it breaks, so you can’t keep wasting time with Cifera, who has already admitted her own defeat.

He’s still alive. She would’ve told you if she had bested him, you are fairly certain, which means that even if she saw him, she wasn’t able to kill him. Did he recover enough strength to fight her back? Somehow, you doubt it. It was the Gamemakers’ earthquake that saved him, saved him just as surely as it doomed him, chasing away Cifera before she could end him but also leaving him stranded in the path of the oncoming deluge.

You hear it before you see it, the dam finally crumbling away and water bursting forth. Now your only hope is that the torrent will have slowed by the time it reaches the Cornucopia, but you don’t have much faith, so you double your pace, and when you burst into the clearing you are met with the surge of water rushing towards you.

District Four is no stranger to flooding, and you know your priority right now should be climbing to high ground, as Cifera surely is. Going underwater is suicide; even if you can navigate the currents, there’s debris to worry about, weapons and branches and stones and maybe even those genetically engineered monstrosities of the Capitol, which will no doubt try to hunt you down if you should enter their watery domain.

Survive. Jump off the side of that boat, just like you did all of those years ago back in District Four, and this time, swim back to the surface alone. Do you understand? You have to make sure the others drown.

You whisper an apology to Caenis, your stylist, who had stripped you bare before the Capitol and called you beautiful. You are hardly beautiful like this, ragged and exhausted, and you apologize once more for rendering her work obsolete. You have let yourself become filthy and desperate; you doubt there’s a man or woman in the Capitol who wants you now, who will be able to look at you and see anything but the girl who stared down a flood and then, with an iron spear still in her hand, dove directly into it.

The spear drags you to the bottom faster than if you had swam there yourself, and when you see shadowy figures surrounding you, their eyes slitted, their tongues forked, it serves as a deterrent to them, as well. You move against the direction of the water, searching for the gold of the Cornucopia, and nearly a minute passes before you catch it glinting in your peripheral vision.

They have swarmed him, those deplorable things, drawn to the scent of the tender wound in his side, that raw and aching flesh which begs to be bitten. This flood, too, is a design of the Gamemakers, for it is less aggressive, more pervasive — the force of the water should have killed you all on impact, but that kind of total destruction would come with no entertainment. It’s these creatures, which no doubt will hunt down the tributes that cannot outswim them, that were the purpose of the earthquake and the dam breaking. You wonder if they have been waiting on the other side of the dam this entire time, or if they were just placed in the waters minutes ago, but you suppose in the end it doesn’t matter, because they are here now, and if you cannot fight them off with the precious air you have left, they will devour you both.

Such cowardly things they are, the point of your spear chasing them away immediately. Scavengers, like sea crabs, not proper predators; it’s an empty threat, because underwater your movements are slowed, so if they set their minds to it, they can surely take you and the spear alike, but it is an effective one nonetheless, sending them scrambling at least for the moment.

The sun filters through the unsettled turmoil of the surface peculiarly, illuminating his floating body in the strangest of ways. His eyes are closed and he is smiling, truly smiling, and you hate that you are the one who will drag him back to the realm of the living when he is clearly so peaceful, but you are selfish, you are, and so you wrap your arms around him, allowing your spear to sink into the depths, and then you press your lips to his, breathing for him as you pull him along with you to the surface.

You are lightheaded when you finally break free from the water’s constraints, grabbing onto a nearby tree branch and using the last bit of your strength to haul him onto it with you, lying him down and pressing on his chest, the way you were taught in District Four, pressing and pressing on it until he coughs up silt and opens his eyes.

“You’re alive,” you say as he gingerly props himself up against the trunk of the tree, his hand on the place where you may have even broken his bones in the effort of bringing him back, of keeping him with you for a moment longer.

Over the sound of rushing water, you hear a cannon, a cannon that was almost his, and you are so distraught by this that you take his face in your hands and kiss him, as you had under the water, but now without the excuse of lending him your air, your life. This time, it is you who needs him, and he is the one who gives, still tasting like a river, muddy and wet and drowning, but sweet and vigorous, too.

“Why did you do that?” he says. “That was dangerous, you should’ve — you should’ve —” 

“Your wound is infected,” you say to him, your forehead still leaning on his own, your hands still cupped around his jaw, his own firm against your nape. “You know that, right?”

“Yes,” he says. “That’s why I don’t understand why you came back. I’m going to die soon anyways. Why would it matter if it was drowning or disease?”

“There’s a point to it,” you say, and then you pull the second ring, the one your sponsors sent you, from your middle finger. Sliding it onto his pinky, you curl his hand into a fist and kiss his knuckles. “There is always a point.”

You want him to die with dignity. You won’t celebrate his death, you know this, and although you could not save him from the running or the fighting, at least his final end is not like that. At least in this last moment, he is not a killer and he is not alone. 

“Look,” you say when his breathing grows even more labored than it was when you first escaped the flood. His hand is still in a fist, still in your grasp, and you trace the ring you have given him. “This is from District Four. Back home, when we say goodbye to someone for the last time, we give them something of our own to remember us by.”

“Ah,” he says, and you fight to keep your voice steady, allowing him to rest his head in your lap and close his eyes, murmuring something about how warm you are.

“You’ll remember me, won’t you, Mydeimos?” you say. 

“Of course,” he says, and although he is burning to the touch, his teeth are inexplicably chattering, and he moves impossibly closer to you, like he is trying to leach away a warmth you cannot give him. “My ally.”

“Yes,” you say. “Your ally.”

Before you can thank him for everything, for fighting Dan Heng, for agreeing to work with you, for lying with you every night and living for so long, a cannon bangs. As the water begins to recede, so fast, so unnatural, like there is a vacuum sucking it away, the loudspeaker turns on, and a familiar voice echoes through the arena: Callictus.

“Esteemed viewers, I present to you the victor of the 68th Hunger Games: our lady from District Four!”

It’s you. Cifera was right — the flood was a device the Gamemakers used to ensure your victory, because you were the most popular one left in that stalemate of an endgame. You have won. You can go back home to District Four, to your parents and Hysilens and everyone you have ever known. By all rights, you should be celebrating.

Yet as the hovercraft descends to collect you, tearing you from the limp corpse you cannot bring yourself to let go of, all you can do is shriek and shriek and wonder if it will ever leave your mind or if it will haunt you for the rest of your life.