She's thirteen when the trainer tosses her a long metal club with a heavy ball at the end, ringed with ridges and topped with a row of wicked-looking spikes. It drops Amber's arm a full foot when she catches it and yanks a muscle in her bicep. She stares down at it with a strange, not-unpleasant twisting in her gut.
This is not a weapon for a pretty little girl. This isn't a delicate dagger for sliding between ribs or a loop of wire meant for slicing through the soft flesh of the throat. This will smash and bludgeon and tear; this will leave a corpse bloodied and pulped until it doesn't look like a person anymore.
It looks like what Amber wants to do to men who runs their eyes over her growing curves and smile at her like they want to touch.
"Try that," the trainer says, rolling over a stationary dummy with her foot, and it skids to a stop half a metre away from Amber. Amber tests the weight of the weapon, but when she leans back to throw it, the trainer calls "Stop". She adjusts Amber's arm, fixes the angle of her wrist and runs her through a practice swing. "You'd wreck your shoulder that way. Keep your elbows in and don't fight the momentum, use it. All you want to do is control it, not pull it back."
After a few tries, the trainer steps back and leaves Amber to it. She stares the dummy down, eyes narrowed, and lowers her weight, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet before swinging with both hands, just like the trainer showed her.
She takes the dummy's head off in one stroke, but it takes four tries to pull the head off of the spikes and punt it across the room. This is brilliant. It's everything Amber ever wanted, it's power and it's ugliness and if she swung it between some guy's legs he'd never walk again.
If they give her one of these there's no way Amber can't win. She can feel it, deep inside her like the other girls in her year talk about seeing a cute boy or pretty girl who makes their stomachs flip over. She grins at the trainer, who returns a small smile over the clipboard she's scribbling onto. "What's it called?" Amber demands. "Can I have another dummy? I wanna go again."
"It's called a morning star," says the trainer, and of course it is, it's beautiful. The name is beautiful and the weapon is beautiful and if Amber were allowed to hit a real person it would make beautiful, beautiful blood. She wants to steal one and carry it into town and wait for the next man to look at her sideways. "You'll have to watch your shoulders, make sure you don't get too bulky if you stick with that, but it has potential."
Amber turns, focuses on the knife-throwing target halfway across the room, and she hauls her arms back and lets the club fly. It travels end over end and buries itself in the wood, sending splinters flying. She giggles and twirls, clapping her hands together, and skips the whole way back to her image training class.
They show her, before her kill test, what will happen to her if she fails. It's a video, and they make her watch the whole thing and she's not allowed to cry or scream or cover her eyes because this is real life and she's meant to be prepared. And so she watches in silence, holding her eyes wide open because the tears will spill over if she blinks, and the sounds stick in her brain (the crying and the grunting and the wet slapping of flesh) but she just breathes and breathes and breathes and thinks of blood.
For the kill test they put her in a room with a man, and he's big and muscled and nasty and his eyes rake her like claws but it's okay. It's okay because there's a morning star lying on the floor between them and he's big but she's fast and he runs but she's faster. She's half his size but the weapon doesn't know the difference and neither do the soft bits of his body when the metal finds them, again and again and again.
In the end she pulls the morning star out of his crotch and dips her fingers in the blood stuck between the spikes. She smears it across the front of her soft training pants, up the inside of one thigh and down the other, and she's shaking but the handle of the weapon is strong and solid in her hands and she spits on the body. "That's as close as you'll get to being between my legs," she sneers, and she lets the morning star fall onto his stomach with a wet thunk.
She gets a smoothie after they let her clean off, with real strawberries brought in from Eleven. The other girls in her group only got the powdered kind and that's how she knows she's the best.
Only - they don't tell you what it means to be the best, not until it's too late.
They tell you it's better than washing out, because everyone knows what happens when you wash out. The younger you are the worse it is, because you sell for cheaper and get the worst sickos, and each year at the Academy means a higher asking price and that keeps you a little bit safer. Meanwhile the boys just get sent to the mines if they fail because it's not fair, it's not fair at all. Amber hates the boys; she hates even the pretty ones, the ones who are there to take the edge off the other boys' appetites and who probably will get sold if they fail, because they're still the exception. Most of the boys are safe except for an unlucky few but none of the girls are safe, not ever.
Everyone knows what happens when you fail, and Amber won't fail. She'll be the best and they'll have to leave her alone because she won, she earned this, and no one can take that away, not the Academy not anyone, it's the rules.
They don't tell you that's a lie, and when they do there's nothing you can do about it. The day they tell Amber and the handful of other fifteen-year-old girls what happens after you win - what you're expected to do, the new lessons they'll be picking up after weapons class - they tell every girl that from now on their families are dead if they mess up. Amber looks at the faces of the other girls and they're looking at her and just like that the other girls aren't just competitors, they're enemies.
Amber is fifteen years old and the top of her class and unless she falls and breaks her leg she's definitely going into the Arena. Only now there's no choice because they tell her any "accidents" mean her family is dead, and she hasn't seen Polly since she was a little baby but that just makes it worse because it means she's still a baby in Amber's head.
She doesn't want to win anymore but she can't afford otherwise, and anyway, she's too good to do anything else. Put a weapon in her hand and no one can stop her, and they don't train the girls in One to lose.
She's Ambrosia a year later when she stands up on the stage, smiling and waving to the crowd. 'Amber' didn't sound like enough of a victor name, and it doesn't drip sweet off the tongue for when they'll play her as a whore. It's a tough name, bitter and sour, but Ambrosia - there, that's better, that's a name someone could whisper in the dark with their hands around her throat.
They might call her Ambrosia to her face - that's the name she gives the cameras, proud and pleased with the proper over-the-shoulder grin, turning just enough to show off the smooth muscles of her bared arms - but she's Amber inside, hard and ancient like the sap that makes the stone it comes from, and they can't take that from her. They can call her anything they like, that stupid fluff name that melts in the mouth like spun sugar, but inside she knows the truth.
There's a slit up her skirt that goes all the way up her thigh, and she's told to bend her knee so it shows. They don't need to tell her; she does it without thinking. All the girls do.
After the ceremony Amber stands in the room in the Justice Building, waiting for the train to arrive. It's too bad they won't let her run to the Capitol, give her a pack of supplies and a good pair of shoes and a week to get there on foot (they could it pre-training!) but no. No, she waits in the room that smells of wood polish and fresh paint while all over the Capitol men salivate and imagine being the first one to greet her when she comes home.
The door opens and Amber blinks because it's not time yet, only it's not the guards coming to lead her away. It's a little girl maybe six years old, and she has blue ribbons in her hair and big blue eyes and soft dark curls and no, oh no. "They said you're my sister," she lisps, and her eyes open wide as she stares up, up, up. "Are you really?"
For a second Amber almost says no, shoves the little girl out the door with a harsh bark of laughter and call out that they made a mistake, that's not her sister - but they're not that stupid. They know exactly who her family is, and play-acting now wouldn't change a thing. Likely they'd just shoot Polly right in front of her and say if she doesn't care then why does it matter.
"Looks like it," Amber says instead, and she gives the girl a picture-perfect smile. Maybe Polly will remember this instead of what happens after. "You be a good girl, okay? Do what Mom tells you."
The Academy won't take Polly if Amber makes it to the final four, and they won't kill her if Amber wins or her death looks good, like she really really tried her best, but if she doesn't - well. They brought Polly in to show Amber how pretty she's growing up, just in case she forgot.
"Okay," Polly says, and she pokes one finger into her mouth, then stops and curls her hand into her fist and a piece of Amber's heart snaps off. Someone's already telling Polly not to suck her thumb or she'll ruin her pretty mouth - who, their mother? Her teachers? The rage builds up inside her but not yet, not here. Soon. Soon Amber will be able to take out as many people as she wants, make it look good and release some of the hate that's festered inside her for the past few years, just wait.
For now, she just has to smile. "When I win I'll come get you," Amber says, and that, at least she can say for real. Maybe if she keeps Polly with her they'll have to try a little harder to take her away.
Polly nods, and there will be cameras everywhere - they've trained Amber to find them and yeah there they are, hidden in the baseboards and one in the ceiling vent - so Amber kneels down and hides her face in her sister's curls. "Whatever they tell you," Amber says in a fierce whisper, hugging her tight, "you don't have to be pretty. Girls can be so much more than that?"
"Like what?" Polly asks, idly curious in that way kids are when big people say something but it doesn't really matter.
"Anything," Amber tells her, and it's a lie - maybe they can in other districts, maybe elsewhere girls can be miners or doctors or train drivers but not here - but she doesn't care. She has to say it. "Whatever you want, okay, don't just be pretty."
And then the Peacekeepers come in and take Polly away, and Amber stands back up with her perfect smile and not a hint of tears in her eyes.
The Two boy is big and dark and towers over his little pixie of a district partner, and that's good. Very good. In training he rips the head off a dummy with his bare hands and tosses it to the Four with a laugh, and they start a game of hot potato while the meat tributes stand off to the side and gawk.
There are whispers in the Academy, rumours that the Twos will always try to kill a One girl clean. Amber and a couple of the others went back and watched a bunch of tapes, and barring a few exceptions that seems to be the pattern. She doesn't know if it's because their trainers tell them or it's just tradition or what, but she's not going to fight it. Somewhere down the line the Twos became the One girls' executioners and nobody is willing to ask too many questions in case it makes them stop.
Amber watches Two boy's hands, big and broad and wide-knuckled, and imagines them grabbing her head and twisting. That part is easier than imagining letting him; Amber could no more stand there and let some boy snap her neck than she could walk straight into a row of razor wires. But he's big enough to overpower her, so at least there's that; a few years back Two sent a twelve-year-old by mistake, and you can't rely on a Three to come from behind at the last minute every year.
No counting on the Two girl, though; she looks wicked enough but she's small, and Amber isn't built like a quarry worker like half the Twos are but she could take this one well enough. Two girl throws daggers with precision when it's their turn at the weapons station, but anyone can do that, and Amber has learned to dodge projectile weapons since she was twelve. Throwing knives are for outliers and the big ones too slow to move, and unless Two girl has any hidden talents, no, it won't be her.
Two girl is gay, though (she hides it well, flirts with the boys like a professional, but her eyes gravitate to Amber and the lean, swimmer's-bodied Four girl when no one's paying attention) and that's something. Amber isn't, not entirely, and any One knows the best chance for surviving is to pair up with the Two or Four boy and give the sponsors just enough of a show to tantalize them without spoiling the merchandise. But at the same time Amber would really, really like to experience something good before she dies.
(Not real, never real, but good, yes, and everyone knows that sex with another girl doesn't count so the sponsors won't even mind.)
Amber flirts with everyone, because that's what's expected and it would be suicide not to. Her one saving grace is that she's too tall and broad for the giggling brainless route (Cashmere straddled the line but her blonde hair pushed her over; Amber is dark and sultry and that keeps her on the edge), and she smiles sharp and digs her nails into the boys' shoulders and makes promises with every sweep of her lashes.
The girl from Twelve calls her a slut under her breath. Twelves are always such prudes, and Amber strips off her training suit in one smooth motion and does the ropes course in her underwear. She's pleased to see Twelve blushing when she finishes, and Amber slips past her and trails a finger across the girl's throat and murmurs "Hypocrite" as she passes.
Fucking outliers. If it's down to her and one of them, Amber will take the win for sure because Snow only knows not one of them deserves it.
She's supposed to seduce the Gamemakers in her private session. Not literally, obviously, no one will pay for anything they've had already, but there's a good chance that the man who'll win the bid on her virginity contract is in that room. Even without that, she has to make every single one of them think it could be him. (Probably not the women - statistically female Gamemakers don't purchase Victors - but that doesn't mean they want to be ignored, either.)
Amber honestly intends to do it. She has the routine mapped out in her head - choose something feminine, something graceful, save the real, messy, bloody murder for the Arena when the madness takes hold - but then she looks up at the platform full of men and women, eating their breakfasts and sprawled on their chairs and laughing with each other, and something just snaps.
She snatches up the heaviest mace on the rack and throws it, hard, so that it sinks deep into the training dummy across the room, knocking it back so that it rocks against the counterbalanced base. All conversation skids to a halt, and the Gamemakers turn to look at her - one of them even drops his fork - as Amber grabs a machete with a wicked curved blade and hacks the second dummy to pieces.
And so it goes. Violent, brutal, clobbering deaths for all of them, and in the end Amber picks up the morning star - her hand tingles when she touches it, and it's made of titanium so it's lighter than the wood-and-steel ones she trained with and it moves like an extension of her arm - and drives it straight into the final dummy's groin. On the way up Amber sweeps into a reverse curtsey and twirls a strand of hair around her finger before sauntering out without waiting for dismissal.
(She throws up in the bathroom after, sick with terror, half-afraid she's lost her mind.)
She scores the year's only eleven. Her district partner throws a tantrum; her escort squeals and claps her hands in congratulations. Her handler gives her a long, unreadable look and pours herself another drink.
"What were you thinking, girl?" Luxa asks Amber later, after finding her sitting on the windowsill with her forehead pressed to the glass, looking out at the glittering city around her.
"I don't know," Amber answers honestly, because why not.
"Well you've done it now, so you'd better figure it out fast," she says, and Amber draws her knees up to her chest.
The night before the Arena, Amber slips down to the training rooms after hours. She ignores the single trainer posted on guard who keeps yawning into her hand, and heads right for the weapons.
("You need to make up your mind," Luxa hissed at her after the interviews. Amber nailed her private session but she'd skated through the three minutes with Caesar, smiling and flirting and saying absolutely nothing memorable. "One minute you're setting the whole place on fire and grabbing the Gamemakers by the throats; next day you're coasting like you don't give a shit. Do you want to win or not, because it's like you're two different people. You'd better figure it out by tomorrow before someone decides it for you.")
I don't know, Amber echoes in her head, though she's not stupid enough to say it aloud, not even in the dead of night to a nearly-empty room. No such thing as empty with the cameras everywhere, and she's shown enough indecision already.
It's stupid to want to win with what comes after; Amber knows it, all the One girls know it, and they only manage to pull in maybe one per decade because of it for a reason. If anything, seeing the Gamemakers eye her like she's already naked and spread out on their beds - a male reporter moving in to touch her before her handlers shoot him a warning look (not yet, and not ever for free is the message there) - convinces Amber that her best chance is to find a quick death at the Two boy's sword.
It's just. She's better than they are. Amber walked onto that stage prepared to lose, but not to lose on purpose. She figured all she'd have to do is let it happen, and that's not the same thing as making deliberate mistakes or running into someone else's blade. But nothing she's seen in training or on that interview stage has convinced Amber that anyone, Career or no, has the chops to take her down, and it's - she's ready to die, but it should be worth it.
With five other trained killers, the Twos with even more extensive background in it than anything One or Four can manage, Amber thought at least one of them would easily outclass her. She never thought about what she'd do if they didn't.
Over the years Amber has trained on everything from throwing knives to axes to longswords, but in the end it always comes down to clubs. Her second kill test was a woman and they gave her a spread of delicate, filigreed knives - that test took the allotted hour down to the minute, and the woman didn't actually die until the final ten seconds - but she didn't enjoy it. Her third (no weapons allowed, and she'd jumped him, wrapped her thighs around his head and dropped him to the floor so his neck cracked) barely registers as worth remembering. Not like her final, when they let her have a choice, and she picked a flanged mace and smashed the man's patellas, dropping him to his knees before caving in his skull with a satisfying crunch.
Girls in One don't have a lot of choice, and Amber will be reaped and sold a second time before she spends her last guaranteed night alive using anything but the weapons she loves. Amber hefts a spiked flail in each hand and whips them through the air in a dance she's memorized since thirteen and will never, after the Arena, ever have the chance to do again. When she finishes her arms ache and sweat drips down her back, tickling between her shoulder blades, but it's not enough. She chooses another, stands in front of the force pole and hits it again, again, again - grins as the sections light up red -
That's when she knows she has to die.
Because this, right now, is everything Amber wants. Power and brutality and an audience waiting for every spray of blood, every tribute who crumples to the ground with bits of bone sticking out white and stark through their ruined skin. Letting out all the rage and helplessness and every dark, ugly part of her; driving it through her arm and the weapon in her hand while her enemies fall in front of her. This is what she was trained for; this is what she is.
This is not, in three weeks, what will be her life. Amber tries to imagine having this - less than a month of wild glory, of chasing highs and ruling the world and killing just because she can - only to spend the rest of her life lying underneath men and women she could kill in a heartbeat but will never, ever be allowed to. Twenty-one days or less, given Games standard, of nothing in her way, followed by a lifetime of following orders, of smiling and kneeling and bending over and losing part of herself every time she does it.
Amber will never be more herself, more in control, than now. Every day she's alive in the Arena will be one step closer to victory, when they give her a crown with one hand and steal her soul with the other.
There are tears on her cheeks when she winds down, but they mingle with honest sweat and Amber gets rid of them with one furious swipe of her arm across her face. She's earned for herself what every girl in One wants: the chance to live a short, beautiful, glorious life and go down fighting, with nobody ever having touched her. She's not going to ruin that by winning.
She leaves the weapons on the floor; it'll give the night shift trainer something to do. Amber tosses her hair over her shoulder and runs through a stretching routine to give the graveyard camera staff a thrill, and she takes the stairs back up to the One floor only to see Luxa sitting on the sofa, waiting for her.
"Get your head on straight?" her handler asks, tilting her drink in her hand so the liquid runs up the side of the glass, nearly reaching the edge before she tips it the other way.
"Yeah." Amber wipes her hands on the sides of her pants. She wants to ask Luxa if it's true what they say, if making it to the end and dying well will keep Polly safe, but she may as well be announcing her weak point to the Gamemakers right there. She has to trust that this, at least, isn't a lie, and at least if she's dead she'll never know the difference. Better than an invisible gun to Polly's head every day to ensure Amber's best behaviour until she's too crazy and strung out to care if she slips up and her sister dies anyway.
"Get some sleep then, big day tomorrow," Luxa sing-songs with a smile like a mouthful of knives.
Amber salutes, and before slipping into bed she orders a smoothie with a sleeping-pill chaser from the machines. She passes out on her bed with the sweat still drying on her skin, but at least she doesn't dream.
And it figures. It fucking figures. Amber makes up her mind to die, and they fill the Cornucopia with nothing but dozens upon dozens of her favourite weapon. They're piled knee-high in the mouth of the Cornucopia, set in the centre of a low depression so Amber can take a good, long look before it's time to run. They glint in the harsh desert light, calling her in with a siren song of blood and brutality, and some part of her sings out in response before she can call it back.
She turns her face up to the cloudless sky, heat radiating up off the sun-bleached sand and rocks and blasting her skin, and she laughs like a hyena while the timer ticks down. The other tributes goggle at her in horror, and she can only imagine what the commentators are saying. She closes her eyes for five clicks of the countdown clock and lets herself feel it, the irony and the thick, black humour and the absolute unfairness of it all. It's everything about her life condensed into one horrible moment, and for those five seconds she doesn't try to fight it, just lets it wash over her in a wave.
Amber shuts her eyes, but it's Ambrosia who opens them.
It's a bloodbath, all right. The hill continues up behind the platforms, and a handful of the tributes who give up on finding any supplies at the bottom of the mound of maces and morning stars and flails end up down there anyway because they can't climb out. The ground is loose and the rocks break free and roll down and several of the tributes lose their momentum and tumble all the way to the bottom before they can stop themselves.
None of the little ones make it out except one, the quiet girl from Five who takes a few deep, calming breaths before climbing her way out at an even pace, testing that every outcropping of rock or root will hold her weight. Ambrosia notes her out of the corner of her eye - she could send a mace flying and knock her down but decides not to, it's always good to have one slowly starve to death to keep the betters happy - and just as quickly dismisses her.
The girl from Two picks up a mace like she was born to do it and flings it right at the back of the Three boy's head; he goes down in a crumpled heap, blood staining the sand and mixing to make a thick, dark slurry. It's impressive for someone her size, even if she really is only petite in comparison to the other Careers; she's solid and strong, and even the largest of the outlier girls are weedy and underfed next to her. Not out for the count yet, but she hesitates when she hefts a spiked club; she has to calculate the angle and power instead of feeling it like a part of her.
Cyan and Two boy do better, making it a competition of who can take out their kills with only one shot. Four girl rolls her eyes at the macho bantering and makes sure to drop her next one with a single blow, and Cyan ooh-la-las her while she snorts and makes a sarcastic bow.
(Four boy tries to make everyone forget how obviously disturbed and out of his depth he is by correcting Two girl's incorrect use of 'mace' as a catchall term. "That's a flail," he says, pointing to the chain. "This is a mace, see the flanges?" "Flange this," the Two girl snaps, and throws it past his head to take out the girl from Eleven. Fours are adorable.)
Ambrosia corners Two girl that evening as the sun sets because they need to do something to bribe the sponsors and there have already been thirteen cannons today. More deaths will just be more of the same, and they can't run through any more the first few days or it'll be slim pickings toward the end. These Games will already be short and brutal, no mistaking that, but the Arena is too unexciting, the weapons too similar, for them to pull off a four-day affair like the 65th . Try to end it that quickly and the Gamemakers will probably turn on the rain and keep them trapped for ages to stretch it out.
Two girl is game, just like Ambrosia thought, and it's much, much better than having to go for her giant ape of a district partner, or even the Four boy, who's more annoying than obnoxious but is still very very male. Two girl is pretty and lithe and has quick hands, and together the put on a show for the sponsors that's entirely scripted to cause maximum pleasure for the invisible audience but which still lets them both have something for themselves.
It's dangerous to let go, and Ambrosia doesn't. She and Two keep a hand at each other's throats the entire time, but having the sharp prick of nails against her skin, digging in with every breath, only makes it a better ride. Ambrosia rocks back against Two girl's clever, clever fingers and sinks her teeth into the column of her throat, and any moment now Two girl could press down and cut off her air but not before Ambrosia does the same. It's mutually assured destruction at its most pure, and the blood sings in her veins and danger whispers in her ear and her fingernails scrape too hard at the last second when the wave hits, nicking Two girl's skin and drawing blood.
Two girl grins, bends and licks Ambrosia's neck and sits back up with her lips and teeth smeared red, and only then Ambrosia feels the sting. She raises a hand to her throat and there they are, four crescent-shaped welts across her jugular. She laughs in spite of everything, and they spring apart with their Arena outfits all askew, balancing in a low crouch with their hands near the closest weapon so that the thrill of anticipated combat mingles with the afterglow. Ambrosia has never felt more alive.
They don't fight. They lock eyes as their breaths slow and Ambrosia's heart stops thudding at double-time, then Two girl chuckles and gets to her feet in a slow, deliberate motion. "Maybe I'll make you beg for me," she drawls, hooking a mace at her waist and strapping another over her back. "We've got plenty of time for it."
"Maybe I'll tear your pretty little eyes out," Ambrosia shoots back (and they are pretty eyes, wide and blue and framed with long, dark lashes), and the girl blows her a kiss.
She can hear her handler now, chiding her to take it slow. The sponsors will get bored, scolds the Luxa in her head; don't give it all away now. It should be a tease, a long, slow smoulder; let the audience feel you're seducing them along with her. Make them ache with waiting until they throw money at the screen and beg for more, then hold hold hold until the very end.
Ambrosia knows what Luxa would say, yes. But then she and the Pack collapse back at their camp after a long night of hunting with another tribute's brains dashed out on the rocks, and Two girl grins at her as the sun slowly sets the sky on fire and the air can't decide to chill or warm her and the audience can fuck themselves. What do they know about patience?
There's fresh fruit waiting for them when they wake up anyhow. Ambrosia takes a bite out of the centre of the largest peach and lets the juice dribble down her chin; the boys snort and roll their eyes, disdaining what they would have fought for if she'd let them have it.
This is the only time in her life Ambrosia will ever have anything like this, and she drinks deep.
They share a kill one night. Two girl uses the broken handle of a mace to flay the boy's throat open, and he gasps and scrabbles for air before Ambrosia smiles, trails one hand down the side of his face and caves his skull in with a single blow. They fuck by the campfire while the bloodlust holds; Ambrosia slides her crimson-stained fingers into Two girl's mouth and she sucks them clean with a shudder that runs clean down her spine.
Another time Cyan takes a step forward while they're together at the edge of camp, his brows furrowed and fingers tight on his weapon. Ambrosia tenses, but then Two girl arches her back with a low cry and flings one hand backwards. In the same motion she sweeps up the mace lying by her side and throws it, and it misses Cyan by inches while he spits out a string of curses and dances out of the way. Ambrosia laughs, and Two girl laughs, and for the first time since trailing her fingers across the girl's collarbone and murmuring in her ear Ambrosia kisses her first. The kiss is no less a battle than the rest, the clash of teeth and the slow, hot slide of tongues, and Two girl bites Ambrosia's lip until it bleeds and their mouths sour with the taste of copper.
Cyan backs down, and in that moment they are invincible.
(It isn't real and it won't last, and she doesn't even let herself pretend, not for a moment. Ambrosia isn't stupid.)
It will end, though, and soon - they're running low on meat, the sponsor gifts have thinned, and the boys are edgy and snappish. Just yesterday they lost Four girl to a trap laid by the Sevens, and the boys made the pair's death last all afternoon in retribution for the insult but it didn't wash away the anger, the skittishness. That night Two boy explodes at Four and they have a shouting match that ends in shoving. At the last second they back down and sit on opposite sides of the fire, digging into their rations, but the last of the camaraderie evaporates.
Years back in her endurance test Ambrosia huddled beneath a tree, pressed close to the trunk to shelter from the cutting wind. It worked until a thick branch above her snapped in two and crashed down, and she had to fling herself aside or be struck right across the head. She still remembers the heavy creak of the limb straining under the weight of the snow that warned her, like the crackle of too-thin ice on the frozen river that wouldn't take her weight.
She feels it now in the glares the boys cast each other cross the campfire, how she and Two girl are never left alone anymore without at least one of the other Pack members within throwing distance. It's coming.
And so that night she wraps her hand around Two girl's throat. "I'm going to kill you," she says, low and dark.
Two girl snorts, fists her hand in Ambrosia's hair and yanks her head back. "You're going to try."
"No." It's important - fear trips in her chest for the first time since the platforms raised - and Ambrosia digs her fingers in hard enough to bruise. "I'm going to kill you. Not the others. Not the meat. Me. I'm going to bury my morning star in your chest and write my name with your blood."
Two girl bares her teeth, flashing white in the darkness, but Ambrosia holds her gaze even with her neck at its awkward angle, and slowly, slowly understanding slides into place. "You're wrong," Two girl says finally. "I'm going to kill you. I'm going to bash your head in, and I'll do it so fast you won't even feel it. One minute you'll be here, the next, you're nothing but brains in the dust."
Ambrosia lets her eyes fall closed, and she breathes in long and deep and fights back the prickle against her eyelids. "Is that a promise," she says, not trusting herself to look. "Because I bet I get there first."
"Oh, it's a promise." Two girl nips and sucks a hot trail from Ambrosia's jaw down to her collarbone. "You can count on it."
This will be the last time. It's a vow sealed in blood and teeth and sweat, and for once - and only just this once - Ambrosia lets herself disappear and finds Amber instead. Amber is louder, greedier; the sounds she makes are not the soft, camera-pleasing noises she was trained into but harsh cries, demanding and impatient. Her hands tear at Two girl's hips and dig into the soft skin on either side of her spine, and Two girl works her over until her breath runs ragged and comes out keening.
Two girl leans down and moves her mouth to Amber's ear, hiding her face from the cameras. "If I had a knife I'd do it now," she says, low enough that the microphones won't catch it, and curls her fingers. Amber comes hard and gasping, and as her mind explodes into a scattering of stars she thinks she hears two more words, spoken quiet and insistent under the cover of her shouts.
(Except that Twos don't apologize, no matter what Amber thinks she heard, and as Ambrosia crawls back to the surface she pushes the thought away.)
She doesn't sleep. None of them do. It's the first night where that happens, and they sit and stare out across the fire as the flames dance and the sparks fly up toward the artificial smattering of stars painted in the Gamemakers' sky. The firelight glints on the spikes of the morning stars, the chains of the flails, the heads of the maces, and no one's hand strays far from the handle of their weapons.
"We should move out," Cyan says finally, breaking the silence. "Cover the camp and finish the hunt."
Two girl stands up, smooth and sinuous as always, lashing her weapons to her belt and hooking the straps tight. "I'll go grab some rocks and scrub to hide the campfire," she says, and strolls away out of sight around the side of the cliff.
"I'll help," Cyan says, following her, and that leaves Ambrosia alone with the Two and Four boys.
They watch her; Four boy has a mace lying across his knees, and Two boy's fingers twitch at his hip, a muscle at his eye spasming as he fights not to look down and check to make sure his weapon hasn't moved. Ambrosia doesn't need to look for hers; she feels it close, comforting and reassuring by her side. When she moves her hand to run her fingers through her hair, both boys stiffen and follow the motion.
From beyond the cliffside, the sounds of a scuffle; a shout, a bitten-off scream. Moments later, a cannon fires, dull and booming overhead.
Cyan must have killed Two girl. Ambrosia springs to her feet, scooping up her morning star - the boys leap up, but not apart; they're shoulder to shoulder, expressions set and eyes narrowed - and Two girl is dead and Cyan will be back any minute and that's three boys against one girl.
Ambrosia is good but not that good, not with them wild and Arena-crazed and angry after days of watching what they can't have. She scrambles back and takes off running, leaving her back fully open. If they really want her dead there will be a mace in her spine in seconds.
But she knows the light in Cyan's eyes (saw it in training when he raked his gaze over a pair of girls stretching each other out, before the trainers told him to step back; saw him turn it against a pretty younger boy one day, and that time the trainers just walked away) and odds are, they won't end her so quickly.
She's right. They chase her, feet pounding against the hard-packed sand and rock, and no spikes bite into her skull and bring her down in a spray of blood. Ambrosia laughs as she pulls away because like always they're fast but she's faster, and boys are idiots. They should have just killed her, and now they'll never find her.
It's not until she's lost them and climbed up a cliff to hide in a crevasse in the rocks that Ambrosia remembers. Two girl is dead. It's the boys and the dwindling handful of meat left, and now it's going to happen like she always feared. Like Two girl promised wouldn't happen, all because she was stupid enough not to watch her back and Ambrosia let her.
Two more cannons fire in the distance, and then nothing for a long time.
Ambrosia spends the rest of the day in hiding, fingers twisted in her hair, racking her brain. She's lost track of the deaths; is she at the final four? Is Polly safe? If she waits for one, maybe two more cannons then she should be in the clear, but they never told her what happens if she makes the finale by default. Maybe it doesn't count if she doesn't make the kills herself.
That night she climbs out to watch the sky. Cyan flashes first, mouth curved in a sneer; then Two boy and his dark glare; then Four boy -
Wait.
Ambrosia claps both hands over her mouth to stifle her cry because Two girl is still alive.
Two more cannons. Two more faces in the sky. Two more kills that Ambrosia had no part in, even though she hunted the whole day and came up empty. That's the last of the meat leftovers, and after that it's her and Two girl and no one else. She knows without having to keep count because the anthem plays in a minor key after the girl from Eight disappears, and that's the signal for the showdown.
The sky stays dark, but the world around her turns a deep blood red as the Gamemakers shift the light spectrum. So much for waiting until the morning. Ambrosia has no food on her besides a few strips of dried meat, and she holds the salted leather in her mouth until it draws out the saliva before swallowing.
Live or die. Live or die? No more hiding, no more playing, no more putting off the decision. It made so much sense to Amber, but for Ambrosia the reasoning slips away between her fingers. Why not? She's come this far. She has the blood of four on her hands already. One more wouldn't be hard. One more cannon and then Ambrosia could go home, scoop up Polly in her arms and take her into the Village and keep her safe.
She lets the Gamemakers guide her through the Arena toward Two girl; the sky lightens when she takes the right path and goes a dark, roiling purple-black if she makes a wrong turn, and as she stalks she lets the thoughts turn over in her mind. Why was she afraid? Nothing she feared has happened so far. The meat is dead. The boys are gone. Cyan and his nasty, sliding smile have floated in the sky and he'll never promise to have fun with her after he kills her ever again.
The desert spreads out before her, the clouds a smear of olive in the sky. She could do this. She could win, bring the crown home, and would it be so bad? Yes, she'd have clients, but how bad could it really be? It's just sex. She'd be good at sex, and at least with a client who paid to be there she wouldn't have to worry about boys with weapons standing behind her, waiting for her to lose control so they can smash her brains in. Get clients, net sponsor money, bring children home. She could do this.
She can do this. She will.
They lead her back to the Cornucopia. Of course they do. This is where it started; it makes sense to end it here. Thunder rolls over the horizon, and the air turns, a fresh wind blowing across the sand. A long, grey sheet of rain appears in the distance, and Ambrosia laughs; now there's water, now the sun disappears and the dry, choking dust fades to a pleasant coolness. Of course.
Two girl waits for her at the edge of the depression, a weapon in each hand. The first drops sizzle against the ground; moments later it's a deluge and the sand slides beneath Ambrosia's feet. She digs in her heels, wraps both hands around the handle of her morning star. This is her weapon, her Arena, her moment. She can do this.
"I thought you'd be dead by now," Two girl calls out. Lightning crashes across the sky, illuminating the sharp line of her cheekbones, the twisted grin. Dried blood had crusted in her hair and plastered to her neck; now it runs down in streams as the rain washes it away. "I almost thought I wouldn't get to keep my promise."
Two girl held her and vowed to kill her and pushed her over the edge with nothing but her hands and the slow, scraping slide of her teeth against Ambrosia's neck. Ambrosia chose this girl as her executioner but now - she's so close. So close. Ambrosia bares her teeth and hefts her weapon, choosing her footing as the ground shifts under her. "I'm not going to break mine," she shouts back, voice raised to carry over the howl of wind. "You're mine. I'm going to carve out your chest."
And there it is, the flicker of surprise in Two girl's eyes, followed by clenched teeth and her fingers tightening on her weapons. She really thought this would be a given; she thought Ambrosia would just walk up to her and let her brain her with a lump of metal. Did Ambrosia ever think she'd do that? She couldn't have. Twos are naive and noble and Two girl fooled herself, that's all. She fooled herself and now she knows; death is coming, but not for District One. Not today.
Two girl changes her stance, bending her knees and taking the defensive, and now she's scared, she has to be. Because Ambrosia is bigger, and stronger, and better, and Two girl will have to know that, even if she did go on a murder spree the past few days. Now she's up against the one person in the Arena she has no chance of defeating, not unless Ambrosia lets her have it - and she won't. Ambrosia deserves this. She deserves everything.
They fight, or at least they try. The wind and rain blind them, and the ground gives and tilts and once a three-inch flood of water crashes down from the cliffs and knocks them both sideways. Two girl's mace catches Ambrosia in the shoulder; Ambrosia returns with a wild swing that smashes the other girl's wrist. It's low and mean and ugly, and unless Ambrosia can find her footing she can't make a kill strike.
Two girl goes down when Ambrosia takes her out at the knee, goes down with a scream that pierces the air and shoots a shiver down the back of Ambrosia's spine. Two girl keeps hold of her weapon, the handle slippery with rain and blood, and she stares up at Ambrosia with hatred contorting her face, but this is it, this is the end.
Ambrosia's foot hits a rock, and she hooks her ankle around it and holds herself firm, bracing for the final blow.
Two girl raises her head, and she lifts her arm with the broken wrist and her hand dangling uselessly and pushes her sopping hair out of her eyes with the inside of her elbow. Her eyes are narrowed with pain and defiance, breaths coming out in gasps, and Ambrosia savours the moment.
Then Two girl speaks, and her voice carries over the wind to Ambrosia but the microphones won't catch it, not at that volume. "You don't want this," she says, hard and arrogant and so fucking sure of herself.
Ambrosia laughs, and she keeps her eye on the girl's left shoulder, watching for the tension that will mark her move to strike. "I really think I do."
"You think you do," Two girl acknowledges, and it's almost companionable, the pair of them bleeding out into the mud in the centre of a storm, Two girl's knee in pieces beneath her mangled skin. Pain tightens her voice. "That's the difference. You think you do, but you don't. I'm the one who wants this."
"You don't know anything!" Ambrosia swings her morning star in a lazy arc. Two girl doesn't flinch. Damn Twos. They think they're so smart, so brave. They'll see who's brave when Ambrosia peels her ribs back like wings and tears out her heart, now won't they!
"I know what will happen if you win," Two girl says. "It's over for me. It won't be for you."
"Shut up!"
All she needs is one more kill. It plays out in Ambrosia's mind: she'll swing her weapon, and Two girl will try to block but she'll just lose another arm, and on the return Ambrosia will take her out with one hard blow to the chest. Two girl will fall, and either she'll bleed out or the shock will do it or the rain and mud will fill her mouth and nose or she'll choke on blood, and either way she'll die. She'll die and Ambrosia will be the winner, and they'll pick her up and carry her out and wash off the mud and blood and filth -
And then it will be time to pay back every sponsor gift she's enjoyed. Time to make good on every promise she made with every wink and teasing lift of her shoulder, every cry and moan and sigh against Two girl's throat. Time to trade the weapons and the blood and the heat of battle for hands in her hair and at her back and rug burn on her knees, every day for the rest of her life, forever.
Ambrosia staggers back a step. "Shut up!" she screams again, and swings.
(There are two sets of hands on the shaft of the weapon. Two voices screaming. Two people, two desires, and Amber fights her way back to the surface with claws and teeth and voice, no no no I don't want this I don't want this please let it end let it be over)
(Amber and Ambrosia grappling in the recesses of her mind, trying to tug each other under the slick black surface of the water)
Amber Ambrosia Amber Ambrosia Amber Ambrosia -
Amber takes control of the swing halfway through and brings it down, away from Two girl's chest in a low, sweeping arc to the side that will miss by an inch -
Two girl heaves herself to her feet with a tearing shout of agony and fire and determination, and no, no, Amber can't change it now, she's in the downswing and there's no way to stop it, weapons have momentum and the morning star smells blood -
The weapon crashes hard into Two girl's pelvis, smashing straight through the bones of her hip and shuddering to a halt. The impact jolts Amber straight through to her shoulders, and this time Two girl's scream splits the sky.
Two girl howls with the wind, a low, keening wail that rises higher and higher, but then it changes, it rasps and breaks and gets louder when it should be failing and Amber staggers back in terror. She's never heard that sound before, could never even make it because it's the sound of survival and Amber has never wanted anything in her life as much as this girl wants to live.
Amber stares at her in shock as the rain pelts her in sheets, but then Two girl grits her teeth and roars and then she's on her feet, somehow, weaving like she's drunk, and she still has her weapon and her arm comes up -
Two girl's heaves her mace through the air with the last of her strength but she's too short and her arms are shaking and her legs won't hold her weight and she'll miss, the mace will hit Amber in the collarbone and it will shatter and the bones will drive themselves straight through her chest but she won't die, not from a blow like that -
Amber trips.
(It's easy to do, the mud is slippery and flowing and there's no solid ground anymore. Anyone could do it.)
The mace hits her square in the side of the head. Pain explodes out, red and white and hot and blinding, ringing in her ears and nausea and dizziness and blackness -
(The bright blue sky over the mountains on spring day when the weather starts to turn, the wind crisp with the last of winter but the sun is warm and Amber twirls in the grass and laughs)
(Polly's tiny, red fist curls around her finger and Amber sits very very still because babies break easily and she doesn't want to break things)
(Polly's arms around her neck and her big blue eyes and soft dark curls but they're sliding, everything's sliding and red and there's blood on her mouth and on her skin and she holds out her hands and the sky goes white, bright white, while the rest of the world collapses around her and there's nothing
there's nothing
"So, Petra. After one of the Hunger Games' most spectacular romances, what went through your mind in the end? Do you have any regrets?"
"Dodging left instead of right?" (laughter) "Although I'm very grateful to the Capitol doctors. I'd rather be alive and unable to walk than the other way around."
"That's the spirit! But tell us. Right before that final attack, it looked like the two of you had a very intense, personal moment. I don't suppose you'd care to share? We're dying to know, right, folks?"
(a pause)
"She told me she was going to win because she wanted it more. I told her she was wrong."
"Well, I think we know who was right! Now, let's take a look a this recap, shall we? Though I might have to cover my eyes at the racy parts, I don't suppose you'd tell me when it's safe to look..."