Lucy barely heard a word President Gumpas spoke from the balcony of the presidential mansion, white walls dancing with colorful light displays, heroic scenes of Victors playing through sweeping views of cities and fields that followed his booming voice, almost identical to the mayor's speech at the Reaping but spoken with such eloquence and embellishment that the crowd actually applauded at all the right parts, the energy in the stands soaring.
Even now she couldn't stop smiling, alien street lamps dazzling her eyes as the crimson sky faded to dusk, and the chariot jerked into motion as the tributes took their last lap around the city circle and turned up a wide street to their new home, the towering Tribute Center.
Lucy raised an arm to wave again, bathing in a final shower of rose petals and clinging to every last cheer, beaming up into the stands until they descended out of view into a vast underground parking garage and the street lights vanished.
The chariots pulled to a halt, horses stamping and blowing as attendants and mentors and stylists rushed in to collect their tributes.
Caspian's shoulders relaxed.
Lucy pried her stiff fingers from his arm, frozen so tightly around the velvet of his suit that she wondered how he hadn't said anything. "Thanks," she said, massaging her hand and attempting to shake some life back into it.
He just nodded, stony mask having already slipped back into place by the time she glanced up into it, any hint of a smile now gone as if it had never existed.
Had it even been real? The smile, the laugh, the rose she still clutched between the fingers of her free hand?
"You were marvelous!" cried Polly, and Lucy spun as their team reached the chariot, all smiles as Digory reached up to help her off, legs trembling as if the solid ground were still rumbling on wheels beneath her feet, but it only amplified the electric buzz flooding through her body.
"Marvelous indeed," beamed Digory, "you two made quite a splash out there. Whose idea was it to link arms?"
"Hers," said Caspian as he dismounted, and Polly took them both by the shoulders and led them across the busy floor into the lobby.
"It was a brilliant move, the cameras loved you two!"
Lucy opened her mouth to say it had really been more of an accident, but caught Caspian's eye at the last second.
He shot her the faintest ghost of a smile, and she shut her mouth and smiled back just as they stepped through the glowing doors of the Tribute Center into what Lucy could only describe as a cathedral, towering white marble stretching up so far her head spun, archways and lifelike carvings climbing higher than she could see even when they took the glass elevator up to the eighth floor and the doors opened into a level of the building dedicated exclusively to them.
She gasped.
Spacious rooms flowed up and down into each other, even more lavish than those on the train, all connected in a vast open floor plan that made Lucy want to run around and lean over every half-wall and balcony and peer around every pillar at once.
To her delight, they kept their ceremony clothes on for dinner, served in three courses at a long dining table with a chandelier glittering overhead like a shower of diamonds, and when it came time to watch the replay of the Opening Ceremony in the massive sitting room filled to bursting with plush furniture, she found Polly hadn't been lying when she said the cameras loved them.
"And here we have District Eight, our textile— wait now, what's this?"
The noise of the crowd almost drowned out the announcer's voice as the camera zoomed in on the two of them, arms linked like old friends, and the Lucy on screen burst into laughter.
"Well, it looks like District Eight has some surprises up their sleeves! This is truly unexpected, it seems we—"
Cheers cut out the audio again as Caspian caught the rose, and the screen went tight on the smile they exchanged.
"Would you look at that! We have some performers here, folks! District Eight, who would have thought it! We'll have to keep an eye on them, won't we?"
Lucy caught an approving glint in Digory's eye from across the room, and grinned. She didn't realize until the recap came to a close that districts Nine through Twelve had barely been covered at all.
"I said it," beamed Polly as the Capitol seal spun on screen and Digory switched off the TV. "You're naturals, both of you."
"I must admit, you surpassed even my expectations," said Digory, leaning forward and taking a puff of his pipe. "You'll have a real shot if you stick with this angle. Playful, engaging. The Capitol doesn't expect it from outlying districts."
Lucy could have exploded with the pride that swelled in her chest, but at the same time something else swirled there, the faintest shadow of doubt. "I'm not sure I understand. I mean, we didn't really do anything special."
"Nonsense," said Polly. "You looked like you wanted to be there. They'll wonder what you have to be so confident about."
"But… what if I don't really have anything to be confident about? I mean… I've never even held a sword, or anything—"
"It's not all about weapons," said Digory, pushing his spectacles up his nose. "It's not even necessarily about fighting. Survival is its own monster, and a sponsor can become a self fulfilling prophecy in terms of keeping you fed and supplied."
Polly nodded. "Getting them to root for you is half the fight, and I'd say you're well on your way to winning it."
Something sputtered to life unbidden in Lucy's chest, fire rushing through her veins before she could hold it back, too comfortable in her fluffy armchair and too full of good food to be quite as alarmed by the thought of the arena as she should have been.
For the first time since she'd left Dictrict Eight, something had gone right.
Even when the mentors turned in for bed, even when Caspian took his leave and she bid them all goodnight, she couldn't bring herself to think of sleep yet, so alive was every inch of her body with the thrill of it, buzzing, restless.
"Miss Pevensie."
She glanced up to find Zardeenah still in the room.
"I believe this is yours." The escort held out a black-clawed hand, grasping an all-too-familiar fairytale book.
"Oh, thank you!" She jumped to take it, heart skipping a beat when she realized she must have left it on the train. "Really, thank you, I don't know what I would do without it."
Zardeenah just gave a faint smirk and walked away, gold tattoos glinting in the lamplight as strange affection surged inside Lucy.
Perhaps the abyssal woman hadn't really been so bad all those years at the Reapings. Perhaps she'd never been such a bad omen as Lucy had always imagined, a grim reaper appearing once a year to collect the souls of the damned; perhaps she was only doing her job, like Polly, and Digory, and the stylists. And how much worse would it be to navigate the Capitol without her?
She clutched the book to her chest, sharp corners digging into her ribs until the view outside the windows caught her eye.
Pure city skyline sprawled out beyond floor-to-ceiling glass, mountains silhouetted black against pale purple sky. No stars pierced the hazy shroud of city lights, but those were nearly as beautiful from here, and though it wasn't the view she'd always dreamed of running off to, the Capitol had its own magic. A thicker, richer magic perhaps, but Lucy wouldn't have minded drowning in it.
She ventured to the glass door situated amongst the windows and pushed it open onto a perfect little balcony, suspended out in the cool night air, ebony railing glinting blue and red and purple in the light of flashing neon signs eight stories below.
In the distance, jagged patterns of light cut through city blocks, fissures of gold glowing up from a deeper city, perhaps the one she'd seen in that single instant on the train, city below city, green parks winding through streets and buildings towering like living canyons, glittering with cut crystal at dangerous, dizzying heights.
She slid to the floor, skirt billowing out like some kind of fairy princess as she tucked her legs up and propped the book open, light from the apartment splashing over her lap as she flipped through familiar pages.
She'd just landed on a spot to begin reading when a voice came abruptly behind her, booming in the stillness of the night.
"Swanwhite?"
She jumped and spun around to face Caspian, his silhouette leaning in the doorway, apple in hand.
"Ay, don't sneak up on people like that!" She rubbed her chest, massaging a racing heart through heavy silk.
"Sorry," he said much more quietly, snapping her back to her senses as the soft indoor light played through his long hair, edging the features which had been so cold a moment ago, hard black eyes fixed unwavering on the screen as commentators praised their performance. "I didn't mean to startle you." He lifted the apple in explanation, a weak smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Got hungry again."
"It's alright," she sighed, and furrowed her brow. "What did you say?"
His eyes fell to her lap again, motioning with the fruit to the open book. "The picture. It's Swanwhite, isn't it?"
"Y-yes…" She glanced down to the delicate illustration, a wisp of a girl with dark eyes and soft pink lips, and then looked back up at Caspian. "You know fairy tales?"
He gazed in silence for several moments, studying the faded brushstrokes. "A queen so beautiful that when she looked into any forest pool—"
"The reflection of her face shone out like a star by night for a year and a day afterward," finished Lucy, as easily as if she had been reading from the next page.
"I haven't heard that since I was little."
"I've never met anyone else who knew these stories." Her voice rose ever so slightly before she caught herself. She bit her lip and smoothed the pages, hesitated for a moment, then offered the book up to him.
He stepped outside and took it gingerly from her hands, as if afraid to touch an ancient artifact, settling down on the other side of the door to flip through.
He still wore his ceremony clothes, but now without the rich red coat, leaving the much darker shirt gathered airily at his wrists and open at the chest where gold trim laced the gauzy collar and loose laces, untucked from his pants and trailing nearly translucent against the marble of the balcony as his eyes flicked over every page with what Lucy could only describe as a kind of hunger.
For the briefest moment he looked like a boy—not a tribute, not a nearly-grown man, just a boy—wide-eyed with wonder as Capitol-manicured fingers traced the shapes of willow women.
Who was he? Where had he come from? How had she lived in the same district all her life without knowing this strange, confusing creature? Not only a Telmar she'd never heard of, but a Telmar who knew fairy stories?
"Did your mother read to you?" The question tumbled out before she could hold it back.
Many times she'd imagined a mother reading bedtime stories to her—at least, that was what happened in books—but the closest she'd ever gotten were the girls downstairs at the orphanage, just as lost and broken as she was, and very few of them ever bothered with the younger kids.
Caspian stiffened before she realized her mistake. For a moment she thought he'd stopped breathing altogether, staring at the same point on the page, until at last he said "My nurse."
That was none of your business, Lucy Pevensie.
He spoke again before she could apologize. "We didn't have a book, though, she told them from memory and drew pictures. Where did you get this?" He flipped it over in his hands.
"School library."
He lifted the torn back cover where the borrower's registry should have been, raising an eyebrow.
"It's a long story," she murmured.
To Caspian's credit, he didn't ask.
"I think I'm the only one who's taken it out in years," she said in an attempt to smooth over the awkwardness. "No one really cares about the old stories anymore."
He nodded absently, flipping another few pages. "Who's this one?" He stopped and turned it to her. "The Lion. He's in a lot of them, I don't remember his name."
"Oh, Aslan! He's the best one, you know, he used to come from over the sea to help the Old Country when they needed him. He was the king of the whole wood, and the talking animals and dryads and fawns all loved him."
Caspian glanced up from the vibrant golden Lion's head. "You believe that? About the Old Country, and talking animals?"
She froze, heat rushing to her cheeks at how easily it had all poured out of her. Scarcely two days without normal human interaction and already she would spill her soul to the nearest warm body? To him of all people? Why was he even out here? Was he really so bored that a scrawny fifteen year old constituted an adequate distraction?
But he didn't sound annoyed, not the way Marjorie always did when she talked about the old stories.
She shrugged, voice falling almost to a whisper as she glanced down at her tangled fingers. "Why not? It's better than whatever they teach in history class."
Caspian's eyes never wavered, the weight of them boring into her as she waited for the reprimand, the mockery. But neither came.
"Do you believe things like Aslan still exist, somewhere?"
Lucy blinked and looked up again. "I— I don't know. But… I hope so. It's too horrible to think our ancestors stamped them all out."
He gazed back, expression unreadable, as if searching her eyes for something before he closed the book and handed it back to her, flopping onto his back with an arm behind his head, staring up into the starless sky.
Lucy flipped back to her spot but couldn't focus, mind wandering to her fellow tribute until her eyes followed, lashes silhouetted against his cheeks as the night's chill set in, chest rising and falling as if he weren't lying six feet from his natural adversary. Although, for him it didn't matter. She was no threat to him.
"They say the stars were people, too," said Caspian several minutes later, softer now, almost dreamy, as if drifting up from a distant memory.
"Yes," she said, glancing back out at the city, away from the figure that looked so much less imposing out here.
"Do you think they still are?"
She looked up at the grey glow of smog, imagining pinpricks of light beyond, twinkling like they did in Eight. "I don't know how the Capitol could have changed that. They must be."
He smiled, and she caught it in the flicker of neon lights. But something else niggled at the back of her mind, and the way the midnight air brushed her bare arms emboldened her to speak it.
"Why did you agree to train together?"
He looked at her and shifted his arm. "I guess… it just makes everything easier. You know, getting both mentors' perspectives at once instead of splitting off."
"Oh."
Somehow the rational side of it hadn't occurred to her.
"What about you?"
"What?"
"Why did you agree to it?"
"I— uh, same reason." She reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear, forgetting again that it was all done up, and instead bumping into the rose she'd tucked there before dinner.
The Opening Ceremony played back instantly in her mind as she pulled it out, her own beautiful face on screen, showered in petals and Caspian's pearly smile; and beneath the flower's pristine silhouette blushed Swanwhite, gazing up from the page, unmatched beauty beyond the lot of mortals.
How many times had she read that story and thought she would never know what it felt like? A fantasy even further out of reach than the fauns and the dryads, yet now here she was, bathed in silk and perched upon the precipice of a city twinkling in the colors of a thousand worlds, gazing down at her mirror image in buttermilk parchment.
They loved her here.
No, not love, she amended. They didn't love her. Nobody loved anybody, not really, not forever. But they didn't have to. They just had to like her, and that was something she could control.
She could smile. She could be beautiful. She could play the part.
"You're naturals, both of you."
If she could get this far, who knew what else she could do? She could learn to find food, and build shelter. She could hide.
She fingered the long, smooth stalk of the rose, spinning it so that the petals became a scarlet kaleidoscope. Where the thorns ought to have been, harmless lumps ran up and down the stem.
So it wasn't a real wild rose, only a genetically engineered imitation. All of the beauty with none of the danger.
Just like the Capitol.
She glanced at Caspian, his eyes closed, the faintest breeze ruffling dark hair.
They could talk about fairy tales up here in the Tribute Center, but in the arena the thorns would be real, and the odds would not be in her favor.
Even still, she had a chance. Perhaps not to win, perhaps that would be too much to hope for, but she didn't think she was going to give Anne Featherstone the satisfaction of killing her so easily.
"Is it strange?" she asked, almost without thinking, almost without expecting a real answer.
"Is what strange?" mumbled Caspian.
"That the Capitol feels like the safest place I've ever been?"
"Yeah," he breathed after a few moments, during which she wondered if he'd really gone to sleep. "That's pretty strange."
She scoffed, smirking to herself and biting the inside of her lip. Nobody asked you, Caspian Telmar.
It was almost an hour before her own exhaustion finally caught up with her and she stood, leaving Caspian under the starless sky as she padded silently through the apartment into her own room, labeled with her name on the door, city light pouring in through massive windows to illuminate a space large enough to be an apartment of its own, complete with lounge chairs and a glass desk she couldn't imagine having time to use.
She washed off her makeup, let down her hair, but crawled into bed still dressed in full gown, resigned to take it off in the morning before anyone could scold her for sleeping in it, and with her hands buried in smooth silk, the long day claimed her.
Lucy woke better rested than she could remember ever being in her life.
By the time she'd investigated the shower and got out to breakfast dressed in a soft blue shirt and slacks, the other three had yet again already occupied the table, and Caspian was halfway through a sticky bun.
"Lucy!" chirped Digory with a smile, and Caspian nodded as she sat down, no awkwardness in it today.
"Good morning," she said, reaching for a bowl of fruit.
"Sleep well?" asked Polly.
"Very well," said Lucy with a grin.
"I'm glad to see you both well rested," said Digory. "As you know, today you will begin your training."
"Where are we in the polls?" asked Caspian.
Lucy looked up at him. "Polls?"
"My uncle always bets on the Games. They start projecting odds right after the Reapings, but it gets more serious right about now."
Digory nodded. "That's right." He pressed a button on the side of the table and the opposite wall lit up with a wide screen, flicking through a few channels before landing on a stylized graph filled with names and numbers, commentary droning over it on low volume.
Lucy furrowed her brow and collected her bearings.
The tributes' names fell in district order, each joined with a picture which must have been taken at the Opening Ceremony. After that came each tribute's height, weight, and age, and in the final column, another set of numbers changed and shifted intermittently. These must be the odds.
Susan from District One had 5-1.
Peter from Two had 3-1, and Lucy swallowed at the blonde boy's handsome, smiling face next to that terrifying number, made even more terrifying next to District Three.
She recognized them from the ceremony, the two who had been arguing: Eustace Scrubb, and Jill Pole, odds 23-1 and 29-1 respectively.
Hurriedly she skimmed the rest of the list until she came to her own name. Lucy Pevensie, height 5'4, weight 105lbs, age 15, odds... 9-1?
She blinked.
Was that right?
Yes, it was right there next to all her other information.
"But isn't that high?" she blurted out. "I mean, that's—" Her eyes fell to Caspian's next. 5-1. The same as the career girl. She gaped, and spun to Caspian staring in equal disbelief.
"What...?"
Polly smiled. "You're both in the top half. It seems your enthusiasm went further than even we supposed."
"Of course, they change all the time," said Digory, "Since they don't actually have much to go on yet. But you've made quite an impression."
Lucy couldn't process it. They really did like her.
"Now," said Digory, "You're still alright being coached as a team?"
Caspian dragged his eyes away from the screen at last to meet Lucy's, and they both nodded.
"Good," said Digory. "What would you each say is your greatest advantage?"
"What are you already good at?" clarified Polly.
"I… uh, trained in sparring," said Caspian, "Several years ago now but I think I could still manage."
Digory nodded approvingly, and Lucy racked her mind for something, anything, though nothing would sound nearly as impressive as sparring. Bother Caspian and his endless potential.
"I'm good at climbing, and keeping quiet."
Digory nodded again. "That can be valuable too, especially depending on the arena."
"You'll want to keep your best skills to yourselves," said Polly, "Save some surprises for the real Games. Focus on things you want to learn or improve on in training, and reserve the showing off for the individual assessments. The element of surprise could save you in a pinch, and you'll minimize yourselves as targets."
"So what should we learn, then?" asked Lucy.
"There will be opportunities to try just about everything," said Polly, "But I suggest focusing a little on each survival skill, since you'll undoubtedly need to feed yourself outdoors, and Eight has done little to prepare you for that kind of work."
Lucy stored the advice away, and she and Caspian continued to ask questions until the clock struck nine and a string of avoxes filed to clear the dishes away.
Polly and Digory took them back to the elevator they'd entered the apartment from.
"Fifth story below ground," said Digory.
Caspian pressed the button, and the glass doors slid shut.
"See you at dinner," said Polly, voice muffled by the glass.
And then the elevator shot down, Lobby rushing up and passing by as the ground floor swallowed them and a thrill shot straight up through Lucy's core, until at last they slowed and settled at the edge of a huge, well lit concrete gymnasium.
Lucy drew in a breath as the doors opened.
"Ladies first," said Caspian.