The next two days flew by in a blur. Lucy tried everything she could possibly get her hands on, visiting each station at least once and focusing especially hard on wilderness survival and archery, with a dash of throwing knives tossed in, though she found them a great deal more difficult than wielding a bow.

Occasionally she and Caspian ended up at the same station, or she found herself sitting somewhere with Eustace and Jill, the latter of which kept to herself if she joined them at all, but proved to be nearly as clever as Eustace with mechanical things.

They made for decent time-passing conversation, never touching any really important topics, only whatever they were learning at the moment, or the other tributes.

In fact, this was how she found herself on the morning of the third and final day of training, perched atop an artificial log flipping through a book on fire-starting while Eustace lay flat on his stomach rubbing one stick into another, trying to get a spark, and Jill sat cross legged across from him, watching but not participating except to throw out the occasional critique or comment.

"Alright, alright," said Eustace, "Stop nagging, will you?"

"I'm just saying, you should move your hands down while you spin it. I'm the one who already did it correctly, remember?"

"How can I forget when you haven't stopped gloating?"

"She's right," said Lucy, butting in without looking up from her book, "It says here you're supposed to move your hands down."

She'd grown accustomed to their constant bickering, and knew Eustace's bark didn't have much of a bite behind it.

He squinted up at her. "Are you here to help or model?"

She scoffed and shifted in her silky off-shoulder blouse, a strip of pale midriff showing between the ribbons that bound her soft pink skirt and flowing white top. "I can do what I like with my final days, thank you very much."

The delicate material lent a confidence to her figure, one that said quite the opposite of final days, though she'd fallen slowly and steadily into Eustace's morbid sensibilities, if only to throw them back at him.

Polly had beamed yesterday morning when she first emerged in real Capitol getup, quite the shift from baggy shirts and slacks.

"Yes, you're a very pretty corpse," he drawled.

"Thanks."

Eustace huffed and kept trying with his sticks, this time moving his hands down.

Lucy closed the book and glanced around the gym, busier now than it had yet seemed in three days as tributes squeezed in their last minute training for individual assessments, when they would each receive a public score based on their performance. Lucy already knew she would save the obstacle course for her assessment, so instead she packed as much time into other areas as she could before the opportunity disappeared.

Across the gym, Caspian hunched over a table at the edible plants station as if cramming for an exam.

By now she'd memorized most of the tributes' names: twelve year old Gael from Nine, chubby-cheeked with berries at the edible plants station; the career girls Edith and Ivy, twirling spears like batons; and of course the loud and self-confident Rabadash, who'd apparently taken the invitation that Caspian turned down, and spent most of his time showing off in front of Susan.

A few other small groups stuck together, but Eustace guessed they were mostly truces as opposed to real alliances, bound to dissolve as soon as the Games actually started. Still Lucy couldn't help watching them, especially the golden-haired Lilliandil and her district partner, a handsome (or really, Lucy might even have called him pretty) redhead named Peridan.

At this moment their voices drifted over from the throwing-knife station, too faint for Lucy to make out the words, but clear enough to read the levity in their tone; her musical laugh at something he'd said, the lilt of his playful question.

Had they known each other back in Seven? Or were they strangers, familiar only in contrast to this alien world?

Alliances don't last forever, you know, came Caspian's voice in her head. But sometimes she forgot, under the bright lights, that it was only a matter of time before they all crashed and burned.

"What was that?"

Lucy snapped out of her reverie to find Eustace and Jill both sitting at attention, heads turning this way and that, sharp eyes scanning the room.

"What—"

A shout cut her off and all three turned to spot some kind of commotion a few stations away.

"Are the careers having another row?" asked Jill, shrinking in on herself. She'd spent the majority of training avoiding the bigger tributes at all costs.

"No, it looks like District Six," said Eustace, and pointed.

Lucy stood to get a better look, leaving the fire-making book propped open on her log as she rounded a plastic tree to find Aravis squared between Edmund and a cowering Lasaraleen, eyes blazing, the delicate girl's wrist gripped protectively behind her.

"Who gave you the right?" she snapped, venom ricocheting off the concrete, thick, frizzy hair bouncing with her sharp motions, "Terrorizing everyone smaller than you, you're just as bad as those Capitol lapdogs!"

"Yeah?" Edmund crossed his arms, tilting his pale, angular jaw. "And why do you care?"

"Because I hate you," spat Aravis, "You and everyone like you, spoiled brats, you think you can do whatever you want!"

"You're calling me spoiled? That's rich coming from you, isn't it? Mayor's Daughter?"

"How do you know that?"

"Unlike some people, I actually take this competition seriously. And last time I checked, the Hunger Games didn't have any rules."

"You need rules to tell you what to do?"

Tributes from every nearby station poked their heads out, murmurs sweeping up and down the gym.

"You don't know anything about me!"

"I know you're an arrogant, entitled little beast."

Edmund's dark eyes flashed, and if he'd had a knife in his hand at that moment he might have stabbed her. "Just because I've got a proper mentor—"

"Oh yeah, because everything comes back to the blasted mentor. She's just as much of a bully as you are!"

"She's a Victor," spat Edmund, moving in on Aravis. "Not like your sad excuses for mentors, you people just hide until everyone else is dead, Jadis earned it. She could destroy Eleven's Victors if she wanted to!"

"Hey!" boomed a new voice, and before Lucy could even spot where it came from, another tribute stormed up and shoved Edmund into a rack of bows and quivers.

Lucy gasped.

Aravis stepped back.

The tribute towered over him, chest heaving, and Lucy realized with a shock of clarity that it was Caspian, eyes flashing with a kind of danger she'd never seen before.

Edmund scrambled to right himself, puffing out his chest, glaring mutinously up at the much taller boy. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"You think your mentor is so great?" snarled Caspian. "You think she actually CARES about you?"

"Who do you—"

"She doesn't give a damn whether you live or die! She only cares about how many you can kill for her. She really got her special project this year, huh?"

Edmund threw his full weight into Caspian's chest, but he hardly budged.

Capitol guards rushed in on the edges of Lucy's vision, but Caspian ignored them.

"Do you even know a THING about your PRECIOUS mentor? How she got to BE a mentor?"

"The same way anyone does," spat Edmund, "She WON. And how has this got ANYTHING to do with you?"

White-armored guards yanked the boys apart, two grabbing Caspian by the arms.

"The Two Hundred and Seventh," he spat, breathing hard and glaring as they pulled him away. "You might find it interesting." And then he shook the hands off and spun when they tried to grab him again. "Alright," he growled, "I'm going," and stormed off across the room without so much as a glance at Lucy.

She watched, stunned, almost unable to process the thunder echoing in her head, the power in his gait as he brushed his hair back and ignored the eyes of the entire room on him, this new creature utterly divorced from the Caspian she'd met on the balcony, the Caspian who insisted his rope-knots were clearly better than hers even as his clumsy fingers fumbled with the new skill, the Caspian who grinned across the room every time she said something mildly scathing about the careers.

Danger flooded back into her skin that she hadn't felt since the train, pricking in her chest, an uncomfortable reminder that she knew absolutely nothing about him.

Edmund kicked the weapons rack and sent a stack of bows scattering across the floor, face flushed. If the guards hadn't been right there he might have run after Caspian, but instead simply shot a withering glare after him and stormed off in the other direction.

Aravis patted a whimpering Lasaraleen.

By this point, Lucy had almost forgotten about them.

"You'd better get your face under control if you want to be any good in front of the Gamemakers," said Aravis, the words a great deal harsher than the tone she spoke them in.

Lasaraleen dabbed at her eyes with the backs of her hands, clutching what looked to be some kind of stuffed animal, white stuffing spilling out from a ripped seam down its middle, and Lucy finally turned away.

"What was that about?" asked Eustace a few paces behind her.

Lucy hurriedly wiped the shock from her face. "I… don't know."

Eustace glanced after Caspian, raised an eyebrow and shook his head, but didn't press it as they returned to their station.

Her eyes moved unseeing over the words in the fire-starting book.

She'd read the same paragraph five times before she gave up and joined Eustace on the ground with his sticks, but even with rough bark spinning between her palms and the Three pair's bickering in her ears, she couldn't keep her mind from wandering.

She hadn't forgotten about Jadis, Caspian's reaction to her in the stable, the not-quite-fear in his eyes. This wasn't just about Edmund, no matter how badly she would have liked to toss him into a wall herself on occasion. But what connection could Caspian possibly have to the District Six mentor?

Anyone who followed the Games would know the mentors, but Jadis must be nearly forty, not recent enough for Caspian to have seen her Games, and he didn't seem like the type to go digging up reruns for fun.

She rubbed her eyes against the glare stuck in her head, pure hatred roiling in black eyes and dripping from that thick voice. But it refused to leave, even when they joined the rest of the tributes in the cafeteria and the doors closed behind them, staff scurrying to prepare for the individual assessments.

So much for her last precious hour of training.

She took her usual spot next to Eustace and Jill, and picked at her food while they spoke in hushed tones a little apart from her. Absently she wondered if they knew what they would show the gamemakers, but it didn't seem right to ask.

Only one space at their usual table remained empty.

On the opposite side of the room, Caspian leaned against the wall in the back corner, arms crossed, boring holes into the concrete floor. She averted her eyes before he caught them, as if something terrible might happen if he did.

Then she breathed a low sigh.

What gave him the right to invade her head? To distract her now? As if their lives didn't hang in the balance? As if every single second of training didn't mean the difference between failure and survival?

If she went cold and hungry in the arena, it was his fault.

Not that he needed to worry about that kind of thing.

He planned to show off his swordsmanship, just like they'd discussed with their mentors, and would undoubtedly score high with the Gamemakers if he proved anywhere near as good with a blade as he was with everything else. Well, everything except for knot-tying, but the smirk that flickered across her face died as quickly as it came.

Finally, the sound system clicked.

"Individual Assessments will now begin. Please enter when your name is called, and demonstrate your chosen skill."

A long pause.

"Susan Bonner."

Susan stood leisurely and walked to the door with a glance and a wink at Peter, dark hair gathered into a loose ponytail and draped over one shoulder.

"Three guesses what she'll demonstrate," muttered Corin as she disappeared, and earned a few quiet laughs from the others.

Next went the District One boy, whose name she had learned was Glozelle. Then Edith, then Peter.

And then Jill.

Eustace's knee bounced restlessly for the next ten minutes, vibrating the bench so that Lucy almost stood in frustration, fiddling with the hem of his shirt and pulling out tiny threads until his own name toned over the speakers and he stood too quickly and hurried out the door.

Time slowed to a crawl, every passing minute dragging on longer than the last as she picked lazily at a platter of eggs and bacon, sneaking glances at Caspian or watching the seconds tick by on the big digital clock across the room.

Only Aravis and Lasaraleen murmured to each other. Most tributes weren't even eating. Corin lay across a tabletop throwing grapes into the air, presumably in an attempt to catch them in his mouth, but most bounced off and escaped somewhere else in the room.

Two full hours passed before they called Edmund's name and the atmosphere among the rest eased considerably, though Caspian never moved from his spot.

Half an hour later, "Lucy Pevensie" finally toned over the sound system and she pulled herself to her feet, resisting the urge to stretch her sore back as she crossed to the door and stepped out into the gymnasium.

The massive concrete room hung still and silent as a brilliantly lit cavern, empty now of all life save for herself and the Gamemakers lounging in the balcony, peering down at her as if at a fish through glass.

She gave a small bow, but they only seemed half interested in her, caught up in conversation or filling their plates from a vast spread. She wasn't even a particularly interesting fish, apparently. The showboats had already put on their performances.

For a second she wanted to stamp her foot and demand proper attention, but that probably wouldn't endear her to them either, so she straightened up and squared her shoulders, and walked purposefully to the obstacle course, spanning the length of the room along one wall.

Soft foam mats ran beneath a jungle of ropes and platforms, the slap of bodies crashing down into them still fresh after days of watching tributes struggle to make it past even the halfway mark.

She'd been itching to take a practice run, to leap over beams like rafters and scale crooked wooden slats like weatherworn siding, but Polly's warning remained firm. Save some surprises for the real Games.

Now she had no time to practice.

She took a deep breath and bounced on the balls of her feet, centered herself on the starting point, and leapt in.

Her feet barely touched the path of stepping blocks, flying straight to the monkey bars and launching up to grasp cold steel.

Years worth of hanging from the rusty schoolyard jungle gym rushed back into her arms as she swung from rung to rung, ignoring the slight twinge in her chest that told her warming up might have been a good idea. She had no time for that either.

Her feet hit the mats again and she ducked under a row of padded beams, never slowing, not even as a row of hurdles rushed up ahead.

The boys had all tried jumping, some girls tried crawling, but Lucy planted her hands firmly on the first hurdle and launched herself over the top as if scaling a fence, playing leapfrog with tall blocks until she cleared the last one and dove straight down onto her elbows and knees to crawl through a hanging tunnel.

Jill's whimpers came faintly back to her as she crawled, refusing to follow Eustace an inch further into the claustrophobic space just this morning, but Lucy pressed feverishly into the darkness and emerged out the other side with friction-burned arms and a fresh burst of energy for the slatted wall.

She threw herself into it, boots skidding against uneven beams and shoving off against the first solid foothold she hit, fingers grasping the top ridge and hauling herself up, staggering to her feet.

The floor dropped off suddenly ahead and picked up several yards away, the gap spanned by a rough, log-like beam stretching across at a slightly upward angle.

Most tributes crawled, but Lucy knew her balance. She pulled her boots off and tossed them to the ground below, gratified to spot some of the Gamemakers turning to watch out of the corner of her eye.

She gripped the rounded surface with her toes, walking briskly enough that her momentum kept her upright.

She'd almost crossed the middle when the beam sagged and her right foot slipped, and she compensated quickly on reflex, pitching forward.

Panic stuttered in her chest and she lunged the rest of the way, covering the distance in three steps before buckling to the mat.

Stupid. That should have been her moment! How could she make the same mistake everyone else did?

Against her own better judgement she glanced up at the Gamemakers' booth, just as several turned away dismissively and one coughed to cover their laughter.

Anger and embarrassment flooded her chest.

She scrambled back up to her feet and surged on to the last obstacle, leaping up to the platform suspended from the wall and launching herself at the rope at the end. But her ankle turned with the haphazard jump and the rope tore at her palms as she slid several feet before clenching tight enough to stop, hanging dead weight as the pulley system lowered her slowly to the ground.

No, that wasn't right!

Her feet hit the ground and she exploded in frustration.

She could do it, she knew she could do it, she'd almost done it just now! If she could just try again— But none of the Gamemakers would watch a second time.

She cast a glance around the room and her eyes landed on the massive cargo net, strung up to the ceiling just behind the archery lanes, knots of criss-crossing yellow rope hanging idle with none of the usual climbing instructors to attend it now.

And before a plan could even form in her mind she set off, steps quickening, racing against time.

Halfway there she pivoted to a rack of gleaming knives, fingers closing around the cool hilt of a slim dagger—the same kind she'd practiced with—before spinning back to the cargo net.

The Gamemakers couldn't possibly give her a low score if she pulled this off.

Hand over foot she climbed, dagger gripped tight in one hand while the other launched up to grasp the next rung. The net stretched two stories into the air, but she only needed half of that to be level with the highest targets.

By the time she neared the center of the net her arm was burning, shoulder on fire, climbing two rungs at a time without a single rest, and then her foot slipped and she swung up with her dagger hand in a desperate attempt to steady herself, narrowly missing her own face with the blade.

In a split second of panic she nearly dropped the dagger, weight-bearing shoulder almost giving out before her feet finally found their places again and took the strain off.

She hung in place for a moment, trembling, hoping against hope that the Gamemakers hadn't seen how close she came to killing herself before the Games even started.

But of course they had.

She cursed under her breath, hauling herself up the last few feet.

She looped her left arm through the net and switched the dagger to her throwing hand, sizing up the nearest target, about ten yards away to the right.

The clock on the opposite wall displayed her countdown: thirty seconds to go. No time to pause or cool down, no time to wait until her arm stopped throbbing.

She held the steel blade like a dart, curling her fingers like she'd learned in training, wound back, and threw.

For a moment her heart stopped, and then the blade landed with a heavy thunk in the bottom edge of the target.

It struck!

She sagged with relief, but even as she did so, she realized her mistake.

The dagger drooped, gravity dragging it down. If that had been a real enemy in the arena she would barely have grazed them.

How did she think she would get a solid stick with that arm?

The blade clattered to the concrete floor like a death knell.

This time a chuckle came from the balcony, echoing hollow in the empty room.

She didn't look.

A high pitched ding echoed off the walls, signaling her time, and she climbed down, twice as heavy as before even with the use of both arms, cheeks stinging.

Her boots still lay beneath the obstacle course and she almost left without them, but thought at the last moment how Zardeenah would scold her, and took the long and humiliating walk back across the room to pick them up before heading for the elevator.

She nearly collapsed when the doors closed and she shot up out of sight of the gamemakers, rushing up through the underground floors of the Training Center.

And then the full weight of reality crashed over her.

She had failed.

Everything she'd worked for, days of training, all that careful preparation, her mentors' advice, it had all been for nothing.

They wouldn't give her a good score now. They couldn't.

The doors opened to her floor, bare feet tracking grey gymnasium into the creamy white carpet, and Digory and Polly looked up from the dining table, teacups steaming as Polly's pencil paused over the notebook she'd been keeping for their strategies.

Digory opened his mouth to greet her, but Lucy couldn't bear to see their smiling faces now. She walked straight past before they had a chance to stop her, taking the shallow steps down into the sitting room and across to the skyline windows.

She didn't even know where she was going until she'd slammed the glass door to the balcony and the afternoon sunlight hit her face.

And she burst into tears.