Author's Note

I do not own the Hunger Games.


They took supper with their mentors that night and returned to the training hall after most of the other tributes had left. Only the boy from Twelve, who was working at the traps stations, and the girl from Four, who was swordfighting with a trainer, remained. Luciente spared the boy a glance and hissed softly through her teeth as he tugged as his snare trap and it shot upwards with a whoosh.

Hyperion moved to take to the spear station. They were one of the easier weapons to use.

Stick them with the pointy end, Hyperion had said, stony faced, earlier in the day.

Luciente, however, stopped to watch the girl from Four as the trainer fought her into submission again, pressing his sword to her chest. She stumbled to the sidelines, panting, to grab a bottle of water. Pissed.

She jumped as she noticed her there, scowling. "What do you want?"

There was wildness in her. Not the same way it was in them, but it was there all the same, anger and spite and rage.

Luciente took one of the long, light swords from the rack. "Teach me how to do that."

"And why would I do that?"

"It wouldn't be a very Career-like thing to do, would it?"

The girl gave her a long look before screwing the cap back onto her bottle and slamming it down onto the table so she could step back onto the mat.

Luciente smiled.

She couldn't learn to swordfight in an hour, but that wasn't the point.

The point was right in front of her, all fire and anger.

"Luciente," she said, once they were finished and gulping down water on the sidelines.

The girl from Four looked her over as though considering it, and then shrugged. "Ilenia."


Once she left, she rejoined Hyperion. The boy from Twelve had long since gone, so they were free to spend an hour and a half practising with the slingshots. Some of those here were designed to take sharpened projectiles or even shoot arrows.

A step up from their handmade tools back home.

She wasn't so good with the arrows, but she soon got the hang of driving the sharpened projectiles into the target with dull thunks. It wouldn't be one fired to take the life of the boy she glimpsed behind her eyes though.

"Do you want her?" Hyperion asked, sliding one of the large, heavy arrows into his slingshot.

"Who?"

"The girl from Four."

"Ilenia," she replied, rolling the 'I' sound off her tongue.

Hyperion grunted.

"She's got a wildness in her."

Not like them; never like them, but all the same.

"She could be free."

Hyperion set the slingshot down, took her hands. "We're tributes for the Hunger Games Luciente. This isn't freedom."

She squeezed his fingers tight. "You used to have more trust in me."

He leant forwards, knocked his forehead against hers. "I do trust in you. But I wish you'd tell me what this freedom was."

Her gaze flickered up to the top of the station, where a shiny black camera was watching, and then to the trainer on the sidelines. He sighed. "Point taken. Just leave the girl from Four. She's a Career."

Luciente laughed softly. "She's not."


They climbed up to the roof again that night, though it had long since gone dark, and curled up in the tamed plants and prickly thickets. The girl from Twelve was up there, though she ran off when she saw them. It was a shame Hyperion disliked her so; she was wild too, but bitter and angry and upset. Luciente sunk her fingers into the soil and gazed out at the dazzling lights of the Capitol. For a moment they seemed to ripple and shimmer, and she saw a city half dark, the streets illuminated by flashing blue and red, and then the world rippled again and the dancing colours and spotlights were back.

Hyperion shuddered.

She squeezed his fingers. "Things that will be, could be, might be."

Nothing was ever certain. These things could be changed, if you made different choices, but sometimes the choices you made were the best at the time.

"You can only corrupt the natural way so far before it starts fighting back."

"And what happens then?"

It was a question he didn't really need to ask, because he'd already worked out the answer, long ago, years ago. He'd had years to think, years locked up, hacking up meat and chopping firewood, jogging endless circles. There were some things they had never and would never be able to put into words, things they had no need to put into words, things that were best left unspoken, like Ariel's big pale eyes and the way he had only needed one good look at Nathaniel in person to know why Luciente wanted him.

What happens when too far is far enough?

Luciente slid to her feet, padded over to the edge of the roof. She had felt it last night, but this night the moon was high and bright and full, and she felt it more, the soft breeze and the ache deep inside her.

"A storm builds."