Author's Note

I do not own the Hunger Games.

While this is a short chapter, I feel that because of the events that transpire in it and the next mean that they're better separated.


Arielle had cried for most of the previous day and into the night, when she had finally fallen asleep. Put money on that one, Luciente had said, and Hyperion wanted to scoff, except—

Hadn't she been right last year?

And the year before.

And the year before that.

And when they young, too young, to fully understood what was going on, what these Games were, what they meant.

They're going to die, she said, and they always did.

Put money on that one, she said, and if they had enough saved they always did.

And she was always right.

We're going to be free, she said, and not for the first time he wondered what she truly meant.


They ate the last of the eel as a makeshift breakfast as the sun rose and continued to follow the stream down. Perhaps he was finally feeling one of the things he was supposed to, because the woods seemed darker today, deeper, the trees closer together.

Hyperion held his spear a little tighter.

This was an unnatural place, and he didn't like it.

He'd heard nothing of Luciente last night either, as long and hard as he'd listened. She remained silent.

But she was alive.

Hyperion half wondered if the entire arena would feel it when she died.

And that was when a figure came tumbling from the trees towards them.

Chaos broke out.

Azrayk swung round with his makeshift spear, Hyperion hefted his real one, Shelley picked up a rock, and Arielle—

Well, he wasn't quite sure where she'd gone. Not far; he could hear her screams still.

The newcomer screamed and lunged at him, grabbing for his spear.

It took him a moment to even recognise them, they were so coated in blood and mud and suspicious white stains, their arena clothes barely remaining in scraps.

The girl from Four.

The one Luciente had called pretty during the reaping and been so obsessed with in training.

Fuck, what could have possibly happened in only two days to leave her in a state like this?

She was almost unrecognisable from the grey scaled creature from the chariot rides, the snappish, fiery Career from training, the hot-head in black from the interviews.

He slammed the length of the spear into her forehead, knocking her aside. She screamed again, scrabbling to get a grip on it, shrieking something, turning it into some bizarre game of tug-of-war where she wrenched it towards her and he pulled it back, all the while getting closer and closer to the stream. He needed to get her into the water, hold her under—

"Give it to me!" she screamed, yanking on the spear.

"Back off Four!" yelled Azrayk, charging her with his own makeshift weapon and driving it into her chest. Fortunately, that drove her away from him; unfortunately Azrayk's weapon wasn't sharp enough to even break the girl's skin and the blow only knocked her onto all fours. She wasted no time in tackling Azrayk around the knees, knocking him to the ground. The two of them wrestled in the dirt, shrieking and clawing and biting, until finally he had the good sense to grab the girl from Four around the neck and slam her head into a tree.

She wailed, bringing her hands up to clutch at her most likely broken nose, and slithered to the ground in a sobbing, slobbering heap.

Azrayk aimed his too blunt weapon at her, while Hyperion directed his too sharp one towards her head.

"What you waiting for wolf-boy?"

He had killed before, twice, three times now.

It would be easy.

He remembered that feeling of unease from what felt like so long ago now, the sense that someone was in trouble.

Had that someone been the Careers, he wondered now, or, at least, some of them?

She had a noose of rope around her neck, he noticed now, fastened tight, and remaining scraps still around her wrists.

He hesitated.

"Hyperion!"

The girl from Four continued to wail, covered in blood – most likely her own – mud – most likely not – and something white he had really been hoping he was wrong about but was now suspecting he was not.

"Didn't you kill your own father?"

"He deserved it," he replied, and lowered the spear.

The girl from Four stared up at him in surprise, her mouth forming an 'o' shape of surprise.

"What the fuck happened Four?"