Author's Note

I do not own the Hunger Games.


Another squirrel had come scurrying by, and Luciente killed that too. She felt its little life flutter and extinguish. They cooked both over a small fire and divided the meat, little as there was, into three portions to be eaten with the few berries and roots Bunny and Nathaniel had managed to scavenge. It was a small meal, simple, but it gave them food in their bellies.

"We need to keep moving," Luciente said, kicking dirt over the remains of the fire.

"It'll be dark soon," Bunny replied. "Maybe we should stay here for tonight and keep going in the morning."

Luciente growled softly, thinking of the black anger on the beach and the dark evil lurking out there somewhere in the woods. She shook her head. "We can't stay so close to the beach."

Nathaniel shuddered. "Because of..?"

Bunny huffed slightly, but she didn't argue.


The anthem played, and Azrayk's face appeared in the sky. Nathaniel gripped her hand tight, squeezed her fingers. "How'd you know?"

"I always know."


They kept moving for as long as they could in the dark, pushing their way through the trees. Bethany and Heaven flickered in and out of the trees, occasionally appearing in front of them with a raised arm as though to point the way.

"What do you think they are?" Nathaniel whispered, peering anxiously at Bethany through the trees. She was watching them with her dead eyes and that echo of a smile, one arm raised to point towards the forcefield. Luciente had never known ghosts that could roam like this. Back in Ten they had kept to the same areas: the little girl from the farm stayed at the farm; the drowned boy stayed at the stream; the crooked neck man stayed in the courtyard; Mrs Pink Dress stayed in her window and the flayed man stayed in the horsefield. They had moved a little, but never left their area.

Bethany and Heaven though, they were staying with them, staying close, and had some level of intelligence beyond anything Luciente had ever known. Could it be the stone, she wondered, giving them strength? Could they be drawing from it, even when the most of it was deep, deep underwater?

"The dead can't hurt us," she said, which had always been true and now wasn't.

"But why are they here? What do they want?"

"The dead don't want Nathaniel," Bunny said with a roll of her eyes.

"Then why are they here?"

Luciente smiled as Bethany faded away and she caught a flash of yellow somewhere distant in the dark trees.

"Why does anyone do anything?"


At last they could go no further. They were tired, so tired, and worn from the trek. It was dark, darker than dark, and they could barely see their own hands, let alone each other. They could trip over another tribute in this darkness and never know.

They sunk to the ground in the darkness and Bunny took first watch while Luciente watched, her fingers wrapped tight around her warm stone. The arena sang around her, life, animals and plants, the forcefield in the distance, the anger and determination on the beach, Hyperion, who was following their footsteps, and the lurking, creeping blackness that stayed not so far from him.

'Hyperion,' she wanted to cry, 'Hyperion, Hyperion, come to me, find me, run with me, don't look back, don't touch the darkness.'

But he was so far, and even when she nudged him like she nudged the forcefield he was deaf to it.

Find me, find me brother, find me before it's all too late.


Dawn broke through the trees, blazing and golden. They felt even closer than before, pressing in on them. Luciente had never felt imprisoned in woodland, but now it was a cage and the bars were closing in around them.

"We'll make the forcefield today," she said, and that was that.

In places they had to scramble between the tree trunks on hands and knees, climbing under and over and around branches, twigs catching at their hair and scratching their faces. Bunny dragged a hand across her eyes. "I must be filthy."

Nathaniel laughed. "My mom would be so mad."

They shared a smile, a bit of a laugh at that. Would her mum be angry, Luciente wondered, or would she even care? She had left them for her new horde; what did that say about her care for them?


They scavenged as they went, digging up roots and ripping berries from bushes. They were sweet in her mouth.

They had a new follower too, Luciente noticed.

The boy from Four.

He had first appeared soon after dawn, lingering somewhere behind Heaven in the trees but glowing such a vibrant blue it was no hiding spot. His one remaining eye glared balefully, and yet soon enough he appeared to help point their path, his arm raised and finger pointing.

What of the girl from Two on the beach then? Had she left her spot too, or was she still there, dark and angry? When she felt for her all she could feel was that darkness, so black it was evil, so cold it froze her to the core. She shuddered, clutching her stone ever tighter as though it might bring her some warmth.

It did not.

But still, the boy from Four stayed.


"Luciente," Nathaniel whispered as they scrambled under a low branch.

She grunted.

"I can… I mean, when I hold the stone… I can… I mean, there's a blackness. Like the girl from the beach, but colder."

She grunted again.

"Is that the evil you felt? I mean, before?"

She gave him a sharp half nod. "It'll come for us."

"But it can't really be the boy from Twelve can it? He's dead; we saw his face in the sky."

Luciente looked over at Heaven through the trees. She was pointing one way and looking another, back towards the evil across the arena.

"Good point. What do we do?"

Luciente opened her mouth, closed it again.

What do we do?

She could play with the fae, take messages from the ghosts, but what did she do with a dark, evil shadow rolling across the arena behind her brother? She had never felt such darkness or evil before, and it pained her that Hyperion was currently so close. What if it touched him; what if it harmed him?

"Luciente?"

What do they do?

About the darkness.

About the forcefield.

About the Hunger Games.

What do they do?

"Luciente, you're doing it again."

Nathaniel reached for her shoulder. luciente frowned and erked away. "I'm fine. Be fine."

"You don't look fine."

What do they do?

"Just thinking."

"About the shadow?"

What do we do?"

She grunted.

What do we do?

She could kill a man, a woman, a child, but this evil was no person and it was coming regardless of anything in its path.