Author's Note

I do not own The Hunger Games.


Wrong.

Wrong.

Wrong.

It was wrong.

It was all wrong.

The darkness was closer, close – too close too close too close – and as the rocks crashed down she and Ilenia were being forced towards it.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong it's all wrong it's all wrong it's all wrongwrongwrong.

Luciente eyed the treeline. The trees were so close they might have been a wall, the trunks packed together.

She tensed, ducked down, and sprinted for them, leaping for a low lying branch. Her fingers wrapped around it and she pulled herself up, scrabbling higher up the trunk.

"Coulda told me the plan witch girl!" Ilenia shouted, hurrying to join her. She wasn't built for climbing, and Luciente had to reach down and grab her wrist, pulling her up. Beneath them, the mud flowed through the trees, staining the bases brown. She turned to look at the trees to their left, and reached out to test the nearest branch. It held.

Just like when she was little then, just like when she was growing, learning, getting strong enough to snarl at the bars.


The four of them eyed each other. Arielle had a weapon now, he noted, a long, sleek silver sword that she held a little clumsily. Bunny frowned. "If we killed her, maybe one of us would have a chance at winning."

Luciente.

If they killed Six, maybe they could change fate.

If they killed Six, maybe Luciente could survive.

If they let her live…

When had he ever known her to be wrong?

And yet…

When had he ever known her to be wrong?

Arielle turned and bolted for the trees. Bunny rushed at her, waving her knife, but fell well short of her target. Arielle managed to scramble through a gap in the tree trunks as Bunny reached the edge of the trees.


The two of them scrambled between the branches. This was second nature to her, her hands and feet finding the way, but Ilenia was struggling, lagging behind, hesitating at every change and testing every branch.

"You need to have more trust!"

"I don't want to fall to my death witch girl!"

"Then you will belong to the darkness."

"What?"

Ilenia glanced over her shoulder. Perhaps fifty feet away and closing, the figure of Cairn Aphelion was rapidly gaining ground. He was wreathed in the dark, cold evil like a second skin, the feeling wrapped tight around him. Luciente wasn't sure how he was still breathing, one with evil like that. He smiled up at them, cold, malicious, predatory. "You can't run. You can't hide."

Up close, she could feel the flickers beyond the cold and the dark. It was like all the worst parts of a person, greed for food and wealth; envy of their alliance; cruel overconfidence in their abilities; a desire for them to hurt, hurt like nothing had ever hurt before; and lust, for blood, for pleasure, for pain, for death.

This was what you would get if you tore a person apart and took out all the good pieces.

Ilenia stared at him. Her mouth opened and closed. She shook, shuddered, made a strange, shrill noise at the back of her throat. "How- how- how-"

"Surprised Four?" growled Cairne in a voice that didn't sound like the one he had during the interviews.

"But you can't be!"

"But I am."

Luciente reached for Ilenia's arm, dragging her to the next tree. "The dead can't hurt us."

Except when they could.


Luciente was in trouble.

He didn't know how he knew, or why, but somehow he did, and that was all that mattered.

Bunny was still trying to squeeze between the trees, shrieking and swearing at Arielle, but they didn't have time for this.

He needed to get to Luciente.

Hyperion held his spear tight and turned back towards the mass of rocks and mud now pouring down from above behind them.

"Luciente's in trouble," Nathaniel said in a voice so like hers that it made him shudder. "Bunny!"

Bunny paused her attack to look back at him.

"We need to get to Luciente! The darkness is there!"

Bunny looked at the rock and mud slide. "Then I guess we get moving."