Peter stumbled, Lucy's dagger trembling outstretched in bony fingers as his longsword flashed into the air.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

But the blow never came.

She blinked, a pair of black boots flickering in the fire's glow mere strides away, unmoving, and she followed them slowly up the rest of the boy's figure, every inch of his body braced for attack but frozen, chest heaving.

And falteringly, almost as if caught in a trance, he lowered his sword.

She stared wide-eyed.

From the other side of the fire, a girl shouted "Peter!"

He didn't move.

His eyes flicked over Lucy, then into the darkness behind her.

Aravis' desperate gurgling breaths rasped through the air and through Lucy's blood as Edmund murmured something she couldn't quite hear.

She didn't dare look back.

The violent orange glow of the fire edged Peter's disheveled golden hair like a halo, sweat dripping down his throat as he stared at her, blue eyes glinting yellow. And then he shook his head distantly and slumped with a heavy sigh, as if giving in under some great weight.

At last, he breathed "Get out of here."

Lucy's brain stuttered. "What?"

He opened his mouth and shut it again as if chiding himself, brows twitching against some invisible force, that handsome face that had gloried in the Capitol's adoration now plagued with a fierce and harrowing conflict.

"It's okay," breathed Edmund from the shadows as another sickening breath rasped in answer, his rushed and desperate tone almost unrecognizable from the boy she knew as Edmund Alexander Warren. "It's okay."

Lucy's stomach flipped, reality spinning, tilting off-kilter.

Peter shook his head again as if to clear it. "I'm not going to fight you."

A cannon boomed and Lucy jumped.

The ragged night went silent.

"Hey!" snapped another voice beyond the fire. "Whose side are you on?"

Lucy glanced past Peter to Rhince storming out from the archway, shoulder bloody and bound in tight, crimson rags, but his sword flashed in both hands, gleaming white hot against the blaze.

And still, Peter stood firm, unmoving.

"Go," he said, urgency strengthening his command, "I can't give you all the time in the world."

Lucy swallowed, uncomprehending, and then a set of strong arms gripped her from behind and hauled her up by the waist, pulling her back into the shadows.

"Go, run!" shouted Edmund in her ear as he shoved her down the corridor she'd first taken to escape the careers with Aravis, her own feet stumbling beneath her as she threw herself into the echoing darkness in spite of fresh pain stabbing up from her calf into her thigh.

She glanced back only once, back into the fire as Rhince brought his sword crashing down into Peter's defense, and a crumpled figure flickered amidst a spreading dark pool just on the other side of the pillar, Aravis' frizzy hair catching the light as Lucy tore her gaze away and bolted into the night.

Footsteps clapped to her left, and then she veered to the right and every other noise grew distant, head spinning, muffled shouts breaking through the haze with another clash, running only for fear of pitching over onto her knees.

She glanced back and saw no one behind her. No Edmund. No Caspian.

Another cannon boomed, and every possibility leapt into her mind at once, terror flooding her veins, the thunder of her own footsteps echoing back to her down the ghostly moonlit ruin for what felt like an eternity, lost in a blur of panic until the adrenaline ebbed away.

She'd lost her sense of direction by the time she stumbled, ducked around a corner and threw herself against the wall, sliding to the ground, shaking, gasping.

Her heartbeat hammered in her ears, every limb buzzing, the world spinning beneath her as she clutched the stone and curled in on herself, burying her face into her knees, digging her fingers through her hair and tugging so tight her scalp burned, forehead pressed hard into the earth and leaching its midnight chill.

The cold crept in and turned her to stone, minutes turning to hours as she lost all concept of time, fingers numb, the bones in her feet turning to icicles ready to snap.

But she never drifted fully out of consciousness, no matter how desperately she wished to plunge beneath the welcoming black waves of sleep. She wandered lost in the empty twilight haunting her frozen veins for so long that she barely noticed when grey dawn crept at last over the horizon, drowning in fire-brand halos and coiling white dragonflesh; shivering, stiff and aching.

She barely heard the footsteps or the hushed voices, barely recognized her own name breathed on the wind, as if listening in on a conversation about someone she'd never heard of.

"Lucy? Lucy, are you there?"

"She's not dead, there hasn't been a cannon since Peter."

"I know she's not dead, but she's hurt, and I don't know—"

The footsteps came suddenly clear as they passed her corner, and a sharp scuff and skitter of stones heralded the shadow that fell hurriedly over her huddled form.

"Lucy," breathed Caspian, and she blinked, pale paving stones wavering slowly into focus, streaked dark with rivulets of dried blood.

Warm hands closed around her frigid fingers, tingling with a painful thaw as her grip loosened and Caspian pulled her arms gently free of her face, twisting the dagger out of her vice-like grip, broad shoulders silhouetted against the sky.

"Is that all her blood?" murmured Edmund from behind him, and Caspian only took a shaky breath.

Lucy gazed up through tangles of her own hair, fingers trembling in his grasp, and his dark eyes filled with such a genuine concern that even through a haze of unrecognition she almost wanted to cry.

"Hey," he breathed, "you okay?"

She wanted to nod, she wanted to speak, but she couldn't move, every inch of her spine frozen to the base of the wall as if fused there by a heavy, dark magic, and with one sweeping glance over her body, Caspian didn't wait for an answer.

He tucked her dagger into his own belt and slipped one arm under her shoulders, propping her head up in spite of a tiny moan at the motion after so many hours of rigid, frozen muscles, legs aching as he looped his other arm under her thighs and heaved her into his arms

"Shh, I've got you," he breathed when another tiny noise escaped her throat, and any half-hearted attempt at protest died on her lips as his warmth enveloped her, her temple resting against his collarbone, eyes fluttering closed against the bite of the pale morning sun.

Edmund's voice murmured something and Caspian answered, but Lucy heard no words, only the rumble under her ear, and she nearly drifted off against him as they moved, lulling her to the edge of unconsciousness until the air warmed and he set her back down, jostling her into a white courtyard beside a glittering pool.

She blinked, this time waking blearily into her right mind as Edmund said something else and ducked out through the gate.

Caspian's steady strength never left her, though, and she found herself still leaning against him when her eyes wandered hazily to meet his, clutched securely to his chest, not unlike like that first night in the caves when she'd bolted out of a nightmare into the arms of a stranger.

"He's just going to get the bags from the tower," murmured Caspian, brushing a stray hair from her cheek.

She managed to nod, and blinked to focus on him, sunlight reflected from the pool dappling over his face, dried blood still spattered across his cheekbones. Glozelle's blood. "Are you okay?" Her voice cracked into a whisper.

He breathed a short, choked laugh, running a hand through her tangled hair with a sad smile. "Never better. You?"

"I… I don't know," she mumbled. "I think— maybe I am, I don't… ah—" She sucked in a sharp breath when she moved her right leg, biting back a little cry at the bone-deep ache that sent tendrils of electric pain from her ankle to her thigh.

Caspian's grip tightened around her shoulders, and she glanced down for the first time to her leg, trousers still rolled up above her knee, the once-white scrap of Caspian's tunic cinched around her calf now drenched red-brown, dried blood having long since flooded over the rest of her leg and into her boot so that she could barely have differentiated her own limb from a slab of meat at the butcher's.

"I… don't think it's broken," she said shakily, though she wasn't even quite sure about that.

Caspian pursed his lips, eyes flicking down to the wound. "Do you mind if I look at it?"

She forced herself to shrug, pain snapping her mind back into screaming clarity, suddenly acutely aware of her own vulnerability, danger prickling under her skin, but Caspian only shifted to sit her carefully against the courtyard wall, and she shivered when his warmth left her side.

Lucy choked back a whimper as he tugged the scrap of cloth loose from her wound and tore some of the scab away with it.

"Sorry," he murmured.

Her stomach turned at the sight of jagged tooth marks carving through the middle of her calf, flesh lumpy with the uneven mass of puncture wounds and ripped up bits of skin as drops of fresh blood oozed bright red against the carnage.

Caspian dunked the rag into the pool and held it dripping ice-cold against her leg as orange water pooled over the stone.

Lucy clenched her jaw and breathed out against the fiery ring, closing her eyes before she could be sick.

Of course, she'd seen worse.

But not on herself.

Caspian unlaced her boot, pulled her sock off, and managed to wash away most of the blood from her pale skin by the time Edmund returned with the bags, setting them wordlessly beside the pool and kneeling to fill their bottles.

Caspian dug out the bandages and the near-empty cylinder of 'antibiotic,' and Lucy winced as he applied the cool cream, using up every last bit left in the container.

No more miracle drug.

Edmund glanced toward them, watching Caspian work, his own expression stony and distant.

And then an absence struck her—the lack of Aravis—and the truth crashed over her with the shock of a bloody arrow clattering against stone, that single horrifying instant of realization as her hand had come away dripping.

Lucy glanced at Edmund, and he averted his eyes.

No, this couldn't be real, this couldn't be how it happened. It was supposed to work, they were supposed to win.

She'd woken from one nightmare into another, only to find that the first had been reality.

"What happened to the others?" she rasped, and winced as Caspian tied off the fresh bandage.

Edmund motioned lazily with one hand. His voice came out thick and scratchy with exhaustion. "Susan and Rhince are still down there. At least, we figure it's Rhince, since Susan wouldn't have let Peter live after that stunt. I think they're leaving. Didn't look like they brought a lot with them."

Lucy's stomach dropped again at the mention of Peter, the whole night rushing back to her in razor-sharp detail.

"There hasn't been a cannon since Peter."

She pulled her pant leg down, gritting her teeth as she slipped her sock back on and laced up her boot. "What about Rabadash?"

"Ran off," said Edmund. "As usual. Wouldn't surprise me if the careers went after each other next."

"I suppose we achieved something, then," said Caspian.

Edmund counted to four on his fingers, and stared blankly down at them for several moments. "Who was that first cannon for?"

"Peridan," said Lucy.

Both boys glanced at her.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. "They came down from the north. The Sevens. Probably from their camp, actually, they were already running away from the ghosts. I ran into them when I lost Aravis."

Edmund's eyes flicked to the ground, absently gathering bits of broken stone into a pile, dried red edging his oval fingernails.

When I lost Aravis.

Bolting down that passage away from the careers had been the last time she'd ever seen that girl alive. She'd meant to double back and find her. She'd meant to double back all along. She just hadn't managed it in time.

Lucy shook her head. "The first one caught up to us and it got him. Lilliandil escaped. I don't know where she went."

"I thought Aravis said the ghosts never showed themselves," muttered Caspian.

Edmund clenched his jaw, fist tightening around a sharp pebble. "I guess we're just too interesting for our own good. The Gamemakers couldn't help but turn their precious pets loose on a feast."

The crunch of Peridan's ribcage snapped in Lucy's mind, the pool of blood spreading black through thick white dust.

Had she done this? Had she lured them all into the perfect trap? Had she given the Gamemakers exactly what they'd wanted from the beginning?

"It's down to eight, then," murmured Caspian. "I suppose the interviews are ramping up."

The Capitol would be closing in on them now, airing non-stop interviews with the tributes' friends and family back home, speculating over their next moves and playing back important moments throughout the Games that had led them here.

The Finalists.

"Oh, joy," said Edmund, "That's no help for me."

Caspian's mouth quirked into a weak grin. "I haven't even thought about it, to be honest. Didn't really think I'd make it this far."

Edmund raised his eyebrows. "You didn't think you'd make it this far? You? Who did you think was gonna make it if you didn't?"

Caspian snorted. "Wow, I never knew you thought so highly of me, I'm flattered."

Edmund scoffed.

Caspian nodded toward him. "I did always think you were obnoxious enough to make it, though."

The boy shrugged offhandedly, arranging his collection of pebbles on flat stone. "What can I say? I'm stubborn."

Lucy said nothing.

She was supposed to be dead by now.

Peridan, Aravis, Peter… It had almost been her. It should have been her.

Isn't this what you wanted, Lucy Pevensie?

Surviving to this point should have made her happy, or at least proud. But now only a sick, heavy feeling between guilt and dread settled in her stomach.

Silence saturated the courtyard as pale wisps of cloud blotted out the sun's harsh light, and no one made the slightest move to suggest what to do next.

A sponsor gift of grain-and-nut bars drifted down late in the morning, but even then they barely spoke, and Lucy gave no reaction when a small bundle of arrows came down after it to replenish her empty quiver, bright red fletchings vibrant as fresh blood against lifeless grey stone.

The wind bit through her jacket, sending miniature ripples shivering out over the surface of the pool, and at last, Edmund stood, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

Lucy and Caspian glanced up at him.

"I know we're all thinking it," he said, "so someone might as well say it. It's time I left anyway."

"Oh, Edmund," breathed Lucy, and stood before she could think, pain stabbing up her leg.

Caspian rose at once to steady her, everything seeming to shift out from under her at once, though of course she'd known this would have to happen sooner or later. Later had just seemed so far away.

Edmund's dark eyes flicked up to meet hers for a second before flicking away. "We're even now, right?"

Lucy glanced down, and grabbed a handful of grain bars from the open bag, shoving them into his hand. "Now we are."

He glanced up again, protest flashing into his expression, but he bit it back before he could speak. He wouldn't have access to his sponsors without Polly and Digory's help. This really was the end for him, and he couldn't afford to turn it down.

He sighed and stuffed the bars into his own bag, and shrugged it back onto his shoulder. "Satisfied?"

Lucy bit her lip, looking him up and down, unruly mop of black hair overhanging dark eyes and sharp features, once so cutting under dull green light, now weather-worn and cast under soft grey as if the world had drawn into sudden autumn around him. And before she could think, before any practical instinct stopped her, she broke away from Caspian and threw her arms around Edmund's neck.

He caught her on reflex, shoulders rigid and stiff in defense, but after a few seconds he let out a low breath and relaxed, and for the briefest moment dug his chin into her shoulder and hugged her back.

All too quickly she dropped down and stepped away, averting her eyes as he ran a hand through his hair.

"You've been all right, Ed," said Caspian, his hand returning to its steady place on Lucy's shoulder.

"Don't get sappy on me now, Telmar."

Caspian smirked. "Goodbye, then."

Edmund took a step back toward the gate. "Keep your distance, will you?"

Lucy glanced up as the faintest good-natured smile flickered across his eyes, and then he turned and jogged away down the path that Aravis had first led them up two days ago.

He vanished beyond a stone wall, and Lucy gripped Caspian's side.

Suddenly she might have been back on the train, the world flashing by around her as she stood frozen, unable to keep up, unable to shake off the tendrils of her old life, weighed down, tethered.

She hadn't thought about Edmund leaving, she hadn't had time to think about it, and all at once it caught up to her just how little time they had left.

Caspian squeezed her shoulder and she leaned into him, heat surging up behind her eyes, emptiness settling in her chest.

"We should move, too," murmured Caspian. "Looks like a storm."

She rubbed her eyes and glanced up into the darkening sky, brewing dangerously grey in the north in spite of the fact that it could hardly have been later than noon.

"Can you walk?" he asked, and she nodded, barely trusting her own voice as she turned to pack up her bag.

But just as she turned, her eyes fell to Edmund's collection of jagged pebbles at the edge of the pool, carefully arranged into the perfect shape of a cross.

Her heart skipped a beat and she swallowed, forcing down a churning wave of nausea as she looked away and bent to collect her things, tucking the last of the food into her backpack.

Caspian picked it up by the straps before she could even attempt it, offering his hand to her.

And just like that first night on the train, she could do nothing but follow his lead, allowing him to pull her out through the gate, abandoning the courtyard as the faintest sprinkle of raindrops dotted Edmund's token of memorial to a girl who'd vanished out of the world without a trace, just like the rest, as if she'd been nothing more than a figment of their imaginations.

They turned north, opposite Edmund's path, and aimed in the vague direction of the tower.

It became quickly clear, however, that they would not reach it, the sky pestering them at first with light droplets, but the temperature dropped off as they walked and the sky grew so dark it might as well have been evening, and they had barely made it up to the topmost layer of the castle hill before the rain came down hard in a sudden downpour, pounding the stone like thunder, drenching the back of Lucy's shirt through the collar of her jacket.

She had to shout to be heard when she caught sight of an overhang in the rock, sheltering the space of a missing brick in the gargantuan wall up ahead. "There!"

Caspian ducked for it at once and climbed into the deeply carved hiding place, out of the pelting rain and the biting wind as Lucy followed, flinging her good leg over the edge and crawling up after him, their breaths echoing off dry stone as rainwater ran down from their soaking clothes and hair.

Caspian shifted all the way to the back to make room for her, and Lucy dragged her now-drenched bandaged leg out of the rain, collapsing against him in the furthest recesses of the deep shelf enclosing them like a claustrophobic tomb.

He wrapped both arms around her shivering shoulders, clutching her tight as icy droplets dripped from her hair into her face, but she barely noticed.

Rain pelted the ground outside, frothing rivulets rushing between broken slabs, churning with chalky stone dust, turning brown, and in her mind Peridan's blood spilled into the cracks like little rivers, dust in his red hair, dark spray coating his pale throat, torn open in the moonlight.

"Hey," breathed Caspian, his breath echoing softly off the stone, and only then did she notice her own hitching breaths, heat pressing in behind her eyes like a tingling fever.

His hand found the back of her head, but his warmth felt far away, too distant even to penetrate the ache in her chest, and all at once a dam burst inside.

A choked sob escaped her throat before she could brace for it, burying her face into his shoulder as if she could hide there as the whole world fell down around her.

"Hey, shh," he breathed, bewilderment lacing exhaustion, "it's okay."

It's okay, Edmund's urgent whisper came back again beyond the crackle of the fire, beyond Aravis' last gurgling breaths. It's okay.

She shook her head violently, tears spilling hot down her cheeks into Caspian's rain-soaked jacket, and she made a noise that might have been no, had it been a word at all.

"You're still here, it's okay."

Again she shook her head. "No," she choked around a sob, "no, no it's not, they're all— it's all— and I— I'm— I'm so sorry, I'm so— if I'd never— if I just— I don't know why I ever thought— why I thought we could—"

"It's not your fault," he murmured in her ear, running his fingers through the back of her soaking wet hair.

"Yes it is, it's my fault, all of this is my fault—" She hiccuped through the sobs. "It was m-my plan, my idea, a-all of it, and now they're all— all— Aravis, and— and— Peridan, and Peter, they're dead because of me, they— they didn't—"

"It wasn't just your plan, Lucy, we all thought it would work."

"Because I— I—"

"You think you tricked Edmund and Aravis into something that didn't make sense? You know them, Lucy… and… I told you myself it was a good idea, it's not your fault it didn't—"

"It is my fault, it is, from the beginning, we wouldn't even be here if I hadn't forced another stupid alliance, if— if I hadn't—"

"You would rather Edmund have just killed Aravis? Right back at the beginning?"

Her breath hitched and caught, and she shook her head, choking on a tight, stuttering sob. She didn't want that either. She didn't know what she wanted.

"Sometimes it doesn't matter what we do," he breathed, stroking her hair, working his fingers gently through the tangles until he pulled through them easily, dragging his fingers along her scalp. "Sometimes the bad things happen no matter what."

"I don't want them to," hiccuped Lucy, feeling exceptionally childish the moment the words left her mouth.

"I know," he murmured, and shifted to pull away so he could look into her face.

She put her hands up to hide her puffy eyes, trying to burrow back into his shoulder in shame, but slowly, gently, he coaxed her hands away, brushing curtains of soaking hair out of her face.

She drew another hitching breath, gasping with a little choked sound as he brushed the fresh falling tears from her damp cheeks, tracing raw skin with cool fingers, gazing into her eyes no matter how she tried to look away from his earnest black pools, no matter how she wanted to hide her ugly crying face.

"You're not built for the arena, Lucy Pevensie," he murmured, so softly that she almost wondered whether he'd meant her to hear it.

"Neither are you," she whimpered, and he smiled faintly, the corner of his mouth curling as he glanced over her face.

"No," he whispered, "I suppose not. Neither of us are very good tributes, are we?"

She choked something halfway between a laugh and a sob, and buried herself back into Caspian's shoulder, strong arms wrapping her automatically back into their warmth.

"Shh," he breathed again, barely audible. "It's okay, you're okay."

And all her arguments collapsed into trembling, exhausted sobs as he held her, so cold and sore with the rain at her back pounding stone in a ceaseless rush.

"Forget it all," he breathed against her scalp, "like you told me. Forget the future, if you can, for a little while. I'm here, I've got you. Just forget."

His warmth crept slowly, achingly in through her fingertips, and the crushing weight of the past twenty-eight hours washed over her at last as it dragged her down into oblivion.

She woke to a horn-blast, disoriented for several moments before she recognized the national anthem in some hazy corner of her mind, and Caspian stirred, too.

He breathed in sleepily and glanced over his shoulder, strong silhouette black against the clear grey midnight sky that shone with the light of the Capitol seal, and Lucy realized she was lying curled up with her back to the wall and her head on Caspian's chest.

She didn't remember switching positions.

The rain had stopped, too, and a quivering breeze swept through the freshly drowned maze as Lucy propped herself up on her elbows to gaze out at the shining eagle, its silver glow shifting into the image of Glozelle.

He shone cruel and handsome for an instant before Peter's image flashed in his place: that same confident smile they'd displayed countless times on Capitol TV next to terrifying odds, now flickering in the sky just like all the rest.

Golden boy; chosen one. King of the Game, now its victim.

Lucy breathed a shaky sigh.

It could have been a dream, that instant silhouetted in roaring flame. It couldn't be real. It didn't make sense. Yet there he gleamed in the clear black void, proof of a sacrifice Lucy Pevensie could not even begin to comprehend. Proof that somewhere, somehow, she had been terribly, terribly wrong.

Peridan appeared next and swallowed up her thoughts; the boy whose green eyes had snapped to hers for just a split second in that stone corridor, whose red hair paled beside the color of his blood.

And last came Aravis, gazing proudly down through frizzy curls as if they were her crown, and for a second her expression reminded Lucy of Edmund, a double pang stabbing through her chest.

The sharp-edged eagle of Panem shone again in her place as the anthem swelled, but for just a moment Lucy imagined Aravis herself transforming into the bird, spreading her wings above the arena that no longer owned her, above the earth which no longer bound her soul to walk alone and unseen.

Lucy blinked as the seal vanished and cast the arena once more into darkness, the lingering purple eagle burned into her vision as pinpricks of starlight pierced the black canopy overhead. "Is it really midnight?" she asked, squinting and scrunching her nose as she stretched, and settled back against Caspian.

"Guess so," he murmured, sleep slurring in his voice as he turned over and curled into her, broad shoulders sheltering her from the breeze, warm breath in her hair, half-sharing the backpack like a pillow.

Comfortable warmth flooded Lucy's whole body, fingers trailing over dry clothes as she reached up to tuck dry hair behind her ear. She must have been out for nearly twelve hours straight, and her mind struggled sluggishly to clear itself as it dawned on her that this was the first time she and Caspian had truly been alone since the Capitol.

She glanced up into his face, pale moonlight just barely edging peaceful features, eyes closed, breaths slow, and the weight of his arm around her waist didn't feel strange—if anything, she felt something like a beloved toy clutched in the arms of a delicate child.

What would she have thought, back there on the balcony, if she could have seen herself now?

"What was your first impression of me?" she asked abruptly, and Caspian's eyelids fluttered open to focus on her, brows quirking in amusement with a faint grin.

"What?"

"You know, at the Reaping, or… on the train. What did you think about me?"

"Why do you want to know that?"

"I don't know, I was just thinking about it, that's all."

He sighed. "I suppose… I thought… you looked… young."

"That's it?"

"Well… yes. Until the Capitol station, anyway."

Lucy cocked her head. "What happened at the station?"

"You know, you saw the crowds and you just… lit up. It wasn't even part of your angle, but you smiled like you knew every single one of them."

"How do you know it wasn't part of my angle?"

"You were surprised when Polly praised you, right?"

"Oh." She blinked. "Why do you remember that better than I do?"

"I'd just never seen it before, I guess."

"What, a smile?"

"No," he nudged her. "That kind of… innocence. But, that's not the right word. I don't know." He gazed into her eyes as if searching his own mind behind them. "You're a performer, not a liar. This is all real, to you. You smiled because you were happy, not because you wanted somebody with money to think you were."

"You mean I'm naive."

"No, I mean you don't have to pretend. You're just that captivating."

"What?" She almost laughed, but the sincerity in his tone brought her up short. "Captivating? Me? I know I'm the one who asked, but you don't have to go that far."

"I mean it."

Lucy furrowed her brow. Was he mocking her? "But I'm… nobody, really. That's the whole point, isn't it? That's why I'm here. Because nobody cares if I disappear."

Caspian shifted and propped himself up on one elbow. "You really think that?"

She looked up at him in surprise and confusion. "Yeah, isn't it obvious? If my own best friend couldn't even be bothered to keep me around—"

"She didn't know what she had," he snapped, and Lucy stared at him.

Her mind went blank.

"Sorry," he murmured, averting his eyes guiltily, "I just mean… if she really knew you, she would never have let you go. Not without fighting to her last breath."

Something cold plunged deep in her gut, and Caspian looked up again hesitantly, meeting her eyes as she blinked.

"Lucy?" he probed when she said nothing.

"Hm?" she choked dryly, utterly at a loss for words as her insides churned with nameless alarm.

He sighed. "I'll be your best friend now, how's that?"

"I— what?" At last she snapped out of her stupor. "You— Wait, don't you already have a best friend?"

"I can have two best friends, can't I?"

"Actually, I'm not sure that's how that works."

"Well," he flopped back down beside her, "I've already decided, so you can't do anything about it. You're my best friend, and Drinian is also my best friend."

Lucy snorted. "Poor Drinian."

"He'll get over it."

She suppressed a grin, and he shot her one, too.

A moment later, before she had any time to dwell her lingering, vague uneasiness, he asked "What was your first impression of me, then?"

"Oh, you were really scary."

"What?" He scoffed. "Me? Scary?"

"Yeah, you know, kind of like a statue, all imposing and mysterious, but you never know when it'll jump to life and break you in half."

"I was… a… haunted statue?"

Lucy nodded matter-of-factly, and Caspian laughed.

"Well, you're not like that any more."

"I'm glad, because that's terrifying."

"See?"

He ruffled her hair, and she squirmed away with an involuntary giggle, the sound almost jarring from her throat still bloated from that morning's tears.

She shoved his hand out of her face with a grin through a mess of curls, and it struck her all at once that Caspian Telmar was the safest and strongest thing she'd ever known in her entire life.

Even with Marjorie she had always been alone, walking on eggshells, never confiding too much for fear of burdening or worrying the delicate girl. But Caspian never flinched, never pulled away, he listened when she rambled and when she cried, he held her shaking shoulders and let her tears soak into his jacket, he steadied her when she couldn't even steady herself.

How could she have predicted the terrifying boy at the Reaping would become the kind of safety she hadn't known since she was six years old?

"No…" she breathed. "You're not at all like that anymore."

"So what am I now?" he murmured into her hair.

And before she could figure out how to put words to any of her thoughts, another answer rose to her lips. "You're the bravest person I've ever met."

His breathing stopped.

Lucy craned her neck to look up at him, black eyes snapping to hers in heartbreakingly earnest confusion.

"It's true," she murmured, "you saved my life last night."

He shook his head. "No more than you saved mine."

"Caspian, you looked a nightmare in the face and ran straight into its jaws. Two of them, actually. And a career. And that's after the last dragon we met almost… you know."

He smiled weakly, and sighed at last as his hand moved to rub her shoulder. "Perhaps your rashness is rubbing off on me, little hero."

Her stomach sank, that same thrum of alarm spreading cold through her gut.

"If she really knew you, she would never have let you go. Not without fighting to her last breath."

No.

She didn't want him fighting to his last breath.

Peter's fiery silhouette flashed back into her head and she averted her eyes. The golden boy who had spared her life. Who had not only hesitated, but bought her time, stood his ground against Rhince, turned on the other careers just to let her go. To let all of them go. And she didn't even know why. He'd died for it, just like Jill had died, throwing Lucy out of harm's way.

She didn't want to be the reason Caspian died, too.

"It'll get faster now," she muttered, "won't it? It always gets faster after the final eight."

"Not always," said Caspian. "We've earned a break, I think. Maybe we won't have to think about it for a little while yet. And besides, they need time to gossip about us back home."

She forced a faint smile, but before she could formulate a response, a small skittering noise came just outside their hiding place and she glanced up.

Caspian craned to look over his shoulder into the grey moonlight, and Lucy shifted far enough to see over him into the passage beyond, where a very small shadow hopped and scurried along the top of a wall out of sight.

"What was that?"

"Scavenger, I think," said Caspian. "Aravis mentioned them, dragonish little vulture things. I saw a couple right after it stopped raining."

"Will they find us in here?"

"I don't think they care about us while we're alive. Or at least, none of them have shown any interest, but I'll be glad to be out of here." And then he added, nearly muttering, "It really is a snakey arena."

"That must be lovely for you." She shot him a tiny smirk and he rolled his eyes.

"Oh, yes, just charming, I can't wait to see how they terrorize us next."

Another tiny shadow scurried across the opposite side of the passage, and Lucy caught the vague shape of a pointed snout and spiny tail before it vanished.

"Would you really say the ghosts were dragons, though? I mean, they're something like, but I suppose they didn't breathe fire. And they didn't have wings."

"Maybe northern lizards," said Caspian, "The sorts of creatures that sank down into the really dark places."

Lucy hummed. "And the little ones?"

Caspian sighed. "I don't know, I'm not an expert on the complex inner workings of the ancient world's ecosystem."

Lucy scoffed and watched for more shadows, forcibly ignoring the persistent churning in her stomach as soft nighttime noises filtered in with the chilly breeze.

It seemed strange now to think she'd ever believed the Capitol created such things as mutts in their labs when the last remnants of the Old Country had been staring her in the face through the screen all along.

How many others had come to the same conclusion as Caspian and Aravis? That it was all real?

And why would the Capitol display the ancient world so blatantly on national television for all to see when they spent the rest of their time adamantly denying its existence?

It at least made sense why they would want to hide it, bury it, relegate it to the likes of fairytales, of baby stories. Those stories had always been the source of her hope, and she supposed the Capitol didn't want anyone having too much of that.

They didn't need people believing in a better world, especially if that world might lay just beyond the confines of their prison. If the people believed the Old Country was only a fantasy, or at the very least believed it to be dead and conquered, they would have no reason to escape, to risk any hint of rebellion for the sake of a better life.

But why would the Capitol flaunt dragons and giant ruins if that was their goal?

What was the point?

"What are you thinking about?" asked Caspian.

"Hm? Oh, nothing."

"Come back, then, I'm lonely."

"Caspian, I'm literally laying on top of you."

He smirked. "I'm still lonely."

Lucy shook her head, but easily lowered herself back down beside him with one last sweeping glance over the empty corridor.

"Hungry?" He offered half a grain bar to her, which apparently he'd been snacking on while she'd been distracted, and she took it with a suppressed grin.

"Thanks."

She nibbled as they talked, soft voices echoing in their cozy chamber as pale stars glittered at their backs, and a long while later Lucy drifted into another comfortable lull, Caspian's steady heartbeat thrumming in her ear, his warmth cocooning her against the night.

Her senses grew hazy, and in her mind, she wandered into a waning sunset, bone-white ruins cast creamy orange under her bare feet, red rose petals fluttering over the pavers and tickling her toes.

The air felt strange, as if hanging on the edge of a breath, and the further she wandered out of thought, the thicker the scurrying petals became, until they shrouded the stone altogether under a blanket of crimson, pooling, and Lucy found herself wading into cold water up to her ankles, roses floating so thick over the surface she could not see the ground as it descended deeper below her.

Roses lapped around her knees, around her waist, and she plucked a flower from the water, its delicate veins glistening as icy droplets trickled over her fingers; a Capitol rose, perfectly engineered.

She closed her fingers around its artificial stalk, smooth as silk, but just as she did so, the exotic melancholy of the sunset invaded her bloodstream, the chill of the water whispering some strange foreboding, and just ahead, something came into view, a figure silhouetted, floating amongst the roses.

A stab of pain pierced her hand.

She glanced down as blood dripped from between her fingers, and opened them to reveal needle-sharp thorns protruding like bone from the slender stem.

She dropped it like a hot coal with a splash into the water, blood pooling from her hand and dripping after it.

And when she looked up again, the silhouetted figure lay before her, rich cranberry jacket soaked darker red in the water, wisps of dark hair fluttering over soft eyelashes, Caspian's perfect features cast statuesque in fading light, enshrined in red roses crawling up his throat, petals ghosting his jawline.

Dead.