Stay alive.
Moth turned to look at what had killed her prey. She caught sight of the dark haired girl just as she ducked back into the trees.
Moth screamed her rage and tossed a ball of fire. The trees caught.
The ring of fire was very close now. Smoke was filling in the air.
Moth dived lower.
Susan threw herself back from the fire and darted back to the tree line. She raised her bow and fired at Moth.
Moth dived faster than she thought. The arrow only grazed her.
Moth's fingers began to turn into long claws. The fire crackled all around the forest.
The sharpness surged within her. Her blood pulsed with it. She could taste its iron in her mouth.
A cloud of purple smoke billowed out when she breathed. It was tinged with a spray of red.
Kate could hardly breathe. Her whole chest was seizing. She fell to her knees at the edge of the clearing and heaved for breath. The fire was too close behind her, pinking her skin.
She looked up to see the battle raging. The whole air was charged with far more than smoke. The cold iron burned into her skin like a talisman.
Kate gripped her knife, gritted her teeth, and crawled forward.
"You," Moth hissed when she saw the Unseelie magic uncurling in greedy clouds. She flew back quickly. Her skin burned where it had touched.
So this was the troublemaker that had poisoned the arena. Moth bared her teeth, but she kept flying backwards. She needed a plan before she faced that.
She glanced around, looking for something to aid her. Her eyes caught on a bit of movement in the winter wedge.
A boy, on the edge of the trees. Wavering between the fire and the fight.
Coward.
She hurled a fireball, just to be rid of the distraction.
Will's eyes went wide. He threw himself backward automatically.
Right into the waiting flames.
The fireball hit him a moment later.
A few seconds later, the cannon boomed.
Moth despaired of a plan and went with what she knew. She threw more fire.
Susan dodged frantically as fire hit all around and started catching even their lone patch of grass on fire. The cloud before her evaporated where the searing flames touched.
More poured out of her. It felt like it was emptying her. Hollowing her out.
Deep, hacking coughs ripped through her chest.
She didn't have to wonder about the wetness that sprayed from her mouth.
She felt to her knees.
Moth drew her fire around her and dived through the cloud.
It slipped past her fire. It burned like acid where it touched her skin. She could feel it eating through wings until they felt frail as spiderwebs.
Moth started to fall out of the sky.
But she could see the girl clearly now.
She threw one last ball of fire.
Susan rolled to the side. The fire was still close. Too close. She screamed as her arm burned. Desperately, weakly, she tried to roll.
Had to smother the flames. Had to -
Her lungs felt choked.
Moth hit the ground. Something cracked. She rolled over. She had to get to her feet -
Kate had been crawling towards the Cornucopia, but she was close now. Too close to pass this chance up.
She sprang at Moth's prone form. Her knife stabbed down.
The faerie let out an inhuman scream. Her skin bubbled. Claws stabbed into Kate's legs. She could feel her burns reacting to the fresh heat.
She slammed down her wrist. The one covered in Tony's cold iron.
Again. And again. And again.
Into the faerie's throat.
There was another long scream. The claws ripped jagged gashes in her legs.
The faerie went still.
The cannon boomed.
There were no more Seelie in the arena. The spell Tumnus had passed on was done.
The purple fog vanished. The choking wrongness vanished from Susan's mind.
It left a good many hollow spaces with it.
Kate could walk. She had to walk. Her knife was gripped so tightly in her hand that she didn't think she could let go. She forced herself up and stumbled between fires until she saw Susan lying on the ground.
By the time she reached her, it wasn't a choice to collapse to her knees beside her. It just happened.
Susan's bow lay half under her. The arrows were spilled out uselessly.
Susan's skin had acquired a strange grey cast. Her whole body was crumpling inward like something vital was gone.
Susan's hand clenched around her wrist. Kate's knife hand jerked up.
The other girl's eyes were wide and frightened. Something dark was eating away at them.
"It didn't take me," she whispered. The words were slurred and strangled. "I'm still - me. Still here."
"Still me. Still here," Kate agreed through her ravaged throat. She dropped the knife and curled her hand around Susan's wrist in turn. She gave it a reassuring squeeze.
The wrist felt like paper stretched over air. Like it could crumple any second.
Like Susan's chest was doing. Like the way the dark was fading in and out of her eyes.
A long string of hacking coughs ripped out of Susan's chest. Kate's own smoke ravaged lungs began hacking in sympathy.
When she looked up, eyes streaming, she saw a girl's eyes. Untouched by magic.
There was a good deal of blood around the other girl's mouth.
The cannon boomed.
All the fires, save Moth's, instantly went out. All that was left were the blackened husks of the woods.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the winner of the seventy-third Hunger Games!"
Caitlin Todd, victor, turned her head to the side and threw up black bile.
(I hope that you can stay alive. If you can't, at least survive.)
A/N: One more chapter to go!