"I know having to stay in the Capitol until the Games are over is a pain. I know you're probably feeling horrible, and Fenton and Mari…we didn't really think over things as well as we could have. But the last few days here are a good time to learn things and cultivate relationships. You'll be here many more years, and learning now's important. What I'm saying...or what I'm trying to say…Terra, do you want to talk about something?"

I lowered and shook my head. No Finch, I don't want to talk about the stupid Hunger Games. Not like those mattered, what with only four kids left. At this point, one of Drake's two kids was going to win it. Woo-hoo. Hooray for him and Finnick.

Finch slumped down onto the couch beside me. "Hey," said my mentor. "You know you can tell me anything, right? That's what I'm here for."

I nodded, but didn't say a word. Anything? Ha.

"I've been hard on you, I know," Finch sighed, rubbing my shoulder. "It's not that I want to crush you or anything. This all is terrible. Fenton and Mari were good kids, and every year it's two new good kids. Add that to all the stuff that goes on during the Games, and I don't know what you've gone through, but I can imagine, and it's just hard. I understand."

She inhaled sharply. "You start to see yourself in your kids after a while. There's bits of me in you, bits of Daud. You fight like him, don't give up like him, and you're a thinker like me."

I fretted. "Not really."

"You're not giving yourself enough credit. And just because everything we tried this year didn't work doesn't mean it won't in the future."

"Won't work most of the time. I can't do anything about that," I grumbled.

"You're not some bimbo on a poster and on television. You're not just make-up and fancy clothes. I know, and Daud knows, even if he's terrible at saying so. You're our victor, Terra. We just want the best for you, hm?"

I smiled, just a little bit, and looked down at my lap. It was strange hearing this from someone, anyone, not just Finch, but maybe especially her. Finch, with all her thinking and analyzing, saying something from the heart instead of the head.

"Every year too, for a week, you're gonna be something to two kids," Finch said. "It'll be tough, and I'm trying to help you learn how to be tough, alright? Because one day you'll be their mentor for more than a week. Maybe it'll be soon, maybe not until a long while like with me, but it'll happen eventually. But until then, I want you to know you can come to me with anything. I won't judge. Same with Daud, although he's not much of a conversation. That sound alright?"

I nodded, but mine was a gesture from the head. I couldn't come to her with anything, judgment or not. Maybe that worked with all things Hunger Games, but a few weeks in the Capitol had taught me that I was much more than just a participant in that little spectacle.

Especially tonight.

/ / / / /

Everything glowed on the streets of the Capitol. The neon of storefronts, bars, and restaurants, jam-packed with debaucherous revelers celebrating the death of one of the 97th Hunger Games's final four. Three tributes to go, two from the same district. It was District 4 vs. District 2 now. The sky glowed, a yellow, golden glaze blown up from the glittering towers. The faces of buzzed patrons and the gowns of staggering drunks sparkled in the night air.

I wore black. My hair, my tunic, my boots, the hood that shadowed my face, all black like the night sky back home. I felt cold despite the warm evening breeze. With my jaw set, I walked in one direction – straight to the Presidential Mansion.

A pair of Peacekeepers stopped my outside of the gates off of the Avenue of the Tributes. "Wrong turn, girlie?" one of them asked, cradling his rifle and strolling up. "What d'you want?"

The other one snorted. "Can't tell, Tibor? She probably wants me. How 'bout it, missy? Guard duty gets a man a bit restless."

"Got that ice queen look about her. She'd probably shank you in the act."

"I'd wake you up first," I growled.

A Peacekeeper behind the gate stood up from where he was leaning, cracked open the iron grate with a loud creak, and grunted, "That's the victor, you idiots. Let her in."

They backed off immediately, and I saw why in a moment. He was one of the Peacekeepers with a black band around the armor of each arm. These ones seemed to command respect, whether they were special sorts of Peacekeepers or Capitolian-born soldiers or whatever made them distinct from the regulars. Whatever it was, this one beckoned me inside.

"Here to see the president?" he said, his voice low and rumbling like distant thunder. "Wrapping up a meeting with Locke."

I tried to look him in the eyes, but only that black, inhuman visor met my gaze. "It's important," I said.

The palace was near-empty at this hour. Gone were the courtiers and workers and whoever else always filled the halls whenever I was here. In their place, emptiness and haunting silence drifted about above the velvet carpet. The portrait eyes of past leaders followed me as I walked, and I pulled my hood lower to just above my eyebrows to keep out their staring. What do you bring at this hour, on this day? asked the men and women framed and frozen. Bad news for the one who rules?

Cyrus and Creon were alone when I knocked and entered the Assembly Hall. Everything seemed so still in here, the two men, the little statues that lined the walls, the great meeting table, the chandelier, the light reflected in from the great crystal windows, everything. It froze me before I could step more than two paces into the room.

Creon looked up first. "You can go, Cyrus," he said, his voice little more than a whisper.

Cyrus sucked in a breath, frowned, and did as he was told. He stopped at the door next to me, still frowning as he put a hand on my shoulder before walking out and closing the door. It shut with a particularly deep thud.

The president didn't say anything at first. He folded his hands behind his back, raised his shoulders, and said, "I'm sorry about your tributes."

"They tried," I mumbled. I didn't want to go on about that subject, not here, not with him of all people.

"Trying's not enough of this sort of game," Creon said, turning at last and walking to the table. He tapped a gray orb on the table, activating a holographic map of a coastline with a few scattered settlements arranged in a semicircle about a central city. "Results are what matter. The best of intentions don't mean anything without the force to back them up."

"What's the map?"

"District 4. Yesterday we crushed a pocket of insurgents, and today their tributes are poised to win this farce. I'd hang Galan Greene if I didn't know he was incompetent. I hate the Hunger Games, but if they have to exist, a Head Gamesmaker should know better than to give terrorists a rallying point by letting the wrong tributes win."

His eyes drifted across the map. A glimmer of sadness, of something else, something gray, drifted across them. "It's a cruel joke we even punish rebellion by killing children who had nothing to do with the uprising in the first place. A hundred years ago, and still no one lets go. These fools call it entertainment."

I folded my hands, and after a long pause, murmured, "Do you miss being in the districts?"

He pursed his lips. "Why do you ask that?"

"The way you talk about the Capitol."

"Loyal subjects don't rebel against their leaders," said Creon, eyes drifting back to the map. "But rightful rulers don't crush the ones they rule, either. When I led the armies in the districts, I found the subjects weren't loyal at all. But they were a bit better at faking serving than the people here are at ruling. Here they don't even pretend to be righteous."

He scowled. "You're a victor. You've seen both sides of the equation. What would you do if you ruled Panem?"

I bit my lip and thought it over. It felt like a test, like Creon expected something of me – but what was I supposed to say when I had something far more pressing to tell him, something I was still welling up the courage to say?

"You give everyone a vote?" he said before I had a chance to speak. "Democracy? I've heard that fairy tale. Couple decades and it turns into mob rule, or the powerful learn how to rig the voting, turn it into an oligarchy."

"I'd let the right people decide how to rule," I said at last, my voice small. "The ones who can earn people's trust."

He smirked: "You'd find some consequences to that."

"I'd manage."

"Is that what you'd have me do as president? Manage?"

Drake, you'd better pay me for this. "Whatever's happening in District 4, it sounds like you beat them. Is it so bad if they can have another victor?"

He closed the map. "Why'd you come?"

So the time came. I squirmed, my hands clammy, my throat closing before I at last said, "You wanted me to look into your father's death. I might have something."

"Might?"

Now came the moment of truth. Did I trust in what I'd seen Arrian do, what I'd seen that Suleiman do? I didn't know, really know, either of them, but I knew enough to understand they had strength that no one else did.

"A source told me," I said. "There's an archive with information about the man who smuggled things in from District 3, things like that mine you said killed the last president. But I can't reach it."

"The Capitol archives? You could've asked Cyrus or anyone else like him. They all have access."

"It's not that. It's private."

He looked up. Creon's expression hardened. "Whose?"

"Calla's."

Creon paused for a long, long moment. He stared at me, emotions flying past his eyes. His hands gripped the table. "You're accusing my daughter of regicide?"

"I'm not –"

"My daughter. My heir. My only child. The mother of my granddaughter."

"I talked to Cassandra, and –"

"Get out."

I froze. Creon's scowl was all ice and steel.

"Get. Out."

He didn't need to say it a third time.