Trigger Warning: Suicide. Please heed this warning. It's important.

Gus

I was surprised by a second night in a row with no faces. I suppose I shouldn't have been. There were no cannons in the night according to Hephaestion's note and none during the day when I woke up. There must've been a small window of time between Hephaestion leaving the note and me waking up where someone could've died without me realising.

When I finally find a staircase that leads upwards and emerge from the tunnels, it's about midday on the sixth day. Unless someone died last night, nobody's died since Valerie and Herbie on day three. Maybe that's why I've found a way out of the tunnels, after days of searching, because the gamemakers wanted something to happen.

I wonder if I should go back to the courtyard and try to regroup with the Sevens. Something tells me it's not a good idea. The Sevens have always been closer to each other than they were to me. If we reached a point where we had to turn on each other, I'd be outnumbered. Plus I'd have to explain why Hephaestion left.

I guess I'm on my own from now on.

I decided to search through the castle, looking for an opportunity to do something to prove myself. To get myself back on track. Something heroic.

That's when I hear my name.

"Guston!"

The accent is familiar. District 5. Home.

"Tornada!" I cry.

I turn around and she's there. She's pale and shaking, her clothes bloodstained. The moment I look at her, she starts crying.

"Are you okay?" I ask. "Are you hurt?"

She throws her arms around me and buries her face in my chest, crying. I study her body for injuries but there's blood all over her clothes. I can't tell whose blood it is.

"Tsarina took me," she sobs. "She… she made me do things."

"I understand," I say. "I saw what she made you do to Jesse. I don't blame you. I knew she was keeping you prisoner. Nobody from Five would do something like that willingly. How did you escape?"

"Tsarina got distracted," Tornada says.

A chill runs down my spine.

"By whom?" I ask. "Who's the distraction?"

"Hephaestion."

"She has Hephaestion?"

Tornada nods.

I feel like my lungs are being crushed. Tsarina has Hephaestion. I don't know how she managed to overpower him, only that the boy I love is currently suffering under a torturer's knife.

"We need to save him!" I cry.

"How?" Tornada asks, grey eyes wide with fear.

"Take me to him!"

Tornada blinks. I realise my hands are gripping her shoulders and I'm yelling in her face.

"But I'm scared…" she says. "I can't go back to Tsarina."

"Take me to her," I say, trying to keep the fear out of my voice. "Then I can kill her and you'll never need to be afraid of her again. I'll protect you, I promise."

Tornada nods and leads me down a corridor. As we're running, a cannon fires.

"It's not him," Tornada says. "Tsarina wouldn't make it that quick."

Soon, we're met by a wall of thorns blocking the corridor, creeping forward towards us.

"It's a hazard," Tornada says. "It wasn't here when I was looking for you."

I'm faced with a choice. I can push forwards and face the thorns or turn back and let Hephaestion die in pain.

Suddenly, I realise what the three forks were all about. They weren't about comparing me to Fawkes Chau from District 3. They were about what happened to Fawkes Chau in District 3. He was kidnapped and tortured by rebels…

And his boyfriend saved him.

Grandpa must believe that Hephaestion can be saved. He must've given me his blessing to charge in and rescue him.

There's a suit of armour on the wall next to me. I grab the sword from its gauntlets. I'm going to need more than just a spear to get through these thorns. I charge at the thorns with my sword, expecting to have to hack through them. Instead, they turn into white roses before me.

I can feel my eyes widen with wonder. I reach out to stroke the velvety white petals.

Then I remember Hephaestion was wearing a crown of white roses on interview night.

These roses are so beautiful. I will show them to Hephaestion after I've rescued him.

"C'mon," I say to Tornada. "We can get through them."

Tornada follows me into the thorns. After we've moved some distance through them, she cries out.

"Guston! They're closing behind us!"

"That means we have to keep going."

A second cannon fires.

"Maybe that was Hephaestion," Tornada says. "Maybe the thorns got him and Tsarina."

"The cannons were too far apart," I say. "C'mon."

For a while, we make our way through the thorns, me slashing the thorns and turning them into white roses and Tornada giving directions. Then a figure lunges out of the roses at us.

Tornada screams and stumbles backwards. Then she lets out a scream of pain and shock as the thorns start to wrap around her. I strike out with my sword and cut her free. Then I study the figure from the thorns, who lays dead on the ground.

It's Lucinda. Her body is limp and covered in scratches from the thorns. I check her pulse. She's dead. She must've been one of the two cannons earlier.

Which means that there's no way that the thorns have killed both Hephaestion and Tsarina.

I give a quick bow, just to pay my respects to Lucinda.

"I'm sorry, Lucinda. You were a good ally."

"Guston," Tornada says, weakly. "I'm not feeling well."

I stifle a curse. The thorns must be poisoned. I can only hope it's not fatal and Tornada stays conscious long enough to guide me to Hephaestion."

I grab Tornada's shoulder with my free hand and push her in front of me, my sword held out ahead of both of us. I half-push, half-carry her through the thorns. I notice Tornada is getting drowsier and drowsier as she calls out directions.

Then she passes out in my arms.

I curse my bad luck and sling Tornada's unconscious body over my shoulder, careful not to let her catch on the thorns. She's so skinny, it's easy for me to carry her. I just have to hope Hephaestion isn't far away.

Finally, I stumble out of the claustrophobic tunnel of roses and thorns into what appears to be a throne room. The walls and ceiling are veined with thorns but the floor is empty. Slumped on a wooden throne, his body wrapped in thorns, is Hephaestion.

I rush forwards, dumping Tornada on the throne room floor. Hephaestion can't be dead. He has to be alive. I reach the throne and start cutting him free. I can tell straight away that he's not dead. He's making noises, muffled whimpers through the gag covering his mouth. His eyes are closed.

He's having a nightmare.

The thorns holding Hephaestion in place become roses at the brush of my fingertips but there are also ropes holding him in place that I have to slice through. Tsarina must've tied him up and gagged him while she was torturing him. He must've been trapped here, unable to move or even scream for help, when the thorns began to spread.

Most worrying of all, there's a wooden spike stabbed through his left hand, pinning it to the arm of the throne. I have to remove the spike so I can pull Hephaestion free from the rose thicket. His hand starts gushing blood. I have to slice a strip of cloth from my tunic and use it to bandage his hand.

Once I've got Hephaestion out of the throne and I've laid his body on the throne room floor, I untie his gag. It comes away soaked with blood. That worries me. I can't see any injuries on Hephaestion aside from his stabbed hand, bruises on his face and shallow scratches from the thorns. How did his mouth get so full of blood? Is he bleeding internally?

Is he dying?

"Hephaestion," I whisper. "Wake up, please."

Tornada is still unconscious on the floor. The thorns seem to be creeping towards her.

I can't carry both of them out of here. I need one of them to wake up. I need Hephaestion to wake up. I told him I'd wake him up from every nightmare.

"Hephaestion," I beg. "My knight. Please, wake up, talk to me. You're going to be okay. It's me, your prince. I saved you."

"Prince of Lightning," I start at the sound of the voice. Tsarina's voice. "You have not saved him yet."

I look up to find the source of the voice. Tsarina's body is suspended in the thorns high above the throne like some horrific banner. Her skin is pallid. Her eyes are closed.

"Tsarina!" I cry. "What did you do to him?"

She laughs. "The girl Tsarina is dead. She paid the price for staining my spindle with filthy rebel blood. Now her body is mine to speak through until the curse is broken."

She opens her eyes. They're glowing a toxic shade of green.

The thorns killed her, I realise. Now the gamemakers are controlling her body.

"What curse?" I ask. Curses aren't real. The gamemakers must've set something up.

"When your rebel knight pricked his finger on my spindle, he was cursed to sleep for a hundred years and spread thorns across the castle. The curse has already claimed four victims. Five remain. You are the only one immune, the only one who can break the curse."

Four victims. Tsarina and Lucinda are dead. Hephaestion and Tornada are unconscious. The gamemakers must've injected them with some kind of drug through the thorns. If I do what they want and break the curse, the gamemakers must have some way of waking them up.

"Will the curse kill everyone?" I ask.

"The curse will kill everyone in this castle save you and your sleeping beauty. The Prince of Lightning and his rebel knight."

I realise I could sit here and wait, let the thorns destroy all of my other opponents and then it will just be me and Hephaestion left. He's fast asleep. I could kill him once we reached the final two and he'd feel no pain.

But what kind of victor would that make me? Nobody would take me seriously if I lucked into victory because of some stupid thorn curse. Everyone would know my games were rigged.

What kind of district partner would I be if I let the thorns kill Tornada? I promised her I'd keep her safe and then I led her into the thorn tunnel. It's my fault she's been cursed.

And what kind of boyfriend would I be if I killed Hephaestion in his sleep without giving him a chance to fight. It might be painless but the last thing he'll remember will be Tsarina torturing him until the nightmares swallowed him up. I want to give him more than that.

"How do I break this curse?"

"There are two ways you can break this curse, noble prince," Tsarina says. "Choose wisely, for your choice will have serious consequences. Your sleeping beauty can only be released from his curse by a kiss - true love's kiss or the kiss of death. If you kiss him, he will awake and you will have a loyal knight to fight by your side. But if you pierce his heart with my spindle, I will tell you a secret that will guarantee you the crown."

I look down at the boy I have cradled in my arms. He looks so pale and ethereal. There are rose petals clinging to his curls, blood smudged across his lips. Bruises are forming on his throat. I can tell he's in pain, lost in some nightmare.

I've never seen anyone I want to protect more. I've never seen anyone I've loved more.

I would choose my knight over my crown every time.

I lean in to kiss Hephaestion, quick and gentle and chaste. I don't think true love's kiss is shoving your tongue down an unconscious boy's throat. It's kinder than that, more respectful.

I pull away. My lips barely touched Hephaestion's but they're sticky with his blood. A cannon fires and my heart sinks.

Did I just kill him?

Before I can react, Hephaestion gasps and starts coughing blood. His beautiful brown eyes flutter open. I start crying and pull Hephaestion closer to me. He's sobbing too. I can feel the warmth of him, his heartbeat racing in his chest.

"You're alive!" I cry. The cannon was someone else. Thank Snow, it was someone else. "You're alive, Hephaestion! I saved you!"

I can feel white rose petals drifting down from the ceiling like we're at a wedding. I shuffle away from him slightly so I can pluck one of the roses from the throne.

"Here," I say. I stroke Hephaestion's tear stained face and tuck the rose behind his ear. He gives me a fragile smile. His eyes light up like dark amber, full of total adoration.

I saved him. I'm going to care for him, always. My true love. Hephaestion Dell'Anno. My rebel knight, knight of roses. My sleeping beauty.

Then Hephaestion's eyes widen with fear. He opens his mouth to speak but no words come out, only a wordless cry and a trickle of blood.

I come to the sudden and terrifying realisation that Tsarina did something to Hephaestion before she stabbed him with the cursed spindle.

She cut out his tongue.

I don't have time to react before something cold and hard punches into my back, again and again. I turn my head to see my district partner stabbing me in the back with a knife.

"Why…" I gasp. I'm your district partner. I carried you through the thorns…

"Your grandfather's peacekeepers killed my mother," she hisses.

I sink to the ground. Hephaestion roars and lunges at Tornada with the spindle in his hand but she darts away, vanishing down a passageway of rapidly decaying thorns.

Hephaestion returns to my side.

"Am I going to make it?" I ask. It hurts to talk. It hurts to breathe. I can feel blood filling up my mouth. I can't feel my legs.

Gently, Hephaestion moves my body so I'm lying on my stomach. He cuts the blood-soaked tunic away from my back and examines my wounds. I'm not sure how he's going to tell me about my injuries without a tongue until I hear the tearing of paper and realise he still has Lucinda's journal. I turn my head to the side so I can read. Then Hephaestion holds a note covered in bloodstained fingerprints in front of my face.

Can you breathe?

Can you feel your legs?

"It's hard to breathe," I wheeze. "I can't feel my legs."

I hear a quiet sob from Hephaestion.

"What's wrong with me, my knight?"

Hephaestion gives me the next note with trembling hands.

Damaged spinal cord

Punctured Lungs

Severe internal bleeding

I don't know what to do. My training didn't cover this.

I let out a bitter, rattling laugh. I remember Tornada studied anatomy with Tsarina in training. Of course she knew where to stab to ensure I died a slow, agonising death.

I know I'm dying. Hephaestion's training probably covered all treatable injuries. Mine must be fatal.

"I'm dying," I say.

I can feel this great weight lifting off me. There's no way I can be saved. No way I can win the games. But now…

Hephaestion is free. He's injured. But he's also strong enough to win this. He could live.

No. You're not dying. Hephaestion's next note reads. You're not supposed to die. We're meant to be the final two. I'm the one who's supposed to die.

I can hear Hephaestion sobbing. I'm dimly aware of the sound of a sponsor gift sliding through the wall. A medical kit. From Grandpa.

Grandpa…

I let him down. I let my family down.

But I saved Hephaestion.

But you can't save him from himself…

I come to another terrible realisation.

"Hephaestion," I whisper. "They sent you here to die for me, didn't they? Not Minaret. Me."

There's a moment of hesitation. Then a note appears.

I would've died for you. Now we die together, right?

He clutches the spindle close to his chest. Suddenly, fear grips me.

He's going to kill himself. He's going to kill himself because he loves me.

He's going to kill himself because District 2 sent him here to die for me and he can't live with the fact that he failed.

I can't let that happen.

"No," I say, tears in my eyes. "Live for me. When I'm gone, I want to know that you're okay. I need someone to take care of my family. And I want my remains to be… in a beautiful garden. I don't care if I'm buried or if my ashes are scattered there. I just want to be… somewhere green, where there are white roses. If… if I can still think where I'm going, I want to think of you."

There's no reply, just sobbing.

"Hephaestion, I love you," I say. "Do you love me?"

I'm scared. He writes. I know what he's scared of.

That this is the last time I tell him. That it's the last time he tells me.

"I'm scared, too. Tell me you love me. Kiss me."

Hephaestion sighs and lays down beside me. He holds up his final note. His final words to me.

Gus, my prince.

I love you. I will plant a garden for you.

Yours faithfully,

H.

I have to hold back tears as I move my head forwards and kiss Hephaestion. First I kiss his lips. Then I scatter gentle kisses all over the rest of his face - his cheeks, his forehead, his eyelids. The soft skin of his throat. The elegant line of his jaw. I feel so cold. All the sensation is draining out of my body. I want these last few moments. I want Hephaestion's warmth and everything I feel when I kiss him.

Then I take one last look at him. His face is in my hands. His eyes are staring into mine. Hephaestion is radiant and soft and deeply hurt and tearstained and powerful and alive.

"My knight," I whisper, forcing the last of the air out of my ruined lungs. "You don't need to fight for me anymore. Fight for yourself. You deserve to win this. You are the best friend I've ever had. I'll always love you. But it's time for you to let me go. I'm setting you free, Hephaestion."

I close my eyes. Press one last kiss to his forehead.

Then I carefully pry the spindle from his fingers.

The gamemakers lied. Hephaestion was cursed before Tsarina stabbed him with the spindle. Cursed to have filthy rebel blood. Cursed to be abused and belittled by everyone who knew his name. Cursed to be tethered to my side, protecting me.

Eventually, he'd be cursed to die for me.

But I want Hephaestion to live. I want him to win the games. I know he will stay by my side until my cannon fires, trying to piece me back together. He'll give me his time, his energy, his medical supplies, when I know he'll need it all. Hephaestion needs to focus on himself but I know he will only do that once I'm dead. They'll hate him if he leaves me before I die. And he'll hate himself even more.

I am scared that the last thing I'll ever see will be Tornada returning and killing Hephaestion. I'm scared that he'll be so focused on keeping me alive, delaying the inevitable, that he won't see her coming.

I can't protect him anymore. I'm only dragging him down into the grave with me.

I wonder what the gamemakers will do when I stain their spindle with my prince's blood. Victor blood. Capitol blood.

Then I drive it through my heart and set my true love free from his curse.


Before I begin this author's note, I just want to establish that I absolutely do NOT condone suicide in the real world. Gus committed suicide for two pretty valid reasons. He was well aware that he was already bleeding to death and only had a matter of hours left to live. Also, he didn't want Hephaestion to put his own life at risk caring for him in his final few hours. However, those reasons - especially the second - are very specific to the Hunger Games and aren't applicable to real life. They certainly do not apply to YOU, the reader. You are not bleeding to death and you have a chance to live a long and fulfilling life. The people who care for you are not putting their lives at risk and you can reach out the them whenever you need them. Mental illness is not like a fatal stab wound. It can be overcome. I would also like to highlight that Gus urged Hephaestion - who is mentally ill but still in a healthy enough physical condition to win the games - NOT to commit suicide because he still has the chance to win the games, overcome his mental illness and live a happy life.

Okay, time for a confession. This has been my plan since the interviews. Since the interviews, my plan has been to split the 76th Hunger Games into two parts. Part One is this story, Yours Faithfully (which was originally going to be called Keep the Faith), which was mainly focused on Gus. Part Two will be my next story, A Traitor's Tale, which will tell the stories of the rebels and rogues who outlived Gus - including Hephaestion and Tornada, our two district traitors. This will be this story's penultimate chapter, since Luka will not be a POV character in A Traitor's Tale and I want to give him a POV reacting to Gus' death.

10th Place: Tsarina Yezhova (D1), strangled by the thorns.
Tsarina was based on Nikolai Yezhov, one of the heads of the NKVD under Stalin, who was nicknamed 'The Bloody Dwarf' due to his short stature and love of torture. Those traits carried over into Tsarina. Tsarina was the perfect candidate for an early-games villain. She was very intimidating and slightly more complex than pre-games villain Meanaret but she wasn't as complex as endgame villain Tornada. She was an absolute monster but she was also a victim of her district's toxic beauty standards and she did have a bond of sorts with Tornada - which I'll explore more in the Tornada POVs of A Traitor's Tale. In the end, it felt logical to kill Tsarina this way because she was standing closest to Hephaestion when the thorn curse was activated.

9th Place: Lucinda Page (D7), strangled by the thorns
This just wasn't Lucinda's games. On an in-universe level, she was a survivalist in an alliance full of fighters in an arena that made her the weakest link in her alliance. On a more meta level, she was the last non-Gus tribute left who wasn't a criminal or a rebel, so she had to die before A Traitor's Tale started. However, she was kind of an MVP for choosing a journal as her district token and then letting Hephaestion borrow it. I got at least three title drops out of Lucinda's journal. I hereby award Lucinda the Maia Nuñez Award for quietly carrying her entire alliance and getting zero attention for it.

8th Place: Unknown tribute, unknown cause of death.
This tribute is either Annette, Petra, Spruce, Mitch or Mirabelle. All of these tributes have rebel ties so they all could've fit into the cast of A Traitor's Tale. I just wanted to have six POV tributes so I decided to kill one off early at the most dramatic moment possible. See if you can guess who they are.

7th Place: Guston Starkwain (D5), suicide after being fatally stabbed by Tornada
It was always my plan to kill off Gus. He was the main character, the chosen one, but he was never going to be the victor. Still, I got pretty attached to him over this story. He went from this insecure, sheltered kid to a confident, heroic leader. Unfortunately, his heroism got him killed, since he saved the wrong people. First Tornada, who stabbed him in the back after he saved her from the thorns and Hephaestion, who the Capitol wanted him to kill. The gamemakers actually set up this whole Sleeping Beauty scenario to force Gus to choose between Hephaestion and victory, his knight and his crown. If Gus had chosen to kill Hephaestion, the gamemakers would've warned him that Tornada would betray him. In the end, Gus was not the hero the Capitol wanted but the hero Hephaestion needed.

It also broke my heart writing Gus' death scene (personally, I think it's the saddest death scene I've written since Fawkes' death scene in The Bride And The Widow). He died close to his two greatest loves - Hephaestion and flowers. I've been dropping hints all story that Gus absolutely loves plants and would've been a great gardener. I think he only realised what his true passion was as he was dying. As for Hephaestion… I had so much fun developing Gus' relationship with Hephaestion from two strangers waving to each other from separate chariots to training buddies to ride-or-die allies to true love's kiss! Gus was the only character who saw Hephaestion for who he was - a beautiful, kind soul who had endured far too much pain and trauma - and gave him the kindness he deserved. I knew it was eventually going to end this way, with Gus sacrificing himself to save Hephaestion. I knew Gus was going to spend his final moments giving Hephaestion the strength to keep on fighting. And I knew Hephaestion was going to live on and become a POV character - and a major contender to win - in A Traitor's Tale.

Also, nerd bonus for people who've seen Game of Thrones… I started watching GoT midway through writing my final draft of this story (I've just finished Season 4 right now but I don't mind being spoiled because I'm weird) and I noticed some eerie similarities between Gus and Hephaestion and my favourite GoT ship, right down to the way Gus gets killed. I think I even leaned into it a little this chapter. See if you can guess who they are.