QUOTATIONS

"All the wisdom in the world is not worth a single child's tear. And I hold this to be true- even if I am wrong."

-Feodor Dostoevsky

"The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts." -Marcus Aurelius

"Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit."

-Aristotle

"That day, which governs only my poor frame,

May come at will to end my unfixed life,

But in my better and immortal part

I shall be borne beyond the lofty stars

And never will my name be washed away."

-Ovid (Metamorphoses: Book XV.871–879)

"This woman was the embodiment of Capitol shallowness. She was one of the stars of the Hunger Games until… until she wasn't."

-Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay: Ch. 22 pg. 328)

A PALACE OF PREDATOR AND PREY

Prologue:

Tigris watched her fortunes plummet with the boys as they collided into one another and went careening down the canyonside. Neither child uttered a sound as their starved and battered bodies began to churn against the cragged, orange canyon in violent ragdolling spirals. The boy from District 10 died a quarter of the way down the cliff face when the serrated knife locked in his grasp was embedded in his temple after he collided with a jagged outcropping of rock. Less than a second later, the boy from District 6 crashed through the thistly, razor-like branches of a dead tree protruding from the canyon wall, shredding him to pieces.

The hopes of a living Victor for the 24th Annual Hunger Games were slim when the boys went over the edge of the plateau. And it was a complete impossibility by the time what was left of them reached the valley below. The boy from 6 came raining down in sections while the boy from 10's lifeless corpse met with and broke open against a dusty boulder in the dried riverbed at terminal velocity. The wet, crunching splat of flesh, blood, and bone against the blistering earth echoed throughout the canyon, leaving behind the ear-splitting silence of wind lazily breezing by. Tigris sat on her velour upholstered couch, gawking in disbelief at the dismembered remains of a boy whose acne scars she put concealer over two weeks ago be strewn about the canyon floor.

This boy from 6 was so close to being the fourth tribute Tigris had successfully mentored to victory, more than any other Hunger Games stylist since she first landed the gig fourteen years ago. Now, Ballas was pulp. Damaged beyond repair. This was worse than bad: more terrible than any unsatisfying conclusion or anticlimax in the Games history- it was an absolute disaster. The nervous clinking of Tigris' ultra violet crystal fringe slip dress was the first sound to break through the thick tension of the air in her penthouse apartment. The words she uttered came falling out with a shameless earnestness as the tawny glow of the television screen washing over the room was extinguished and plunged everything into a bitter darkness:

"My life is over."

The front door slammed shut. Tigris realized that Nerilla, Chloris, and Ivory had just departed without a word as her eyes adjusted to the dim emptiness of the lavish, twelfth floor apartment steeped in late afternoon twilight. Her trio of stylist assistants and closest friends had been adamant they should spectate the final battle in her decadently renovated apartment building, so transformed from the shabby, old place she'd grown up in. Tigris had gone from being evicted from the property once upon a time to being the property owner just a decade later. She'd been of the assumption such wild swings in fortune were a thing of the past but that clearly wasn't true anymore. And Tigris knew her prep trio were likely kicking themselves figuratively and literally for ever requesting proximity to her as they hurriedly ran from 74 Cominia like it was about to explode.

Tigris shifted in her cushioned seat, gripped her white ostrich feather bag, and rose to exit. She looked down to the five carat diamond wedding ring on her trembling hand. Tigris couldn't imagine feeling sicker or being worse off, but considering Virgil's role in all of this, she knew he certainly could. In the entire history of the Hunger Games, no Head Gamemaker had ever botched a finale to this degree and the effects would be far reaching beyond their family home, beyond the Capitol, even. The priceless purple glass beads on the fringed frock she wore clattered against themselves as Tigris trotted across the recently laid porcelain tile and out the front door. She bypassed the elevator bay in embarrassment, too fearful of being stuck in an impossibly awkward conversation with one of her tenants. She steadied her coiffed updo of bleached locks and snatched off her amethyst coated high heeled shoes. Hurling the full weight of her slight frame into the heavy stairwell door, Tigris snapped off a few finely manicured gel nails as she pushed through and began bounding down the steps.

The one section of the building she'd neglected to update was this fissured and fluorescent stained concrete stairwell, the same one she raced down during air raids during the war as a little girl with her cousin and grandmother. She felt that same urgency now with her bare feet slapping against the cold, cracked concrete as she descended. Tigris could sense the sky falling again, life collapsing all around her as she sped towards the ground floor. Her mind was spiraling down with her, the thought of Virgil's handsome face and serene steadiness flashing against the intrusive mental images of a teenage boy's carcass being obliterated against a sandstone boulder were flashing with explosive force in her conscience. Tigris attempted to blink away the pictures splattered across her mind as she reached the final set of stairs and her foot caught on the top step.

The feather bag and amethyst high heels went flying in opposite directions. Tigris instinctively threw her arms out in front of herself. She envisioned the boys plunging down from the sky as she fell forward. The moment of peaceful weightlessness gave way to the crushing blow of her body slamming against the concrete stairs as gravity sent Tigris tumbling down the remaining steps to the ground floor landing. The world kept twisting around her once she came to a rest lying face down on the ground. Multicolored pin pricks of light and long tresses of undone hair obscured her vision. She sat up groaning while pressing at her temple, her mangled manicured fingers coming away tacky and red.

Before her rattled brain was able to process what had even happened, Tigris was picking at glimmering shards of ultraviolet glass beads and dislodged amethyst gems on the floor in the flickering fluorescent lights. She shook herself, dusting off the crystals that were adhered to her palms with blood into her dirt-stained feather bag. She collected the damaged heels from the floor before pushing open the ground floor landing door with a pained grunt, emerging out into the building's silent and vacant lobby. Tigris downcast her gaze as she hurriedly hobbled past all the finely polished reflective surfaces and made her way through the revolving door onto the Corso and into the still, hot night air.

As she trudged along the barren sidewalk, Tigris' anxieties grew over the eerie deadness of her environment. She'd never seen it like this but knew it only could mean one thing. When the Capitol shudders their windows and hides in their homes, the districts are typically doing the opposite. Tigris imagined how she might appear something like district at this very moment: marching down the streets in her filthy, tattered clothing. No doubt, civil unrest was parading across the country as a result of Virgil's finale, and Tigris grappled with the idea she somehow was two more feet in that march whether she wanted to be or not. But the laborious, seventeen block trek Tigris committed herself to had no greater or nobler destination than the uptown condo she shared with Virgil and their cat.

The condescending offering of a handkerchief from the doorman was instantly smeared crimson as Tigris pressed it to her temple and trudged over to the elevators across the lobby of her condo building. Sooty footprints stuck to the marble floors as she went, pressing on the up button with her equally stained fingertip that left behind a bloodied grime she had to wipe away with her bag. Tigris stepped inside the elevator, selecting her and Virgil's floor with her elbow as the doors closed and boxed her into its mirrored interior. Her vanity beating out her better judgment, Tigris raised her chin to be confronted by her four-way mirrored reflection.

A mangled, tarnished, blood-streaked woman was copied into infinity in all directions, the monstrous image of the worst version of herself she'd ever seen multiplied on and on into forever. Tigris stared at her haggard reflection, peering past the dirt, drying blood, and smeared makeup to see the wrinkles under it all. She pawed at the sweaty grime covering her forehead in an attempt to wipe away the lines beneath them to no avail. Age thirty-nine: ancient, withered, practically decaying. Tigris bit her cheek, snarled her upper lip, and furrowed her brow before raising and bringing down a vengeful fist against the face of her reflection, the fissures that radiated out from its impact splitting her into an even more distorted, broken nightmare.

Chattering snaps of the shattered mirror against the elevator's floor were responded to by the blithe ding of the doors opening. Ears ringing and head pounding, Tigris made her way down the short hall tracking blood onto the floor from her slashed knuckles. The tinny ringing in her mind spun faster and faster while Tigris dug in her bag for her key card to unlock the door, hearing wailing cries coming from the other side. She found the key, holding it against the reader at the knob and unlocking it with a click. The handle was ripped from Tigris' grasp- the door violently thrust open with a rush of air from within. Through the dark interior, Tigris could see the glimmering skyline of the Capitol out the living room window. As she flicked on the foyer light and called out to Virgil, the source of the crying came bounding around the corner.

Smax slid to a stop with raised, white fur. She gave a prolonged, anxious meow and flick of her bushy tail before turning back and trotting off, urgently returning the way she had come down the hall. Tigris followed, turning the corner to see Smax come to a rest at the master bedroom's door sitting open a jar. A narrow beam of golden light emanated out the opening of the room into the hall, basking Smax in a glow that caught the mournful reflection in her eyes as she turned to face Tigris. Those seventeen blocks Tigris trekked were a cake walk compared to the effort it took to simply enter the bedroom and approach the precipice of the opened window with its curtains billowing in the high-rise winds. And the visceral death Tigris felt so encapsulated by on the bare Corso was comparatively overflowing with life when she looked over the edge.

Months dragged on as Tigris faded further and further into something she couldn't recognize or respect. Her entire social circle seemed to agree, and overnight she was unemployed and ostracized. The near dozen buildings she and Virgil claimed ownership of were reduced to only one by the end of the year. Tigris' childhood home of 74 Cominia was the last building she was willing to lose, but her tarnished name and reputation complicated prospective tenants' interest in renting the mostly vacated units after her fall from grace. The building, once her triumph, was now her final, shriveling vestige of income that routinely failed to cover its own operating costs. Even after selling over half her closet, the miniscule funds she raked in could scarcely cover the dingy, subterranean basement of a one-bedroom studio Tigris and Smax were forced into in the humiliatingly distant outskirts of the Capitol.

Tigris had become so used to the demoralizing routine of thumbing through stacks of bills and notices of foreclosure shoved through her rusty mail slot, she had missed the starchy white envelope with a gold wax seal upon her first pass through. Her hands instantly went cold and clammy as the sweet scent of roses wafted off the envelope. She pried it open. With trembling fingers, widening eyes, and her jaw on the floor, Tigris began to read the letter: