I'm 23. I like to draw & write whatever interests me, with a little humor on the side.
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this is just a drawing I had on the back burner, so I might as well just put it out there. đ€·ââïž
otherwise, I havenât been active as of recently due to medical concerns (the ao3 curse caught up to me đ„Č), so Iâm not gonna be doing as much writing or drawing. My sincere apologies about this! Like I said, Iâll try my best, but Iâll try to get back to writing/drawing as soon as I am able!
thank you all for your support with my recent art pieces! đ€
so basically, Iâve been through the trenches when it comes to bloodymary, but believe it or not, I havenât seen nor read PHM (I know, Iâm not a real fan).
that being said, would you guys recommend watching the movie or reading the book to get the best experience out of it? I was going to try and get into PHM regardless of bloodymary, but I just wanted to know what everyoneâs preferences were!
âProject Hail Maryâ: Movie vs Book
Movie (starring Ryan Gosling)
Book (also starring Ryan Gosling, at least in my head)
Voting ended onJun 8
Iâm interested in doing fanart for BM but I just wanted to get the best possible impression out of Hail Mary, like I did for Iron Lung. Thatâs it!
so basically, Iâve been through the trenches when it comes to bloodymary, but believe it or not, I havenât seen nor read PHM (I know, Iâm not a real fan).
that being said, would you guys recommend watching the movie or reading the book to get the best experience out of it? I was going to try and get into PHM regardless of bloodymary, but I just wanted to know what everyoneâs preferences were!
âProject Hail Maryâ: Movie vs Book
Movie (starring Ryan Gosling)
Book (also starring Ryan Gosling, at least in my head)
Voting ended onJun 8
Iâm interested in doing fanart for BM but I just wanted to get the best possible impression out of Hail Mary, like I did for Iron Lung. Thatâs it!
Death of a Wildfire (25th Hunger Games) - Chapter VII
âNo one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.â
â Edward R. Murrow
<<<PREVIOUS CHAPTER | NEXT CHAPTER>>>
I taught Rosabel to draw a bow in the Secret Garden because I could not teach the district mercy.
That was the shape of it, though I hated the sound of the thought. Mercy should have been the easier thing, something that should have lived in mothers clutching their childrenâs shoulders and fathers counting the heads around supper tables. It should have been waiting in the millhouses, the academy halls, the market road, in every place where people still had to look one another in the face after the voting was done.
But mercy had gone scarce that week.
So, instead, I taught Rose how to stand.
Feet apart, weight even, elbow high. Shoulders loose, though she never kept them that way for long. She carried fear there. Most people carried it in their hands or mouths. Rose carried it just beneath her collarbones, tight enough that I could see it when she breathed.
âAgain,â Iâd say. And she would pull.
The bow I made for her was ugly, rushed, and illegal enough to hang us both if the wrong person found it. Not my finest work, but it held its curve, and the string did not snap. That counted for more than beauty. I carved it in the dark behind the Tempest barn, shaving down the limbs by lamplight with one eye on the road and the other on my own foolishness.
Rose had stared at it the first morning like I had handed her a live snake.
âYou made that?â She had said.
âIt works.â
âThat wasnât what I asked.â She practically rolled her eyes.
In return, I shrugged. âItâs what matters.â
At first, the arrows landed nowhere useful. In the grass or dirt. The side of a fallen log. Once, a fern so innocent I almost apologized to it. Rose had good eyes but too much thought in her. She wanted to understand the lesson before she trusted her body with it. She wanted to know where the arrow would go before she released it, which was not how arrows worked, nor how life worked in general, though I spared her that little wisdom because I enjoyed keeping my teeth.
By the third morning, she struck bark. And the fifth? She struck it twice.
By the sixth, she lowered the bow after a clean hit and looked at the target not with triumph, but with something more cautious. Recognition. As if some part of her had understood that this was no longer practice.
I did not teach her because I believed it would be enough. A week of stolen mornings could not make a hunter out of a girl who should have been finishing essays and complaining about academy lunches. I knew that. She knew it too. Still, we went before dawn to that hidden scrap of green and worked until her fingers reddened and the sun began lifting over the grass.
I taught her how to listen for movement. Where to step where the ground would forgive her. How to tell a rabbit trail from a badger path. Or to cut her own panic down to one breath at a time.
The rest I could not give her. In a better district or a fairer world, she wouldâve understood that simply in time. Instead, I gave her what my hands could make.
A bow or knife. Anything of use. Even a few dirty tricks.
The lie that preparation was close enough to protection to let either of us sleep. By the morning before Reaping Day, every child of reaping age in District 9 had been gathered into New Bisman.
That was how it had always been done, more or less. A week before the Reaping, the families from the outer farms, river settlements, mill roads, and grain stations began making their way toward town. Some came by wagon, others by horse, some even walking with bundles tied to their backs and younger children dragging behind them. For ordinary Games years, the week had an ugly usefulness to it. Children reported for collection, confirmed their ages and entries, and the clerks counted the many ways hunger had written their names into the lottery.
The district, being what it was, made a market of the terror anyway.
Vendors opened early. Traders unfolded patched canvas over crates of salt, needles, lamp oil, dried fruit, bootlaces, secondhand coats, and little paper twists of sugar meant for children whose parents could spare the coin. The butchers smoked sausages near the station road. Women sold bread from cloth-lined baskets. Men argued over tool parts and wagon wheels. Someone roasted corn over a barrel fire as if the smell of it could keep dread from gathering in the throat.
New Bisman grew loud during Reaping week. Much too loud.
That was the first thing Rose noticed as she walked toward town hall without her cousins to accompany her. Usually during collection, Waaska would be on one side and Nibs on the other.
Now, all she had was the sand in her boots.
The noise had weight to it this year. No joy nor proper bustle. It was the sound of people trying to prove they were still people before the Capitol reminded them they were numbers.
Children filled the square in dark uniforms, patched work coats, good dresses worn too early in the morning, boots scrubbed as clean as mud allowed. Some had come in from so far out that they still smelled faintly of horse sweat, straw, and cold road. Younger ones clung to older siblings. Older ones pretended not to be afraid and failed in ways Rose found almost unbearable.
A boy from the north mill road laughed too hard at something his friend said, then went quiet when his mother touched the back of his head. A girl no older than thirteen stood stiff as a fence post while her father fixed the ribbon at her collar, his hands shaking worse than hers.
Near the intake line, Waylynn Scranton was shaking like a leaf while Burr stood beside his younger brother, looking furious enough to bite through iron. The Rolette grandkids werenât far behind, with their lips pressed thin, just like their grandfather, watching the booths as if they might disappear altogether if they looked hard enough.
Rose looked away before anyone could catch her staring.
That was the trouble. Everywhere she looked, someone was breaking. Everywhere she did not look, she felt someone watching.
The voting stations had been built outside town hall overnight.
They were not like the old collection tables. Those had been plain things, ugly but familiar; long desks, registration books, gray-faced clerks, peacekeepers standing near enough to remind everyone that math belonged to the Capitol. This time, everything was different. This had structure. Intention. A cruelty dressed up as civic order.
Three intake stations stood beneath the town hall awning, each marked by a black number and guarded by peacekeepers in polished helmets. Beyond them, a row of voting booths had been arranged beneath temporary canvas walls, each one narrow enough to swallow a child whole and return them changed. Capitol seals had been stamped across the privacy screens. Fresh ink. Fresh paper. Fresh lie.
At the first station, children gave their names. At the second, their age and district sector were confirmed. At the third, a ballot was placed into their hands.
Then they were sent to choose which child might die.
Rose tried to keep her head down. It wasnât helping. Whispers moved faster than she did.
Not always words, though. Sometimes just the shift of attention, the brief quiet that followed her, the small pull of mothers drawing children closer, though whether from pity or resentment she could not tell. A boy from the academy looked at her and then away so quickly it felt rehearsed. One of Carrigan Killdeerâs friends leaned toward another girl with her mouth half-hidden behind her hand.
Rose continued forward.
The intake line moved slowly because no one wanted it to move at all. Children stepped up one by one and gave their names like confessions.
âImogen Emerado. Sixteen. South mill quarter.â
âNEXT!â
âRuth Oxbow. Fourteen. East elevator row.â
âNEXT!â
At the edge of the line, two mothers murmured over their childrenâs heads.
âJust write one of the jail names,â one said, voice barely low enough to pretend at decency. âThatâs what we told Hayle. There are boys locked up already. Ones whoâve made trouble.â
âB-But it still counts?â
âOf course it counts! Theyâre eligible!â
Roseâs stomach gave a traitorous little lift. Something almost like relief⊠but not quite. It was meaner and horribly human. For one terrible second, she thought, âThen maybe not meâŠâ
The shame came so fast after that she nearly lost her footing.
She hated herself for it. Hated the warm, instinctive flare of survival in her chest. Or that she could hear a mother suggest throwing some imprisoned boy toward death and feel her own lungs loosen. Hated that the Capitol had made even mercy competitive.
The line had finally moved, and the first intake station stood before her. The clerk did not look old enough to have such tired hands. He sat behind a ledger with two peacekeepers at his back, possibly having a Capitol official in his ear at all times. His pen hovered above the page.
âName?â
âRosabel Tempest-Strix.â
The pen hesitated. Only for half a breath. Rose still saw it.
The peacekeeper behind him saw it too.
The clerk cleared his throat and wrote her name. âAge?â
âSeventeen.â She calmly replied.
âResidence?â
âTempest property, south pasture road.â Again, calm.
Rose could almost hear the words arranging themselves in other peopleâs mouths.
The clerk stamped the first mark beside her name and sent her on. At the second station, her information was checked against another ledger. At the third, a woman in a gray Capitol uniform handed her a ballot.
The paper was heavier than Rose expected. That was the first stupid thing she thought. How heavy it felt. Cream-colored, clean-edged, official. As if better paper made murder more civilized.
âProceed to an open booth.â the woman said as if she had said it a thousand times, because she had. âAny falsified names will automatically receive a fine and a recorded revote.â
Rose looked at the ballot. There were two blank lines beneath the printed instruction:
ELIGIBLE NAME(S) HERE.
One boy and one girlâŠ
As if the district did not contain whole lives.
Like one name could be separated from supper tables, school desks, half-mended coats, favorite songs, little brothers, bad tempers, chores left undone, mothers who would not survive the grief, fathers who would pretend toâŠ
⊠behind her, someone sniffled.
Rose turned slightly.
A few places back, Dido Westhopeâs oldest child stood with a ballot clutched in both hands. She had always been a sharp little thing, all elbows and suspicion, but now she looked smaller than her age. Her pencil hovered over the page without touching it. Dido stood beyond the rope line where parents were made to wait, face hard, hands locked together at her waist. She did not call out nor did she guide her. She did not save her child from the choice.
No one could. A peacekeeper stepped closer to the girl.
âWrite.â he ordered.
The child flinched and bent over the ballot. Rose turned away.
The booth smelled of fresh wood, ink, and canvas warmed by too many frightened bodies. Once inside, the square became a blur of shadows on the other side of the screen. A private place in public. A coffin with paperwork.
Rose laid the ballot flat. Her pencil was already there, tied to the booth by a short black cord.
She stared at the blank line. She thought of the names people had been saying all week.
The imprisoned kids? The gang kids? The girls with reputations their mothers could not wash clean? The academy children with too much privilege? The field children with too little protection? The ones whose parents had enemies? Or those whose parents had no power at all?
She thought of Waaska. Fifteen, anxious, watchful, guilty enough to fold in on herself. She thought of Nibs, too young this year, but not for another couple of years. Not always. She thought of herself, though she tried not to.
The pencil sat between her fingers.
Nothing in her wanted to move.
Outside, the square murmured and shifted. A child cried. A man coughed. Somewhere a vendor laughed too loudly, then stopped. The whole district waited in the terrible politeness of people pretending this was a process and not a wound.
Rose pressed the pencil down. The name she wrote was never one she said aloud or on paper.
Not that day. Not later. Not in the years when confession might have made it easier to carry. Maybe she simply forgot the shape of the letters or remembered too well. It could be that the guilt was less about the person she chose than the fact that she chose at all.
I never asked. There are questions that only prove you have the luxury of needing an answer.
When Rose stepped out of the booth, her face had changed and anyone else might have missed it. Her braids still lay neat over her shoulders. Her dress was still buttoned at the throat. Her chin was still lifted enough to make people call her composed if they wanted a prettier word for trapped.
Though, her eyes looked older. She folded the ballot once, as instructed, and carried it to the sealed box beneath the Capitol seal. The box had a narrow mouth. That detail stayed with her. She explained that much.
The ballot disappeared inside with hardly a sound, and just like that, Rosabel Tempest-Strix had helped choose someone.
She stood there for one breath too long. A Peacekeeper cleared his throat. âMove along.â
And she did.
Past the booths. and the intake stations. Past Waylynn Scranton, who had stopped shaking and now only stared at his busted-up boots. Past Carrigan and the little cluster of academy girls, who parted slightly as Rose approached, not enough to be kind and not enough to be openly cruel. Past the parents who looked at her with pity that felt like an accusation.
Thatâs where Waaska found her, near the edge of the square.
âR-Rose?â her voice slightly broke.
A month had passed with the cousins awkwardly dancing around the situation, of Waaskaâs potential assistance in helping spread rumors, forever smudging Rosabelâs title. They never talked of the moment. Waaska felt too much guilt to be fully upfront about the situation. Rose, of course, knew that.
The girl, only fifteen, nervously looked on as her elder cousin approached, guilt hung over with fear as she nervously bit down on the inside of her cheek. âSo⊠are you done? With the vote, I mean?â
The redhead came to a halt as she faced the younger girl. Her honeyed eyes glazed with fear at what her cousin would say next. Something accusatory or possibly hurt? Rose could see the treacherous fear in her face.
Rose knew it before she looked at her hands, though that was where the proof sat plainest. A gray smudge of pencil dust marked the side of Waaskaâs finger. Her thumb worried at it like she could rub the whole morning away if only she pressed hard enough.
âYes,â Rose said. âIâm done.â
Waaska nodded too quickly. âMe too.â
Neither of them asked the other for a name.
The square had not stopped moving around them. Children still entered booths and still came out changed. A man near the vendors shouted that hot cider was half-price, his voice cracking somewhere in the middle of the offer. A peacekeeper corrected a boy who had stepped out of line. Somewhere beneath the awning, the intake clerk stamped another page.
Rose could not stop hearing that sound.
Stamp. Next. Stamp. NextâŠ
Waaska opened her mouth, closed it, then looked past Rose toward the voting boxes as if the words she needed might be sitting there beside the Capitol seal.
âI didnât,â she said at last.
Rose tilted her head. âDidnât what?â
âVote⊠for you.â
The sentence came out so fiercely that it almost sounded like an accusation. Rose simply blinked.
Waaskaâs eyes went wide, horrified by her own tone. âI mean, I didnât. I swear on Tunkaâs hands, Rose, I didnât write your name. I would never-â
âWaaska?â
âI wouldnât.â The raven-haired girl rapidly shook her head in desperation. âI-I swear!â
âI believe you.â
The younger girl stared at her, breathing too fast.
Rose kept her voice gentle because anything else might break them both. âI didnât think you had.â
That should have soothed her. Yet, Waaskaâs face crumpled, not all at once but in pieces. First her mouth, then her brow, then the careful hardness she had been trying to hold over herself like a roof in bad weather.
âBut I did something,â she whimpered, her head shaking ever so slightly.
Rose went still. Something had sat between them for weeks, too large to step around and too tender to touch. The thing Waaska had carried in her throat every time she entered a room and found Rose already there. The thing Rose had known without being told because love made people transparent in the cruelest ways.
Waaska hugged her arms around herself. âI⊠I didnât mean for it to happen the way it did.â
Rose looked at the ground between them. The dirt had been churned to powder by hundreds of boots.
Rose simply nodded. âI know.â
âNo, you donât.â Waaska shook her head, tears shining hot in her eyes. âYou donât know all of it! B-Because itâs worse than you think!â
âI know enough.â Rose attempted to comfort.
âI told everybody though! I-I told Enrique! I told-â
Roseâs fingers curled against her skirt.
Waaska saw the movement and started speaking faster, as if speed could outrun consequence. âI didnât tell him like gossip. I didnât. I-I was scared, and he kept asking why you were acting strange, and I said maybe it had something to do with the Capitol boy, and then she asked if I meant Snow, and I didnât say no fast enough. Then he told his sister, and Carrigan made it ugly because Carrigan makes everything ugly when she wants to feel taller than someone elseâŠâ
Rose said nothing.
Waaska wiped her cheeks with both hands, only smearing the tears with pencil dust. âI-I tried to take it back. It wasnât enough, b-but I tried! Honest!â
Rose wrinkled her brow. âYou canât take back a thing after people prefer the wrong version.â
âIâŠâ Waaskaâs guilt had completely overwhelmed her. ââŠI know.â
âAnd people preferred it, ya know?â Rose reinstated. âThatâs not something you can help.â
Waaskaâs breath hitched.
Rose looked toward the booths. One canvas flap opened, and a girl from the academy stepped out with her ballot folded between both hands like a dead bird. Her mother tried to meet her at the rope, but a peacekeeper held her back until the girl had dropped the paper into the box.
Rose watched the ballot disappear.
âRose,â Waaska said, so softly it barely reached her. âIâm sorry.â
The words should have done something.
They should have opened a wound. Let fresh air in, loosened the hard knot in Roseâs chest. She had wanted that once, badly enough to imagine them while brushing her hair or lying awake in the dark, rehearsing the exact shape of Waaskaâs confession, the tears, the explanation, the hug that might follow.
Now? Now they were here, they felt too small for the room they had to fill.
Rose turned back to her cousin. âI know you are.â
Waaska flinched. âThatâs⊠all?â
âWell, what do you want me to say?â
âI donât know.â Her voice cracked. âSomething. Yell at me. Tell me I ruined everything. Tell everyone that Iâm awful.â
âWaaska,â Rose chimed. âYouâre not awful.â
âBut⊠I am.â
âNo.â Rose shook her head. âYou were scared. And jealous, which isnât a bad thing. Everyoneâs jealous of someone. You were angry at me for leaving, even though I shouldâve been the one to assure you otherwise, and you said something careless to someone cruel.â
Waaska pressed her lips together as if the accuracy hurt worse than accusation.
âThat doesnât make you awful,â Rose said. âIt just means⊠you need to be more responsible is all.â
A tear slipped down Waaskaâs cheek. Rose wanted to reach for her. Her hand twitched with the old instinct, the easy cousin-shape of comfort, but she kept it at her side. Forgiveness had come to her already. Trust had not caught up.
âI forgave you before you asked,â Rose admitted.
Waaska looked up sharply.
âReally, I did.â Roseâs voice stayed quiet. âI didnât want to at first. Itâs easy to be angry because anger feels cleaner than being hurt. But⊠I know you. I know your heart, even when youâre not careful with it.â
Waaska made a broken sound and covered her mouth.
âBut forgiving you doesnât fix it,â Rose continued. âIt doesnât pull the words back out of everyoneâs ears.â
âI know,â Waaska whispered.
âAnd if they call my name tomorrow-â
âDonât.â Waaska stepped toward her. âPlease. Donât say that.â
Rose stopped. There it was again. That same look I had given her when she spoke too plainly of what could happen. As if naming the thing invited it in. As if the thing had not already been standing among them, patient and well-fed.
âWaaska,â Rose tried again. âListenâŠâ
âNo.â Waaskaâs voice rose. A few people nearby glanced over. She lowered it quickly, but the panic stayed. âNo, donât talk like that. Please. I didnât vote for you. And I know⊠families shouldnât turn on one another. And⊠Iâd understand if you voted me. You know?â
âI know.â Rose swallowed. âBut⊠that doesnât have to be that way.â
Waaska shook her head. âI deserve it.â
âNo you donât.â
Waaska simply stared at her.
Rose didnât like the way her cousin looked then, younger than fifteen and older than childhood, standing in the square with pencil dust on her fingers and fear making a prison out of her face.
âThe district is scared,â Rose assured. âScared people donât always choose kindly.â
âBut they shouldnât choose you.â
âTheyâll choose whoever makes the most sense to them.â
At this, Waaska huffed back in frustration, her own private form of rebellion. âThat⊠shouldnât make sense!â
Rose almost smiled at that, though it hurt. âNo?â
âNo.â Waaska shook her head hard. âIt ainât fair! All of this⊠forcing us to turn on one another? H-How can we possibly live with this? Live with this being our only defining choice in life?â
âWaaska-â Rose carefully looked at any nearby peacekeepers who could catch what her cousin was saying.
âWeâre notâŠâ Her voice broke before she could finish. ââŠweâre not just a name on paper!â
Roseâs throat tightened so quickly that for a moment she could not answer.
Around them, the square went on being the square. Somebody bought bread, before they dropped a coin. A horse stamped and a peacekeeper called for the line to move faster. Rose looked past Waaska, past the booths, past the town hall where tomorrow the ballots would become a verdict.
âThatâs the point,â she admitted, remembering what Coriolanus had told her.
Waaska went still.
Rose looked back at her. âThey need somebody⊠possibly me to be the name on that paper. Itâs easier that way.â
Waaska, still wearing her defiance, argued. âNo.â
âYes.â Rose sighed. âIt is.â
âNo, Rose!â Her voice was so full of terror that Rose finally reached for her.
Waaska came apart the instant Rose touched her.
She collapsed forward, arms winding tight around Roseâs waist, face buried against her shoulder like she had done as a little girl after nightmares. Rose held her automatically, one hand against the back of Waaskaâs head, the other between her shoulder blades.
The hug hurt, which surprised her. The hug itself did not erase all that had come before. Waaskaâs tears soaked into the collar of Roseâs dress. Her body shook with every breath. Rose closed her eyes and let the noise of the square blur into something distant.
âIâm sorry,â Waaska kept saying. âIâm sorry. Iâm so sorry. I didnât want them to hate you.â
Rose simply held her baby cousin.
Waaskaâs cries grew ragged. âI⊠didnât want them to look at you like that.â
Rose felt her eyes misting. âI know.â
âI was mad,â The young girl hiccupped. âB-Because I thought you were leaving us behind.â
Rose opened her eyes. There, finally, was the small ugly truth beneath the bigger ugly truth. She looked over Waaskaâs head at the voting booths.
âI was trying to make somewhere we could all go,â Rose softly admitted.
âI know that now.â Waaska cried harder. âA-And maybe you still can.â
Rose rested her cheek lightly against her cousinâs hair. For one moment, it was almost enough to pretend they were back at the lodge, that Waaska had only broken a dish or ruined a ribbon or said something sharp over breakfast. Something small enough that an apology could heal it before supper.
But the ballot boxes stood beneath the Capitol seal. And tomorrow, someoneâs name would be spoken. Waaska pulled back enough to look at her. Her eyes were red and wide, searching Roseâs face for anger and finding something worse.
âYou already think itâs going to be you,â she whispered, though her head still shook in denial.
Rose did not answer fast enough.
Waaskaâs grip tightened around her arms. âRose?â
âI think,â Rose said carefully, âthat if it is me, I donât want my last day before the Reaping to be spent pretending I didnât see it coming.â
Waaska looked as though Rose had slapped her. âNo.â
âWaaska-â
âNo, donât do that.â Her cousinâs face suddenly became stern, just like Auntie Miseaâs. âDonât make peace with it.â
âIâm not making peace with it.â Rose tried to soften the blow.
âYou are. You sound like-â Waaska choked on the words. âYou sound like youâre already walking onto that stupid stage.â
Roseâs stomach turned, since Waaska was either wrong. Or right.
All week, with the makeshift bow in her hands and bark splitting under her arrows, Rose had felt some secret part of herself begin moving ahead of her body. Toward the square, the stage, and to whatever hellish nightmare came after. It was not surrender, exactly. It was preparation. Or maybe the two were closer than she wanted them to be.
âIâm scared,â Rose nodded, trying her best to hold back tears.
Waaska froze. Rose had not meant to say it, at least no so soon. Especially, not with half the district close enough to see her if they looked too hard. Though the words were out now, plain and shaking.
âIâm so scared I donât know what to do with it,â Rose whispered, a humorless smile etching itself to her features. âBut if I let myself fall apart every time I think of tomorrow⊠I wonât be able to stand when it matters.â
Waaskaâs face crumpled again. âYou shouldnât have to stand.â
âNo,â Rose said. âI shouldnât.â
No one shouldâŠ
That truth sat between them, useless and complete. Waaska looked down at her pencil-smudged thumb. âI wrote⊠a name.â
Roseâs breath caught. âWaaska, you donât-â
âA-And it was mine.â
The confession landed harder than Rose expected. Hearing that her cousin had done such a thing made the whole situation more real. The idea that Waaska had condemned herself to such a point where she would rather die in her familyâs place⊠it made Rosabelâs heart sink. Neither of them was clean, no. They had still condemned a district boy regardlessâŠ
Rose reached down and took Waaskaâs marked hand in hers.
âWeâre⊠not going to talk about the names,â she finally said.
Waaska nodded, crying silently now.
âIf it happens,â If they pull my name. âJust⊠keep strong. Donât put on a show for them. Not for the peacekeepers. Not for the crowds. Not for whoever is whispering. Promise?â
âW-Why?â
Because I need someone to remember this is real. That I donât know if Iâll be brave unless someone who loves me doesnât die alongside me. That if they turn me into a tribute, I need one face in that square that still knows my name means more than deathâŠ
Rose swallowed all of that down. âBecause⊠I will be strong for you.â
Waaska made another broken sound and hugged her again, tighter this time. Rose held on.
Above them, the town hall clock began to toll. The sound rolled over the square, iron and indifferent. One bell. Then another. Children shifted in the lines. Parents looked toward the sky, toward the booths, toward anything except one another.
When the final bell faded, Waaska pulled away and wiped her face with the heel of her hand.
Together, they stepped away from the voting booths and into the living noise of New Bisman, where the vendors still called, the peacekeepers still watched, and the ballot boxes sat full beneath the Capitol seal, holding twenty-four hoursâ worth of fear in their narrow mouths.
Rose did not sleep so much as surrender to stillness. I knew because I had not slept either.
The Tempest house had been quiet through the dark hours, but not peaceful. Peace had weight to it. It settled into floors, into walls, into the breathing of sleeping bodies. This quiet was different. It waited. Every creak of timber sounded too loud or shift of wind against the shutters came like a hand on the glass. Even Wolfie, who usually huffed and scratched and turned circles before lying down, had gone still near the loft way as if he understood that any noise might tip the night into morning faster.
Morning came anyway. That was the cruel thing about it. No amount of dread slowed the sun.
By first light, Rose was awake, if she had ever truly stopped being so. She came into the kitchen already dressed in her underlayers, her hair loose down her back, auburn waves mussed from the pillow and restless hands. There were faint shadows beneath her eyes. Not deep enough to draw pity from a stranger, perhaps, but I knew her face too well to miss them.
She looked younger with her hair down. That bothered me more than it should have.
âMorninâ,â I simply greeted.
Rose glanced toward the window. The sky outside had just begun to pale. âAlready?â
âTechnically.â I sighed.
Rosabel glared at the skyline. âRude...â
I almost smiled. There was porridge on the stove because my hands had needed something to do before they became fists. I had burned the first batch and scraped the pot clean before she swooped in. The second sat warming over the lowest flame, edible if no one had standards worth defending.
Rose looked at the pot. âWhereâd you learn to cook?â
âMyself.â I shrugged, in halfhearted jest.
âThat bad?â
I snort out a laugh. âBetter at gettingâ the source, thank you!â
Her mouth twitched, but the expression faded before it could become anything useful. She sat at the table, folding her hands together so tightly her knuckles went pale.
I set a bowl in front of her. She looked at it for a while.
âEat,â I said, softer than an order.
She shook her head. âIâm not hungry.â
âExactly.â I pushed the bowl further in her direction. âEat.â
Her eyes lifted to mine. I did not point out that hunger had very little to do with her appetite. She understood that. That was the whole, stubborn trouble with Rose. She understood too much, and understanding had started cutting into places childhood should have protected.
She took the spoon. Three bites. Four at best.
Didnât count after that because counting felt too close to collection.
A dress had been laid over the back of Virgilâs old chair.
Rose had brought it down before dawn, though I had not seen her do it. It hung there in the kitchen light like a memory that had not decided whether it wanted to comfort or accuse. The fabric was green with a faint warmth to it, the kind of color that passed through grass when sunlight caught it and made it look softer. Prairie roses had been stitched along the hem and cuffs in small curling clusters, their threadwork careful, old, and too lovely for a day like this.
It had belonged to Virgil and Miseaâs mother, thinking back on it.
I remembered the first time I saw it. Not on Rose, but tucked away in a cedar box years before, wrapped in cloth and dried lavender. Virgil had shown it to me once when he was trying to find proper reaping clothes for a young Rose, running his fingers over the embroidery with a look on his face I pretended not to see. He had said his mother wore it to festivals before the war made festivals feel foolish. Said Misea had nearly worn it for her own wedding before deciding it was too decorative, yet delicate for a woman who intended to spend half the day hauling tables herself.
Rose had never worn it. She hadnât quite filled it out yet⊠not until that Reaping morning.
She followed my gaze and said, âAuntie thought I should.â
âYeah.â I nodded. âMiseaâs usually right about those things.â
Rose looked back down at the porridge. âShe said it would make Papa happy.â
My throat tightened.
She scraped her spoon along the bottom of the bowl. âHopefully itâll be⊠like taking a piece of him with me.â
âYeah,â I agreed, my eyes landing on Virgilâs hat hanging near the door. âSuppose it will be.â
It was the only honest thing I could earnestly say aloud.
After breakfast, if the few spoonfuls she managed could be called that, we rode to the Mniwakan lodge. The road to the lodge felt shorter than usual. Far too quick. There should have been more distance. More dust. Maybe more time for the world to reconsider itself.
Rose rode beside me in silence, her shawl wrapped over the underdress and her hands holding the reins too neatly. Wildfire seemed to sense something wrong in her rider. The mare moved with unusual care, not skittish exactly, but attentive, ears flicking back every few breaths.
At that point, I thought back to the Secret Garden. At the possibility that⊠maybe we could change route. Hide Rose away until the Reaping was long over. Then, I remembered everything we prepared for up until that moment.
The bow was not with us, nor was the knife I had shaped down to fit Roseâs hand. Obviously. They were hidden where no peacekeeper had reason to look, wrapped in oilcloth and tucked beneath the loose floorboard of the Secret Garden. Useless today, maybe dangerous instead. Everything I had given her mattered only if tomorrow became worse than this one.
That thought sat like a stone in my mouth. Rose noticed me staring too hard at the road.
âAuphie,â she broke me free from my thoughts. âYou donât need to do that.â
âDoing what?â
âThink about⊠it.â She was referring to the Garden. âEverythingâs⊠going to be okay.â
âSuppose.â I steer Errante away from a loose bit of shrub. âExcept, we donât have to do this, ya know?â
âReally.â Rosabel furrowed her face. âAnd if they call my name today and Iâm not there, what then?â
âRosabel.â
She gave me the smallest look. âAuphidius.â
âYou know what Iâm sayinâ,â I try again. âIâm just⊠lookinâ out. Is all.â
âI know.â This time, her smile lasted almost three seconds. âBut Iâm seventeen not seven. Hope you know that.â
That was the issue. I did.
Finally, New Bismanâs rooftops began to show through the morning haze, and it vanished. The Mniwakan lodge was already awake when we arrived. On reaping day, it wasnât as chaotic in the mornings. Rather, most of the cousins within the respective age range would remain silent. Focus on morning chores and tell their Tunka Ziibi that they loved him ten times more than they usually did.
Though, this morning, Reaping day appeared even worse.
Misea was in the main room, tying cloth bundles that did not need tying. Bread, dried fruit, a tin of salve, and a flask of water. Practical, useless things. Things a woman could place into a bag to keep from placing both hands around grief and shaking it until it answered.
Gami stood near the stove with his arms folded, staring into the fire as if he had forgotten why it was there. Tunka sat in his usual chair, wrapped in his blanket, his eyes open but distant. Nibs hovered near the table, too quiet, his hair still sticking up in the back because no one had had the heart to fuss at him for it.
Waaska stood by the window. When Rose entered, everyone looked at her. Then everyone looked away too quickly.
There was an air of carefulness. Rose felt it land on her skin like cold rain.
âRosie,â Misea said, brisk in the way people get when tenderness threatens to ruin them. âCome here. Let me see you.â
Rose crossed the room.
Misea took her face between both hands and looked her over, not as if checking whether she was clean or properly dressed, but as if memorizing the exact arrangement of her features before the district tried to make them public property.
âYou didnât sleep,â Misea said.
Rose smiled. âNeither did you.â
âIâm old.â She scolded the girl, though not out of real reprimanding. âIâm allowed to look dreadful.â
âYou donât.â Roseâs mouth trembled.
Misea saw it and immediately busied herself with the shawl clasp. âCome on, then. Weâll finish you up proper. Canât have the whole district thinking we let you leave the house looking like a windstorm with legs.â
Rosabel shrugged. âI donât think 9 cares what I wear.â
âMen care about all sorts of things they pretend not to.â Misea reminded her niece. âUsually the wrong ones.â
Gami made a faint sound into his cup. It might have been a laugh, if the morning had been kinder.
Misea led Rose toward the small washroom off the hall. Waaska took one step as if to follow, then stopped. Her hands twisted together in front of her.
Rose noticed.
âYou can come,â she said quietly.
Waaskaâs face shifted with such gratitude it almost hurt to look at.
I stayed in the main room with the other cousins and Nibs. For a while, no one spoke.
The lodge had its usual smells with its smoke, wool, cedar, dried sage, yesterdayâs bread, the faint sweetness of berry preserves cooling near the pantry. Smells of home. They felt indecent against the day ahead, as if the world had forgotten to strip the comfort out before the Capitol arrived to do its work.
Nibs sat down at the table and dragged one finger through a nick in the wood.
âYou going to the square?â he asked me.
âKinda have to.â I causally retorted.
Nibs nodded, lingering on that answer like it actually meant anything. âWith her?â
âAs far as theyâll let me.â
He nodded, though his jaw had gone tight. He huffed, half laughing, but close enough that Gamiâs face softened for half a breath before hardening again.
From the washroom came the sound of water being poured into a basin. A drawer opened. Cloth rustled. Misea murmured something too low to catch. Then Waaskaâs voice, soft and uncertain, answered.
Rose told me later that washing her face felt like the first wrong thing.
It should have been nothing. Just some cool water and soap. A cloth across the cheeks, the jaw, the back of the neck. She had done it every morning of her life. Though that day, every ordinary movement felt ceremonial in the worst way. Like preparing for judgment, as someone had taken the small private rituals of being alive and turned them into steps before a public hanging.
Misea helped her into the dress.
The fabric settled over Rose quietly, green-colored and old, the prairie roses curling around her sleeves like something stubborn enough to bloom anyway. The fit was not perfect. It had been made for another woman in another year, but Misea pinned and tucked with practiced hands until it looked intentional.
Waaska stood behind Rose with the ribbon. It was pale gold, almost the color of dried wheat when the sun caught it right. Her fingers shook so badly she fumbled the first knot.
âIâm sorry,â she whispered.
Rose met her eyes in the little cracked mirror. âFor the ribbon?â
Waaska swallowed. âFor shaking.â
Miseaâs hands paused at Roseâs hair. No one said anything.
Waaska tried again. This time she managed to fasten the ribbon at the end of Roseâs braid, careful not to pull too hard. Rose watched herself in the mirror and struggled to understand the girl looking back.
She looked nice. That felt horrible.
The green dress softened her. The embroidered roses made her look like someoneâs daughter, someoneâs hope, someone who had woken for a festival instead of a Reaping. Her twin braids lay over her shoulders, each tied neatly. The ribbon held. Her face was pale, freckles refusing to wash away but clean. Her eyes looked too bright.
She wondered, with sudden nausea, whether people would see the dress and think she was trying to look innocent. Or worse, whether they would think she was trying to look worthy of mourning.
âBoots,â Misea said, biting back a sniffle.
Rose sat on the bench while Waaska brought them over.
The white boots had sunflowers stitched along the sides in yellow thread, their petals small and cheerful. Too cheerful. Rose had loved them once. She had begged to wear them too often when she was younger, even through mud, until Virgil threatened to lock them away if she ruined the embroidery.
Now she stared at them like they belonged to another girl.
âYou donât have to wear those,â Waaska said quickly, mistaking her silence. âWe can find your brown pair, or-â
âNo.â Rose reached for one. âThese are fine.â
Fine. What an awful little word.
She pulled them on one at a time. The leather creaked softly around her ankles. .
Misea finally finished the last button at Roseâs wrist. Then she turned away too fast. Rose saw it anyway.
Her aunt pressing two fingers beneath her eyes. Her shoulders rising once. The way she gripped the edge of the washstand until the knuckles whitened.
âMisea?â Rose said.
âIâm all right.â Misea said, her voice tight, before she admitted the truth. âIâm not. But neither are you, and weâre both standing, so letâs not get particular.â
Rose stood. Misea faced her again. For a moment, the briskness fell away. She reached out and smoothed the dress over Roseâs shoulders, then touched one of the embroidered prairie roses near her collar.
Misea smiled back, but it broke at the edges. âVirgil⊠he wouldâve loved to see you in this.â
The name settled over the room. Roseâs smile faded.
âI wish he was here,â she said.
Misea drew her in at once. She hugged Rose like she was trying to hold all the pieces in place by strength alone.
âI know,â Misea whispered into her hair. âOh, honey, I know.â
Soon, it was Waaskaâs turn to be prepped for Reaping Day, her dress much newer, less damaged. It shined a beautiful cream tone that reminded Rosabel of wheat the moment autumnâs chill hit the fields.
By the time they came back into the main room, every conversation stopped.
I had thought I was prepared. I was not.
Rose stood in the doorway in that old floral dress, prairie roses at her hem, sunflower boots peeking beneath, her hair braided neat and tied with gold. She looked like the morning. That was the first ridiculous thought that came to me. She looked like something the district had no right to destroy.
Then she looked at me, and the thought burned up. Because she was terrified, though, it felt far more brutal than that. It wasnât noticeable to anyone who didnât know or understand where she hid it. Her chin was lifted, shoulders back. Her hands rested still at her sides.
But I knew. Again, I saw the fear beneath her collarbones.
Again. Again. Again.
My hands curled once before I forced them open.
âWill it do?â Rose asked, attempting lightness.
No one answered quickly enough. Then Tunka shifted in his chair.
âCome here, child,â he calmly ordered his surrogate grandchild. His voice sounded thinner than usual. Age had always lived in it, but that morning something else did too. Fear, perhaps. Or memory. Maybe both.
Rose crossed to him and knelt, though he did not ask her to.
Tunka Ziibi studied her face for a long moment. His eyes, clouded at the edges but still sharp where it mattered, moved over her braids, the ribbon, the dress, the boots. When he lifted his hand, Rose bent her head so he could rest his palm against her hair.
âYou wear old love today,â he finally replied.
Roseâs eyes shone.
Tunkaâs thumb brushed once over her temple. âOld love is strong. Stronger than fear, though fear makes more noise, I suppose.â
The room went very still. Rose swallowed. âThanks but⊠I donât feel strong.â
âThat is because you are listening to the noise.â
Minha, who was brushing out one of her granddaughterâs hair for the reaping, hesitated. Her eyes studied her father-in-laws words. Mina, who had been fussing over Zaaga all morning had to cover her mouth. Misea and Gami, both understanding the weight of his words, knew what the implications were for their niece.
Tunka leaned closer, his voice lowering. âListen beneath it.â
âTo what?â she whispered. Rose held his gaze.
âTo what remains.â He let his hand fall.
It was not enough to save her. Nothing anyone said that morning could be.
Though, Rose closed her eyes for one breath, and when she opened them, she looked a little less alone inside her own body. Gami stepped forward next. He cleared his throat once, twice, then held out a small, scented cloth.
âFor your pocket,â he said.
Rose took it, before opening the cloth to reveal dark, shriveled berries. âWhat is it?â
âElderberries.â Gami nodded. âThe boys get Hawthorne berries, while the girls usually⊠they usually take them to make them smell better at the reaping.â
âThatâs not the only thing, Gami!â Mina interrupted her older brother before giving Rose a comforting smile. âItâs said that carrying a batch of those berries around will grant you good fortune. Thatâs what the Mniwakan kids have done. Ever since our very first reapings.â
Roseâs mouth trembled into something almost like amusement. Gami gave a tight-lipped smile toward the packet. âDoesnât matter what you do with them⊠just know that you still have family here to wish you the best.â
Rose folded it carefully into her pocket. âThank you.â
Nibs had not moved from the table. His face had gone blotchy with the effort of not crying. Waaska smoothed out her cream-colored dress as she received for own batch of berries with trembling hands. Some of the cousins of reaping age threw each other nervous stares and hushed murmurs as the last of the Mniwakan pack prepared themselves for the Reaping.
Outside, the first official bell rang from town. The sound came faint through the lodge walls, but everyone heard it. No one moved.
Then Misea inhaled, sharp and practical, and clapped her hands once. âWell, we wonât give the Capitol the satisfaction of making us late.â
It was such a Misea thing to say that Rose nearly laughed. Nearly.
Coats were gathered. Buttons checked. Doors latched. Minha, who was barely keeping it together, put out the stove though nothing on it needed tending. Waaska adjusted Roseâs ribbon one more time, then pretended she hadnât. Nibs stood close enough to touch Roseâs sleeve but didnât quite hold on.
I stepped outside first. July morning had warmed slightly, but not by much. A thin wind moved over the yard, carrying dust from the road and the distant murmur of New Bisman already filling itself with bodies. Wagons creaked somewhere beyond the rise. Horses snorted. A dog barked once and was quickly hushed.
Rose paused in the doorway. For a moment, no one crowded her.
She looked over the yard, the rail fence, the hard pale sky. She looked toward the road that would take them to the square. Her hand brushed the pocket where Gamiâs packet sat. Then, almost without thinking, her fingers moved to the ribbon at the end of her braid.
I wondered whether she was remembering the bow. The Secret Garden. The bark splitting beneath her arrow, or whether she was thinking of the ballot box and its narrow mouth.
Either way, when she stepped down from the porch alongside her cousins, she did it carefully, as if the ground itself had become something watched. The children of reaping age followed alongside their parents, aunts, uncles, Waaska, and Nibs. The only two left at home were Zibins and his father, given Tunka Ziibiâs age, which prevented him from making long journeys. As I slipped through the door, I noted Zibins, despite being the hardened man he was, bowed his head solemnly as his grandchildren made their way to the square.
The family gathered around her, but not close enough to hide her. Though, nothing could hide her now. The road to New Bisman waited. Rose lifted her chin, and the prairie roses at her hem stirred in the wind.
The walk into New Bisman felt longer than it was. That was the ugly, little thing about dread. It stretched roads, turned fence lines into miles, and made every familiar bend in the path feel like a question you already knew the answer to but had to keep walking toward anyway.
The Mniwakan children moved in a loose cluster ahead of us, quieter than I had ever seen them. Among them, Waaska walked close to Rose but not quite touching her. Nibs stayed on Roseâs other side, one hand swinging at his hip like he meant to reach for her sleeve and kept talking himself out of it.
The rest of us followed close enough to look like family and far enough to remember that, in a few minutes, family would be sorted away from children.
That was the first cruelty of the square. New Bisman had dressed itself for Reaping Day.
It was shabby at best. 9 did not know how to do pretty in the way the Capitol meant it. Still, people had scrubbed what could be scrubbed. Boots were blackened with Lacker. Hair combed, slicked back, or pinned fine enough to be considered âpassableâ. Dresses let out or pinned tighter. Boys wore collars stiff enough to make them look strangled, and girls had ribbons tied into hair that had probably been washed before sunrise with water still cold from the pump.
On any other morning, half those children would have been in patched field clothes, mill dust, or work boots with grain husks stuck in the seams. Reaping Day made them look too clean.
That was the rule. Dress properly. Posture straight. Do not embarrass the Capitol while it takes from you.
That rule came in after the fifteenth Games or maybe the sixteenth? The games had all blended together after so many Reapings. Some boy from an outlying district, either 6 or 8, but definitely not 9, had purposely volunteered in nothing but a hide wrap and a strip of cloth tied at his waist, and not in a bashful, frightened way as if somebody had dared him to. No, that boy was on a mission, making sure the Capitol played by his game this time. If memory serves me, the kid practically skipped on stage as the peacekeepers tried to drag him into something decent, but heâd simply laughed right at the cameras and said heâd been born nearer the earth than the Capitol and meant to die that way too.
Nearly gave the announcers fits. The whole Capitol had called it savage and ridiculous until the boy actually won. I still wished I couldâve seen the gamemakersâ faces. There was poetry in a thing like that, even if Panem tried its best to beat poetry out of everyone poor enough to understand it.
After that, the districts received wardrobe expectations. Written ones. Pressed into every mayorâs office and academy board, passed down with the same grim seriousness as tax instructions. No bare feet. No exposed underclothes. No visible work grime. No statements of political, cultural, regional, or familial provocation.
That last one was broad enough to cover anything the Capitol disliked after the fact, which was generally how the Capitol preferred its rules.
Rose knew the rule too. Everyone did. Maybe that was why she kept smoothing one hand over the prairie roses at her skirt. Not because anything was wrong with them. Simply⊠everything was.
The closer we came to the square, the louder New Bisman became, though not in any way that resembled life. It was a careful noise. Vendor calls cut short whenever a peacekeeper passed. Mothers whispering into collars. Wagons creaking over dry ruts. Horses stamping near hitching rails. Children breathing too fast.
And of course, people looked at Rose. Some tried not to of course. That might have been worse, though.
A woman who used to buy cider from Virgilâs place every autumn pressed a hand to her mouth when Rose passed and then turned away so quickly her bonnet strings swung. An academy boy stared at Roseâs boots until his father knocked him lightly in the chest and murmured something too low to hear. One of the mill men gave her a nod that looked almost respectful before shame pulled his eyes back to the dirt.
Too kind. Too silent. Too relievedâŠ
Rose felt all three like hands on her back.
She had the strange thought that she could tell, somehow, who had written her name. Obviously she wasnât certain. No one had told her, but no one had to. It was in the quick glances, the softness, the way some people looked at her like apology was already waiting behind their teeth but not brave enough to step out.
A girl from the academy smiled at her. Rose did not know what to do with that. The smile was small and trembling, but not in a scheming, satisfied way. Rather almost apologetically. Like the girl had given away a match in winter and now wanted to pretend she had not helped start a fire.
Rose looked ahead. Town hall rose beyond the market road, whitewashed and blank, its windows open to the summer air. The stage had been formulated around the great step leading up to the building, higher than usual, wide enough for officials, peacekeepers, and whatever new Capitol machinery had come to dress the Quarter Quell in ceremony. Fresh bunting hung from the rail in District 9âs dull harvest gold and Capitol red. The colors looked wrong together.
Off to one side, the imprisoned children had already been brought in. Not all of them. Just the ones old enough for the vote and important enough to display.
Peacekeepers kept them in a separate line near the jail wagon, wrists bound in front with short chains that made even standing look like obedience. The crowd gave them a wide berth. Though, not necessarily out of fear alone, but rather convenience. People liked a clean boundary around the ones they had decided could be lost.
I saw Hoel Ellendale immediately.
He stood with his shoulders hunched and his chin tipped low, dark hair falling into his eyes. One cheek was bruised yellow and purple near the jaw. The cuffs looked too large on his wrists, which made him seem younger for half a breath until he lifted his gaze and looked at the crowd with such flat hatred that the illusion broke.
He did not look ashamed. That was what I first noticed. He looked furious, like a hint of old Hoffboss managed to possess his younger brother, even in the afterlife.
Beside him, another boy muttered something, and Hoelâs mouth twitched in a humorless shape that might have been a smile if joy had anything to do with it. A peacekeeper shoved the boy beside him quiet. Hoel did not react, except to glance toward the stage as if measuring the distance between himself and every person who had helped put him there.
Then his eyes found mine. Those same brown eyes that looked too much like his brotherâs. Only briefly, though. There was no recognition in his gaze to soften him. No pity. Nor accusation either, not yet.
Just⊠a young boy doomed by his brother to be standing present and aware, understanding that the district had been given a knife and told to call it a ballot.
I looked away first; my eyes instead fixed on Rose. I saw the way her fingers curled against her skirt after.
âKeep moving,â a peacekeeper barked near the sorting ropes.
The square had been divided by age, like always. Twelve-year-olds toward the front, small and pale and trying not to cry. Thirteen and fourteen next. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Boys to one side, girls to the other. The old arrangement of the Games. Only now the ropes looked less like organization and more like pens.
Waaska stopped when they reached the break. She had to go with the fifteen-year-olds. Rose had to go farther. For one second, Waaska looked as if she might follow anyway.
âWaaska,â Misea said gently to her daughter. The girl froze.
Rose then turned to her cousin. âRemember...â
Waaskaâs face twisted at this unknown statement hidden between the two of them. She nodded, but it looked painful.
Nibs grabbed Rose then. He moved fast, before anyone could stop him, throwing both arms around her waist with the desperate strength of a child who had decided dignity was useless. Rose bent around him, eyes closing tight.
âIâll look for you after,â she whispered to the boy, who fiercely held on tight to her dress.
Nibs, knowing that this was a lie, finally relented. âMâkay.â
âGood.â Roseâs voice still faltered.
Misea touched Nibsâs shoulder, but she did not pull him away at once. Even when the peacekeeper near the intake station began to frown.
Finally, Nibs let go. Misea stepped in next. She did not cry, which was even more heartbreaking. Her face had gone still with the effort of it, all that feeling packed behind her eyes until I wondered how a personâs skull still held.
She cupped Roseâs cheeks the way she had at the lodge. Then, her chin quivered. âPrickle briar.â
Roseâs composure wavered. Just a little.
Misea pressed her forehead to Roseâs. âWhatever happens, you are not what they make of you today.â
Roseâs eyes shone. âAuntie-â
âNo. Just listen.â Miseaâs voice trembled but did not break. âYou are a girl born of fire, of something so strong, it terrifies even the Capitol. You will use that strength, you hear me?â
Rose nodded once.
âYou are not a vote or a rumor. You are not a flame that the Capitol can designate to a candle.â Misea swallowed. âYour father wasnât⊠and neither are you.â
A peacekeeper at the intake station called, âGirls of seventeen, this way!â
Miseaâs hands tightened. Then released.
I hated her for letting go. Though I loved her for having the strength to.
Rose turned to me last. For all my thinking, all my planning, all my illegal bows and ugly tricks, I had nothing useful in my mouth.
She looked up at me, waiting.
I reached into my coat and thumbed at the Secret Gardenâs key, wondering if I should hand it off to her. Give her a sign that she would return safely. That this key would be useless unless she lived long enough to return it back to its lock.
Her eyes dropped to my pocket, instantly understanding. Then back to mine.
âAuphie.â She sternly assured me. âDonât.â
âRosabelâŠâ
âDonât argue with me at a Reaping.â She shook her head. âPeople might get suspicious, you know?â
And youâll never be able to enter the Secret Garden again, was the other thing she thought. Though those words never reached fruition.
That almost got me. I relented, letting the cool metal dip back into my pocket.
âIâŠâ she whispered. ââŠdonât know if I can do this.â
There were hundreds of people around us, and still the words seemed to belong only to the space between her ribs and mine. I wanted to tell her she would not have to, that Iâd could burn the stage down first. I wanted to tell her every brave, stupid lie a man tells when love has made him useless.
Instead, I bent close enough that only she could hear.
âYou donât have to know,â I admitted. âYou just have to breathe until the next thing comes, ya hear?â
Her mouth trembled. âIâll⊠Iâll keep breathing, Auphie.â
I gave her a small nod, her determination gave me a respectable amount of hope.
A peacekeeper stepped closer, herding Rose and Waaska to their respective stations. âGet in line-â
I looked at him. He looked at my bad leg, then my face, and must have decided whatever he saw there was not worth the paperwork.
Rose lingered for a few moments longer, before she made her way to the intake booth, confirming her name, age, and other useless confirmation details. Then she was gone into the line of seventeen-year-old girls, green dress among gray uniforms and brown work skirts, prairie roses at her hem, sunflower boots planted carefully in the dust.
The rest of the Mniwakan family were forced to stand in the very back alongside the rest of the citizens. Misea stood beside me, one hand pressed to her chest.
Waaska had joined her age group as well, but her eyes were fixed on Rose. Nibs stood rigid at his fatherâs side, jaw clenched hard enough to ache. Around us, families separated and re-formed into the required shapes. Children inside the ropes. Adults outside. Peacekeepers between.
Rose kept her chin lifted. Still, I could see her shoulders. I could see where she carried fear.
The stage waited at the front of the square, its bunting moving faintly in the wind. Two golden envelopes were set beside the podium, sealed and official beneath the Capitol seal. The mayorâs chair sat empty with his officialsâ seats on the sides. The microphones gleamed black in the morning light.
Everything looked orderly. That was how you knew it was punishment. For a while, no one spoke into the microphones. That was another cruelty about the reapings. The waiting.
The children had already been sorted. Families already split into their proper places. Peacekeepers had found their corners and edges, standing with rifles angled just low enough to call it ceremony instead of threat.
Rose stood with the seventeen-year-old girls, third row back, near enough towards the outlying crowd that she could see her family from a safe distance and far enough that we appeared little more than a jury to a trial.
Waaska stood with the fifteen-year-old girls two sections over. She had both hands clasped in front of her cream dress, fingers locked so tightly one could practically see the strain in her knuckles even from where she blended into the crowd. Every few breaths, Waaska looked toward her.
Rose tried to look back each time. She had promised, no spectacle⊠or at least something close to it.
The square smelled of dust, clean soap, summer heat, horse tack, and the faint grease of food vendors still trying to sell breakfast along the far road. It was indecent, that smell. Of hot food nearby for all the district children to remember what was to come. The body remembered hunger even when the soul had gone sick.
Rose swallowed against it.
A peacekeeper near the stage lifted a hand. Then, the murmuring thinned.
Then Mayor Lancaster stepped onto the platform. He looked smaller than he ought to have. That was my first thought, watching from the back with the rest of the adults. Lancaster had always had a way of filling a room without raising his voice, not through courage exactly, but through office and momentum. Men like him knew how to wear authority until people mistook the coat for the body beneath it.
Though, that morning, standing beneath Capitol red and harvest gold, he looked like a man who had been placed somewhere and told not to move.
His suit was dark, pressed, too warm for July. One sleeve still sat a touch stiff, just like his dress collar. His face was practically erased from any hardships that 9 had unceremoniously thrown at the rest of its citizens. I could tell this was on purpose, as cameras across the square blinked and adjusted, occasionally having the lens zoom in on a child that looked particularly promising⊠or miserable.
Once, Lancaster had made his presence known, however, the camera crew made sure to get as many angles of the stage as possible. Some focused on highlighting the mayorâs authority and in turn, the Capitolâs as well. Though, despite all the Reaping prep for appearances, nothing could do much for Lancasterâs eyes. Those looked raw. Old. Trapped.
He approached the microphone, before raising his hands to address his people.
âBoys and girls!â His voice smoothed over the crowd as smooth as butter. Rehearsed a thousand times before, no doubt. âDistrict 9! I am your mayor, Panis Lancaster! And as such, I would like to warmly welcome our district children for making it on this⊠monumental day!â
The man looked like he wanted to say something more, maybe something akin to comfort. Instead, he continued.
âAs you may be aware,â He continued. âThis yearâs Reaping ceremony was conducted a little differently. As a civic duty to your country and your district, each child of reaping age has been required to select one young man and woman.â
I half expected there to be a riot breaking out once more. However, the fight that burned buildings a month ago seemed to be extinguished as we simply stared on, waiting for the inevitable.
âAnd because of this special occasion. Because of your continued cooperation of our 25th Games, President P.S. Axel himself would like to present a special message for our very first Quarter Quell.â
Our very first Quarter Quell.
That sentence didnât sit right with me. Very first. A more optimistic version of me would like to bear that maybe this wouldâve been the last of the Hunger Games, after this year. That Quarter Quell was a signal of the Games coming to an end. A bloody, horrific end, that future children could simply look back on in a history book and be relieved that they werenât alive then.
No. The Capitol had no plans on ending the nightmare. This was merely the kindling.
Of course, when President Axel was mentioned, nobody expected the man himself to come waltzing out in his usual attire. Like he had been taken straight off of those annoying Capitol posters that the street kids like to vandalize, knowing full well theyâd pay for their crimes later.
No, Axel decided to make his debut in 9 through a measly piece of paper that Lancaster unfolded before us all.
The mayor rarely spoke with a note card and hardly needed to anyway. His ability to speak on the fly was remarkable, possibly the same skill that landed him as District 9âs mayor.
This time it was different. In his hand was thick Capitol paper. All formal and printed. Stamped at the top with President Axelâs seal, no doubt.
A murmur traveled through the square when people noticed. Lancaster waited for it to die. It did not die fully, only crawled lower. He cleared his throat.
âCitizens of District 9,â he recited, the microphone dragged his voice thin across the square. âToday marks the commencement of the 25th Hunger Games and the inaugural observance of the Quarter Quell, a solemn addition to our national tradition of remembrance, consequence, and unity.â
I felt Misea stiffen beside me.
Unity. Right.
That word had never done an honest dayâs work in its life.
Lancaster read on, his voice was steady enough to pass for control if a person did not know what fear sounded like when it wore a mayorâs mouth. âBy the order of your acting president, Pompeius Axel, and in recognition of the sacrifices made to preserve the peace of Panem, this yearâs tributes shall stand not merely as names drawn by chance, but as representatives selected by the collective civic voice of their district.â
Rose stared at him. Collective civic voice.
The phrase seemed to spread over the children like smoke. It was a fluffed-up version of chosen⊠condemned.
Roseâs fingers curled against the side of her dress. Around her, children shifted. A girl in front of her began crying silently, her shoulders shaking while her chin stayed lifted as though she had been told not to embarrass her family. A boy across the square made a soft, disbelieving sound and was immediately hushed by the peacekeeper nearest him.
Lancasterâs eyes did not leave the page.
âAs your leader, I extend my confidence to the people of District 9, whose participation in this process reflects the enduring strength of Panemâs shared future. To those whose names are revealed today, the Capitol offers honor, opportunity, and the full consideration afforded to every tribute who carries their districtâs hopes into the arena.â
My jaw tightened hard enough to ache. Honor? Opportunity? District hopes?
I wondered if Axel actually wrote those words himself or if some Capitol clerk had polished them up while drinking sweet coffee in a bright room where no child had ever been expected to die for anyoneâs future.
Either way, I hated him for them.
Lancaster paused. Only briefly. His eyes lifted from the page and moved over the crowd, though not at the adults. The children.
For one strange second, the paper seemed to lower in his hand. Again, another unspoken thought that would never see the light of day.
Lancaster looked back down. âMay the selected tributes bring distinction to Panemâs breadbasket. May the value of choice forever echo through our beautiful land that is Panem. May your children and those who come after understand the dedication that we, the people, hold united. And above all elseâŠâ he read, voice thinner now, ââŠmay the odds be ever in their favor.â
The square stayed silent. No one applaused. Not even the weak, frightened kind people sometimes offered when silence became dangerous. Simple stillness was all that remained.
Lancaster folded the paper with a care that looked almost like shame.
âIn years past,â he said, and now the words seemed to be his own, or closer to it, âIt has been the duty of the mayorâs office to conduct the Reaping according to established district procedure.â
A few heads lifted. Everyone knew that. Everyone expected that.
Mayor Lancaster would read the names. A boy and a girl. He would do it grimly and formally, because that was what he had always done. Then the tributes would be taken inside, the train would come, and the district would begin its yearly mourning.
Though, it wasnât Lancaster who made the unfortunate decision this year. Instead, he stepped back.
âThis year,â he continued, trying his best to feign enthusiasm, âin accordance with this yearâs special procedures of the Quarter Quell, the final certification and announcement of the districtâs selected tributes will be conducted by official representatives of the Capitol.â
The silence changed. Rose felt it. Before, it had been dread. Now it was confusion sharpening toward fear. Lancaster turned slightly toward the side of the stage.
âDistrict 9.â Lancaster held out a showing arm to the right side of the stage. âPlease welcome, Yvette Dolittle and Threax Moss as our official representatives of this yearâs Reaping ceremony!â
A woman stepped on stage first. Yvette Dolittle, walked towards the podium, as if the square had been built for the purpose of receiving her.
She wore a deep green formal military uniform tailored so precisely it seemed less sewn than engineered. The jacket clasped high at the throat, sharp at the shoulders, gleaming with brass buttons and narrow black piping, various dark metals decorated her blazer. Her gloves were black. Boots performatively over dramatic for being real combat ones. Her hair, a smooth black coil at the back of her head, held not a single loose strand.
Her skin was spotless. Not clear in the natural way some people were blessed with, but polished beyond weather, labor, or ordinary life. Gleaming, almost. Like porcelain left too long in a cabinet. Her mouth was painted a reserved shade of red, too controlled to look festive, and her eyes were green. And not like Rosabelâs green.
The color sat strangely against her face, bright and glassy, not quite belonging. Capitol work, surely. Dye or some vanity I did not know the name for. The effect made the shorter yet broad woman look half human and half like an ornament.
The man behind her appeared less certain of his own performance. Threax Moss wore the same dark green uniform, though his looked lived-in by comparison. It wasnât wrinkled, never that, but less worshipful of its own shape. He was young, perhaps not much older than somebody like Gooseneck, with tired eyes and hair combed back too precisely from his forehead. His face held the drained patience of a man who had been given instructions he did not admire but intended to execute correctly.
He did not smile. Neither did Dolittle.
That was when I understood.
The costumes were theatrical, yes. The green uniforms, the gleaming metals, and their perfect little march to the microphones. The titles, the posture, the Capitolâs fondness for making every ordinary horror look rehearsed.
But these two were not performers. At least, not underneath.
Dolittleâs eyes moved across the crowd with assessment, not vanity. Moss stood with his weight evenly placed, hands still, shoulders alert. Military-trained, both of them. Not front-line peacekeepers, but something close enough to know discipline from decoration.
The Capitol had not sent simple fools to parade about the fact that they had been plagued by district soil. It had sent handlers.
Rose understood it too, though perhaps not in those words.
District 9 had cast the votes, but the Capitol had come to own the moment. That was the trick of it. Let the district dirty its hands and let the Capitol arrive in clean gloves.
Yvette Dolittle took the center microphone.
âThank you, Mayor Lancaster,â she said, her voice was elegant and cold, every syllable polished enough to cut bread, but not in a solemn way like Lancaster. They had a job to do. âIt is an honor to stand before District 9 on this historic morning.â
Somewhere behind me, Gami made a sound in his throat. Miseaâs hand tightened around her own wrist.
Dolittle continued, âThe Quarter Quell represents not simply a continuation of Panemâs most essential tradition, but its refinement. Today, the will of District 9 has been received, certified, and sealed under the tireless work of Capitol authority.â
Her green eyes moved toward the children. Rose felt, absurdly, as if the woman had looked straight at her.
âLet it be understood,â Dolittle continued, âThat every properly submitted ballot has been counted. Every eligible candidate has been considered. Every selection has already been verified.â
She smiled then, however if held no such warmth. Instead, it was the kind of smile one might give to a locked door. âWith that understanding⊠the Capitol thanks you for your participation.â
Roseâs stomach turned. Beside the podium, Threax Moss stepped to the side, where a nameless assistant held out two gold-sealed envelopes on a literal platter. He did not hurry, though he hadnât dragged the moment out either. He moved with the efficient calm of a man opening a file.
Two envelopes.
One marked in white script: GIRL.
The other: BOY.
Rose stared at them until the words blurred.
In all the years she had watched Reapings, the names had been pulled from decorative, glass bowls, clear and terrible, filled with folded slips of paper. There had always been something awful in seeing chance made visible. The slips piled together, the hand reaching in, the tiny pause before fate became language.
This was much worse. No stupid bowl to hate nor scrambling paper.
There was no longer the illusion that luck had anything to do with it.
Only two envelopes, already sealed and decided. The districtâs fear pressed flat into gold.
Moss lifted the first envelope and carried it to Dolittle. His face showed nothing. The official woman accepted it with both hands.
Rose became aware of her own breathing.
In. Out.
She was starting to remember what I had told her.
You just have to breathe until the next thing comes.
In. Out.
Across the square, Waaska was staring at her instead of the stage.
Rose noted her cousinâs concentration once... but only once. Then she faced forward.
Yvette Dolittle slid one gloved finger beneath the seal. The gold paper opened with a soft, tearing sound that seemed to carry across the whole square.
For a moment, no one breathed. They couldnât.
Not the children standing inside the ropes, nor the parents pressed along the edges, or the distant vendors pretending their fires still needed tending hadnât made so much as a peep. Even the horses seemed to still near the hitching posts, their ears flicking toward the stage as if they too were waiting for the district to shame itself aloud.
Dolittle withdrew the card. It was white, small, clean, innocent...
Rose watched the womanâs eyes move over it. Just once, with zero hesitation or surprise. Nothing in her face shifted to acknowledge that the card held a life instead of a word.
Then Yvette Dolittle lifted her chin to the microphone.
âDistrict 9âs selected female tribute for the 25th Hunger Games isâŠâ
Rose felt her own pulse move strangely in her ears, almost like a river current. Yet⊠separate from her somehow. In her head, she already knew. Instead of the Districtâs word, it was Rose who decided whose name was on that ballot. And⊠so did I.
I closed my eyes, allowing my ears to make the rest, and⊠I took my own advice. I breathed.
In⊠outâŠ
Roseâs fingers brushed the side of her dress, finding the raised thread of one prairie rose stitched near her hip. Her eyes stared ahead at nothing in particular, as Dolittle smiled.
Thatâs when her name was called, only I hadnât registered Dolittleâs voice properly. I all but blotted out that memory, instead, focusing on my other senses, like the smell of earthen dust, the feel of grit underneath my fingernails, the bitterness of adrenaline racing across my tongue as I finally heard the truth straight from the Capitolâs mouth.
The square did not erupt, though a part of me wished it had.
Instead, the sound came in pieces.
A sharp gasp from somewhere behind Rose. A womanâs wounded cry cut off by someone elseâs hand. A murmur that moved like wind across dry grain, not loud enough to be called outrage and not quiet enough to be called grief. Somewhere, a child began sobbing. Somewhere else, someone whispered, âNo,â with such practiced sorrow that I knew, with a sick little certainty, that they had written her name and were only now allowing themselves to mourn it.
A man swore under his breath. Another said, âShe has a chance,â too softly for courage and too quickly for belief. Someone else murmured, âBetter her than-â and stopped before finishing the sentence, knowing justifications only made things worse.
I knew Rose had heard all of it. Or maybe I only thought she did.
Maybe she only imagined the words because she had been living inside them all week.
For a second, her body forgot what it was meant to do. Her name hung over the square, repeated through the microphoneâs thin echo, no longer belonging to her mouth, her school papers, her fatherâs voice, or Waaska calling from another room.
Rosabel Tempest-Strix. The selected tribute. The districtâs answer.
Her answer, too, in some way she hated.
Rose did not collapse. That was the first thing I noticed when my eyes opened.
I knew she was afraid. I saw the fear go through her. It moved across her shoulders, through her throat, down into her hands, but she caught it before anyone else could name it. She did not cover her mouth. Did not look for me. She did not look at her aunt or even Waaska.
She looked forward. Composed, they might have called it. Brave, if they wanted to make themselves feel better. Though, I knew better, and so did Rose.
It was last piece of herself she could still keep. ControlâŠ
Dolittle stepped back from the microphone and turned toward the row of girls facing her left as if Rose might need help recognizing her own name.
âThe female tribute,â she repeated, sharper this time. âMay proceed to the stage, please.â
Please? That word had no business being there.
Roseâs first step was almost ordinary. One boot forward. Then the other. Sunflowers stitched in yellow thread flashing beneath the hem of her grandmotherâs dress. The girl in front of her shifted aside too fast, face crumpling with relief before shame swallowed it. Another girl pressed both hands to her mouth and turned away.
Rose passed them. She kept her chin lifted. The ropes opened before her.
The path to the stage had never looked long from the crowd. In all the years she had watched other children walk it, it had seemed brutally short. A few steps through dust, a hand at the elbow, before a climb onto wood. Then gone. Now it stretched like a road out of the district entirely.
She was halfway there when-
âN-NO!â
A scream tore through the square so violently that even Dolittleâs head snapped toward it.
Rose stopped before turning.
Waaska broke from the fifteen-year-old row like something flung. She ducked under the rope before the nearest peacekeeper understood what she was doing, her skirts swishing with speed in mind, a stray piece of hair escaping her own braid. For one wild second, she looked small enough to still be running across the lodge yard after a dropped toy.
Then she was in the aisle, shoving past a stunned girl, both hands reaching for Rose.
âNo, no, no, please!â Waaska cried. âRose, no!â
âWaaska!â Rose attempted to hush her.
It was not loud enough to reach her. Waaska threw herself at Rose with such force that Rose stumbled back half a step and caught her by the shoulders. The younger girl clung to her, sobbing openly now, all the dignity Reaping Day demanded ripped out of her by the roots.
âTake me!â Waaska screamed toward the stage, toward the peacekeepers, toward anyone with enough power to pretend they had none. âTake me please! I-I wrote my name! I wrote mine, you can check! Please, you can check it!â
The square went still in a new way. A terrible way.
Roseâs hands tightened on Waaskaâs arms.
âDonât,â she said, low and urgent. âWaaska, please, donât.â
But Waaska was beyond hearing.
âIt should be me!â she cried. âIâm sorry! Iâm sorry, Rose, Iâm so sorry! I didnât mean it! I didnât mean for them to-â Her voice broke into something raw and young. âPlease, take me! She shouldnât go! She shouldnât!â
A peacekeeper moved first. Then another. I moved too.
I do not remember deciding to.
One second I was standing beside Misea, and the next my bad leg had already betrayed me by not moving fast enough. Gami caught my arm before I could make it worse. Or maybe he saved me. I hated him for both.
âAuphie,â he said through his teeth.
âLet go!â I demanded.
He didnât. Misea had one hand over her mouth. Nibs was crying now, silent and furious, both fists clenched at his sides. Around us, the district watched.
That was what I remember most. They simply watched.
The same people who had whispered Roseâs name into ballots, who had told their children there were worse choices, easier choices, practical choices, watched Waaska try to hand herself over in the dirt.
Watched love fail to count. One peacekeeper seized Waaska by the arm.
She twisted away hard enough to nearly fall. âNo! Donât touch me!â
Rose stepped between them without thinking. âD-Donât hurt her.â
The peacekeeper paused, not because he cared, but because the cameras had turned. Rose realized it at the same time I did.
The black lenses fixed on her, specifically on Waaska. On the pretty girl in the green dress holding a sobbing friend who had tried to volunteer too late. On the district being made to see its own choice made flesh.
Dolittle said nothing. Mossâs face tightened, just slightly.
The peacekeeper reached again.
This time, one of the older Mniwakan cousins and Gami himself pushed through the edge of the crowd and grabbed Waaska around the wrists before the peacekeeper could drag her by force. Waaskaâs father feared the repercussions of his daughter, yes, but he could understand why she had done this. They held on as Waaska thrashed against them.
âNO!â Waaska screamed, reaching for Rose over her fatherâs arm as he hoisted her up. âROSIE!â
Roseâs face changed then. The composure cracked where only those who loved her could see it.
Her mouth trembled once before she steadied it. She took one step toward Waaska, and for a wild, stupid moment, I thought she might run to her. That she might forget the stage, the cameras, the rifles, the whole rotten country watching, and choose her family instead.
Then Rose stopped. She remembered.
Waaska had asked her not to make a spectacle. Rose had asked Waaska to be strong. Neither of them had known how impossible that would be.
Gami pulled her back into the familyâs side of the ropes. Misea reached for her daughter at once, gathering Waaska into her arms, but Waaska simply sobbed into her motherâs shoulder, undoubtedly feeling helpless about the entire situation.
Rose walked the rest of the way alone.
Each step felt too loud. The dust clung to the white leather of her boots. The prairie roses at her hem stirred in the light wind. Her braid ribbon had loosened slightly from Waaskaâs grip, one end trailing over her shoulder like a piece of torn sunlight.
When she reached the stage stairs, a peacekeeper extended a hand. Rose did not take it. She lifted her skirt just enough to climb without stumbling and stepped onto the platform herself.
Dolittle watched her approach with that locked-door smile.
âWelcome, Miss Tempest-Strix,â she said softly, away from the microphone. Rose looked at her. There were many things she could have said. None of them would have given her back peace.
So, she said nothing. She turned to face District Nine.
From the stage, the square looked different, like⊠a corral of sorts. Contained, a fenced thing, with rows of children lined with adults. Families pressed together and held apart. Cameras blinking like black insects in the sun.
Rose found me first. She could not help it.
I stood beside the Mniwakan family with the eerie presence of a soldier. Her cousin was folded into Miseaâs arms, still crying hard enough that her shoulders shook. Nibs stood beside them, face wet and furious. Gami had one hand on Waaskaâs back, as if he did not trust her not to run at the stage and get herself shot. He was right not to.
Roseâs eyes lingered. I wanted to give her something.
Maybe a nod, a smile, a command, a promise? Something poetic?
All I managed was to stand there and look back at her like a useless man with empty hands.
Rose still saw me. She saw all of us.
And for one merciful moment, the Capitol allowed silence to sit.
That was another thing they knew how to do. They liked to make their noise, sure, but the Capitol understood the usefulness of quiet after a wound. Let the district hear itself breathing, with every mother, father, cousin, and neighbor alike remembering exactly where they had been standing when the girl in the green dress climbed the stage. When they put her to death.
Then Threax Moss moved.
He stepped toward the nameless assistant with the platter and took the second envelope. The one marked BOY in clean white script. His expression did not alter as he accepted it, though his fingers lingered on the seal half a second longer than Dolittleâs had. Maybe I imagined that. A man starts inventing mercy in strangers when he cannot find enough of it in the world, you know?
Rose didnât look over at him from the stage.
The wind tugged once at the loosened ribbon in her braid. She resisted the urge to fix it. That small disorder seemed to matter too much. Waaska had done it after all, with her hand, pulling it loose while trying to keep Rose from being taken. She wanted, absurdly enough, to leave it exactly as it was.
A mark of someone who had reached for her.
Moss stepped to the microphone. Unlike Dolittle, he did not smile.
âThe selected male tribute for District 9,â he started. His voice was lower than hers, flatter, less polished. It wasnât kind by any means, but it wasnât notably unkind either. A voice trained to carry orders without needing to believe in them.
He broke the seal. The square seemed less afraid this time, which was what made it even more cruel. Rose could feel the difference from the stage. Her name had already torn open the morning. Whatever came next would fall into that opening.
Moss withdrew the card and read it. âHoel Ellendale.â
The silence did not break the same way. There was no scream this time. Whatever was left of the Ellendale family, they certainly werenât bursting through the rope.
Instead, the sound came like something being buried. It started as a low murmur. A few sharp intakes of breath. A strange, shameful exhale from somewhere near the back, as if certain people had been holding in the hope that the district had chosen someone easier and now felt relieved to have that hope confirmed.
Hoel Ellendale.
Hoffmanâs baby brother. A boy from the jail wagon. The boy already half-lost in peopleâs minds because it was simpler to decide a prisoner had less life to take.
A woman whispered, âWellâŠâ
Simply that. Well.
I turned toward the prisoner line before I could stop myself. Hoel had not moved.
He stood between two other cuffed boys, head low, dark hair in his eyes, a bruise along his jaw ugly beneath the morning light. For a second, I wondered if he had heard. Then his mouth twitched, with something close to satisfactionâs bitter cousin.
Of course, his face seemed to say. Of course.
A peacekeeper seized his arm, before Hoel ripped it back. The square tightened a notch.
The peacekeeper reached for him again, harder this time, but Hoel stepped forward before he could be dragged. His chains clinked once at his wrists, sharp and small, and that sound carried farther than it should have.
He walked like a boy who had spent his whole life being shoved and had finally decided not to give anyone the pleasure of seeing him stumble. People moved out of his way faster than they had moved for Rose. That too, I noticed.
Rose had parted the crowd with guilt. Hoel parted it with fear.
His eyes moved over the rows as he walked. They werenât searching, exactly. Measuring maybe? Remembering faces? You couldnât really tell with the boy.
Every person who looked away from him seemed to confirm something he had already known. Even those who dared look back only sharpened the anger in his expression.
When he passed the family ropes, nobody reached for him. Nobody said his name.
Maybe there was someone in the crowd who loved him. There had to be. They couldâve been too afraid to show it. Or maybe⊠he had learned young that love, in the Ellendale house, usually arrived with teeth.
Either way, he walked alone.
Rose watched him approach and felt something tighten in her chest. She had expected to be afraid of him, maybe. Everyone knew Hoffman Ellendaleâs name or knew what his gang had nearly done to a high-ranking Capitolite like Coriolanus Snow, and what the Capitol had done to them after. It felt as though 9 had no choice but to vote for the boy.
Regardless, Hoelâs name had been dragged behind his brotherâs like a second shadow. However, the boy climbing the stage did not look like a gang leader. He looked too young for that. Furious, obviously. Bruised. Dangerous in the way cornered things became dangerous, but at least sixteen. Still, someoneâs child, even if the district had decided he was easier to call a consequence.
At the stairs, a peacekeeper moved to help him up. Hoel stared at the manâs hand until he lowered it. Then Hoel climbed himself.
The chains made the movement awkward. Moss glanced toward Dolittle, then toward the cameras. Some calculation passed between them without a word.
âRemove the restraints,â Moss ordered.
The peacekeeper hesitated. Then, the cuffs came off with a click.
It wasnât that the boy looked any better without them. He was practically in glorified prison rags. Though, having a tribute being held in cuffs in front of live camera during the Reaping ceremony didnât exactly have that ânoble tributeâ attribute to it. Not really. Hoel flexed his hands once, slowly, as if reminding himself they still belonged to him. Red marks ringed both wrists. He did not rub them.
He took his place a little way beside Rose but did not look at her. For a moment, the two District 9 tributes stood side by side beneath the Capitol bunting.
The girl holding her fatherâs unbearable legacy in her prairie flower dress, alongside loosened ribbon and white sunflower boots dusted brown. Then the boy from the jail wagon, bruised and hard-eyed, wrists freshly freed but still carrying the shape of iron.
Together, they looked nothing like victory. They looked like what the district had been willing to lose.
Dolittle returned to the microphone.
âDistrict 9,â she said, her tone almost proud, âyour chosen tributes for the 25th Hunger Games.â
The cameras clicked and adjusted. Rose heard them.
That was the first time she truly noticed the cameras as if they were alive, not just machines or in the background. They shifted like insects. They turned their black eyes toward her face, Hoelâs bruised jaw, and of course, the crowdâs guilty stillness.
Itâs lens constantly taking more and more away from them.
âYou should be proud of your contribution to your countryâs history,â Dolittle added, her smile widened by a fraction. âMay they bring honor to your district and glory to Panem.â
Roseâs hand curled. Hoel finally glanced at her. Only briefly.
His expression said nothing in particular. She hadnât read any malice nor fear. Nothing was too noticeable at first. It was only when she looked more that she saw something like recognition stripped of comfort. You too, then.
Rose looked back at him. Yes.
She did not know whether that made them allies or only proof of the same crime.
Dolittle shifted as if to end the ceremony. The peacekeepers at the edge of the stage moved closer. Moss stepped half a pace toward Rose and Hoel, ready to guide them off, as Lancaster made his way to the podium for his usual dismissal of the ceremony. The whole square seemed to lean toward the next instruction, grateful for anything that would tell them what to do with their hands, their eyes, their guilt.
Then Rose heard herself speak before she knew she had decided to. âMayor Lancaster?â
The words came out clear enough for the nearest microphone to catch them. A ripple passed through the square. Dolittle went still. Moss stopped.
Mayor Lancaster, who had returned near the podium, ready to speak a few more closing statements, looked up sharply.
Rose felt every camera turn. Her mouth went dry. For one breath, she wanted to take it back. Still, she kept standing.
Rose swallowed. âMay⊠May I say a few words?â
Dolittleâs smile vanished. Slowly. Enough to reveal the mechanism beneath it.
âThat will not be necessary,â she tried to intervene.
However, Rose looked at Lancaster instead. He didnât coordinate the Reapings themselves, of course. He was just a talking piece that the Capitol needed. Still, he was District 9âs mayor, and if District 9 had chosen her, then she would make District 9 hear her.
Lancasterâs gaze moved from Rose to Dolittle, then to the crowd, then back to Rose. There was no courage on his face. Only shame. And sometimes? Shame did a poor imitation of bravery, and sometimes that was all anyone had.
âBriefly,â he nodded, ignoring any repercussions heâd probably receive for it later.
Rose stepped toward the microphone before anyone could change their mind. Hoelâs head turned slightly. His face searching for answers, confusion etching across his features. Rose did not look at him.
She placed both hands lightly on the sides of the podium. Her fingers trembled once against the wood. She pressed them harder until they stopped.
From the stage, District 9 looked impossibly familiar and impossibly far away. She could see so much, which wouldâve broken down even the strongest of men. There was Carrigan Killdeer, pale and still among the academy girls. And the Scranton children, Waylynn half-hidden behind Burr. There was her aunt, Misea with one arm around Waaska and the other hand pressed to her own chest. Then Nibs. Then⊠me.
Rose looked at me the longest. His face had gone still in a way that frightened her. Then she faced the entire district.
âI donât know what Iâm supposed to say,â she began. Her voice carried strangely through the microphone, thinner than it felt in her throat. The square did not move, willing to hear her speak. âI thought about being angry⊠and I still might be. Later at least.â
A few people shifted.
âI thought about saying I forgive you, but⊠I donât know if that would be true. Not yet.â
A breath moved through the crowd. My jaw tightened.
Rose continued, because if she stopped now, she would never start again. âI know why some of you wrote my name. I think I do. Maybe you thought I had a better chance or you thought the Capitol already liked me. You maybe thought I was halfway gone from 9 Â already.â
Her voice trembled on that last part, her thoughts lingering on me and Waaska. She despised it. Nevertheless, she kept going anyway.
âMaybe⊠you were scared for your own children, and I can understand that. Truly.â
The silence deepened. Rose looked toward the younger rows. Children stared back at her with wide, frightened eyes. Some of them had voted and would probably still remember it when they were not.
âI canât tell you that you were right,â she said softly. âYou werenât.â
Someone sobbed once, quickly muffled.
âBut I also know⊠what the Capitol did to us. I know they gave us a choice that was never truly a choice. They put names in our hands and told us to make fear look like duty.â
Dolittle shifted behind her. Mossâs eyes flicked toward the peacekeepers.
Rose saw it. My heart climbed clean into my throat. Careful, Rosie. Please be carefulâŠ
Rose drew in another breath. âI⊠I am not standing here because I want to die. I really donât.â
The words struck the square harder than she expected. They were simple, but no one had wanted to hear her say it.
âI am scared,â she confirmed. âI am more scared than I know how to explain. And Hoel-â She glanced back at him, only briefly. âH-He should not have to stand here either.â
Hoelâs face did not change, but something in his eyes did. Rose turned back.
âBut if District 9 has given us to the Capitol, then I will not let the Capitol make me ashamed of loving District 9.â
I closed my eyes.
No, I thought. No, donât do that. Do not make their vote sacred.
Roseâs hands tightened on the podium. âSo, I guess my sentiments are⊠that I wonât go as your mistake,â she said, voice gaining steadiness now, not because she was less afraid, but because fear had finally found something to hold. âI wonât go as your guilt or your rumor. I wonât even go as proof that the Capitol owns every part of us.â
She swallowed. âAnd if I dieâŠâ
Misea made a sound like she had been struck.
Rose nearly faltered, but she picked herself back up. âIf I die, I will not die as District 9âs victim.â
The words came out uneven. Young. Too brave and not wise enough.
âI will die⊠as its martyr.â
The square seemed to lose all air. My stomach all but dropped.
Goodness help me, I hated it because I understood exactly why she had said it. She was trying to take the ugliest thing done to her and make it mean something before the Capitol could make it mean nothing. She was trying to turn the blade around by holding it through her own palm.
Though martyrdom was still a story someone else could use. After all, Rosabel was still a girl.
Roseâs eyes shone, but no tears fell. âI wish you all the best,â she said, and her voice broke there, just barely. âI mean that. I wish the children of 9 warm food and full fields and safer years than this one. I wish my family peace. I wishâŠâ She stopped, breath catching. âI wish nobody ever has to stand here because home was made afraid enough to choose them.â
At that, everyone simply stood. There was no applause. No one couldâve even pretended. The shock held them too tightly. Rose stepped back from the microphone.
For one second, she looked like a child again in the most unbearable way. There a girl in a green dress with a loose ribbon and dust on her white boots, having used the last free words she might be allowed for a long while.
Lancaster stared at her. The man, no doubt, had a certain amount of respect for those words. Those same words that he wouldnât even dream to utter.
Dolittle, of couse, was already moving.
âThat will conclude District 9âs Reaping ceremony,â she said into the microphone, too quickly, too smoothly. âTributes will proceed to transfer under Capitol supervision at once.â
Moss stepped beside Hoel. A peacekeeper then stepped beside Rose, as she looked once more toward the crowd.
Waaska had stopped sobbing. She stared at Rose like she was trying to memorize the shape of her standing there. Nibs had one hand over his mouth. Miseaâs face had gone white. Gami looked at the ground.
And me?
I probably looked like a man who had just watched a door close and realized his hands were still empty. Rose wanted to say something to us, her family. AnythingâŠ
Though, Moss and Dolittle hastily moved in before the square could decide whether it was allowed to react. And with that, District 9âs tributes were escorted from the stage.
Death of a Wildfire (25th Hunger Games) - Chapter VI
âHope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.â
â VĂĄclav Havel
<<<PREVIOUS CHAPTER | NEXT CHAPTER>>>
The morning after Lancaster's mansion burned was rough, and even rougher to wake from.
Sleep had come late and poorly, more a collapse than rest. When my eyes finally opened to the dawn's weak glow, memories flooded back with the filthy patience of water finding cracks. The Quarter Quell, voting, children penned in the square, Rose at the window, Snow's mouth slipping onto hers before my fist did the sameâŠ
Everything moved through me like a bad dream I had failed to wake from.
I got out of bed before the house could stir around me. That was cowardice, and I knew it. I dressed in my only other clean shirt, fumbled my belt wrong twice, then made for the yard with the excuse of warming up Errante before town.
The dapple grey accepted the bridle with the grave patience of a creature who had survived enough human nonsense to stop expecting sense from us. I rode him along the nearest pasture until the leg began complaining in full. Normally, in the saddle, the injury troubled me less than it did on foot. That morning, everything hurt. The splint bit hard as the muscles around the fracture throbbed. The skin had ballooned into a hot, angry tenderness that made every motion feel like I was arguing with bone itself.
Dido used to say pain meant healing. That something in the body was building itself anew. Wasnât sure she had been right about that though.
By the time I rode into New Bisman, the peacekeepers were raising the ashen stakes for morning executions.
There was no doubt there would be some after the riot. The Capitol never let a public outburst pass without making a public answer. Kindling had been stacked high around the blackened posts, enough wood to warm a family for a winter week if mercy had ever ranked above spectacle. The air already smelled of old ash, pitch, and the clinging stink of burnt hair that never truly left a place once the stakes had claimed it.
District 9 punished with fire because fire was what we understood. Or because the Capitol liked irony.
I never knew which was worse.
Other districts had hangings, firing squads, even electrification, according to Stand Up, who once described the latter with a face gone pale and said at least it ended quicker. The smell was similar after, he claimed, but the screaming was minimal.
In Panem, minimal screaming counted as mercy.
I had seen my first burning at six. A man accused of Dark Days sympathy, though by then sympathy had become a word the Capitol could hang around anyone's neck and set alight. Peacekeepers stopped the street and made us watch. I remember the way his clothes burned away first. The way his face stopped being a face or the way one peacekeeper joked that rebels squealed like swine and another told him not to insult swine.
I spent the rest of the day crying in Auntie Aelias's lap while she stroked my hair with hands that would one day be tied to the same kind of post because of me.
I did not linger near the executions that morning. Still, I saw enough.
Hoffman Ellendale's name passed in whispers before I reached the firecatcher grounds. He and two of his crew would all be tied to the stakes for the manor fire. Knowing the sadistic tendencies of some of the keeper commanders, Hoel Ellendale, that scrawny younger brother of his, would probably stand cuffed near the peacekeeper line, forced to watch. I could just picture the boy from the alley.
His face would hold no tears for his kin. Only that flat, hollow look of a boy whose grief had found nowhere safe to go and so had frozen before leaving his eyes.
I shivered at the internal image.
The firecatcher outpost waited at the western edge of town, brick-built and smoke-stained, steady as ever in a world that had lost interest in steadiness. My pulse kicked harder the closer I came. What if Snow changed his mind? What if one of those stakes was meant for me by noon? What if Rolette had only delayed the inevitable because public order mattered more than private punishment?
Who would fend for Rose then?
The thought nearly made me laugh. As if I had done such a grand job of fending for her already.
I dismounted and limped inside. The chief's office door still bore the formerâs name on the plaque.
Virgil Tempest.
That alone nearly took the breath out of me. I stood before it too long, staring at the carved letters like they might rearrange themselves into an answer. Then I knocked once and opened the door.
"Chief?"
The room was cluttered with scattered notes, some in Virgil's handwriting, others in Rolette's. The newly appointed chief was hunched over a large brown ledger, searching for something with the grim focus of a man trying to hold an entire force together with paperwork and will. He looked up when I entered. A knowing sadness passed over his weathered face before he gestured to the chair across from him. "Son."
The word hurt. I took the chair slowly, the leg protesting each bend. "You said⊠after what happened, you'd want to see me."
"Yeah." Rolette closed the ledger with one hand. "I did."
Silence settled. Through the walls, I could hear the yard outside, a horse snorting, a pump handle creaking, men's voices subdued under morning. Life continuing because life had always been rude that way.
"Ain't never seen you like that before," Rolette said finally.
My face dipped with regret. "I know."
I wanted to plead my case. To say Snow had crossed a line. That he had no right to touch Rose in front of people already hungry for someone to blame. To say a Capitol man did not get to put his hands on Virgil's daughter and walk away untouched.
Though justifications in Panem were like pebbles thrown at trains.
Rolette only nodded as if he heard every internal argument I did not, or rather, could not make.
"I can't imagine what went through your head," he said. "Not fully. I know you love that girl somethin' fierce. Whole force does too, just like a second daughter or a little sister⊠Tempest knew it."
My hands tightened on my knees.
"But," Rolette continued, and there it was, the word that always came carrying a knife. "You laid hands on a Capitol representative. Publicly and in front of the peacekeepers. After an announcement that already has the district near tearing itself apart."
I simply nodded. "Yes, sir."
"You struck him."
I didnât even try denying it. "Yes, sir."
"Then you struck her." Rolette added.
My throat closed. I looked down.
Rolette did not soften it. I respected him for that. Hated him for it too.
"I didn't mean to," I said, barely breaking from a murmur.
The chief only sighed. "I know, son."
That mercy felt worse than accusation. Rolette leaned back, eyes on the plaque outside the frosted glass of the door. Virgil's name, reversed from inside, still visible like a ghost that had gotten caught in the wrong room.
"You've got family here too, Rhodes," he said. "This place has been your home since the day you set foot in it. Tempest saw to that."
Been. I heard it and so did he.
"Which is why," Rolette began, then stopped.
He looked down at his hands. He was not an eloquent man by nature. Virgil had been able to turn plain speech into something close to scripture when the hour demanded. Rolette's words came heavier, shaped by duty before grace. But I could see the cost of them in his face.
"It's okay," I answered before he finished.
His eyes lifted.
I reiterated. "I understand."
He swallowed once. "You're a good man, Auphidius."
My laugh came out small and wrong. "Debatable."
"Not to me." His voice firmed, and that nearly broke me. "But good men? They can be dangerous when emotions carry the reins. I can't have you on the active rolls. Not now. Maybe not ever, dependin' how the Capitol reads this. If I keep you badged, I put every catcher here under suspicion. I put Rosabel under a brighter one too."
There it was. It wasnât clean nor fair, yet⊠it was the truth.
I thought of Rolette's eldest granddaughter, newly twelve and now eligible for the Games. I thought of every child in the square. Then my head Snow's split lip and the way he had said nothing about arrest because he had not needed to. Mercy from men like him was never free. It only changed the invoice.
I nodded.
"You'll turn in your badge," Rolette said, voice thickening. "Coat too, if anyone official asks. But you keep it hidden till then. No sense givin' the Capitol a display it hasn't demanded yet."
I rose slowly. The room wavered a little at the edges, from pain or shame or both. I reached across the desk and offered my hand. Rolette looked at it for a long second.
Then he took it. His grip was rough, warm, and brief.
"We'll help how we can," he said. "Quietly. Don't make yourself easy to find, ya hear?"
I sniffed back any piece of hurt that would threaten to bubble over. "Yes, sir."
"And Rhodes?"
I paused at the door. Rolette's eyes had gone to Virgil's name again. "Take care of Tempest's girl. But for pity's sake, don't mistake holding on for takinâ care."
The walk back to Errante was hard. Very hard.
Every step felt like some invisible hand was pressing down on my shoulders, shoving me deeper into the dirt with the weight of everything I had managed to ruin in the span of a single night. Losing the badge was one thing. Losing Virgil's legacy? Losing Rose's trust? Those were wounds I could not stitch shut with time or excuses.
The outpost door clicked behind me, and the noise rang through my skull like a hammer on steel. Virgil's name stayed on the plaque watched me all the way out.
Errante nickered softly when he saw me, ears flicking, sensing something was wrong before I touched his reins. I rested my forehead against his neck, breathing in grass, sweat, dust, all the ordinary things that should have grounded me. They didn't.
"I'm sorry, buddy," I muttered into his mane. "I'm sorry I couldn't keep it together."
A pathetic apology, to a horse at that. Easier than saying it to Rose.
"Rhodes!"
I flinched hard. Burr Scranton's voice cut through the fog in my skull like a whip crack. Heavy boots thudded against the dirt as he jogged up, panting like he had sprinted across half the district.
"There you are!" he huffed. "Been lookin' all over for ya. Ditcher swore you'd be down by the creek drownin' yourself in that special water Gooseneck keeps stashin' in his locker. Well... kept. Till he tied the noose on it."
I did not smile back.
Burr slowed when he got a good look at me. Really looked. His joking expression faded into something softer. Confusion, concern, the kind of worry you only give people you've seen bleed more than once.
"You look like hell, Rhodes," he muttered. "Chief give ya grief?"
I opened my mouth. Nothing came.
Burr's face changed. "Ah."
It was a small sound. It said enough.
Rose, Waaska, and Nibs rode to the academy beneath a morning sky the color of old tin.
Smoke still lifted from New Bisman's center in a thick, bitter stream. The air was foggy, though not from weather alone. Ash drifted low over the road, softening the outlines of buildings and turning every figure at a distance into a smudge that might be neighbor, peacekeeper, or ghost.
No one spoke.
Nibs rode hunched on his pony with both hands tight on the reins, his usual restless chatter swallowed somewhere between home and the square. Waaska kept her eyes forward, posture too straight, one dark braid falling over her shoulder. She had not looked at Rose much that morning.
Rose had not known whether to be relieved.
They passed the execution ground from a safe distance, though safe was a generous word for any place where the smell could still reach you.
The stakes were lit. Flames climbed around the bound shapes of Hoffman Ellendale and two of his men, turning them into motion, then sound, then something no human mind should be asked to name. Peacekeepers kept the road clear. A few citizens had been forced to watch, heads bowed or lifted in terror, depending on which survival instinct had taken them first.
Hoel Ellendale stood near the front in handcuffs.
They recognized him by the gaunt shape of his face, that eerie echo of Hoffboss stripped down to bone and youth. Bruises mottled his cheek and jaw. His eyes were red at the edges, but not wet. He watched the fire with a flat, cold stare that looked less like courage than a soul leaving by degrees because the body had not been permitted to follow.
Rose had known of his existence, back when Ellendale senior had been a firecatcher himself. However, after a grizzly accident had taken the boysâ father, the whole household had shuttered into shambles at the loss of the patriarch. The mother had died early in their lves, and the eldest Ellendale had been swallowed whole by the Games, never to return. From what Rose could recollect, it was just the two brothers, with Hoffman more ravenous than a rabid dog, especially after hearing the gory details of his time in the Gluttony Games and young Hoel trailing behind, understandably having nowhere else to go.
Rosabel couldnât help but pity the boy.
"Why are they making him watch?" Nibs whispered.
Waaska's mouth tightened. "Don't look."
Nibs looked anyway. So did Rose.
She thought of me at that moment. Of the way I had spoken about executions without ever quite describing the first one Iâd seen. Then, her mind flashed to the memory of my hand stopping in the air when she told me not to touch her. Of smoke and Coriolanus and being kissed in front of people who now had the power to write her name on a ballot.
Her stomach turned.
"Just⊠keep going," Rose said with defeat. And they did, breath held as much as possible so as not to taste the air.
At the academy, silence had become a new subject. The halls did not ring with the usual morning noise. No bragging over marks, complaints about breakfast, whispered jokes, nor slates clattering for attention. Students moved in careful currents, their eyes darting to one another and away again as if every glance might be counted later. Conversation traveled in brief, folded whispers passed hand to hand like contraband.
Everyone was thinking of the same thing. Who?
Who would be easiest? Who had enemies? Who had too many friends to risk? Who was poor enough to be forgotten, rich enough to be resented, strange enough to be blamed, pretty enough to be punished, loud enough to be made example?
Who?
Carrigan Killdeer sat during civics with her head bent over her book, not raising her hand once. That alone felt like the world had tipped. Dax Hebron did not argue with the lesson. Amos Bottineau never looked up. Even Nellie, usually a girl who seemed likely to talk during her own funeral, kept both lips pressed tight as if words had become ammunition and she did not trust herself not to fire the wrong one.
And Professor Wishek did not appear to notice. Or perhaps she noticed and chose survival.
When she asked for a volunteer to read aloud, no one moved. Not Carrigan or Dax. Not Rose, though in another life, yesterday perhaps, the silence would have bothered her enough to fill it.
Wishek sighed with theatrical exhaustion and chose a boy in the back at random. His voice shook through a passage about Panem's unified national purpose after the Dark Days.
Rose stared at her textbook and read nothing. Her mind kept returning to Coriolanus.
Not in the way she wanted though. There was no clean desire, infatuation, or even as much admiration anymore. Only confusion, maybe a bit of anger. With that sick thread of empathy she could not seem to cut because she had seen him in pain and heard him speak like a man who believed cruelty was not indulgence but architecture. If he believed that, truly believed it, what kind of world had made him? What did a Capitol childhood teach a person about mercy? Was he monstrous, or merely fluent in a monstrous language?
And why did part of her still want him to open the university to her? The thought made her ashamed. Then ashamed of the shame, her head rapidly thinking of excuses dipped in guilt.
By lunch, Rose felt scraped hollow.
She took her tray of grits and bread before she looked for Waaska by their usual table. Empty. Nibs sat with the younger students near the far wall, poking at his food and pretending not to look frightened. Still, Waaska was nowhere.
Rose waited. Then searched. The restrooms. The side hall. The old lecture room with flaking paint. Back to the cafeteria. Still nothing.
At last she approached Nibs. âHey. Do you know where Waaska went?"
Nibs looked up, startled, then annoyed in the way young boys become annoyed when fear has embarrassed them. "No."
"Nibs." She eyed him sternly.
He huffed. "Maybe the roof? Some of the older kids go there to stuff their faces when they don't want teachers starin'."
The roof. Rose nodded and moved before doubt could slow her.
The stairwell smelled of dust, metal, and damp wool. As she climbed, voices drifted down from above through the battered roof door. For one hopeful moment, the sound almost comforted her. Actual chatter. A little laughter. Some proof the Quarter Quell had not swallowed everything whole.
Maybe Waaska had found someone to confide in. That was good! Maybe the fear of the vote had opened something in her cousin instead of closing it.
Rose reached the top landing. A boy laughed.
"Oh, my goodness," he said. There was no doubt in her mind that it was Enrique who was talking, though his tone sounded like it always knew where gossip lived before gossip knew itself. "I always knew something was up!"
Rose paused.
Suddenly Waaska laughed back too. Brightly, yet⊠with a hint of nerves.
"Yeah," Waaska said, her voice going between sounding confident and sounding alienated. "A-Absolutely."
"Wait, wait," another girl pressed, voice eager. "So⊠was she courting him?"
The floor seemed to move beneath Rose's feet.
"Oh! Y-You mean the Capitolite?" Waaska said, and Rose could hear the shrug, could hear the effort to sound casual, included, safe. "I mean... they did kiss, didn't they?"
Several kids burst into laughter. Rose's hands went numb.
"My sister's always wonderin' why Rose got accepted by the Capitol before her," Enrique said. "Guess now we know."
"I always picked her for a bread stealer," another voice snickered.
More laughter. Rose backed away from the door. One step, then another.
She made it down one flight before her stomach rebelled.
The nearest restroom was empty. Rose stumbled inside, dropped to her knees beside the rusted bin, and dry-heaved until her throat burned and her eyes watered. Nothing came up but bile and the sound of her own heart trying to beat its way out of her ribs.
Waaska⊠not a bully like Carrigan. Or strangers. Not the people who had always wanted to believe the worst because the worst made better conversation.
Waaska.
Family.
Rose stayed folded over the bin long after her stomach had emptied, knuckles white around the rim. She pressed her forehead to the cool tile until it hurt.
She didn't mean it, Rose told herself. Any of it! Sheâs just scared! Yeah, that was right! She wanted them to stop looking at her! She wanted to belong somewhere for five minutes in a world that had become a pen and a ballotâŠ
Though betrayal does not become harmless because fear taught it the words.
Then, the bell rang.
Rose remained on the floor while feet thundered down the stairs outside. Through the door cracked open an inch, she saw Waaska pass with Enrique and the others, laughing at something Rose could not hear. Her cousin's face looked bright with relief.
That was the cruelest part. As if hurting Rose had made Waaska look less aloneâŠ
When the hall emptied, Rose stood on unsteady legs. Her mouth tasted of salt and iron.
By the time she reached the yard after final bell, she had decided two things that contradicted each other perfectly.
First, Coriolanus Snow had been wrong to kiss her, but also⊠maybe everyone else was right to think she had earned it somehow.
We ended up at the saloon because some griefs are too large for daylight and too immediate for wisdom.
The place smelled of old beer, floor dust, lamp smoke, and men pretending not to be afraid. Everyone spoke lower than usual. Every laugh came half-strangled. The Quarter Quell had done what the Capitol intended; it made neighbors look at one another and wonder what names had already sat behind their teeth.
Burr put a glass in front of me.
"That's ridiculous!" he said after I told him. "Man, if it weren't for Hillsboro and half the peacekeeper line watchin', I'd give that no-good piece of work a piece of my mind myself!"
He did not say Snow's name. Most sentiments toward the Capitol arrived without proper nouns. Safer that way.
I downed the drink. The liquor burned my throat and then kindly burned nothing else.
"Chief didn't have much choice," I mumbled. "Still, could've been me on the stick this mornin'."
Burr shook his head. "Don't say that."
"It's true." I shrugged, looking at the bottom of my glass.
"Still don't say it." Burr took his own drink, grimaced, and leaned one elbow on the bar. "Rolette ain't Tempest. That's all."
I threw him a side eye. "Burr, please."
"No, listen. I don't mean it like one of my conspiracies.â He assured me before explaining himself. âI mean Tempest trusted his people different. He'd have known you were stupid, sure. He'd probably have called you twelve kinds of idiot and beat you with his hat. But he wouldâve known why you did it. Wouldâve seen S- that guy for what he was doin'."
I rubbed both hands over my face. "Virgil's dead, Burr. We shouldn't test a dead man's merit."
"Fair." Burr nodded, then took another drink. "Still doesn't mean he wouldn't have done the right thing."
"And what would that be?"
He gave me a serious glance. "Teachin' a man to respect a young lady, thatâs what."
The words should have comforted me, but⊠they hadnât.
Respect or civility was not what the room outside had seen. The district had seen Snow kiss Rose. It had seen me strike him, before Rose fell because of my hand. Stories do not keep their original shape long once fear starts chewing on them.
I blankly stared down at the surface of the bar.
"Rhodes!"
A hand clapped my shoulder, jolting me from the ugly turn of my thoughts. Trouble stood behind us with a gaggle of trainee firecatchers, all too young and too bright-eyed for the hour. He looked better than he had after the mine, though a bruise still colored one cheek and his sleeves hung loose around arms not yet finished growing.
"It's good to see you," Trouble said. "And Caliber-"
"How many times I gotta tell ya?â The elder catcher turned. âBurr's fine!"
The trainees laughed. Not merrily, rather in a desperate manner. Laughter was scarce that morning and therefore hoarded wherever it appeared.
One lanky boy pointed at me with a grin. "Good job yesterday, Rhodes!"
My brows furrowed as I frowned. "For what?"
"For melting snow,â The trainee then winked in a corny, coded way. âOf course."
A few snickered. My stomach churned.
"I⊠didnât," I replied plainly.
The boy blinked. "What?"
"Don't make that into a joke."
âYeah, guys,â Burr backed me up. âYou might get in trouble with the chief.â
The group quieted a little. Trouble shifted, confused and concerned. "We just meant... well, not even Rolette had the grits to do what you did, Rhodes."
That earned him a humorless chuckle from me. "I wouldn't recommend it."
"Why not?" A girl with soot still under one eye crossed her arms. "It's summertime. Snow ain't belong in it."
More laughter. I did not laugh along.
Trouble leaned closer, lowering his voice with the careless secrecy of a boy about to reveal a knife he did not know was sharp. "For what it's worth, Tempest-Strix should've been more grateful of you."
My head turned slowly. "What?"
Burr's hand tightened around his glass, quietly warning the young catcher. âTroubleâŠâ
Trouble's expression faltered. "I mean... after she defended him."
"She didn't defend him." I huffed back, somewhat offended.
"That ainât what folks are sayin'."
I rolled my eyes. "Folks are idiots, ya know."
The lanky trainee scratched the back of his neck. "C'mon, Rhodes. She couldn't have been snogginâ him for nothin'."
The room around us changed, though it didnât reveal itself right away. The bartender still wiped a glass. Men still pretended not to listen. However, every ear in that place leaned toward us.
I set my glass down carefully.
"What did you say?" I ask, tone inching towards disbelief.
The boy took a step back. Trouble looked suddenly frightened. "Rhodes, I thought you knew-"
"Knew what?" I fully turn to face the boy.
Burr muttered, a hand came to my should, "Easy."
I turned to him. "Do not easy me."
Trouble swallowed. "People are sayin'... well, they're sayin' she's been rollin' in the snow, if ya catch what Iâm throwing."
The phrase landed foul and cheap. For a second, I could not move.
Then every piece of the night arranged itself into something uglier. Snow's public display of affection. Rose's stillness and hidden confusion. The watching yard. Half the district turning their heads. The peacekeeper interest. The trainees laughing.
The Quarter Quell vote.
My blood went cold enough to hurt.
"No," I refused. "That is not true! Whatever you think is happenin' with Rosabel, it is not true. She's trying to get into University. That's it."
"Yeah, but how?" the lanky boy asked, too foolish to realize he'd wandered into a blaze. "I heard she ain't even top of the academy. The Killdeer girl is."
"That is weird," Burr agreed, albeit reluctantly and softly.
I looked at him. His face didnât hold malice, though.
"What?" I asked.
Burr lifted both hands a little. "I'm only sayin' folks wonder. She got attention fast. Capitol attention. And Rose... she was given a lot already. Tempest's house. His name. His protection."
"She's his daughter." I scoffed.
"She's adopted, Rhodes," Burr said.
The bar went very quiet.
"And she ain't even district-born," someone farther down muttered.
I stood so fast the stool scraped backward. Pain tore through my leg, but I welcomed it. Pain kept my hands from becoming weapons again.
"She is District 9," I said, voice low. "More than half the people in this room who'd sell a child for one less mouth at supper and call it civic duty."
Nobody answered. Burr looked stricken, but he did not take it back. That was all I needed to know.
"I need to go," I finally retorted.
Trouble reached like he might apologize. Burr shook his head at him.
I limped out through the swinging doors and into the morning, where the air smelled of smoke from the stakes and New Bisman sat around itself like a dog waiting to bite.
Snow had not only marked Rose. He had handed the district a story it could vote on.
I reached the Tempest house hard enough that Errante's sides were damp beneath the saddle.
Wildfire was not in the paddock, meaning Rose wasn't home.
"Damn it," I muttered, turning Errante east, straight for her auntieâs home.
The Mniwakan lodge sat where the road began to soften toward pasture. I expected noise when I approached. That family produced noise like a healthy tree produced leaves. Instead, the porch sat quiet beneath the afternoon light.
Instead, it was Waaska who sat on the steps in her academy uniform.
Her braid had loosened, and her arms were wrapped around herself as though the summer air had turned cruel. Her eyes were red-rimmed. When she saw me, all the color left her face.
"Oh, uh⊠Auphie?" The young girlâs eyes swiveled from either side of the gravel road, then back to me.
I slowed Errante to a walk. The closer I got, the more distinguishable her reddened eyes had become. "You all right?"
She paused at my question, blinking once as if I were speaking a foreign language before nodding. "I-I'm fine, Auphie. Thanks for asking."
Children are terrible liars when guilt is fresh.
I decided to change the subject. "Where's Rose?"
Waaska flinched at her name. That told me more than I had time to ask.
"I don't know," she said. "I haven't seen her since... since school."
Then, my mind was trained back to Morton Valley. The one place Rose would go if she did not want to be found and yet wanted to be near the only thing that still felt like hers.
Not the academy, of course. No one would find any comfort being cooped up in such a place. Rather her other school⊠the first one.
I turned Errante north.
"Auphie?" Waaska called, her voice on the brink of a sob, almost.
I looked back. Her mouth opened, then closed. Whatever confession sat there was too large for the steps, too late for the moment.
"Ride safe," she simply said, despite her broken inflection.
I nodded once and rode for Morton Valley. The sun had begun lowering by the time I reached the Secret Garden. Wildfire grazed near the creek, her bay coat turned gold at the edges by late light. Relief moved through me so suddenly I nearly hated it. Errante whinnied softly to her, like he was greeting an old friend, as she lifted her head as if offended by the interruption before returning to the grass.
Rose sat outside the cracked red stone, knees drawn close, her corduroy jacket discarded in the creek bay as though she had thrown it off in a fit and lacked the strength to regret it. Her gaze rested on the water without seeming to see it.
"Rosie?" I called gently.
Nothing. I tied Errante beside Wildfire and limped toward her.
"Rose...â I gently press. âI'm sorry about last night."
"No," she said, voice flat yet gravelly. "You're fine."
Those two words frightened me more than anger would have. I simply lowered myself beside her with more effort than dignity. The grass whispered around us. A deer moved at the far edge of the meadow, then vanished into brush. The Secret Garden stood at our backs, silent as ever, holding every old thing we had trusted it with. Rose still did not look at me.
"You've been drinking," she noted.
I winced. "Some."
"MmâŠ"
I let her sit with that for a minute before I responded. "This isn't about me."
"No," she said, not cruelly. Her voice and expression seemed far too exhausted to snap back.
âRose,â I took a slow breath, my mind whizzing through a variety of difficult situations. Any solution that could dig the girl out of this miserable mess. "You need to stay here. In the Garden."
Her eyes finally turned toward mine. Red-rimmed, bloodshot, exhausted. "Why?"
"Because if you stay in New Bisman,â I tried explaining. âYouâll be in danger."
"Everyone is in danger." Rose shrugs, her tone still deadpan.
"Not like you." My voice tightened. "Rose, what Snow did? That kiss? He left a mark on you, put a target on your back. People are talkin'. Ugly. Actually, worse than ugly. And with the vote-"
"And then what?" she asked, her head shaking. The question came so softly I almost missed the blade in it.
"What?" I frowned.
"If I hide," she said, looking back to the creek. "Then what? The district can just vote for the next girl in line?"
My mouth went dry. "No."
The lie tasted foul the instant it left me. Rose heard it. Of course she did.
She gave a small, broken nod. "This is what I've sowed, Auphie. I suppose I have no choice but to reap it."
âRose,â I replied. "Don't say that."
"Why not?" Her voice trembled at last. "It's true!"
"No, it isn't." I pleaded.
She laughed once, brittle and humorless. "I used him, only serves me right."
I stared at her. "Rose."
"I did." Her hands tightened around her own arms. "Coriolanus. I wanted University so badly that I let myself think of him as a way in before I thought of him as a person. I wanted him to see things my way. I wanted his money, his introductions, his access, and now everyone knows. They know exactly what I am."
My heart sank. My immediate response was anger, but obviously, not at Rose. No, my disdain held true for the Capitolite. However, the next emotion was regret. Guilt. Maybe there was some way I couldâve prevented all this?
My eyes dropped to the bruise on her lip. "No."
"I was vain." She admitted.
"No." I refused.
"I was selfish." She shook her head, tears threatening to pour down. âNo⊠I am selfish.â
"Rosabel."
She flinched at the full name, but I needed her to hear me.
"You did not use him."
The words left my mouth steadier than I felt. I reached for her wrist without thinking, then stopped with my fingers barely brushing skin, leaving the choice to her. She did not pull away.
That alone told me how far she had gone.
"You listened," I continued, slower now. "You questioned and challenged what you were handed. That isn't manipulation. That's a spine."
She shook her head. "A spine doesn't get people killed."
I grimaced before refuting. "A spine doesn't have to keep everyone alive either."
Her eyes filled, though she blinked hard against it.
"B-But I kissed him," she whispered. "Or he kissed me, and I did nothing, just like you said! I let myself think, just for a second, that maybe if someone from the Capitol saw me as worth something, then maybe the rest of them would too. And now everyone thinks I⊠you know, cheated my way into favor. That I'm greedy. Dirty. Guilty... and maybe I am."
I hated that she was poisoned with this belief. No, that I contributed to this belief.
"Why wouldn't they vote for me?â Her jaw clenched. âWhy wouldn't they choose somebody who already looks guilty?"
Then, something sharp twisted in my chest.
"You think they're gonna vote you in because you deserve it?" I asked quietly.
She didn't answer. Her gaze simply peered ahead, glossed over, full of self-deprecation.
"Rose." I turned fully toward her. "They ainât gonna vote on guilt. Theyâll vote on fear. And right now⊠you scare them."
Her brow furrowed. "I don't-"
"You do," I interrupted, not harshly, but firmly. "Because you don't bow the way they do. You don't pretend the Capitol is untouchable and you donât just swallow things just because you're told to. That makes you dangerous in a district that survives by keeping its head down."
She shook her head, breath uneven. "Then that's on me."
"No," I said, sharper now. "That's on them."
She looked at me then, really looked, eyes glassy, searching my face like she expected to find doubt there. She didn't.
"I should have known better," she whispered, sniffing back a sob. "I should have stayed quiet. I should have stayed invisible. Waaska wouldn't be scared, and my classmates wouldn't look at me like that, and you?" Her voice broke. "You wouldn't be trying to hide me like a liability."
That one hurt. I stood before I realized I was moving, boots crunching softly against gravel as I paced a short line along the stream, keeping myself from saying something I could not take back.
When I turned to her again, I crouched so we were eye level.
"Don't you dare shrink yourself into something small just to make the world more comfortable," I pushed. "Not for them or for me. And especially not because the Capitol trained everyone here to tear down the first person who looks like she might survive."
Her lips trembled. "You don't get it, Auphie. If I go in, if I'm voted, then at least it stops there. At least somebody like Waaska's safe. They won't have to look at me like I betrayed them anymore."
"And you think that makes it worth it?" My voice cracked despite myself. "You think walking into those Games will somehow wash you clean?"
Silence. I rested my hand over hers. She was cold.
"They don't get to decide your worth," I said softly. "Not Snow. Not the damn Capitol. Not even District 9. And not you either, not when you're hurting this badly."
Her breath shuddered. "I don't know how to fix this."
"You don't," I answered honestly. "Because it isn't broken. It's cruel. And cruelty doesn't get fixed by sacrifice. It just learns who it can afford to lose."
Tears slipped free then, silent, tracking down her cheeks as she bowed her head. I did not stop them. I just stayed.
"I'm⊠scared." she admitted at last.
I squeezed her hand once. "Good. That means you want to live, Rosie."
The meadow dimmed as the sun dipped lower, shadows stretching across the Garden like reaching fingers. Somewhere behind us, Wildfire snorted softly, grounding and real.
âYou know what?â I said as an insane notion burrowed itself into my skull. âI ainât gonna let them take you.â
It was a dangerous promise. Stupid, maybe. Big enough to break me. I made it anyway.
In response, a broken sob tore through Rosabelâs throat. She leaned into me then, and I drew her carefully into my arms. This time, I made no effort to crush her and definitely not to claim her. Just holding, with my hands open enough to let her leave if she needed to.
She didn't.
When we finally rode home, Misea was waiting.
She came out before we had fully dismounted, skirts gathered in one hand, worry naked across her face. "Auphie? Rosie?"
Rose was barely off Wildfire before Misea pulled her into a hug, then reached for me too, dragging us both in with a strength born from panic and auntship.
"I heard about yesterday!" she said. "I am so-"
"Don't apologize," Rose murmured into her shoulder. "Everyone's going through a troublesome time."
"Yes, but I can't imagine how you must feel." Misea smoothed one hand over Rose's hair, careful near the swelling at her mouth. Her voice dropped. "Having to choose amongst each other? Itâs⊠barbaric."
Rose nodded, but there was distance in it.
Misea took both our hands. "Tunka says community and family matter most during times like this. We wanted you both for supper. Minaha is making duck, and threaded squash soup. I know how much you love it, Rosie."
Rose's face changed. Not with dislike, but rather fear.
I saw it. The thought of the lodge. Of Waaska. Of family gathered around food while rumor sat beneath the table like a snake.
"She hasn't been feeling well," I said before Rose had to. "After everything. She didn't sleep much. I think rest would do her better tonight."
Misea's expression softened with immediate concern. "Of course. Of course, sweetheart. The last thing you need is a crowded table."
Rose's relief was so visible it hurt.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"I'll send supper," Misea said. "No argument. Neither of you is going to bed empty."
"I can ride back with you," I said. "Bring it home. Let Rose rest."
Rose looked at me then. Her gaze held gratitude, tight and tired, and something like trust beginning the awful work of rebuilding one splinter at a time.
At the lodge, life had decided to continue loudly.
That was the blessing and insult of big families. The Mniwakan house breathed through work even when grief pressed at the windows. Children carried bowls. Zaaga darted underfoot with a bundle of kindling too large for him. A niece and two younger cousins argued over whether the soup needed more salt. Minaha  stood near the firepit with the grave attention of a woman making sure duck skin crisped properly despite the end of civilization. Older boys came in from the fields, checking themselves for ticks before their grandmother could do it for them and shame them publicly.
The smell of roasted duck and threaded squash soup should have comforted me. It almost did.
Gami met me at the entry with a bundle of strange bread in one hand and clapped a the other to my shoulder. "Auphidius. Good to see you standing."
I nodded timidly. "Standing's generous."
"Still counts.â He chuckled, adjusting the bread in his grasp. âSay, where's Rosabel?"
"Resting," Misea assured her husband before I could answer. "I mean, after yesterday, who wouldn't?"
Gami nodded, though worry stayed in his eyes. "Waaska's been strange too. Out back since she came home. Said she needed air."
Misea sighed, shaking her head. "Reaping jitters, I suppose."
I remembered Rosabelâs adamancy on Waaskaâs safety, on her implying that her cousin was confused? It wasnât that there was no reason for her to be. After the Quarter Quell announcement, everyone was bewildered. But even before that, Waaska seemed perturbed sitting outside of the lodge. Had the ballot reaping really scared her that much? Even if it was another month out?
"I can check on her," I suggested.
âOh, no.â Misea swatted her hand in fiend disregard. "You don't need to, Auphie."
âThatâs okay.â I assured her. "I can just check. Just for a moment."
Maybe she heard something in my voice. Mothers probably had a special instinct, knowing when a child's silence had teeth. After a moment of thought, she nodded.
I found Waaska on the back fence, looking over the horse pasture as evening softened the fields. Her uniform jacket lay folded beside her. Wind tugged loose strands from her braid. She looked smaller from behind than she had any right to, shoulders curled inward around a shame she had not yet named.
"Waaska?" I called out.
She jumped so hard she nearly slipped. When she saw me, her face drained. "Oh, Auphie! Is uh⊠Rose here?"
"No." I shook my head, much to the girlâs relief⊠or dismay?
"Oh."
I leaned against the fence post, sparing my leg the trouble of pretending. For the second time that day, I asked her the same question once more. "You doin' okay?"
She stared toward the pasture, internally processing if she really was. For a while, the only sound was horses cropping grass and the lodge alive behind us. Then Waaska said, her expression crestfallen, "I⊠did something today."
My chest tightened, simply letting her continue.
"And,â She drew in a shaky inhale. âI don't know how to take it back."
I remained silent.
"It's⊠about Rose."
Her voice broke around the name.
"I heard everything last night," she said. "Not everything, maybe, but⊠I heard too much. About him kissing her, the Capitolite I mean. Bout you asking if there was something them. I felt bad for you first. Then I felt... I don't know. Betrayed, I guess."
"Betrayed?" I tilted my head to the side. âHow so?
She wiped at her cheek with the heel of her hand, angry with the tear before it fell. "Because she was going to leave and⊠and abandon us. For University. The Capitol. Him. And I thought families don't just leave one another. And then at school everyone was looking, and I didn't want them looking at me, and then a boy from my class started talking for the first time and-"
Her words tangled. I waited.
"I⊠told everyone,â She whispered, finally confessing. "On the roof. I said she kissed him and⊠I laughed about it."
My jaw tightened.
The old part of me, the mean part, made from alleys and hunger and boys like Hoffman Ellendale, wanted to sharpen my voice enough to leave a mark. However, Waaska already looked like a child who had found the knife in her own hand and did not know how to put it down without cutting herself again.
"So," I said carefully. "You gave them Rose."
She flinched. Hard.
"Yeah." Her voice cracked. "I did, I did. I thought⊠if they were talking about her, they wouldn't talk about me. And then the boy from my class, Enrique, said his sister was mad Rose got picked for University before her, and everyone started laughing, and I⊠I didn't stop it."
I inhaled slowly through my nose.
"Why did you feel betrayed?" I asked.
Her mouth opened. Closed. She swallowed.
"Because she was going to the Capitol," Waaska murmured. "Because he kissed her and everyone saw, and it was like... like she was already gone. Like she mattered somewhere else more than she mattered here."
âBut⊠she isn't gone."
"I know." Waaska squeezed her eyes shut, hoping to bottle up her emotions.
"You know what?" I asked, more out of curiosity than out of accusation.
Waaska looked at me then, eyes wet and furious. "I don't know what I know anymore."
That was the first honest thing anyone had said all day.
"Rose is still here," I assured her. "Still kicking and trying to pull at something better, like she can drag it out of the dirt with her bare hands."
"But what if she gets voted?" Waaska whimpered with fear. âI⊠I did this! Itâs my fault.â
The real fear beneath the confession stemmed from her guilt. Everyoneâs guilt. The Quarter Quell was not just a rule. It was a sword the Capitol had set on the table and told children to pick who would fall on it first.
Waaska stared out toward the darkening rows of wheat in the distance. "People are already mad at her. They think she's⊠dirty. That she snogged her way into being special. They'll vote for her because⊠it feels like justice to them."
"It isn't justice," I said, sharper than intended. I softened my tone. "It's sacrifice."
Waaska's breath trembled. "And it's my fault."
I did not disagree. Not right away, though. Because if I lied, she would hear it. If I excused it, she would learn nothing. And Rose? She did not have the luxury of people learning slowly.
So, I held Waaska's gaze and let the truth sit between us, hard as stone.
"You made it easier, yes," I explained. "You gave them a story they can swallow. One they can repeat without feeling sick."
Her face crumpled. "I wish I didnât."
"I know."
The young girl turned to me, a furious expression that showed determination suddenly glinted in her eyes. "I want to fix it."
"ThenâŠâ I eyed the endless fence posts. â⊠you have to start by telling the truth. To Rose."
Waaska looked horrified, her expression sickened, but more so pointed to herself. "She'll hate me."
"She might." I sighed. The answer hurt her. It needed to. "But you don't get to decide what she feels by keeping her in the dark. That's what the Capitol does. Or rather what it wants. They control the story so no one can breathe."
Waaska gripped the fence rail. "I can't. Not after what I said."
"You already made one choice today.â I offered. âNow⊠make another."
Her tears finally spilled. She wiped them angrily, like she was mad at herself for having a face that could betray her.
"She's going to get voted," Waaska whispered. "Because of me. Because I didn't keep my mouth shut. And because, you know, she's... Rose."
There was something in the way she said the name. Like it meant target. Like it meant bright.
Then Waaska said, smaller, almost to herself, "I wanted to be her. Just for a second."
I went still. Waaska stared into the pasture, voice hollow. "Everyone looks at her. When they hate her, they still look. And when he kissed her, it was like she mattered. O-Obviously, Iâm not talking about that gross Capitolite, no. Itâs just a-and I know itâs stupid, but⊠I wanted that."
Oh.
That was the sickness of it. They had taught our children to crave attention even when it came to teeth.
Waaska choked on a sob. "And now I ruined her."
"No," I said, firm enough to make her glance at me. "You didn't ruin her."
"Auphie-"
"You hurt her," I corrected. "But you didn't break her. Rose is not glass. She ainât a rumor. Hell, she ainât a story you trade to keep your own hands clean."
Waaska's breath hitched. "Then⊠why does it feel like she's already falling?"
Because she's trying to carrying everyone, I thought. Because she's been holding the line with her bare palms and it's finally starting to cut through.
I didn't say that part. Instead, I said, "Because⊠the district is hungry and scared. When people are like that, they⊠pick someone to blame so they don't have to admit the truth."
"What's the truth?" Waaska whispered, her dark brows pinched.
I looked at her dead in the eye. "The truth is⊠the Capitol is going to take one of us no matter what, but⊠they're counting on you being too terrified to notice who's really holding the knife."
Waaska's sobs quieted into something like breath. Then, she nodded. Barely.
"I want to make it right," she said hoarsely, trying to keep her sobs at bay.
"Then be brave," I told her. "Not loud. Brave."
She blinked hard. "W-Will you help me?"
To face Rose. To face the mess she had made. To face the possibility Rose would not forgive her and the possibility she did not deserve forgiveness yet.
I hesitated for only a heartbeat.
"Yeah," I said. "I'll help you out where I can."
Waaska's shoulders sagged with relief. Then, as if the moment itself finally found her, she whispered, "What if⊠Rose won't listen?"
I stared past her into the deepening dusk, where the hills turned into silhouettes and the world looked as if it were holding its breath.
"Then I'll make sure she does," I nodded quietly. Or Iâll try to anyways.
Waaska's eyes widened. My way of thinking wasnât blunt exactly, she knew I meant it. If Rose was already blaming herself, already offering her throat to the Quell like penance, then someone had to be cruel enough to keep her alive. I glanced toward the lodge again, toward the warm light, toward the supper Rose was not sitting down to eat.
"Rose doesn't get to die because she feels guilty," I murmured, more to myself than Waaska. "Not while weâre still here."
Waaska swallowed hard. "Auphie..."
I turned back to her, voice gentler.
"Go wash your face," I said. "Breathe. Eat a bite so you don't faint. Then, when the time is right, we tell her. All of it."
"W-When will that be?" Her bottom lip quivered. âDoes it have to be tonight?â
âNo,â I assured, though, still I help her penance high where she could see it. "Tonight she gets one night where she isn't being watched."
Waaska slid down from the fence slowly, legs shaky beneath her. She hesitated by the back steps, hand on the rail, then looked at me one last time. "And if they vote for her anyway?"
My hands curled into fists at my sides. âThen we do everything we can to bring her home."
And for the first time, Waaska did not look like a scared kid. She looked like someone who understood what it cost to stand in front of fire.
By the time I went back inside, supper had been packed into a covered basket and tied with cloth.
Misea had tucked in more than she needed to. That was how women like her loved people when words turned useless. Duck wrapped in paper. A jar of threaded squash soup, still warm enough to fog the glass. Corn cakes. Pickled onions. A little crock of berry preserves. Enough food for two people and then some, as if hunger were the one problem in Panem a decent aunt could still outwit.
Gami added one last thing before I could leave.
âHere,â he said, pushing a flat, pale round of bread into the basket.
I looked down at it. Then back at him. âWhat happened to it?â
Gamiâs brow furrowed. âThatâs bread.â
I furrowed my brows. âSomebody sit on it?â
He gave me a wounded look. âItâs called pita. Got it off a trader passinâ through from east rail.â
âPita,â I repeated, dubious. âSounds like a small animal that bites.â
âItâs good with duck.â He assured me.
I make a gesture of something between a nod or a shake. Regardless, it came out uncertain. âIâll inform Rose of that.â
Misea walked me to the porch. She stood there with both arms folded tight around herself, watching the yard like she expected the road to bring bad news if she looked away too long.
âTell Rosie Iâll come by tomorrow,â she nodded, her gray-blue eyes holding maternal concern.
âI will.â I assured.
âAnd Auphie?â She called after as I paused with the basket in one hand.
Miseaâs mouth trembled once before she steadied it. âDonât let her sit too long in her own head. Ya hear?â
That almost made me laugh, though not because it was funny. âTrying not toâ.
The ride back to the Tempest place was quieter than it had any right to be. Errante moved easy beneath me, unbothered by the basket swinging light against my leg, while the road darkened from gold to blue. New Bisman sat behind us with smoke still smearing the sky above the mayorâs quarter and the execution ground. A whole town trying to pretend supper could still happen after children had been turned into ballots.
The Tempest house had one lamp lit when I returned. Rose had not yet gone to bed. I knew that before I opened the door. There was a way a house held wakefulness. A thinness in the air. A careful soundlessness, like the walls knew someone inside was trying very hard not to make their pain visible.
She sat at the kitchen table with a book open in front of her and one hand pressed flat over the page. Obviously, her eyes gleamed over the same sentence over and over. Just keeping the book from closing, maybe, as if that counted as studying.
Wolfie lay beneath her chair with his chin on his paws. Then, Rose looked up when I came in. For a moment, neither of us said anything.
Then I lifted the basket. âBrought supper.â
Her gaze dropped to it. âMisea did?â
âAnd half the lodge,â I motioned it as if appraising its value. âBy the weight of it.â
That drew the smallest breath of a smile from her. Something alive enough to count.
I set the basket on the table and started unpacking it. The smell of duck and squash soup filled the kitchen, warm and rich, and for one dangerous second it nearly felt like any other evening. One where Virgil might come in late smelling of smoke and oats, where Rose would wrinkle her nose at some school assignment, and I would pretend I had not been waiting for someone to ask if I wanted seconds.
Rose closed her book carefully.
âMisea didnât need to send this much.â She smiled fondly at her auntâs sentiment.
âShe did, actually.â I shrugged. âSuppose itâs in the aunt law.â
âThe aunt law?â She crinkled her brow.
âVery strict.â I jokingly played along, just like I used to do when Rose was ten. âOld as Panem. Older, maybe.â
Roseâs mouth twitched.
I pulled out the flat round of pita and laid it on the table with the solemnity of evidence. âGami also sent this.â
Rose looked at it. Then at me, a shadow of amusement graced her face. âWhat is it?â
âBread, apparently?â
That got more of a smile. A tired one, but real enough to hit me somewhere tender.
âItâs pita,â I relented. âHe got it on a trade run.â
Rose inspected it, turning the slice over before shrugging. âIt looks fine.â
I was taken aback. âIt looks like somebody left it under a saddle.â
Rose tore a small piece of it free. âYou are insufferable.â
Maybe.
She dipped the bread into the squash soup once I poured it before tasting it. Her eyebrows rose a little despite herself. I already knew squash soup was her favorite, but with pita bread of all things? It really couldnât be that good.
I narrowed my eyes. âDoes it taste like bread?â
âWhat do you think?â She shot back, chowing down at the pita and soup.
âThat it tastes like somebody left it under a saddle?â I told her up front, before she shook her head with disapproval.
âNo, Uncle Gamiâs right.â She took another piece, folded it with duck inside, and dipped the edge into the soup. âIt really does bring everything together.â
I gave her a sarcastic glance. âDoes it really?â
âYes.â She insistently shook her head, her wide eyes encouraging me to try a bite. âCâmon, Auphie.â
I didnât. Instead, we ate in silence for a while. Or Rose ate a few bites and pushed the rest around her plate. I did not press her. Pressing Rose usually had the same effect as poking a badger with a spoon; educational, but not wise.
Her book sat between us. I glanced at it. âSchoolwork?â
She nodded absentmindedly, before dipping a piece of her pita in the soup. âHistory.â
âCapitol history or real history?â I glared down at the material. I already knew the answer.
âThat depends on whoâs grading.â She huffed.
That earned an earnest chuckle out of me.
Her eyes flicked up at that. I regretted it for half a second, wondering if the action had crossed wrong after everything. But she only looked back down and smoothed a crease in the page.
âIâm almost done,â she stated.
I looked back down at the book. âWith history?â
âWith the academy.â Her voice went quiet. âThere isnât much left now. A few marks, a final essay for Professor Wishek, and thenâŠâ She swallowed hard. âThe Games.â
I leaned back slightly.
I knew that every school year as a âcelebrationâ, the Games would be broadcasted live for all classes, regardless of if they were of reaping age or not.
It had started being an active, albeit forced, tradition to publicly broadcast the Games live across each settlement, all across the streets. You could be working at the mills, in the fields, or even at home, and itâd be mandatory for all radio stations, or if you were rich enough, televisions to be playing the Games for that specific time of year. Though, if you were working, you could at least zone out and simply focus on a task at hand, rather than listen to the screams of your own child being publicly flaunted on air.
However, the academy students had no such luck.
âThe whole class has to watch,â she continued. âItâs supposed to be civic instruction. We analyze the arena afterward. Strategy. Geography. Historical value.â Her fingers curled against the table. âAs if weâre not watching one of us die.â
One of us. I stared at the soup cooling in my bowl.
âVirgil hated that part,â I shook my head.
âI know.â Rosabel replied, remembering her father.
I turn my head back to her. âHe⊠ever tell you?â
Rose nodded. âoh yeah. He said the Capitol liked making children practice being adults by teaching them how to watch other children suffer.â
âYep,â I sighed. âThat sounds like him.â
âIt does.â A smile grin appeared as Rose remembered the man fondly. For a moment, the kitchen held his absence so clearly I could almost hear his boots in the hall.
Then, I broke the silence first. âWaaska feels bad.â
Her eyes moved to me. Then she turned back to her bowl. âI know she does.â
I let out a slow breath. âShe told me.â
Roseâs jaw tightened once. âWhat?â
âAbout the rumors.â I clasp my hands together in front of me. âAbout what she said.â
âShe told them about⊠yesterday.â Rose had a hard time iterating that last part.
I simply nodded. âYep.â
Rose closed her eyes. I waited for anger. I might have preferred it. Anger was easier to stand beside than the quiet way Rose absorbed hurt, like she thought being still might keep it from spreading.
âShe was scared,â Rose said. âShe⊠She had to be.â
I nodded. âTold me she was.â
âI know, but,â Confliction crossed the redheadâs face. âThat still doesnât make it right.â
âNo.â
Her eyes opened again, wet but steady. âIâm tired of understanding why people hurt me.â
That one hit clean. I nodded once. âYou donât have to forgive her tonight, ya know?â
âYeah,â She sighed, almost in defeat. âI know.â
âAnd,â I steadily continued my train of thought. âYou donât have to make it easier for her because sheâs sorry.â
Her gaze lifted to mine then, like she had expected the opposite. I kept my voice plain. âSorry matters. It just doesnât sew the wound shut by itself.â
Rose looked down at her hands. âI⊠does she think Iâm leaving? Because if she does⊠I, goodness, Iâd never want to abandon people so close to me, you know?â
I tightened my mouth in thought. âShe thinks a lot of things right now, Rose.â
She shook her head. âSo does everyone.â
Neither of us spoke after that. The lamp burned softly on the table. On the floor, Wolfieâs ears twitched toward some night sound, then settled. The house creaked in the cooling air.
Finally, Rose said, âDo you think theyâll vote for me, Auphie?â
I hadnât expected her to be so forward. Not so soon. Certainly not everything that transpired the day prior. The question had its bones showing.
I could have lied. I wanted to. Badly enough that my tongue nearly shaped the words before my conscience caught them by the collar.
âI think,â I said slowly, âSome already have.â
Rose did not seem all that surprise. âAnd the rest?â
âThe rest,â I slowly spoke. âThey are trying to decide what kind of person they can live with being.â
Her mouth tightened, her eyes wandered with uncertainty. âThat sounds like a yes to me.â
âYeah,â I agreed. âIt sounds like I donât know how many decent people fear can ruin before morning.â
She nodded faintly and looked toward the dark window. âI keep thinking of what Iâd do. If it wasnât me. Like⊠if it were some other girl everyone said had a better chance. Someone older. Someone trained. Someone who had made trouble, or had no family, or had Capitol attention already.â Her voice thinned. âI hate that I can understand the shape of it.â
âThat doesnât make you them.â I assured her.
âNo.â She rubbed at the corner of her eye. âBut it means the Capitol knew exactly where to aim.â
I could not argue with that.
Rose turned back to the table. âIf they vote me in, AuphieâŠâ
She stopped. I watched the thought work through her face and hated every person who had taught a seventeen-year-old girl to speak of her own death with practical pauses.
âIf they vote me in,â she tried again, âI donât want you doing something stupid.â
I gave a dry little laugh. âBit late for that request.â
âI mean it.â Her face turned serious.
So, I mirrored it back. âSo do I.â
Her expression sharpened. âYou already lost your position because of me.â
âNo,â I said at once. âI lost it because I hit a Capitol man in front of half the district and then made a worse mess afterward. You donât need to take credit for my bad decisions. I worked hard for those.â
âAuphie.â Her head tilted in frustration, before softened despite herself, but the fear stayed. âItâs just⊠I donât want you hurt more.â
That did something ugly and tender inside me. I looked at the book between us. At her ink-smudged fingers. The bruise still faint near her mouth. At the girl who had been trying all day to make herself into something the district could sacrifice cleanly.
Thatâs when an idea came to me. Not a good idea. Good ideas are generally tidier, safer, less likely to get a man dragged behind a peacekeeper wagon, but⊠it was an idea with shape.
âIf worse comes to worse,â I finally allow my impulsions to slip, âYouâre not going in empty-handed.â
Rose frowned with confusion. âWhat does that mean?â
âIt means tomorrow morning,â I assert. âWe go to the Garden.â
Her frown deepened. âAuphie. Why?â
Before I could explain, I quietly confirmed it. âIâll teach you what I can.â
âWhat? You already have.â
âNo.â I shook my head. âNot enough.â
Her eyes searched mine, still, a dwindling hope reflected back to me. âTeach me what?â
âHow to hunt properly.â I said promptly. âHow to track something that doesnât want to be found. Or how to move without sounding like a schoolgirl stepping on every dry twig in District 9.â
âI do not-â Her expression rapidly bounced between a thousand thoughts. âWhat- What do you-â
I ignored her. âHow to ration something without wasting half of it or to judge water. And to tell a useful plant from a pretty poison. How to do all that ugly stuff that Virgil never wanted you to know when it comes to firecatching.â
Then, her face had gone still.
âAnd,â I added, quieter now, âIâll make you a bow.â
The room seemed to close around the sentence. Rose stared at me. âThatâs⊠contraband.â
âYes.â I said simply.
âAuphie, you could be arrested!â The rule following academy student in her panicked. âO-Or worse!â
âI know.â
Her brow sharpened. âAuphie!â
âI know.â
âNo, you donât.â Her voice rose, not much, but enough for Wolfie to lift his head beneath the table. âYou just got dismissed because of Coriolanus. Rolette is already watching you. Peacekeepers are already watching all of us. If they find a weapon here-â
âBut they wonât.â I ominously confirmed. âTrust me.â
âAuphie, you donât know that.â She kept pleading.
âNo,â I admitted. âI donât.â
Her breath caught, frustrated and afraid. âThen⊠why would you risk it?â
I leaned forward, resting both arms on the table. âBecause if the district decides your name belongs on that ballot, I wonât have my last act be standing around politely while they send you off unprepared.â
Rose looked away. I kept going, because stopping now would be cowardice.
âI canât stop the vote. I canât stand in that square or make people braver than they are. I canât make Snow undo what he did and make the whole damn Capitol admit this entire thing is rotten from root to roof.â My voice roughened. âBut I can put something useful in your hands. I can teach you how not to freeze. I can give you one more way to come home.â
Her eyes filled again.
âDonât say it like that,â she whispered.
âLike what?â
âLike,â Her eyes broke from mine reluctantly. âLike itâs possible.â
My throat tightened. âRose⊠it is possible.â
âAuphie-â
âIt is.â I said it harder that time, because she needed the words to have a spine. Maybe I did too. âNot easy. Or fair. But possible.â
âAuphie,â She shook her head once in near defeat. âNo one from 9 ever wins. Not even on the first day-â
âTessie did.â
Pain and fear crossed her face. âAnd look what winning did to her.â
I went quiet. There were some arguments a person could win and still lose the soul of the matter.
Rose wiped at her cheek quickly, angry with herself for the tears. âI⊠I donât want to become a thing people tell stories about because thereâs nothing else left of me.â
I gulped back a tremor. âYou wonât.â
âYou donât know that.â Her face crinkled in thought.
âNo,â I said. âI donât.â
She looked at me then.
I held her gaze, plain as I could. âBut I know this. You are not dead tonight and if I had it my way, you wonât be dead in a long time. You are sitting at this table, insulting perfectly suspicious bread, worrying about school, and arguing with me like you still expect tomorrow to be something you can answer back to. So tomorrow⊠we prepare. Got it?â
Roseâs mouth trembled. Not quite a smile. Not quite a sob.
âPrepare?â she repeated.
âThatâs all,â I said. âNo grand speeches or pretending like weâre not scared. There will be no deciding youâre already gone because the district might be cowardly enough to call your name. We. Prepare.â
She looked down at the pita bread still torn open beside her bowl. After a long moment, she picked up another piece, folded a bit of duck inside it, and held it out to me.
I eyed it. âI still donât trust that thing.â
âIt brings everything together.â She said almost casually.
âThat so?â I sighed.
She simply nodded before I took it from her and ate it because she was watching.
It was good.
Rose saw my face and, for the first time all day, gave a real laugh. Small. Cracked. Gone almost as soon as it came. But real. I would have smuggled a hundred illegal bows through a peacekeeper barracks for that sound.
She sobered quickly. âIf we do this,â she said, âwe do it carefully.â
âAgreed.â
âAnd if you think Iâm going to let you get yourself burned for trying to help meââ
I threw my hands up in surrender. âThen, you can lecture me at the reaping.â
âI mean it.â Her eyes turned to glass.
âSo do I.â I responded in earnest.
Her eyes narrowed, but there was less despair in them now. Fear still sat there, of course, bright and honest. Which was good. Let it. Let her be afraid and let it keep one hand closed tight around life.
Outside, the night settled fully over the Tempest yard. Somewhere in the paddock, Wildfire shifted against the fence. The house stayed quiet around us, no less endangered than before, no less watched by the world beyond its walls.
When I rose to clear the bowls, she opened her history book again, not because she was reading, I suspected, but because tomorrow had not taken that from her yet.
By morning, the district might have already decided all manner of things about Rosabel Tempest-Strix, but sitting there beneath the kitchen lamp and contraband already taking shape in my mind, I made one decision of my own.
If they were going to vote her into the Games, then I would bring her back out.
Death of a Wildfire (25th Hunger Games) - Chapter V
âA hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.â
- Simone Weil
<<<PREVIOUS CHAPTER | NEXT CHAPTER>>>
Before Virgil Tempest, before the firecatcher coat, before anyone ever looked at me and saw something useful, there was Dido, Auntie Aelias, and the Dregs.
That was the whole of my world, give or take a few alleys, a collapsed tannery, and the stretch of northern brush where desperate kids learned the difference between hunger and law. My parents had died when I was young enough that memory kept them more as weather than people. There were no clean portraits in my head, no tender scenes I could summon when grief wanted company. Only fragments: a woman's sleeve smelling of lye, a story or two about a man who looked like me, Dido's hand gripping mine too tightly the day we were moved into Auntie Aelias's house.
Dido remembered more. That was one of the first cruel things the world gave her and denied me. She remembered the before, and I only remembered the after.
Auntie Aelias was technically our great-aunt, though nobody with any manners would have made her carry the extra title. She was old by District 9 measures, which meant she had lived long enough to look at government announcements without believing the nice words and had enough ache in her joints to forecast weather better than any Capitol instrument. She kept a makeshift clinic on the poor edge of New Bisman, in a narrow two-room shack pressed against the last row of Dregs housing, where concrete blocks met mud and every building looked half ashamed of standing.
Her clinic was not the clinic proper. That place had clean sheets, locked cabinets, official healers, and prices that made a body reconsider whether bleeding out might be cheaper. Auntie Aelias had boiled linen, bitter poultices, old tinctures, and hands steady enough to make a child stop screaming before the needle went in. People paid her in coin when they had it and potatoes when they didn't. Sometimes in eggs. Once in a cracked mirror she hated and hung up anyway because refusing a gift was rude, even when the gift showed a woman exactly how tired she had become.
She could set a wrist, lance a boil, dress a burn, and talk a fever down like sickness was a stubborn mule. Healing the poor never fed anyone well. It only made sure everybody in the Dregs knew where to knock when their baby coughed blood or their husband lost a finger to the mill teeth.
Thatâs why Dido hunted.
At first she tried to keep it from me. She was maybe ten or so the first time I followed her beyond the northern wash flats and saw her pull a trapped hare from beneath a tangle of bitterroot. I must have been five, maybe six? Old enough to understand the animal was dead and young enough to think death was something you could use if you were careful with it. Dido turned on me with a snarl that would have frightened a coyote.
"Go home, Auphidius."
"No." I hissed through my gapped teeth.
That was most of our childhood, if you stripped it down honest. Dido saying go home. Me saying no. The Capitol finding a way to make us both wrong.
She had an atlatl carved from scrap wood and bone, one Auntie said had belonged to a cousin before the Dark Days swallowed his name. It was a simple thing, ugly as a fence slat, but in Dido's hand it became a miracle. She taught me to throw because she learned quickly that I would keep following her whether or not she wanted me there, and a boy with no training was noisier than a boy with a task.
By eight, I could drop a pheasant from the low air if the wind didn't shift mean. By nine, I could set a snare tight enough that a jackrabbit had no chance. By ten, I knew which traders would buy a dressed bird without asking where it came from and which would ask only to see whether fear made the price lower.
We used the Secret Garden before it ever belonged to Rosabel.
Back then, the place was not a sanctuary. Not yet. It was a hiding place and hiding places don't become holy until someone survives in them long enough to add meaning. The narrow crack in the red stone was almost invisible if you didn't already know where to look, tucked deep in the northern Morton Valley where the creek bent around broken rock and the grass grew tall enough to swallow a child whole. Dido found it first, or so she said. I always suspected Auntie had told her and let the lie stand because Dido needed to feel like something in our life had been earned instead of inherited through misfortune.
We stored gear there. Snares. The old atlatl. Arrows I had no right to own and loved more than common sense. Waxed thread. Salt wrapped in cloth. A rack made from creek branches where meat could hang in the cool dark until night made it safe to haul home. Auntie knew, though she pretended not to, because old healers and old women are experts in knowing what children think they've hidden.
"Careful with the steel points," she would say while stirring supper, never looking at the bundle under my coat. "A puncture gets ugly if it festers."
Dido would shoot me a look across the room that meant, âSee? She knows, you idiot.â
I would grin back because I was young enough to believe being known meant being safe.
For a while, it worked.
That was the dangerous thing. Most bad ideas work for a while. We ate better. Not well, mind you. Nobody in the Dregs ate well unless they were stealing from someone who ate better. Though, there was meat often enough to keep Auntie's hands from shaking when she worked late. Dido's cheeks stopped looking hollow. I learned the small pride of slipping coins into the cracked ceramic jar near the clinic shelf and watching Auntie's mouth soften when she thought no one could see.
Then the peacekeepers came heavier.
They had always existed, same as winter, taxes, and the Games. However, a good decade after the Dark Days, after the peacekeepers were slowly able to replenish and districts were meant to have been beaten into obedience, the Capitol had decided victory required constant reminding. So, patrols thickened around New Bisman. First along the rail line. Then at the mill gates. Then through the Dregs, where they inspected houses with the bored cruelty of men turning over stones to see what might scuttle out.
The weaponry recession came wrapped in words like safety and reconstruction. Blades, bows, trapping wire, spear throwers, even certain kinds of leatherwork could become contraband if the wrong peacekeeper wanted a reason. Guns were already off limits to the districts, but weapons like bows were to be submitted for registration through the peacekeeper force⊠and never given back to the hands of an everyday hunter ever again. Redundant and pointless, really.
Licensed hunters existed in name, yes. Licensed hunters also belonged to better families, better ledgers, better connections. The rest of us were poachers if caught and survivors if not.
Dido understood the change before I did.
"We stop," she told me one evening in the Secret Garden. She stood in the doorway with a sack over one shoulder and blood dried beneath one fingernail from cleaning grouse. "No more. Not for a while."
I stared at her as if she had suggested we stop breathing. "Auntie needs the meat."
"Auntie needs us alive." Dido reiterated.
"Auntie needs coin too."
That cost me a glare.
"Don't you twist this." Her voice had gone hard, but not cold. Dido was never cold with me then, not truly. She was frightened, and fear made her voice sharp. "They're checking stalls. Shops. Homes. They found snares at the Tanner boy's last week and took his father for questioning."
âWell,â the little boy that I was, tried to reason a way out. "His father came back."
"With three teeth gone."
I shrugged because I was nearly eleven and stupid enough to mistake defiance for courage. "Then we don't get caught."
Dido slapped me. Not hard enough to bruise. Hard enough to make silence.
She looked more shocked than I was. Her hand trembled at her side, and for one second, I thought she might apologize. Instead, she stepped closer.
"You think you're clever, but you ainât," she stated. "We were lucky, not clever. Those are not the same thing."
I looked away first. That made me angrier than the slap.
"We stop," she said again. "Promise me."
I promised. Then I broke it.
Not all at once. That's how betrayal likes to dress itself, in little exceptions neat enough to pass as need. One snare because Auntie had given away too much medicine without payment that week. One turkey because winter was coming. One hidden cache moved from the Secret Garden to Auntie's back room because peacekeepers had been seen near the valley and surely the clinic, with all its smells and sickbeds and old women shuffling in for poultices, would be safer than a cave.
Surely⊠right?
The morning Auntie Aelias died, I had gone out before dawn and come back triumphant.
I remember that. Shame loves detail.
Two pheasants, fat from gleaning fallen grain near the eastern fields. A hare too, snared clean by the creek. I was filthy, frozen at the fingers, and proud in that secretive way only hungry boys can be proud, with coins already imagined in the jar and Auntie's stew already alive in my head.
Smoke rose from the heart of New Bisman as I came over the ridge.
That was not unusual. Morning burnings had become part of the district's clock by then. The Capitol liked its lessons well attended, so they scheduled executions when workers moved toward mills and fields. People could pretend they did not look, but the smoke found them anyway. It seeped into collars, hair, bread dough, prayer. District 9 learned obedience through the nose.
I noticed the smoke. I did not yet know it belonged to us.
The Dregs were too quiet when I reached them. That was the first true warning. Poverty is many things, but rarely silent. Usually the alleys rattled with coughing, pots, arguing, children chasing one another with sticks, men cursing boots that had split at the sole. That morning, doors were shut. Curtains hung still. Even the dogs had gone to ground.
Auntie's clinic door stood open.
Inside, the shelves were half-cleared. A basin lay overturned. Her rolls of linen had been scattered across the floor, white strips trampled into dirt. Dido's sewing kit was open on the table, needles glittering like little silver teeth.
"Auntie?" I called.
No answer. The bundle of birds slipped from my hand and hit the floor.
I moved toward the back room, already knowing and refusing to know. The hiding hollow beneath the cabinet had been torn apart.
Empty. The leather wrap that had held the atlatl and spare arrowheads lay open like a skinned thing.
Then Dido spoke from the doorway behind me. "They found it."
I turned.
She looked wrong. She rarely ever cried. Claimed crying never helped anyone. Though, her face had gone flat in a way no child's face should know how to go flat. There was ash in her hair. One sleeve was singed at the cuff. Her gray eyes did not meet mine.
"Dido," I whispered. "Where's Auntie?"
Her silence told me before her mouth ever could.
Rose did not go home.
She meant to. That was the part she would later hold against herself with almost physical hatred. She had taken Errante from my hand, felt the insistence in my grip when I pressed the reins into her palm, and seen the way fear had moved behind my eyes before I covered it with command.
Just go homeâŠ
For a few minutes, she had obeyed. Or tried to.
Errante carried her south from the square with a steady, ground-eating trot, his dapple-gray neck darkened with sweat beneath the bridle. Behind her, New Bisman remained broken open by noise. Screaming and crying became more and more faint. The hard clatter of peacekeeper boots against street planks grew distant, but not enough. The awful, restless churn of a crowd that had not yet decided whether it was frightened enough to run or angry enough to stay.
Rose held the reins too tightly. Her hands still shook.
The district will vote. The district will vote. The district will voteâŠ
The phrase would not settle into sense. It kept moving inside her, taking on new shapes every time she tried to look at it directly. At first, it had sounded impossible, before turning grotesque. Then, worst of all, practical. The sort of cruelty only Panem could invent because only Panem had learned how to make punishment sound like participation.
By the time Errante reached the fork in the road, Rose was no longer thinking about home. She was thinking about paper. The paper.
The original Games charter was folded in the false bottom of Virgil's old dispatch box, where he had kept amendments, firecatcher exemptions, levy maps, and correspondence too politically inconvenient to throw away and too useful to burn. Rose had read the charter years ago, not because she had any love for the Games, but because her father had once told her hateful things were usually built from language before they were built from steel.
The first time she read it, she had been twelve, having just become eligible for the Reaping. Too young to understand everything. Old enough to understand enough.
However, even twelve-year-old Rosabel knew one thing for certainâŠ
⊠there had been no Quarter Quell, and especially no voting. There hadnât been a clause permitting the districts to choose their own children for slaughter under the pretense of civic voice.
Nothing.
Rose pulled Errante to a stop so sharply the gelding tossed his head. For one breath, she looked toward the road home. Then toward the mayor's quarter.
Auphie will be furious! She thought to herself. Virgil would be furious.
That had to have meant she was wrong. Or⊠maybe anger was simply what men reached for when they could not bear the sight of a girl walking toward danger with nothing but a question and a stolen page.
Rose went home⊠to retrieve the charter before she turned Errante toward Lancaster's manor.
The mayor's house stood too cleanly against the unrest of the town below. Even now, with the square barely settled behind her and smoke-colored dust still hanging over New Bisman's streets, the manor kept its polished distance. Its white trim caught the late light. Its windows glowed with lamplight. Its hedges sat clipped and obedient beside the path, as if plants themselves behaved better when authority watched them grow.
Two peacekeepers stood at the front gate. Rose, knowing full well what she was doing, did not go to the front gate.
She tied Errante at the side rail, near the delivery walk where wagons brought flour, coal, and whatever fine unnecessary things Lancaster's household pretended not to import. The gelding shifted uneasily as she looped the reins around the post.
"Stay," she whispered, though the word felt foolish once spoken. Errante flicked one ear.
Rose took the folded charter from inside her satchel and tucked it beneath her jacket. Then she went around the servants' side. The back door had been left unlatched.
That, more than anything, told her how badly the day had shaken the house. Lancaster's manor was not the sort of place where doors were left loose by accident. Usually, everything there seemed fastened twice, like the doors, curtains, expressions, conversation. Now? The servants' corridor beyond the kitchen stood lit and empty, smelling of floor polish, cold meat, and the sharp tang of worry.
Voices carried from deeper in the house. Men arguing, though men like Lancaster did not shout unless the performance required it. This was worse than shouting. Instead, it was clipped, low, controlled, and full of panic dressed in better grammar.
"...cannot expect the district to absorb this without unrest."
"That is no longer a question of expectation, Mayor. It is fact."
"Children were frightened in the square."
"Children are frightened every year."
"This was different."
"Then perhaps District 9 should learn to respond differently."
Rose stopped in the hall. That voice.
Cold. Even. Familiar now in a way that made her skin tighten.
Coriolanus Snow.
She moved closer despite herself, keeping one hand to the wall where the runner muffled her steps. Through the half-open library door, she could see Lancaster standing near his desk with two district officials beside him, both flushed from argument. One held a handkerchief crushed in one fist. Another stared at the floor like a man trying to find escape in the pattern of the rug.
Coriolanus stood by the window.
His snakebite hand was bandaged beneath a dark glove, held with careful ease at his side. If the venom had left him weakened, he had arranged the weakness into posture so well that it almost looked intentional. His crimson coat was immaculate. His pale hair was exact. He looked less like a man recovering from near death than a portrait restored too quickly after damage.
Lancaster rubbed his forehead. "Mr. Snow, you must understand, if the citizens believe they are being made complicit-"
"They are being made complicit," Coriolanus said, tone unwavering.
The room went still. Rose felt the words pass through her with a quiet horror.
Coriolanus turned from the window, his face composed. "That is the point."
One of the officials made a faint sound, something akin to a laugh. "Surely you do not mean-"
"I mean," Snow continued, "that rebellion survives by allowing people to imagine innocence after obedience. The Quell corrects that error."
Rose's fingers tightened around the paper beneath her jacket.
Lancaster's face had drained of color, which surprised Rose more than anything. She had never seen the man look so utterly helpless, even during the Quell announcement. "That is⊠a very dangerous interpretation, Mr. Snow."
"It is not an interpretation.â The Capitolite retorted. âIt is design."
Rose stepped back without meaning to. A floorboard beneath her heel gave one small, traitorous creak.
Fortunately, Lancaster did not hear it. The district officials were still too fixed on Snow, too disturbed by what he had said to look toward the corridor.
But Coriolanus did. His eyes shifted.
Only briefly, though not enough to alert the others or to interrupt the shape of his own posture. His gaze moved to the narrow gap between door and frame, found Rose in the dimness beyond it, and held her there for one suspended breath.
Rose froze. He had seen her. He knewâŠ
She felt her stomach drop as she expected for Coriolanus to make her presence know. However, with perfect calm, he looked back at Lancaster.
"In any case," Coriolanus said, his voice smoothing back into something less openly cruel, "the district's response must be contained before it becomes a lesson to others. Mayor, I suggest you take your officials and address the peacekeeper captain directly. Public injury reports should be controlled. Public grief should be guided. Public anger should be exhausted before it organizes itself. Am I clear?â
Mayor Lancaster stared at him a moment longer. He looked as if he wanted to object and as if he had already learned objection would not alter the terms of the room. Finally, he gathered the papers from his desk with a stiff motion. "Very well."
One official moved first. Then the other. Lancaster followed after them, his mouth pressed thin, his expression drawn with the strain of a man being asked to make cruelty orderly enough for filing.
Rose pressed herself flat into the shadow beside the side passage.
They passed within feet of her. Lancaster never turned nor did his officials. Their boots moved down the corridor, farther and farther, until the front portion of the house took their voices and made them distant.
Rose remained where she was, scarcely breathing. Inside the library, no one moved, or rather, he didnât move.
Then Coriolanus said, without raising his voice, "You may come in now, Miss Tempest-Strix."
The sound of her name in the empty hall felt worse than being shouted for. For one awful second, Rose considered running. It would have been useless. She knew that before the thought had fully formed. He had seen her. More than that, he had chosen not to reveal her. That choice already sat between them like a hand around the back of her neck.
So, she stepped into the doorway.
Coriolanus had not moved from the window. His gaze rested on her with the cool patience of someone observing a mistake ripen into usefulness.
No surprise. No warmth. No false relief. Just firm recognition.
Rose stood with the folded charter tucked against her side, her academy jacket dusty from the square, one braid loosened at her shoulder. "I⊠ needed to speak with you, Coriolanus."
"Yes," he briefly sighed. "That much is obvious."
Her face warmed. "I-I didn't mean to overhear."
His finger drummed against the windowpane. "No?"
The single word was soft enough to be polite yet sharp enough to draw blood. Rose swallowed hard regardless. "I came because⊠I found something."
Coriolanus's expression did not change. It didnât make an attempt to look intrigued or even bothered by her sudden proclamation. His face remained solid, like a sheet of ice.
As Rose slowly approached, she felt, against her will, the strange pull of being understood by someone outside the fence of District 9. That was the confusing part. Coriolanus frightened her at times, yes. He had frightened her at the clinic because he was on the verge of death and barely seemed affected. Yet he also listened in a way most adults did not listen to children from districts, and some hollow, ambitious part of her still wanted to believe there was a route through him into the world she meant to change.
That made the fear harder to sort.
"I came because I have a question," Rose finally admitted, thinking about when a suitable time would be to present the contradiction hidden in her jacket.
"You have many, I assume.â His eyes briefly met hers. âThat is usually the trouble."
She drew the folded charter from beneath her jacket and held it out. "This one has an answer."
Coriolanus did not immediately take it. That forced her to stand there with her arm extended too long, feeling suddenly young and ridiculous. Especially exposed.
Only when her fingers began to tremble did he step forward and accept the document. His gloved hand brushed the edge of the paper, almost brushing her skin.
Still, Rose had to fight the urge to pull away. He unfolded it slowly.
The room was too quiet. Beyond the walls, Lancaster's voice moved somewhere distant, unaware, occupied elsewhere because Coriolanus had decided he should be. That realization made the room feel smaller.
His eyes moved over the page once. Then again.
By the time he looked up, Rose knew he understood exactly what it was.
"Where did you get this?" he simply asked.
The question was soft. Far too soft.
Rose's stomach tightened. "It⊠was my father's."
His gaze dropped back to the charter. "Of course it was."
"He kept copies of the Games charter, w-when he was making the amendments." Her voice sputtered once before it strengthened, as facts seemed safer than fear. "This is the legal copy from the year he argued the firecatcher amendment. The one recognizing years of fire service as lottery reduction. It lists all standing provisions connected to tribute selection."
Coriolanus folded the top edge down slightly with his thumb.
Rose pressed on. "And I was simply confused because⊠because there is nothing here about a Quarter Quell."
The tense silence that followed made Roseâs heart erupt in her chest. Her brows furrowed with worry at the idea of accidentally touching on something too⊠recalcitrant.
"No." Coriolanus plainly said. The answer was so immediate it stopped her.
She stared at him. "N-No?"
"No," he repeated. "There is not."
For a moment, Rose could only hear her own pulse. Perplexity etched across her freckled features. "You⊠knew?"
Then, to Roseâs complete shock⊠and trepidation, Coriolanus gave her faint smile. "Of course."
The word hit like a slap. They resounded far more casually for Rosabelâs liking. Cautiously, she took one step closer. "Then⊠how can it be? T-The Quarter Quell? There⊠there must be reason for this changeâŠ"
Coriolanus regarded her as though the question disappointed him, yet his expression didnât fully register that.
"Careful, Rosabel," he snickered, albeit in a disturbingly off handed tone.
She almost laughed alongside him. "I-Iâm sorry? I donât think I-"
"Yes, you do." He held up the charter slightly. "Because, you, my dear, are standing in a government house where no one knows you have entered, holding restricted material, accusing the Capitol of violating a law you are not authorized to interpret."
âI⊠I know,â Rose admitted as she felt heat rise in her face. "But⊠is that not worth asking?"
Suddenly, the Capitoliteâs face dropped. "Not the way you ask it."
What?! Rose suddenly felt overly aware of the situation, like this was a trap that Coriolanus had set up specifically for her⊠even though she was the one who drew everything out. At this realization, she understood it was too late to turn back and admit defeat. It wasnât that simple.
"How should I ask it, then?â Rose continued to press, though her words began to crack as she paced further on thin ice. âShould I⊠should I just wait until the district votes one of us to death? O-Or wait until everyone finds a way to hate whatever child is easiest to send? How then!?"
His expression went still. There was the first crack on the ice. So fine to the point where anyone could miss it. Though, Rosabel could feel it. See it.
She felt herself cross it a heartbeat after the crossing.
Coriolanus looked toward the door, then back to her. "Lower your voice."
Rose did not.
"The Games charter never allowed this, Coriolanus.â She insisted, though it sounded as if she were begging, bargaining for answers. âThe districts choosing their own tributes was never part of the original punishment. It was never-"
"It was never necessary before."
Rose stopped. Her eyes widened in that worried manner.
Coriolanus folded the charter with careful precision. "That is the answer you came for, is it not?"
Her mouth felt dry. Her voice beginning to grow feeble. "Necessary to whom?"
A faint, humorless amusement touched his face, though, not his eyes.
"For someone⊠promising," he plainly said, "you still keep expecting cruelty to announce itself by name, donât you?"
Rose did not answer. How could she?
He stepped away from the window and crossed to Lancaster's desk, where he laid the charter down beside a stack of official letters. He did not give it back.
Rose noticed that at once.
"The Capitol has grown sentimental," Coriolanus sighed, a grimace formed across his lips. "Not universally, though⊠itâs enough. The districts have become useful objects of pity to certain people who can afford pity because they will never pay its cost. President Axel understands that sentiment. He intends to survive it by appearing generous."
Rosabel lingered on that idea, remembering University. Remembering that loosened vice around her interview that could have potentially cost her her life.
"Just like⊠the university," Rose said quietly.
The man hummed, "Among other things."
"But⊠the Quell?" Rose pinched her brows. âThat would emboldened that empathy, would it not?â
"Correction." He quickly remarked, before looking at her, his eyes leaving nothing of note for her to read. âIt is meant to invoke correct, not empathy, Rosabel.â
The word chilled the room.
âButâŠâ Rose shook her head once, her gaze casted to the floorboards as though they had the answers. "N-No, thatâs not-"
"No?" Coriolanusâs brow raised, before taking a step forward.
"That is not correction, though.â She tried to reason. âThatâs⊠manipulation. Rot. Why⊠why take advantage of that?"
His eyes hardened. Not visibly enough for anyone else to notice, perhaps, but that might have been the exact moment his patience thinned and something underneath looked through.
"There is nothing to take advantage of," he affirmed. âBesides, you canât simply expect oneâs feelings to rule over law, can you? Empathy breeds manipulation and it is simply our job to prevent that real manipulation from festering over our lives.â
Rose went silent.
The reprimand landed with surgical neatness, with a part of her fearing it might sound believable to him, to Lancaster, to the university board, to anyone already waiting to decide that district emotion had overrun district intelligence. Coriolanus saw that too. Of course he did.
His voice softened. "Rosabel."
She wished he would not say her name like that. Not so warmly and affectionately. Like he had chosen it from a shelf and placed it exactly where he wanted it.
âP-Please.â Roseâs voice came out in uneven sputters. âThis⊠none of this-â
"You have gone through⊠a lot these past few days," he said, his assurance feeling too sudden for Rose to wrap her head around.
She gulped; confusion and betrayal intermingled. "I am aware."
"No. You are not." He came around the desk, slowly enough that she had time to step back and hated herself for doing so. "If you were aware, you would understand how dangerous this is. You have lost your father. You just came from a riot. You made yourself visible before you were ready to be. You⊠saved my life.â His voice was shifting to a gentler octave. Still, it did nothing to help Roseâs anxiety. âAll of this within the span of a week. And now? And now you are walking into locked rooms with stolen documents because you think outrage will make you brave enough to survive the consequences. Are you aware of that?"
Rose's throat tightened. The worst part was that some of it sounded close enough to care to be mistaken for it by someone lonelier than she wanted to be.
"I did not steal it," she sniffled in defiance.
Coriolanus tilted his gaze. "No?"
Rose scrunched her eyes shut. "It was my father's."
"But you father is dead, Rosabel."
The words entered the room cleanly. Rose flinched before she could stop herself. Coriolanus watched it happen. Then his expression shifted, subtle as a hand sliding into a glove.
"I am sorry," he whispered, something bordering on emphatic. Empathetic? How ironicâŠ
He stepped closer, and the room seemed to lose air by degrees.
"You came to me because you understood something," he said. "Even if you did not wish to name it."
Rose forced herself to meet his eyes, an emboldened expression of frustration flashed in her face. "I came because you are vice gamemaker!"
"And?"
"AndâŠâ Rose, despite her voice depleting, kept her chin higher. ââŠI thought perhaps you could explain how this was allowed."
"No." His gaze lowered briefly to the charter on the desk. "You came because you knew I could decide whether your question became a scandal or a secret."
Roseâs eyes widened. For one second, all she could think of was the university board. Dr. Anderson's level gaze. The younger professor's interest. The dean saying she had loyalties. Lancaster's careful, frightened face. A door, barely open.
And Coriolanus had placed his hand on the edge of it.
She saw that now.
"I didn't mean to threaten anyone," Rose said, too quickly than she originally intended.
Coriolanus flashed her a smile, albeit humorless. "Intent is a luxury of private life."
She swallowed. "Then I apologize."
Suddenly, a completely new expression plagued Coriolanusâs features, with a smile that finally reached his eyes. Something that couldnât be joyful. Not now. "ThereâŠ"
The word came too softly. Rose froze.
Coriolanus tilted his head slightly. "That is better."
Something in her recoiled, though not from her apology. She had meant it, partly. She had come recklessly and cornered him with paper and fury and grief, right? Some part of her knew that had been foolish. She had to beâŠ
Yet the way he received it made the apology feel no longer hers. As if he had been waiting for her to step into the proper posture. Rose's hands curled into themselves.
"I only wanted to understand," she tried to explain.
"I know."
Rose bit back. "You don't."
"I do." He gave her a small, cold smile. "That is what makes you so dangerous, my dear."
The word should have frightened her. Instead, for one foolish second, it almost sounded like praise.
Coriolanus saw that too. His smile faded into something quieter.
"Your mind is rare," he quietly affirmed. "Do you know that?"
Rose did not answer.
"You take structures apart instinctively. You hear a speech and search for the hinge. You read a law and look for the absence. Most people? They only notice what power says. You notice what it omits."
The room had become very still. Rose knew she should speak. Deflect. Step away. Ask for the charter back. LeaveâŠ
Instead, she stood there while his words moved around her like ribbon becoming rope.
"That kind of mind," Coriolanus continued, "will either be cultivated or destroyed. There are very few middle paths."
Rose's voice came smaller than she wanted. "Is⊠that a threat?"
"No." He looked almost offended by the simplicity of the question. "It is an assessment."
Roseâs eyes darted to the small flower clipped to his jacket. A rose, pure as snowâŠ
"That's⊠not much better."
"It is more honest." Coriolanusâs voice dipped to something close to teasing. Not quite.
He moved then, not toward her, but past her, to the door. For a single hopeful instant, she thought he meant to open it. Instead, he pushed it shut the last inch.
The click of the latch was quiet.
Rose stopped breathing for half a second. Coriolanus turned back.
"You cannot keep doing this," he said.
"Doing what?" she felt her alternatives out of this situation growing more distance.
"Running,â Coriolanusâs hand ghosted over her shoulder. âRacing toward every locked thing because you resent the lock."
Rose's pulse beat hard at her throat. "Maybe⊠maybe it isnât the lock thatâs resentful."
"MaybeâŠâ Coriolanus parroted. â⊠except most are meant to keep clever girls out. And perhaps, itâs easy see why one might hold such sentiments."
The sentence should not have landed the way it did. It should have sounded patronizing. Perhaps it was patronizing. Beneath it sat something else, though, something colder and more possessive than concern.
A clever girl.
Not a citizen. Not a student. Not even Rosabel.
A thing categorized. A thing he had decided required management.
"I am not trying to break into anything," she said, the statement itself was only a half truth though.
"No," he agreed. "You are asking me to help you enter rooms where protection will become necessary."
Rose looked toward the desk. "Then give me back the charter."
He did not move. "It is safer with me."
The answer came so easily, so reasonably, that for a moment she could not find the shape of her anger. "It belongs to my father."
"It belongs to a dead man whose paperwork could ruin you if discovered in your possession."
Rose took a step toward the desk. Coriolanus did not block her.
He did not have to. Then⊠she stopped before reaching it. The truth hung heavy on her shoulders. That he had made the consequences visible enough for her to halt herself. That was the truth.
Her voice shook despite her effort. "You⊠you have no right."
"Rights," he said, almost gently, "are among the first things people invoke when they realize power has already moved without them."
Rose stared at him. There was no mask now. Or rather, the mask had become so perfect she could no longer tell where it ended.
"You asked why the Quell exists," he said. "There is your answer. Because power dislikes innocence it cannot own. It despises that mercy, once publicly demanded, must be counterweighted by fear. The districts have begun to look too sympathetic, and sympathy without humiliation becomes politically expensive."
Rose felt sick. "Is that what you think?"
âIt isnât as simple as yes or no, my dear,â Coriolanus confirmed. "Rather, it is enough to understand it."
"But⊠that isnât hat I asked."
âYouâre correct,â he admitted. "But it is the answer you can bear to hear."
The room pressed close around her. The heavy curtains trapping her within. The polished desk with its papers with their official seals, alongside the faint smell of ink and lamp oil. She could hear the blood in her ears.
She had come to negotiate with reason. She had brought proof. And still, he had taken the proof, named the danger, placed himself between her and every door she wanted opened, and called it care.
"I should go," she said.
"Of course," he replied.
Neither of them moved.
Coriolanus regarded her for one more moment, and when he spoke again, his voice had returned to that smooth, public softness she recognized from the university meeting. "When this passes, we will discuss your future properly."
Rose's stomach twisted. "My future?"
Coriolanus nodded. "Yes."
"I⊠don't know if there will be one." She couldnât help but admit.
Something altered in his face.
"There will be," he assured her. The certainty should have comforted her.
"It will need discipline. Guidance of course. Better instincts than the ones that brought you here today." His eyes moved over her face with an attention that felt less like seeing than appraisal. "But there is still a path, Rosabel."
She understood then. Access had a cost. Though, she did not yet know the currency, only that he had begun counting.
Suddenly⊠a smell entered the room.
At first, Rose thought it was lamp smoke. The manor used too many lamps, and old houses sometimes breathed soot when wind hit the chimney wrong. This was sharper, though. Meaner, much meaner. It slid under the door with a dark, oily edge that did not belong to hearth or candle.
Coriolanus noticed it the same instant she did. His head turned toward the door, and the second it did, Roseâs fears were confirmed.
Smoke.
I had seen fire take many shapes in my life.
Grassfire moved hungry and low, licking close to the earth like it meant to swallow the world by inches. Barn fire went angrier, louder, full of snapping beams and animal panic. Oil fire had its own wicked language of black smoke, greedy heat, flames that moved like they knew a body's fear before the body did.
House fire was different. It was personal.
It ate chairs, curtains, beds, paper. The little useless things people kept because life, in its kindness or cruelty, had once given them a reason to keep them. It swallowed walls that had heard private arguments and laughter and sickness and the scraping together of ordinary mornings. A burning house did not just destroy shelter. It destroyed evidence that people had lived inside it.
Mayor Lancaster's mansion burned like it had been waiting years to prove it was made of ordinary wood after all.
Smoke poured from the lower east windows in thick black ropes, rolling up beneath the porch awning and into the evening sky. Firelight flashed behind glass. Catchers were already at work across the yard, dragging grit sacks, shouting for water lines, hauling panicked officials farther back from the steps while peacekeepers tried and failed to look useful with rifles in their hands and fear in their mouths.
For one second, the whole fire seemed to fall silent. The noise was still there, roaring up the walls, men shouting, glass popping, somebody coughing hard enough to retch. Though inside my head, everything narrowed to that horse standing riderless beneath the smoke-dark sky.
Rose.
My body moved before sense did.
"Rhodes!" Einkorn shouted after me.
I did not answer.
My leg hated me at once. Every step drove pain clean up through the hip, bright and sickening, but fear had already gotten its hands around my throat and was dragging me forward faster than pain could reason with. I cut around the line of catchers at the front, shouldered past a peacekeeper who tried to bar the side path, and limped hard toward the alley.
"Sir! You can't-"
"Move!"
He did.
Maybe because I sounded mad enough to bite or because firecatchers had already started looking like the only people in that yard with any right to command a burning thing.
The side alley was worse.
Smoke had gathered low beneath the overhang, trapped between brick, hedge, and the narrow service wall. Heat pressed down in waves. One of the upper windows had cracked open from the pressure, letting out dark breath in heavy pulses. Beneath it, paint blistered along the trim. Curtains flared orange behind the glass and then blackened, collapsing inward like a hand closing.
I looked up. And there she was.
Rose was at the second-floor window, half in and half out, one hand braced on the frame while smoke poured around her in ugly gray sheets. Her hair had come loose from one braid, red strands stuck damp to her cheek. Her face was pale beneath the soot, eyes wide and unfocused with coughing. One sleeve of her academy jacket had torn at the shoulder, and her skirt had caught somewhere behind her, holding her in place like the house itself had decided it wanted one last thing from her before it went.
My heart stopped so hard it hurt. "Rose!"
Her head jerked toward the sound of my voice. For half a breath, relief crossed her face. Then the window frame above her cracked.
"Don't move!" I shouted, which was a stupid thing to shout at a girl trapped in a burning house, but panic has never been much for useful language.
Rose coughed, tried to pull herself farther out, and nearly slipped right then. A hand caught her from behind. Snow.
He appeared through the smoke like something the fire had made and then thought better of keeping. His coat was gone. One shirtsleeve was dark with soot, his pale hair no longer exact, his bandaged hand held stiff and close to himself while the other gripped Rose's arm with hard control. He was coughing too, though even that looked like something he resented more than suffered.
I hated the sight of his hand on her before I had time to decide whether hate had any right to be there.
"Get her out!" I yelled.
Snow's eyes found me below.
Even through smoke, through heat, through the madness of fire chewing its way up the wall, there was something awful in how quickly he understood the shape of things. He looked at me, then at Rose, then down at the narrow sloped ledge beneath the window where part of the veranda roof jutted out over the alley.
"She has to climb down first," he called, voice hoarse but still impossibly controlled.
Even in that moment, I couldnât help but snap back. "I know that!"
Rose tried again, one trembling hand reaching for the outer ledge. Her shoe scraped against the sill and slipped once on loose ash. She made a small sound, not quite a cry or a gasp, and it cut through me worse than the fire.
I lurched forward under the window, arms lifting as if I could somehow reach her from the ground by wanting it badly enough.
"Rose, look at me!" I called.
Her eyes dropped to mine. They were too bright. Tears or smoke or terror, I couldn't tell.
"You're gonna step down onto that lower trim," I said. "Slow! Don't look behind you! Just look at me, ya hear?!"
She nodded once. Too quickly.
Snow said something to her, too low for me to hear. Rose shook her head at him, then tried to shift her weight. The house gave another groan, with a deep guttural complaint. The kind of sound wood makes when it is deciding whether loyalty to gravity has finally become stronger than loyalty to form.
"Rose!" I shouted.
She stepped. For one breath, she had it.
One foot found the outer ledge. Her hand clung to the frame. Her body turned sideways, skirts dragging smoke after her. She was coming out! She was coming down! I was close enough now, directly beneath the line of the window, leg screaming, arms ready, heart beating one single word over and over.
Then the rotten strip of trim beneath her boot tore free. Rose slipped. The sound she made then was small. Just one frightened little breath as the world dropped from beneath her.
Nearly ruined me. I lunged.
My bad leg buckled. Pain exploded up my side, white and brutal, and I went down hard on one knee in the alley muck just as Rose fell.
Snow caught her.
He had climbed farther out than I realized, braced one foot against the sill and one knee on the slanted veranda roof below. When Rose's grip failed, he seized her around the waist and shoulder, the force of her fall dragging him down with her. They hit the sloped roof together, slid, and struck the gutter hard enough to bend it with a shriek of metal.
For a second neither moved.
Then Snow rolled, one arm locked around Rose, pulling her against him before the slope could pitch her over the edge entirely. And that was what I saw.
Rose curled against Coriolanus Snow's chest, soot-blackened and shaking, his arm around her like possession disguised as rescue. The image entered me clean as a blade. It did not matter that he had saved her. Maker help me, it did not matter enough.
All I could see was that he had reached her first. "Rosabel!"
I forced myself upright with a sound I would have been ashamed of in any other moment and staggered toward the broken runoff pipe where the lower roof sloped close enough to the alley wall for a body to reach. Einkorn came up behind me, grabbing my arm before I tried climbing on a leg that would not carry me across a room, much less up a burning house.
"Don't be stupid!" he hissed.
"Get off me!" I tried shrugging him off.
"She's down!"
"No she ainât!"
Above us, Snow had hauled Rose to the safer edge of the veranda roof, where the drop to the alley was shorter. He lowered himself first, landing hard but upright, then reached back for her.
Rose tried to follow and nearly folded. Her legs were shaking too badly. Snow caught her again when she came down. This time, her legs landed on the ground.
His arms closed around her before she could fall, one hand splayed at her back, the other gripping her upper arm. Rose clutched at his shirt on instinct, coughing so hard her whole body shook. She looked smaller than she had any right to. Younger. Not the same girl who argued for university and never could keep her thoughts to herself. Just there, smoke-stung, trembling, and held upright by a man I could not bear seeing touch her.
I reached them in three limping strides. "Let go of her."
Snow looked at me over her shoulder.
His face was streaked with soot now. A cut had opened along one cheekbone. The smoke had reddened his eyes, but still he managed to look like the only calm thing in the alley.
"She can barely stand," he said.
I narrowed my eyes and huffed. "I said let go."
Rose coughed again, one hand flying to her throat. "Auphie-"
The sound of her voice nearly broke the anger clean in two once more.
I took her by the shoulders the moment Snow released her, gentler than my voice, though I wasnât sure she felt the difference. She swayed toward me and I caught her, pulling her back from the wall as a sheet of flame burst behind the broken window above.
In an instant, I gathered the girl in my arms, holding her tightly to my chest, my heart still pounding with terror at how close it had been for her. How close I was to losing her. She was quick to hug back, though I couldnât tell what her emotions mightâve been, until I finally drew back. The horror now waning.
"What in all hell were you thinkin'?" I demanded.
Rose flinched. I saw it. I saw it and still could not stop myself.
I forced myself to breath. "I⊠I told you to go home."
"I did," she rasped, then coughed so hard she bent nearly double.
"No, you didn't.â My voice sounded accusatory, though, my brows pinched in fright. âYou came here. You came back here, after everything, Rose, you couldâve been killed! Donât you-"
"I had to ask him-"
I vehemently shook my head, not understanding what she was referring to right away. "No, you didn't!"
Her eyes snapped to mine, wet with smoke and hurt. "Yes, I did!"
The force of it startled me. She hardly had the breath for loud. Yet even half-choked by smoke, Rose still had that terrible ability to make a sentence stand upright in front of you and refuse to move.
Snow stepped closer.
"Mr. Rhodes," he said.
I turned on him. "Don't."
His expression remained still. "She is frightened, injured, and half overcome by smoke. This is not the moment to raise your voice at her."
Something in me went cold. "Well⊠she ainât yours to manage."
"No," Snow said. "But at present, someone ought to."
Einkorn, a few feet behind me, muttered, "Easy now."
Easy. As if anything in that alley had ever been easy.
Rose reached for my sleeve. Her fingers were weak but urgent. "Auphie, stop."
I looked down at her. Soot smudged one side of her face. Her lips had gone pale. The tear track through the dirt on her cheek looked almost silver in the firelight. She was shaking so badly now that I could feel it through my coat.
Fear came back then, bigger than anger, worse because it had nowhere useful to go.
"Rose," I said once more. âYou couldâve been hurt. Or worseâŠâ
Her face softened in a way that made me feel crueler than if she had shouted back. "I know."
"You could've-" My voice broke ugly. I swallowed hard and tried again. "You could've died in there."
Behind us, glass burst outward from an upper window and rained down into the alley. Einkorn swore and shoved us all back toward the garden wall. Snow moved at the same time, one hand going to Rose's back.
I slapped it away. The reaction was faster than thought.
Snow looked at his hand. Then at me.
For the first time, something like real anger entered his face. Like a thin, precise displeasure, as though I had touched an instrument he intended to keep polished.
"Rhodes," he sternly replied, no title to my name this time. âThis is not the place for our personal prejudices.â
I gave a harsh laugh. He was probably right, before my mind cruelly remembered why the riot happened in the first place. "That a threat?"
"A recommendation."
"From you?" I stepped closer before my leg could warn me not to. "Youâre really gonna go recommendinâ that we shouldnât judge one another, yet we find you alone with a girl who has no business being here?"
Rose stared at him then. Not at me. At him.
That tiny turn of her head told me I had said something I was not meant to know, or something she had not wanted named aloud. Snow noticed too. Of course he did.
"She came here on her own," he affirmed.
âYeah?â I huffed back. "She's a student."
His eyes hardened. "And apparently more capable of independent action than you prefer."
That struck exactly where he meant it to. I moved before I had decided to.
Einkorn caught me around the chest from behind, hauling me back with a grunt as my weight shifted wrong on the bad leg. Pain ripped through me, white-hot and humiliating, and I nearly went down again.
Rose grabbed my coat. "Auphie!"
Her fear was for me now. That made it worse somehow.
Snow stood where he was, breathing hard from smoke, one hand still bandaged, shirt torn open at the collar. He looked less immaculate than before, but no less dangerous for it. Firelight moved over his face and turned him almost blood-colored at the edges.
"You should take him away from the fire," Snow said to Einkorn, though his eyes stayed on me. "Before he does more damage to himself."
I spat the words before I could stop them. "You don't get to talk around me."
"And you do not get to shout over everyone who inconveniences you."
Silence struck between us.
Even with the mansion burning, even with catchers calling from the yard and peacekeepers trying to clear the alley mouth, that sentence found room to land.
Rose's hand tightened in my coat.
"Auphie," she whispered.
Her voice was nearly gone. That did what Snow's words could not. It pulled me back into the world, into the soot and heat and the trembling girl between us who had become the shape of a fight before either man had the decency to let her breathe.
I looked at her. Truly looked.
Her knees were unsteady. Her shoulders shook. One hand kept pressing near her ribs as if she could hold herself together from the outside. She had not won anything by standing in the way. Not from me nor Snow. Whatever she had gone to Snow for, whatever argument or proof or desperate question had driven her back into the mansion, she had come out looking not victorious, but stripped raw.
And still Snow's attention rested on her like a claim waiting for language.
No. Not here. Not tonight.
I took Rose's wrist, careful despite the rage still clawing at me, and drew her toward the mouth of the alley.
She resisted at once. "Auphie-"
"Rose."
She gave me a look of mild defiance. "I need to-"
"No."
Snow's voice came from behind us. "Miss Tempest-Strix may need medical attention."
I scoffed back. "She'll get it."
"Then allow me to-"
I turned back once. "If you take one more step toward her, Capitol or not, I swear I'll forget the whole district's watchin'."
Einkorn made a strangled sound behind me, half warning, half prayer.
Snow did not move. For a second, I thought he might smile. Fortunately, he didn't. That might have been worse though.
Rose looked between us, smoke-bright eyes wide with exhaustion and something like dawning horror. She understood then that the fire was not the only thing spreading and knew that whatever had started between Snow and me had found its first real flame, and she was standing close enough to be burned by both sides.
I did not wait to see what Snow would say. I tightened my grip just enough for Rose to feel the decision in it.
"You're leaving with me," I turned to her. "Now."
Rose tried to leave with me. That was what I kept telling myself afterward, like the fact might soften anything that followed. She had tried. Really.
Her hand was still in mine when we came stumbling out from the side of Lancaster's mansion, smoke rolling after us through the broken window line like the house itself had exhaled something poisoned. Her fingers were far too cold. She coughed hard enough to bend at the waist, one hand pressing to her chest while I kept hold of her other wrist as though the building might still reach out and drag her back in by the sleeve.
"Breathe," I told her, uselessly. "Rose, just listen. Breathe."
"I am," she rasped, though she plainly wasn't doing it well.
Her hair had half come loose from its pins, red strands clinging to soot on her cheek. One side of her face was streaked where tears or smoke had cut through the ash. The sight of it did something, accompanied by fear and regret so large it had nowhere clean to go.
Around us, the yard had turned wild.
Firecatchers shouted over one another as they hauled grit toward the east wall. Peacekeepers formed broken lines near the gate, trying to keep townsfolk back from the lawn while half of those townsfolk screamed for children, brothers, neighbors, anyone they'd lost track of in the riot and smoke. Officials from the mayor's office huddled beneath the elm trees, coughing into handkerchiefs and looking offended by disaster now that it had gotten soot on their cuffs. Lancaster himself stood near the road, drained but upright, one sleeve burned through at the elbow, his face fixed on the house like he could not quite believe his own walls had betrayed him.
Then everyone saw him, Snow. The man who they thought might perished in the flames. The one who might be subdued by the natural forces of District 9 for the second time. Now, he probably had a reason to speak ill of the districts, no doubt. After all, 9 had nearly chewed him up and spat him back out.
That, more than anything, made the whole yard turn.
He had one hand braced lightly against a nearby fence post as he rounded into view, his Capitolite attire in ruins, pale hair disordered enough to prove he had, briefly, been made mortal by fire. The sight of that should have satisfied something in me. It didn't.
A peacekeeper moved toward him at once. "Sir-"
Snow raised a hand. Just that. One small motion. The man stopped.
Rose saw him and stiffened beside me. I felt it through her wrist.
"Come on," I said, low. "We're leaving."
She nodded once, too quickly. "Yes."
Though, before we could make our way to Errante, Snow's voice reached her before we'd made it three steps. "Rosabel."
Not Miss Tempest-Strix. Not even Rose.
The name crossed the yard soft as a hand laid where it wasn't wanted. Rose stopped.
I hated that she stopped. Hated that she couldnât help it either. Hated it even more that Snow had known she wouldn't be able to keep walking once he called her like that, not after whatever words he had put in her head before the smoke came.
I turned before she did.
Snow had come across the last patch of the yard. His gaze did not linger on me. It passed over like a man acknowledging poor weather, then settled on Rose with a focus that made the space between us feel suddenly crowded.
"You should be seen by a medic," I said.
Rose's eyes stayed on Snow. "I know."
"Then move."
The order came too sharp. She flinched. Just barely.
I saw it. Felt it. Despised myself for it.
Snow saw it too, as his expression changed by less than a breath, but I knew in that instant he had stored the thing away. That was what men like him did. They saved weaknesses like coin.
He stepped closer, stopping just beyond arm's reach. Close enough for others to see. Not close enough to look improper until he made it so.
"Thank you," he said to Rose.
The yard was loud, yet the words seemed to clear themselves a path.
A few people nearby turned. A firecatcher with a grit sack paused at the mouth of the alley. One of Lancaster's clerks looked over from beneath the elm. A peacekeeper lifted his chin. Even in the smoke and confusion, people knew when something was being staged before them.
Rose swallowed. "You don't need to-"
"I do." Snow took her hand from mine, abruptly, yet in a creeping, slow manner.
He didn't yank or seize or force in any way a person could point to cleanly. He only reached with quiet certainty, slid his fingers around hers, and eased her hand out of my grip as if the matter had already been agreed upon by everyone but me.
Rose froze. Her eyes flicked to mine once.
A warning? An apology? Fear?
I still don't know. Snow lifted her hand.
For one wild second, I thought he meant only to kiss her knuckles like some old Capitol courtesy made obscene by timing. That would have been bad enough. Public enough. A claim dressed as gratitude.
Snow being the ugly bastard that he was, looked at her face instead.
Then⊠he stepped in and kissed her.
Not the sort of kiss singers made foolish songs about, nor the sort lovers earned in doorways after danger. It was worse for being controlled. Deliberate enough to leave no doubt that it had been chosen.
His hand came lightly to her jaw, and Rose went utterly still beneath it. She did not lean in nor did she answer.
Her mouth did not move. The whole yard seemed to notice her stillness and misunderstand it at once.
I heard someone gasp. A murmur start near the gate. I saw Carrigan Killdeer's mother, of all people, turn her head sharply from the road. Saw one of the peacekeepers watch with too much interest and theatrical shock. A firecatcher look away because he knew enough to be ashamed for seeing it and not enough to stop it.
Snow drew back before anyone could decide whether to interrupt. Rose stayed frozen.
Something in me went white. I do not remember deciding to move.
One moment I stood there with my bad leg screaming beneath me and smoke in my lungs. The next my hand was on Snow's collar, and I had driven him backward hard enough that his shoulders struck the side wall beside the alley with a sound that cut clean through the yard.
"Auphie!" Rose cried.
Snow's head snapped back against brick.
The peacekeeper nearest us shouted, "Stand down!"
I did not stand down. I shoved Snow harder, pinning him there with one forearm across his chest. My injured leg nearly gave beneath me, but rage had hold of me by then, and rage is generous with borrowed strength.
"You don't touch her!" I bellowed out. My voice did not sound loud to me. It sounded flat. Deadly. Like all the fire had gone out of it and left only the iron frame behind.
Snow's eyes found mine.
His breathing was rough from smoke, but his face had already begun putting itself back together. That angered me more than anything. The composure of him. The refusal to look caught. Even shoved against a wall by a half-lame district man, Coriolanus Snow looked less afraid than inconvenienced.
I hit him for it. Just like a boy would hit in the Gluttony Games. A hard, ugly blow across the mouth that knocked his head sideways and split his lip bright against the ash on his skin.
The yard erupted.
"Auphidius!" Rose shouted, this time with real fear in it.
Hands reached for me. A peacekeeper's. Maybe Einkorn's. I threw one elbow back and felt someone stumble away. Snow's hand came up, not to strike me, but to brace against my arm. That only fueled me somehow. Like he was choosing restraint because he knew restraint would look better with witnesses.
"Mr. Rhodes," he said, low enough for only me and Rose to hear. âI wouldnât push this if I were youâŠâ
That did it. I drove him sideways off the wall and down toward the dirt.
Snow hit the ground on one knee, catching himself with one bandaged hand. I went after him. Pain tore through my hip so bright I nearly lost the world, but I did not stop. I grabbed for him again, wanting his polished throat under my hands, wanting the calm cracked out of him, wanting something in the world to finally show damage in the right place.
Then Rose stepped between us. She shouldnât have. Maker help me, she should not have.
"Auphie, stop-"
I barely saw her. Not Rose, not then. Just movement. A body in the path. A hand grabbing my sleeve while Snow shifted behind her, already rising, already turning the moment into something he might survive better than the rest of us.
"Move!" I snarled.
"N-No!"
She shoved at my chest with both hands. Weakly. Desperately. Trying to make me see her.
Which I did⊠a heartbeat too late.
I jerked my arm free. That was all. That was what I told myself first. I only jerked free. I only meant to pull away. I only meant to get past her.
But force does not care what a man meant to name it. My forearm caught her hard across the shoulder and jaw. Rose stumbled backward.
Her satchel, when had she gotten that thing back, I didn't know, slipped from her arm and struck the dirt. She hit the edge of a low stone border beside the hedge and dropped to one knee, one hand flying to her mouth.
Everything stopped. Outside, the mansion still burned. People still shouted. A horse screamed somewhere beyond the gate. Fire still cracked at the eastern windows.
But inside me, everything stopped.
Rose looked up at me. Her eyes were wide. Disbelief.
That was the thing that nearly broke me in two.
It wasnât the sight of her blood. There was only a little, bright at the corner of her mouth where her tooth must have cut the inside of her lip. Not the fall or even the sound she made when she hit the stone.
It was the way she looked at me as if, for one terrible second, she did not know whether I was safe.
"Rose?" I croaked. My voice broke on her name.
I stepped toward her, and she flinched, almost instinctively. Unforgivable.
The whole world could have burned down around us then and I would not have noticed.
I had spent every breath since Virgil died trying to keep harm from reaching her, yet there she was on the ground because of my hand.
Snow stood slowly behind her.
Blood marked his lower lip. Soot lined one cheek. His gaze moved from Rose to me, and for the first time since I had met him, something like satisfaction passed through his eyes before he buried it.
Rose tried to stand.
I reached for her without thinking. "Don't-"
"D-Don't touch me." she said it quietly. I wished she wouldâve just screamed it instead.
My hand stopped in the air between us. Rose pulled herself upright without taking it. She swayed once, and Snow stepped toward her.
"No," I snapped, though I barely had the energy to do so.
Snow paused, just long enough to make the pause visible.
Rose pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. Her eyes were wet now, whether from smoke or pain or me, I did not deserve to know.
"I'm all right," she said. Nobody believed her. She wasn't.
"Rosie," I tried again, softer now, wrecked by the sound of my own voice. "I didn't mean-"
"I know."
The answer came too fast. Too empty.
I think she said it because she couldnât bear not to. If she did not say so, then the whole old shape of us would have to be questioned right there in the dirt before Snow and the peacekeepers and half of District 9's watching eyes.
Snow took out a handkerchief and touched it to her bleeding lip. A pretty little gesture. Controlled. Damning.
I turned on him so sharply my leg buckled, and Einkorn caught me from behind before I could move again.
"Enough," Einkorn hissed in my ear. "Rhodes, enough."
I fought him once, but not hard.
I certainly wasnât calmed by the idea, but it was just the way Rose still looked at me.
Snow pressed the handkerchief gently against her face, allowing Rose to hold it against the wound. He had softened in public the way men like him softened when cruelty needed lace over it.
"Rosabel," he finally said. "Are you alright?"
She looked at him then, and I saw confusion cross her face. The dazed need to answer the person speaking gently because the person who should have been safe had just become the loudest danger in the yard.
"N-No," she replied. "I mean⊠I'm fine."
"Youâre still bleeding."
Rose kept pressure on the handkerchief. "It's nothing."
"It is not nothing." Snow doted on the girl.
The words were for her. The performance was for everyone. I saw straight through that. I saw it too clearly and too late.
The kiss had been witnessed. So had my fist and Rose hitting the ground.
Now Snow, bloodied by me, was the one speaking gently. A sound came from the far side of the yard. Boots. Authority moving through ash.
Chief Rolette pushed past two peacekeepers and came into the alley mouth with his hat low, his face drawn tight from smoke, grief, and the kind of anger that did not waste heat.
He took in Snow's split lip. Einkorn holding me back. The Capitolite hovering over Rose with blood at her mouth.
My hand still half-raised like I had not yet learned what it had done. Rolette's eyes settled on me. He had seen enough.
For a second, no one moved. Then Rolette said my name.
"Rhodes."
Not Auphidius. Not son. Not even Mr. Rhodes, which would have been bad enough.
Just⊠Rhodes.
The way he said it made me feel fourteen again and caught in some stupidity I could not talk my way out of. Only this time there was blood on Rose's mouth, Snow's lip split open, half the yard staring, and my own hand still remembered the shape of the shove that had put her down.
I swallowed. "Chief-"
"No." Rolette's voice cut through mine without lifting. "Not here."
Einkorn's hand was still locked around my upper arm. I had the absurd thought that I could have broken free if I wanted to. Maybe I even could have. But not with Rose who stood three paces away, one hand pressed to her mouth, and she had told me not to touch her.
So, I stayed held.
Rolette looked from me to Rose, then to Snow. His jaw shifted once, the muscle there working like he was chewing through every word before deciding which ones would not make the situation worse.
"Miss Tempest-Strix," he said, quieter. "Get home."
Rose blinked at him.
For a moment, I thought she might argue. Rose had that look, the stunned, stubborn lift of the chin that meant her pride had finally returned from wherever shock had shoved it. Though Rolette's expression left no room for argument and, worse, no room for pity.
His anger was not loud. That made it heavier.
"Now," he added.
Rose nodded once. Snow moved as if to say something. Rolette's eyes cut to him so sharply even Snow reconsidered the shape of his mouth.
"Mr. Snow," Rolette said. "You'll have medical attention and escort back to government grounds once the fire line's safe."
Snow nodded with a regal expression, despite the disheveled mess before us. "That is very considerate of you sir."
Rolette nodded, though an uneasy look had glossed over him. "I⊠we apologize."
That earned the faintest tightening in Snow's face. Nothing more.
Then Rolette turned back to me.
The yard noise came rushing in around us again. Firecatchers calling for grit. Peacekeepers yelling civilians back. Lancaster coughing somewhere near the road. The fire still worked at the mansion, snapping and breathing through broken windows, eating at curtains and old wood and whatever fine things rich people thought too permanent to burn.
Rolette stepped closer until only I could hear him cleanly.
"You're done for today."
My throat went tight. "C-Chief-"
"I said you're done."
Einkorn's grip loosened, but only slightly.
Rolette's eyes dropped to my bad leg, then returned to my face. The disappointment in him was worse than the anger. Anger I could stand against. Disappointment had a way of making a man feel his own shape from the outside and find it wanting.
"You'll meet me tomorrow morning," he said. "Before first bell. At the grounds."
Something cold settled under my ribs. It was not a threat. A chief did not need to threaten. The words carried enough future in them without help. Tomorrow morning. At the grounds.
Whatever was coming then, it had already begun.
"Yes, sir," I solemnly replied. My voice sounded strange. Thin. Not like mine.
Rolette held my gaze one moment longer. "Get her home."
The order should have relieved me. It didn't, especially since Rose had heard it too.
Her face, already pale beneath soot and smoke, closed in on itself by a degree, though not in disapproval. More like she had just been handed from one man's authority to another's and had no strength left to explain why that hurt.
She bent to gather her fallen satchel. I moved at the same time. She froze. So did I.
Then, slowly, deliberately, Rose picked it up herself.
The motion took longer than it should have. A book had fallen out. And another. A loose page from the dirt. Her hand trembled when she tucked everything beneath one arm. Snow watched, and I hated him for it. I hated him for watching gently.
I hated myself more for giving him the chance. Einkorn finally released me.
"Rhodes," he murmured, low and warning.
"I know..."
I did not know. Not really.
I followed Rose out of the alley all the same. We did not speak on the ride home.
Or maybe there were words, small ones, useless ones. "Careful there." "This way." "Road's blocked." I could not have said for certain later. What I remember is the distance between us. Not physical exactly. After all, Errante wasnât exactly a draft horse. Yet, we were enough not to make her flinch again.
That was the new arithmetic between us. Close enough to protect. Far enough not to frighten.
The streets of New Bisman had gone strange in the aftermath of the riot. Not emptied, no. The district did not know how to empty itself cleanly. People crowded porches and alley mouths, whispering behind hands, watching peacekeepers shove citizens away from the square and watching firecatchers ride hard toward the mayor's quarter. Children cried openly now that the first shock had worn off. A boy Rose's age sat on the curb with blood running from his nose while his mother cursed a peacekeeper so fluently even the man seemed briefly impressed. Somewhere farther off, a girl kept shouting her brother's name until the sound became less a call than a wound.
Rose looked at all of it. Too much of it.
Every cry seemed to catch in her face before she forced herself onward.
When we reached the Tempest house, evening had gone gray over the yard. Wolfie met us halfway up the path, hackles low but uneasy, circling Rose once she dismounted before pressing his whole body against her skirts. She put one hand on his head automatically. Such a small, ordinary thing for such a traumatic, trivial day.
The house stood quiet. I dismounted, let Errante out to pasture, before I made my way in and shut the gate behind me.
The click of the latch sounded final in a way I did not care for.
Rose had almost reached the porch when I said, "What were you thinking?"
She stopped. The words had come out wrong. I knew that instantly.
They were meant to mean was I thought you were dead or something along those lines. They were meant to mean I saw Errante outside that burning house and my whole body understood a world without you in it. They were meant to mean I canât lose you too, not after Virgil, not after everything, not like thatâŠ
What left my mouth was what were you thinking.
Rose turned slowly.
Her face was still streaked with soot. The corner of her mouth had begun swelling where I had struck her, where I had struck her, no matter how soft the lie of accident tried to make itself. Her eyes were red from smoke and tears both.
"What?" she said.
I should have stopped. I did not.
"What were you thinking?" I repeated, and the fear in me had gone ugly enough to sound like anger. "The square turns into a riot, peacekeepers are shoving folks down in the streets, the mayor's mansion catches fire, and you decide that's the hour to go sneaking about with him?"
Her expression sharpened. "I didn't know there would be a fire."
"You knew enough to sneak."
That struck down like a hammer. I saw it hit and still could not stop.
Rose's grip tightened around her satchel. "I went because I needed answers."
"From Snow?"
"Yes, from Coriolanus."
"Coriolanus?" I sneered. "So weâre on first name basis too?"
âAuphie, please, itâs not-â
âIt doesnât matter what I think.â I plainly retorted. âRosabel, why him?â
"BecauseâŠâ she bit her injured lip in shame. ââŠheâs⊠heâs vice gamemaker."
The words stood there between us in the yard, clean and terrible. Rose glanced once toward the road, as though remembering other ears might exist beyond the fence. Her voice lowered.
"Because he would know," she explained. "And because no one else wouldâve told me the truth."
"The truth?" I laughed once, and it came out mean. "You think that man handed you truth?"
Rose shook her head. "I think he knows more than he says."
My gaze hardened. "That ain't the same thing."
"I know that!" Her voice cracked on the last word, and Wolfie lifted his head.
Rose shut her eyes for half a second, trying to gather herself. That should have been enough to shame me into quiet. It wasn't.
"And then what?" I asked. "He⊠just happened to kiss you in front of half the district? Or are you gonna say that was nothing?"
Her eyes opened. Hurt and fear mirrored back in my visage. The thing I had not meant to say like that. For a moment Rose did not speak. She only stared at me, and I watched understanding move through her face, slow and horrified.
When she answered, her voice had gone very soft. "Let?"
I realized how I had sounded almost immediately as my chest tightened. "Rose-"
"No." She took one step toward me, her brows furrowed, but not in anger. "Just⊠say it proper."
I couldnât.
Her eyes shone now, fear and hurt in equal measure before her voice wobbled. More so out of panic. "Y-You really asked why I let him."
"I didn't mean-"
"Yes, you did." Her voice trembled, but it did not weaken. "Maybe you didn't mean to mean it. But⊠you said it any how."
I dragged a hand over my mouth, tasting ash and panic. "He put his hands on you."
Tears welled in her eyes. "I know."
"In front of everyone."
Rose, shaking her head, let a tear dribble down her reddened cheek. "I know..."
"And you just stood there." The second sentence left me, I felt disgusted. Vile. Why the hell would you even say that Auphidius!? You bastard!
I hated it more than the first. Rose went still.
Then something in her face broke, but in subtle rather than theatrical way. Her expression turned into disbelief so complete it made her look younger than she was.
"I⊠ donât know," she confessed with regret, internally kicking herself. The words were small. They should have killed the argument dead.
Instead, my fear, stupid and flailing, lurched for one more thing to wound us with. "So what⊠it there something between you two?"
Rose recoiled as though I had struck her again. Maybe I had. No hand needed this time.
"What?"
I swallowed. My throat felt raw. "I'm asking-"
"No, I heard you." She gave a short, breathless laugh that sounded almost like pain. "I heard you just fine."
I shouldâve worded everything differently, seen the situation for what it really was. However⊠I was no better than Snow within that moment. "I saw the way he looked at you."
Her gaze hardened at once. "Then ask him about it!"
Careful AuphidiusâŠ
"I'm asking you."
"And I'm telling you there was nothing." Her voice rose now despite her trying to hold it down. "There is nothing. There was a conversation and the charter. The Game Charter. Then he was me asking him why the Capitol would make children vote one another into slaughter, and there was him trying to turn that question into something else because⊠because, I donât know, Auphie, please!"
I knew she was confused and sickened. My anger towards the Capitolite faltered at that. Only a little.
"The charter?" I asked, eyes widened.
Rose looked away. That, too, told me too much.
"You⊠You brought him Virgilâs Games charter?"
"I brought a copy." She corrected.
"Rose." My anger transcended into something akin to fear, specifically for her life.
"I-I know." She desperately answered.
"Do you⊠Do you know what you just did?" The dread came back at once, sharp enough to make my voice rough. "Do you understand what kind of danger that is? You put proof in front of a gamemaker that the Capitol's own rules don't name this Quell, and you thought what? He'd thank you for the correction?"
Rosabelâs gaze slowly descended further into regret. "I thought⊠he might answer me! I-Iâm sorry!"
My brows pinched, before I shook my head. "He won't."
"No," she said, and now there was heat in it. "You know you hate men like him. That isn't always the same as knowing them, ya know."
I stared at her, more so angered at the fact that sheâd defend him after his grotesque performance. Looking back, I shouldâve understood that she was terrified and confused. Desperate to explain away the dangers of what she had done in fear of everyoneâs lives. I wish I hadnât looked at her that way. That was on me.
The yard seemed to tilt beneath me. My leg throbbed, the pain returning now that rage was beginning to lose its hold. I looked at her mouth again. At the swelling there. At the mark I had made.
"I know⊠enough," I sighed, though it sounded hollow now.
Rose hugged her arms tighter to her chest, as if needing something between us. "He was trying to scare me."
"Good.â I stupidly retorted. âBe scared."
"I am scared, Auphie!" she snapped.
The words rang out across the yard. Rose looked startled by her own volume. So did I. Then she pressed the heel of one hand to her brow, careful not to touch the injured part of her mouth.
"Iâm terrified," she said again, lower. "I am scared of the Quell, the voting part. Iâm scared of what people are already saying in town, at school, everywhere. I-I hate it because I asked a question and sudden everything is starting to make less sense, and now⊠itâs all my fault. I am scared because he kissed me and I didnât now what to do fast enough. Now when I looked at you afterwards⊠or anybody in that matter, you just⊠I donât know how to explain it. You looked⊠ugly."
Her eyes lifted to mine. "And then⊠you hurt me."
My throat tightened. It wasnât an accusation dressed up in cleverness; it was just⊠the thing itself.
I had no defense against it.
My mouth opened once and shut again. Rose's face crumpled for half a second, and she forced it back into place so quickly it hurt to watch. "I know⊠you didn't mean to, trust me, I do. I just⊠I really wished you hadnât gone so far, just for my sake.â
That mercy felt worse than condemnation.
"Rose," I said, barely.
"I just⊠wanted you to stop." Her voice trembled again. "A-Actually, I wanted the whole district to stop, really⊠but you didn't."
A long silence followed. The wind moved through the little flower beds near the porch. Somewhere inside the house, a shutter knocked softly against its frame. Wolfie whined once and leaned harder against Rose's leg.
I wanted to tell her everything then. All of it. That seeing Snow touch her had not been superficial or possessive, that was the story I kept trying to sell myself. I had to tell myself everyday that Rosabel couldnât stay a child that needed protection forever. That I shouldnât diminish her autonomy, future, and will to be who she wanted to be and love who she wanted to love. That she wasnât my reflection⊠she wasnât me.
Instead, it had made me afraid because I saw a claim being laid in public and knew enough of Panem to understand public images became cages. I was not angry because she had been kissed, but rather that my anger was fueled by who had done it. Snow had made her stillness into a performance.
I had not doubted her. Not truly. Never truly.
Though⊠I had spoken like I did, and now the difference mattered less.
"I thought you were dead," I quietly admitted, not looking to turn this into an excuse.
Rose blinked. The words came rougher than I meant them to, scraped raw from somewhere I had been trying not to touch.
"When I saw Errante outside that house, I thought..." I looked away because I could not finish with her watching. "I thought I'd failed before I even got there."
Her face softened. Only a little. Enough to make hope stir and then hate itself for doing so.
"Auphie," she said, though, she still held that hardened emotion towards me. I was yet to be worthy of her forgiveness
My mouth, fool thing that it was, kept going. "And then I come in and he's there, and you're there, and he's got his hands on you, and then outside he-" I stopped, breath shaking. "I don't know what he wants from you. I really don't. But I know he wants⊠something, and I just donât want you to keep standing too close for him to figure out how to take it."
"No." I shook my head. âBut I think heâs enough of a snake to back you into a corner.â
"You still thinkâŠ?" Roseâs voice laced with sadness as well as disappointment. â⊠you still think Iâm running towards something I donât understand?â
My mouth tightened. "No, Rose, that ain't-"
"You think I need managed." She said, before rephrasing it. âThat heâll be the one to try and manage me?â
He crossed a boundary. I shouldâve said. Though that hit too close to the word Snow had used, and she did not know it. Or maybe she did. Maybe the word had lodged in her too.
I flinched. Rose saw.
Her voice went quieter. "He meant something like that, ya know. N-Not about me, the districts more so."
I felt the blood leave my face. "What? Why would he admit that?"
âI donât know,â She looked toward the porch. "And besides⊠I probably shouldnât be telling you that anyways..."
"What? Why?"
"It doesn't matter."
âYes.â I firmly asserted. "It does."
"It matters too much," she said, and that shut me up.
For a second, we only stood there in the almost-dark, both trembling hard from the adrenaline, both too tired and too hurt to find the better versions of ourselves.
Then Rose said, "I⊠know it sounds like Iâm defending him. Trust me, I probably sound nuts."
I wanted to say that she was nuts for confronting a Capitol born in the first place. Fortunately, I held my tongue, letting her continue.
"Iâm just trying to understand whatâs happening with the Games." Her voice shook. "With everything really. Itâs just⊠itâs hard when the person youâre depending on for your future is just the complete opposite of you. Of how you think, orâŠ"
Rosabel had to pause. Her own fears and confusion about the day quickly catching up to her.
I had no answer.
She shook her head once, her mind more scrambled the more she thought about it. About University, then the Quell, and finally, Snow himself.
"The thing is," she finally said. âI⊠donât want to leave you all her in the districts⊠but I donât want you to keep living like this either. You understand that, no?â
The sentence gutted me. I sighed. "I know that, Rosie. Everyone knows."
"I wish that was true..." she said in a miserable tone.
My eyes stung. Smoke, maybe. Shame more likely. Rose looked down at the dirt. Her hands were trembling again. "I⊠ need to go inside."
"Rose-"
"Please." She stepped back. "I just⊠need to think is all."
The girl held no malice in her voice. Only panic and dread. She turned toward the porch.
I took half a step after her, then stopped myself before she could tell me to. The old instinct in me reached for her anyway. To steady her anxiety or apologize for my nasty interrogation. To keep her from walking away with blood on her mouth and no promise between us that morning would find us whole.
However, every promise I wanted to make had already been damaged by my own voice.
Rose finally climbed the steps. At the door, she paused with one hand on the latch. For one painful second, I thought she might turn back.
She didn't, thank goodness. She simply stepped to the side to let Wolfie pad on in, before she went inside and shut the door behind her, as gently as she could. That was the part that stayed with me.
I stood there in the yard after, useless as a post, listening to Wolfie whine from inside the home. Then a floorboard creaked from the shadow of the side porch.
I turned.
Waaska stood half-hidden beside the rain barrel, one hand pressed to the porch rail, her face drained in the evening dim. She had a shawl pulled around her shoulders and Nibs nowhere in sight. Maybe she had come to check on Rose after the square, or Misea had sent her. Of course she had known something in the way family sometimes does, that grief had found another room to ruin.
Her eyes moved from the shut door to me. Then to the mark of blood still drying on my knuckles.
I felt sick.
"Waaska," I gulped.
She did not answer. I did not know how long she had been there. Long enough, by the look of her. She had probably heard enough to recognize Snow's name. To hear kiss and to hear my harsh reprimands that mightâve been mistaken for merciless blaming towards her cousin.
Maybe even long enough for truth to become dangerous once placed in the wrong order.
"She⊠all right?" Waaska asked nervously.
The question was quiet. I looked toward the door.
"No," I said.
Waaska's mouth tightened. She nodded once, not at me exactly, but at whatever conclusion had begun forming behind her eyes. Then she stepped down from the side porch and moved past me toward the front door. I wanted to stop her and explain everything that had just transpired. To say, not like that. Not how it sounded. Not what you think. Not what anyone will think by morning.
However, our argument had left the both of us with no closure.
Waaska, carefully attempting to ascend the porch steps, went to knock on the door before halting. I could practically feel the girlâs nerves buzzing from the riot before she turned away. Leaving Rosabel to her own devices.
And for what it was worth, I couldnât blame her.
Dido learned the truth that same evening, long before I was ready to give it to her.
The thing about guilt is it has a smell. I don't know how else to explain it. Maybe it was blood from the pheasants on my sleeve, or the mud on my cuffs from the creek bank. I couldâve just been my face, as Dido looked at me in Auntie's empty clinic. She was still looking at the torn-out hiding hollow, looked at the bundle I had dropped on the floor, and she knew.
"You didn't stop," a trace of betrayal lingered in her tone.
I shook my head before I knew whether I meant denial or confession. "D-Dido-"
"You promised."
My eyes were probably as wide as diner plates. I began to shake with unease, my chin trembling as I desperately tried to explain myself. "I-I know! I-I sorry, I just-"
Dido wasnât having any of it. "You promised."
I reached for her then. In that moment I didnât I have any right to comfort her. I was only a child then, and she was my sister and Auntie⊠was dead. The world had gotten too large for me to stand alone inside it as my bony, little digits tried to reach for comfort in my only remaining family.
Dido stepped back. Only one step.
"Don't," she snapped.
"Dido, please." Tears pricked from the corners of my eyes.
Her face changed. Grief cracked through it then, real and ugly, and for one moment she looked as young as she was. Fourteen. Maybe fifteen. Old enough for the Capitol to reap and young enough that losing a guardian should still have turned her into a sobbing child instead of the hard, trembling thing standing before me.
"I trusted you," she said, her voice nearly betraying her.
Those words found me again years later unfortunately, with Rose carrying the reflection of a younger version of me and my hand remembering her flinch.
I trusted you.
"I-I only wanted to help," I said, bawling now, though at the time I would have sworn the tears were anger. "Auntie needed coin! I-I swear Dido! I was careful, really, I was-"
"Not careful enough," Dido interrupted, her voice low and harsh enough to scare me, even now. "Not careful enough to care about Aelias."
The door outside creaked in the wind. Somewhere down the alley, peacekeeper boots struck stone in passing rhythm. Every sound made me think they were coming back for me too. For the boy who had owned the gear. For the boy Auntie had not named, even when they dragged her out. I know that now. I know she must have refused them, must have swallowed my guilt so I could keep breathing.
At the time, all I knew was fear.
"A-Are you going to tell them?" I whispered, my face crinkling in an ugly way for my sisterâs response.
She didnât though. Dido stared at me. The hurt that crossed her face then was almost worse than if she had said yes.
"Should I?" she asked.
I did not answer. Then⊠she shoved me. Hard.
I stumbled backward and struck the counter with my hip, knocking over a jar of dried yarrow. The leaves scattered across the floor like little dead hands.
"Get out." Dido said. Her voice monotonous yet emotional all in the same breath.
"W-What?"
"Get out."
"Dido-"
"I said, get out!" Her voice broke on the last word, and that made it final. If she had stayed cold, I might have fought. However, my sister was breaking, and I had done the breaking. "Go!"
"W-Where?" I begged. "Please, Dido! W-Where am I supposed to go!?"
She turned away from me. That was her answer.
I remember the door more than I remember leaving. How it looked from outside. Warped boards. A patched hinge. A strip of old cloth stuffed where winter wind liked to slip through. I remember banging on it until my knuckles hurt.
"Dido!" I cried. "Dido, please! Open up! Please!"
No answer.
"I-I'm sorry! I didn't mean it! I didn't know!"
Still nothing.
I sank to the step and pressed my forehead against the wood like I could push my way back into family through sheer wanting.
That was when the peacekeeper found me. He was young. I remember that too. Not much older than Dido, though he wore his uniform like it made him grown. He stopped at the mouth of the alley and looked me over, a crying boy on the Dregâs clinic step in the aftermath of an execution.
"You belong here?" he asked.
I wiped my face with my sleeve and said nothing, still trembling with emotion. His eyes moved to the door. To the clinic sign. To the ash still drifting faint over the rooftops.
"No guardian, huh?"
The word opened something cold beneath me. I stood immediately, my little feet shuffling away from the door⊠and from him.
He smiled a little, not kindly. "Millhouse is short hands ya know? Orphans get placed quick. Might give ya something to do âsides cryinâ like a snot nosed brat.â
Thatâs when I bolted, far from the Dregs, from the peacekeeper, from DidoâŠ
He shouted after me. Maybe laughed. He gave chase for a street or two. I can't say. Fear made the alleys into a blur of brick, mud, laundry lines, old smoke, and my own breath tearing itself out of my chest. I ran until my ribs burned. Ran past the edge of the Dregs, past the last houses, past the creek trail, into the valley where dusk gathered under the grass.
The Secret Garden took me in because stone does not ask questions.
I crawled through the crack in the rock, through darkness that smelled of damp wood, old game, dried blood, and earth. My gear still hung there in neat bundles. Snares. Hooks. The atlatl I loved. The evidence of every choice that had led me there.
Then I curled on the dirt floor beneath it and cried until I fell asleep, knowing there was nothing else I could do. Knowing that by morning, I had no home.
Thatâs when I had learned that being cast out did not require the Capitol to touch you at all. Rather⊠if it came down to it, you could be thrown aside by anyone. Even family.
Death of a Wildfire (25th Hunger Games) - Chapter IV
"Our choices determine the substance of our lives."
- SĂžren Kierkegaard
<<<PREVIOUS CHAPTER | NEXT CHAPTER>>>
Within the Gluttony Games, there only ever stood one victor.
Not a victor in the Capitol sense, mind you. No crown of laurel nor the grandiose anthem blaring pretty over the loudspeakers. No cameras catching the good side of your bloodied face or a chance to murder your own peers, young and old. Nope, just one bruised boy standing in a chalk-drawn square after the rest had been shoved out, carried out, or crawled out on their own elbows.
One boy, ten to fourteen most nights, though the peacekeepers had never been known for counting too carefully when money was involved. One boy left with split knuckles, torn sleeves, a rope burn around both wrists, and the whole miserable pot of offerings clutched to his chest like it could make him less hungry by morning.
To enter, every kid had to give something up, like tokens, coins, or something as mundane as a copper button stolen from an uncle's coat. Maybe a ring from a grandmother's secret stash or a lucky charm or a heel knife or hell, a fistful of ration cards if a fool was desperate enough. Anything with value went into the pool, and the pool went to the winner.
The peacekeepers running the show called it sport.
They held it just outside their main base in New Bisman, far enough from the commander's office that everybody involved could pretend not to know what was happening. The slab had once been part of some old loading yard before the Dark Days broke half the town and the Capitol broke the rest. By the time I knew it, it was only a square of concrete stained permanent maroon that no amount of scrubbing could convince back into gray.
The keepers drew the fighting boundary in chalk. They took bets, laughed, and even called us little beasts when we bit and little gentlemen when we bled politely.
They called it the Gluttony Games in an ironic twist, because nobody fought to the death.
Usually.
The boys came from everywhere poverty had corners sharp enough to shove a child into. Street kids from the alleys. Mill boys with lint in their hair and exhaustion already set into the bones. Field hands whose parents could not afford the academy and therefore had little use for a son who could not yet swing a scythe all day without dropping. Sometimes richer boys came too, soft-handed but mean from boredom, looking for a thrill their fathers could pay them out of if things turned ugly. Just a slice of excitement without the perpetual risk of life or death.
It was not the Hunger Games, no. Still, it was the kind of thing Panem teaches a person to watch before they are old enough to understand why they cannot look away.
Every night began nearly the same. The younger boys against the younger boys. The older against the older. That sorted the duds quick, according to the keepers, though duds mostly meant children who had not yet learned how to hurt another child efficiently. You stood in the chalk square with your hands bound together by nearly a meter of rope, the other end tied to your opponent. When the bell went off, you pulled, shoved, tripped, hooked, kicked, shouldered, or dragged the other boy out of the square.
Simple enough, if simplicity had ever once prevented cruelty.
I remember one fight before mine, a curly-haired boy whose name I never learned and a drunken Hoffman Ellendale, twelve years old and already carrying himself like a full-grown man expecting the world to flinch first. They beat each other bloody for near ten minutes while the peacekeepers howled themselves hoarse. The curly-haired boy got one good knee into Hoffman's ribs, and for a moment the crowd turned, hungry for upset, but Hoffman laughed. He actually laughed with blood down his chin and spit across his teeth.
Then he got both bound hands in the boy's hair and smashed his head against the concrete.
Once. Twice. Hard enough the sound cut through the cheering. The third time, even the keepers quieted.
Hoffman threw him over the line after that and stood there grinning like he had done something clever. He went home with the pot. The other boy was dragged toward the shadow side of the base, head lolling wrong. Looking back, I donât think I ever saw him again.
After that, I prayed, in whatever ugly, half-starved way a child prays when he has stopped trusting anyone is listening, that I would never draw Hoffman Ellendale.
Which only proves the maker has always had a poor sense of humor.
"Calico!" a peacekeeper shouted one night, using the mocking nickname that clung to me worse than molasses. "You and Hoffboss are up!"
Hoffboss. Not fancy, but still better than Calico.
Calico had been their joke over the odd streaking in my hair. Dido used to say our family called it dapple. Brunette mostly, with stray pieces of wheat-blond here and there like sunlight had gotten confused and settled in the wrong place. Rare enough to be noticed, not rare enough to be admired. A cursed arrangement, in other words.
The keeper looped the rope around my wrists and cinched it tight. Minor burn welts had already risen across my skin from the earlier rounds. Hoffman barely seemed to feel the binding. His wrists were callused dark from work and fighting both, rope sliding into old grooves like it belonged there.
The overhead security lamp buzzed above us, failing at most of its duties except making the blood on the concrete shine. My scavenged fieldworker boots looked too wide for me under that sickly light. They had belonged to a man bigger and deader than I was, and I had been told I would grow into them. I never quite did.
"At the sound of the bell, gentlemen!" one of the peacekeepers bellowed. "The fight will commence!"
Final round.
My wrists burned from the boy before, some poor kid who had put up a family heirloom and lost it on one rookie misstep outside the chalk. Easy win. Bad omen. A body starts thinking easy means deserved right before the world corrects him.
Hoffman watched me with maple-brown eyes gone nearly black beneath the lamp. His nose was already bleeding, but he stood steady, loose through the shoulders, drunk enough not to know fear and sober enough to know exactly where to strike. I felt adrenaline building in me so fiercely I thought I might puke on my own boots.
DING. DING. DING.
Hoffman yanked first.
The rope snapped tight so hard I thought both my wrists might tear clean out of socket. I planted one foot behind me and dug the heel into concrete, leaning back with everything my skinny frame had. Wrestling Hoffman was like trying to hold a mustang by the tail. Field work had built him wrong for a boy our age, all rough power and no restraint.
"Kick the hitch, Calico!" Hoffman snarled, dragging me half a step toward him. "Pool ain't worth a hang if you ain't gonna do nothin' with it!"
He was not wrong. When I won, I spent the money on bread, meat if I was lucky, maybe a cot for a night if rain had made the alleys cruel. Once or twice I had looked at a bottle of liquor with too much interest for a child. Hunger makes men early. So does loneliness.
"Go, Hoffboss!" the crowd shouted. "Kick his teeth in!"
Hoffman twisted hard. My right side slammed into the concrete, breath knocking out of me. His boot came for my mouth, and instinct saved what sense might have lost. I caught his ankle between my bound hands, looped my end of the rope around it, and clung hard.
I had seen another boy win that way once. Tangle, yank, drop.
So, I yanked.
Hoffman stumbled, cursing, kicking like a calf not yet resigned to the branding iron. I twisted his leg and got another chorus of shrieks from the crowd. The keepers loved it when a fight turned clever. Made them feel less guilty for calling it entertainment, I suppose.
"You ornery cuss!" Hoffman spat. "You and your weevil of a sister can go kick a bucket of manure for all I care! Ugly Capitolite scum!"
There it was.
The bait.
Rumors had followed me and Dido for years by then. That we had Capitol blood. That we were born in the city and smuggled out. That our father had been some disgraced officer. That our mother had sold information. That old Miss. Aelias Parshall had been raising a pair of polished little traitors in a tanner's shack on the edge of the Dregs. There were too many versions to hate cleanly, so I had learned not to hate any of them out loud.
I held him down anyway.
"You ain't gettin' a thing outta me, Ellendale," I said, teeth clenched as I pressed his leg into the concrete.
Hoffman grinned. Blood slicked his teeth. "Maybe not. But that ain't discountin' the rumors about old Missus Parshall, is it?"
My hands trembled. His eyes lit up because he saw it.
"Heard a little whisper between the rows," he went on, breathless with delight now. "Heard it was you who sent the missus to the stake."
The world narrowed. "Don't."
The word came out too quiet for the crowd. Too small for a warning. Hoffman heard it and knew he had found the soft place.
"Heard you had your own little business," he sneered. "Must've been a shock when you got home, eh?"
"Shut it, Hoffman." I gritted through grinding teeth.
"Poor little Auphie," he said, a mocking jeer in his voice. "Except that ain't what your sister said, was it?"
SMACK!
I do not know what crawled into my twelve-year-old head that night except rage, and rage does not need much room once it decides to stand up. My fist caught him with the force of something larger than me. Then I hit him again. And again. The rope tangled between us, the chalk line forgotten, the crowd forgotten, the rules forgotten, everything forgotten except the need to smear his ugly words into blood before they could keep existing.
"Shut up!" I screamed, hitting and hitting and hittingâŠ
Hoffman hit back. He caught my cheek, my ear, my jaw. I hardly felt it. I clawed at his face, tore skin under my nails, slammed his head sideways until blood poured fresh from his nose and the crowd changed pitch from excitement to something nearer alarm.
No one stopped me. Not at first.
Then hands seized the back of my shirt and hauled me off like I weighed nothing.
"Hold on, son!"
"Get off me!" I thrashed, half blind with tears and fury. "Get off!"
The man dragged me clean across the chalk line, which meant Hoffman won the pot. The keepers cut my bindings, and I stumbled forward into suddenly silent air. Hoffman lay on the slab with a bloody, crooked smile spread across his face.
I would have gone for him again. The man's hands landed on both my shoulders, firm enough to stop me without making a show of force. "Easy there..."
"What the hell?" I spat, trying to wrench away. "You realize what you just did?"
The stranger ignored me and turned toward the grounds. He wore a dark cattleman hat and one of those navy-blue dusters that reflected when the light hit it right. Firecatcher fabric. Worn thin, patched at the cuffs, smelling faintly of smoke and horse.
"Get on home, everyone," he called. "Celebration's over."
The crowd obeyed. That was the first thing about Virgil Tempest that frightened me.
He did not shout louder than the peacekeepers. He did not threaten nor did he wave a weapon. Yet the boys scattered, the onlookers thinned, and even the keepers grumbled rather than argue. Some people carry authority like a badge. Virgil wore his like weather.
When the yard had mostly emptied, he turned back to me and crouched down on one knee to meet my eye. He removed his midnight-black hat. Cobalt eyes studied me from a face weathered by sun, smoke, and years of walking toward things other men ran from.
Finally, he spoke. "What's your name?"
I sneered at him, expecting him to be a joke. "What's it to you?"
He gave the smallest smile. "Mind if I introduce myself first? Virgil Tempest. Chief if ya wanna call me somethinâ else. Saw you out there with the Ellendale boy. Got a mean streak on you, son."
I stared at the snake-skinned boot near his knee, steel-toed for wanagi country. A boot like that could stop a bite. A boot like that cost more than I saw in a month.
"S'pose so," I muttered. "If I'm in trouble, just say so."
"Oh, no, son." Virgil glanced once toward the peacekeeper base, then back to me. "I just couldn't help noticin' you're the little bugger always fightin' here every night. Correct?"
"Yeah?"
Blood dripped from my nose. I wiped it with the back of my hand and left a smear across my cheek. Better this than the fields, I told myself. Better bleeding for a chance at coin than living the same Capitol-measured day until I was too tired to want more.
Virgil's hand rested on my shoulder. Heavy and sturdy. Wasnât supposed to be gentle I reckoned. Just⊠grounded. "You ever wonder what all that fight's for, son?"
The question caught me just as bad as Hoffmanâs punch. "What d'you mean?"
He nodded toward the concrete, still wet in places. "You fight like someone lookin' to burn somethin' outta his chest. Ain't anger alone keepinâ a boy your size standinâ against a brute like Ellendale. It's purpose. Only difference is, you ain't found yours yet."
I had no answer.
The night air smelled of dust, sweat, blood, and the far-off sweetness of grain. Purpose sounded like a rich man's word. Something people with full pantries invented because survival bored them.
"Ain't much purpose in 9," I muttered. "Only thing worth fightin' for is stayin' alive."
Virgil studied me a long moment. "Stayin' alive's a good start. But survivin' ain't livin'. The firecatchers, we got a say in that. We fight the flames before they eat the district whole. Sometimes we win. Sometimes we don't. But we keep folks breathin' a little longer. That's somethin' worth doin'."
My gaze drifted to his coat, singed and patched and lined with stories I did not know yet. It was not glamorous work. Catchers died ugly. Everybody knew that. They got paid poorly for saving crops the Capitol owned and people the Capitol barely counted. Yet somehow, standing there with Virgil's hand on my shoulder, the work seemed to carry more dignity than anything I had seen on that concrete slab.
"You sayin' I should be one of you?" I asked, half mocking, half hoping so hard I hated myself for it.
Virgil straightened and set his hat back on. "I'm sayin' a fighter like you don't belong in the dirt with drunks and gamblers. You got grit, boy. The kind that don't wash off easy. If you're willin' to put that fight to use, I'll teach you how to catch fire instead of feed it."
The idea lodged somewhere deep under my ribs.
Dangerous. Absurd. Maybe⊠it was right.
For the first time in years, the thing burning inside me did not feel only like anger.
"All right," I said, quiet but certain. "I'll⊠Iâll learn."
Virgil's hand came down once more on my shoulder. "Good. Eastern mill. Sunrise. We'll see if you're built for the blaze."
The blaze. I really had it for a time, didn't I?
By the morning after the clinic, my leg had become the sort of thing a body could no longer ignore politely.
That was the trouble with an injury once professionals got their hands on it. Before then, a man could pretend pain was only pain. Just temporary. Something stubbornness could outlast if pride kept its teeth set hard enough. Though once a healer looked at it with that flat, unsentimental expression and started naming bones, ligaments, and recovery times, the body stopped feeling like an inconvenience and more like evidence.
Dido had wrapped the leg tight enough to insult me every time I bent it wrong, which was often. She had given instructions too. Stay off it. Keep it raised. Do not ride or run. Donât even attempt to prove anything to anyone by ruining the only leg I had left fit to complain with.
I had nodded through all of it, knowing full well that the moment I stepped out of that clinic, Iâd still ride down the streets of New Bisman knowing full well sheâd catch me.
The day after the fiasco of Capitolite nearly dying on district soil didnât change much to the naked eye. As I strolled slowly through the streets atop Errante, each cog in the little machine that was 9 kept turning. Kids ran on their way to work or school, the fieldworkers were cussing about their unfair wages, the store owners swept their porches clean for the chance for one, if only just one customer entered their business.
A little way outside the catcher base, there were a couple of peacekeepers openly mocking a young boy, no older than sixteen. The keepers laughed as they shoved the kid against the nearest alley wall, before the bigger of the two spat in the boyâs face.
âWhereâs your older brother now?â Jeered the soldier. âOlâ Hoffboss canât protect ya now, huh?â
Hoffboss? It took me a second glance recognize the boy. Hoel Ellendale, Hoffmanâs baby brother. However, unlike his brother, he was all bones and bruises. Scrawny little man that could barely hold his own like Hoffboss could in the Gluttony Games.
Not that the boy seemed particularly keen on fighting back anyways. He kept a stoic expression as the peacekeepers kept shoving Hoel to the dirt, taunting him about his brotherâs gang always abandoning the poor bastard.
Looking back, I wish I wouldâve said something. Stopped their cruel words and help young Ellendale back on his feet. Unfortunately, I didnât.
Then, I got to the firecatcher grounds.
Not for duty, obviously. That was what I told myself on the walk over, anyway. I was checking in. Seeing what Gooseneck had heard from the District 7 rangers. Asking after Trouble. Making sure the report from the valley had not been polished down into something harmless by the time it reached hands clean enough to mishandle it.
Perfectly reasonable.
The fact that every step from Burr Scranton's residence to the grounds drove a hot nail up through my hip was nobody's business but mine.
The firecatcher grounds sat on the midwestern edge of New Bisman, where town loosened its grip and gave way to training yard, stables, equipment sheds, and the broad scraped lot where trainees learned how to throw themselves at disaster in acceptable formations. Usually, the place held noise enough to make a man feel useful just standing in it. Men cussing wind direction like wind might take correction if shamed properly. Young catchers dragging hoses and grit sacks with the grave seriousness of children given their first dangerous errand.
That morning, it was quieter. It wasnât necessarily empty pre-say. District 9 did not have the luxury of empty where work was concerned. Though, the whole yard moved under a damp cloth, with voices lower, steps a little slower. The force had not stopped for Virgil. It couldn't really. Yet everywhere I looked, his absence sat in the spaces where people hesitated before asking who had authority now.
Deputy Oakley Mayleaf was near the tack shed, speaking with two older catchers over a ledger. She looked up when I came through the gate. Her eyes dropped to the limp that ruined my every step, then back to my face.
She did not say anything, which was decent of her.
Burr would have said something. Ditcher would have pretended not to, then said something worse by accident. Mayleaf only gave me one short nod and returned to the ledger, granting me the mercy of being seen and not discussed.
I was halfway across the yard when Gooseneck Hillsboro stepped out from behind the horse barn like he had been waiting for me to make a fool of myself at the proper distance.
He had a way of appearing without announcing himself. Always had, especially in his frame being tall, spare, but especially narrow through the shoulders in a way that made him look less strong than he truly was. He had a face that had learned early not to volunteer opinion before it was needed. His hat sat low, shading his eyes, and his hands hung by the thumbs on his belt loops in that quiet, inward posture of his that made a person feel examined without being accused.
"Rhodes," he stated.
"Hillsboro." I nodded back.
His gaze traveled down the full pathetic length of me, splint, bad stance, with the worst being the sweat already gathered at my collar despite the morning still being cool.
"You get lost on the way to bed?" he curtly snorted. Not out of malice, though my treacherous mind couldnât tell the difference.
"I was headed there eventually." I sighed.
"Funny.â He almost laughed. âGrounds ain't on that route."
That made me shrug. "They are if a man takes a shortcut."
His mouth moved once. The dawn of a smile. "You look like chewed bark."
That cost him a glare. "That your medical opinion?"
"No, Rhodes. That's being generous."
I shifted my weight before I remembered I ought not, and the leg answered so sharply I had to grip the side of the barn with both hands. Gooseneck saw it. Of course he saw it. Men like him were put on earth, I suspected, to notice the exact things a body wanted left alone.
He tipped his chin toward the shaded side of the tack shed. "Come sit."
"I'm fine." I quickly retorted before my body could answer.
"No, you're upright.â Gooseneck shook his head. âBarely at that. Folks confuse the two, ya know."
I considered arguing, then decided there were more dignified ways to lose. I limped after him toward the shed, each step drawing my temper tighter until I could feel it sitting behind my teeth. There was a bench there, rough-built and sun-warped, tucked between stacked bridles and a row of old buckets. I lowered myself onto it with as much control as pride could scrape together.
It still hurt enough to put spots in my vision. Gooseneck, all limbs, leaned against the post opposite me, arms folded now, his eyes turned toward the yard rather than me. That too was a kindness, really, for a man could receive a scolding better when he did not have to stare straight into it.
For a while neither of us spoke. Didnât seem necessary.
The yard carried on in fragments. A trainee dropped a grit scoop and earned a soft curse from the catcher beside him. One of the stable boys led out a nervous mare with her ears pinned and her tail switching. Somewhere beyond the sheds, a hammer struck wood three times, then stopped.
Finally, Gooseneck said, "Heard you tried to catch Trouble under a falling tree."
I simply nodded. "Did catch him."
"You also caught some mine along the way, from the looks of it."
"Didn't mean to.â I side eyed Gooseneck. âDidn't know."
âYep.â It was his turn to nod. "That tends to be the trouble with mines."
I craned my neck to properly look him in the eyes. "You drag me over here to admire the irony of it?"
"No." He looked at me then. "Nope. I dragged you over here because you're acting like your leg ainât broken."
I scoffed. âIt ainât.â
âDamn near close though.â
That landed closer to home than I liked. I looked away toward the training lot where two young catchers were hauling a water barrel between them, both trying to look less winded than they were.
"The healers already gave me the sermon, Hillsboro."
âImagine the did.â Gooseneckâs shoulders bobbed, containing a piece of a chuckle. "I imagine they did."
"Well, theyâre better at it than you." I admitted.
"Likely." His voice stayed even. "They also know how much worse your condition got."
I said nothing. Gooseneck let that sit a moment. He knew some doors opened worse if shoved.
"Clinic says it's bad," he finally said.
"Clinic says a lot."
Now, Gooseneckâs widened gaze turned to stare me down. "Is it bad?"
I rubbed my thumb along the bench wood. The surface was surprisingly smooth where other hands had worn it down before mine. Proof of other worried men. Of other bodies briefly reduced to tools and waiting.
"It's worse than before, can tell ya that," I relented.
"How much worse?"
I huffed a humorless breath. "You askin' as a friend or as a scout lead?"
"Depends."
That almost made me smile. Almost.
"They set it," I said. "Said if I keep weight off it, it might mend clean enough."
Gooseneckâs brows pinched. "Might?"
"That's the word they used." I sighed, feeling the pressure build beyond just my injury.
Finally, the lieutenant turned his head back to the base, though not his attention. "And if you don't?"
I did not answer right away, because⊠knew. Maybe not in every official, educated, clinic-worded way, but I knew enough. Bodies had their own language, and mine had been speaking plain since the valley. Hell, since the spill. There was a difference between pain from something healing and pain from something warning you it was deciding how much of your future to keep.
"If I don't," I said at last, "then it won't."
Gooseneck nodded once, as if that confirmed some grim little sum he'd already been doing. "Good."
I looked at him sharply. "Good?"
"Good that you know." He corrected.
That answer earned a humorless chuckle. "Knowing and liking ain't kin."
"Rarely are."
I leaned back against the shed wall and shut my eyes for one breath. The shade smelled of dust, leather, horse sweat, and old smoke baked into wood. Familiar smells. Firecatcher smells. The kind of smells that had once meant place, purpose, belonging. That morning they only made me aware of how easily a man could be standing in the middle of his own life and still feel it pulling out from under him.
"I can still work, ya know," I bargained, despite knowing my efforts were in vain.
Gooseneck snorted through his nose. Not impatient. More tired of anything.
"Course you can." His inflection deadpanned. That was a giveaway to Gooseneck not letting on what he was thinking. In fact, it was a dead giveaway for most folks in 9.
"Whatâs that supposed to mean?" I countered.
He shrugged. "That was a foolâs sentence, ya know."
âHillsboro,â Though my voice sounded more pleading than commanding. "I'm not useless."
"Didnât call you useless."
On a technicality, he was right. Never truly let the words reach fruition, sure⊠then again, folks in 9 never said everything that was in their noggin.
"You didn't have to." I prompted.
His gaze sharpened then, not angrily, but with enough force to make me stop. "No. I didn't."
The yard sounded farther away all of a sudden. Gooseneck pushed off the post and came to sit at the other end of the bench, leaving enough space between us that the conversation did not yet have to call itself personal.
"You know what I've seen?" he asked.
My lids drooped at his question. "Plenty, I reckon."
"Too much of one thing." He rested his elbows on his knees. "Men thinking the only way to prove they still matter is to spend themselves faster. Young ones, mostly. Old ones too, though they lie better about it. They lose somebody. Lose a rank, a wife, a brother, a child, a hand, a good horse, whatever piece of life they'd built their balance around. Then they come here and start mistaking punishment for purpose."
I swallowed, though there was nothing in my throat.
"They volunteer first. Ride longest. Sleep least. Take every little bad call like the maker itself assigned it. And folks praise 'em for a while because it looks like strength from a distance. Looks noble, absolutely. Like duty." His mouth tightened. "Up close, it's just a man bleeding into a bucket and calling it a drop."
The words were not loud. That was why they cut clean.
"I ain't doing that," I said, but it came out weaker than I'd wanted.
"No?"
I sighed through my nose, forcing myself to admit it. "No."
He nodded toward my leg. "Then what are you doing?"
Anger rose in me, sudden and welcome, because anger at least had the decency to feel like motion. "I'm trying not to be useless."
Gooseneck went still. The sentence had come out before I approved it. Once spoken, there was no calling it back, so I set my jaw and looked away. Across the yard, Deputy Mayleaf handed the ledger off to one of the older men and pointed toward the east shed. Somebody laughed once, too sarcastic to be happy.
Gooseneck's voice softened by a degree. "Then⊠thatâs settled."
I hated him a little for hearing it right.
"Tempest's gone," I said, eyes cast to the dirt. "Rolette's chief. You've got scout rotation. Everybody's useful. Burr's annoying, but hell, even that serves a purpose half the time. And now Rosabel is-â
I stopped myself there. Too late, maybe.
Gooseneck's gaze moved to me, his expression turning to genuine concern. Maybe even fear if you spelt it correctly. "Rosie's what?"
I shook my head. "Nothing."
Gooseneck, fortunately, backed off, though he clearly didnât buy it. "Mm..."
"Don't 'mm' me." I scoffed.
He shrugged. "Reckon, ya needed it."
âSheâŠâ I dragged a hand over my mouth, before strangled sigh escaped from my throat. "She⊠wants to go to university in the Capitol. The mayor's been generous, but⊠it's that damn Capitolite, Snow, that isn't sitting right with me. I want to say he's a good fella. Say that⊠at least he's helping Rose move toward. Something like that."
I had to pause and gauge Gooseneckâs reaction at the mere mention of the Capitol. He never said anything aloud. Never openly talked against them, swore at them, spat at them. Nothing⊠but as I noted the slightest bit of grief glossing within his eyes, anyone who knew anyone in 9 would know that Gooseneck Hillsboro had every right to openly hate them. Especially since the catcher was forced to watch both of his siblings become slaughter fodder for the Capitolâs perverted gamesâŠ
âŠand despite it, Hillsboro remained composed.
My voice roughened despite my best effort. "Everybody, everything, is moving. And I'm sitting here with a busted leg being told to rest like I'm some lame horse stuck in its stall."
Gooseneck was quiet for a while after that. That was one thing about him I both admired and despised. He never rushed to fill a wound with words just because silence made him uncomfortable. He let a thing breathe, showed its full ugly shape, before deciding whether to touch it.
Finally he said, "Tempest made a mistake with you."
I turned on him so fast pain sparked up my hip. "What?"
"I think⊠he taught you too well."
The anger faltered because it had nowhere obvious to land.
Gooseneck kept looking at the yard. "Tempest had a way of making every young fool under him believe usefulness was sacred. If you could help, you should. If there was fire, you went toward it. Good lesson, most days." He paused. "Dangerous one when loss gets hold of it."
I looked down again.
"He loved this force," Gooseneck said. "Loved this district. Loved work, saving what could be saved. But he never asked you to become kindling."
My throat tightened.
"He isn't asking anything of me now," I said. "He's dead."
"No," Gooseneck replied. "But dead men usually ask the most of a person. Or we start putting our own orders in their mouths and pretending a grave gave them."
Maker help me, he was right. Every time I reached for Virgil's hat, I told myself I had to stand because he would have stood. Had to ride because he would have ridden. Had to watch Rose, guard the force, keep moving or else dishonor the man who had saved more of me than I knew how to count. I had dressed fear in his voice because his voice still held authority over me, even from the grave.
Gooseneck leaned back slightly. "You want to obey orders?"
I did not trust my voice. I only looked at him.
"Live long enough to remember him right," he said. "Not just loud."
The yard blurred a little around the edges. I blinked hard and blamed the pain.
"You sound like an old woman," I muttered.
That earned me a chuckle. "I was raised by several."
I raised my brows. "Shows."
"Good.â Gooseneck nodded with pride. âThey were smarter than most men."
That got a breath out of me. Not a laugh, but near enough to loosen the worst of the tightness in my chest.
Gooseneck's expression turned practical, which meant the mercy portion of the conversation had ended. "Rolette's taking you off field response."
The world narrowed. I felt a faint wave of an argument bubbling out from my frustration before Hillsboro beat me to it.â
"Temporary. Until the clinic clears you."
This did nothing to quell me. "And if it doesn't?"
His silence answered before his mouth did. I felt something drop inside me, low and heavy.
"Gooseneck."
"I'm telling you plain because somebody ought to," he said. "You cannot run line or brace under a grit pack. You definitely can't haul a man out of a burn zone on that leg. Not now."
I stubbornly chuffed. "I know what I can do."
"No." This time there was iron in it. "You know what you used to do. Those ain't the same."
The anger came back, but beneath it was fear so cold it made the morning seem thin. Firecatching had not been a job to me, not really. It had been the first place where work and belonging had taken the same shape. It had given me orders, danger, exhaustion, scars enough to map me by. All this to say, it had also given me Virgil. Purpose. A way to be more than the sum of what I had survived before it.
Now, without asking, my own body had placed that life under review.
"What am I supposed to do?" I asked.
Gooseneck's eyes softened, barely. "Heal."
I shook my head. âThat ain't an answer."
Goosenecks eyes trained themselves to the ground, before he reluctantly admitted, "It's the only one you've got."
I looked down at my hands. Same scars, same knuckles, same dirt around the nails. It seemed unfair that everything inside could shift so violently and leave the outside mostly recognizable.
From the training lot, Trouble appeared near the water barrels. He moved stiffly, one navy, jacket sleeve torn from the blast, his face still warm amber in the morning light. Though even as an elder teen, I feared he might be aging too fast. Most did in the districts.
When he caught sight of me, he lifted one hand, hesitant and ashamed. I lifted mine back before I could think better of it.
Gooseneck saw that too.
"He's alive because of you," he assured me.
I gave the smallest tilt of my chin. "Maybe."
"No maybe. He is."
I scrunched my eyes closed, as an onslaught of unforgiving grievances filtered in my head, all at once. "And I'm half useless because of it."
"Those two truths can sit at the same table."
I hated that. Hated how much it sounded like Rose asking how to mourn and still want things. Maybe that was adulthood, then. It wasnât just wisdom. Nobody wise enough would ever admit they had enough of that. Rather, it was learning to hold two true hurts without letting one erase the other.
Gooseneck rose first, brushing dust from his trousers. "You can still make used of yourself here, Rhodes. You know that, right?"
"And how you suppose that?" I huffed halfheartedly. âBy pretending Iâm a scarecrow or something?â
He gave me a dry look. "By occupying your mind, not your leg."
I huffed. "And what, leave all the borinâ stuff to me?â
Cause I can actually read a newspaper, unlike the rest of the sorry folks in 9? I was about to add that thought, though, I bit my tongue, understanding most people didnât have their own personal library hidden away in pre-Dark Day bunker. Obviously.
Gooseneck's face finally etched with faint humor, tilting his head in fiend disapproval at my hollow comeback. "Hell, Rhodes, whatever are you gonna do?"
That nearly got a real laugh out of me. "As long as I donât get chewed out for some spelling errorâŠ"
âNobody would know otherwise.â Gooseneck countered, before he offered me a hand and hauled me upright. Pain flared, but I kept my face steadier this time. He had already seen enough. He waited until I had my balance. "Besides⊠Tempest didn't care that you were useful."
I had no answer. Not one I could say aloud and survive with dignity intact. I simply gave him a nod. Small and stiff. Not enough for gratitude, but all I could manage.
Then I limped out of the firecatcher grounds in exchange for their information center. All the while with Virgil's hat low over my brow, my leg burning, my throat tight, and a pit in my stomach so deep it felt like the earth beneath that fog valley had opened again inside me.
Because Gooseneck was right.
I had not only cracked bone out there. I had come back from that clearing close enough to losing my place that I could finally see the edge of it.
And once a man sees the edge, he cannot unknow how near his next step may take him.
Rose knew she was being watched before the academy doors had even shut behind her.
That was not unusual by itself. Grief drew eyes. So did absence and being the daughter of a man, half the district had buried only days before. She had prepared herself, badly but earnestly, for that sort of attention. The softened voices, careful pauses, or maybe the pity that tried to approach politely and somehow still stepped on the sorest place in a body.
This was not that. There was something quicker and sharper in the air. A sideways kind of looking.
A girl from the lower forms saw Rose cross the front hall and immediately turned to whisper into another girl's ear. Two boys near the coat pegs stopped arguing over a lunch pail long enough to stare. Someone at the stairwell said her name too softly to be certain of it and too distinctly to be mistaken for anything else.
Rosabel Tempest-Strix kept walking.
Her academy uniform felt wrong on her that morning. Too familiar for the life she had woken inside. Pine-green jacket, brown skirt, white blouse buttoned neatly at the throat, green ribbons tied through her braids because she had not had strength to choose anything different. She had washed her hands twice before leaving the house and still thought she could smell clinic spirits under her nails. The cuffs of her blouse were clean now, or near enough, but she knew where Coriolanus's blood had dried on them the day before. Knew where the fabric had stiffened. Where her shawl had gone missing somewhere between Victor's Village and the clinic, swallowed by emergency and not yet returned.
It seemed impossible that anyone else could know those details. Almost as impossible that they did not.
The hallway narrowed around her with bodies and voices. Students moved in familiar clusters toward their rooms, boots knocking against old boards, satchels thumping hips, laughter rising and cutting off whenever Rose came too nearby. She saw Carrigan Killdeer standing by the classroom with two other girls, her eyes bright with the particular strain of someone trying not to look too interested in being interested. Dax Hebron glanced up from a paper in his hand and looked away too slowly. Amos Bottineau, who had always been terrible at pretending, simply stared until Dax elbowed him.
Rose held her books tighter against her chest. It occurred to her then that yesterday had not stayed where she left it.
The mayor's parlor had not remained behind closed doors. The conference had not remained a conference. Victor's Village, for all its fresh paint and peacekeeper gates, had not been far enough from town to keep gossip from crawling under the fence. And the clinic had never kept anything quiet for longer than it took a waiting room to empty.
By first bell, the whole school had some version of the story. Rose could feel the versions collecting around her.
She had gone to see the mayor.
She had met with a Capitol man.
She had been shown the victor houses.
She had saved Coriolanus Snow from a snakebite.
She was close to going to university.
Close to being sponsored.
She thought herself chosen.
That last one was the worst, though no one had yet said it aloud.
Miss Wishek's classroom was already half full when Rose entered. The familiar smell of chalk and old paper closed around her with almost insulting normalcy. Sunlight fell through the high windows in pale rectangles across the desks, catching dust in the air and turning it briefly golden before the room swallowed it back into gray.
Rose took her usual seat near the middle. That was her first mistake.
The room shifted around the choice, not dramatically enough for a teacher to scold, but enough for her to feel it. She had sat there all year. Most her academy years, really, whenever she could claim it first. It had never meant anything beyond habit. Now even a desk seemed to ask whether she still belonged in the same place as before.
Rose set her books down carefully. Too carefully.
"Is it true?" The whisper came from somewhere behind her left shoulder.
"Don't ask her."
"I'm not!"
"You just did."
Rose kept her gaze on the pencil groove carved into her desk. Someone years before had scratched a row of tiny wheat stalks into the wood, each one leaning the same direction as if pressed by wind. She had traced them with one finger many mornings when civics lessons bored her past endurance. Today she only looked at them and tried to remember how breathing was meant to work when a room had decided to turn her into a question.
Miss Wishek entered before anyone else could be brave enough to ask it aloud.
The room snapped into respectability at once. Satchels were shoved beneath desks. Whispering thinned into little scraps and died there. Rose lifted her chin and opened her reader to the marked page, though she could not have said what lesson they were meant to begin with.
"Open to chapter twelve," Miss Wishek said. "We will continue our discussion of district responsibility within national recovery."
A few students turned pages. A few only pretended to. Rose kept her eyes down and felt the whole room lean toward her without moving.
District responsibility.
The phrase landed differently than it had before. Yesterday, it might have annoyed her in the old familiar way, might have prompted two or three marginal arguments and a question Miss Wishek would have pretended not to enjoy. Today, with Coriolanus Snow's blood still living somewhere in memory under her fingernails and the university board's faces still fixed in her mind like portraits in bad light, it felt less like a lesson and more like a warning.
Miss Wishek began to read. "Each district is given purpose according to its strongest civic capacity. By serving within that purpose, the citizens of Panem-"
"Ask her." A distracting whisper emerged.
"I'm not asking her." The next whisper parried.
"You said you would!"
Miss Wishek stopped reading. The classroom went still so quickly it almost made the whispers sound louder in memory than they had in fact.
"Mr. Bottineau," Miss Wishek said.
Amos sank slightly in his seat. "Ma'am?"
"If your private conversation is more informative than the text, perhaps you would care to share it with the class."
"N-No, ma'am." The dirt blondeâs eyes swerved to anywhere but Rose.
"Then I suggest you locate your page before your curiosity begins costing you marks."
A few students snickered, relieved to have someone else embarrassed for them. Miss Wishek resumed the lesson. Rose kept her eyes on chapter twelve and felt her ears burn.
For the next half hour, the class behaved itself badly.
Not in any way Miss Wishek could punish cleanly. No open questions or even bold remarks. Only glances passed between desks, notes folded and refolded beneath elbows, too-casual looks whenever Rose turned a page. Carrigan leaned twice toward Nellie and received two sharp looks for her trouble. Dax watched Rose with a seriousness that almost made her prefer Carrigan's gossip. At least gossip knew itself for what it was. Dax looked as though he had begun sorting her into an argument.
When the bell finally rang, Rose gathered her books too fast.
The room rose around her in scraping wood and released breath. Students moved toward the door in a clump, and for one foolish second Rose thought she might slip through them unnoticed by virtue of everyone else trying too hard to notice her discreetly.
Then Carrigan Killdeer stepped into her path. The brunette had always been out to get someone, regardless of who it was. Though, Rose couldnât really blame how her and Enrique turned out. The Killdeer family were proud of being district. Most were, and there was nothing wrong with that. However, that also meant that an outsider, especially a feral, had no place among the hard workers of District 9.
 She did not do it cruelly, though Carrigan always made sure of that. Cruelty would have given Rose something firmer to stand against. If Carrigan and her friends tried to be mean enough like they would when they were children, Rose would feel more justified to talk back.
 Instead, her peer only pretended to look bright-eyed, curious, yet too hungry for the answer to pretend she had not been waiting all morning.
"So," Carrigan said in a subtly accusatory manner, hugging her reader to her chest. "Is it true?"
Rose adjusted her grip on her books. "Is what true?"
Carrigan gave her a look. "Don't be like that."
"I don't know what you're asking."
At this, Carrigan openly scoffed. "Yes. You do."
Nellie and Grist Mayville hovered half a step behind Carrigan, both looking apologetic but not apologetic enough to leave. Amos had stopped by the door. Dax lingered near the window with his paper still in hand, pretending with astonishing failure to reread it.
Carrigan lowered her voice. Not enough. "They say you met with him."
Rose's stomach tightened. "With who?"
Carrigan's brows lifted. "The Capitol man."
The room seemed to hold its breath around the phrase. Even Miss Wishek, sorting papers at her desk, paused by the smallest measure.
Rose looked at Carrigan and understood then that the question had already become larger than Coriolanus Snow himself. It was not merely, did you meet him? It was, did he choose you? Did you step somewhere we were not invited? Did the world open for you while the rest of us were eating barley mash and reciting civic purpose?
"I⊠was introduced," Rose said simply.
Carrigan's eyes sharpened. "That's not an answer."
Rose remained assertive. "It's the answer I have."
Grist spoke then, quieter. "They said he got bit."
Rose's fingers tightened around the spine of her reader.
Nellie, who had apparently decided self-preservation was for other people, blurted, "Did you save his life?"
"Nellie," Grist hissed.
"What? That's what they're saying."
Rose looked toward the door. More students had gathered there now, some from their class, some from the hall drawn by the scent of rumor the way flies found sugared milk. She thought of the clinic cot, of Coriolanus's hand going rigid on the rail, of the healer's voice cutting clean through panic, of her own bare arms in the cold because her shawl had vanished under somebody else's emergency. She thought of how frightened she had been.
And focused. Alive. Too alive⊠especially for district standards.
"I helped get him to the clinic, yes," Rose said.
Carrigan's mouth parted. "So it's true?"
"That I helped an injured man? Yes."
"That's not what I mean, and you know it." She snapped, clearly trying her best to wring out every last detail. One more crumb to use against a feral girl.
Rose met her eyes then. "Maybe people ought to start meaning what they say."
That quieted Carrigan, though only for a heartbeat. A few students made little sounds, not quite laughter, not quite shock. Dax looked up fully now.
Carriganâs mouth tightened, before she took Roseâs sentiment to heart. âThen you better start admitting that youâve been puttinâ yourself out for that pretty Capitol man, huh?â
Roseâs eyes widened with horror as an uncomfortable feeling of terror turned her feet ice cold.
Was that� Did everyone think-
Miss Wishek set her papers down.
"Enough," she said. The word cut through the room with more force than volume. "Miss Tempest-Strix is not a bulletin to be read between lessons. You will proceed to your lunch break."
Carriganâs lips quirked with satisfaction. Grist looked down. Nellie immediately became fascinated by the floorboards. The students began moving, though not without looking back. Rose stayed where she was until the worst of them had passed into the hall.
Unfortunately, the long hall still belonged to the academy.
By second bell, whatever had happened in Miss Wishek's room had already outrun her. The corridor was crowded, at least for a rural school in 9, with students changing classes, and every knot of them seemed to loosen just enough to let her pass through the center of its attention. The younger ones stared openly. The older ones tried to be clever and only succeeded in being obvious.
"She's the one!"
"Tempest's girl?"
"I heard that Capitolite asked for her himself."
"No, Lancaster did."
"My brother says she was at them creepy Capitol houses outside of town."
"Why would she be there?"
"Because she's trying to be Capitol, stupid."
Her boots struck the floorboards with an ordinary sound. That became important somehow. One step. Then another. Shame and guilt pitted itself in the depths of her stomach. Carriganâs words still hung over her like a blanket of mist. Of course, Rosabel knew Carrigan was simply parroting what her parents may have said. Yet⊠How could somebody say such a thing?
She was still a girl. Still a student like everyone else. She still had a reader under one arm, a pencil tucked behind her ear, and a cuff buttoned crooked because she had dressed too quickly that morning. She was not a story. Not yet, at least. Not if she could keep walking normally enough to prove it.
Rose kept walking.
Then, at the turn toward the stairwell, someone caught her sleeve.
Rose turned too quickly. Waaska stood there with Nibs half-hidden behind her shoulder, her brown eyes fixed hard on Rose's face. For a second, relief moved through Rose so suddenly it nearly made her weak.
Then she saw Waaska's expression. It wasnât cold exactly. Waaska couldnât hold a mean face, even if you insulted her very existence.
No, it was guarded in a way Rose had rarely seen from her. Her braid was neat today, her uniform properly buttoned, satchel strap pulled tight across her chest like a shield. Nibs looked from Rose to his sister and back again, silent for once, his face pinched with the effort of holding questions he had clearly been ordered not to ask.
"Uh, Rosie?â Waaska said, a slight tremor in her speech.
"Waaska." That was all either of them managed at first.
The hall moved around them. Students glanced as they passed, slowing just enough to catch whatever they could before a teacher's look hurried them onward.
Waaska noticed. Of course she did. Her mouth tightened. "Could you⊠come with us?"
Waaska didnât wait for an answer. She took Rose by the wrist and pulled her into the little alcove beside the old supply cupboard, where broken slates, mop buckets, and a cracked portrait of President Axel had been left to gather dust. Nibs followed at once, squeezing in beside the wall.
Rose almost smiled at the absurdity of it. Almost.
Then, Waaska let go of her wrist and folded her arms, again, not in a distant manner. More so concerned. "All right. What happened?"
Rose drew back a little. "What?"
Waaska gave her a look so flat it could have leveled wheat. "Rose."
Nibs, despite the tension, made a tiny snorting sound. "You're acting like those stuck-up Killdeer folks."
Waaska turned to her brother. "Nibs."
He promptly shut his mouth.
Rose shifted her books against her chest. "I⊠I don't know what people have been saying."
"Câmon, Rose, you must know," Waaskaâs voice broke a bit. "Or at least you can guess. Everyone can guess because everyone's saying ten versions of it, and every one has your name on it."
Rose felt as though she had fallen onto concrete.
"Is it true that⊠that you're trying to be Capitol?" The question came out sharply, yet not fast enough. Too blunt, yet with a trace of fear. Rose stared at her cousin.
Waaska's face flickered, regret trying and failing to soften the edge before it did damage. "I mean... is it true there's a chance you'd be taken into university?"
Rose looked down at the books in her arms, feeling herself nod. "There may be."
"May be!?" Though her cousinâs voice was barely above a whisper.
"That's all it is." Rose said in a statement far too speedy for her liking.
âBut⊠Rose?â Waaskaâs teeth fiddled with the skin of her lip before deciding to press further. "That's not all it is, is it? Not if people are already whispering like you've got Capitol ink drying on your papers."
Rose gulped. "But I don't."
"But that Capitolite, Snow⊠he knows you."
Rose did not answer quickly enough. Waaska saw that too. Her eyes narrowed, not cruelly, but with fear made precise. "So⊠that part's true."
Rose closed her eyes for half a second. "I met him, yes."
"And you went somewhere with him?â Waaska concluded.
âY-Yes.â Rose hesitated. "He showed me Victor's Village."
âVictorâs Village?â Nibs's face scrunched in confusion. "You mean those weird Capitolite houses?"
Waaska turned on him. "Nibs."
Nibs shrugged. "What? That's what they are."
Rose swallowed. "Yes."
Waaska looked back at her. "Why?"
Because he asked, Rose almost said. Because I need a sponsor.
He had spoken to her like the part of her that wanted to understand systems was not a nuisance or a girl's vanity but something worth feeding. Sure, he was Capitol, yes, and polished and strange and impossible to read, but he had nearly died in front of her too, and mortality had a way of complicating suspicion. Coriolanus could help her reach university, and university had begun to feel less like a dream than a door she had already put one hand against.
Instead, she said, "Because⊠it had to do with the Games. And university. And⊠how the Capitol is trying to make certain things look kinder than they are."
Waaska stared at her as if trying to decide whether the answer was too honest or not honest enough.
"And then he got bit?" Nibs asked.
Waaska elbowed him.
"Ow!" Nibs scowled at his elder sister.
Rose looked at him, and some of the pressure in her chest eased despite everything. "Yes. He got bit."
"By a wanagi?" Waaska cringed at the mere mention of such a critter.
Rose nodded at the memory. "Yes."
Nibs's eyes widened. "Those suckers kill folk! Did he foam? Bet he did! I heard most folk seize a couple seconds after the venom hits and then-"
"Niibi!" Waaska whispered, horrified.
"What? I ain't ever seen it!"
And you donât want to, Rose wanted to reiterate. Instead, she let out a shaken breath that nearly became a laugh, then failed at the last second. "No. It was... worse than that, somehow."
"But you saved him," Waaska confirmed.
"I helped."
Waaskaâs gaze turned to something eerily similar to her mother. Like when Misea would catch one of the kids eating sweets before supper when they were all younger. "That's saving."
"No," Rose said, more firmly than she meant to. "The healers saved him. I didn't. I was just there."
Waaska's expression shifted at Rose's insistence, then shifted again into something harder to read. "But you were there."
Waaska let out a humorless little breath. "Fine. Everybody thinks you're special now."
Nibs looked between them again, uneasy. Rose felt the words go into her like cold water.
"Thatâs⊠no. I don't think I am."
"Me neither." Waaska's eyes came back to hers, bright now. "But⊠thatâs not the same as it not happening."
Rose had no answer.
Waaska lowered her voice. "Yesterday, you were dealing with Uncle Virgil. But today? Youâre in the back of everyoneâs mind, Rosabel. By next week, who knows? They'll have made you into whatever shape suits them best. And once they do that, it won't matter what you say. They'll hear what they already decided you are."
Poor Rose. Brilliant Rose. Capitol Rose. Coriolanus's district girlâŠ
Rose stared at her. The ugly part about it was that Waaska did not sound jealous. Nor angry. Hell, she didnât even seem conflicted about the situation. Instead? There was terror wearing a cousin's voice and speaking too quickly before it broke down.
"Is that what you think?" Rose asked.
Waaska flinched. "No."
"Waaska."
"No," she said again, but the second answer came out less certain. She looked toward the hall where another group of students passed, whispering Rose's name softly enough to deny it if challenged. "I think you're walking near something none of us understand, and everyone's acting like it's already a blessing because they want to believe somebody from here can, you know?â Waaska looked from side to side, before lowering her voice. âGet out."
Roseâs eyes turned downcast. Fearful from the pressure. Her memory hiked back to her conversation with Coriolanus in the village. Talking about hope, but this time it didnât apply to the Games.
A feeling of immense intensity surged through her heart as it dawned on her. Truly. "I'm not trying to get out."
Waaskaâs brows furrowed. "I know that, Rosie."
"Do you?" The phrasing came out harsher than Rose intended.
Waaska's face changed. The hurt there was immediate, and Rose regretted the question as soon as it left her mouth. Nibs went still. Rose took a step closer.
"I'm sorry, itâs just⊠Iâm just so used to everyone else not being so sure. Or even sincere." Rose gulped back a painful lump of anxiety. âI just⊠âm sorry.â
Waaska looked down at her shoes, polished but not well enough to hide where the leather had begun cracking at the sides.
"I know you," Waaska said quietly. "That's the thing."
Rose's throat tightened.
"I know you'll tell yourself it's for the district. And it will be. I know you'll mean every word. You'll write essays and answer questions and talk circles around people who think we chew straw because it's cheaper than bread. Maybe they'll clap for you and love you for it." Waaska's eyes lifted. "But⊠that doesn't mean they won't use you too."
Rose had thought something similar herself. The memory of our conversation at the clinic flashed in her mind. Of course this was a possibility, but⊠she could only hope that it wasnât. And hearing it from Waaska made it worse. "I'm being careful. Or⊠at least trying."
Waaska almost laughed. "You? Careful?"
Rose shrugged halfheartedly. "I can be careful⊠at times."
"Rose?â Waaska looked over Roseâs shoulder and back to her cousin. âDo you hear the way you talk?"
"About what?"
"Everything." Waaska said in an instant. "Folks here talk about how things could be better, sure, but you keep talking about things that seem impossible. Dangerous even."
"I don't talk dangerously." Again, I donât try to at leastâŠ
"You think it's just ideas, but most folks would call it like⊠like a symptom of sorts."
Despite herself, Rose's mouth twitched. Waaska saw it, and for one brief second the old shape of them returned. Cousins in a cramped alcove, teasing before class. Nibs trying not to smile because he wanted permission to laugh.
Then the moment passed. Waaska rubbed one hand over her face, all sharpness suddenly collapsing into exhaustion. "Mama says⊠itâs official. Sheâs gonna pull us."
Rose's thoughts stumbled. "What?"
"From school." The words seemed too plain for what they did. Rose looked from Waaska to Nibs. Nibs lowered his eyes.
"W-Why?" Rose whispered, the stutter threatening to break her down.
Waaska kept her arms folded, but now it looked less like defense and more like she was holding herself together by force. "Rent's due after harvest adjustment. With Uncle Virgil gone..." She stopped, swallowed, started again. "The market's been bad. Papa says the traders are squeezing everybody because they know loss makes folks too tired to haggle. Mama says she can maybe keep one of us enrolled till end term, maybe neither if grain credit keeps falling? Nibs is old enough to help with goats and store runs. I can help at market. Or at the mill if it comes to it."
"No," Rose said before meaning to say anything at all. The word came too quickly. Childishly, almost.
Waaska's expression sharpened again, though this time the edge was grief, not frustration. "No?"
"That can't-" Rose stopped. She knew how foolish it sounded. Of course it could. The world did not ask permission before narrowing.
Waaska gave her a sad little smile. "I⊠thought so too. Thought weâd have a bit more time, to be honest."
Rose felt that strike and tried not to show it.
Nibs spoke, small now. "I don't want to leave school."
Waaska's face broke at the edges. Only for a second. Then she put one hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "I know..."
Rose looked at him. His dark hair had been combed badly, likely by himself. One sock was, predictably, slouched near his ankle. He looked suddenly much younger than he had in the hallway. Young enough that Rose wanted, with a force that hurt, to promise him something.
She could ask Lancaster, maybe. Or to Misea?
Find a way. She could⊠noâŠ
She could not begin making promises out of panic simply because she hated the shape of the truth. Not after everything. Especially when every promise in the world had begun to feel like a door someone else might lock from the other side.
"I can talk to Aunt Misea," Rose said carefully.
Waaska shook her head at once. "Don't."
Roseâs brow pinched. "Waaska, please?â
"No." Her voice hardened, but there was pleading underneath. "Don't⊠make us your cause, Rosie. You donât deserve that."
Rose went still. Waaska seemed to hate herself for saying it, but she did not take it back.
"That isn't what I'm doing," Rose replied.
"I know." Waaska's eyes filled, though no tears fell. "I know you'd mean it good. That's what scares us."
Rose could feel the hall beyond them. The school with its silly, little whispers. The invisible thread running from her name to Coriolanus Snow's, from Coriolanus to university, from university to money, status, suspicion, hunger. Everything tied together now whether she wanted it tied or not.
Yesterday, her ambition had lived in notebooks, in the Secret Garden, in questions asked too carefully at the edges of maps.
Today it had entered other people's mouths and already, people were measuring themselves against it.
Waaska looked away, blinking hard. "Mama says maybe this is how things are now. You get lifted or you get put to work. No in-between."
Rose's chest ached. "That isn't fair."
"No," Waaska said, a miserable wobble threatening her speech. "It ain't."
Nibs sniffed once and rubbed his nose against his sleeve. Waaska looked ready to scold him, then didn't. The second bell rang again, sharp and official through the hall, yet⊠none of them moved.
Rose wanted to reach for Waaska's hand. She wanted to say, I won't leave you! I won't let them pull you! I won't let Coriolanus use me! I won't let the district turn me into something strange! I won't change! I promise! I won't lose youâŠ
Every one of those promises would have been love. Or a lie.
So, she only stepped forward and took Waaska's hand once, briefly, before letting go.
"I'll think of a way," Rose whispered back in finality and determination.
Waaska looked at her, and the disappointment there was small but real. Thinking was what Rose offered when she had no miracle. It had always been her strongest gift and, in that moment, not nearly enough.
Nibs shifted beside them. "Can thinking keep us in school?"
Rose looked at him. Then at Waaska. Then toward the bright, noisy hall where her name was already moving without her.
"I don't know," she finally answered. Only because it was the only honest thing she had, she hated it as soon as it left her mouth.
The answer had barely left Rose's mouth before the hallway changed again.
It wasnât really loudly at first. There was no scream, no bell struck in panic, no announcement sharp enough to give fear a proper shape. Only a shift in the current of bodies beyond the alcove, with some boots slowing and voices thinning. A teacher calling someone's name and not sounding like herself.
Then the academy's front doors opened. The sound carried all the way down the hall. Rose turned. Waaska turned too, one hand still half-raised as though she had meant to say something more and thought better of it. Nibs pressed closer to the supply cupboard, his dark eyes wide now, all earlier mischief gone from him. For a moment, none of them moved.
A peacekeeper stepped into the corridor. Then another. Then three more behind them.
The academy did not often host peacekeepers indoors. They passed the outer roads, lingered near the station, stood too straight at public ceremonies, but the school itself had always been granted the thin courtesy of pretending children learned better without rifles in the doorway.
That courtesy ended all at once.
The headmaster appeared at the far end of the hall, face drawn tight around the mouth.
"All students are to proceed outside!" she said with no room for further argument.
No one moved quickly enough.
"Now," said the peacekeeper nearest her.
That worked.
The hall broke into motion. Satchels were grabbed from hooks, books dropped and snatched back up, younger children herded toward the front doors with the stunned obedience of animals hearing thunder before rain. The sound rose around Rose in layers, with shoes scraping floorboards, frightened whispering, a little girl asking whether they were in trouble, someone insisting no, no, it was only another announcement, probably another announcement, surely only-
A hand closed around Rose's wrist.
Waaska.
For half a second, Rose thought her cousin meant to pull her back into the alcove and hide the three of them among broken slates and mop buckets until the whole thing passed. But Waaska only held on. Tight enough to hurt.
"Nibs," she said, voice low.
"I'm coming," he said at once.
 Waaska looked at him, and something in her face had gone old. "Stay close until they tell you where to go."
"What?"
Rose reiterated to her younger cousin. "Just do as they say."
They were pushed into the stream of students before anyone could argue.
Outside, the academy yard had already been overtaken. Two military wagons waited at the front gate, their wheels sunk slightly into the dusty road. Peacekeepers stood in a loose formation along the fence, rifles slung but visible, their white uniforms too clean against the red-brown yard. The sight of them made Rose think, absurdly, of chalk dust. Something meant to look tidy while coating everything it touched.
Teachers clustered near the steps with expressions carefully emptied of outrage. Miss Wishek had one hand pressed to her throat. The headmaster spoke in a stiff undertone to a peacekeeper with sergeant stripes, nodding at intervals as though agreement had become a survival habit.
Students were being sorted and not by class.
By age.
Rose understood that before anyone said it aloud.
The smallest children were made to stand near the academy steps under teacher supervision, confused and sniffling, some still clutching lunch pails or slates. The older ones were directed toward the road in lines that did not quite hold because frightened children were poor at becoming orderly objects. A boy from the lower forms, no more than eleven, tried to follow his sister and was stopped by a peacekeeper's gloved hand against his chest.
"Twelve and up," the man said.
The boy stared at him. "But she's my sister!"
"Twelve and up."
Rose felt Waaska's grip tighten.
Nibs had gone very still. He looked at the younger children by the steps. Looked at the older ones by the road. Looked at Waaska.
"No," he said quietly.
Waaska turned to him. "Nibs-"
"NoâŠ"
His voice did not rise, but his face folded open in terror. He reached for his sister's sleeve with both hands. Waaska let him. For one brief, terrible second, she let him cling to her like he could keep the world from counting correctly.
A peacekeeper approached. "This one?"
"Ten," Nibsâs instructor answered too quickly from behind them. "He is ten."
The peacekeeper looked Nibs over as if age might be hiding under his collar. Then he gave a short nod and gestured toward the steps. "There."
Nibs did not move. Waaska crouched in front of him, though her own face had begun to tremble. "Go stand with your teach."
Nibs, who rarely tried to look weak in front of his sister, frantically shook his head. "I-I don't wanna."
Waaska, despite her distress, assured her brother. "I know."
"Waaska?â A terrified tremor plagued the little boyâs voice.
"Go."
He looked at Rose then, and that was somehow worse. As if Rose, with all her dangerous thinking and maybes and not-knowing, might produce a different answer from the air.
She had none.
"Nibs," Rose said softly. "Do what she says."
His mouth twisted. For a second, she thought he might cry. Instead, he backed away one step, then another, until his professor pulled him gently toward the younger children. His eyes stayed on Waaska the whole time.
That was when Rose began to feel cold, yet⊠not frightened exactly. Her body had gone too focused for fear. Her mind moved from detail to detail with a horrible steadiness.
Twelve and up, but⊠not adults?
Not everyone. ChildrenâŠ
Only the ones who had crossed into the age where the Capitol could pretend childhood had become eligible for public sacrifice.
Rose looked around the yard again and saw it plainly now. Carrigan Killdeer stood stiffly in line, her earlier curiosity hollowed out into something smaller as she pulled Enrique closer to her side. Dax had one arm around his younger brother's shoulders until a peacekeeper separated them. Amos kept glancing toward the road as if measuring how fast he could run and how far a rifle could reach. Nellie was crying quietly into her sleeve, while Grist did her best to comfort the girl to no avail.
They were children.
Some nearly grown, yes. Some tall enough to be mistaken for adults from a distance, with work-rough hands and tired mouths and shoulders already trained to carry weight. Though that was all a trick of hunger and labor. Up close, Rose could see the truth. A girl with ribbon still tied around one braid. A boy with ink on his fingers from arithmetic. Another with a baby tooth gap when his mouth opened in fright.
Children. Children. Children.
They were being gathered as if the district itself had produced a crop.
The line began moving.
No one told them where they were going. They did not need to. The road from the academy led toward the heart of New Bisman, toward the square and city hall and every place Panem liked to place a flag when it wanted cruelty to look official.
Waaska walked beside Rose in silence. Then the line turned onto the main road, and the academy disappeared behind them. New Bisman had already begun gathering before the academy children arrived.
That was the second thing Rose noticed. The first was the noise.
It was the kind of noise that was immense. A living pressure of voices held under too much restraint. Families crowded the edges of the town square, pressed back by barricades that had not been there that morning. Laborers still in field clothes stood shoulder to shoulder with shopkeepers, mill workers, traders, widows, cousins, old men with canes, mothers with flour on their sleeves, fathers with mud drying on their boots. Their faces turned all at once when the academy children were marched in, and the sound that moved through them was not speech.
It was recognition. The square had been arranged. That was what made Rose's stomach sink.
This was not confusion. This was not some sudden emergency being handled badly. Someone had planned the sight of it. The temporary railings set around the center. The raised platform before city hall. The Capitol banners hanging from the upper windows. The peacekeepers posted in a ring with just enough space between them to suggest escape and just enough weaponry to punish anyone foolish enough to believe in it.
At the center of the square stood a broad enclosure made from rope, wagon rails, and peacekeeper bodies.
Children were already inside. Not academy children.
Rose knew that before she recognized a single face.
These were the ones who did not smell faintly of chalk and old paper. These were the children with mill lint in their hair, sleeves too short at the wrist, sunburnt necks and harvest cuts, boots split at the toes. A pair of sisters in patched dresses clung to each other near the far side. A boy Rose had seen once selling garlic at market stood with both hands balled at his sides, trying hard not to look as scared as he was. Another girl wore a feed sack altered into a skirt and stared straight ahead with the blank expression of someone who had learned young that being noticed rarely ended well.
They had been brought from the mills. From the fields. From market stalls and alleys and wash houses and horse pens and bakery doors.
Children who could not afford the academy had been gathered too. Of course they had.
The keepers had not come for students. It had come for ages.
Rose stepped into the enclosure and felt the air change around her. The rope line might as well have been a wall. Outside it, adults surged forward and were pushed back. Inside it, children drew closer to one another without meaning to, bodies folding inward under the animal logic of danger.
Waaska found Rose's hand again. This time Rose held on.
Across the square, a woman screamed a name. A boy near the rope answered, "Mama!" and lunged forward before two peacekeepers shoved him back into the child crowd. A man shouted that his daughter was only eleven, she was small for her age, ask anyone, ask the fieldworkers, ask the butcher, ask the damn president if the Capitol had not executed him too.
No one listened.
Rose watched two peacekeepers count a row of children at the far side. They had a hefty binder full of names and records, all confirming date of births, occupations, and more.
A peacekeeper flipped through their records after a girl gave her legal, government name. Then, in a terrifying interrogation, the keeper asked her. "Age?"
"Fourteen," she whispered.
He nodded as if sheâd just passed his test. "In."
The next boy. Name? Age? In. Out.
The next child could not have been more than nine. His lip trembled so badly he could barely answer his name before they flipped to his name.
"Out." They said after confirming the boyâs age for themselves.
He was pushed toward the family side and immediately swallowed by a woman who held him so hard it looked painful.
Twelve to eighteen.
The numbers settled in Rose's mind like stones dropped into a well.
Twelve to eighteen.
Reaping age.
What⊠what was this? A surprise Reaping? But why? Reaping day was still a month away?!
That was why Nibs had been left behind. Not because anyone had mercy. It was much more simple than that. The rules had no use for him yet.
On the platform, Mayor Lancaster stood with his hat held in both hands.
He looked different in the square than he had at the academy. Smaller somehow, though the platform raised him above the rest of them. His face had been arranged into solemnity, but the strain around his eyes gave him away. He looked like a man asked to hold a knife by the handle and insist he had not brought it.
Rose saw him and felt Waaska's hand twitch in hers.
The waiting stretched.
That was how dread entered the square, and it wasnât even with the peacekeepers, the ropes, or even the children being counted and penned beneath banners. Those things were only its furniture. Dread itself came in the waiting. In the way the sun sat too bright on the city hall windows. In the way horses shifted uneasily near the posts. In the way parents kept calling names and children kept answering, each reply proof that no one had vanished yet and therefore could still be taken.
Too many people. Too much official staging. Too many children standing where children should never have been made to stand.
The square no longer looked like a square. It looked like practice.
A crowd arranged around a center. Authority lifted above them. Children displayed publicly. Personhood thinned into eligibility.
A rehearsal arenaâŠ.
Finally, Lancaster stepped toward the microphone. The square quieted in ugly pieces.
"Children of District 9," he began.
A father near the barricade barked out, "Children? Then let 'em go!"
A ripple of agreement surged through the adults, but the peacekeepers raised their rifles just enough to remind everyone what kind of conversation Panem preferred.
Lancaster closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, his gaze moved over the enclosure. Rose had the horrible feeling he saw every face. That he was not cruel enough to avoid seeing and not powerful enough for seeing to matter.
"I would first like to apologize," he said, voice amplified thinly through the square, "for making this announcement so suddenly."
Someone laughed, though no humor was to be had.
Lancaster continued before the sound could gather. "There has been⊠an announcement from the Capitol regarding this year's Games."
The square stiffened.
Games.
Everyone probably knew already, though the word moved faster than wind all the same.
Rose felt it pass through the children before any adult could soften it. Several of the younger ones began to cry at once. Not the smallest children, no, they had been spared the enclosure. These were twelve-year-olds. Thirteen. Old enough to understand the word and still young enough for terror to break through without shame.
Waaska's nails dug into Rose's palm. Then, a screen flickered to life against the front wall of city hall.
Gasps rose around the square. The people had seen projections only rarely, usually during the Games of course and official broadcasts from the Capitol when the equipment was dragged out under guard and treated like a holy relic that ran on electricity instead of fear. The image trembled first, pale and distorted against brick. Then the golden emblem of Panem sharpened into view.
The anthem began. Every person in the square seemed to stop breathing.
Then President Pompeius Axel himself appeared.
Rose had seen his picture everywhere in readers, on posters, on the front page of brittle Capitol-issued notices. Though moving, speaking, enormous against the wall of city hall, he became something else entirely. An aged man with graying ginger hair, a severe mouth, and eyes so deeply set they seemed carved into him. He did not look like a man who expected to be loved. He looked like one who considered obedience more reliable.
His voice cracked through the speakers.
"Citizens of Panem."
The words struck the square hard enough to spook one of the horses near the road. Its handler murmured to calm it, but the animal kept tossing his head.
"In honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of our victory against the rebels, we gather to commemorate our unity, our strength, and the enduring peace forged in the ashes of rebellion."
Rose stared up at him.
Ashes. He said the word as if ashes were something noble. As if anything good had ever been built by making children stand in a pen.
"To mark this historic occasion," President Axel continued, "the Capitol proudly unveils its very first Quarter Quell, a special variation of the Hunger Games, designed to remind us all of the cost of defiance and the value of sacrifice."
Quarter Quell.
The phrase had no meaning and every meaning at once. It sounded ceremonial. Ancient. Like a bell tolling for something already dead. Around Rose, children shifted closer together.
A girl near her whispered, "What does that mean?"
No one answered. Axel's face did not change.
"On the twenty-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that their children were dying because it was their choice to initiate violence, every district will be made to hold an election to vote on the tribute who will represent it."
For a moment, Rose did not understand. The words entered her one at a time yet refused to assemble.
Election.
Vote.
Tribute.
Represent.
Then they came together. And the world tilted.
No. Not reaped by lottery. Not chosen by slips of paper, not by the cold randomness everyone hated and feared but could at least call blind when grief required something to blame.
Voted.
Chosen by neighbors. By hunger. By grudges. By fear. By debts. By who had spoken too sharply, stood too proudly, been too pretty, too strange, too useless, too useful, too visible, too loved, too resented. By who a district could bear to lose. By who a district wanted punished.
Rose's mind moved with sickening speed.
Carrigan's stare. Dax's arguments. The hallway whispers.
âEverybody thinks you're special now.â
âBy next week, who knows?â
No.
No, no, no.
The Capitol had not merely found another way to take children. It had found a way to make the districts reach for them first. The crowd understood a heartbeat later.
Sound broke through the square, but Axel kept speaking over it, his recorded pause too perfectly timed, as though he had expected the shape of their horror and found it acceptable.
"For the first time in our Games' glorious history, the power of selection has been granted to you, the people."
Granted. Rose almost laughed. Her throat made no sound.
"Each district must conduct a public vote to determine which boy and girl shall be reaped as tribute to the Capitol."
A mother screamed and slammed herself against the barricade. Peacekeepers shoved her back. Somewhere behind Rose, a boy began sobbing so hard he gagged. An older girl wrapped both arms around him and looked over his head with eyes gone flat and furious.
Waaska had stopped breathing beside her. Rose turned to her cousin, but Waaska was staring straight ahead.
Not at Axel. Nor at the crowd. At the adults pressed beyond the rope.
At District 9 looking back at them.
That was the worst part⊠because for one dreadful second, Rose could feel the square thinking. Everyone thinking of names. Everyone realizing that survival had just been turned into a ballot.
Axel's voice rang out one final time.
"This solemn responsibility serves as a reflection of choice, of consequences. With this in mind, let the voting commence. And above all else⊠may the odds be ever in your favor."
The emblem flashed gold. The anthem cut. The projection died.
For one full breath, no one made a sound.
Then⊠New Bisman erupted.
By midday, I had learned there were worse punishments than being useful.
There was almost being useful.
That was where Chief Rolette had planted me, apparently. Not in a cot, fully sent home, with a free to ride the lines with the rest of the catchers where a man could at least sweat honestly and pretend pain was something with a purpose. No, he had me stationed at the technical bench inside the New Bisman firecatcher base, sorting grit reports, checking hose couplings, updating the dispatch board, and generally doing the sort of work that made a body feel like it had died halfway and been reassigned to paperwork.
The base was alive around me in its usual restless fashion. Men and women came in and out through the side doors, boots tracking dust over the plank floors, voices carrying from the stable yard, radios crackling in little fits like insects caught in a tin cup. Somewhere outside, a horse kicked the stall wall hard enough for somebody to shout at it by name. Somewhere farther in, one of the younger catchers dropped a crate of metal fittings and invented three new ways to blaspheme before anyone could stop him.
I sat with my bad leg stretched under the table and pretended I was not measuring the distance to the door every time it opened.
"You're doing it wrong," Einkorn Streeter said.
I looked up at him slowly.
He was perched on the far side of the bench with a coil of copper wire in one hand and a broken radio receiver in the other, looking much too pleased with himself for a man named after wheat. Einkorn had the unfortunate gift of being right often enough that nobody could dismiss him outright and irritating enough that nobody thanked him for it either.
"I am writing numbers on a board," I said.
"Wrong numbers." He corrected.
"They're yesterday's numbers."
"Exactly." He leaned across the table, reached past my elbow, and tapped the chalkboard with the wire. "You marked the south grit shed at twelve sacks."
I threw him a side eye. "That's what Rolette said."
"That's what Rolette guessed." Einkorn dropped the wire, picked up a stub of chalk, and crossed my twelve into a nine with the confidence of a man altering law. "I checked it before breakfast."
That earned him a huff. "You checked the grit shed before breakfast?"
"I was up." Ein stated.
"Why?"
He shrugged. "Couldn't sleep."
"That ain't an answer, Streeter."
He shrugged "It's the only one I got."
Fair enough I suppose.
Einkorn had always been built like someone who had taken the wrong road into adulthood and decided to keep walking out of spite. Narrow shoulders, restless hands, hair sticking up in wheat-brown tufts no amount of water ever disciplined. He could mend a pressure gauge faster than most men could read the manufacturer's mark, could take apart a radio blindfolded, and had once fixed a cracked pump valve with baling wire, pine resin, and what he swore was a modest conversation with the maker.
He was also the sort of fellow who would rather crawl inside a malfunctioning engine than admit to being lonely. I understood that better than I liked.
"So," he said after a while, eyes still on the receiver. "How's the leg?"
"Attached."
Ein glared at me. "Rhodes, you donât have to sass me."
"That's the answer I'm offering." I mindlessly reply, gazing down the numbers.
He gave a little hum, neither amused nor fooled. "Chief says you're to keep off it."
"Chief says a lotta things." I hummed.
"And Chief currently outranks you." Ein said in a matter-of-fact way as he adjusted the radio wires.
âWell,â I circled a value that was probably from yesterday. "Chief ain't here."
Einkorn looked pointedly toward the open office door, where Rolette's hat hung from a peg like a warning.
I sighed and reached for the dispatch sheet again. "Hand me that pencil."
Einkorn gave it over. "You're going to wear a hole clean through that thing."
"Then you can patch it with that wire youâve got there." I snorted, nodding my head to the copper in his hands.
"Youâre kidding, but that could work..."
Before I could answer, the front door opened. That alone made me glance up.
Stand Up stood in the doorway with his helmet tucked beneath one arm, one shoulder blocking the sunlight behind him. He looked wrong inside the base, though not because he was unwelcome exactly. Plenty of peacekeepers came through when duty demanded it, usually stiff-backed and pale-faced from pretending they did not mind the smell of smoke, sweat, horse, and old grit dust.
Stand Up was different. He had the shape of a peacekeeper, sure enough. Uniform clean, boots shined, posture trained into him by men who believed the spine was where obedience lived. Though, his eyes had never quite learned the trick of being empty. They moved over the room, over the catchers, over the dispatch board, and then settled on me with something too personal to belong to his station.
"Rhodes," he said, giving me a brief nod.
"Stand Up." I casually greeted.
Einkorn glanced between us. "That really what we're calling him?"
âWhat do you mean?â I shrugged. "It's what everyone calls him."
Ein found himself chuckling, more at the name than my statement. "That don't answer whether it should be."
Stand Up's mouth twitched. "Private is fine."
"Private what?" Einkorn asked, because apparently curiosity had finally taken the wheel from manners.
Stand Up hesitated just long enough for the silence to notice. "Schist is fine as well."
Einkorn blinked once. "Huh."
I shot him a look before he could say whatever unfortunate thought had wandered into his head.
Stand Up stepped farther inside. "Chief around?"
"Stable yard," I said. "Or pretending to be. What brings you by?"
His expression changed. Not much, but enough. "I wanted to see how you were doing."
"That so?" I dryly laughed.
"Yes."
Einkorn looked over at Stand Up, a subtle grin growing across his mouth. âHow thoughtful.â
"Well." I ignored Ein before gesturing down at my leg. "Still not dead."
Stand Up slowly nodded, possibly reminiscing on yesterdayâs incident. "That seems to be the district standard for good health."
Einkorn snorted despite himself. I almost smiled.
Stand Up came closer to the bench, lowering his voice as he did. "I also came because there's been word from the northern line."
That killed whatever humor had been trying to live. Einkorn stopped fiddling with the receiver. I sat up straighter, my bad leg immediately punishing the effort. "From 7?"
Stand Up nodded once.
The name of the district sat strangely between us. 7 had become one of those places folks in the base mentioned by accident and then avoided looking at afterward. Especially when it came to the quakes. A situation no report wanted to describe cleanly. We had heard enough to know something had gone wrong out there, and not enough to know whether wrong meant accident, rebellion, Capitol construction, or the earth itself finally getting tired of being cut open.
"What about it?" I finally asked.
Stand Up took a folded slip from inside his jacket and set it on the table, as if the thing might bite.
"Orders came down. Teams from 7 and 9 are to keep quiet about the whole matter. No tavern talk. No letters. No unofficial reports. No speculation. Nothing."
Einkorn's brows pulled together. "Speculation about what?"
Stand Up looked at him. Einkorn looked back. The receiver crackled faintly between them.
Finally, Stand Up said, "Exactly."
I reached for the slip, but he placed one hand over it before I could take it.
"That's not a copy for the force," he said. "That's only so you know I'm not bringing rumor."
I hesitated. "Whose orders?"
His fingers lifted from the paper. "General Barnabas Plaga."
I did not know the name. Not then at least which bothered me.
The men whose names everybody knew were usually showpieces, like presidents, mayors, or commanders who liked their faces painted on posters. However. the names you did not know, the ones that moved through other men's mouths quietly and still changed the way they stood, those were worse.
Einkorn must have felt it too, because he set the radio piece down very carefully.
"High up I reckon?" I asked.
Stand Up's jaw tightened. "Very."
I cocked my head. "How high is very?"
"Higher than most district posts ever deal with directly.â Stand Up confirmed in a hushed tone. âHe has military rank, but he oversees Capitol security now. Special assignments, like government protection or Games operations."
Government? Games?
The word did not belong in the base. Or it did, like it belonged everywhere in Panem, tucked under floorboards, and stitched into uniforms, waiting to be stepped on.
I looked down at the slip. "Why would a man overseeing Capitol security care about quakes in 7?"
Stand Up did not answer. A worse answer than anything he could have said.
Einkorn leaned forward slightly. "You know?"
"No." Stand Up shook his head.
"Any guesses?"
Stand Up's eyes flicked to the open door. "I've learned guesses are safer when left⊠unsaid."
I gave a humorless huff. "That sounds mighty peacekeeper of you."
"It is." There was no pride in the way he said it.
For a moment, the three of us sat inside that uneasy quiet. Outside, the base kept moving. A horse whinnied. Somebody laughed too loudly near the pump. A radio down the hall gave a burst of static and then went dead again.
Then shouting rose from the yard.
At first, I thought it was the usual kind. Catchers argued the way wheatfields caught fire, quick, sprawling, often over something small enough to be embarrassing afterward. Though, this shout had no teasing in it. No annoyance. It came again, sharper, followed by running boots across gravel.
Einkorn was up before I was. I got to my feet too fast and paid for it.
"Hell," I hissed, catching the table edge as pain speared up through my side.
Stand Up moved like he meant to help me.
I waved him off. "Don't."
He stopped, but only barely. The door banged open.
Ditcher stumbled in, red-faced and breathless, one hand braced to the frame.
"Square's gone bad," he said.
The room froze.
"What?" I asked.
"Town square. There's a riot, or damn near close to it. Peacekeepers got half the city blocked off."
Einkorn came around the bench. "Why?"
Ditcher looked at me then, and whatever he saw in my face made him swallow the first answer wrong.
"It's⊠the Games," he relented.
My hand tightened on the table. Stand Up's expression went still in a way that frightened me more than panic would have.
"Well, what about the Games?" I asked.
Ditcher shook his head like he could shake the words loose in the right order. "Announcement from the Capitol or something. Axel himself. They gathered the children. All of 'em. Academy, mill, field. Twelve and up."
ChildrenâŠ
I did not move. I did not even breathe.
Ditcher kept talking. "They're saying this year ain't regular. They're saying the district has to-" He stopped, eyes darting once toward Stand Up, then back to me. "They're saying folks gotta vote."
Einkorn's face emptied. Stand Up whispered something under his breath I did not catch.
But I did. Vote.
For one stupid second, I tried to make the word mean anything else.
Vote on policy? Or mayoral matters? Maybe tax allotment? Grain rationing? Anything dull and bureaucratic and ugly in the ordinary way⊠but the Games only ever meant one kind of choice.
"Dammit," I said.
Ditcherâs silence answered.
RoseâŠ
Her name hit so hard it nearly took my bad leg from under me.
Rose was seventeen, probably even standing in whatever pen the Capitol had built in the middle of New Bisman while grown men with rifles asked District 9 to dress murder up as civic duty.
I was already moving before I knew I had decided.
"Rhodes," Einkorn called. "Your leg-"
"-can rot." I grunted, leaving no room for argument.
Stand Up followed me out first. Einkorn came after, cursing as he grabbed his hat and a medical satchel from the wall. The yard had erupted into frantic motion. Catchers were spilling from the stables, from the equipment shed, from the wash house, some half-dressed, some still fastening belts, all of them looking toward town like they could smell the smoke of trouble before seeing it.
Errante was already saddled. Bless whoever had done that. Or curse them for making it easy.
The dapple gray stood tied near the hitching post, ears alert, stamping once as I limped toward him. I grabbed the saddle horn and pain flashed white behind my eyes.
For a second, my hands failed me. Then Stand Up was there, shoulder braced beneath my arm.
"I said don't," I snapped.
"You can yell from the saddle."
I hated him for being right. Between Stand Up and my own stubbornness, I got mounted with only one noise of pain any decent man would pretend not to hear.
Einkorn tossed me the reins. "You fall off, I'm telling Rolette you did it stupidly."
"You tell Rolette anything,â I glared down at the younger catcher. âI'll haunt your wheat field."
Ein gave me an exasperated expression. "I don't own a wheat field."
"Then I'll haunt somebody else's and blame you."
Stand Up swung onto a peacekeeper horse with the smooth efficiency of someone trained to mount under inspection. Einkorn took one of the bay mares from the post, nearly got nipped for his trouble, and cursed at her like they were already friends.
Then we rode into New Bisman. The little town had never felt so long.
The streets between the base and town center blurred into dust, false fronts, startled faces, wagons pulled half across the road and abandoned by owners who had run toward the square or away from it. The noise reached us before the crowd did. A low, swelling roar threaded with screams, shouted names, orders barked too high, children crying, horses shrilling, and somewhere beneath it all the awful human sound of too many people realizing the world had tilted and left them no good place to stand.
We came in from the west side. The square had become a wound.
Barricades had been shoved aside in two places. One wagon lay tipped near the edge of the road, a wheel still spinning uselessly. Peacekeepers had formed a broken line near city hall, rifles raised but not yet firing, which only meant someone higher up still had use for the crowd alive. Citizens pressed against them from every side, some trying to get to the children, some trying to drag their families out, some too furious or frightened to know which direction salvation lived in.
Children were everywhere. That was what I saw first.
Not the adults shouting. Or the flags.
The childrenâŠ
Some still trapped behind a rope line, with others already loose and running. Teenagers pushing through the crush, younger siblings clinging to their coats, girls sobbing into their hands, boys yelling for mothers, for fathers, for anyone. A child with a bloody lip stumbled into the road and almost went under a horse before Einkorn leaned hard from his saddle and hauled him clear by the back of his shirt.
"Clinic!" he shouted, pushing the boy toward a cluster of catchers. "Get him to the clinic!"
The firecatchers had arrived ahead of us in pieces and thank mercy for that. Whatever else we were, whatever arguments we had with Panem and ourselves, we knew panic the way farmers knew weather. Men and women moved through the crowd with hands out, voices steady, bodies planted between rifles and citizens wherever they could manage it without being shot for the trouble.
I searched faces. Too many far too fast.
Rose.
Rose.
Rose.
A woman grabbed at my stirrup, eyes wild. "Have you seen my boy? Thirteen, brown coat, he was by the grain office-â
"No, ma'am," I said, hating the answer. "Find Lieutenant Hillsboro near the well. He's collecting names."
She staggered away before I finished.
Stand Up rode ahead, then dismounted when the press grew too thick. He moved toward a pair of children being shoved back by a peacekeeper line, his hands raised.
"Let them through," he said to one of his own. "They're trying to reach family."
The peacekeeper did not budge.
"They're children," Stand Up snapped.
A voice cut across the street.
"Private!"
Stand Up froze. A superior officer stood near the platform, one hand on his baton, face flushed with irritation. Captain by the markings, and the kind of man who wore rank like armor against having to think.
"Private Schist," he barked. "You are not assigned to nursemaids. Get back to crowd control."
Stand Up turned slowly. "Sir, these civilians-â
"Crowd. Control." The words were clean enough to pass inspection and ugly enough to mean anything.
For one second, I thought Stand Up might refuse. Something in his shoulders shifted like a man deciding whether the line inside him had finally become visible from the outside.
Then his jaw tightened. "Yes, sir."
He looked at me once. Not asking forgiveness exactly or offering explanation either.
Then he moved back toward the line, face hard, and began doing what he could from inside the shape they had given him. I kept searching.
A flash of red near the overturned wagon nearly stopped my heart.
Not Rose. Some other girl, younger, crying into her father's shoulder.
Then-
"Auphie!"
Her voice cut through everything. I turned so sharply Errante sidestepped beneath me.
Rose stood near the fountain at the edge of the square, one hand gripping Waaska's, her face pale beneath loose strands of red hair. Her uniform was dusty. One ribbon had come half undone. There was no blood on her that I could see. For one blessed breath, that was enough.
I swung down from Errante and nearly collapsed when my leg hit earth.
Rose saw it and moved toward me at once. "Your leg-â
"Not now."
"Auphie, t-they said-â
I cut her off. "I know enough."
Waaska stood beside her, breathing hard, eyes bright with furious tears. "They made us stand there. They put us in with everybody else and they-" Her voice broke, then hardened again. "They said people get to vote. Like we're-weâreâŠ."
Waaska, almost hysterical, was on the verge of hyperventilating. I looked from her to Rose. "Where's Nibs?"
"A-At the academy," Waaska said. "They didn't take him in the age group.â
Rose's hand caught my sleeve. Same as always. Same as when she was little and knew a grown man was lying to spare her.
"Auphie," she pleaded. "What do we do?"
That was the trouble with being asked a question by someone who still believed you might know the answer.
I looked at the square, at the ropes, at the peacekeepers, at the platform, at citizens already turning their fear into fury. Fury that made things at least moderately survivable in public than despair.
Then I looked at Errante. "You ride home."
Rose blinked. "What?"
"Take Errante.â I grabbed her shoulder, giving it a slight shake. âGet out of here."
She let my words simmer into the chaos surrounding us. Then, she vehemently shook her head. "No!"
"Rosabel!" I desperately snapped.
"No, I need to find Aunt Misea⊠a-and Waaska needs to-â
"I'll get Waaska home." I reiterated with a gentle squeeze of her shoulder.
Waaska immediately stepped in. "I'm not leaving Nibs at the academy. He-â
"Then you go with Rose," I said, though even as I said it, I knew she would not. Waaska had the Mniwakan stubbornness in her bones and fear for her brother sharpened into a blade. "At least get out of the square."
Rose stepped closer. "I can help."
My eyes narrowed. "No, you can get hurt."
"So can you!" She spoke over the cry of an injured man, disbelief lacing her gaze.
âRose.â I firmly put my foot down. "I need you to go. Now."
"Auphie,â she gestured to the town square in a last-ditch attempt. âI canât just abandon everyone here!â
"And how are you gonna change everything, huh?"
Though my words spoke true, they violently hit a nail in Roseâs hurting heart as she desperately struggled to conjure the words to talk back. Her eyes searched my face, and I saw in them the same thing I had seen in Morton Valley when I told her Virgil was gone. That awful moment of understanding arriving before permission. She knew why I wanted her gone. Not only because the square was dangerous. With a revolt on the cusps of breaking free, I had enough reason to shoo the girls back home already.
No⊠it was because the Capitol gave the people a choice, an opportunity. Something that seemed so volatile and crude on top of the piling corpses of children during the Games every year⊠and Rosabel Tempest-Strix was suddenly visible in a way no child should be.
"Go home," I said, softer now. "Lock the door. Stay there till I come for you."
Rose swallowed hard. "W-What if they come there?"
My answer did not arrive fast enough. She saw that too. Still, I took the reins and put them in her hand.
"Then you ride to the lodge," I said. "Or Morton Valley. Anywhere but here."
Her fingers closed around the leather reluctantly, before turning to her younger cousin.
âI⊠I canât,â Waaska backed away, shaking her head. "I have to find Nibs."
"Heâs probably still at the academy," Rose told her, though her voice trembled. "Go. Find him. I'll-"
She stopped, realizing there was no clean promise to make.
Waaska looked between us, then threw her arms around Rose so quickly Rose nearly lost her footing.
"Don't be stupid," Waaska whispered.
Rosabel could only nod, her green eyes glossing over from the smoke and emotions.
Waaska pulled away before tears could take hold of her too and vanished back into the crowd, heading toward the academy side with the determination of someone small enough to slip through gaps and angry enough to make new ones.
I helped Rose into the saddle because my body remembered how to do that even when everything else had gone to hell. Errante shifted but held steady. Rose gathered the reins, looking down at me with her face caught between fear, fury, and that dangerous thinking of hers already trying to become a plan.
"Home," I firmly reminded her.
She nodded. I did not believe her. Still, she turned Errante toward the south road, and for the moment, that was the best lie available.
Then the square surged again.
A peacekeeper line buckled near the grain office. Someone threw a stone, before someone lse screamed. The horse beneath Rose startled, but she controlled him beautifully, hands firm, knees steady, hair lifting in the dust as she rode out through the narrow gap between a distiller cart and a barricade.
I watched until I lost sight of her. Then I turned back.
For the next half hour, the world became nothing but work. Blessed, brutal work.
We moved children to the clinic. Then, dragged overturned railings clear of the road. We pulled one man off a peacekeeper before the peacekeeper could decide public execution was the proper punishment for grief, before  hauling a woman with a cracked head onto a door taken from its hinges and carried her three blocks while she kept asking whether her daughter had been chosen yet, as if the vote had already happened, as if waiting was too merciful to believe in.
Einkorn was everywhere at once.
He splinted a boy's wrist with two ruler sticks and a strip of school sash and fixed a jammed pump handle at the public well when someone needed water for the injured. He shouted at three grown men twice his size until they stopped shoving and started lifting. There was blood on the young manâs sleeve and corn dust on his cheek, and at some point he had acquired a child's lunch pail and was using it to carry bandages.
"Rhodes!" he yelled from beside the clinic wagon. "You still upright?"
"Yeah!" my voice carried over the sea of commotion. âWhy?!â
"Good!â Ein nodded, gesturing towards a cart. âBe upright over here!"
I limped over. Together we got two more children into the wagon and sent them toward the clinic with Ditcher riding beside them.
Stand Up passed us once, jaw clenched, helping maintain a line that was less a wall now and more a desperate attempt to keep the square from devouring itself. His superior shouted at him twice more. Stand Up obeyed the shape of the orders and betrayed the spirit whenever he could, letting mothers through one at a time, turning his body just enough for children to slip behind him, blocking another peacekeeper's baton with his own arm and pretending it had been an accident of crowd motion.
I saw it, yet⊠said nothing.
Then Lieutenant Gooseneck Hillsboro came riding hard down the east lane. He hauled his horse to a stop so sharp the animal nearly sat back on its haunches.
"Fire!" he shouted.
Every catcher in earshot turned.
"Where?" someone demanded.
Gooseneck pointed south. "Mayor's mansion!"
For one second, the square fell away. Mayor Lancaster's estate sat just off the main stretch, too close to the government offices, too full of records, officials, and visiting Capitol company for any fire there to mean only fire.
"How bad?" Ditcher asked.
"Bad enough!â That was answer enough too, before Gooseneck wheeled his horse. "Team with me! Now! If you can move, move!"
He called upon a couple of names before punctuating it with my own name. We took five catchers from the square and two from the south pump wagon. The streets blurred again, this time with smoke thickening ahead. Citizens scattered from the road as we rode through, some shouting after us, some too exhausted by one disaster to make room for another in their faces.
The mayor's mansion was burning from the western side. Not fully swallowed yet, though that was mercifully to say at best. Most of the front had been evacuated. Lancaster stood on the lawn in shirtsleeves, soot across one cheek, coughing hard into a handkerchief while two clerks hovered near him with the useless panic of men whose paperwork had never caught fire before. Several government officials clustered near the gate, faces gray, some without their expensive jackets, one holding a briefcase against his chest like it contained his own beating heart.
Then, a quiet miracle was confirmed the moment we reached the grounds. Coriolanus Snow was nowhere among them. At first, I thought I had simply missed him.
Then Lancaster grabbed Gooseneck's arm. "There's someone still inside!"
Gooseneck's face tightened. "Who?"
Lancaster's neck craned, trying to look at the back of the house. The answer came from a clerk, voice shaking.
"The Capitol man. S-Snow."
The yard went quiet in a way fire had no respect for. The flames cracked along the west porch, eating up curtains and climbing fast toward the second floor. Smoke rolled black from the upper windows. Glass shattered somewhere inside, sharp as a gunshot. Yet still, for one shameful second, no one moved.
I wish I could say I was better than that. I was not.
Coriolanus Snow, the Capitol Man...
The one whose name had attached itself to Rose's like a hook in skin. The one whose neck she had helped save from venom only for the whole day to curdle around him anyway.
A piece of me thought, Let him burn.
It wasnât noble. Hell, it didnât even come from a place of justice. Just thought it.
Then hated myself for how easy it had been.
Einkorn said nothing beside me. Gooseneck's jaw worked once.
A younger catcher muttered, "Would they even care if we-"
"Yes," Gooseneck reluctantly insisted, though, he might as well have been forced to say it at gunpoint.
Every head turned toward the lieutenant.
My leg throbbed. Smoke bit my throat. Somewhere behind us, Lancaster coughed hard enough to fold nearly in half.
"Yes, they would care," he sighed. "Maybe not about him proper. Definitely not like people care about people. But if a Capitolite dies in a District 9 fire while we stand outside holding our peckers and principles, who do you think pays for it?"
No one answered. They did not need to.
Yet, that did it.
There wasnât much courage in it. Not mercy. Though did carry a motion to it that reminded me of our conversation that morning. And motion? It had to serve until better things arrived.
Finally, orders were snapped at once. "Streeter, lines! Larimore, south flank, keep the porch from spreading! Thompson, Gwinner, axes to the east door! Nobody goes in without masks!"
Chief Rolette arrived in the middle of it, riding through the smoke like a bad omen with a badge. He took in the fire, the officials, the scattered equipment, and me standing where I had no business standing, and for once did not waste time scolding.
"Report!" he barked.
Gooseneck pointed with one gloved hand. "West side started first. Likely accelerant. Thereâs a resident inside, upper floor or back hall. We're making entry."
Rolette's face went hard. "Likely?"
Before Gooseneck could answer, shouting rose from the far side of the property.
Three figures bolted from behind the smokehouse near the rear lane. Then two more.
I recognized the first man by his run before I saw his face. Hoffman Ellendale.
Of course.
Long-limbed, mean-shouldered, jacket flapping open as he sprinted toward the alley with his gang scattered around him like rats abandoning a grain sack. Gooseneck saw him the same instant I did.
"Ellendale!" he shouted.
Hoffman looked back. Even from the distance, I could see the grin. Then he vanished around the lane.
Gooseneck swore, sharp and ugly, and swung into his saddle. "Thompson! Gwinner! With me!"
Rolette turned. "Hillsboro-â
"They lit it!" Gooseneck snarled. "Or they know who did!"
Rolette's mouth tightened. Then he gave one hard nod. "Bring 'em breathing if you can."
Gooseneck made no promises as him and his catchers rode. They tore after him on horseback, hooves striking sparks from the road as they chased Hoffman's gang into the smoke-hazed side streets.
The rest of us stayed with the fire. After all, fire did not pause for vengeance.
Einkorn had the pump wagon working within minutes, shouting pressure counts like he was insulting them personally. Water hit the west porch in a hard silver arc, hissing into steam where it met the worst of the flames. I took the south flank with two younger catchers, soaking the dry trim, tearing loose burning curtains with a hook pole, and trying not to put weight on my bad leg whenever the pain became bright enough to make me stupid.
Inside, the entry team broke through the east door. Smoke belched out around them.
"Mask!" Rolette shouted at me. Immediately, I tied the cloth up.
The heat shoved against us in waves and it wasnât prairie fire heat either. House fire heat was meaner in some ways. Closer. Full of paint, varnish, fabric, paper, all the private makings of a life turning poisonous as they burned.
Lancaster stood beyond the gate now, watching with an expression I could not read. Maybe there was fear. Guilt. Maybe the simple horror of realizing official walls burned like any other.
A shout came from inside. "Found stairs!"
Then coughing. Then another shout, swallowed by the house.
I turned toward Einkorn. "Pressure!"
"Giving her all she'll take!"
I shook my head. "Make her take more!"
This earned me a huff. "You want the pump to explode too?"
He bared his teeth in something that was not a smile and threw his weight into the lever. The hose kicked. Water slammed harder into the porch. For a few minutes, there was only the work, with heat, smoke, orders. The thud of axes. The roar of flame losing ground inch by inch and punishing us for every single one.
Then Einkorn stopped shouting numbers, snapping my attention back.
"Ein!" I called. He had gone still beside the pump wagon, one hand on the lever, eyes fixed past the front gate. "Don't freeze on me now! Ein?!â
He did not answer. Then, I followed his gaze.
At first, all I saw was smoke and people and horses crowded near the road. Then the wind shifted, thinning the gray veil long enough for the hitching rail beside the manor gate to come clear.
A dapple gray gelding stood tied there, reins looped hastily over the post. My breath left me.
Errante.
Einkorn looked at me then, and whatever color he had left was gone. His gaze switched to mine, more so out of confusion. "Rhodes?â
Death of a Wildfire (25th Hunger Games) - Chapter III
âFor what is the best choice for each individual is the highest it is possible for him to achieve.â
â Aristotle
<<<PREVIOUS CHAPTER | NEXT CHAPTER>>>
I was a fool back then.
I mean, most children are idiots when theyâre young. It is half the mercy of childhood and half its punishment. However, when I turned twelve, foolishness in me had grown sharp enough to cut anything that came near it.
I had no place of my own. No one I could point to cleanly and call family. Barely anyone in New Bisman wanted to speak to me unless they needed a quick errand done, a pocket watched, or a boy blamed for something already missing before I even entered the room. Then, finally, to add droppings on the cow pie, I was now eligible for the Games.
Life gets harder after you turn twelve. That was what I kept telling myself.
And, for reasons I still cannot explain without sounding like a complete moron, that was also what I kept telling five-year-old Rosabel.
"Why do you hav'ta die in the Games?" she asked with nothing but innocent curiosity.
AgainâŠ
We were sitting on the bank of the Blood River, where the current slid brown-red beneath the afternoon sun and dragonflies made arrogant little loops over the mud. It had been a week or so since I had caught the eye of Chief Tempest and the firecatching squad through my street based run-ins. Street kids often fought each other for a few coins, extra ration credit, maybe a heel of bread if the fight had turned theatrical. I had won my share of brawls in those fights, mostly because hunger makes a boy mean in a way training cannot imitate. I was a spitfire then, fueled by rage, hunger, betrayal, and the deep private conviction that if I hit first and hard enough, nobody could make me feel small.
So naturally, when Chief Tempest decided my first training task toward becoming a firecatcher was babysitting his snot-nosed brat, I considered it an insult delivered straight from the heavens.
I was also broken enough to take the money.
"Because," I scoffed, skipping a flat stone across the river with more force than skill. "People in the Capitol eat children for the holidays. There! Are ya happy now?"
Rosabel, with her bright green eyes, chubby cheeks, and hair like somebody had set a sunset loose on her head, merely stared at me.
Then she laughed. "Ha! Ha! You're funny!"
That story was supposed to scare her. It had scared away plenty of little crooks from trying to pickpocket me. Though Rose clapped both hands over her mouth like I had told the grandest joke in Panem and kicked her muddy feet against the riverbank.
"Yeah, well," I said, immediately offended, "it won't be so funny when your name gets picked and you're stuck in the game full of man-eatin' weasels or something!"
Surely that would frighten her enough to leave me alone. Surely she would wander a few feet off and play with twigs or mud or whatever five-year-olds found fulfilling when not tormenting older kids with questions.
But not Rose. Definitely not Rose.
"What kinda games do they play?" she asked, bending for a pebble and making a feeble attempt to throw it.
It plopped directly at her toes.
I sighed with a depth I considered manly at the time. "The monsters don't play games with you, Rose. Theyâre too busy trying to eat you."
"But if they could?" she asked, eyes big as supper plates. "Could they play Cats 'n Cradle?"
I gave her side-eye.
This kid was relentless. Why all the questions? Why did every thought in her skull need to come out of her mouth and find its way into my ears? Chief Tempest should have taught her how to shut up, not how to follow a thought until it collapsed from exhaustion.
I had to think of something to distract her. Something a five-year-old would want badly enough to forget about Capitol monsters or holiday cannibals or whatever else my mouth had invented before my common sense could stop it. Then I remembered a place. That place.
The thought came upon me so suddenly I stopped with another stone still in my hand.
There was a place I had found many years ago alongside⊠well, it doesnât matter. The point still stood that it was a place where I had still been sleeping wherever I could get away with it. A place that had meant more to me than food some nights. More than money. Maybe even more than the chance to join the firecatchers. It was secret, dangerous, and mine in the only way anything had been mine back then.
Which meant showing it to Virgil Tempest's daughter was probably the stupidest thing I could do.
"Okay, listen," I said finally, throwing the stone uselessly into the river. "How 'bout⊠I show you a place. A cool place. Will that make you shut up?"
Rose's whole face lit as if I had handed her a second sun. "M'kay!"
She excitedly jumped up and down in her yellow sundress, dirty hem flaring out around her knees, and then looked at me as though I had become the keeper of some grand adventure.
I hated that she was probably right.
We left the riverbank and headed toward the northern Morton Valley. The leaves were still mostly summer green, though some had begun turning soft yellow at the edges, warning anyone with eyes that harvest heat would not last forever. August air moved through the aspen and elm with a warm, insect-heavy hush. It was a solemn stretch of year. The Games had just ended. Two children had come home in boxes. District people were good at carrying grief while pretending to carry grain, but even at twelve, I knew the difference.
The valley grass grew past a grown man's knees. For a little girl like Rosabel, it swallowed her whole.
At first, she tried to march through it bravely, one tiny hand pushing stalks from her face while the other clutched the strap of her little cloth bag. After about ten minutes, she grabbed my left hand and refused to let go. After twenty, she started complaining about her feet. After thirty, she had reasoned, with terrifying persistence, that since I was taller, older, and the one who had suggested the adventure, it only made practical sense for me to carry her.
I told her no.
She asked again.
I told her absolutely not.
She asked whether firecatchers were supposed to help people.
I gave her a piggyback ride the rest of the way.
By the time we reached the creek that fed off the Blood River, sweat had soaked the back of my shirt and Rose had begun singing nonsense words directly into my ear. Finally, the creek curved around a sandbar and led us to the broken rock.
It rose from the valley like a chunk of red bone, taller than ten Rosabels stacked on each other's shoulders. Late afternoon sun struck its pale shell and painted it with a heavenly rust-red glow. Down its middle ran a dark crevice just wide enough for a skinny boy to squeeze through if he turned sideways and remembered not to breathe too much. Fortunately, at the time, I was pretty slim myself.
"This is it," I said, dropping Rose onto the soft sandbar with less grace than she deserved.
She swayed dramatically, then stared up at the rock. "Where are we?"
"A place."
"What kinda place?"
"The quiet kind, if you're willin' to see somethin' new."
Rose ignored that, naturally, and came to my side. Her eyes traveled over the crack, and for the first time since I had known her, caution overtook curiosity by a hair. "What's in there?"
"Just wait."
I entered first, shoulders brushing stone on both sides. Light came in only through thin cracks overhead, falling in narrow pale streaks across the passage. My hands knew the walls by then. I slid them over the cool, gritty surface, counting turns by feel more than sight. Behind me, Rose clutched the back of my tattered jacket for dear life.
For once, she did not speak.
The passage went on farther than seemed possible from outside, bending once, then twice, then opening enough for both of us to stand upright in darkness. There, tucked behind a jut of stone and old roots, stood a door.
It was oak or had been once. The boards were weathered, dark, swollen in places, scraped in others, with a rusted lock that looked older than anyone alive in New Bisman. I pulled a brass skeleton key from my pocket.
It was nearly the size of my hand then. I loved that key with a child's foolish reverence. It felt like proof I had been chosen by something, even if only by circumstance.
I slid it into the lock. The mechanism gave a reluctant click, and the door groaned open.
With a practiced hand, I struck a match and set it to the little lantern hanging just inside. Flame swelled behind dusty glass, and the room appeared from the dark.
"The Secret GardenâŠ" I finally revealed.
Rose stepped in behind me and looked around.
It was not, by any honest measure, a garden. It was more like the inside of a giant wooden crate someone had shoved into the rock and forgotten. Heavy planks lined the walls, warped and stained from years of damp. The air smelled of mildew, dirt, old paper, and whatever little animal had died in one corner before the place was inhabited once more, and I convinced myself the smell had character. In the far-left corner sat my cot, if a burlap sack over scavenged straw could be called a cot. A cracked tin cup, with a wax stub, and a piece of broken mirror. My whole kingdom.
Rose pinched her freckled nose. "Phew! It smells like you live here!"
"Yeah," I retorted. "'Cause I do."
Her hand fell from her nose. "Oh."
I should have felt embarrassed. Mostly, I felt angry at her for noticing and angrier at myself for caring.
"I was just lucky enough to have it," I added, too quickly.
"What is it?" Rose asked, more confused than impressed. "An' what so special here?"
That was when the real danger of what I was doing caught up to me. I had not just shown her where I lived and hid away. I had shown her the door, its key. The place no peacekeeper, catcher, thief, or living soul was meant to know.
All because I wanted her to stop asking questions.
"M'kay, listen." I crouched by a loose floorboard near the lantern. "You cain't tell anyone what you see here today, all right? If you tell anyone about this, it gets your father in big trouble. You hear?"
For the first time that day, Rosabel understood the weight of what I was telling her. Her eyes went wide and solemn, and she nodded with both lips pressed together.
I lifted the floorboard, and beneath it sat the crate. Medium-sized at best, and certainly heavy enough to make my arms tremble then. And most of all, plain enough to be mistaken for storage by anyone who did not know better. I dragged it free, set it in the lantern light, and lifted the lid.
Dust exploded upward. Rose coughed into both hands and waved the clouds away from her face. The smell of old paper filled the little room, dry and sweet with a hint of rot, a smell I still associate with trespass.
When the dust settled, Rose leaned over the crate.
"âŠbooks?" she said, confusion tinted her tone. She reached in and pulled one out with both chubby hands, its cover worn almost blank from age.
"Not just any books," I said, taking it gently before she could tear anything. "One-of-a-kind. Ain't no others like 'em in the entire world."
"How do you know?"
"Because the Capitol burns any books that the donât like. And look!" I opened the large volume and tilted it toward the lantern. The title on the page was faded but legible enough to my proud twelve-year-old mind. "This one? It was written thousands of years ago! You think you'd see any of this in a schoolhouse? There's stories here about faraway lands that once existed, or maybe still exist. There's talk about what the American Empire looked like and how people were free to do all sorts without a peacecreep sniffin' at their boots. There's poems and wars and maps and old laws and--"
I stopped because I realized I sounded excited.
Rose did not tease me for it. She was already reaching for another book.
"Amazing," she whispered with awe.
She flipped through a cracked geography text until a colored map appeared, faded almost to ghosts. Her finger landed on a great island. "Wow. Is this place real?"
"Sure was," I said, leaning closer. "Maybe still is. I believe that one is called... Austriali. Austria? Page is smudged. Anyway, it was big. Somewhere in the world."
"WoahâŠ"
She turned pages slowly, reverently, meeting strange animals, oceans, ruins, mountains, and cities whose names had outlived the people who built them. All that vast knowledge, all those old dead countries and their bright ideas, hidden in a crate under a floorboard because Panem was afraid of a little book with memory in it.
"Auphid'is?" Rose said after a while.
"What?" I hummed.
"Why's it called the Secret Garden?"
I shrugged, embarrassed again, and dug through the crate until I found the one I wanted. It was a bit smaller than the rest, with a dainty cover and pages worn nearly soft as cloth. The title had almost rubbed away, but if you held it to the lantern just right, you could still read it.
The Secret Garden.
"Named after this," I said. "First book I learned to read."
Rose took it from me as if I had handed her something alive. She opened to the first page, brow furrowing in fierce concentration.
"Ch-Choper--"
"Chapter."
"Chapter One," she said, and then continued, slow and messy. "There is... no one... left..."
I sat beside her, meaning only to listen long enough to correct her, but the sound of her trying to read filled the hidden room differently than my own silence ever had. I did not know it then, but that was the first time the Secret Garden truly became a garden. It wasnât necessarily because anything grew in it, rather⊠something had been planted.
At twelve, I thought showing Rose that place was a mistake.
Years later, sitting beside her outside the same hidden rock while the creek worried around our boots and the morning after her father's funeral lay raw over both of us, I had cause to wonder whether it had been the first mistake I ever made that mattered.
Rose sat on the creek stones with the brass key in her palm.
She had brought it back because she always did. The key had become part of our shared language by then. If she held it out to me, she needed the door opened. If I pressed it into her hand, I trusted her to go in alone. If it sat between us, neither of us quite trusted what the world outside was doing.
That morning, it sat in her palm like an accusation.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I⊠just donât know what I should say to him. S-Snow I mean..."
The both of us decided to go down to the little place, before Rose returned to visit Snow, and before I went out scouting on Hillsboroâs assignment. I paced along the creek bed hard enough that water seeped through the cracks in my boots. My leg protested every turn, but I did not have room in me to care properly. "He's Capitol, Rosabel. You know what everything means to them. Money and blood. Sometimes both, if they can make the numbers pretty."
"Yes," she said, standing. Her eyes, which had looked hollow since Virgil died, had begun to burn again in that frightening way purpose can mimic health. "But we both know this is our chance."
"Chance to do what?"
"To show what real change is." She stepped nearer, shoulders straightening as if she meant to compete with my height by force of conviction alone. "This place a-and those books? They have ideas and stories that could change Panem, Auphie. Make it stronger, kinder even? Maybe not all at once, no, but--"
"You think a Capitol man wants kinder?"
Her mouth tightened. "I think a Capitol man might want useful."
That stopped me because it sounded too much like the conclusion she had reached the night before among all those maps and papers. Too practical to dismiss as dreaminess. Too dangerous to ignore as childish hope.
I looked past her toward the broken rock. In the old days, that crevice had seemed like proof a thing could survive by hiding. Rose had taken a different lesson from it. She believed survival was only the first part. The second was bringing what survived back into light.
"Rose," I said, carefully now. "Why⊠How can you trust him?"
She blinked as if I had spoken another language. Snow⊠that realization struck her. "I mean⊠I donât know him. B-But I reckon heâs knowledgeable! Heâs the way to University, Auphie! If I can get him to sponsor me, I can find a way to-"
"- move on." I accused her before I could stop myself.
"N-No!" Her voice sharpened, then softened when she saw the words had come from fear rather than persecution. She crouched by the creek, watching a leaf spin in the current. "The people here deserve⊠more, especially for what theyâve done for me. They deserve an education like me. A life beyond just tireless field work. And a choice! A real choice, Auphie! Not just which work breaks their back first or whether their name stays out of a glass bowl until they're too old to be useful as entertainment. The books say there were places where children grew up believing the world had rooms for them they hadn't even seen yet. Why shouldn't District 9, or the rest of Panem have that?"
A part of me knew she was right. That was the worst of it.
Apparently, there had been a time when almost everyone knew how to read and write. When people choose their trade, their land, or their leaders, and called such things ordinary instead of treasonous. I could not help wondering, as I always had, why the Capitol would work so hard to cover up such a wonderful idea if the idea itself was truly dead?
On the other hand, I wanted to call her naive. To tell her no one in the Capitol cared about giving anyone a choice. That those old pages were just stories, and stories did not stop bullets, taxes, reaping slips, or men with clean gloves and hungry eyes.
"You really think they'll let someone like you sit in their fancy marble halls?" I asked. The words came out nastier than I meant to. "You ain't one of them, Rosabel. They'll smile, pat your hand, call you inspiring, yes, but⊠theyâll drain the blood from your veins if it buys them one decent afternoon of feeling charitable."
"Then let them," she shot back, eyes bright with tears she was too angry to shed. "If they want to drain me, they'll see what's left. They'll see us. District 9, all the districts, aren't just stains on a map. They're people. W-Weâre people!"
Her voice cracked on that last word, and for a moment it was not a girl speaking anymore.
It was Virgil through her. Not his voice, certainly not. Something worse than that. His willâŠ
I turned away toward the tree line, hands buried in my coat. "Rose, do you think this only ends in harmony? Iâm just askinâ cause⊠sure, maybe the idea of it is nice, but⊠maybe there's a reason ideas like that are hidden. Either way, the Capitol ain't gonna like it. They'll snuff you before you have time to catch."
"I don't care," she said softly.
"You should."
"If I can help even one person. If one child here doesn't have to spend their whole life wondering what else exists and why nobody thought they deserved to know... isn't that worth something?"
"Worth your life?" My throat tightened. "Because that's what it'll cost. You think I don't know what happens to good people who try to fix a broken world? The Capitol don't let you build, Rose. It just makes you burn."
She looked down at her reflection in the creek, her face trembling and warped by the current.
"That's not what Papa said," she whispered. "He said⊠fire always takes something, yes. But if you can make it burn bright enough, it might light the way for somebody else."
Dammit Virgil. Him and that damn stubborn heart. The same one that would have seen beauty in oil fields and hope in ash.
I lowered myself onto a stone beside her with a hiss of pain I tried to hide. "You sound just like him, you know that?"
Rose smiled faintly. "Maybe that means I'm right."
"Maybe." I found a pebble and tossed it into the creek with a shallow splash. "What about Misea? Does she know about all this? About university?"
The color drained from Rose's freckled face. That told me enough before she spoke.
"That's another thing," she said. "Misea is thinking about pulling Waaska and Nibs out of the academy. Without Papa helping with vouchers, she says it's getting too expensive. Taxes have been raised twice since the beginning of the year. She⊠doesn't think she has a choice."
"Damn it." I dragged a hand down my stubbled chin. "That ainât rightâŠ"
"Thatâs why I have to go." Her voice rose, though it trembled at the edges. "If I can make it into Capitol University, maybe I can learn what they're doing. How to fix it. Maybe even how to bring proper schooling back for everyone. None of those quotas. No peacekeepers hovering by doors⊠or even children sorted into ignorance because ignorance is cheaper."
"You think they built the system by accident?" I snapped. "They don't believe it needs fixing. They think we are the problem. They think our suffering is proof we need more managing."
"Then what am I supposed to do?" she shot back, voice breaking. "Sit here and rot? Pretend reading and dreaming and trying don't matter? Pretend Papa took me in and taught me to ask questions just so I could learn when to stop?"
I opened my mouth, though nothing came after.
That was the part of her argument I could not touch. Virgil had not raised her to be small, especially since the manâs presence was anything but. He had not raised any of us that way, which was a damned inconvenience now that he wasnât alive to suffer the consequences.
"This Capitol man," I muttered. "What's his name again?"
"Snow. Coriolanus Snow"
I knew what his name was already. I just needed time for reality to hit me like a train.
The name landed between us like frost on a blade.
"Snow," I repeated, a slight chuckle traced itself within my inflection. "You're really trusting a Capitol man named Snow, huh?"
"I'm not promising him Papaâs headstone, Auphie. I'm speaking with him about an opportunity."
"The sponsor..."
Her eyes faltered just slightly. I caught it. My maple eyes were glossed with an expression of conviction as Rose insisted. "He might actually help, Auphie. Iâll make sure he listens. He didnât laugh at me when we met! He even shook your darn hand! What kind of Capitolite would purposely put themselves at the level of us District folk?"
A slimy oneâŠ
Obviously, I didnât say that to her face. Instead, I simply retorted, "But what's he want in return?"
"Nothing," she whispered, her eyes trembling with worry.
Neither of us believed that cleanly enough to say so. I shook my head and went back to pacing near the water. "No one in the Capitol does nothing for nothing."
"Then maybe get to know him." she said suddenly.
I stopped.
Her voice softened, but her eyes stayed firm. "If you don't trust him, speak to him yourself. Please. See what kind of man he is. You may still dislike him after, but at least you'll know."
My chest tightened. She was not challenging me. She was pleading, and that was far harder to stand against. I saw the same look she used to give Virgil when she wanted him to stay home just a little longer before another call came over the radio.
I closed my eyes and let out a long breath. Maybe I should trust her, just this once. Or maybe trust was only the name we gave surrender when the person walking away was someone we loved.
"Rose," I said, rubbing the back of my neck. "If this man is what I think he is, you won't need me to see it. You'll know soon enough."
"Then trust me," she said. "If I'm wrong, I'll come right back home. But if I'm right... maybe things can change. For all of us."
The creek gurgled around us, soft and restless, like it was waiting for one of us to move.
I felt Virgil's old hat on my head and brushed my thumb along the faded feather tucked in the band. For a second I thought of what he would say. It wasnât the easy version of him that loss was already trying to make holy, but the real man. The man who would have looked at Rose, looked at me, and said keeping her safe and keeping her small were not the same thing.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. "You sure this is what you want?"
"More than anything," she replied, though a slight tremor could be discerned in her voice.
I nodded once. No agreement, just⊠surrender.
"All right, then," I said with finality. "Go. Make him listen."
Her lips parted as if she could not quite believe I had said it. "You mean it?"
"Don't make me regret it." I forced the faintest smile. "And don't let them change your voice. You're a tough little lady."
Her smile came slow, small, and stubborn, carrying some piece of sunrise the world had no right to keep giving her. "I won't."
She pressed the brass key into my hand.
"Keep this," she said. "Just⊠I still donât want Snow to, you know? Ask what itâs for."
The metal was warm from her palm. I closed my fingers around it and felt something old in me shift, a line between pride and fear that always hurt when crossed.
As she turned up the hill toward Wildfire, I looked out across the creek one last time. The reflection staring back was not mine anymore. It was hers. Brighter. Braver.
I only hoped it stayed that way.
"You'll see, Auphie!" she called before mounting. "Just trust me!"
For the last time that morning, I almost could.
Scout work in the firecatcher world was meant to be simple.
You went first. You looked. You listened. You reported. If a fire was growing in the rows, you marked the wind and the spread. If a caravan had gone over in bad weather, you counted survivors and guessed how long they had before somebody needed hauling. If there was something ugly enough on the landscape that no one wanted to walk into it blind, scouts were the sorry fools sent just close enough not to die stupid.
A few days prior, Gooseneck caught word of a disturbance near the northern edge of the district line, out where District 9 wrinkled upward toward 7 and the prairie began remembering trees.
"Reports out beyond Willow's Hatch," Lieutenant Hillsboro said over the line before dawn had fully warmed the town. "District 7 rangers found something west of their border routes. Possible ground disturbance? Smoke reports. Maybe machinery. Rolette wants eyes on it."
"Machinery?" I asked.
"That's the word they used. You, Scranton, Ypsilanti, and a few peacekeeper escorts. I think itâs one of the nicer keepers, Stand Upâs what yâall call him? Heâs under the assignment."
At least the heavens had some mercy left.
I had gone down to the peacekeeper facility after Gooseneckâs orders to rent out a crossbow again, though the weaponry was hardly ideal for my standards. Most of the weapons allowed to firecatchers were strictly for self-defense against prairie wildlife and for hunting if needed. Though, what made the keeper-assigned bows so irritating at times was the lack of flexibility within the weaponry. You see, each crossbow was equipped with a tracker that recorded each arrow fired and its location. The crossbows themselves were at the bottom of the barrel when it came to Capitol-designated weapons and were comparatively brittle compared to the rifles allowed to the peacekeepers, but if one were to attempt to remove a tracker from the crossbow itself, the entire weapon would break in seconds. It was even worse when a catcher accidentally knocked the tracker off, which happened more often than not. Usually, catchers are simply fined if there were peacekeepers present at the moment, but if a tracker were to fall out when a catcher was in the dead of winter in the middle of the wilderness? Letâs just say jailtime was the best alternative. That, or simply starving to death.
By the time I reached the north rail platform, my leg had already stiffened into complaint. Burr was there ahead of me, half asleep and fully annoyed, with Theron Ypsilanti, though everyone on the force called him Trouble, beside him trying to look older than he was by gripping his hand-me-down crossbow too tightly. Stand Up stood near the little hay cart that would take us toward Willow's Hatch, helmet tucked under his arm, rifle slung but not showy. His comrade, nicknamed Needles, lounged beside him with the easy posture of a man who had not yet learned how fear ages a body.
"Had they mentioned what this disturbance was?" Stand Up asked once the cart lurched forward and New Bisman began sliding past us in damp morning streaks.
I picked at the tracker on my rented crossbow because looking at moving scenery made the pain in my leg feel too honest. "District 7 rangers found part of the forest gone. That's all I know."
Stand Up tilted his head. "Gone how?"
"If I knew that, I wouldn't be riding north to find out."
Burr snorted. "Ya won't hang us for tryin' to defend ourselves, will ya, Weevils?"
Needles grinned at the nickname. Stand Up only glanced at the rifle across his lap. "Given our predicament, I would say you're a bit outnumbered, Scranton."
Burr glared at the firearm as if it had personally insulted his mother. "Don't mean I gotta like it."
"What if they're Northmen?" Trouble asked suddenly.
The cart wheels clacked over a rough joint in the track. My leg answered with a spike of pain that made me miss half of his next sentence.
"--heard they paint themselves blue and eat meat off dead people."
"Trouble," I said, recovering enough to stare at him, "those are stories told by people too lazy to admit they don't know a thing."
"Except the blue part," Needles added.
Stand Up elbowed him in the side.
"What he means," Stand Up said carefully, his eyes swerving about the cart, "is that Northmen have their own way of doing things. They aren't mindless monsters."
"He's right," I said. "And besides, even if Northmen were out there, they're smart enough not to come near the districts unless something worse is chasing them."
Which was true, or at least, true enough.
When it came to Northmen, some said the Capitol tried to wipe them out and failed. Some said the Capitol left them alone because there were too few to matter, or that the Northmen were not one people at all but a dozen little nations pressed into a single frightening word because Panem liked its maps simply.
In all my life, I had only ever seen one Northman with my own eyes. And she, well, technically wasnât a Northman.
"Actually," Needles said, looking over at me with the carelessness of someone stepping on a bruise because he did not know it was there, "isn't Tempestâs girl a Northerner?"
My hand tightened on the crossbow. "Kinda."
"I mean, her mama was, right?"
"Kinda," I said again, and this time Stand Up gave Needles a look that finally taught him the subject had ended.
Mercifully, Burr pointed ahead. "Look there. Hatch ain't far now."
Willow's Hatch rose out of the mist with its silos black against an orange-red dawn, capitalizing on every grand lie Panem ever told about District 9 being the Breadbasket. The old cart rolled into the station with a groan. The rafters offered no relief from the wet air. With growing season near, seed sacks were being hauled by the dozens, men and women sweating under fifty-pound loads while mist plastered their shirts to their backs. I watched them move through the gray morning, bent, hurried, and already tired before the day had properly begun.
My life was not going well, with my fresh new injury, my borrowed hat, and my habit of letting people I tolerated walk toward danger. Still, it could always be worse.
District 7 announced itself before its people did.
Pine and pitch cut through the smell of wet grain and sweat as we reached the exchange post beyond the station. Rangers waited near the tree road in oilskin coats the color of bark, axes slung low, green chevrons stitched to their sleeves. Their captain was a narrow-faced woman with weather-cracked lips and a cedar bead sewn into her hat brim.
"You're the scouts from 9?" she asked.
"That's us," Stand Up said. "Captain Alder?"
She nodded once. "You'll see soon enough. Half mile out. We sent a team this morning. They came back unsettled."
"Unsettled how?" Burr asked.
Alder looked past us toward the trees. "They said the forest stopped. Everything. Birds, wind, even the flies."
That did not sit right with me. I did not know much about trees, but I knew enough land to understand that forests do not just stop. They change shape, sure. They complain, crack, move, whisper, and rot. Though, they donât simply stop.
Alder filled us in as we moved toward the border of 7. Trees had been disappearing; however, they werenât cut down in the ordinary sense. They were gone, completely. Trunks, branches, all of it. No drag marks or sawdust worth naming. No noise reported in the night. District 7 had first blamed outcasts, runaway settlers living off the grid, but the cuts were too clean and the missing timber too great. Then an entire valley on the northern boundary had been stripped in one night.
"And you waited to call us?" Burr muttered.
Alder ignored him with admirable restraint. "There were quakes. Or something like them. They moved south after each event. Toward your border, which⊠made it your concern."
District 9 did not get earthquakes. Obviously.
We got prairie wind, hailstorms, dry lightning, twisters, and of course, grassfires that were brutal enough to skin whole fields in an afternoon. But quakes? Never. The land out there rolled and dipped and eventually wore itself down slowly. It did not shudder from the marrow.
Not unless something taught it how.
The deeper we went into the thinning trees, the thicker the fog grew. It curled low over roots and stumps like smoke from a dying fire. Sound began to behave strangely. Boots struck ground, but the noise did not carry. Needles cleared his throat once and flinched at how quickly the fog swallowed it.
Trouble kept close behind me, fiddling with the safety on his crossbow. "Feels like a graveyard," he whispered.
"Keep your head down, then," I muttered. "Graveyards don't bite."
Then, without warning, the trees ended.
The valley opened before us in a broad, wrong clearing. Every tree had been sheared away at the same height. No splinters. No scorch marks. Just flat stumps spread in all directions, smooth as if something enormous and patient had pressed a hand down across the forest and shaved it clean. The ground was damp, glassy in places, and the smell of resin lay thick enough to taste.
At the far side of the clearing, fog banked against nothing we could see. A white wall, far too solid and far too still.
Stand Up crouched near one stump and ran a gloved hand over it. "Smooth. Like a blade."
"Ain't no blade that clean," Needles said. "Not even Capitol grade."
I crouched beside Stand Up. The wood surface was cold. "No saw marks. Or burn pattern. Just... ended?"
"Captain Alder," Stand Up said, looking around. "This happened⊠all at once?"
She nodded. "Rangers on watch said the fog rolled in near dawn. Sun came up. Trees were gone."
Trouble swallowed. "So⊠it is Northmen?"
"No," I said, dumbfounded by such a statement. "Northmen can cut trees. They don't erase them."
Stand Up's radio crackled faintly. He turned it down at once, as if even sound was not allowed in that place.
Alder stepped forward. "There's something else. A device, or part of one, near the far fog bank."
Needles stiffened. "Device?"
"Reported after the first sweep," one of the younger rangers said. "No one got close. Didn't want to."
"Smart," Stand Up murmured.
The District 7 peacekeeper accompanying Alder shifted. "Explosives division was alerted. Haven't heard back."
"And why exactly should 9 be concerned?" Burr asked, though his voice had lost some of its bite. âI mean⊠other than the quakes?â
Alder pointed east, then south. "Because of the frequency of âem. Whatever keeps moving under there crosses toward your side. Same route every time. Sometimes twice a day. Sometimes once. But⊠its always a route for some reason..."
"Quakes don't take routes," Stand Up softly confirmed.
No one had an answer to that.
The birds hadnât sung, which was when I noticed it proper. Not one finch in the upper boughs or a crow making insult out of the quiet. The whole valley stood with the hush of a room after somebody had said something unforgivableâŠ
"Have any of you gone past the device?" I asked.
The rangers looked at me as if I had suggested chewing glass.
"Absolutely not," one said. "Messing with unknown machinery is a death sentence."
"Did it make any sounds?" Stand Up asked.
Alder hesitated. "Sometimes there's nothing. Then sometimes⊠it sounds like something moving too far below the ground to belong there."
Then⊠a vibration came before anyone could reply.
It wasnât exactly a shake at first. More like a deep, awful hum climbing up through the soles of my boots and into bone. The ground gave one long subterranean groan. Pines beyond the clearing quivered in place. Somewhere in the fog, a branch snapped.
Needles swore. Trouble stumbled sideways. The valley answered by shaking harder.
It felt like standing too close to a rail line when a freight train came thundering through, only there were no tracks under us and no engine in sight. Just rolling violence beneath the earth, traveling with sickening direction. Purposeful. Organized. Far too organized to be honest.
My bad leg lit up instantly.
Pain rattled through the damaged bone hard enough to turn my stomach. I reached for the nearest trunk, bark biting into my palm. Stand Up caught Needles by the elbow before the younger peacekeeper went down. Alder hauled one of her rangers upright. Burr braced against a stump, eyes wide despite himself.
The sound built. Then I heard another sound.
CRACK!
Sharp. Wooden. NearâŠ
I looked up just in time to see Trouble clinging to a tree at the edge of the clearing, its roots half-loosened by the shaking. The trunk listed once, slow and terrible.
"Trouble!" I shouted, though the quake swallowed most of the word.
He turned too late. The tree gave. What happened next lives in me in flashes.
Trouble jerking backward. Alder yelling. Burr cursing. My own body moving before wisdom could stop it.
I lunged.
Definitely not gracefully, but just enough to catch Trouble by the back of his coat and yank him away from the falling trunk. My good leg found ground. My bad one found nothing steady at all. The world pitched sideways under the rolling force beneath us. For one stupid instant I thought I had managed it.
Then, the minute the tree found groundâŠ
BOOM!
âŠsomething went off.
It definitely wasnât like the explosion at the oil spill. Nothing so grand nor so consuming. This was smaller, but somehow meaner. A burst of dirt and fire punched up from the clearing with a crack like the world snapping one finger beside my head. Orange-white light flashed through the fog. The blast slapped me hard enough to send both Trouble and me backward. Air vanished. Ground came up ugly and fast.
Then, my full weight landed square on the injured thigh.
There are pains a body can think through, and pains that erase language from the inside out. This was the latter, and for a second? The world went white around the edges.
Then everything rushed back wrong. Scorched earth, pine sap, copper in my mouth. My own voice tearing itself out of me in a sound I would not have known as human if it hadn't belonged to me.
I tried to roll off the leg. Something shifted deep in the hip with a wet little wrongness that almost blacked me out.
"Hell-" I strangled. "Hell!"
Hands were on me at once. Trouble, pale and shaking. Burr and Stand Up, one on either side. Needles somewhere near my boots, making a sound of fascinated horror, no man should ever make over another man's body.
"Rhodes!"
"Easy-"
"Don't move him like that, you idiot-"
The District 7 healer dropped to his knees beside me fast enough to make his satchel buck. "Lift him by the shoulders. Not the leg. Gently nowâŠ"
As if I intended movement. I lay with my eyes squeezed shut and every inch of my left side blazing like somebody had hammered a red-hot fence post through the thigh and up into the hip. I could feel the injury now as a structure, not just pain. Feel where it had gone from fractured inconvenience into something altered.
"Oh," Needles hissed. "That ain't good."
"No," the healer answered. "It is not."
I did not look down. Cowardice, maybe? Or prudence? Sometimes a person does not need his own eyes once the nerves have already testified.
"It hurts," I managed through gritted teeth, which may have been the stupidest yet obvious sentence I ever spoke.
The healer did not laugh. "I know."
Metal clicked. Morphling.
I smelled it before I felt the needle, that bitter medicinal tang too thin to carry the mercy it promised. Then the bite went into the flesh above the worst of the injury.
For one long moment, nothing happened. Finally, pain loosened one finger.
Just one. Enough to let air back into the world.
I dragged in a breath and opened my eyes. Fog had thinned under the force of the blast, trembling apart in pale sheets. Dirt and splintered roots rained softly down. A little fire had caught at the base of the fallen tree, weak and uncertain, its flame pressing upward only to be smothered by wet air. Even that looked wrong. Fire was meant to behave like conviction, but this one flickered like a lie.
Burr paced once, twice, then stopped when he realized he was holding my hat in one hand. Virgil's hat.
He looked at it like he had found something holy in the dirt and had no idea what to do with himself now. I reached up and took it back as my fingers shook.
Trouble crouched beside me, mud on one cheek, eyes wide in a face not yet caught up to the fact he was still alive. "You'll be all right, yeah?"
"Course," I lied with a grunt.
He studied me too long with a worried glance, then nodded the way men do when they know they have been lied to and choose charity anyway.
Stand Up came over once Alder's rangers began pulling back from the clearing. His expression had gone mean with worry, which on him looked more tired than angry.
"Can you walk?"
"No."
Of course I couldnât.
"Good. Saves me arguing."
That got the shadow of a laugh from Burr and nothing from me. Stand Up looked toward the fog bank, then back down at me. "We're pulling out. Alder will send the full report. Hopefully the chief will get it in time. But, Rhodes, you⊠you need to go to the clinic."
I shut my eyes.
"Rhodes?" he asked.
"I heard you."
I could practically hear Stand Upâs mind doing mental somersaults before nodding. "You⊠you did what you could for Trouble."
That was kind of him. It was also irrelevant.
They eventually loaded me onto the ranger's cart with more care than I wouldâve liked. Every jolt still sent a dull ache through the leg in spite of the morphling, but the worst of it had changed shape now. Less about the fire. More about the weight. An awful sense of something began settling permanent in me whether I approved of it or not.
As the valley receded behind us, the birds still did not return. I remember that.
The silence followed us all the way to the ridge, where the ordinary world began again by miserable degrees. Wind in the pines, the wheels creaking, and Needles muttering too loud about mines and Burr telling him to shut his trap. Stand Up's radio hissing with a voice too far away to matter yet.
Life resuming its proper little noises. Though beneath all of it? I carried the after-sensation of that subterranean groan through the soil and the sharper truth of what the blast had left me.
It is possible to lose something before anyone officially tells you it is gone. That was what the ride back taught me.
Rose had never liked the mayor's quarter.
It was not ugly, pre-say. Ugliness could be dismissed, laughed at, or even pitied if a person was feeling generous. Though the mayor's side of New Bisman had a way of pretending at grace that made her feel more poorly dressed than outright wealth ever did. Homes sat back from the road with porches too broad, fences too straight, windows too clean to belong honestly to District 9. Even the trees had a tended look, as if they had been persuaded not to grow wild.
Lancaster's manor stood at the center of it all like a respectable lie.
Rose tied Wildfire at the front rail with hands she willed not to shake. The mare tossed her head, sensing perhaps that this was no ordinary errand. Rose smoothed a palm down her neck, drew one measured breath, and stepped back to look at herself in the entry glass beside the door.
The sight did not improve matters.
She had changed from yesterdayâs funeral black, yes, but not into anything fine. Her dress was a cream color and practical through the waist, a little too worn at the cuffs if anyone cared to notice. Her boots had been brushed, though the leather still bore white dust in the stitching. Her hair had been redone in two braids pinned neater than usual, but grief had taken something from her face that no arrangement of hair could repair. She looked exactly what she was, like a district girl who had just buried her father the day before and then come knocking at the door of possibility before the soil had settled over him.
Her satchel hung heavy at her side. Fortunately, that steadied her.
Inside it lay notes from the Secret Garden, and obviously, not the dangerous ones. She had not been foolish enough to bring pages marked too openly with forbidden questions or copied passages from histories Panem had tried to burn out of existence. Nothing that would look like sedition if dropped on a polished desk and read by the wrong pair of eyes. Regardless, it was enough, like sketches of land recovery or comparative notes on district administration. Even fragments of older thought carefully reworded into something academic rather than incendiary. Enough that if someone asked a real question, she would not answer empty-handed.
The peacekeeper by the front gate eyed her with boredom first, suspicion second. "Do you have an invitation?"
"Yes," Rose said, with as much confidence as she could make from very little. "From⊠Mr. Snow."
"Snow?" The other peacekeeper snorted. "Next you'll say you've tea with the president."
"I-"
"She has an invitation," said a voice from the doorway. "And yes, I gave it."
Rose turned.
Coriolanus Snow stood in the open front door as if he had been placed there by design. Unlike the pale colors he had worn the day before, he was dressed now in a faint green suit that, to Rose's recollection, nearly matched the sturdy ribbon tying her braids. His pale hair was exact, with his posture effortless. Nothing in him seemed touched by the damp morning air.
He looked exactly like the posters hung in the windows of downtown businesses portrayed Capitol folk.
He smiled. "Please come in, Ms. Tempest-Strix. The weather has been an absolute fright, and a lady of your standards ought not be interrogated in it."
The peacekeepers straightened at once. That should have intimidated her more than it did.
Rose climbed the porch steps, keenly aware of mud on her hem, damp in her sleeves, and the awful state of her boots. As she entered, she reached for the knot of her decorative, sunflower shawl, but Snow's hands were there first.
"Oh," she gasped, startled. "You don't need to-"
"I insist." He took the shawl with a gentleness that felt almost foreign. "It is the least I can do, especially after your father's passing."
Rose, feeling slightly uncertain, simply gave him a curt nod. "Thank you, Mr. Snow."
"Please," he said, hanging the shawl carefully. "Coriolanus."
The name landed strangely between them.
"That's a beautiful name," Rose said before she could overthink it. "Uh⊠Coriolanus, I mean."
A faint amusement touched his mouth. "No need to be unctuous, though I thank you for the return favor. Your name remains quite memorable as well."
Rose felt heat creep across her face, bordering on flattery but not quite.
"Ms. Tempest-Strix," Mayor Lancaster called as he appeared from the corridor, dapper as ever and visibly relieved she had arrived. "Please, make yourself at home."
Home was not the word Rose would have chosen.
The manor's interior smelled of beeswax, paper, and some floral polish too refined for her to name. The floors had been sanded and varnished until they reflected light upward. Portraits hung along the walls, all old mayors and family men looking mildly disappointed that history had not arranged itself more elegantly around them. Rose followed Lancaster and Snow into the sitting room, where the air buzzed faintly with mechanical warmth.
Then she saw the projector.
It sat atop an aging coffee table, a Capitol-built device of polished brass and black glass, its screen casting green-gold light against the far wall. Four figures flickered in wavering color: three men and one woman, each elegant in the distinct manner of people used to being listened to.
Rose stopped so abruptly Lancaster nearly bumped into her.
"So soon?" she whispered, feeling a nervous laughter trickling along the edges.
Snow's gaze flicked to her, though not mocking nor apologetic⊠as far as she could interpret. "They were already in conference. I thought it better not to waste momentum."
Momentum. That was a neat word, like pushing a child into deep water and calling it swimming.
"Gentlemen," Snow said to the projection, "and madam, our young Ms. Tempest-Strix has arrived. Fresh from District 9's academy, and perhaps less fresh from a difficult week, though I suspect you will find her prepared all the same."
Four pairs of eyes turned to Rose. Her heart began pounding so violently she wondered whether the projector might pick up the sound.
An older woman in a crisp dark suit sat near the center of the projected image, silver hair coiled tight at the nape. Beside her was a broad-faced man with scholar's stoop and a mouth built for disapproval. A younger professor with spectacles leaned forward, alert as if some part of him had just woken. Above them, in a larger pane of the projection, sat a narrow-eyed man Rose took for the dean because even through the distortion, the others seemed to lean toward him whenever he was quiet.
"Good afternoon, Ms. Tempest," the dean said. His tone had no softness Rose could translate. "It is extraordinarily rare to see a district-born applicant take direct interest in our academic program."
Rose bit back the instinct to correct her name. "Good afternoon, sir. If I may add, that while I am not exactly district-born, I hold tremendous pride in having been raised in District 9. I'm grateful to represent it."
The younger professor's interest sharpened. "If not from the districts, where did you originate?"
Rose's fingers tightened around the satchel strap. She had rehearsed this, but rehearsal and saying a thing aloud before Capitol scholars were not cousins.
"My biological mother was from the Northlands," she said. "Though⊠she has since passed. From what the clinic records and my father told me, she carried the usual markers people associate with Northman dress. Thatâs⊠where the Strix part of my name was added in commemoration of her. Of what she carried into District 9, even in death."
The broad-faced professor frowned faintly. "And your father?"
"Adopted, sir," Rose said, and felt the word open a hollow place in her chest. "His name was Virgil Tempest. Chief firecatcher of District 9. He rescued my mother and I during a grassfire, and he managed to save me⊠and raise me in such a beautiful place like District 9."
For a moment, the polished sitting room seemed to fade. Rose had not been alive to remember that day, but she had been told the story often enough that it lived in her like inherited memory. Of what her mother wouldâve looked like, of Virgil being so gracious as to call her his own, the firecaters, her familyâŠ
Rose returned to the room with the weight of all that sitting behind her ribs.
"He was a good man," she finished.
The dean gave a small nod. "Virgil Tempest. Yes. We have⊠heard stories surrounding him. I understand his passing was recent. Our condolences."
"Thank you," Rose said.
Snow, standing near the hearth, watched her with that attentive stillness that made her feel both steadied and studied. The older woman tapped her pen against the desk. "Ms. Tempest-Strix, please explain your interest in attending university."
Where to begin?
Rose inhaled sharply. Her eyes darted once to Snow. He offered no answer, only the impression that he expected her to have one. So, she did.
"District 9 may not be my origin, but it is my home," she said. "Without the kindness of its people, I would not be here. I would not have had a family or education or even a roof over my head. I am fortunate, I will admit, but⊠many of my peers are not. Many brilliant children never get the chance to become brilliant adults in any formal way, not because they lack ability, but because their usefulness is often decided too early."
The broad-faced professor, whose pane identified him as Professor Fairchild, leaned back. "And how, Ms. Tempest-Strix, would you suppose that be?"
A trap, Rose thought.
Too direct an answer and she would sound accusatory. Too mild and she would sound ornamental.
She thought of the Secret Garden. Of old pages breathed over by lamplight. Histories from before Panem taught people to call obedience stability. A line she had once copied down came to her: A state ought to be governed for the common good, not merely the security of the governing.
She did not dare quote it.
Instead, she said, "Land recovery, labor distribution after environmental damage, educational access tied to function instead of class assumption, and agricultural planning informed by those who live with the consequences of policy."
The younger professor sat forward outright.
The older woman simply asked, almost with accusation, "Class assumption?"
"Yes, ma'am." Rose turned slightly toward her. "In District 9, children are often sorted early into usefulness according to household need and district expectation. Work is necessary, of course. Though education is treated as refinement instead of infrastructure. If a government only educates the children, it already expects to trust, then it reproduces obedience more efficiently than competency."
The room went still. Lancaster looked alarmed, and Rose felt it without turning.
Professor Fairchild's mouth thinned. "A remarkably polished observation for a district schoolgirl."
Before Rose could answer, Snow spoke. "Perhaps because she is neither merely polished nor merely a schoolgirl."
The words were calm, almost gentle, and yet they cut Professor Fairchild's momentum cleanly in half.
Snow turned to Rose. "Continue."
Because he had given her back the floor instead of rescuing her from it, Rose understood that whatever this was, test, game, or opportunity, she had not yet lost it.
She continued.
She spoke of grain first because grain was safe, and from grain she could move outward without appearing to leap. Contamination after rail spills. Why recovery ought not to be left solely to emergency containment. Field rotation. Water access. Hill-valley pockets in 9 that sustained plant life differently than the broad prairie. Why district agricultural planning remained too generalized to be efficient.
She did not mention the bunker. Of course she didnât. She did not mention banned histories or old republics and especially the crate beneath the floorboards.
She instead translated.
That, she realized as she went, was the true skill the Secret Garden had given her. Conversion. The ability to take one dangerous idea and render it, in public, as utility. When she paused to breathe, the younger professor said, "You have read beyond your school allotment. Almost along the lines of our own students from our academy..."
It was not accusation. It was certainty. Rose met his gaze. "Yes, sir."
Lancaster's expression suggested he might stop breathing.
The dean folded his hands. "From where, exactly, did such reading come?"
The question entered the room like a knife laid carefully on linen. Rose felt her body became aware of itself. Her dress at the shoulders. The pulse in her throat. There was a terrible weight of every wrong possible answer.
"From what I could borrow," she said, letting it be both true and incomplete. "Old district stock. Household fragments. Discarded texts. Copied passages. Whatever literature that most in the districts considered⊠unfashionable."
The younger professor's mouth twitched.
The older woman said, "Unfashionable is a diplomatic word."
Rose did not answer that.
Professor Fairchild tapped one finger against his desk. "University is not an instrument by which every district grievance may be dignified into policy."
"No, sir," Rose said. "But neither should policy be so far removed from labor that people begin mistaking endurance for consent."
Silence again. Deeper this time.
It couldnât openly be called rebellion, that required one to make assumptions and jump over hurdles. That was what made it dangerous. It was simply reasonable.
The dean looked down at his notes. Fairchild no longer seemed dismissive, which was more satisfying than his approval would have been. The younger professor looked nearly intent. The older woman regarded Rose as though recalibrating several prior assumptions at once.
At length, the dean asked, "What would you study, if admitted?"
"Systems," Rose said.
Fairchild frowned. "That is not a discipline."
"No, sir. Itâs the problem." Rose caught herself and softened by a hair. "Government, agricultural planning, resource law, historical state formation, any field that explains how a country decides who is educated, who is fed, and who is expected to call that arrangement natural."
Lancaster shut his eyes for one fleeting second.
The younger professor murmured, "My wordâŠ"
The older woman asked, her eyes narrowed a fraction, "Your mayor mentioned an interest in returning, rather than staying designated at the Capitol. Why?"
That question entered Rose more softly than the others. Why return, if another world opened and let her through?
She thought of Virgil at the kitchen table, sugar in his coffee, dust on his boots, telling her a mind was no use if it only admired its own reflection.
Rose folded her hands over the notebook. "Because I do not think knowledge is most honorable where it is most decorated. I think it is most honorable where it is most needed."
No one moved.
The older woman, whose name Snow later supplied as Dr. Anderson, spoke almost offhand. "You quote like someone taught in the Capitol."
Rose's breath nearly caught. She chose her next words carefully enough to feel them scrape. "I was taught that most ideas worth surviving have already had to survive somebody's dislike of them."
The younger professor laughed once before he could stop himself.
Fairchild muttered, "Goodness."
Snow, very lightly, said, "Dr. Anderson..."
Dr. Anderson's expression did not change, but her fingers folded over her papers.
The deanâs brows raised before he looked toward Snow. "You were correct."
Rose did not know what that meant. Whether Snow had predicted her mind or only insisted she was worth the interruption, she could not tell. She only knew the words passed through her with dizzying force.
Snow nodded with a hint of pride before he answered, "She is useful."
It was not a pretty word. Not warm nor kind. Though in that room, usefulness was not insult. It was admission into seriousness.
Lancaster recovered enough to say, "Miss Tempest-Strix has shown great discipline under difficult circumstances."
Professor Fairchild replied, "Discipline, yes. Also⊠dangerous reach."
Dr. Anderson answered before Snow could. "All intelligence has dangerous reach to someone."
The younger professor added, "If half the district students have been under-taught to this degree, the initiative has been misimagined from the start."
The dean lifted one hand, and the speakers quieted.
"Miss Tempest-Strix," he said. "You understand, I hope, that university is not merely a reward for unusual intelligence. It is an institution. It has loyalties of its own."
Rose held his gaze. "Yes, sir. So do districts."
From another mouth, it might have been insolence. She said it softly enough that it landed as principle.
The dean studied her for one beat longer, then nodded. "Thank you. We will consider your candidacy for the following semester. Mr. Snow and Mayor Lancaster will be informed of the next steps."
For a second, Rose did not understand. Then the weight lifted so abruptly that she had to grip her notebook to keep her hands from flying somewhere foolish.
"Thank you, sir, " she said, voice thinner than she would have preferred. "Truly."
The projection flickered as the university representatives began signing off. Dr. Anderson's pane remained half a second longer.
"Miss Tempest-Strix." she bluntly said, before Rose looked back up at the woman.
"Do not lose the habit of precision to the habit of performance. Institutions reward the second more quickly. They need the first more badly."
"Yes, ma'am," Rose said.
Then the screen went dark. For a moment, the room existed only in the hum after power.
Lancaster exhaled like a man who had survived a weather event. "Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! Your father would be most proud, Ms. Tempest-Strix!"
Rose let out a nervous laugh before she thanked him, though the mention of Virgil struck too sharply to linger over.
Snow moved closer. "You did very well."
"D-Did I?" she asked before she could stop herself.
"Incredibly." His smile was slight, controlled, though not unkind. "You frightened them in exactly the proper amount."
A laugh escaped her, half disbelief and half exhaustion. "I⊠didn't mean to frighten anyone!"
"That is why it was effective."
Rose did not know whether that was compliment or warning.
She had nearly made it down the front steps of the manor before she let herself breathe properly. The house behind her still glowed with polished wealth. Far too many lamps, too much lacquer, curtains too heavy for prairie weather. It was not an easy room to grieve in. Not that any room had been easy lately.
She gathered her shawl around her shoulders and reached Wildfire's hitching post when the front door opened behind her.
"Rosabel?"
She turned.
Snow descended the steps with no evident hurry, as though catching her had been his intention all along and not an interruption improvised at the last moment. The porch light caught the green of his coat and sharpened the planes of his face.
"Mr. Sn-" Rose bit the inside of her cheek, before catching herself. âCoriolanus?"
He seemed pleased she used the name. "I hope I did not delay you overlong inside. It has been a trying day, and I suspect the mayor sometimes mistakes opportunity for obligation."
That surprised her. It was accurate in a way grown people rarely bothered being with kids her age.
"It was... not entirely fine," she admitted.
"No," he said softly. "I did not imagine it was."
Wind pressed a loose strand of hair across her cheek. She tucked it back. "I should go home."
"Of course," he said.
Which was exactly when he did not let her. He glanced toward the far edge of town, where construction and ambition had recently begun pressing themselves into prairie road. "Though there is something nearby I thought you might find interesting."
Rose's curiosity pricked at once. Annoyingly.
"Interesting?â Rose let out a nervous bout of laughter once more. âH-How?"
"In the way a serious mind finds things interesting when most people would only find them⊠decorative." He tilted his head. "Or useful."
She was tired. Her father was dead. She ought not have been so easily moved by a sentence shaped like a challenge. "What⊠What is it?"
"Something not yet publicly discussed."
The word publicly unsettled her. Though⊠it did intrigue her.
"I don't know that I ought to be shown things not publicly discussed," she said, though even to her own ears it sounded like a test rather than a refusal.
Coriolanus did not press. "No. Perhaps not."
Then he let silence sit there long enough for her to feel the opening in it.
"I have found," he said after a moment, "that most people prefer to be told what to do, especially in terms of a routine or as I would prefer to call it, systems. Very few care to see how it actually intends to function. Though⊠you have struck me as one of the few."
Rose was confused as to how accurately that landed.
"What kind of⊠system?"
"One adjacent to the Games," he said. "And to the future Panem intends to advertise for those who survive them."
A cold current moved through her.
Wildfire snorted softly at the hitching post, objecting on her behalf.
"This isn't some sort of test, is it?" Rose asked, a bit of humor attempting courage in her voice.
Coriolanus answered smooth as laid silk. "Only if all conversations between intelligent people must become tests eventually."
That was not an answer. Rose knew it.
Still, she heard herself say, "All right."
Coriolanus inclined his head as if acknowledging not agreement, but selection. "Good."
The eastern project had been closed to district citizens for nearly a year.
People saw pieces of it from a distance, like tarped fencing, peacekeeper patrols, mute men in plain gray uniforms moving in and out of the perimeter with tools, Capitol architects arriving in brief polished flashes and vanishing again. Nobody knew what it was meant to be, though everyone had guessed. A military station? New peacekeeper housing? A Capitol leisure ground? Another punishment site?
In District 9, imagination usually learned to forecast cruelty before comfort. Snow borrowed one of Lancaster's gray warmbloods⊠much to my begrudging surprise⊠and with a single peacekeeper trailing at a formal distance, he and Rose rode east.
Once they dismounted at the gate, the commander saluted Coriolanus like he was more than a visiting official.
"Mr. Snow," the man said. "I presume this young lady is with you."
"I would certainly hope so," Snow replied lightly.
To Rose's surprise, the peacekeeper almost smiled. Once inside, Rose understood why no one had been allowed near.
Beyond the last veil of tarp and scaffolding, a row of pale stone houses gleamed in the muted light. Each one was massive by district standards, almost obscene in its elegance, with verandas framed by white pillars and fresh paint shining too cleanly for a town that tasted of dust and grain. The scent of new mortar and cut birch drifted through the air, sharp against the faint odor of wheat smoke. Mute men moved quietly through the site, setting tile, polishing brass, smoothing railings, all with a precision that made the place feel both new and haunted.
"What is this?" Rose whispered.
Coriolanus stood a little taller, as though presenting a monument. "Victor's Village. Homes for Panem's champions. Those who survive the Games."
SurviveâŠ
The word tasted bitter.
Rose could see the scale now. Twelve houses arranged with theatrical care, each yard bordered by iron fencing. Each porch broad enough for the whole district to see what victory purchased. She imagined what it must feel like to live there. To wake every morning knowing you had killed children to earn clean glass windows and a patch of grass.
"It is meant to inspire hope," Coriolanus said. His tone was soft, deliberate. "A reminder that even the lowest can rise. That victory grants reward. That loyalty is not forgotten."
Hope, brick by brick, bought with graves. Rose shivered despite herself.
âOriginally, your district was supposed to undergo construction after the eighteenth games, when-â
"Hope," Rose accidently interrupted.
"YesâŠ" he turned to gauge her reaction, perhaps misreading her tone or perhaps not. "Hope keeps the districts alive. Those who learn to earn it, Rosabel, will always have a place in Panem's future."
She looked toward the mute men laboring beneath the half-built porches, their faces pale and expressionless. Hope for them seemed a washed-up thing on a riverbank.
"Why would we need⊠hope?" Rose asked. âIn a place likeâŠ?â
She couldnât conjure enough assurance in herself to finish her sentence. Coriolanus fully turned to her.
"In a place like what?" he asked, though she was certain he knew.
"Like here. In the districts." She chose her words with care. "Forgive me, Coriolanus, but in the midst of death, how does one comprehend an idea as foreign as hope?"
For a moment, he only stared at her. Wind tugged faintly at his lapel, carrying mortar and wheat smoke between them.
"Hope," he began, his voice lowering an octave, "is what separates order from chaos. Without it, the world tears itself apart. The Dark Days taught us that much."
Rose's eyes drifted back to the houses. "Perhaps. But chaos⊠itâs not the same as freedom. Sometimes a world tears itself apart because no one ever let it grow."
Snow smiled faintly⊠but not warmly. "Growth requires guidance, Rosabel. Left alone, things tend to burn."
She felt the words like a chill, and in them she heard the echo of her father's work. Firecatcher. Containment. Control.
"Maybe some fires are meant to burn," she said under her breath.
Coriolanus stepped closer, lowering his voice. "Fires do not burn forever. They require kindling. Feed. Something to nourish their hunger, which is never truly sated."
Rose looked at him then. His eyes were very blue, and very calm, yet⊠plain.
"That hunger," he continued, "can only be managed by hope. Do you understand?"
No, she wanted to say. Pain does not birth hope.
Though some part of her understood what he meant, and that frightened her more than disagreement would have. Hope as control, as medicine, as⊠a chain. Could a noble thing be made into a tool for cruel hands and still remain noble at the center?
"I⊠don't know," she nervously admitted.
"Does this make you afraid?" he asked.
What sort of question was that? Of course it made her afraid! Children in District 9 lived with two more years, five more years, however many more years of their names in glass, and he stood before a row of mansions discussing hope as if fear were an academic inconvenience.
She nodded because words would reveal more emotion than she wanted.
"Don't be," Coriolanus said.
"Of the Games?"
Coriolanusâs eyes remained fixed on her brow. "When you go to university--"
"When?" Rose almost stuttered.
"Yes," he said smoothly. "When you go to university, your relationship to Panem changes. Yours. Your children's. Their children after them. Your name, your family⊠there are protections attached to advancement, Rosabel. Not always public, but real nonetheless."
The thought struck her hard.
Safety. Not having to fear the reaping. Having the luxury of life.
It sounded beautiful. It would to anyone, honestly.
Then her mind went to Misea. To Waaska and Nibs. To the firecatchers, like Rolette and his grandchildren, Hillsboro and his siblings, Scranton and his brothers. To the children in her academy class. To future children who would not have a Snow on a porch telling them they could step sideways out of fear if only they made themselves rare enoughâŠ
"And everyone else?" she asked.
Something in his expression shifted by a degree. "Everyone cannot be saved by the same door."
Roseâs expression furrowed. "Then it isn't enough."
"You said if one child is changed by your deeds, it will be enough," Coriolanus pushed. âAnd sometimes? Your own future is enough.â
She hated that answer because it was too close to something she might have said about herself.
Coriolanusâs voice softened. "I should not be telling you this, but⊠as someone attached to the Games' reform apparatus, I would say your odds of achieving what you have dreamed are high. Very high, if you learn which arguments open doors and which merely burn prettily in front of them."
Rose stared at him. "You work for the Games?"
Now, looking back at Victorâs Village, she shouldâve known he had some association with them, in addition to how he spoke of them. Granted, every Capitolite sought a reason to justify the Games, right?
"In part." He said as plainly as his gaze.
"In part," she repeated flatly.
"There are many parts to governance."
"And one of yours is convincing children not to mind being butchered so long as the porch is wide enough after?"
That, finally, made him still.
He wasnât offended, surprisingly enough. If he was, he was doing a good job at hiding it. No, his expression sharpened with alert, as if he had been waiting to see where her moral line would appear.
"Would you prefer," he asked quietly, "that victors return to nothing?"
Rose opened her mouth, then shut it.
No. Of course not. No tribute should survive horror only to be shoved back into the want that had made their name reaped like livestock in the first place. Granted, children should not have to return with blood on their conscience at all.
"That is not the choice," she said.
"It is one of them."
"No." Her voice strengthened. "The choice is not between decorated aftermath or no aftermath. Itâs whether suffering is eased because it is wrong, or because the Capitol has found a way to make wrong things look merciful."
He studied her for a long second.
Rose felt suddenly how alone she was with him. She wasnât in danger, not in the immediate bodily sense. However, my skeptical silence was not at her shoulder. Virgil's blunt suspicion was not there to cut through the afternoon. No familiar voice stood ready to pull her back if the conversation went too far.
Snow seemed to notice the shift in her, though perhaps not its source.
"You assume motives must be pure to produce useful structures," he finally said.
"And you assume usefulness excuses motive."
"No." His voice softened. "I assume people survive most often through arrangements made by imperfect men."
Rose felt her throat tighten.
She knew District 9 well enough to know whole families survived on compromises they would never describe as noble. Virgil had dealt with mayors, peacekeepers, Capitol clerks, and ledgers he despised because keeping people alive mattered more than feeling morally untouched while doing it.
"The student initiative works on a similar principle," Coriolanus continued. "Yes, there is public appetite behind it. Yes, politicians enjoy appearing generous. But if that appetite opens a door, does it matter to the student whether the lock was forged from charity or calculation?"
Rose looked at him. "It⊠matters if the student forgets who built the door."
For once, he took a breath before answering. "And who do you think built it?"
"The districts did," she said simply. "By surviving long enough to become useful to somebody's conscience."
The silence after that was full, though she could not name what. Coriolanus turned slightly, perhaps to guide her back toward the gate, his hand resting on the post. That was when Rose noticed the grass. One patch near the fence line bent wrong against the wind. It didnât stir or tremble. Though, pressed down in a shape too narrow and deliberate to belong to weather.
Her eyes dropped a second too late.
Something pale and quick uncoiled from the shadow of the post.
Coriolanus jerked. More surprise than pain at first, a hand snapping back from the fence rail with the smallest intake of breath.
For one absurd beat, Rose did not understand what she had seen.
Then the thing slid back through the grass soundlessly. It didnât rattle, because it never did. It never had a warning. A smooth white-gold body disappearing beneath the boards.
Thatâs when her stomach dropped. Wanagi snake.
"C-Coriolanus?" her voice slowly began to tremble.
Coriolanus looked at her sharply, as people do when they have not yet decided whether danger is real. He pulled back his hand, perhaps to inspect it, and that was when she saw the punctures above his thumb joint, already swelling angry beneath the skin.
All color left Rose's face.
"Coriolanus," she said, and now her voice carried enough force to make him listen. "D-Don't move!"
He looked from the wound to her. For the first time she had met him, he seemed not composed, at least not in a way that felt deliberate. Only caught off guard.
"Was that-"
"Uh, it was⊠W-Wanagi." She desperately tried to explain, only her own fear made the word shake. "Oh no..."
The snake moved again at the edge of the grass, startled by the commotion. Rose saw its head lift, saw the angle of it toward her boots, and acted before terror could root her in place. She tore her shawl from her shoulders and flung it over the creature. It writhed beneath the fabric, trapped just long enough for a worker to seize a shovel and pin the cloth safely down.
The peacekeeper came running. "What happened?"
"Snake," Rose said, grabbing Coriolanusâs wrist with both hands and lifting it. "Wanagi! Get help, n-now! The uhh⊠clinic! Please!"
The man hesitated only long enough to understand she knew what she was saying, then turned and shouted for workers. Snow's breathing had changed. Shallow now. His jaw tightened once as he looked down at his own hand like his body had become a problem requiring interpretation.
"Is it fatal?" he asked, oddly calm.
Rose hated that he asked it like that. She hated more that she answered honestly. "It can be, yes."
The worker nearest them blanched and ran for the road. Another came forward with his coat in his hands, not knowing what use it would be and unwilling to stand idle.
Rose set Coriolanusâs arm against her shoulder. "Slow, just⊠breath. Don't fight it. Just keep walking."
He obeyed. That frightened her too.
Men like Coriolanus Snow did not seem like men accustomed to obeying quickly. Yet he did then, whether because the venom had begun its work or because pain stripped hierarchy down to animal bones.
They had nearly reached the gate when his weight shifted hard against her.
"Coriolanus?"
His knees buckled. The world erupted.
By the time I reached the New Bisman clinic, my leg had quit being a body part and turned into a personal grievance.
Every step up the adobe walk felt deliberate. Punishing. The sort of pain that made a man aware of each foolish decision that brought him there. I might have turned around even then if Stand Up's orders had not sat in my skull like a nail too deep to dig out. See the medic. Get it handled. Be useful later instead of stubborn nowâŠ
Problem was, the clinic itself never struck me as a place where anything simply got handled.
The building stood near the poorer cut of town, broad and sun-bleached, with narrow windows and a porch too small for the number of people forever waiting beneath it. Somebody had whitewashed the trim recently, but dust had already settled into the corners and made the effort temporary. The smell hit before Stand Up even got the door open. Smelt something like spirits, old sickness, soap, boiled linen, and other things that could make the strongest men gag. There was a trace of morphling hiding behind everything like a secret too expensive to speak aloud. Overall, I hated the clinicâs stench.
"We got an injury," Stand Up announced as Burr and Trouble helped me through the door. "Firecatcher. Possible fracture aggravated by blast."
The waiting room held the usual misery. A mill boy with two fingers bandaged together or an old woman coughing into a kerchief gone pink at the edge. There was even a field hand I recognized from southside routes asleep upright against the wall. Pain in the clinic always looked tired before it looked dramatic.
One underling healer took a single look at my leg and ordered me onto a cot. I finally sat down in the uncomfortable surface, wincing at every little adjustment that was made to my predicament.
âIâll fetch you a healer at once!â The underling assured before tracking somewhere behind a linen separator near my designated cot.
Then⊠I heard her before I saw her.
It⊠wasnât that she was loud. Dido had never needed volume to alter a room. Some people entered a space by sound. She entered by effect, like a shuffle of attention, change in pace, or a quiet obedience that springs up around competence when folks are too tired to perform anything else.
When she stepped through the side door in her healer's apron, sleeves rolled and dappled brown hair pinned back without a strand out of place, the whole room tightened by a hair.
She looked older than when I had last let myself think of her properly.
Though, not old in the traditional. Simply set in the face. Like life had pulled certain softnesses out and replaced them with function. Though we looked relatively different enough, the Rhodes in her was still easy to spot if a person knew where to look, like the slope of her brow or her mouth always on the edge of judging something inefficient. It was the damn hair that made the association far too recognizable though. Hair with its brunette base and occasional streaks of blonde, same as mine. Same blood declaring itself even after years of silence.
I knew the name she wore now sat differently. Westhope.
She had been married for a while now. Had children of her own. Belonged somewhere I had not.
Her gray eyes, a stark contrast to the my gaze that was as dark as soil, moved across the room, past Burr, past Stand Up, past Trouble, then⊠landed on me.
She stopped. Only a second, before she cleared her throat. "Mr. Rhodes."
No brother. Or Auphie. Not even Auphidius.
I pushed myself upright with the cot edge, calmly retorted back. "Mrs. Westhope."
Burr looked between us, realization crossing his face. Trouble opened his mouth. However, Burr shushed him and tugged him back. "We'll⊠give ya space."
"Unnecessary," Dido bluntly responded, not even sparing a glance to the young man.
Burr wisely decided it was necessary anyway, as he, the catcher apprentice, and the peacekeeper distanced themselves further into the lobby.
The examination room was narrow and too warm, with a cot against one wall and a tray of instruments laid out so cleanly they nearly accused a person by existing. Dido moved the privacy drapes around my cot in a professional manner and went straight for bandages without asking whether I could manage the nearby table on my own.
Barely, as it happened.
By the time I lowered myself onto the edge, she was crouching before my leg, fingers brisk and cool against the splint the border medic had thrown together.
"You waited." she said. Accusation in the underbelly of her voice. That wasnât a question.
"I was busy."
"You were stupid." She promptly snapped.
I couldnât help but sigh. "That too."
She glanced up, just for a moment. Her face gave little away, but not nothing. "Take the brace off."
I obeyed because pain has a way of humbling arguments before they begin. She unwound the dressing in practiced turns, exposing the swelling beneath. My thigh had gone ugly, bruising spread wide and dark, yellowing at the outer edge where the body had started its mean little work of repair without asking whether I approved.
Dido pressed near the fracture. I sucked a breath through my teeth.
"Tell me when it hurts," she said.
"It already hurtsâŠ"
She made a small sound. "Deep fracture. Aggravated. You may have shifted the set. Lucky it didn't break through."
A humorless laugh escaped my throat. "I've heard a great deal about my luck today."
"That doesn't make it less true."
Her hands were steady in the same fashion as every other healer before her. It wasnât the kind born from kindness, but rather from habit. Years of practice, no doubt. The gloves made her touch feel foreign, as if she were treating a stranger instead of her own brother.
I used to look up to those hands. They were the first to teach me how to tie a bandage, how to wrap a burn, how to hold still when something hurt. Back then, Dido told me pain was proof you were alive.
Now? All I could feel was proof that she had left.
"Who dressed this first?" she asked briskly.
"District 7 healer."
"Before that?"
"I did enough."
"Reckless as ever."
I let out a sharp breath, again, not quite a laugh. "Wouldn't be much of a firecatcher otherwise."
That earned the faintest pause from her. She recovered quickly.
"I heard⊠about Chief Tempest," she finally admitted.
The sentence landed so plainly I almost preferred if she had left it alone. My voice gave nothing away in terms of registry. "Yeah.â
"I'm⊠Iâm sorry." Her delay felt authentic, but⊠far more deeper than that.
Some apologies arrive too late to feel comforting and too honestly to brush aside. She sat somewhere between. I looked down at my hands.
"He mattered," she added, and for one instant her voice trembled on the edge of something not yet surrendered.
I simply nodded. She did not ask if I had been there. News in District 9 traveled with enough blood on it already. She likely knew more than I wanted to repeat.
Instead, she reached for my leg again. "This will hurt."
"It already does." I reiterated.
Then she set the bone, and as wise men have probably said before me⊠it hurt like a bitch.
In my mind, I bore it with the quiet dignity of a man tougher than the boy she once knew. What I did instead was curse loud enough to disgrace Virgil's hat and nearly kick her in the shoulder before the pain burst white through my vision and left me sweating against the table edge like some fool hauled in off the slaughter line.
Dido, naturally, did not flinch.
"There," she said once the room stopped tilting. "Now you may continue feeling sorry for yourself in a structurally sound position."
I laughed despite everything. It came out rough, brief, and far too close to pain. Despite the pain, a pain far deeper than my leg decided to bloom and fester at that moment. As it⊠something other then my bone was set. Something buried in my head, my heart.
I wanted to say something as my elder sister began to settle everything around her, including meâŠ
⊠then the front of the clinic exploded into noise.
The flurry of motion, moving boots, and voices flooded the little building as my head barely had enough time to understand the commotion. A man shouting for room. Somebody else yelled for antivenin before I understood the word. The building changed around us in an instant, all slow sickroom misery reoriented toward one sharper emergency.
Dido was already on her feet before the door opened.
A younger aide nearly collided with the drapes. "Westhope! Snakebite! They're bringing him in now."
"Him who?"
The answer came from the hall itself.
Snow was half-carried, half-dragged through the clinic by two district workers and a peacekeeper gone pale as milk beneath his helmet strap. His coat had been stripped off somewhere outside. One shirtsleeve was rolled back, and already the veins along his forearm looked wrong. The were far too dark and much too angry beneath the skin. His jaw clenched so hard that, for one vicious second, I thought perhaps venom might yet do the district a service.
Then I saw Rose beside him.
Her neatly pinned braids had loosened, one nearly to her shoulder. Mud stained the hem of her dress. Both hands were marked where she had held pressure above the bite. She looked frightened, yes, but not frozen. A sense of coordination was still held in her movement. The way she always did when somebody was hurt badly enough that feeling had to wait its turn.
The room tilted for an entirely different reason.
"Cot. Now," Dido snapped, and men twice her size obeyed. "You, boil water. You, bring the antitoxin case. If his breathing changes, I want to know before it worsens, not after."
Snow was lowered onto the main ward cot with a hiss through his teeth that sounded more offended than frightened. Even poisoned half to death, he had a way of seeming insulted by bodily weakness.
Rose looked up only when Dido took his arm. That was when she saw me.
For one second her face changed completely. A recognition so immediate it hurt to watch. Then the moment was gone, and she turned back to Snow because the living body in front of her demanded it.
"What bit him?" Another healer demanded.
"W-Wanagi," Rose answered, voice trembling but steady. "Down by the new construction fencing. It didn't rattle. It just⊠struck."
A healer swore under his breath, as Dido reached for the wound.
Two punctures sat angry and swollen above Snow's thumb joint. They were small and mean, and already darkening. The room tightened around that sight.
Everyone in 9 knew what a Wanagi snake meant. Not one of the obvious killers that raised half its body and announced terms like a rattler would. These were much worse. Assassin snakes, folks would also call them. Slid under brush and stone like bad thoughts. Believed by some to be altered rattlers left over from the Dark Days, though in the districts, one could only assume when Panem refused to explain which horrors were deliberate and which were merely permitted.
Dido tied a strap above the wound as the other healer reached for the antitoxin vial with hands steadier than a sod wall.
Snow finally spoke. "I assure you this is unnecessary drama."
Rose gave him a look so sharp it nearly made me proud. "You were on the ground."
"I have survived a snakebite before." Snow causally admitted, though, this did nothing to deter her.
The healers did not bother joining that particular foolishness. Instead, the needle was driven in clean.
Snow's whole body locked. One hand gripped the cot rail until the knuckles flashed white. I saw then what pain did to men like him. It did not soften them. Instead, it stripped away one layer of polish, revealing the harder structure beneath.
Rose stayed at his side anyway. That was the part I could not make peace with. Never will.
She wasnât necessarily wrong to help. Rose would have helped a rabid dog if it came foaming and still had enough life left to want saving. Care was the law she obeyed quickest. It was one of the best things in her and one of the most dangerous.
Though as I watched her hold a cloth to Snow's wrist while Dido and the others worked, I had one brief, shameful thought. Let him dieâŠ
It came fast. Ugly. Private as sin.
Maybe the venom would finish what Providence had no sense to begin. That way, the district would be spared one Capitol snake by another. Maybe Rose couldâve been spared too.
The thought sickened me the instant it formed, especially since he was right there. At a human level, he was a man on a cot fighting poison with his jaw locked and his hand shaking, and there she was helping because somebody had to, and what kind of creature looked at suffering and wished it complete merely because it belonged to the wrong body?
I looked away in disgust. At him and myself. Hard to say which weighed worse.
"Milk," Dido ordered. "Or that oxygala if Salem has any. Something fresh. The bakery should have milk if the dairy stalls are shut. Go."
Rose blinked as if pulled from water. "Now?"
"Unless you want him dealinâ with gerdy, yes. Now. Move."
One of the workers stepped forward. "I'll go with her."
Rose hesitated only long enough to make sure Dido truly meant to take her place. Then she wiped her hands once on her skirt, gave Snow one final glance, and turned.
She went, boots striking fast down the clinic porch with the worker on her heels, and I watched through the open hall until the evening swallowed both of them.
Behind me, Snow made a low sound as his body began to understand what venom and antidote were doing to it. The healers ordered blankets, then water, then told somebody to inform the peacekeepers outside that crowding the entryway would not keep him breathing better.
I sat there on the edge of my treatment table with my leg newly set, my sister three yards away saving a Capitol man, and Virgil's hat resting heavy on the chair beside me like something borrowed from a life that had already become harder to recognize.
Snow was not dead.
Some new thing, meaner and less visible than any snake, had already sunk its teeth where I could not reach it.
By the time Rose came back, the worst of the commotion had burned down into that hospital quiet that never means peace so much as temporary survival. You could still hear it if you listened. A basin set down somewhere too hard and the quick-soled shoes crossing the ward. Dido's low, clipped voice behind the hanging curtain where Snow had been put. Fortunately, no one was shouting for antivenin anymore. No one was running.
In a place like that, stabilization counted as mercy.
I sat on the narrow recovery cot in the side room, my leg bound and set straighter than the maker likely intended it to be again. Morphling had taken the edge off but not the meaning. Pain still sat heavy and dull, a patient pulse deep in the hip whenever I shifted wrong.
I looked back at the hat beside me as Dido reentered my orbit. She, with the full authority of an elder sister and irritated medic, had taken one look at me touching the brim like a nervous tic and told me if I bent one more unnecessary inch she would splint my neck next.
So, I sat bareheaded and sore and listened to another man not die.
Finally, Rose appeared in the doorway looking like the day had tried to take her apart and failed only because it got tired first.
Her braids hung loose. Her dress was wrinkled through the skirt and dusted at the hem. Her shawl was gone entirely, and with it some last sign of being properly put together. Her forearms were bare to the elbow, pale and goose-pimpled from evening chill, one cuff turned back where dried blood had stiffened fabric. Her face looked worn thin and bright at once, as if fright and purpose had struck together and made a light in her that had no right surviving the day.
That was what perturbed me. The fact that she looked lit. She stopped when she saw me watching and let out a breath. "You're⊠still awake."
"Hard habit to break, I suppose." I huffed back.
That earned me the ghost of a smile. Enough to hurt.
She stepped inside and shut the curtain softly. I looked at her bare arms before I could stop myself.
"Where's your shawl?"
Rose glanced down like she had only just remembered it belonged to the day. "Trapped the snake with it. Then I think someone used it under his arm. Or left it at the gate. I don't know."
The answer came too quick and too unbothered, which told me she was still running on something meaner than strength. I nodded toward the chair. "Sit."
To my surprise, she actually did, albeit in a cautious manner. Rose always lowered herself into seats as if deciding whether she had time for the luxury of being tired. Eventually, she sat across from me and folded her hands in her lap. They were trembling.
"How bad?" she asked, nodding toward my leg.
"Depends whether you ask me or the healers." I attempted to speak in a lightened manner.
She didnât take the bait. "I'd⊠rather ask you."
"If you ask me, I'll still be riding by next week."
"And,â Rose looked over her shoulder as if searching for Dido, then back to me. âIf I ask your sister?"
"You'll hear a speech about structural stupidity."
That almost made her smile. For a moment we looked at each other in stale clinic light, both carrying too much of the day on our clothes. Then she said, quietly but with something alive under it, "He's going to be all right."
I knew who she meant.
"Good," I bluntly replied, and meant it enough to feel ashamed that I had to force the word past uglier things first.
Rose nodded. Her fingers tightened around each other. "The antivenin took hold. They say the venom hadn't spread as far as it could have. He'll be weak. Feverish, maybe. But⊠he'll live."
I watched her as she said it. Not her speaking necessarily. Her.
The strange brightness had returned to her face now, not from joy but some internal reckoning already underway.
"And?" I asked.
Her eyes flicked to mine. She knew what I meant.
"And," she said, drawing one breath before the rest came faster, "After I brought back the milk, he said he hadn't forgotten our conversation. He said once he's well enough, he still means to speak with me again. About university, and introductions. E-Even funding. Auphie⊠this might actually be possible."
Her green eyes flickered at once. There it was.
I felt something in my chest go quiet and cold. Rose saw some part of that happen because she leaned forward, fatigue giving way before the force of what she was trying to say.
"I⊠I think this is real," she reinstated. "Not just mayor-talk or even a promise meant to make me feel better. I think he really can help..."
I looked down at my hands. They were rougher than hers. Bigger. Uglier. Dirt still sat beneath my nails from the valley in 7, no amount of clinic water having fully got it out. I thought, with a bitterness so old it surprised me, of all the ways people like us were forever being trained to feel grateful when a door opened six inches after our whole lives bricked out of the wallâŠ
"Rosabel," I said slowly, gulping back my doubts. "You⊠donât need to sacrifice an arm and a leg just to get somebody in the Capitol to look at you serious. You know that, right?"
Her expression changed. Hurt first, then defense. "I⊠didn't give anything away."
"You know what I mean." I tried to gently assure her.
"No," she said, her gaze fitted with defiance. "I don't think I do."
I rubbed a hand over my mouth and wished the room were larger, wished my leg hurt less, wished Virgil were alive enough to say this better.
"Rose, youâve already gone through a lot," I said, trying to evade any sore spots that were still festering. "And today you showed off to a Capitolite before running off with him and near watched him die in your hands. Now? You're sitting here talking like all of it proves that⊠everythingâs gonna work itself out like a miracle. Maybe⊠donât you think things are movinâ a little too fast?â
Rose went very still. "That's not what I said."
"I ain't sayinâ thatâs what you meant, I just think-"
"You managed it anyway." Quiet words. They landed harder for that.
I looked at her fully. Her hands stained with blood, the whites of her eyes reddened, with a bit of dirt smeared on her cheek. Hope shining where exhaustion ought to have flattened it. She looked like a person being held upright by one thing only, and that one thing had started wearing Coriolanus Snow's name around the edges whether she meant it to or not.
"He noticed you now," I said. "Mâkay, fine. Maybe he helps and life gets a whole lot bigger. But Rose... you need to slow down a bit. I ainât sayinâ he has ulterior motives, but⊠what if he does? Or not him, but somebody else does?"
Her mouth parted. She heard the truth in the first half and hated the shape of the second.
"I⊠donât understand," she said. "I thought⊠I thought you said you trusted me to make my own decisions?â
âAnd I do,â I insisted. âItâs just that⊠you almost watched him die. And, while I know that, sure, the causation didnât leave much room for bickering⊠that ainât exact a good place to start buildinâ trust, Rose.â
âO-Okay?â Rose seemed more frustrated than angry. âThen what was I meant to do? Let him die because he's Capitol? Because you have a prejudice against folks like him? He's human, Auphie. Not some bloodthirsty story monster."
I felt myself losing hold of the dispute. "No."
"Then don't speak like helping him cost me something shameful." Rose retorted. âAnd donât try to treat me like Iâm completely helpless. I know what I want.â
I shut my eyes. "That ain't what I said."
"Near enough." She sat back, breathing harder now, one hand rubbing at the heel of her palm where blood had dried earlier. When she spoke again, her voice had gone lower. More dangerous for being honest.
"You think⊠this is about him," she said. "It isn't. It's about the chance. If he remembers me because I was useful or capable or stubborn enough not to vanish when a room expected me to, Iâm not sorry for that."
I leaned forward despite the protest from my hip. "I'm not asking you to be sorry or to disappear."
"Then what are you asking?" Her eyes lifted to mine. "Truly, Auphie. What?"
There are questions that strip a man down quicker than insult.
What was I asking? That she stop? Wait? Mistrust the only clear road before her because something in me recoiled from the man walking beside it?
Desperation rose in me then, not loud, just steady enough to make a fool of my mouth. "I'm asking you not to tie your whole future to somebody like him when you've got folks here who'd take care of you."
The second the words left me, I knew they were too small for what I meant and too large to take back. Rose stared at me. It wasnât shock, but rather saddened. In that deep, tired way grief makes a person sad when they no longer have strength left for softer misunderstandings.
"Auphie," she said, and my name sounded less like protest than pity. "How?"
One word. That carried everything.
She glanced, not cruelly, at my leg. Then the bandaging. Then the clinic room around us with its boiled-linen smell and the plain fact of cost built into every shelf and basin.
"How?" she asked again. "With what money? You can barely stand. Rolette is already talking scout duty like mercy, and this place doesn't run on affection."
I tried to argue. Nothing came, because a part of me knew. She was right, and the truth of her rightness made me feel meaner than any argument could have.
"I know what you mean," she said. Rose's face softened, which was almost worse. "I do. I know⊠you're frightened."
"I justâŠâ I gulped back any emotion. ââŠI just don't want this to be the way you have to do it."
For a moment, the room went quiet except for the low stir of the ward outside.
"It may not be the way I want," she said. "But it may be the way there is."
I shut my eyes once. That was Rose all over. Never romantic where reality had to be named. Hopeful, yes. Reckless sometimes. Though never ignorant of cost and I had to always remind myself of it.
She stood, slower than when she had sat. The adrenaline was leaving her by degrees; I saw it in the stiffness of her shoulders, the faint sway she corrected before it became visible enough to invite help.
"Go, then," I said, voice rough. "But don't mistake his hand for help."
Rose nodded once, eyes glistening in the lamplight. "I'll come back. You'll see."
I did not answer. Couldn't. My throat felt full of smoke.
At the entry, she paused without turning. "I'm not trying to leave you behind."
The sentence struck somewhere low and old in me.
"I know," I said, barely above a whisper.
She stood one second longer, as if there might be some arrangement of words that would let both of us keep the truth and spare each other hurt besides.
There wasn't. She only nodded and went out into the ward, bare-armed, exhausted, and still somehow walking like a girl who had seen the outline of a future and meant to catch it before the world thought better of allowing one.
For a little while after Rose left, I did not move.
There did not seem to be much point. My leg hurt in that deep, patient way pain sometimes does after it has made its argument and no longer feels the need to shout. The clinic room had gone quiet again, though not truly still. Beyond the thin partition, I heard the ward breathing in its own fashion with trays, murmurs, glass, blankets, the rustle of a body that had not decided whether it meant to recover or merely delay dying.
A shadow crossed the curtain.
Dido stood there with one hand on the cloth, sleeves rolled, apron marked at one hip with something dark I chose not to identify. She looked tired in the way competent people do, which is to say little different at first glance, only less willing to waste mercy on nonsense.
"He'll live," she said.
I nodded begrudgingly. "I gathered."
She came in without permission, crossed to the tray, and began putting orderly things into stricter order. The sort of meaningless straightening a person does when thought wants the hands occupied. For a while, neither of us spoke.
Then she asked, "Can you stand?"
"Probably."
She shot me a brief glare. "That isn't what I asked."
"Yes." I relented
"Show me."
It was ugly. I got my good foot under me, pushed off the cot, and felt the left side protest so hard my vision pulsed black at the edge. Still, I stood.
Dido watched with her mouth flat and gray eyes giving away nothing beyond attention. "You'll limp worse tomorrow."
I shook my head. "I was counting on a miracle."
"Try counting on less stupid things." That might have been the closest either of us came to affection.
She handed me Virgil's hat from the chair. I took it slower than I meant to. Her eyes dipped once to the brim, then away.
"He'd have hated seeing you this reckless," she said, her voice pierced with subtle emotion.
I settled the hat onto my head. "That makes two of us."
SilenceâŠ
One of those old family silences with too much in it to sort cleanly while standing upright, with regret, habit, and shared blood. Shared temper added to that too. Too many years of not knowing where to set all of it without breaking something else.
I reached into my trouser pocket for the little fold of district notes I had left. It wasnât much by any means. Barely enough to look respectable. With the clinic care cost what it was, and morphling, splints, and setting bone did not come cheap merely because a man had no money fit for the asking.
Dido saw the motion before the notes were fully out.
"No," she abruptly intervened.
I looked at her. "No?"
"No."
I held the money anyway. "Dido--"
"No, Auphidius." Her voice sharpened just enough to cut through mine without rising. "Put it away."
I stared because that was perhaps the last thing I expected from the room. Dido Westhope would not give things lightly, certainly not waived fees in a clinic that ran on shortage and apology.
"You don't have to do that," I said, voice laced with a tremor.
Her expression changed by a degree. Tighter around the eyes. More tired than before. "I know."
I folded the money back slowly and shoved it into my pocket because pride is easier to argue with when the leg is throbbing, and your sister looks half a breath from telling you to get out before she changes her mind.
Still, I asked, quieter, "How come?"
She turned back to the tray and rearranged a bottle that needed no rearranging.
"Because you are limping out of here after burying him yesterday." A pause. "And Tempest-Strix came in looking like she'd forgotten her own skin trying to keep a poisoned man breathing. I have seen enough for one evening. Take your free mercy while it's offered and don't make me explain it prettier than that."
I nearly smiled.
"Thank you," I said instead.
That, finally, made her look at me. There was discomfort in her face, plain enough to read. Like she had already given more of herself away in one day than she preferred and did not care to be witnessed in it.
She only nodded toward the door. "Go home. Stay off the leg. And if Rolette asks, tell him I said scout duty can kiss my whole ass until that fracture starts behaving like bone instead of broken fence post."
That got a real laugh out of me, brief and painful though it was. "Yes, ma'am."
The ward had gone dimmer while I sat in the side room. Lamps were turned low. Evening had sunk fully outside the clinic windows, leaving the glass black and reflective. I could see movement near the far cot where Snow had been laid up: one healer crossing, another adjusting something at the bedside. I did not see Rose. Whether that relieved me or disappointed me, I could not rightly say.
I stepped out slowly, limp worse than before and unlikely to improve by morning. Every stride taught me some new boundary I had not wanted to learn. My body no longer felt like a tool I could force into service by sheer meanness. It felt conditional now. Compromised and treacherous in ways pain alone had not prepared me for.
At the front threshold, I paused long enough to settle Virgil's hat lower against the early summer air.
Three things stood clear to me then in a way nothing else had all day.
My body was failing me.
Rose was moving toward Snow instead of away from him.
And whatever it might cost to stop that, I had already come up short.
Outside, New Bisman lay hushed under darkening sky, with only a few windows still lit and the road silvered faint by rain and dust. Somewhere behind me, in that clinic full of boiled linen and bad luck, Rose was still tied by circumstance, gratitude, and possibility to a man I did not trust and could not yet prove dangerous.
And if it was not just gratitude taking hold in her, then I had every reason in the world to be afraid.
Death of a Wildfire (25th Hunger Games) - Chapter II
âThe last of the human freedoms is to choose oneâs attitude in any given set of circumstances.â
â Viktor Frankl
<<<PREVIOUS CHAPTER | NEXT CHAPTER>>>
The first time Virgil Tempest brought Rose home, she was small enough to fit in the crook of one arm and loud enough to shame a whole room full of grown men.
That was how he told it, anyhow.
I was too young to remember the beginning cleanly, and Rose, of course, did not remember it at all. Though stories like hers did not stay private in District 9. They passed through little towns like New Bisman until they became something between history and weather. Everyone had a version. The healers had one. Or the catchers. Maybe even the peacekeepers, but Virgil had the only one that mattered.
It had been late July, the kind of late July that made the prairie feel mean. The fires that summer were beyond controllable. Heat dragged itself low over the grasslands and sat there all day, heavy and yellow, until even the wind seemed tired of moving. The wheat stood high enough to hide a child and dry enough to take offense at a spark. Everybody with sense watched the horizon that time of year. In District 9, a person could smell a bad day before they saw it.
Virgil smelled that one coming before noon.
A grassfire had started north of New Bisman, not far off the old hunter's road where the land sloped toward a run of scrub cottonwoods and dry chokecherry. Nobody knew whether it started from lightning, a carelessly dumped ash pan, or one of those harvesting machines the Capitol kept insisting were more efficient than safe. By the time the alarm reached the firecatchers, the flames had already begun running with the wind.
Virgil rode Crocus, his stallion, straight into the smoke.
That was the thing about him. He never entered a fire like a fool, never ran at it as if courage were only another word for speed. He listened first. Watched how the smoke folded, how the grass bent, how the heat pressed against his face. A fire had manners, he used to say, just ugly ones. It would tell you what it meant to do if you had the patience to let it speak.
That day, the fire told him it had found prey. And not its usual feast of sparse cattle, field workers, or unfortunate merchants.
A womanâŠ
He saw her at the edge of a shallow draw, half collapsed in the blackened grass where the smoke had curled thick and low enough to drown a body before flame ever reached it. She was dressed in a style that did not belong to New Bisman or District 9 in that sense. A long, travel-worn tunic belted at the ribs, boots laced high and stained with ash, a blue scarf dragged loose at one shoulder. Her hair, dark under soot, had decorative feathers threaded through it, painted in shades of blue so vivid the color showed even through smoke. Owl feathers, Virgil had said. These had been cleaned, shaped, painted, and carried with meaning.
Northman, he thought at once.
Now Northmen, according to Panem, were supposed to myths, just a few crazy rebels that took to living too far north after the Dark Days. However, folks like Ziibi were more than willing to tell us otherwise.
He claimed that they had travelled from another world entirely. Their ancestors being among the last survivors of this strange, other land. Tunka Ziibi had even claimed there was a point where these nomads would barter with the districts, still keeping to themselves once their business was done. All of this was only for a brief period of time before the Dark Days, forever scaring off any hope that a Northman would dare reach 9âs boarder⊠until that day.
That was the first thing that made the rescue dangerous in a different way. Panem liked every person cataloged neatly enough to be taxed, starved, reaped, or punished. Northmen wandered too much in the old ways for the Capitol's taste. They had their own dress, their own music, their own dead, their own names for the stars. District folk had learned to be wary of anyone the Capitol mistrusted, if only because standing too near them when the blow came could break your bones too.
Virgil, being Virgil, did not have time for politics while a Northwoman was dying in front of him.
He hauled her up with one arm, got her over Crocus's saddle with more desperation than grace, and rode out of the draw with sparks biting at his coat. By the time he reached open ground, her breathing had already gone wrong. She wasnât even coughing. Instead, it was a thin, wet, rattling breath of someone whose lungs had swallowed too much smoke and whose body was forgetting how to fight for itself.
He rode her to the New Bisman clinic so hard Crocus was flecked white by the time the doors came into view.
The clinic was never built for mercy. It was built for usefulness, which in Panem is not the same thing. Adobe walls, narrow windows, floors scrubbed too often and never clean enough. The sort of place where the poor went when infection had already made an argument and where firecatchers went when they had lied too long about being fine. Virgil burst in carrying that Northman woman like some farmhand would carry a newborn calf, except there was no hope or life inevitable for her. Only smoke, blood, ash, and the hard panic of a man who knew he had beaten the flame and might still lose the life.
The healers took one look and stopped asking questions that did not matter.
They cut away the blue scarf. Unlaced the tunic. Found burns along her arms, soot in her nose and mouth, skin gone ashen under the dirt. Her pupils did not answer the light right. Her pulse fluttered and then thinned beneath the healer's fingers. The feathers in her hair came loose as they worked, bright blue against the dirty sheet, little owl eyes painted near the tips like something meant to guard a road between worlds.
Then one of the healers went very still.
"Tempest," she said, though Virgil was only a younger captain then. Still a man with a dream to save everyone. "She's carrying."
Virgil looked down and saw what panic had hidden from him. The woman's belly, rounded beneath the loosened fabric. Not far along enough to be ready, maybe, but far enough that whatever life inside her had already taken its own shape.
The room changed after that.
It was not that anyone had believed the woman's chances good before. They had not. But hope, even a foolish one, was a thing a room could hold for a while if nobody named the ending too soon. Once they knew there was a child, the hope split in two. One half died with the mother already slipping beyond them. The other screamed to be saved.
The head healer checked the woman's eyes again. Listened at her chest. Pressed two fingers to her throat and waited long enough that the waiting itself became an answer.
"We can't bring her backâŠ" she said with a solemn beat.
Virgil always said that was the worst sentence he had ever heard from a doctor. It left him standing there with his hands still full of effort and no place left to put it.
"The baby?" he asked.
Nobody answered right away.
Then the head healer looked toward the table, toward the thin cabinets, toward the two apprentices who had gone pale as milk, and said, "Maybe. If we do it now."
Now meant without permission. Without family or a name for the woman beyond the feathers in her hair and the smoke in her lungs. Now meant cutting open the body of someone already too far gone because the living thing inside her had not yet had time to be claimed by death as well.
Virgil stepped back then.
There are men who think leadership means deciding every hard thing yourself. Virgil was never one of them. He knew enough to let healers do healer's work. He stood near the wall with his hat in both hands, blackened coat smoking faintly at the hem, and watched while the clinic made a choice no decent world would have forced upon them.
The woman died before the child was born.
No one said it aloud at first. The room was too busy trying to keep one heartbeat from following another out of the world. The healers worked fast and ugly, speaking in clipped phrases, hands moving in ways that seemed brutal only because birth had been dragged too close to death for anyone to pretend it was gentle. Virgil watched the head healer lift the child out into the dim clinic light, slick and furious and quiet for one terrifying breath.
Then she screamed.
Goodness, how she screamed.
Virgil said the sound struck the room harder than the firebell. A thin, bright, indignant cry that had no respect for the dead, for smoke, for Panem, or for the fact that every grown person in that room had just made peace with losing something. The baby drew one breath, then another, and turned red with the effort of living.
Her hair, damp and plastered to her little skull, was the color of fire catching sunrise.
That was the first thing Virgil noticed.
Not the strength of her little lungs. Her hair.
Fiery red. Red as embers under ash, as the far edge of a grassfire right before it grows teeth. Almost like something that had no business surviving smoke and yet had done so out of pure spite.
The healer wrapped her in a clean cloth and looked at Virgil like she already knew what was about to happen.
"No kin papers," she said, her brow furrowed with a bit of confusion. "Nothing but those feathers."
He did not answer at once. He looked at the dead woman, then at the child who had come from her, then at his own hands. He had pulled one life from the fire and failed to save it. The world, in all its cruelty, had put another into those same hands before he had even washed the soot off.
Virgil Tempest was not a man who mistook second chances for accidents.
By sundown, he had signed what papers District 9 allowed. By the next day, the mayor at the time had found a way to make the adoption legal enough that the Capitol could not easily argue without admitting it cared what happened to a nameless district baby. Virgil named her Rosabel after a prairie rose he once claimed could bloom through poor soil if it was stubborn enough, and Strix for the woman with the blue owl feathers whose life had become the first grief wrapped around Rose's own.
Rosabel Tempest-Strix.
A name made of rescue, failure, and ghost.
Virgil carried her into the firecatcher post two days later and showed her off like he had personally negotiated her existence with the Maker and won.
Some folks do remember that part, though only in pieces. A baby bundled against his chest. Men and women with burned hands leaning in too close and then pretending they had not softened when she grabbed one of their fingers. Virgil wearing a grin so wide it made him look foolish and not minding one bit. Somebody asking if he had lost his damn mind. Somebody else saying the child had more hair than Catcher Rolette.
"Careful," Virgil warned, holding her up for inspection. "This here's my prickle briar. She bites."
She didnât bite. Obviously. She slept through most of it with her mouth open, having already decided the firecatcher force was not worth waking for.
He loved that child with the sort of astonishment a man gets when he has spent too many years assuming that some doors have closed on him forever. Virgil never married. Not for lack of wanting a home, I think. Only because the force had eaten his years in long hard strips, and because duty had a way of making a man late to every tender thing until they stopped assuming tenderness is waiting. Then Rose came screaming out of smoke and grief, and he found himself a father before he had time to plan what kind he meant to be.
Naturally, he became the sort who overdid it.
He showed her off at posts. Took her in a sling to supply meetings until the acting deputy threatened to write him up for making half the catchers useless with cooing. Let her sit on Crocus before she could walk, one hand braced to her back and the other ready to catch her if she so much as breathed wrong. He learned to braid hair badly, then well enough, then let Misea fix it anyway. He spoke to that child like she was both a miracle and a person, which is rarer than folks like to admit.
And when she grew, he did not try to make her into himself.
That might have been the best of him.
Virgil Tempest was a firecatcher down to the marrow. He loved the work, or at least loved what the work meant when stripped of danger, politics, and Capitol hunger. He believed in standing between flame and field. Between disaster and the people who could not afford one more loss. He believed in the skill of it, the honor of it, the strange old beauty of riding a fireline while the whole world turned orange around you.
That being said, he never wanted Rose to inherit it as her only path.
"You can love a thing without feedinâ it your whole body," he told her once, when she was maybe eight and furious because he would not let her train proper with the youngest catchers. "Remember that, prickle briar. A callinâ ain't much good if it don't leave you alive enough to answer something else."
He, instead, enrolled her in the academy as soon as she was old enough. Paid what needed paying. Argued when fees changed. Put her in a uniform that swallowed her whole at twelve and told her she looked like a professor in need of a taller chair. And because Virgil had a poor habit of caring in plural, he helped with Waaska and Nibs too, making sure Misea's children had a fighting chance at education instead of being tossed straight into work because Panem found young backs useful.
He wanted them higher than him. Not better necessarily. He never thought of learning that way. Higher, meaning freer. With more rooms in their minds than District 9 usually gave its children keys to.
Rose was his by name only, some folks said. They were fools.
Blood is an old argument people keep having because it gives them something simple to measure. Virgil never needed it. He loved that girl through thick and thin. At her best and worse, healthy and ill. Even in every ride away from home where he looked back long enough to make certain she was still waving.
The image I remember clearest came much later, when Rose was five or maybe six, old enough to run barefoot and wild-haired through the clearing before anyone could catch her.
"Papa! Papa!"
She came flying out of the yard in a dirty sundress with her red hair loose around her face, one hand held high like she had discovered treasure. Virgil sat atop Crocus at the edge of the road, spurs glinting faintly, cattleman's hat low over his brow, that peregrine feather tucked into the band as if he had ridden straight out of some forbidden old-world tale. Legends spoke of men like that once. Cavaliers. Cowboys. A species the old histories claimed died when the Wild West ended. But looking at Virgil Tempest on a horse, with prairie behind him and fire ahead of him, a person might have thought cowboys had not died at all. They had only learned new wars.
"Prickle briar!" he called, bending low as she stretched up on her toes and offered him a small stemmed sunflower. The first of the season, maybe. Or only the first she had decided mattered. "Ain't you the sweetest thing."
"Fo' good luck," she said, solemn as a judge, then kissed the flower head with all the ceremony of a blessing. "So you neva' die."
Virgil laughed, but gently. He took the flower and slid it into his breast pocket like it was a medal. "That's a strong brine to brew, prickle briar. Let's hope it works then."
"It will!" she told him, because children still believe the world can be ordered by love if love speaks loudly enough.
She patted Crocus once, grinning up at both of them. "Love you!"
"Love ya more," Virgil said.
Then he rode off toward the plains, waving until the road swallowed him, while Rose clapped and called for his safe return. Her little silhouette dwindled in the morning light, red hair bright as flame, arm still waving like she might hold him to the earth by force of wanting.
I remember that Rose.
The one who thanked her father for existing or believed he would cross all twelve districts and the dead lands beyond them if it meant coming home to her. The one who still, even at seventeen, had some private child-place in her heart where Virgil Tempest could not die because he had promised too often that he would be careful.
That child-place burned with him.
After I told her, the rest of the day went strange in my memory. Questions, then crying, then the awful emptiness that follows crying when a person has no strength left to ask the same impossible thing again. I remembered giving her space because there was no decent alternative. I remembered finding out District 5 had managed to contain the spill and that no one else had died. Not no one, of course. There remained enough for funerals, barely enough for burial, which Panem would no doubt call closure because Panem had always been fond of small mercies with official labels.
I remembered crashing at Burr Scranton's family place because I could not face the Tempest house after leaving Rose in pieces.
Burr's mother offered coffee and some liquor, which told me she had a good sense for grief even if she expressed it like a woman trying to scold the world into behaving.
I slept on a narrow loveseat that had not been built with injured firecatchers in mind. By dawn, my leg had stiffened into something hateful and my back had joined the rebellion out of pure spite. The kitchen beyond the wall carried low voices before I opened my eyes proper.
"Caliber," Mrs. Scranton said, which meant she was either worried or angry and had decided one could do the work of the other. "Is scout work gonna really pay with the rent?"
"Ain't gonna be doin' it too long, Ma," Burr answered. "Sides, it ain't like I'm an amputate now."
"Don't you joke like that."
"Wasn't jokin'. I still got all my pieces. Mostly."
"See? This why Waylynn ain't joining the catchers. Risky business, little reward."
"Field work ain't exactly safe neither," Burr muttered. "Waylynn's near fifteen. He can decide what he ought to do with his life."
"Over my dead body, hoping."
I had no place in the matter, so naturally I got up and limped into it anyhow.
Mrs. Scranton looked older than forty-some in the way district women often did when grief, work, and childbirth had each taken a turn at carving. Her dark hair had begun going gray at the temples, and her face held the deep tiredness of someone who had married young, buried a husband in a feed mixing accident, and watched her eldest son become a breadwinner before his shoulders had fully settled into manhood. She looked me over with the frank mercy of a woman who had seen too many wounded boys pretend to be men.
"Coffee's fresh if ya want some, hon," she said, nodding toward the kettle. "Liquor's under the flour sack in the corner. Don't tell me which you take. Gives me plausible innocence."
"Thanks, Mrs. Scranton," I said. "But I was just 'bout to be on my way."
Burr leaned both hands against the counter. "Ya comin' to the funeral then? I got some clothes you can borrow. Not good clothes, mind. Just better than showing up lookin' like you got dragged by a mule."
"I'm going in catcher gear," I said. "Tempest wasn't a man for dramatics."
"True enough."
"Well, I think that's disrespectful," Mrs. Scranton put in. "Man should get some respect after his life has been bit."
Burr rolled his eyes. "Ma..."
But she had already planted the thought, and I hated that she had. Virgil would not have cared whether I wore a tie or a flour sack. Rose might. Misea maybe. Waaska and Nibs, poor kids, might remember who had stood beside them looking like he had not cared enough to dress death properly.
"I'll check back with you," I told Burr.
He nodded, softer than usual. "Do that. And Rhodes?"
I paused at the door.
"Don't be stupid about that leg. That's my job."
I would have laughed if the morning had belonged to another life.
Errante was saddled by the time the sun lifted fully. The dapple gray gave me one long-suffering look when I mounted, as if he too had opinions about my medical decisions, but he carried me east through New Bisman without complaint. The town felt deflated, like they usually did in late July. District towns always had worked enough to prevent proper stillness. Though grief had moved through the streets ahead of me. Merchants spoke lower. A woman near the market crossed herself in that half-hidden household way when she recognized Virgil's old unit badge on my coat. Peacekeepers even watched without their usual appetite.
By the time I reached the Tempest house, the world had gone too careful.
The home had taken on that strange sort of quiet loss leaves behind when it has already spent itself too loudly in the night.
But not really silence, exactly. Silence has a sense of peace to it.
That was a house still moving because it had to. Somebody in the back room opening and shutting drawers with more care than usual, as if roughness itself had become disrespectful. Wolfie paced the yard in uneven little routes, pausing now and again to stare at the road like the shape of Virgil might still come riding up if the dog kept watch faithfully enough. Even the horses, like Stone seemed subdued where she stood near the fence, one hind leg bent at ease, though her ears kept flicking toward the house every time the door gave the smallest sound.
I tied Errante near the trough and stood outside the back door for a spell before knocking.
My leg was already giving me hell. The night had not done it any kindness, and the ride from Burr's place had only reminded every bone that something in me was cracked. Still, I could not quite bring myself to step inside right away. The house had belonged to Virgil yesterday in ways that felt impossible now. His coat was probably still on the peg. His boots still by the threshold. A tin in his pocket still holding tobacco scraps. You can remove a body from a place, sure enough, but that does not mean the room understands what happened.
I knocked once against the frame, soft enough not to sound official.
No answer.
I knocked again and eased the door open just wide enough to look in.
The kitchen was empty. Or nearly. Somebody had banked the stove low, and a basin of washwater sat forgotten beside folded black cloth and an open sewing can. Through the window over the sink, morning lay pale and thin across the yard, not yet committed to warmth. I heard movement out back, closer to the paddock, and changed my step.
Rose sat on the bottom rail of the fence with her hands tucked into the sleeves of one of Virgil's old work shirts, plainly thrown over her black dress against the chill and against everything else. The hem swallowed half her legs. One boot toe dragged little half-moons in the dirt beneath her while she stared at nothing I could see. Her braids had been done at some point, though not that morning by the look of them. They were looser than she usually wore them, ribbons absent, strands lifting around her temples.
I stopped a few paces off.
She must have heard my uneven pace, because she said, "You can come sit if you want. I'm too tired to pretend I haven't noticed you."
I let out a breath that might have become a laugh in better weather and limped over to the fence. "You always have a knack for spoilin' mysteries."
"Mm."
That was all.
I eased myself onto the lower rail a little sideways to save my leg and looked out over the paddock with her. The horses stood beyond the far side, heads low in the grass, moving slow and aimless as if even they could feel the wrongness in the day. Wolfie made one pass by us, nose near the dirt, then flopped heavily beneath the fence and laid his muzzle across his paws with a sigh like an old man giving up on a conversation.
For a while neither of us said anything. That was the honest part.
Not people in mourning speaking in poems, knowing exactly how to comfort one another. Just two souls worn thin enough by the last day and night that speech had started to feel like labor of its own.
The prairie wind moved through the grass beyond the house in long, pale sweeps. Somewhere farther up the road, a wagon rattled past, then faded. Rose pulled her sleeves farther over her hands.
"I didn't sleep," she said finally.
"I reckoned not."
"Every time I thought I might, I heard somebody moving in the house and remembered that... wasn't possible."
I nodded, though that felt too small for the shape of it.
Her voice did not sound especially tearful now. That frightened me worse than if she had been sobbing. Some folks cry themselves empty and sleep from sheer bodily defeat. Rose, when pushed too far inward, had a way of going very still. As a boy, I used to think stillness meant calm. Years had corrected me.
She bent and picked a loose splinter from the fence rail with her thumbnail. Turned it over once. Dropped it.
"I keep thinking," she said, "that maybe I shouldn't go. You know? To university."
I looked at her. "How so?"
"It'd be like... like I'd be leaving him behind." Her throat moved once. "Well, I'd be leaving him behind regardless if I left, but now? I wouldn't expect to return to him."
The wind shifted, pushing the smell of damp dirt and horse sweat our way. I said nothing. She was not finished.
"It feels ugly now," she went on. "The timing of it. Me talking to the mayor about the Capitol and books and studies while he..." Her jaw tightened. "Like I was already half gone in my mind before he'd even left."
"That ain't true."
She gave me a look then, not angry, just tired enough to resent being contradicted too quickly. I tried again.
"You're following what you want," I said. "That's all. You were excited. And sides... he would've liked that."
"He would've humored it. There's a difference."
"No," I said. "Not with your papa there ain't."
That quieted her, though not in retreat. More like she was weighing the sentence for weakness. Rose had always done that. Most folks listened to words for comfort or insult. She listened to structure. Whether they could hold.
After a while, she said, very softly, "Part of me keeps wondering if this is the answer."
"The answer to what?"
"To what happens next."
I knew where she was heading and felt my stomach go hollow.
Rose pulled one knee up slightly beneath the shirt hem and pressed her sleeve-covered hands around it. "Maybe this is the sign. Maybe I was never meant to go anywhere. Maybe I was stupid to think I could."
I looked at her profile and, maker forgive me, some ugly private part of me answered yes before the better part stood up.
Yes. Stay here. Stay where I can see you. Stay where grief and work and weather are cruel in ordinary ways I understand. Stay where the world is small enough that if it reaches for you, I can swat it away. Stay where I can protect youâŠ
The thought was there and gone in the same breath, and I hated it on sight. Because it was not love speaking then. Or not the best shape of it. It was fear. Fear wearing devotion's coat and hoping nobody looked too closely.
I turned my gaze toward the pasture so she would not see what crossed my face.
"You ain't stupid," I said, though it came rougher than I meant. "And this ain't a sign."
"How do you know?"
The question was not defiant. That made it harder.
I rubbed my thumb once against the side of my index finger, feeling the faint ghost-bite where the crossbow string had sat. "Because if every bad thing that happened got called a sign, nobody in District 9 would ever leave their porch."
She did not answer.
I kept going, because I could feel the scales tipping and knew if I did not catch it now, it might settle in her deep enough to stay.
"Rose," I said, quieter this time. "You asked Lancaster whether a person could learn somethin' worth carrying home. Remember you sayinâ that."
Her eyes flicked toward me. "You heard that?"
"Figured thatâs what you meant. And that wasn't the question of some girl itching to run off and forget where she came from. That was you. Plain as day."
The smallest change came over her face. Not hope, exactly. Recognition, maybe. The misery of being seen accurately when you are too tired to argue.
She looked away. "It doesn't matter now."
âRosabel,â My voice turned stern. "It does."
"My father is dead, Auphie."
I had no answer that was not already ruined by the fact.
She let the words sit there between us, eyes squinting into the landscape, searching for answers that were not there. "And if I leave now... if I still want those things after this? What kind of daughter does that make me?"
That struck harder than I expected, maybe because it was the truest thing she had said yet.
Not am I capable. Or will I be chosen. Not even can I survive it. Just⊠what kind of daughter keeps wanting a future after burying her father?
I looked down at the dirt, at the mark her boot had worried into it.
When I spoke again, I chose the words slowly. I couldnât afford them not to be.
"The kind he raised."
She went still. I could feel my own pulse in my throat. The selfish part of me had not gone anywhere. It was still there, hoping she would say maybe I was wrong, maybe she would stay, maybe that would be easier. Easier to know she was close. Easier to pretend close and safe were the same thing.
Virgil would have hated me for it.
Or maybe not hated. Worse. He would have understood me and expected better anyway.
I stared hard at the paddock fence and made myself speak like the man deserved. "Don't you go makin' his death into the thing that buries you too."
Rose's head turned slowly.
I pressed on before courage deserted me. "If you stay, then stay because it's what you want. Because after all this, you still decide this is where your life belongs. Not⊠Not death came mean and early and now you reckon you owe the dirt your whole future in return..."
Her breathing had gone shallow. I could hear it.
"He wouldn't have wanted that," I said. "And you know that."
At that, her face finally changed. Not into tears right away. Into effort. The kind it takes not to cry when the crying has already started somewhere deeper and is only waiting for a crack.
She laughed once, very quietly, and there was no humor in it. "You make it sound simple."
"It ain't."
"NoâŠ"
We sat with that for a while.
Rose pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and held them there. When she lowered them again, her lashes were wet, though the tears had not yet fallen.
"I don't know how to do both," she said.
"Both what?"
"Mourn him and keep wanting things." She gave a shaken sigh.
There are sentences a body remembers hearing in the exact place they landed. That was one of them. I looked at her fully then, at the rawness of her, the effort it took to sit upright and say something that honest, and I thought grief's cruelest trick might be convincing people that love for the dead and duty to the living had to war against each other until one won.
"If anybody was stubborn enough to do both," I said, "it'd be you."
That got the ghost of a smile out of her. Thin as thread, but there.
"I suppose that's meant to be comfort?"
"It's meant to be observation."
The smile trembled, then failed. She dropped her eyes to the dirt and nodded once, filing the words somewhere she might return to later when she had more strength. After a minute or two, Rose said, "I'll think on it."
She was not convinced. I knew that. Her grief was too fresh, too clever, and too ready to make philosophy out of pain if given the chance. But she had heard me. More than that, she trusted I meant it, which was almost harder to bear.
"All right," I said.
She nodded once more and at last let one tear fall. She wiped it away in the same motion, irritated by its existence more than comforted by the release.
Eventually, we made an effort to go back inside. Rose stopped in the doorway so suddenly I near walked into her. For a second, I thought she had forgotten something practical, her shawl maybe, or the black ribbon Minaha had likely set aside for her dress. However, she did not turn toward the kitchen or the washbasin or any of the scattered signs of morning's hurry. She stood with one hand braced lightly against the doorframe, looking upward toward the loft with that distant, struck expression people get when memory comes upon them faster than speech.
"You all right?" I asked.
She blinked once, as though returning from farther away than the loft above us, then nodded. "Yeah."
The answer was thin, but not false.
Before I could say anything more, she slipped past me and started up the narrow stairs. I stayed where I was.
I donât think I meant to. More because that house still felt like it had rules in that I no longer knew how to obey. Even walking through the kitchen had felt like trespass. The place was too full of Virgil in all the ordinary ways death hated most. A nick in the table edge where he'd once dropped a knife cleaning trout and laughed about it for a week. The peg by the door. The spare gloves he kept beneath the counter. He was everywhere except where a person might reach him.
Above me, the loft boards gave a quiet creak under Rose's steps.
Then silence. Then the softened sound of something shifting.
I did not belong up there. That was the plain truth, or at least the one I had taught myself to live by. Virgil had fed me. Taught me. Patched me up. Cussed me out. Trusted me with work that mattered. There were whole years of my life I could not speak honestly about without his shape standing somewhere in the middle. Even so, there remained in me, stubborn as a splinter under skin, the mean little understanding that I was not his by any means. Not his in the way Rose was his by name and law, or even Waaska and Nibs by blood, or any living proof that he had once built a life that did not begin with accident or pity.
I had been taken in. Loved, maybe, if I was brave enough to name it. Though taken in all the same. That difference had never mattered much when Virgil was alive. He had a way of making belonging sound simpler than ownership. Still, death makes cowards of old comforts. It turns every kindness into something you suddenly fear you imagined too generously.
The loft floor creaked again, and when Rose came back down, she had Virgil's hat in both hands.
The same one he forgot the day of his death.
I do not know why that almost did me through quicker than the funeral itself threatened to. Maybe loss can survive in the abstract so long as nobody presses a real thing into your sight. Nevertheless, there it was, the old weathered black hat with the sweat-dark band, the slight warp to the brim, and the peregrine feather worn soft by years of being thumbed into shape by the same hand. I had seen it a thousand times, whether that a hitching rail or the kitchen peg. Pulled low against prairie sun. Tipped back off his brow when he laughed too hard. Ordinary as his boots. As normal as his voice.
And now it looked wrong in Rose's hands. He ought to have still been wearing it. He ought to be here.
Rose came the rest of the way down careful and slow. When she reached the last step, she did not speak. She only stood before me with the hat resting light against her palms, her eyes gone red again though I knew she would hate me for noticing.
I looked at the hat, then at her, then away. "R-Rosabel..."
She held it out a little. Something in my chest went tight and hateful.
"No." I winced.
Her expression changed very slightly. Not in surprise, exactly. More like she had expected resistance and was already tired of having been right.
"Auphidius, please-"
"No," I said again, firmer this time, and took one useless half-step back with my good leg, as if distance would settle the matter. "That ain't mine."
For a second, the only sound in the kitchen was the low mutter of the stove and the faint ticking of cooling metal near the window. Rose did not lower the hat.
"It should be."
I laughed once, short and joyless. "Well, it isn't."
The words came rougher than I meant them to, but I could not help it. There are some griefs that come out looking too much like anger to be distinguished from it.
Rose's fingers tightened slightly around the brim. "Auphie-"
"I can't wear that."
"And why not?"
I nearly said because he's dead just for the cruelty of hearing it stated plain, but the sentence died before it reached my mouth. What came instead was smaller and meaner for being true.
"Because⊠I donât deserve it."
She looked at me with a kind of exhausted steadiness that only made me feel younger and pettier by comparison. "I know that."
"Well, then-"
"That isn't what I'm implying."
I dragged a hand over the back of my neck and turned partly away from her, toward the counter, toward anything that was not that hat held between us like a test I had no decent chance of passing.
"That's your papa's," I said. "It oughta stay with his family."
The moment the words left me, I hated them.
It wasnât because they were untrue in any legal or sensible sense. I knew exactly what I was doing with them. Shrinking the matter into entitlement so I would not have to answer the larger thing underneath.
Rose heard it too. When she spoke again, her voice had changed, but she didnât raise it. Just clearer. "You are his family."
I shut my eyes for half a second. "Rose..."
"No.â Rose retorted back with a bit of a bite. âDon't do that. Not to him."
I opened my eyes and found her green ones fixed on me, wet and unwavering.
"Don't stand there and talk like he only belonged to the people who shared his name," she said. "Don't do that to him, and don't do it to yourself..."
The kitchen narrowed around us.
I looked at the hat and saw too much. Memories of love, tears, and emotions flowed in my head. Virgil in the pasture teaching me how to calm a skittish mare without making a performance of authority. Virgil leaning back with one bootheel braced on the stove rail, hat tipped low while he pretended not to listen to Rose explaining some schoolbook idea he plainly loved hearing her tell. Virgil laughing through tobacco when I made a fool of myself on the line. Virgil tossing that same hat onto my head one summer afternoon just to see me sputter and swat at it while he near laughed himself lame.
I would have sooner taken a blade to the ribs than admitted how much of my life had come to hang on the shape of that man's approval.
Still, shame is stubborn.
"I wasn't his son," I said, quieter now. "Not really."
Rose's face broke a little from the effort of hearing something she could not believe I still believed.
"Auphie, please," she said, and there was almost a plea in it now, though not for herself. "Who taught you to ride? Who taught you how to walk into a fire and still come back out of it?"
I did not answer. I couldn't.
"He was the one who worried over you when you were hurt. Who bragged on you when you weren't around to hear it. A-And trusted you enough to send you with the work that matteredâŠ"
My throat had gone hot and tight. Rose took one step nearer, still holding the hat between us, but gentler now, as though she understood this was not a quarrel she needed to win. It was a grief she needed to guide through.
"In every way that ever counted," she said softly, "He⊠He was your father too."
That did it. And it wasnât clean neither. Nothing so merciful.
At that, something in me that had been standing hard and stupid finally gave.
I took the hat from her as carefully as if it were some fragile relic salvaged from an ancient burial ground. It was lighter than I expected though. Rose watched, saying nothing now, giving me the dignity of silence. I turned the hat once in my hands, thumb grazing the inside band where the leather had gone soft with age. My vision blurred at the edges, and I set my jaw against it because I still had not learned how to let grief happen in front of somebody else without feeling half flayed by the fact.
Then, before I could think myself out of it, I put it on.
The brim sat a little low over my brow. A little looser than it had on him, maybe. Or maybe my imagination refused the fit on principle.
Rose let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh breaking beneath tears. When I looked up, she was smiling. Not in the happy sense though. Never that. Just with something in it that hurt near as much. Relief, maybe? Â Or recognition? Just for one brief, impossible second, she had found continuity where the last two days had only offered severance.
"It suits you," she said with finality.
I shook my head. "Don't lie to be kind."
"That wasn't..." Rose, despite her weeping state, glared at my sarcasm in a knowing manner. ââŠthat wasnât what I meant)
"No?"
"No." She shook her head, her smile trembled, then held. "Just truth."
I tried to answer her and failed. Whatever I meant to say caught wrong somewhere in my chest. Rose understood that too, because without warning, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me.
The force of it was small. Rose had never been one for overly dramatic gestures. Still, it landed harder than any blow I had taken in the explosion. For half a second, I stood there like a fool, one hand still awkwardly on the brim of Virgil's hat as if I feared movement might knock it loose. Then I put my arms around her as carefully as my body would let me.
She was shaking, but not violently. Just enough to tell the truth of the strain she had held back since dawn. I rested my chin lightly against the top of her head and closed my eyes.
There are embraces people give for comfort, and there are embraces people give because something in them has recognized the other as part of the same ruined thing. This was the latter. We were not consoling one another so much as confirming the shape of the loss between us.
After a while, Rose pulled back just enough to swipe at her face with the heel of her hand, annoyed by the wetness there.
"You ought to keep it on," she murmured.
I swallowed against a nervous prick in my throat. "For the funeral?"
"For today." Her eyes lifted to the brim again, and that small, aching smile came back. "For him."
I nodded once. There did not seem to be anything left worth saying after that.
By the time Misea arrived on horseback with the Mniwakan family behind her, the morning had found a little more shape. It wasnât the comfortable shape routine. Just shape. She rode in wearing her merchant coat over black, one hand tight on the reins, her face held together with the sharp effort of a woman who had already wept and knew she would again. Waaska rode close behind, eyes swollen, while Nibs sat before Gami on a broader horse and looked smaller than a boy his age had any right to look. Minaha came in a wagon with Ziibi wrapped beside her, his cane across his lap and his eyes fixed forward.
Misea saw the hat on my head.
For a second, loss moved over her face in a way that made me want to take it off and apologize. Then she nodded once with acknowledgment.
So, when we left for the burial plot, I kept it on.
The funeral was short. That was not unusual. Sacred gatherings had been watched too closely for too many years in Panem for anybody to trust long ceremonies with their whole heart. Anything resembling reverence that lasted too long could be called assembly. Assembly could be called unrest. Unrest, if the Capitol was feeling honest about its appetites, could be called treason. So, in District 9, death had learned how to compress itself. Folks buried their dead quick, blessed them quieter, and trusted the weight of the crowd to say what law would not permit aloud.
Still, for all its brevity, Virgil's funeral did not feel small.
The burial plot sat outside New Bisman where the grassland broke open just enough to make room for the family dead, close enough to town for mourners to walk, far enough from daily roads that no one would risk stepping careless over a grave. The clouds had yet to clear by afternoon, leaving the whole stretch of earth under a dark, low sky that seemed unwilling to move on. Wind worked the prairie hard, bending the taller grass flat in long, rough sweeps. Every now and then it kicked up enough dust to sting the eyes, though not a soul there would have admitted whether it was the wind doing the work.
It seemed every firecatcher in District 9 had come. Veterans. New trainees. Border scouts still half-smelling of smoke. Men and women with burns old and new. Families from the fields. People from town. Traders who had done business with Virgil. Mill workers who had likely only spoken to him twice in all their lives and still came because some people, when they die, take part of a district's shape with them. Even a few peacekeepers stood off to one side, stiff-backed and out of place in their pale uniforms, though I noticed more than one had removed his helmet despite regulation. Stand Up was among them. I did not care enough to wonder whether the gesture came from respect, guilt, or merely an understanding that to keep a helmet on in front of Virgil Tempest's grave would mark a man out poorly in that crowd.
Hats came off all the same.
Dozens of them. Nearest thing to bowing District 9 trusted. No florid kneeling nor grand displays. Just the simple baring of the head beneath the sky and the admission that somebody worth something had gone under it.
I took off Virgil's hat with both hands.
The wind touched my hair at once, cold and searching. For a foolish second I wanted the hat back on my head immediately. It didnât stem rom vanity but from the sudden wrongness of holding it instead of wearing it. Rose had been right. It was something to carry. Trouble was, I still did not know how to hold it without feeling like I was stealing from the dead.
The older catchers came first with the coffin. They bore it slowly, carefully, as though any roughness now might be a final insult. The wood was plain and dark, built quickly but not carelessly. Panem did not permit much extravagance to district funerals unless a death could be made patriotic enough to suit Capitol theater, and Virgil had never been a man Panem knew how to celebrate honestly. With that in mind, the coffin stayed simple. The sort of thing a man from District 9 would recognize as respect.
They lowered it to rest above the open grave.
I stood not far behind Rose and the Mniwakans, with Misea looking on at what remained of her brother. Waaska and Nibs tucked close at either side of their mother. Nibs had gone quieter than I would have thought possible for him. Waaska's eyes were swollen red, though she was trying hard for her mother's sake to keep her face set proper. Rose had one hand fixed on Nibs's shoulder, not restraining him, just anchoring him there. She wore black, bonnet and all, and if someone had not known better, they might have thought her composed. I knew enough by then to read the strain in the set of her mouth, the dark half-moons under her eyes, the way she held her body so straight it bordered on punishment.
Rolette stood near the head of the grave with Mayor Lancaster a few paces off.
For a moment no one spoke.
The coffin hung there over the earth. The wind moved. A team of horses farther off gave a restless stamp. The district, for one hard strange second, seemed to gather itself around the shape of Virgil's absence and not yet know how to proceed.
Then Lancaster stepped forward.
He did not clear his throat dramatically. Did not throw his arms wide. He only removed his spectacles, folded them once, and held them in one hand while he faced us all with the sort of solemnity that comes easier to men practiced in public grief.
"Citizens of District 9," he said, and the wind near carried the words off before they settled. "We gather on this day to honor Chief Virgil Tempest, who died in service to this district, alongside his fellow catchers and the other souls lost in the border explosion."
He named them one by one.
Each of the dead from the spill. Each District 5 conductor meant to be buried by their own. Each catcher not fortunate enough to be standing there among us. As he spoke those names, guilt moved through me so sharply I near lost the thread of the rest. My eyes shut against it for one brief instant and all I could see was the border again.
With the light. The blast. The horse. The shape where Virgil ought to have been. Walking away from him. Leaving him. Telling myself I had obeyed when the better truth was that obedience had cost something I could never pay back.
By the time Lancaster's voice drew me back, my jaw had gone tight enough to ache.
"...and in Virgil's wake," he was saying, "District 9 has lost not only a chief, but one of its steadiest hands. He was a father, a brother, a guardian of our grainlands, and a man whose duty extended far beyond title. No child, no worker, no citizen in this district was beneath the measure of his concern."
That, more than anything fine or formal, struck the crowd true. The statement itself wasnât polished necessarily... but it was accurate.
A murmur moved through the gathered mourners, not talk exactly, just that low human sound people make when grief and agreement meet in the same chest and do not know what else to do with one another.
Lancaster looked out over us, then toward the grave.
"Chief Tempest altered the life of this district in ways the record may never fully hold," he continued. "His work preserved land, livelihoods, and children who may otherwise have been lost to the forever journey we regard as life. Whatever rank he wore, whatever labor he carried, he belonged also to the people gathered here now. For that, and for all else beyond language, District 9 owes him its respect."
He stepped back.
It didnât hold a clean conclusion. It was just enough said to place Virgil not only in the earth, but in the structure of the district he had helped shape.
Rolette stood still another second before nodding once toward the coffin. "If any of y'all wish to say farewell..."
Lancaster added quietly, "You may."
And then no one moved.
It struck me that every person there was waiting on somebody else to be brave first. To step toward the grave of an unsung man and make the first contact with finality. All those hats held against chests, with those hands rough from labor and weather, all of them held back for the same reason. Once one person crossed that distance, there would be no more pretending this was a ceremony and not the actual laying down of Virgil Tempest into the ground.
Then Rose broke first. Or maybe not broke. Chose.
She stepped forward out of the gathered family with the same strange, terrible steadiness she had worn all day. Wind tugged once at the edge of her bonnet as she came to the coffin and laid one hand against the wood. Her fingers stayed longer than the gesture required.
"Goodbye, Papa," she said. The words were barely above a breath, but in the hush that followed, they might as well have struck like thunder.
Then she bent and pressed one last kiss to the coffin lid. That was all it took.
After her came Ziibi, moving slower than age ought to have permitted but with no help asked for. Then Minaha. Then Misea, who did not cry until her hand touched the wood and then had to draw herself back before it took her entirely. Waaska stepped forward biting hard at the inside of her cheek. Nibs put both hands on the coffin and stood there so long Gami had to guide him gently aside. One by one the line formed.
Catchers.
Kin.
Neighbors.
Peacekeepers, even.
Each placed a hand to the coffin before it was lowered, some murmuring farewell, some silent, some crossing themselves in whatever half-forbidden household way had survived the Dark Days, some simply bowing their heads because grief needs little invention when it is real enough. The line stretched and shortened and stretched again until it seemed the whole district had touched him in parting.
I was the only one who had not moved. Or if not the only one, then certainly the one most conspicuously rooted. I do not know whether anyone noticed before Rolette did, but of course he was the one to speak. " Rhodes?"
His voice cut through my thoughts clean as wire. I turned and found him standing near the grave with the departer's torch in hand.
I had not even seen who lit it. One of the elder catchers, maybe. One of the old ritual keepers who still remembered how to perform such things quietly enough not to draw Capitol irritation. The flame bent and recovered in the wind, bright against the dark of the afternoon, crackling with a steadiness that seemed almost indecent after the violence of the gas fire that had taken Virgil.
Rolette held it toward me. "Would you do the honor?"
For one stupid second, I looked behind me as though there might be another Rhodes standing there to receive the request. Me?
The thought came and went with a sick emptiness.
I wanted to refuse, with a sickly feeling brewing in my chest. Rose stood closer. Misea had more right. Any man there with Virgil's blood or name or years over me had more right. What claim had I to be the one holding fire over the grave of a man I had failed to pull from it?
My eyes found Rose before I meant them to. She had tears standing in them again now, but she gave me one small nod all the same. Go onâŠ
I looked back at the torch.
The wind moved over the grass in one long low rush. Somewhere at my side, Burr shifted his weight, and I was aware in some dim removed fashion that he and the other catchers watched me, brightly cognizant of me carrying the new shape of the force in my hands whether they liked it or not. Rolette waited. Lancaster said nothing. The district itself seemed to draw up and hold.
I finally stepped forward.
My leg protested fierce enough to make me dizzy, but I scarcely felt it.
I reached for the torch, and the moment my hand closed around it, something old and ugly worked loose in my chest. Fire again. Always fire. Fire at the derailment. In the horse's eyes. At the edge of every field we had ever saved. Fire now, handed to me clean and ceremonial as though it had not already taken enough.
The coffin began its slow descent into the ground.
I stood at the head of the grave with the flame in hand and watched the box go down inch by inch until earth began swallowing line and shape with certainty all alike. The ritual words were somewhere in my memory, only permitted to be known and recited by catchers. Those words helped send the old departer's flame to the deceased to guide them through the afterlife. They had been pared down over years so the Capitol could not call it worship too easily. I said them because they were expected, though I could not have told later whether I said them right.
What I remember is the torchlight shaking in my grip, and thinking I ought never to have touched flame again after the border. What I remember is the awful feeling that every eye in District 9 could see the guilt in me as plainly as the hat I had worn in.
When the final, sacred line of the rite ended, I dropped the torch deep into the ground, letting the ritual flame kiss the coffin so it would burn as the other catchers began to bury Virgil and flame within the prairie. The little fire caught and held, small but stubborn beneath the first downfall of soil.
Rose's arm looped through mine before I knew she had moved.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"No," I said, though my voice had nearly gone. "Thank you."
She leaned into me for one brief moment, and together we watched the flames of her father vanish under District 9 earth.
The rest of the day was bleak and cloudy, a gloom old veterans would have taken as warning. Nothing better comes after the life of a good man, they liked to say when a comrade fell. I knew it to be true. Everybody did.
Once the service began to loosen, the firecatchers were called to the outpost on the west side of New Bisman. That was not unusual. Whenever a catcher retired or passed, the mayor appointed a new chief and deputy, and the force reassembled itself because fires were famously unbothered by mourning. It seemed simple enough.
This time, simple had been left somewhere behind us in the grave dirt.
"I'm sorry," Burr said as we made our way toward the outpost, "but why does she need to come with us again? I know her ol' man is gone and all, but she doesn't need to be here, does she?"
I cut him a look over my shoulder.
Rose walked a few paces behind us, black dress stirring around her boots, bonnet still on though the veil had been pinned back. She was not following like a child dragged somewhere she had no place. She walked like a daughter who had decided if men were going to start dividing up her father's legacy before the soil settled, she had a right to witness the cut.
"She goes where she wants today," I said.
Burr lifted both hands. "Fine. Didn't say she couldn't. Just saying this room is crowded enough to begin with."
That, unfortunately, was true.
The outpost's main meeting room was a dingy little auditorium with old insulation that smelled sour if you stood too close to the walls. Add a few dozen firecatchers, funeral clothes, damp wool, and the metallic ghost of extinguished fires, and you had yourself a room where holding your breath became a competitive sport. The high roof helped some. Not much.
Rose stayed near my right arm as we navigated toward the front. Burr drifted left, already hunting familiar faces. Gooseneck Hillsboro turned when he heard my step drag.
"Rhodes," he said, his charcoal eyes lighting with relief he tried to hide. Then he saw the hat, and the relief folded into something quieter. "Scranton."
"Hillsboro," Burr answered. "Look at you, still tall enough to make the rest of us feel poorly designed."
Gooseneck ignored that with practiced ease and looked at me. "Three months?"
"Three months since working with you," I said. "How've you been?"
"Married." Hillsboro nodded proudly.
Burr blinked. "Saints. To who?"
"Girl up north. Merchant's family." Gooseneck's mouth twitched. "Hoping to work up enough cash to move nearer where she lives."
"Never thought you were cut to break the stem," Burr said.
"Neither did I."
Then Gooseneck noticed Rose.
His posture changed immediately, not stiffening, exactly, but becoming gentler in the way men like him managed without softening their faces too much. "Ms. Tempest-Strix. I'm... truly sorry."
"Thank you, Hillsboro," Rose said. Her voice was quiet, but steadier than I expected. "I appreciate your condolences."
Before anything else could be said, Mayor Lancaster stepped to the podium.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he called, and the room settled. "May I have your attention? Given the status of this tragic event, we must now designate a newly appointed chief to the firecatcher force."
The catchers, unlike their usual outgoing selves, nodded solemnly. A few clapped because their hands needed something to do.
"That being said," Lancaster continued, "we shall appoint the current deputy, Mr. Inciperius Rolette, as our new acting chief."
The applause came stronger then. Not joyous, but necessary. Rolette stepped up to the podium, hat in hand, his face worn down by the day and by the simple fact that it had not been meant to be him standing there.
"Catchers of District 9," he said. "I'm proud to serve as your chief and commander. Proud, and sorry for the circumstance of it. Let us not forget the men and women who sacrificed themselves to bring our standinâ in this district to what it is today. Fires won't wait out our grief. Fields ainât stopping burnin' cause we want another week to think. So⊠we move."
That was Rolette's mercy as chief. He did not insult us with grandeur.
He named the appointments one by one. Gooseneck was moved into greater oversight of scouting and training rotation, which suited him enough that even Burr behaved for half a minute. Two older catchers from the border routes were shifted to permanent coordination on field calls. A pair of younger men from the west division were brought up under the new deputy's command.
Then Rolette looked to the side.
"And finally," he said. "I am proud to announce our newly appointed deputy, Mrs. Oakley Mayleaf."
The room changed.
This applause had teeth in it. Hoots, howls, boots against the floorboards, men and women who had been careful all day finally letting pride crack through the grief because Oakley Mayleaf had earned every inch of it and nobody alive was foolish enough to pretend otherwise. She stepped up in funeral black, broad-shouldered and steady, dark hair twisted severe at the nape of her neck. She took Rolette's hand in a firm shake, and for a second I thought I saw something pass between them that had nothing to do with rank and everything to do with the private misery of being the sort of people who do not refuse when duty comes ugly to the door.
"I would be honored, Chief," she put it at that. It was enough.
I turned to check Rose.
She was clapping, showing no ill will toward Rolette or Mayleaf for stepping into places her father had left behind. Though her eyes had gone distant and dull green in the lamplight, fixed somewhere between the podium and the grave still fresh in all our minds.
"Hey," I murmured, touching her arm. "You all right?"
Her dazed expression dissolved as she looked at me. "What? Y-Yeah. I'm fine."
That answer had never once convinced anyone in the history of Panem.
Soon, the cheering died down. The room waited for dismissal. Rolette returned to the podium. "Thank you again, everyone, for your service. This district and all its residents owe a great debt to you for protecting not just our crops, but our people as well. And for that, we cannot thank y'all enough."
He paused. The pause was too careful.
"With all that understoodâŠ" he went on, his gaze shifting to Lancaster, ââŠwe have⊠one more man who would like to speak with us this afternoon⊠from the Capitol."
I could feel the room hold back its boos out of fear and good sense. Capitol citizens rarely came to districts unless it was for a propo, an inspection, or some cheerful demonstration of authority dressed up as concern. And of course, the gamesâŠ
When they did come, they usually sent someone from their neighboring districts to do the grotesque act of speaking and touching for them. But a Capitol man in New Bisman, after a funeral, at a firecatcher outpost?
There was no world where that did not have another purpose under it.
Lancaster returned to the podium with the expression of a man trying to make medicine taste like cider.
"Catchers of New Bisman," he said in all the polish he could muster. "As mentioned previously, today should be one of solemn honor. We honor the men and women who keep our borders breathing. Firecatchers, the first to rise and the last to rest, who guard our grain and our kin from the flames that would devour us all. Chief Tempest was one such man. A father, a friend, and a fighter until the very end."
The crowd began a tiny ripple of murmurs. Impatient. Wary. Confused.
Rose, unlike before, looked suddenly alert.
"And it seems fate would have it," Lancaster continued, "that our grief be witnessed by one of Panem's finest sons. A man of the Capitol who has come to see the strength that keeps this district alive. Please welcome, from the Capitol itself, Mr. Coriolanus Snow!"
The man who stepped onto the platform looked exactly like the name implied.
White. Clean. Composed.
His hair, his skin, his suit, even the polished dress shoes that had no business standing on firecatcher floorboards, all of it looked untouched by dust or weather, though it wasnât gaudy. He was too disciplined for gaudy. Cream-white coat, pale gloves, collar sharp enough to cut, a single red rosebud pinned near his breast like a drop of blood he had authorized to exist. The scent reached us a second later, faint, cold, floral. Roses after rain. Or roses laid in a room where someone had died.
Cameras flashed behind him. That was when my stomach tightened.
"Mayor Lancaster," Snow began, smiling toward the room as if he were not dressed for a harvest day in a painting. "Chief Rolette. Citizens of District 9." His voice was smooth, but not syrupy. Better than I expected. Didnât mean it was worse in some ways, either. Donât twist my words. "I did not come here expecting sorrow, but I find myself standing among people of great resilience. The Capitol grieves with you, truly, for a man who fought to preserve the heart of this land. Panem endures because of men like Chief Virgil."
Chief Tempest, I thought.
I did not know how things ran in the Capitol, but in the districts, calling a man by his first name without permission was rude, especially if family was present. I turned to see if Rose noticed.
She barely seemed to.
Her face had gone unreadable, just not blank. Her brows furrowed faintly, mouth parted just enough to show she was listening hard. Snow's words were finding places in her grief where reason should have been standing guard. And why not? He looked kind. Sounded respectful. Hell, he had arrived carrying exactly the sort of glittering attention Panem usually denied district dead.
That was the first thing I disliked about him. He understood the value of arriving as an exception.
"On behalf of the Capitol," Snow continued, "I would like to contribute a small fund toward the rebuilding of your firecatching posts and the replenishment of supplies lost in the border disaster. It may be modest, but it comes from a place of respect, and from hope that the bond between Capitol and district will burn brighter than the flames that may harm our district."
Our district? Since when could field workers afford three-piece-suits?
For one heartbeat, the room was dead silent.
Then a pair of hands began to clap somewhere behind me. Soon the rest followed. Timid at first. Practiced. Then slightly stronger, because it is difficult for hungry districts to refuse money even when it arrives wearing perfume. Cameras flashed again. Snow inclined his head, accepting applause as if he had never expected anything else and never needed it either.
It was a good performance. That, too, worried me.
After Snow stepped aside, Rolette dismissed the crew. The room emptied in uneven currents, grief and suspicion as well as exhausted relief all moving toward the doors at once.
"That was weird," Burr said as he fell into step beside me. "Imagine him riding bareback on a bronco in that getup. The horse would sue."
Despite myself, I laughed once. "Probably just some propo move."
"Obviously. But I'd still watch the bronco part." Burr nudged Gooseneck, who had come up on his other side. "Hey, why don't we go out and celebrate? Hillsboro as lieutenant? That's worth one drink, at least."
"I can stay out late for a bit," Gooseneck said. "Scout assignments in the morning. Rhodes? You coming?"
"Yeah," I said, turning to look behind me. "I just need to-"
Rose was gone.
For one stupid breath, I stared at the space where her black dress should have been. Nothing. Only the backs of catchers, reflective dusters, the last few women gathering shawls from benches.
Gooseneck followed my gaze. "Need us?"
"No," I said too fast. "You go on. I'll follow."
Burr's face said he did not believe me, but Gooseneck tugged him onward with the mercy of a man who knew when interference would only make things louder.
I adjusted Virgil's hat in a worrisome manner and started searching.
This almost reminded me of when Rose was younger and I kept losing her under my own supposed supervision, only to find her hiding in a bush, a hayloft, or halfway up a tree with a book and no apology. I had always managed to find her before Virgil got home. Now Virgil was never coming home, and the thought sharpened the panic beyond reason.
"Rosabel," I called, too low at first. Then, louder, "Rose?"
I checked the aisles, the side hall, the space behind the platform where the mayor's people had gathered in low voices. Finally, near the tall wooden partition behind the stage, I heard her.
Her voice held a brightness so sudden it startled me more than tears would have.
I rounded the partition and stopped.
Rose stood with Mayor Lancaster and Coriolanus Snow.
Up close, Snow was worse. He didnât appear ugly, though, Iâd more so call him clean. Squeaky clean. Reckon he was a few years my elder. He was handsome in that Capitol way that seemed engineered rather than born, all pale symmetry and careful posture. The rose at his breast looked fresher than any flower had a right to be after a day of mourning. His attention rested on Rose with a practiced gentleness that would have looked like kindness if I had not already distrusted how carefully he spent it.
Lancaster turned with surprise. "Oh, Mr. Rhodes. Good to see you again."
"Mayor," I said, though my eyes were on Rose.
She looked back at me with color in her cheeks, almost in a bashful manner. Nerves? Exhaustion? Some wild little spark of possibility she had no strength left to smother.
Snow turned toward me and extended his hand.
"I am assuming you are a firecatcher, Mr... Rhodes?" he hesitated at my name. "Coriolanus Snow."
Then, to my complete and utter shock, he did something that left me awestruck. He offered me his hand.
For a moment, I paused.
How could this man be Capitol and bear to shake my hand without retching? From the rumors I had heard, Capitol folk were allergic to everything, including grass. How could one possibly be allergic to grass?!
Still, I took his hand firmly and tried not to crush it.
"Auphidius RhodesâŠ" I said with a lace of uncertainty.
Something in Snow's face held for the length of a single blink.
Not enough for anyone else to call it recognition. Or enough for me, then, to call it anything at all. His smile did not falter. Nor his hand tighten. Though the name seemed to pass through some narrow place inside him before he released me.
"Interesting," he said. "Very tasteful."
"Thank you." It was not the compliment I expected, especially since there had been a time when my name sounded too Capitol for district mouths and too district for Capitol ones.
Snow looked back over at Rosabel. "As tasteful as your name, my dear. Rosabel Tempest-Strix has a rather memorable cadence."
Rose's cheeks flushed deeper as she awkwardly nodded.
"Thank you, sir," she said, then turned quickly toward me. "Don't worry about me, Auphie. You can just... head on without me."
"Oh," Snow said lightly. "You must be her cousin?â
"We're not related," I answered before manners could catch me. Then I looked at Rose. "And I can wait."
"Oh. Well, if that's the case, maybe-"
"Actually," Snow interjected, sparing Rose from the tangle of her own sentence as neatly as if he had cut thread. "I have a meeting to attend shortly, but we should discuss this matter at a later date. Tomorrow afternoon, perhaps? I will be at Mayor Lancaster's manor, which I presume you know how to find."
"Yes," Rose answered before I could weigh in. "Yes. The time and date both work."
Snow's smile widened, a thin deliberate curve that did not quite reach his eyes. He stepped closer, the scent of roses sharpening at his sleeve.
"Splendid," he said softly.
Then he took Rosabel's hand.
Not in a forward manner, by Capitol standards, I imagine. With practiced gentleness. A gesture rehearsed so long it could pass for grace. He bowed his head and brushed his lips against the back of her knuckles.
The gesture was so foreign in District 9 it almost looked like mockery.
Rose froze, color rushing to her cheeks. For a moment, she looked as though she did not know whether to curtsy or cry.
I felt my stomach twist.
Something in the air turned cold, the kind of cold that crawls down your spine when a storm is still too far off to prove. Snow released her hand and straightened his pristine cuff, his blue eyes flicking once between us with quiet calculation.
"Until tomorrow, Miss Tempest," he said.
Thereâs a Strix in there, buddyâŠ
Then, to me, with perfect courtesy, "Good evening, Mr. Rhodes."
"Good evening," I muttered, though my voice barely carried.
When he left with Lancaster and the silent band of cameramen trailing after, the room seemed to exhale. The faint echo of his shoes still rang in my ears like the ticking of a clock winding down.
Rosabel looked at her hand in a kind of stunned wonder before snapping back to reality. Her face glowed as though she had just met someone from a storybook.
"He's... nice, isn't he?" she whispered.
I stared at the exit, the scent of roses still sharp in my nose.
"Yeah," I said finally, though the word felt wrong in my mouth. "Nice."
But deep down, I knew there was not a thing about Coriolanus Snow that came without a cost.
The ride back to the Tempest house ought to have felt like an ending.
That was what I kept waiting for. Some soft drop in the day. A signal from the world that the worst part had finally been done with and the rest of us were permitted to go home, sit down, and be ruined in private like decent people. However, New Bisman did not know how to close around death neatly. Wagons still rolled. Somebody still argued over feed prices as though Virgil Tempest had not been put in the ground only an hour before. Rose rode Wildfire beside Errante in funeral black with her bonnet ribbons gone slack in the wind, and she did not look like a girl returning from a burial so much as one trying very hard not to feel where the day had torn her open.
She hardly spoke.
She was not angry with me. She had gone inward again to that tight, thinking place inside herself where words had to knock twice before being let through. Once or twice, I glanced over to make sure she was keeping pace, and each time she was, hands tight around the reins, eyes not on the road but somewhere beyond it.
By the time we reached the house, the sun had begun sinking proper.
The yard looked wrong in evening light, in a subtle misarranged by absence. Wolfie met us near the porch and circled Rose once before pressing himself to her skirt as if he too had spent the afternoon trying to understand why grief had changed the shape of home. The horses stampeded once they were let out to pasture. Even the house seemed to hold its breath when Rose opened the door.
I had meant only to see her in.
That was the plan I told myself. Make sure she got back all right. Sit if she asked. Leave if she did not. Go to Burr's or finally drag my sorry self to the clinic and let some healer cluck over my leg till I was fit to be insulted by it. Though plans have never held much authority around the truly bereaved, and the second Rose stepped inside, I knew the day was not done with either of us.
She did not remove her coat right away. Nor her gloves.
She crossed the kitchen as though drawn by a wire and set her gloves down on the table without looking at them. Then she stood still for one beat, maybe two, both hands braced against the wood and her head bowed. I thought, foolishly, that she might finally give in. Cry. Sway. Sit. Some visible yielding to the fact of what the day had beenâŠ
Instead, she turned on her heel and went straight for the stairs.
"Rose?"
"I'll be right back."
Her voice sounded thin but purposeful, which was not a combination I much cared for. I stood in the kitchen with Virgil's hat still on my head, listening to the loft boards creak above me, then to the scrape of a trunk lid, the quick shift of stacked paper, the muted thud of books being moved by somebody who had already decided she would not be stopped.
When she came back down, she had both arms full.
Schoolbooks. Loose paper. A stitched notebook I recognized from the Secret Garden. A rolled map tied in green ribbon. Two little cloth bundles of something dry and fragile that I knew were plant cuttings or seed heads she had been storing. She set the heap down on the kitchen table with such care it took me a second to realize the care was all that kept her from trembling.
Then she finally looked at me. Her eyes were red from the cold and still swollen from the way grief makes a body hold itself. She flexed her hands once, turned back to sit, and began sorting through the papers with a speed that struck me wrong on sight.
Not frantic. Worse. So much worse.
"Rose," I said carefully, leaning one shoulder against the doorway because my leg had started up again on the ride home. "You oughta sit a spell."
"I am sitting."
"You know what I mean."
"I do," she said without looking up.
That was Rose at her most difficult. She wasnât rude, not even sharp exactly, just precise enough that any softness in a conversation had to earn its keep.
She untied the green ribbon from the rolled map and spread it flat across the table. It was one of Virgil's old district surveys, or a copy of one anyway, with field boundaries marked in one hand and her own notes crowding the margins in another. Beside it she laid pages covered in neat columns, sketches of names, market comparisons, questions written so tightly at the edges that they looked ready to push off the paper entirely.
The stove had gone low. The room smelled of ash, wood, and the faint medicinal sweetness of whatever dried herbs she had brought down. Outside, evening wind moved lightly against the siding. Inside, Rose bent over the table like a scholar at work and not a daughter who had buried her father by afternoon.
That unsettled me more than tears would have.
I limped closer and pulled out the chair opposite hers, lowering myself into it with a grimace I did not bother hiding. She glanced up only long enough to register the movement, then went back to her papers.
"At least eat somethin'," I said. "You ain't had near enough all day."
"I'm not hungry."
"That don't mean your body ain't."
A pause. Then, still sorting, she said, "There's bread in the crock if you want some."
I let out a low breath through my nose. "That ain't what I asked."
That finally made her stop. Not for long though. Just enough to put both palms flat on either side of the map and look at me properly across the table.
Her face was pale from exhaustion, the dark beneath her eyes near bruised. One braid slipped apart at her shoulder. There was still a faint crease on her cheek from where the bonnet ribbon had pressed too long against her skin at the funeral. She looked, in every ordinary sense, like someone who ought to be under blankets and watched over.
Instead, there was light in her. Not joy. Dear heavens, no.
Purpose.
I think that was the first moment I understood how dangerous purpose could look when it found somebody already hollowed out by grief.
"I know what you're asking," she said more quietly. "I just can't do it."
"Can't do what?" my head tilted.
"Stop."
The word fell plain between us.
She looked down and touched one finger to a page filled with notes regarding the other districts, economics, currency, trading, law, before tracing the line of a sentence without really reading it.
"If I stop," she said, "then all I'll hear is the dirt."
Something in me went still.
She did not cry when she said it. That made it worse. The fact that this wasnât a bluff, but rather, a fact. The echo of finality. I knew it too.
Rose drew a breath and went on.
"Lancaster said there may be a sponsor at the event. Not just may in the abstract. May in the way public men say things when they mean yes but don't wish to be held to it till the room is favorable. And Snow..." Her mouth tightened very slightly at the name, with a hidden stream of concentration. "He knew enough not to laugh at me. That matters, doesnât it?â
I leaned forward despite myself. "Rose."
"No, listen. Please!â
I did.
She turned one of the notebooks toward me. I recognized the cover at once. Red stitching at the spine. Warped corner where it had once gotten wet in the valley. The sort of notebook Rose used for the Secret Garden because she considered common school paper too careless a thing for discoveries.
Inside were pages that might have been illegal, depending on whose eyes found them. Sketches of district borders, expanded and contrasted based on merit she had pieced together. Questions about trade rotation. Questions about recovery after natural disaster. Questions about judicial reworking and what might be beneficial when running a rural state nobody in the Capitol had bothered to think for.
Then, tucked in the back, I saw another set of notes entirely.
Policy. District output. Labor distribution. Education allotments. Grain routes. Questions about who decided what the district was taught and why the people producing the food were given so little say in how they might improve the land that fed the country.
I looked up at her. Rose must have read something on my face, because she spoke before I could.
"It's all the same problem," she said. "That's what I've been trying to understand."
"The garden?"
"The district." Her fingers tightened on the notebook. "The garden only taught me how to see it."
She sat back then, and for the first time since entering the house, she looked fully awake. Too awake.
"In the garden," she said, "things grow where they shouldn't. I know what we've learned there is dangerous, but only to them. If you know where to look, you can find a whole world of structure beneath what seems barren. District 9 is the same. Everyone thinks all we are is grain and labor and weather. I imagine it's the same for the other districts and their industries. But there are systems underneath. Systems making us weaker than we need to be. Systems keeping knowledge somewhere else and then punishing us for not having it."
I listened, her voice teetering on whether or not she wanted to be calm. She wasn't. Her hands trembled in spite of how steadily she spoke. The thought in her was clear, and a clear thought in the wake of catastrophe is a frightening thing to witness when you love the person doing it.
"If I could learn properly," she said, "not just from old books or hand-me-down readers or whatever the Capitol gives us at school, but from people who study this. Governance, resource systems, agriculture, law, whatever word they use for it there. Then I could bring it back." Her voice lifted, not loud, but alive in a way it had not been all day. "Do you understand? Not leave. O-Or disappear into the Capitol like everyone assumes. Come home with something they can't take back once I know it."
I did understand. That was the issue.
She was not speaking vanity. She wasnât talking about some schoolgirl fantasy of satin dresses and city lights. Rose wanted tools. Language. Authority. The means to look Panem in the face and know enough to stop asking permission every time District 9 needed to save itself.
Because she wanted it for reasons that good, I had little ground to stand on except fear.
Still, I tried.
"You buried your papa today," I said. "You ain't gotta turn this into work by supper."
Her head came up. "I'm not turning it into work."
"No?"
"Nuh uh." She held my gaze. "I'm turning it into use, thereâs a difference."
The sentence hit with almost physical force. I rubbed a hand over my mouth and felt the edge of old tobacco still caught in my gums.
"Rose, I ain't sayin' don't go after it."
"Aren't you?"
"I'm sayin' rest."
She laughed, very quietly, and there was a brittle little sound to it that made Wolfie lift his head from beneath the table.
"That's what people say when they mean later," she said. "And later is how kids from places like this get told no. Politely."
"That ain't what I mean."
"I⊠I know." Some of the sharpness left her. She looked down at the papers and exhaled. "I know you don't."
For a moment neither of us spoke. Rose gathered a few pages into a cleaner stack, then stopped halfway through as if the energy required to neaten them had become its own labor.
When she spoke again, her voice had gone smaller. "He was supposed to see it."
I swallowed. She did not need to explain what it was. All the possibility, work, even the strange bright opening that had come into reach only to arrive on the same day the world split her down the middle.
"I know," I said.
Rose looked at the notebook beneath her hands as though it might answer for the dead if stared at long enough.
"And now," she continued, "if I let this go too, then what exactly am I doing? Like you said⊠would he have wanted that?"
There it was again. Rose at her rawest always asked the hardest version of the question. I shifted in my chair and felt pain shoot bright up the side of my bad leg. It grounded me enough to answer cleanly.
"You ain't wrong for wantin' it. I never said you were."
"No." She nodded once. "But you think I look unwell."
I snorted despite myself. "That's because you do."
That almost got a smile from her.
"I probably am," she admitted.
"Then come away from the table."
"I⊠can't."
"You can."
"Auphie." This time, my name came out tired rather than chiding. She folded her hands together hard enough that her knuckles showed white.
"If I lie down now," she said, "I'll think⊠Iâll think about him. If I sleep, I'll wake up and have to learn it all over again. If I sit still too long, everybody's condolences in my head will start catching up to me until I can't breathe for the weight of it." Her eyes lifted to mine, stripped of everything but honesty. "This is the only thing that feels⊠forward."
There was no fighting a sentence like that without doing harm. I leaned back slowly and let out a breath. Rose watched me, though no trace of triumph was there. Just patience, waiting to see whether I would keep trying to haul her toward a kind of rest she could not survive yet.
Instead, I replied, "Then at least let me get you some coffee."
The corner of her mouth twitched. "That sounds⊠like a good idea. Probably a compromise though."
"Rose,â I calmly look her eye to eye. âI ain't watchin' you faint over a notebook."
She lowered her gaze, and this time the ghost of the smile did appear, frail as frost but real enough to count. "All right."
As I got up, I cursed my leg under my breath while she pretended not to hear me and put the kettle back on. Behind me, I heard the soft shuffle of papers again, quieter now, more deliberate. By the time I set a cup beside her elbow, she had turned to another page, one covered in notes about ancient government systems and soil renewal after fire damage. I saw her gaze pause over the words land recovery after contamination before she pressed her lips together and went on.
Even now, with her father only hours in the ground, some part of Rose had already reached toward the thing that killed him and asked what could be learned from the ruin. She could not bear for it to mean nothing. Especially for District 9.
I sat back down and watched her work while the sky outside went from gold to blue to something darker. Once or twice, she sipped her mug without seeming to notice. Once she reached absently for the bread I had set out and ate half a piece only because her hand found it before her mind did. The black of her mourning dress swallowed the lamplight. Her face remained too thin with exhaustion, too drawn by sorrow, too young for the resolve living in it.
And yet the longer she sat there among her notebooks and maps and scraps from the Secret Garden, the more alive she seemed.
It was hard to admit that some part of that scared me. Scared me that grief had found in her something fierce enough to stand up inside the wreckage and call itself purpose. By lamplight, with her father dead, Snow newly arrived, and the future sitting open on the table in a hundred trembling pages beneath her hands, Rose looked more alive than she had any right to.
Which was exactly what worried me most.
I might have gone on watching her all evening if the radio had not crackled from the shelf near the window. The sound cut through the room sharp as a match strike. Rose startled only a little, more from being pulled out of thought than from fear, while my whole body tensed on instinct. Firecatcher radios were not the sort of thing that carried good news after dark, especially not the day a chief had been buried.
Rose looked toward it first. Then at me.
"Can you get that?"
I pushed myself out of the chair with a curse half swallowed in my teeth and made my way to the set, my leg protesting fierce enough to put a mean shine at the edge of my vision. Virgil's old relay box sat where it always had, mounted high near the shelf, looking as ordinary and inconvenient as ever. That struck me wrong too. The chief dead, his hat on my head, his radio in his house, and me the one reaching for it as though the world had not made some terrible clerical error.
I lifted the receiver anyway.
"Rhodes."
Static answered first. Then Gooseneck's voice came thin through the line, flattened by distance and machinery both.
"Thought that'd be you."
"There a problem?"
A pause long enough to feel deliberate.
"Not tonight," he said. "Tomorrow."
I looked out the window without seeing the yard beyond it. "Go on."
"Rolette's shifting hands already. Wants scouts doubled east side after what happened at the border. Wants men who know the land and can keep their mouths shut while doing it."
I nearly laughed, though there was not much humor in me. "Well, I know the land."
"And your mouth is tolerable when forced."
That got the ghost of a breath out of me. Then Gooseneck's tone changed by half a degree, enough to make the real point plain.
"You'll be riding light," he said. "No field response. No direct firework. Just scouting."
Just scouting. The words ought to have felt like mercy. Instead, they landed where pride still hurt.
He must have heard the silence on my end, because he added, quieter, "Your leg ain't fit for more and you know it."
I looked down at the floorboards. At the dust caught in the cracks. At the shape of my own boot, uselessly still.
"Yeah," I said. "I know."
"Meet the east line after sunup. Burr'll be with you partway. After that, you ride the old routes and report back before dark."
"All right."
Another pause. Then, in that same low practical way of his, Gooseneck said, "How's the girl?"
My eyes flicked toward Rose before I could help it. She had not gone back to her papers entirely. She sat very still now, cup cradled in both hands, watching me across the room with the expression of someone who knew enough from my face and was only waiting for the pieces to be named.
"She's upright," I said.
Gooseneck made a sound that might have meant understanding and might have meant nothing at all. "See you tomorrow, then."
The line went dead.
I set the receiver back slower than necessary and stood there a second with one hand resting against the shelf. Behind me, the kitchen had gone quiet again save for the soft hiss of the lamp and the wind nudging at the siding.
Rose broke it. "You're going?"
"Tomorrow." I turned back toward her. "Scouting."
She nodded once, absorbing that with the same grave efficiency she seemed to bring to every hurt now. "With your leg like that?"
"With my leg like this," I corrected.
That earned the faintest twitch from her mouth, though it faded quick. I made my way back to the table and lowered myself into the chair again. "Gooseneck says it's light work."
"And do you believe him?"
"Not really, no."
That got a real breath from her. Not quite a laugh, but near enough to count. For a moment, I thought that would be the last of it. She would go back to her notes, and I would sit there pretending not to watch her, and the chapter of the day would close in that uneasy truce grief sometimes allows. Instead, Rose set down her mug.
There was a carefulness to the movement I did not care for. Too deliberate.
"Auphie," she said.
I already disliked the shape of it. "What?"
Her fingers folded atop the notebook. "I think⊠I ought to speak with Mr. Snow again."
I said nothing. Not because I had not heard her. I had, trust me, I had.
Rose went on before I could answer. "N-Nothing foolish. None of that." Her chin lifted, tired but stubborn. "About the university, a-and whether there's actually a way to make any of it matter."
"And you reckon he's the way to do that."
"I reckon he may be a door."
There it was. The shape of it right in front of her.. Opportunity.
I leaned back in my chair and looked at her across the spread of notebooks, maps, and pages full of things too dangerous to be lying open on any district kitchen table. She looked wrecked. Pale. Hollow-eyed. Half held together by coffee, stubbornness, and whatever force in her kept refusing to die when sorrow ought to have flattened it.
And still she looked certain. Or no, not certain. Maybe⊠resolved.
"I don't like it," I admitted at last.
Rose nodded as though she had expected no other answer. "I know."
"He's Capitol."
"I know that."
"That ain't enough."
"No," she said. "But it's true."
The lamplight caught the edge of Virgil's map between us. I could feel the old wrongness rising in me again, that formless instinct to say no, don't go near him, don't hand your hope to a man who arrived wearing polish and perfect manners at your father's funeral. Though instinct wasnât exactly an argument, and fear was not proof. Rose had never once been the sort of girl who could be steered off a thing by unease alone.
I looked at her and knew, all at once, that if I tried to forbid it, I would be insulting both of us. She was not mine to command. I did not yet have language strong enough to explain why the thought of Snow turning his full attention toward her made something in me go cold.
So, all I said was, "If you go, don't go foolish."
That shifted her expression a little. Softened it a little. I hadnât agreed with her entirely and neither did she, but she knew what kind of surrender it had cost.
"I won't," she said.
I nodded once, knowing the plain miserable fact that the next day had already begun choosing for us.
Outside, the wind moved through the yard in one long low sweep. Somewhere in the dark, one of the horses shifted at the rail. Rose turned back to her papers, and I sat there with Virgil's hat still on my head and the radio call still ringing faintly in my bones, watching her go more fully toward her work while I was being sent toward mine.
I had no words yet for the shape of my refusal, and no right to make one up before I understood it myself.
Death of a Wildfire (25th Hunger Games) - Chapter I
âThe only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.â
- Albert Camus
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Her journal started six years prior, on what I believed was the worst day of my life.
The night before, a train out of District 5 derailed on the northeast border of 9, headed for 6. The tracks mustâve gone bad somewhere along the crossing, because by dawn, five whole cars had left the rails and torn themselves open across occupied harvest land, spilling a tanker of oil clear through a lentil field. Now, I wasnât exactly an expert in plant growth, but even I knew enough to say the land was done for. A year to restore the soil, maybe more. Twice that if we firecatchers werenât quick enough. Triple that if Panem decided the district hadnât earned the right to be slow. You get the point.
âSmells like added taxes tâ me,â Chief Tempest muttered from atop his stallion.
Even then, even at first light with the whole field laid open like a wound, he still had a way of making disaster sound familiar. Not harmless, exactly. Just survivable. That was the thing about Virgil Tempest. He had a knack for talking to catastrophe like it was an old drinking buddy that had shown up on the porch uninvited. He never looked impressed by ruin. Maybe that was why people trusted him so easy.
I followed him down the rise, my own mare picking its steps warily as we approached the site. The derailment looked worse the closer we got. A number of the freight cars had buckled over into the field, metal twisted and peeled back in awful, shining ribbons. One of the tankers had split open clean along the side, and black oil oozed from it in thick, ugly streams, crawling over the young lentils and smothering them before theyâd even had a proper chance to grow. The morning itself seemed sick from it. The fumes hit the back of my throat almost immediately, sharp and metallic, with something sour underneath that made me want to bare my teeth against it.
The oil looked wrong against prairie light. Like a bruise on the sky that had somehow slipped down to the ground.
Tempestâs horse tossed its head, ears pinned, nostrils flaring as the two of us dismounted. The chiefâs stallion rarely spooked, not unless there was something worth listening to, and the sight of him doing it put a burr under my skin. I couldnât explain why, not then. The scene itself was still. Too still. There shouldâve been more shouting, more movement, more sign of survivors, more something. Instead, it all sat there in the pale morning like the world had paused mid-breath and was waiting on one wrong move to blow apart.
âWhatâs to do, sir?â I asked, trying to keep my voice even as I tightened the reins in my hand. âWill we have enough grit to contain it?â
âNo,â Tempest answered plain as anything. He scratched the back of his neck and stared out over the spill like he was already measuring it in his head. âNo, we certainly donât. Bet ya the peacekeepinâ squad may have some to spare. How far out did the deputy say they were?â
âA good hour or so,â I said, scanning the wreckage for any sign of life. âMaybe near Devilâs Gulch, sir?â
âDevilâs Gulch.â He shook his head at that. âThatâs pretty far⊠and we still ainât got a clue how much grit weâll need, huh?â
No. No, we surely didnât.
While we were talking, another firecatcher squadron began to make its way down toward the spill, boots already blackening where the oil had spread into the grass. Their hats dipped in silent greeting as they passed Tempest. He reached instinctively for the brim of his own to answer them back, only to realize heâd left it home. I remember that detail clear as cut glass. The small, almost embarrassed huff he let out, though the others smiled all the same. Everybody in 9 knew Virgil meant the gesture whether or not the hat was there to carry it.
I started reaching for my fire mask then, figuring Iâd head in with the rest of them and do what needed doing, but the chief stopped me with one raised hand.
âHolâ on, son.â
I paused.
âI need ya tâ head back tâ camp.â
I frowned at him, then at the wreckage. âSir? The wreckage?â
âYes, donât worry.â He tightened the reins in his hand and gave the stallion a little pull toward the ruined cars. âIâll handle everythinâ on this front. What I need you tâ do is tell Deputy Rolette tâ radio in as much grit from Devilâs Gulch as he can get. Soon as done. Understood?â
There are moments that look smaller in memory than they felt while you were living them. This was one of those. Nothing in it seemed grand because there wasnât any ominous foreshadowing screaming in my face. No heavenly voice telling me, âHere! Here is where your life splits in two!â
It was only an order.
And I obeyed it.
That was the worst part later. I couldâve disobeyed him, betrayed him, maybe even freeze while others ran in. I really shouldâve of. No, what lodged itself under my nails and stayed there was the simple, stupid truth that I did exactly what he asked of me. I listened, trusted, and let his certainty make a home in my head the way it always had.
That was Tempestâs real gift. Folks said it was bravery, or judgment, or the way he could stand in front of a grassfire and somehow know its temper before it turned. Maybe that was true. Though if you asked me, his greatest talent was assurance. He could make a bad thing sound manageable and a frightening thing sound already half-solved. In a place like District 9, where most people woke every morning expecting to lose something by sundown, that kind of steadiness was rarer than mercy. He wore it so natural that you forgot it was a performance at all.
âSir?â I called after him anyway because some part of me still balked. Almost like some part of me mustâve known. âAre you certain?â
He didnât even turn around all the way. Just laughed under his breath, shoulders moving with it.
âSon, no need tâ be catchinâ worries. Catch fires. Ya hear?â
That was the sort of thing he said all the time. A line simple enough to settle a person, broad enough to feel wise. And like always, it worked on me. He briefly turned his head to me as I nodded. I let him have the last word. Let him sound right.
âGood work,â he said, with that rustic grin of his.
Then he turned back toward the spill, the horse in tow, and I turned away from him my own borrowed steed at my side.
I have lived inside that turn ever since.
People like to imagine regret as something loud, maybe reminiscent of a scream, or a prayer you keep saying because maybe this time the world will listen. Mine was quieter. It was like a footstep. One step forward, back turned, my mind already shuffling ahead to the rest of the day as though the moment behind me had been safely filed away under routine-
BOOM!
The world split open.
The explosion hit before my thoughts could catch up with it.
There was no time to understand it, only time to feel it. A flash behind me so bright it punched clean through my vision. Heat slamming against my back, pressure so violent it seemed to pick me up by the spine and hurl me forward. One second I was standing. The next I was facedown in rock and dirt, breath knocked out of me so hard I thought for a blind instant that the blast had taken my lungs clean along with it.
Panic came first. No fear in any noble sense, just⊠animal panic. My ears rang with a shrill, awful hum, and black blotches swam through my vision each time my heartbeat slammed against my skull. My hands scraped uselessly against the ground trying to get purchase, and everywhere I touched felt sharp, wrong, lit up with pain. I tasted iron in my mouth. Blood, somewhere. My own. I didnât know from where.
I rolled, clumsy and sick, trying to make sense of light and smoke and the shape of my own body, why the fuzzy figure that was my mare raced away in the other direction and over the hill. The world trembled in and out of focus. Then it steadied just enough for me to look.
The place where Virgil had been standing⊠it was gone.
There was only fire now. Fire and a choking wall of smoke. The field had ceased to be a field and become one great mouth of flame. It licked at the wreckage, ran along the grass, climbed the black ribbons of oil like it had been waiting all morning to be born.
And then something came tearing through it.
I heard it before I understood it, a harsh, ragged sound that was almost a scream or almost a roar. Something large and living burst from the fireline and came straight toward me, fast enough to make the air around it howl. Instinct dropped me into a crouch, arms up, face tucked in, because whatever it was, it was going to trample me flat.
It passed so close I felt the heat of it lash my cheek.
When I looked again, I saw it.
The chiefâs horse. Or, at least, what had been the chiefâs horse.
The poor creature was burning nearly everywhere at once. Fire ran wild across its back and shoulders, tack melting into hide, skin hanging off in strips where the worst of the blast had caught it. It stumbled in frantic circles, kicking up ash and dirt, trying on pure instinct to outrun what was already fused to its own body. Iâd seen livestock injured before. Badly, even. Seen dogs split open by wire or cattle taken wrong by weather and infection. Though⊠nothing in my life had prepared me for the sight of that animal trying to live through pain no living thing shouldâve had to know.
The smell got to me worst. Burning hair, leather⊠flesh.
It dropped to its knees once, tried to heave itself back up, and failed halfway. The sound it made then was quieter than before. Smaller. Like whatever terror had been left in it was finally being worn down by suffering.
And that was when I remembered Virgil.
I looked back toward the inferno like a fool might look into the mouth of the maker and ask for the dead back. There was no shape of him. Obviously. There was no impossible salvation waiting if only I were brave enough to go in after him. The fire made liars out of every hopeful thought I had left. I knew that. I knew it even then.
But knowing a thing and living with yourself afterward are two different beasts.
I did not go after him.
That is the part that never softened with age. I did not run into the fire. Didnât even try to be honest. I did not even make one noble, stupid attempt to drag him back by the arm and die beside him if it came to it. Maybe I wouldâve been useless, with the flames swallowing us both. There wouldnât have been anything left by the time I hit the ground. All of that may be true, but⊠truth did not stop the shame of it. And it certainly didnât stop me from thinking, over and over, that if heâd been the one left standing, he wouldâve gone in for me.
Instead, I stood there with smoke in my lungs and a dying horse in front of me, and that was where my courage decided to make itself known.
Not for Tempest.
For the damn horse.
I donât remember deciding to move. I only remember moving, my leg screamed the instant I put weight on it, something in my thigh giving with a wet little pop that told me Iâd done myself no favors in the blast. I near went down again. Didnât. Limped forward, vision blurring around the edges from pain and smoke. The horse had folded onto himself now, body curled ugly and trembling, every breath coming quicker and shallower than the one before. One eye rolled toward me.
The eyeâŠ
There are sights I forgot from that day. Details that time, in its mercy, has scraped thin. Things like the exact shape of the tanker, the order of the men running in, or even the color of the sky at the instant of the blast, faded in extended memory. I never forgot that eye. Wet and wide, pleading in a way that made language feel unnecessary. The stallion did not need words. I knew what he was asking the moment it looked at me.
End it.
My crossbow came into my hands like reflex. Not thought. Reflex, though, the Capitol didnât need to know that. I remember fitting the arrow, with the string biting my fingers. I also recollected wondering, in some sick little pocket of myself that kept thinking even then, how I could suddenly find enough steadiness to do this and not enough courage to go into the fire for the man whoâd raised me in every way that counted.
The bolt struck true.
The horse went still almost at once.
And the world, for one breath? It seemed to hold itself quiet around us.
I had done that. Given mercy, enough for the beast and not bravery enough for the man.
Maybe that isnât fair to the boy I was then. Any decent person would say I acted like what every firecatcher ought toâve acted, that ending the animalâs suffering was the only kindness left in reach. Maybe so. Though, decency did not sit with me in the dark afterward. Guilt did and the ugly little fact that when the moment came for me to choose, the only life I was strong enough to end was the one already kneeling in front of me.
Everybody would later say the explosion was an accident. That Virgil died doing his duty. What I did was required. All of that mightâve been true. Yet truth has never once managed to quiet the oldest question in me⊠what if I had turned back sooner? What if I had called his bluff? What if I had said, âNo, sir, not this time?â
The fire did not care for what ifs, and the dead were never moved much by second thoughts.
By the time the smoke began settling enough for the others to reach me, I already knew what the day had taken.
Yeah⊠Tempest was really dead.
That was the trouble with death, I think. It never looked entirely real at first. Not when it happened so quick. It happened blazing, loud, and all at once, with smoke in your lungs and ash in your teeth and too many bodies moving afterward for your mind to settle on the fact of one missing man. Death liked to arrive obvious and then spend the rest of the day turning doubtful in your head, as though the world itself was embarrassed by how quickly it had stolen somebody important.
By nightfall, I still half expected Virgil to come striding over the lip of the gully with soot on his jaw and some smart remark on his tongue. Heâd tell us weâd all made too much fuss. Tell me specifically that I looked sorrier than the horse had. Maybe cuff me lightly upside the head for not getting the grit there sooner? Something ordinary. Something rude enough to feel real and abrupt.
Instead, all I had was a cot, a bad leg, and the memory of fire.
Most of the unit had gone quiet by then. A few folks still shifted in their bedrolls, muttering in their sleep or coughing up what the smoke had left behind, but the worst of the dayâs commotion had finally worn itself down. Weâd set camp in a shallow gully to block the grassland wind, and the little fire at its center had collapsed into a low bed of coals ringed by tired men who had quit pretending not to stare at them. Even reduced to embers, fire still held a room. Maybe that was why none of us could quite turn away.
Iâd tried lying still. Truly, I had. And every time I shut my eyes, the chiefâs horse came back to me. Not even as himself anymore. By then the thing had turned wrong in my head. The eyes had become Tempestâs. The breathing belonged to Tempest. All of the charred steedâs pain had somehow found a way to stretch itself over the man too, until I couldnât say for certain which one I was remembering and which one I was inventing to trip myself.
So, I got up.
Or, more truthfully, I hauled myself upright one ugly inch at a time, gritting my teeth so hard I thought I might crack one clean in two. The leg had stiffened something awful. All afternoon Iâd managed to ignore it by simple virtue of worse things being present, but pain has a way of growing bolder at night, once grief starts entertaining company. I put my foot down, near blacked out, and had the humiliating thought that maybe my firecatching buddies would look me down in disapproval and Iâd be carted back to District 9âs capital, New Bisman like some lame old plow horse no one had the nerve to shoot.
That thought mightâve earned a laugh on another night. Not this one.
Deputy Rolette sat alone by the campfire, hat still on despite the waned sun, elbows on his knees, staring down into the coals like there was a map hidden in them. The firelight did mean things to old faces. Pulled years to the surface. Carved out the fatigue in a body until a man started to look less like himself and more like whatever his life had done to him. Iâd always thought of Rolette as one of those men who had somehow come into the world already old enough to know better. Though that night he looked it. Looked every inch of his age and then some.
I eased myself down beside him with a hiss I wasnât quick enough to swallow.
He said something to me right off, but I was still half in the morning, still looking at things that werenât there. The chiefâs horse had dropped in front of me all over again, only this time when I raised the crossbow, it was Virgil kneeling in the grass with one eye turned toward me, wet and asking. I mustâve gone pale as milk, because the next thing I knew Roletteâs voice had sharpened.
âSon? Son⊠you doinâ alright there?â
I blinked hard and dragged myself back into the gully. Back into the little ring of firelight, the prairie dark beyond it, the men and women asleep nearby, the smell of smoke settled deep into every scrap of cloth I owned.
âMâsorry,â I mumbled, rubbing a hand over my mouth. âWhatcha say?â
Rolette took off his cattlemanâs hat with grouse feather and set it across one knee. His hair had thinned these past few years, but he still had a habit of pushing a hand through it whenever he was turning something over in his mind. He did so now, then let out the sort of breath a person only managed when the truth in front of them had gotten too large for language.
âVirgilâŠâ he said at last. âHe was a good man. Ainât a whole many of âem left, you know?â
Oh, I knew.
The trouble was, not everybody else did.
The Capitol of Panem had a talent for shrinking a person after death. They could take a man who had spent years standing square in the path of a thing and make him look, on paper, like a footnote in his own district. Tempest had done more for 9 than most elected men in Panem ever would, and by sunrise tomorrow thereâd likely be some clean little statement from some clean little office calling his death an âunfortunate incident sustained in loyal service to national industryâ, as if heâd lived and died merely to keep grain tall and mouths shut.
And somewhere in the Capitol, I imagined, somebody would be pleased.
âYeah,â I said finally, though it came out raw. âItâs just⊠this morning. He was alive, and nowâŠâ
âI know.â Rolette laid a hand on my shoulder, gave it one firm squeeze, then turned his eyes back to the coals and fussed them with a stick. âTrust me, son. Everybody knows.â
I nodded because there wasnât much else to do with a sentence like that. Grief makes a fool of conversation. Every response sounded either too small or too practiced, and silence becomes its own sort of failure if you leave it sitting there too long.
I ended up doing what people do when they canât say the thing that matters. I asked about tomorrow.
âSoâŠâ My voice sounded smaller than I meant it to. âWhat happens now?â
Rolette inhaled slowly through his nose. There was no surprise on his face, which told me heâd already been asking himself the same question all evening.
âWell,â he said, shifting in his seat. âI git appointed chief, I suppose. Though given the state of reckoninâ that happened today, it ainât likely thereâll be some fancy ceremony. Donât want one anyway. Too little time tâ waste.â
He was right, of course.
Summer was nearing hard, and with it came the prairie fires, and with those came the same old arithmetic Panem always did with our bodies. How much could be lost? How much could still be salvaged? How many workers could be spared? How much grain could burn before the district was accused of negligence instead of misfortune?
Folks in the cities liked to think disasters were democratic. It wasnât. Disaster was political. Always had been. A field caught fire in 9, and somehow it was still the farmhands whoâd failed the country, not the country that kept them starving.
The people needed the firecatchers, and the firecatchers needed a chief.
Even if the man stepping into the role looked like heâd rather be skinned alive than inherit it this way.
I studied Roletteâs face in profile and tried to imagine him where Tempest had sat in every meeting, every argument, every standoff with men who spoke for Panem as though Panem had ever once spoken for us. I couldnât picture it cleanly. That wasnât an insult pre-say, simply that Virgil had filled his own shape too completely. A man like that leaves a vacancy larger than rank.
For a while I just stared at the fire and let my thoughts slide around uselessly in my skull. I knew I ought to feel some single, obvious thing. Devastation, maybe? Or rage. At myself, maybe? Some pure note of mourning that would prove I was the sort of son Virgil had deserved.
However, I just felt⊠scattered. Hollow in the middle and overcrowded at the edges. Guilt pressing at me from one side, doubt from the other, and a strange bitterness underneath both that made me ashamed just to notice it. I kept waiting for grief to arrive in a respectable form. It never did.
After a bit, Rolette barked out the ghost of a laugh.
âWell,â he said, not looking at me. âSuppose Chief got the last laugh, didnât he?â
I turned to him. âHuh?â
He tipped his chin toward the sleeping shapes around camp. âLook at you kids. Without the chief, more of âem wouldâve been sent straight to the choppinâ block, and all for what? A few jokes? A gamble or two?â
The chopping block.
The Hunger Games.
That wordless, yearly slaughterfest of a district boy and girl that the Capitol liked to drape in anthem and pageantry, as though making a child âone of themâ for a few weeks before their premature death made the execution ceremonial instead of obscene.
Tempest had never spoken on the Games lightly. I reckon nobody in 9 truly did, not if they had blood worth naming, but Virgil in particular? He had been one of the few men I knew who hated the thing openly enough to try changing it. Not by speeches, either. Or through a grand rebellion. By argument, persistence, and wearing the right people down until they mistook concession for their own idea. It took patience, but Tempest had enough to go around.
A good few years back, after a brother and sister on the force had both been sent off to die for Capitol amusement, Tempest finally had enough. He then argued that if fifteen-year-old trainees were already risking their hides every wildfire season for the sake of Panemâs breadbasket, then those same years ought to count for something. Every year of firecatching service would pull a traineeâs name from the lottery twice over. It wasnât justice. It was rumored that his original proposal had to be shaven down to be taken seriously and not as a sign of tyranny. It wasnât near enough. In my personal opinion, every child doing labor ought toâve been exempt⊠or rid of the Games all together.
But in Panem? Justice and policy had never once been kin to one another. What Virgil won was narrower than fairness and broader than mercy, yet still it mattered. It saved kids, and I mean real kids. Names and faces and voices and comrades that otherwise wouldâve been thrown into that blasted arena because somebody in the Capitol thought tradition more sacred than childhood.
As someone whoâd survived all six years of eligibility and then seven more besides, I figured I had some right to say heâd done a fine job.
The Capitol never forgave him for that. They probably smiled, then shook his unworthy, district hand when paperwork changed. Though, I knew enough by then to understand that Panem did not take kindly to district men who learned how to influence the odds.
Rolette mustâve seen where my thoughts had drifted, because he nodded to himself and muttered. âChief knew how to keep âem out of our business betterân most.â
I huffed a laugh without much humor in it. âYouâre right. You are certainly right.â I rubbed both hands together, more for something to do than warmth. âGuess my only question now, though⊠howâll the firecatchers survive?â
He glanced at me sidelong. âAgainst what?â
âPanem. The Capitol...â My voice lowered and trembled despite my best effort to keep it flat. âFolks in the mills and especially the fields barely get by as is. Ainât no peacekeeper fit enough to take our place. Not really.â
âWellâŠâ Rolette said, and the word stretched thin between us. ââŠIâd say things ainât perfect, but shoot, they almost were. Specially with the chief keepinâ âem Capitol folk out of our business. But as for our future in the âmarrowâŠâ
He drifted off there. Not because heâd forgotten what came next, because he obviously hadnât.
âSir?â I said quietly.
He rubbed his jaw. âI donât think weâre goinâ nowhere. But where weâre headed ainât gonna be much better, ya know?â
There it was. The truth, or as close to it as a man could manage without dragging all his fear into public.
And as honest as he was, I couldnât make myself push him further. Really couldnât ask him to compare himself against Tempest, not the first night, maybe not ever. Virgilâs legacy had stretched near my whole life. Rolette was good, but good and ready werenât the same. The Capitol would smell the difference. Of that I had no doubt.
He let me sit with that a spell before he rose stiffly from the log and looked down at me.
âHowâs the leg?â
I didnât much care for the question. Pain I could tolerate. Naming it was another matter all together.
So, like an idiot, I tried to stand.
The moment I put weight on it a blade of white-hot pain drove clean up through my left side and near straight into my teeth. I dropped back down with a strangled noise before I could pretend otherwise.
âAh! Hell!â
Rolette huffed out a laugh despite himself, though his face sobered quick after. âThat bad, eh?â
I nodded, more because talking seemed unnecessary than out of dignity. The leg answered for me well enough.
âListen, RhodesâŠâ His tone shifted then, and I knew before he opened his mouth that I wasnât going to like what came next. âI think itâd be best tâ think about doinâ scout work. Maybe go back tâ the cities a while. Just for now.â
I stared up at him. âWhat?â
âLike I said, for now. The medics said your legâs fractured. Bad.â He spoke gently, which somehow made it worse. âThey did what they could, but youâll need tâ stay off it awhile.â
Stay off it? As if my body had ever once belonged to me in that sort of easy way. Like work itself were a coat I could shrug off when it no longer sat comfortable on the shoulders.
âYouâre sayinâ I should quit?â I asked far too abruptly. My tone came out too flat. Far too calm. That was always how anger started in me, quiet enough to pass for sense.
âLike I said,â Rolette tried again. âMaybe think âbout some scout work. Maybe even office work. Back at base.â
Scout work. Less riding, fire, even less of the only life Iâd ever truly made for myself outside of loss?
I looked down at the coals because I couldnât bear to let him watch the shape my face had taken. âHow⊠long for recovery?â
âThey patched you best they could,â he said again. âStill might not hurt to visit that clinic downtown. Just tâ be sure. They got professionals for that sorta stuff, ya know? Thereâs a train headed to the city tomorrow morninâ, so I ainât throwinâ you out tâ the weeds just yet. I just want yâall recovered and easy on the step for a little while. Till youâre back on your feet. Understood?â
The only thing I wanted in that moment was movement. Some proof I was still useful. That I could do all that required no thinking or no feeling or no carrying of news.
But instead? I nodded.
âYes, sir.â
âAnd Rhodes,â he added, softer now. âI understand your⊠predicament surroundinâ the clinic in New Bisman. Heard it through the rows. I know itâs hard. But ya need that leg checked proper. They can set that of yours right. You ainât gonna be no good if you donât git the help ya need, yâhear?â
I nodded again, though my mind rebelled cleanly against it. Now wasnât the time. Nothing about this was the time really, but he was right in the way men are right when asking something practical of you and your whole soul resents them for it.
He bent then and held out a hand. I took it, let him haul me up enough to feel human again.
âItâs been good workinâ with ya, son,â he said. âHereâs tâ hopinâ you make a safe recovery.â
Before I could say much of anything back, he reached into his knapsack and brought out a silver-lined tobacco tin. I mustâve looked around on instinct, because he chuckled low in his throat.
âAt ease, son. Here.â
He pinched out a share and gave it over. I tucked the dip into my cheek quick as prayer, letting the bitterness bloom hot and steady in my mouth. Anything to focus on besides memory. He took some for himself, worked it between his teeth, then slid the tin away again.
For a while we stood there in the dimming glow, chewing and not speaking, which in District 9 often passed for mutual understanding.
Then Rolette remembered. Or heâd probably never forgotten and had simply been waiting for the right shape of silence.
âOh,â he said, almost too casually. âAlmost done forgot. With you boys headinâ back tâ New BismanâŠâ
âYeah?â I asked around the tobacco.
ââŠyouâll be the first few to know about the chiefâs passinâ, though the mayorâll probably get word soon enough.â He paused, and I felt the change in him before he said the rest. âThat beinâ said, I think you should be the first tâ tell the Tempest family, Rhodes.â
I near choked.
âMe?â I coughed, wiping at my mouth. âHow come?â
Rolette looked at me then with his weathered eyes, fully, and all at once I understood that this was no practical order like clinic work, train times, or even reassignment. This was the real errand. The one heâd been circling all night.
âAuphidiusâŠâ His face folded in on itself with age and pity both. âYou and I both know Virgil didnât chose family by blood. Whole force is his family, sure. ButâŠâ He let the sentence settle where it would hurt most. âSpecifically you.â
Something in me gave.
Not publicly. No, certainly not enough to spare me the labor of holding myself upright. The wall Iâd spent all day bracing from the inside suddenly cracked straight through. Specially you. Iâd known it, I think. Known it in all the little ways a person knows love before theyâre foolish enough to name it. Yet hearing it said aloud by another figure of authority turned the whole thing final in a way I wasnât prepared for.
Virgil had not only been my chief⊠he was more than that. He was my guide, my mirror, the archetype Iâd tried writing myself out to be.
And now I was meant to carry his death home to the people who would feel it most.
I wanted, very badly, to disgrace myself then. To fold and sit right back down in the dirt before howling like a child until somebody took the decision from me. I didnât. Rather, I wouldnât. Pride is a useless thing half the time, but occasionally it is the only tool left in reach.
I swallowed back the rising ache in my throat and nodded once.
My leg still hurt. My hands shook. The dip had turned bitter as rust in my mouth.
And all I could think was that I had to tell them.
I had to tell her.
RoseâŠ
Within the heart of Panemâs District 9, a little yet bustling town by the name of New Bisman sat quiet beneath the last grip of dawn. The gravel streets were mostly empty at that hour, save for the occasional trader or early worker passing in the distance. Even they seemed unwilling to make too much noise before the sun had properly risen. The prairie stretched wide around the town, pale with early light and wind-brushed in long, patient strokes, with the whole of morning feeling as though it were still deciding whether it wished to be gentle.
Rosabel Tempest-Strix woke before the day had fully decided.
She did not need calling. Her body had long since learned the shape of chores, the rhythm of a house that ran better when somebody rose before the rest of the world and put warmth back into it. The floor was cold beneath her bare feet as she crossed the packed earth interior of the sod house, her shawl drawn close around her shoulders while the last of night still clung to the walls. The home held a little leftover warmth from the evening before, but not enough to keep stillness comfortable.
And so, Rosabel lit the stove while the sky was still slate-gray, the prairie stretched quiet and heavy beneath the last hold of night. She opened the iron belly and coaxed yesterdayâs embers back to life with kindling she had split herself, watching the first thin tongues of flame catch and steady. Once the fire took properly, she fed it a few thicker pieces and set a dinged copper kettle atop the grate, already half-full with dry cider she had traded for earlier in the week. The house began to wake with her after that. Not quickly, though just enough.
From a tin beneath the counter, she scooped cornmeal into a bowl, cracked in two eggs from the previous morningâs gather, and added a careful drizzle of traded milk with a pinch of salt from the cellar. She stirred the batter slowly, in the sort of rhythm that asked for no thought at all, only repetition. The skillet hissed when she poured the mixture in. A soft golden round formed against the blackened iron, sending up the warm smell of grain and heat, alongside something almost sweet enough to feel like comfort.
She glanced toward the window while the first cake cooked. It was a rough frame fitted with waxed paper instead of glass, and through it the morning world looked bleached and faraway, the grassland like a sea of still stubble with the wind just beginning to whisper through it. Somewhere out there, beyond the flat and the fences with the long patient miles, her father, Virgil Tempest, was working. Catching fires for District 9. Likely up before her. Likely tired as well, saying something dry to somebody who needed steadied, just like heâd say to her when he was off duty.
He had been gone for nearly a month now.
For Rosabel, that felt much longer than a month had any right to feel.
She turned the corn cake with a practiced hand and pressed it flat with the spatula, trying not to let the ache in her chest rise with the steam. The house itself was full of him. Her father had built it with his own hands, laid the beams, cut the sod, fixed the porch twice over, and laughed every time the wind tried to convince the walls to give in. Five years, two stories, and one girl later, the foundation was still held, just like he had always said it would. There was comfort in that, but also⊠loneliness.
Rosabel finished the cakes and set them aside near the hearth to keep warm. Then she poured herself only half a cup of the cider, more for the scent than the drinking of it, and set the rest to stay hot. She felt fortunate that there was enough food for her this morning, enough for breakfast at Auntie Miseaâs too. That she did not have to stand over the stove counting mouthfuls or bargaining with hunger before school. That was one of the quiet differences of her life. She still ate carefully, as most people in 9 learned to do, but care was not the same as fear. Virgil Tempest had seen to that. He had made sure there was food in the house, that her boots were mended before they split, making sure winter did not come as a complete surprise every year. Rose knew enough of District 9 to understand what kind of luck that was.
She would have called it fortune. Other people might have called it rank. Virgil would have called it doing his job. And others would have agreed.
Before she let herself sit, Wolfie barked once outside. Rosabel smiled to herself and reached for the small wooden bowl waiting near the edge of the counter. She wrapped her shawl tighter, stepped into her worn white sunflower-stitched boots, and pushed out into the early chill. The air still held some bite from the night, though it was softer now, touched faintly by the scent of damp earth and grass before the real summer heat could claim the early June days.
Wolfie was waiting near the porch, tail thumping lazily once he caught sight of her. The old dog stretched long before padding her way, his furry, tan coat catching the first weak gold of morning.
âMorninâ, old man,â she murmured, crouching to scratch between his pointed ears.
Sheâd filled his bowl with scraps from the table and a little beaver fat she had secure traded from poachers as an extra treat, before he settled in without complaint, content to chew and keep one eye on her all the while. With summer coming, the meat would need curing soon enough to keep from spoiling, but that was a problem for later in the day. This moment belonged to routine.
The paddock was already alive with movement by the time she crossed toward it. Insects had started buzzing in the grass, and a pair of swallows cut low through the yard hunting their breakfast. Rosabel ducked through the gate, boots sinking soft into the damp ground as three heads lifted at her approach.
The Tempest herd consisted of Errante, Stone, and Wildfire, who all greeted her from the rail like creatures who had never once been fed on time in their lives.
âLazy things,â Rose said, though there was nothing but fondness in it.
Errante came first, nosing at her skirt pocket until she gave in and offered him a palmful of oats. Stone and Wildfire danced impatiently until they got their share too, each one pushing their luck exactly as far as they always did. Rose ran a hand over neck and shoulder as she moved among them, checking them in the same absent, affectionate way she checked everything else she loved. She hauled fresh alfalfa to the trough, and the horses dropped their heads to it greedily while she made her way to the water barrel and gave its contents a quick look-over.
Nothing wrong there.
The coop answered her next with indignant noise.
The guinea fowl were already up and carrying on beneath the squat cottonwood that shaded their enclosure, pacing and jerking their heads about like tiny, feathered sentries put in charge of something much too important for them. Rose laughed despite herself, scooped cracked corn from the grain sack, and scattered it along the hard-packed path theyâd worn into the dirt.
âYâall act like Iâve never fed you before!â
The whole flock surged forward in a frantic little mass. Their biggest hen, Pansy, shoved aside the rest of them in pursuit of the best mouthfuls, earning herself a look.
âYouâre a menace,â Rosabel informed her.
Pansy squawked back as though slandered by the suggestion.
By then the sun had begun to rise properly, stretching pale gold across the grassland beyond the paddock and warming the dew into scent. The ground smelled sweet and damp. Wildflowers somewhere out by the road had begun to open. The whole yard seemed full without being overly crowded. Rosabel paused at the edge of it, Wolfie pressing up to her leg as though he too understood that some mornings deserved a second look.
The world felt wide then. Open. A little too lonely, perhaps.
But not empty. Never empty. Panem made sure of itâŠ
She rested her hand on the dogâs head and looked out toward the flat horizon, where the land carried on farther than sense, comfort, and even farther than any daughter could follow her father to make sure he was safe. Somewhere under that same growing light, Virgil was working. Maybe thinking of home or thinking of her. Maybe not thinking at all because the work in front of him needed both hands and all his attention.
Please come home in one piece, she thought, though she knew prayers had a poor habit of disappearing unanswered into the prairie sky.
Still, hope looked lively in her all the same.
Back inside, she took the cider from the stove before it went bitter, dropped in a single cinnamon stick to soften the smell into something worth carrying, and packed the corn cakes into the handwoven carrier she always used on school mornings. The scent turned her stomach with hunger then, and she glanced toward the cakes with a flicker of temptation.
Could she at least have one bite?
âNo,â Rosabel muttered to herself, laughing once under her breath as though sheâd actually been reprimanded.
She climbed to the loft and changed into her pine-wood green academy uniform, wrestling briefly with the jacket that had once been too large for her and was now annoyingly snug across the shoulders from five straight years of use. Back when she first received it at twelve, she had been the smallest girl in her grade, thin as a fence rail and hardly heavier than a sack of grain. Now the fabric pulled differently, given her broader physique. The brown wool skirt was still serviceable, if too warm in direct sunlight, and the whole uniform had a way of turning itchy in summer weather that Rose had long since accepted as part of her education.
âDarn thing,â she huffed, smoothing the jacket down anyway.
She braided her red hair into its usual twin plaits, tied them off with green ribbons, gathered her schoolwork and the breakfast carrier, and headed back outside in her dusty white boots.
Wildfire made for a smooth ride into the east side of town, and the morning was mild enough that the cider scarcely trembled in its container. Large lodge houses rose here and there across the flat, with red sediment hills in the distance and the rich earth of District 9 showing through wherever the land had been cut or worn down.
By the time Rosabel reached the Mniwakan lodge, the morning had ripened into gold.
The house stood broad and weathered against the prairie, its red-painted boards faded by wind and years, its roofline slightly uneven from additions made as the family grew and kept growing. It was less a single house, barely anyone in 9 could afford anything so spacious on its own. Rather, it was a home that had been asked, over and over again, to make room for one more child, one more marriage, one more winter, and one more mouth at the table. Beside it sat the low barn with its sagging doors and patched siding, and beyond that the pens, the washing line, the goat enclosure, and the first long strips of field that belonged, in one way or another, to the Mniwakansâ labor.
Even from the yard, the place had its own kind of pulse.
Somewhere near the barn, one of the Mniwakan boys was trying to coax a stubborn dairy goat into being milked and losing badly by the sound of it. A younger cousin, still too small for field work but old enough for chores, was hauling kindling in an armload twice too large for him. The air smelled of sun-warmed earth, goat musk, damp wood, frying sausage, and the faint sweetness of clover clinging to somebodyâs hem from yesterdayâs work.
Rose slowed Wildfire by the hitching post and dismounted with the easy familiarity of a girl who had made this ride enough times for the mare to know it by heart. She balanced her books and carrier against her hip and gave the pony a fond rub along the neck.
âBe good,â she murmured.
Wildfire twitched one ear as if to say she always was.
Rose tied her off, lifted the handwoven carrier containing the cider and corn cakes, and took the porch steps two at a time, though she slowed just before opening the screen door. She always did, because stepping into the Mniwakan lodge felt a bit like stepping into a river current. Once inside, you belonged to its motion.
The screen banged outward before she could touch it.
Roseâs cousin, Waaska stood there with her own uniform a bit frazzled, her raven hair braided halfway finished, looking bright-eyed and harried in the particular way only she ever managed.
âRosie!â she said, her honey-ambered eyes flickered. âYouâre late.â
âHow so?â Rose answered, smiling as she shifted the carrier away before Waaska could fumble it. âYouâre the one who gets to sleep in.â
âNo, that would be Nibs. Heâs lazier than a sack of potatoes.â
From somewhere deeper inside came a muffled, indignant holler from Waaskaâs baby brother, Niibi. âAm not!â
Waaska rolled her eyes so hard Rose thought she might strain something, before stepping aside to give Rose some space to enter.
The heat met her first.
The Mniwakan lodge always felt ten degrees warmer than the rest of District 9, as though its walls had learned how to gather people and hold heat in equal measure. The kitchen table took up most of the main room, scarred by years of bowls, knives, elbows, and prayers. Shelves bowed beneath jars of beans, dried chokecherries, flour sacks, crockery, and half-mended things that had been set aside only long enough to be forgotten. Coats hung from pegs near the door, with boots lined up in two neat rows and one very disobedient pile. Someone, probably Nibs, had left a school satchel open on the floor beside a basket of mending. Someone else had left a wooden spoon in the wash basin.
It was crowded. And warm. And alive.
At the stove stood Waaska and Nibsâs paternal grandmother, Minaha, whom most of the younger ones called Minha when they were feeling affectionate or wanted something. She was the real center of the household in the way fire was the center of a room; not always the loudest thing, but the thing everything else arranged themselves around. Her hair, streaked with silver now, was tied back in a low knot, and her sleeves were rolled firm over forearms made strong by years of fieldwork, washing, kneading, hauling, mending, lifting children who were never light for long. She had married into the family through Zibins Mniwakan, yet anyone with eyes could tell the house listened to her as much as it listened to him.
âThere she is,â Minaha said, not looking up at first as she stirred potatoes into a pot of broth. âSet that down, sweetheart. You always bring too much. Far too much.â
Rose set the cider and corn cakes on the edge of the table. âPapa says showing up empty-handed is bad breeding.â
âWell,â Minaha replied, glancing over with a smile that lived mostly in the corners of her earthy, brown eyes. âYour papa had enough sense to know a full table keeps love from turning sour.â
At the far end of that same table sat Minhaâs husband and the secondary head of the household, though in truth there was very little âsecondaryâ about the weight he carried. He was broad-shouldered, deep-chested, and slow-spoken, a man who always looked as though heâd come in from work only a breath ago, even when washed and indoors. Zibins possessed the sort of steadiness that made younger relatives drift toward him without quite realizing it. He was already halfway into his work clothes, boots unlaced, going over a paper scrap with last weekâs grain tallies and this weekâs projected shortage.
He looked up when Rose came in and gave her one short nod.
That was Zibinsâs version of warmth, and Rose had long since learned to read it.
By the hearth sat Ziibi Mniwakan, the eldest living Mniwakan member under the lodge roof and the head from whom the rest of the family line seemed to descend like tributaries from an old river. He was Zibinsâs father, a man that time itself etched stories and memories within.
Something that always both impressed and scared Rose a little was that Ziibi had survived the Dark Days, which meant that every child in the house had grown up under the shadow of something they could not quite imagine and remembered too well to romanticize. Age had hollowed him some but not diminished him. He sat with a blanket over his knees and his cane propped beside him, his face lined so deeply Rose sometimes thought he looked carved rather than born.
When his rich, dark eyes found Rose, they were still keen.
âRosabel,â he greeted.
âTunka,â she answered softly.
That was what most of the younger generation called him. Grandfather. Not simply by blood, but by place. Ever since Virgilâs sister had married into the Mniwakan household, Tunka Ziibi himself had accepted Rosabel as though she were his own kin. To which, she technically was.
A little body collided into Waaskaâs side at that exact moment, and Niibi, or rather Nibs, emerged with his shirt half-buttoned and one sock missing, his hair standing every direction it could think of. He was still at the age where movement and mischief were nearly the same thing. If Waaska moved like she was trying to hold the family morning together by sheer force of will, Nibs moved like he had been born specifically to shake it apart and see what would happen.
âNibs,â Waaska snapped. âI told you to wash your face!â
âI did!â The young boy whined.
âSplashing water at your own reflection donât count!â
âIt oughta.â He muttered under his breath, shooting his sister a glare of disdain.
Rose bit back a smile.
Before she could answer, another quieter figure descended the ladder from the loft. Mina, Zibins and Minahaâs younger daughter, came down with a folded apron over one arm and her boy on her heels. She had a gentler face than Rosabelâs uncle and a different kind of stamina, being less blunt, more enduring. Where her elder brother and Rosabelâs uncle, Gami had gone into trade with Misea Tempest and learned the rough grace of barter and merchant roads, Mina had stayed anchored to the householdâs rhythms, working where needed, mothering where needed, taking her place in the architecture of the lodge as naturally as another post driven into the earth.
Her five-year-old, Zaaga, solemn-eyed and only half awake, had his hair hanging loose and black down his back.
âYour Rosieâs here,â Mina said to him.
Rose laughed softly. âYour Rosie?â
Zaaga, who had inherited Minaâs quiet and none of his cousinâs chaos, gave Rose the kind of look that suggested he did not see the problem. âYou braid better than Mama does.â
âTraitor,â Mina said flatly, though affection warmed the word as she headed to help her mother with breakfast.
Rose set down her shawl and books, already slipping into the morningâs tasks without needing instruction. That was one of the things she loved most about the Mniwakan lodge. There was always work, but never the kind that made her feel like a guest obliged to prove herself. Instead, the family absorbed her into its motion as naturally as another pair of hands.
âSit,â she told Zaaga, patting the bench near the hearth.
He obeyed immediately. That alone told Rose the morning had not yet gone on long enough for him to become stubborn.
She took up the comb his mother handed over and began gently separating his hair. Across from her, Nibs had managed to steal a bite of sausage from a cooling plate and was trying to chew it before his grandmother turned around. Waaska was still fighting with her own laces and glaring at him on principle. Mina moved to the cupboard for bowls. Zibins got up to fetch another chair for one of the unnamed cousins who would surely wander in hungry from the barn. Ziibi watched all of it with the grave patience of someone who had seen enough of life to know that chaos at breakfast was often a sign of blessing rather than disorder.
âMisea and Gami gone already?â Rose asked.
Minaha nodded, dropping more chopped potatoes into the broth. âOut before sunrise. Gami wanted first pick of the west market before the mill wives got there. Misea said if he haggled one more farmer into sulking sheâd make him carry the stock back himself.â
Rose smiled at that. She could hear Misea clearly in the line of it.
Misea, Virgilâs sister, had never lost the look of someone who might laugh first and apologize never. Like some of the Mniwakans, she had married in, and unlike most women who married into an old family, she had not softened herself to fit its every edge, because she didnât have to. She had simply become part of it without giving up the fact that she had once been a Tempest. Rose had always admired that in her.
And because Misea and Gami worked as merchants instead of full-time field laborers, and because Virgilâs name still carried force in New Bisman, their children had privileges other field-worker families often lacked, most notably, academy enrollment that could be maintained instead of interrupted every season by somebody deciding the children were more useful in the rows than the classroom.
Rose knew that. She never forgot it. It made mornings like this feel luckier than they looked.
Zaaga sat quietly while she divided his hair into sections. He did not fidget unless spoken to, and when he did speak it was usually to say something unexpectedly final.
âDonât make it too tight,â he said.
âI never do.â
âMama does...â
Mina, crossing behind them with a stack of tin cups, muttered. âAnd yet, you still live.â
Nibs barked out a laugh so sudden he nearly choked on the stolen sausage. Waaska smacked him between the shoulder blades without even looking.
Rose began the braid slowly, fingers practiced and careful. She liked moments like this, because it was one of those little acts by which a place admitted you knew how to belong there. She knew which bowl Ziibi preferred or how Minaha liked the salt crock near her right hand and never the left. Habit also told her by now that Waaska would rather rush half-dressed than risk being late to school, or how despite Nibs disgust towards learning, opting to follow in his uncleâs footsteps instead, he was secretly the smartest boy in his year.
Those things counted.
Outside, voices drifted through the open slat of the window. One of Waaskaâs cousins trying to coax a goat out from under the wagon, the same one who struggled to milk her earlier. Another grandchild was being told to stop feeding scraps to the dogs before the real scraps had even been sorted. A barn door slammed, before wind passed lightly over the porch and through the decorative wind chimes. And all the while, breakfast came together.
Minaha moved between stove and table, with her daughter laying out spoons and bowls. Waaska finally got both boots tied and was now trying to force Nibs into his jacket. Zibins poured water from the pitcher and paused to check the sky through the back door, reading weather the way some men read the paper. Ziibi waited near the hearth, not inactive but central, the kind of elder around whom a familyâs shape still held, all while watching Rose braid the last of her extended cousinâs silken hair.
When Rose tied off Zaagaâs braid, he reached back to feel it and nodded once, satisfied.
âSee?â she said. âNow you look ready to be seen by civilized company!â
Zaaga frowned slightly. âAinât planninâ on any.â
At that, even Zibins let out the faintest breath of laughter.
âGet to the table,â Minaha said, though her voice was soft. âBefore the civilized company decides to eat without you.â
The room filled quickly after that. One of the cousins came in smelling of goat and hay, another with flour still on her sleeve from helping at the mill house before sunrise. They were greeted, seated, redirected, and folded into the long habit of the place. Rose took her seat near Waaska and Nibs only after Mina insisted and Minaha threatened to set her to washing up if she didnât.
Then, one of the grandsons lead Ziibi to the head of the table where he was seated.
The effect was immediate.
The room quieted not because anyone had been commanded to silence, but because they knew him enough to listen before he had spoken. Nibs lowered his eyes. Waaska stilled. Zaaga folded his hands in the way Mina had taught him. Zibins bowed his head, with his wife standing with one palm resting lightly on the chair back before finally taking her seat.
Rose bowed her head too.
Ziibiâs voice was worn by years and still strong where it mattered.
âMay this family understand anything short of prosperity and hope,â he murmured.
Rose had heard the blessings many times before, yet it never felt memorized. Ziibi altered it gently from morning to morning, as though blessing was not recitation but attention.
âLet us understand the beauty of humility and change so that we may prosper. Let us know the goodness of respect and understanding so that we may grow.â
Rose kept her eyes lowered, but she could feel the room around her; the stagnation of bodies, the morning warmth, the clean smell of bread being torn apart, Nibs trying very hard not to poke Waaska while the prayer was still going.
âAnd let us know,â Ziibi continued. âThat for whatever trial comes into our path, we may still keep strength enough to rise, and kindness enough to remain ourselves.â
That line settled more deeply than the rest.
Rose felt it in that quiet place inside her where hope lived, and it wasnât the sort sold in speeches. It was smaller that. The kind held in hot food, in open, wooden doors, in the fact that a family worked because its members insisted on carrying one another where they could.
She had always thought the Capitol would hear words like Ziibiâs and misunderstand them on purpose. They would call them primitive, perhaps, or even rebellious. Though, more realistically, they would find Tunkaâs words useless.
But Rose? She never saw them in any of those unsavory colors. To her, they were love made orderly enough to survive.
Ziibi bowed his head a little lower, then finished softly. âThank you...â
The room breathed again.
After a quiet moment, of Minaha serving Ziibi first, bowls were passed, potatoes ladled, sausage links divided, and fresh bread torn by hand. Nibs reached too early and got a sharp look from Waaska. Mina slid the better portion of broth toward Zaaga before he could ask. Zibins finally folded away his tally sheet, as Minaha sat down last, as she often did, only after confirming every person at the table had something warm in front of them.
Rose lifted her spoon and let the first mouthful settle into her.
Around her, the Mniwakan lodge returned to its living shape, all full of labor, interruption, appetite, and the unspoken confidence that whatever the day brought, it would be met by more than one pair of hands.
It struck her then, as it sometimes did, that she belonged not only to her little house with Virgil and Wolfie and Wildfire, but here too. To this table, with this family by extension and affection. To the broad web of people who made District 9 feel, despite all its sharpness, like something more than a place to endure. That mattered. A lot.
When the meal ended and chairs began to scrape back from the table, Rose helped gather the bowls out of habit, before Minaha shooed her away. Waaska grabbed her books, and Nibs had somehow misplaced the same sock as before. Zibins and the other field workers already began shrugging into their coats to see to the field of grain. Ziibi was lead back his place by the hearth, where he remained. There he quietly watched them all with those old, seeing eyes.
Rose touched his shoulder lightly as she passed.
âThank you, Tunka.â
He covered her hand once, briefly, with his own, a gentle smile graced his features. âGo learn somethinâ worth keepinâ.â
By the time we boarded the train back to New Bisman, Iâd learned that grief had a mean little trick to it.
It did not come kindly nor all at once, not in the way folks in hymns or funeral speeches liked to pretend it did. There were waves mean enough to make a body think maybe it had steadied, only to knock the knees out from under it again the second it caught you standing upright. Worse yet, it came with practicalities. Men still needed loading. Reports still needed giving. Orders still needed obeying. Your chief could die right in front of you and the world, insultingly enough, would still expect you to sit where you were told and keep your good leg out of the aisle.
Which is exactly what I did. Or tried to do, anyway.
The train car smelled of fermenting grain, smoke, and the sharp mineral tang of dust turned to mud beneath too many boots. I sat jammed between Burr Scranton and Ditcher Hazen on a splintery bench with my injured leg stretched just far enough not to scream every time the carriage lurched. Across from us, two younger catchers had already nodded off despite the racket, their heads knocking lightly against the wooden wall each time we crossed a rough patch of rail. Somebody farther down the car was whispering too low to make out. The whole thing had the exhausted hush of catchers who had seen enough in one day and would still have to wake the next morning, all the while living inside it.
Burr, naturally, was the first one to break it.
That boy could no more sit in silence than a wasp could choose not to sting.
âThat isnât an easy show to dance to, given what the chief did,â he muttered in regard to Tempest, arms folded, hat tipped low over his brow. âTo the Capitol, I mean. Specially wonderinâ how in hell his family didnât get bit by ânatural causes.â NowâŠâ He clicked his tongue against his teeth. âWell, they might shape us up into peacecreeps.â
âLike hell they would,â I grumbled before I could help myself.
Burr turned to me at once, pleased to have his audience back. âIâm serious. Capitolâll start traininâ their boys to take our place, then when District 9 runs outta homegrown firecatchers, the suckersâll hold it over our heads. Blame us when stock burns like hell or when the mills spark! Thatâs how they do things.â
âCâmon, Burr.â I rubbed a hand over my face and wished, not for the first time, that pain made a body meaner instead of merely tired. âThatâs absurd. Ainât no peacekeeper can do our job.â
âNot unless Rolette keeps his head in his ass!â
At that, I cut him a look. He only leaned in harder, voice dropping the way men do when they believe theyâre about to become prophets.
âThink about it. Rolette sendinâ us home? Just like they do with peacekeepers. And with peacecreeps, wellâŠâ He shrugged one shoulder. âIâve heard whispers in the rows. Capitol donât treat their cripples kindly.â
âWeâre not cripples, Burr,â Ditcher put in from my other side, sounding tired enough to make the correction feel older than the argument. âYou just twisted your mind wrong and his legâs busted. Thatâs different. And no, peacecreeps ainât takinâ over the firecatcher force. They barely know how to ride horseback. What makes you think they can do a takeover?â
âBecause Rolette just ainât Tempest, Hazen,â Burr shot back. âHeâll fold as soon as they threaten to throw his grandkids into the Blood River. Just you wait.â
Ditcher rolled his eyes. âWhat about Tempest? Tempestâs family is safe. Lived long enough to grow a whole kid, didnât he? Hell, even his sisterâs familyâs doinâ fine. How come the Capitol didnât threaten him when he made that Game Amendment?â
That quieted Burr⊠for all of half a breath.
ââCause Tempest didnât break,â he said finally, and though the words were aimed at Ditcher, I found myself carrying the question all the same.
It lodged in me ugly. How come they didnât threaten him? Or had they? Had he simply never let us see it?
Had Virgil Tempest, Chief Virgil Tempest, really stood between his family and the Capitol the way he stood between the district and fire? Squarely, stubbornly, until the thing in front of him gave way first?
Or was Burr doing what Burr always did and mistaking every misfortune for design because randomness offended him worse than tyranny did?
âAnd âsides,â he muttered, not quite done poisoning the air. âWhy dâyou think he was among the few to conveniently die in that gas fire?â
âScranton.â Ditcherâs voice sharpened. âIt was an accident. Thatâs it.â
And to be honest, I agreed.
Even if some dark little corner of Panem had wanted Virgil dead, now was not the time to go building a gallows out of guesswork. I had seen the spill. Smelt it. Watched the whole field go wrong at once. Men did not need Capitol plots to die ugly in District 9. Industry managed that just fine on its own.
âSure,â Burr said after a moment, quieter now. âAn accident.â
I scoffed. Ditcher did too. It was a weak sound, but it was what we had.
After that, the train settled into a misery of its own making. Burr sulked. Ditcher picked at a loose thread in his cuff. I watched the grain of the floorboards below my boots and tried, with little success, not to think about what waited at the end of the line.
My leg throbbed in time with the rails, and horribly enough, it didnât just linger in one place. The pain had spread by then, out from the injury proper into the whole of my left side, until every jolt of the train made it seem as though somebody was driving hot nails up through bone. The medics had splinted what they could and wrapped it well enough to get me home, but home was still a ride away, and the body is a cruel accountant where distance is concerned. Still, the pain was almost a mercy.
It gave me something immediate to hold onto. Something smaller than Virgil⊠or Rose. Smaller than the task Rolette had put in my hands like it was a responsibility instead of a punishment.
Tell the TempestsâŠ
As if the sentence itself didnât blister.
But every version of the errand ended in the same place. Her face. Or rather, what it would contort into.
By the time the train began to lose momentum, my stomach had knotted itself hard enough to make me lightheaded.
New Bismanâs station rose into view through the dust-blurred window, the same weathered platform with that same crooked signage no one in 9 would ever bother fixing. It was usually a consistent crowd of workers and traders that moved about it, only this time, everything felt different. It was as if the world had not shifted on its axis somewhere out near the border. That was the ugly thing about towns. The stupid things just kept going. Even after a man like Virgil died, somebody still had to unload feed sacks or mind on the price of flour. The world couldnât just pause in its place because I wanted it to.
I let out a nervous breath as I slowly off-boarded the train, my leg not allowing me near as much dignity as I wouldâve preferred. Burr and Ditcher both lived closer to the station than I did, and after enough shoulder-claps and muttered see-you-tomorrows to make me feel lonelier instead of less so, they peeled off and left me to my own devices.
Which was just as well. I donât think I couldâve borne company much longer.
The station yard was alive in the way only New Bisman ever managed to be all brick, dust, and wood, every street pretending to belong more to trade than to want. A wagon rattled past under too much grain. A woman in a faded bonnet shouted prices over a barrel of onions. Somewhere close by, somebody had just pulled bread from an oven, and the yeasty warmth of it rolled through the street mixed with the sharper tang of fermenting grain from the silos and millhouses further up.
The first trolley southside came chugging up the lane with its usual exhausted complaint, and I climbed aboard before I could think too hard about whether walking mightâve done me good.
It would not have. Obviously.
I sat near the back where I could stretch the leg a touch, bracing one hand against the bench as the trolley lurched forward. The old streets of New Bisman rolled by in their familiar colors; false-front buildings painted orange, mustard, tobacco-brown; feed stores; millhouses; tradersâ stalls with striped awnings sun-bleached nearly to thread. Grain dust hung in the air like a second atmosphere. Children ran errands with baskets crooked against their hips. A woman shook out a rug over a balcony and sent a cloud of pale dirt drifting down onto the street. Two firecatchers on horseback tipped their hats at me when they recognized my face, and I lifted a hand back on reflex before remembering I was carrying news no hand ought to be free enough to wave under.
Everything looked exactly as it ought to have looked. That was what made it so wrong.
Nostalgia is a vicious thing when paired with dread. Every corner of that town had a memory attached to it. I knew which vendor sold the sugared plums too dear in summer, or which alley boys used to slip down to avoid street inspections. Which stable kept the meanest mares. Which had windows belonging to families who could afford glassed windows, and which had to make do with sackcloth and prayer. I could tell how the streets had once broken at the sight of peacekeepers chasing down some scrawny child to send back to the mills or, worse, to sell cheap to whichever wheat tycoon had run short on field hands and conscience both. I knew what happened to the children caught publicly. How most of them, if infection didnât set in first, learned to limp before they learned to read. Knew the Capitol could call all of that civic order with a straight face.
Despite all this⊠New Bisman of District 9 was home. New Bisman was also the sort of place that made you understand how thin the line was between belonging somewhere and being used by it.
The trolley trundled on all the same.
We passed the main stretch of market, particularly near the grain offices with their painted lettering and locked front doors. We passed the silos like ugly monuments to District 9âs usefulness. Then, gradually, the buildings shifted. The facades grew meaner, lower, less eager to impress. The streets widened a little. The air changed.
Then it passed the clinic.
The adobe, sod building sat where it always had, ugly as regret, broad and windowless on its upper level like it had been built specifically to keep a body from seeing too far ahead. Folks called it the only real hospital in District 9, though ârealâ was a generous word for any place where poverty and morphling met as often as they did there.
I shouldâve gotten off. That much I knew.
My leg had long since moved past throbbing into something rawer, something almost electric. The longer I sat on it, the worse the ache became, winding itself up through muscle and bone until I could scarcely tell where the injury ended and my temper began. A wiser man wouldâve stepped down right there, taken the humiliation, and let the healers do what needed doing.
But after losing Virgil and needing to tell his family, I did not have the strength to set foot in that building.
Not then. Not firstâŠ
I stayed where I was while the trolley rolled on, jaw set, fingers dug white into the edge of the bench.
Main Street came and went. The city hall bell rang somewhere off in the east. A child laughed from a side lane. Somebody shouted for change. Somebody else cursed a mule. The town continued being itself with a cruelty so casual I almost admired it.
By the time we neared the south side, the pain in my leg had become a thing I moved inside rather than merely suffered. I stood too early and nearly sat back down again from the force of it. The trolley driver gave me a look that mightâve been pity if Iâd been in the mood to accept such a thing. I was certainly not.
I got off at the corner nearest the Tempest place and stood there for a moment longer than I had any right to, one hand on the post, breathing through the ache.
The streets here were quieter.
There house sat on a wider, much more spacious part of the town. Smaller houses, better-kept yards, and a little more room between one porch and the next. The sort of part of town where a man like Virgil Tempest could build something sturdy enough to keep weather out and hope in. I knew the route from there without needing to think about it. Past the dry ditch, and the split-rail fence. Then to the cottonwood with the lightning scar down one side.
My limp had worsened by the time I reached the road that would take me the rest of the way.
I could feel my heart kicking hard against the cage of my ribs, though it wasnât just from exertion alone. Rather, from the plain simple fact of what waited at the end of it. A house and a family who would still, at that exact moment, be moving through breakfast or chores and then school preparations beneath the assumption that Virgil Tempest existed somewhere in the world and would continue doing so by evening.
And me? I was the man about to end that illusion for them.
I stopped just before the gate.
The little Tempest house stood where it always had. Quiet. Familiar. Sun catching at the roofline, with nothing in its posture yet suggested grief. The yard betrayed what I carried, as it looked like a place still entitled to ordinary hours, with yellow sunflowers and prairie rosesâŠ
For one shameful second, I thought of turning around.
Not forever, just⊠maybe for a minute. Long enough to breathe and to sit down somewhere out of sight before gathering the courage that duty had failed to provide. Long enough to remain, if only briefly, a man not yet walking death to a childâs front door.
Though that was the problem. I had already learned that grief did not honor hesitation⊠so, I opened the gate and went on.
I had only made it three limping steps up the path before I understood Iâd gotten there too late for the kind of cowardice Iâd briefly hoped for. The house was shut up proper, curtains half-drawn against the papery glare, the porch swept clean. Nothing about it knew yet, that it was about to be touched by what I carried.
That was the cruelest thing.
I lifted my hand to knock and found, to my embarrassment, that it would not steady. The fingers trembled there in the sunlight like they belonged to somebody much older and much weaker than me. I swallowed hard, raised my fist again, and rapped twice against the sable-brown door.
âRosabel?â I called, hating how thin my own voice sounded. âRose? Itâs me. Auphie.â
No answer came.
I stood there a second longer, listening to the stillness on the other side, to the scrape of wind through the flower stalks and the far-off rattle of a wagon somewhere nearer town. My leg had begun throbbing hard again from the walk, each pulse of it hot and mean, but the pain barely registered against the pressure building in my chest.
I knocked once more.
âShe should be at the academy by now, Mr. Rhodes.â
The voice was low, coming from behind me, calm as courthouse stone.
I turned too fast, nearly paid for it with my balance, and had to catch myself against the porch post before the world righted. Mayor Panis Lancaster stood a few yards back along the path, one gloved hand resting over the head of his walking stick, spectacles flashing pale in the light. His coat was buttoned neat despite the warming day, and there was something in his face that told me, before he said another word, that he already knew.
âMayor,â I managed. âI- I didnât hear you.â
âNo,â he said quietly, his tone already registering the severity. âI expect not.â
He did not come closer right away. I appreciated that more than I could say. Most folks, when they smelled tragedy on a person, either pressed in too close from pity or backed off too far from fear. Lancaster, for all his polish, at least knew how to stand at a humane distance from it.
I straightened as best I could and wished I hadnât. The movement sent a bright streak of pain up my left side, sharp enough to make me draw a breath through my teeth.
His brown eyes flicked, once, to the way I was holding myself.
âYou ought to be at the clinic.â
I almost laughed. It came out more like a bitter exhale. âAinât the first place I felt like stoppinâ.â
âNo,â he said again, softer now, looking over my shoulder at the house. âI imagine it would not be.â
The quiet between us was not long, but it felt long enough for the whole of New Bisman to shift and settle around it. The town, insulting thing that it was, kept right on being alive.
âFrom my understanding,â Lancaster said at last. âThat word has not yet reached the city. Am I correct?â
I nodded.
âAnd Deputy Rolette sent you on ahead with the news in tow, correct?â
Another nod.
He let out a slow breath through his nose, gaze dropping briefly to the dust between his shoes. âThen I am very sorry, Mr. Rhodes.â
There was a decency to the way he said it that nearly undid me worse than any grand speech could have. It wasnât eloquent. It really wasnât. Rather, it sounded like a man who knew there was no arrangement of language fit for the thing it was meant to cover.
âDoes anyone else know?â I asked.
âVery few,â he answered. âOnly those who must. I have not announced anything publicly, nor will I until the family has been informed.â
At that, something in me loosened by a hair. It wasnât relief, exactly. More like the smallest available mercy. Lancaster seemed to read as much on my face.
âIf you intend to tell them yourself,â he went on. âYou may do so without interruption from me.â
I looked back at the shut door, then toward the road that led east, toward the lodge side of town where the Mniwakans lived all crowded together in their big red house The place where they still bargained with their words for one more good harvest.
Virgil should have been the one walking up those steps again. Not me.
âHe was supposed to come home,â I heard myself say, and hated how boyish it sounded once spoken aloud. âRose⊠hell, they were probably expectinâ him next week.â
Lancasterâs expression changed, though only slightly. It wasnât surprise, but more so the look a man gets when the shape of another familyâs sorrow becomes newly precise in his mind.
âI am sorry,â he said again.
I nodded, because there was nothing else to do.
âAnd Miss Tempest-Strix,â he continued after a moment. âIs still at school. Classes are not yet dismissed, so if you wish to tell the Mniwakans first, I think that would be wise.â
WiseâŠ
The word almost made me wince. There was no wise path through what came next, only less cruel ones.
âI donât want her hearing it in a hallway or anythingâŠâ I muttered.
âNo,â Lancaster said. âNor in front of the other students.â
He stepped up one plank of the porch then, not enough to crowd me, only enough to make plain that the rest of what he said was meant in earnest.
âI can see to the academy,â he said. âThere is to be an assembly for an unrelated occasion that I must see to, but I assure you Mr. Rhodes, no one will be informed of Chief Tempestâs untimely passing.â
I stared at him.
It was such a small promise in the face of everything else, but it landed squarely all the same. For one awful second, I could picture Rose learning it wrong, some child whispering, some teacher fumbling, or some rumor outrunning the truth. The image made my stomach turn so sharply I had to look away.
âThank you,â Was all I could manage, and meant it.
Lancaster dipped his head once, his dark brimmed hat concealing part of his gaze. âTake the time you need with the family first. I will remain nearby.
Nearby. That was close enough to help if help became necessary.
Which, more than anything else, made him feel more human.
I dragged a hand over my mouth, tasting dust, old tobacco, and the faint metallic trace of blood that still seemed lodged at the back of my throat from the border. Then I looked past the mayor, eastward, where the road curved toward the lodge district.
The Mniwakans first.
Then RoseâŠ
âŠevery version of the morning had led there anyway.
The academy always smelled faintly of chalk, boiled grain, and moldy bread.
By midday, the classrooms had gone close and stale with it. What little breeze the prairie offered never seemed to find its way through the building properly. It got caught somewhere in the brick, timber, and the officialness of the place, leaving the students to sit in rows beneath high windows that let in light but not much mercy. The desks were old, older than most of them, being carved up by generations of bored fingers and pocketknives. The blackboards had been scrubbed so many times they never really looked clean. Even the maps of all twelve districts seemed tired, their corners curling inward as if the whole world had grown weary of being pointed at.
Schooling, Rosabel had learned, was its own kind of discipline.
It wasnât cruel pre-say, not in the way of lashings or mill whistles alongside peacekeeper rifles, but a narrower thing. A slow straightening of the spine, demanding that a hand be raised only when called upon. A lesson repeated until it no longer sounded like knowledge and started sounding like obedience. Rose still considered herself fortunate to be there. She knew better than most that luck had built the path beneath her boots as much as hard work had. Plenty of children her age were already in the fields by sunup or coughing their lungs ragged in the mills. She had a desk, a pencil stub, and enough time left in the day to think thoughts bigger than survival.
Still, the academy had a way of making even possibility feel buttoned at the throat. And, frankly, âacademyâ was a generous word for the place.
Nibs had started calling it the Jail House sometime last winter after one of the lower form boys got locked in a supply cupboard for mouthing off to an instructor. It had been a joke at first, the sort boys like him made when they were too young to understand how close jokes could sit to truth. But the name stuck in Roseâs head because it suited the building better than anyone in authority would care to admit. The local prison likely had fewer cracks in its walls. Maybe better ventilation too.
Still, it was the only official school in District 9.
Graduating from it could give a child a narrow road away from the fields, the mills, or the fire line. Narrow, yes, but a road all the same. Parents who could afford the tuition treated the academy less like a school and more like a ladder, even if getting one child up a rung meant selling off a little hobby farm, taking on debt, or sleeping six bodies to a room through winter. Rose had seen what people would trade for the faint promise of a softer future. Some methods were less honorable than others, maybe, but she could not blame them.
Everyone was trying to climb out of something.
For the Tempest and Mniwakan families, Tunkaâs blessings must have found purchase somewhere. Virgilâs years as a firecatcher had given them just enough respectability and pay to let Rose, Waaska, and Nibs attend without the household starving for it. Life at the lodge and the Tempest home was not fine by Capitol measures, heavens no, but Rose knew no such thing as complaining.
She had food enough most days, a bed, a horse to ride to school, and most importantly, people who loved her. Everything, really, except her father beside her as often as she wished.
That morning, the children dismounted near the academyâs holding paddock, where the horses nosed at dry hay and complained in low huffs about being left to stand through another day of lessons. Rose looped Wildfireâs reins over the rail before helping Nibs with his satchel, though he made a great show of not needing help at all.
âI know how buckles work,â he muttered, yanking the strap crooked over one shoulder.
âCongratulations,â Rose said. âThat puts you ahead of half the Capitol.â
Waaska made a strangled little sound that might have been a laugh if she had not swallowed it so quickly. Rose glanced at her cousin.
Waaska had been quiet since the ride in. Not merely tired-quiet either or even morning-quiet, which Rose understood and respected. This was the kind of quiet that sat too high in the shoulders and too tight around the mouth. Her books were clutched to her chest like they might be stolen if she loosened her grip. Every few seconds, her eyes darted toward the academy doors, then away again.
Nibs, either not noticing or pretending not to, kicked dust off his boots. âWhy does this even matter? Iâm gonna be a firecatcher anyways.â
Rose pointed toward the entrance. âThat sentence is exactly why it matters.â
âI donât need arithmetic to catch fires!â The ten-year-old huffed.
âYou need arithmetic to avoid dying stupidly while catching fire.â Rosabel pitied Waaska in that moment. Maybe this is why sheâs so quiet this morningâŠ
âUncle Virgil never said that.â
Rose threw the boy a side eye. âUncle Virgil said it every time he needs to calculate acreage spread.â
Nibs considered that, then frowned, wanting to complain at how Rose was only trying to sound smart. âStill think this place is a jail.â
âThen try not to become its worst inmate,â Rose told him, steering him toward the lower form hallway before he could attempt escape through argument.
The academy entryway was already crowded with students changing from work boots into school shoes, tying ribbons, shaking prairie dust from hems, and pretending not to stare at whoever had arrived poorer, richer, thinner, or later than themselves. Rose delivered Nibs to his classroom on the ground floor and made sure he was actually seated before letting him out of her sight.
He slumped into his chair with all the dignity of a prisoner awaiting sentence.
âYouâre dramatic,â Rose whispered.
âYouâre worse than WaaskaâŠâ
âShut up and learn something.â
He stuck his tongue against the inside of his cheek, which was about as close to surrender as Nibs ever came.
By the time Rose and Waaska climbed toward the older classrooms, the first bell had rung its warning through the hall. The sound bounced off concrete and brick until it seemed to come from everywhere at once.
âHey, Rose?â Waaska asked.
Rose slowed. âHm?â
Waaska shifted the bundle of books in her arms and looked down the hall toward her classroom. A few students had already gathered outside the door, standing in a tight little knot near the wall. Their laughter was quiet, but not kind. Not exactly cruel either. That was sometimes worse.
âDoes anything feel⊠off to you?â
Rose followed her gaze. âOff how?â
âWell,â The fifteen-year-old tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear. âI heard⊠heard someone say Mayor Lancaster might come by later.â
âOh.â Rose tilted her head. âThatâs probably just some announcement. Maybe about harvest tallies or examination schedules?â
Waaska did not look comforted.
âOr maybe heâs finally shutting the Jail House down,â Rose added, trying for lightness.
Waaska gave a tiny smile, but it vanished almost as soon as it appeared. That was when Rose really saw it. Her cousinâs eyes were glossy.
âW-Waaska? Whatâs-â Rose said softly.
Waaska looked away from her cousin at once.
Inside the classroom, the knot of students drew tighter. Enrique Killdeer stood near the middle of them, his dark curls falling into his eyes as he said something that made two kids cover their mouths with their hands. One of them glanced toward the hall, saw Waaska, and looked away too quickly.
Not guilt⊠no. Rather it was the satisfaction of having been seen seeing. Rose felt something cold settle in her chest.
âHave they been doing this all term?â she asked.
Waaskaâs mouth trembled. She did not answer, but the answer was there anyway. In the stiff way she stood. In the tears she was trying so hard to keep from falling. In the way she held her books like armor.
âOh, WaaskaâŠâ
Rose stepped closer, careful not to make too much of a scene. That was a cruelty of school too, how comfort could become spectacle if given too openly. She touched Waaskaâs forearm first, giving her the chance to pull away.
Waaska didnât. So Rose drew her into a hug.
Her cousin stiffened for half a second before folding into her, face turning toward Roseâs shoulder. She did not sob. That might have helped ease her emotions, sure. She only shook once, silently, like a fence post struck by wind.
âT-They donât say it outright,â Waaska whispered, a slight hiccup plagued her voice.
Rose held her tighter. âWhat donât they say?â
Waaska swallowed hard. âThat I⊠I donât belong here.â
Roseâs jaw tightened. From inside the classroom came another little burst of laughter.
Waaska pulled back just enough to wipe beneath one eye with the heel of her hand. âEnrique said his father called us climbers.â
Rose went still, her brows furrowing. âClimbers?â
âClass climbers,â Waaska said, voice small and ashamed, as if repeating it made it partly true. âLike⊠weâre trying to pretend weâre better than we are. Like Uncle Virgil and Mama only sent us here so we could be employed above our station o-or talk pretty enough to forget the lodge.â
Rose looked toward the classroom. Enrique saw her staring. For one brief moment, their eyes met. His smile faltered, but not enough. Then he turned back to his circle.
Coward, Rose thought, with an intensity that surprised her.
Waaskaâs voice dropped further. âT-Though, some of them say itâs worse because of⊠of you.â
Rose felt that one land in a place she had trained herself not to touch. âBecause of me?â
Waaska shook her head quickly, already regretting the confession. âI-I shouldnât have said that! Iâm sorry-â
âNo.â Rose forced her voice gentle. âTell me.â
Waaska looked miserable. âThey say⊠they say the Tempests only got respectable because Virgil took in a âferalâ kid⊠a-and made a story out of you.â
Rose did not move. That word⊠it wasnât new.
FeralâŠ
She had heard it before, though rarely to her face. It lived in the mouths of adults who thought themselves subtle, in the pause before someone asked where she was âoriginallyâ from, in the way certain academy mothers watched her braids, her freckles, her boots, her mannerisms, looking for proof that District 9 had not truly made her its own.
Feral, like she had been found in the grass.
Feral, like love had âcivilizedâ her.
Feral, like belonging could be granted but never inherited.
Waaska stared at the floor. âI told them youâre from here now. That⊠that youâre family...â
The anger in Rose softened into something more painful. âI know you did, Waaska.â
âBut it didnât matter.â Wasskaâs eyes shamefully looked at the concrete floor.
âNo,â Rose admitted. âSometimes it doesnât.â
Her gaze filled again. âI⊠I hate it!â
Rose adjusted her cousinâs braid with a gentleness she did not feel. âSo do I.â
âThey act like being near you makes me⊠wrong somehow. Like our familyâs pretending.â
Rose gave a small, humorless smile. âWell, if we are pretending⊠weâre doing an awful lot of homework for it.â
Waaska let out a broken little laugh despite herself. Rose gave a tight-lipped smile in return.
âItâs not funny.â
âNo. Probably not.â Rose sighed.
For a moment, they stood together at the edge of the hall while the academy moved around them. Younger students hurried past with slates tucked under their arms. A teacher called for someone to stop running. Downstairs, Nibsâs voice rose in protest over something already, which meant he had lasted nearly four minutes before becoming a public nuisance.
Rose looked back toward Waaskaâs classroom.
âYou know,â she said, âMost of those children have older brothers or sisters in my class.â
Waaska sniffed. âReally?â
âReally. Carrigan Killdeer, for one.â
Waaska made a face. âOf course.â
âShe doesnât like me either.â
âShe doesnât like anyone really.â
Rose gave a half chuckle. âThat may be the smartest thing anyone says in this building today.â
Waaskaâs mouth twitched again.
Rose lowered her voice. âListen to me. School is temporary.â
Waaska looked up.
âAll of this?â Rose said, nodding toward the classroom, the hall. âTemporary. These people feel enormous because we have to sit beside them every day. But one day, youâll walk out of here, and theyâll become faces you once knew in a building that smelled like⊠like musty socks!â
Waaskaâs expression wavered, wanting to believe her and not quite able to.
âMy real friends,â Rose continued, âThey wonât push me away because Iâm different. Or because the people I love are different.â
Waaskaâs voice came thin. âYou think thatâs why they donât like me? Because they judge you first?â
Rose hesitated.
She could have lied. It would have been kinder in the immediate way. A little balm slapped over a wound already gone deep.
But Waaska was on her way to being an adult, just like Rose was. A teenager, sure, but not a child. Old enough to know when comfort had been watered down past truth.
âMaybe,â Rose finally said.
Waaska looked away.
âBut that doesnât make their judgment true,â Rose added quickly. âIt only makes it lazy. And if they decide who you are based on what they think of me, then theyâre not only cruel. Theyâre pretty unimaginative.â
That got a real laugh from Waaska, small and wet.
Rose took the victory for what it was.
âYou are not a climber because your family wants better for you,â Rose said. âYou are not false because you learn quickly. And youâre definitely not lesser because you love someone theyâve decided not to like.â
Waaskaâs chin trembled. âYou make it sound easy.â
âI like it when things sound easy.â
âThat partâs true.â Waaska rolled her eyes in a playful motion.
Rose smiled. âThere. See? Mean as ever. Youâll live.â
Waaska wiped her eyes again, breathing carefully now. From the far end of the hall, her instructorâs voice rang out. âFive minutes, children!â
A few students jolted into motion. The classroom cluster scattered just enough to pretend it had not been a cluster at all. Enrique slipped inside first.
Waaska stared after him.
Rose squeezed her hand once. âDo you want me to walk in with you?â
Waaskaâs pride returned at once, fragile but upright. âN-No.â
âGood.â
Waaska gave her a look.
Rose smiled. âI was just hoping youâd say that.â
Her cousin drew in a breath, lifted her books, and squared her shoulders in a way that looked so much like Misea, and in some ways, Virgil.
Then Waaska entered the classroom. A few heads turned. No one said anything. Not while Rose stood in the doorway. She waited until Waaska took her seat before stepping back.
Only then did Rose continue up the stairs toward her own classroom, adjusting the cuffs of her dark academy uniform and smoothing one hand over her auburn braids. Her stomach had tightened in that familiar way again, the old knowledge pressing at her from beneath her ribs.
DifferentâŠ
FeralâŠ
Temporary.
She told Waaska school was temporary because it had to be. Because if these halls with all its whispers and all its ittle daily exclusions were permanent, then what hope was there for any of them?
Professor Wishek was just making her way to shut the classroom door when Rose reached the landing. Rose slipped through the opening with a murmured apology and headed straight for her desk.
Carrigan Killdeer glanced up from her reader.
Her eyes moved once over Roseâs face, a clear disinterest or even disdain for her arose. Then, she looked away.
Rose sat down, opened her book, and pretended not to feel it.
âWe will start the day with the pledge,â Miss Wishek had said that morning, same as always.
They stood. They recited. They sat. Simple.
Literature had followed, then arithmetic, civics, always civics, as though Panem needed refreshing in their minds the way a stove needed stoking. By the time the noon bell ought to have rung, Roseâs stomach had already begun reminding her of the corn cakes sheâd packed away before sunrise and the cider cooling in the carrier sheâd left with the office matron. She had spent the last half hour drawing little flowers in the corner of her page while Miss Wishek read from a Capitol-approved reader in a voice flat enough to sand wood.
Then, just when everyone had started preparing themselves for lunch, the school day shifted.
Miss Wishek closed the book with a dry clap.
âGraduating class,â she said, smoothing the front of her dress with a look that made half the room sit up straighter. âYou are to proceed to the cafeteria at once.â
Carrigan, who had never once in her life managed to hide a complaint, blinked up at her. âWithout lunch?â
A ripple of unease moved through the room.
Miss Wishek did not answer the question so much as look through it. âAt once.â
That was answer enough.
The seniors filed out under the eyes of their instructor, then joined the trickle of younger classes being ushered through the corridor as well. The hallway smelled of dust and old mop water. Shoes scraped over warped floorboards as someone else whispered that maybe an announcement from the Capitol. Or a district inspection. One of the little boys from the lower forms, already frail with hunger, asked if lunch had been canceled entirely and got shushed so quick he nearly swallowed his own tongue.
âWhatâs going on?â Nellie Watford muttered as the seniors rounded the corner toward the cafeteria. âThis ainât normal.â
âMaybe itâs about that speech the mayor was supposed to give!â Amos Bottineau whispered back, craning his neck toward the front.
Carrigan let out a dramatic groan. âI swear if he interrupts lunch just to hear himself talk, Iâm gonna die where I stand.â
âYou were gonna say that regardlessâŠâ Dax Hebron told her dryly.
Rose did not join in. Not that sheâd be allowed to with open arms anyway.
She had gone quiet in the way she always did when something in the air changed before anyone else quite named it. She faintly remembered Waaskaâs observation, slowly paying attention to her surroundings herself. The building felt different now. Tighter. The children, from eight to eighteen, were being funneled, not dismissed. The teachers didnât merely supervise, rather they were watching. Even the lunching staff lingering in the doorway to the cafeteria seemed uncertain whether they were there to serve food or witness something.
The room itself had none of the comfort that its title suggested, cafeteria that was. It was really just a long hall with benches, narrow tables, and a set of steam kettles lined up along the far wall. The smell of barley mash and watery broth hung stubbornly in the air, enough to remind the body what it was missing without quite satisfying it. Rose and the other seniors were guided to the back benches while younger children packed themselves nearer the front, fidgeting and whispering and kicking at the table legs.
From where she sat, Rose could see the whole room at a slant.
She spotted Nibs immediately, mostly because his hair looked as though he had lost a private fistfight with a broom. Waaska sat close behind him looking maddeningly neat by comparison, one braid smooth as polished roped silk, already reaching over to flatten down her brotherâs collar before he could swat her away. A few rows over were children Rose recognized from firecatcher families, and then the merchant sons and daughters, and the wheat tycoonsâ kids, like Carrigan and Enrique, and finally, there were the children who always looked half-starved even in their uniforms, belonging to the wealthier fieldworkers or millhouse employees whose parents sacrificed an arm and a leg just for their children to know how to read. The academy had a way of putting children together without ever truly erasing the lines between them.
The room gradually settled into a hush.
Then Mayor Lancaster entered, sending a brief, knowing smile to the front row, particularly at his grand nieces, who attended the academy.
He did not need a microphone. He never did. The man had the sort of public voice that seemed built to fill up civic buildings and press itself clean into every corner. He was dressed in his usual respectable brown, not flashy, not too close to Capitol finery either, but still finer than most anyone else in District 9 could manage. He gave a slight bow of the head, first at the younger children, then at the staff, then at the graduating class as if taking stock of what kind of hope the district had managed to raise this year.
âBoys and girls,â he began, and just like that the room went still. âIt is an honor to see all of you here today.â
A few of the younger children shifted proudly beneath the attention. Carrigan, from the back, muttered. âHe says that every time,â but not loud enough to carry.
Lancaster placed both hands lightly behind his back and paced once across the front of the room.
âI would first like to offer my congratulations to our graduating students. Ten years of study is no small feat, and I believe District 9 ought to be proud of the young men and women seated before me now. So, well done.â
There was a brief wave of applause, polite and uneven. Rose heard Waaska clap loud and earnest from the middle rows. Nibs only did it after his sister elbowed him.
Lancaster waited until the sound died.
âAnd now,â he said. âI have come with an announcement. One which, I believe, may change the course of our districts as we know them.â
Rose felt Carrigan shift beside her.
âOh, here we goâŠâ the brunette sighed.
The mayor continued all the same.
âFor the first time in Panemâs short history, Capitol University will now permit district-born citizens to attend, if⊠they are shown to possess the grades, the effort, and the drive to serve as worthy representatives of their people.â
Well, that was unexpected. For one second, the room did not seem to understand the words it had been handed. Then⊠it did.
The silence cracked open into whispers. Not loud at first. A rustle. A stir. Hundreds of private calculations being made at once. University? At the Capitol? No! That wasnât possibleâŠ
The words moved through Rose like flint struck against dry kindling as she sat very still.
Somewhere in the front, a little girl repeated the word university under her breath as if testing whether it belonged in her mouth. One of the older boys gave a disbelieving laugh before another student, already narrow-eyed and furrow-browed with suspicion, folded his arms like he refused to be impressed by anything he had not personally wrung from the earth.
Dax raised his hand first.
Lancaster inclined his head. âYes, Mr. Hebron?â
Dax stood with the careful stiffness of someone raised in a house where questions were currency and pride its own inheritance. âSir, if I may⊠how is this even possible? District children have never been permitted entry before.â
âThat is correct,â Lancaster said. âThere have been seldom opportunities for district children to attend university⊠until yesterday.â
The room sharpened. A few gasps and whispers of disbelief echoed across the cafeteria.
âYou see, confirmation reached us yesterday afternoon, presumably under the deanâs acknowledgment himself, that a young woman from District 3 has been accepted into the university program. In light of that development, voices within Capitol institutions have argued that district students with sufficient merit ought to be given the same opportunity, regardless of origin.â
Now the room truly broke into chatter.
âA district girl got in?â
âHow?â
âWhat kind of merit?â
âDid her family buy it?â
âCould anybody do it?â
âWhat dâyou mean by represent?â
Miss Wishek clapped once for order at her seniors, but the sound hardly dented the noise.
Lancaster raised his voice just enough to cut through it. âThe strongest path into university, as it now stands, would be through sponsorship.â
That caught. Even the younger children, who understood little about university and even less about Capitol education, understood the word sponsor. It had a shape to it already. A vicious sting with spectacle-sheen that did not belong anywhere good.
A boy from the lower end of the senior tables stood up so fast his bench squealed. Rose thought his last name mightâve been Velva, though she couldnât be certain.
âBut thatâs what they do in the Games!â he blurted. âHow do we know this donât got ulterior motives!?â
A few students made little sounds of agreement, frightened and eager at once.
Lancaster did not scold him. Instead, he nodded as though the question had been worth waiting for. âA fair concern.â
Rose watched him closely then. He looked practiced, yes, but not false. There was real calculation in him, and maybe some caution too.
âYou are correct that sponsorship has long been associated with the Games,â he continued as he lightly paced in front of the student body. âBut unlike the Games, this opportunity is not intended for spectacle. Rather, it is intendedâŠâ Here he let the words settle with care. ââŠto give the districts reason to believe in what their children may yet become. To give our young people a chance to better not only themselves, but what they may someday be.â
Someday be. A future...
That was it. That was the spark.
Not escape, nor vanity. No, Rose certainly did not care for those things, not really. Though the idea of learning something vast and hidden and useful⊠something not meant for children like her, and then carrying it back into District 9 like a lamp under a coat?
The thought made her chest pull tight.
Around her, the room continued sorting itself into camps. Some of the students looked openly dazzled or hungry in a way that had nothing to do with lunch. Others had already begun distrusting it on principle, which in District 9 was often just another word for survival.
Carrigan leaned in and muttered under her breath. âSounds like a fancy way to make us dance for strangers.â
âIt usually is,â Nellie replied to her friend with a huff.
Dax Hebron, still standing, pushed a little further. âAnd what makes somebody worthy, sir?â
Lancasterâs gaze moved across the graduating class. âDiscipline? Intelligence? Character? The willingness to represent oneâs district with dignity. Good marks, yes, but not marks alone.â
Rose felt her pulse quicken. Words like that could be bent six different ways depending on who held them. She knew that, but they were still doors. Opportunities. Even a locked door was proof that a room existed on the other side.
She did not realize she had raised her hand until half the room turned toward her.
Lancaster saw it too. âYes, Ms. Tempest-Strix?â
The use of her name made a few heads swivel more sharply, especially from the senior class.
Someone behind her muttered with exasperation, âOf course she has a questionâ, but Rose ignored them. She could feel Waaska somewhere in the room practically lighting up with attention.
Rose stood. Her uniform felt too warm all of a sudden, the collar close against her throat, her skirt heavy on the knees. But her voice, when it came, did not shake.
âIf someone from here were to attendâŠâ she asked. ââŠwould they be expected to stay in the Capitol after? Or would they be allowed to come back and use what they learned for the district?â
There it was. What can I bring home?
The room went quieter than before. Even Carrigan stopped fidgeting.
Lancasterâs face changed just slightly, not in surprise, exactly, but in recognition. Rose saw it at once. He had expected curiosity, maybe skepticism, maybe even greed. He had not expected the question to be framed that way.
âIn an ideal case,â he said carefully with a slight nod. âThe hope would be that such education might ultimately benefit the district from which the student came.â
Rose held his gaze.
âIn an ideal case?â she repeated.
A few of the older students snorted softly at that. Dax Hebron looked sideways at her with something like reluctant respect.
Lancaster, to his credit, did not flinch. âYes,â he said. âIn an ideal case.â
Rose nodded and sat, though she could still feel people watching her now. Something had shifted. The room had marked her question and tucked it beside her name. It unnerved her⊠but it thrilled her more.
More questions followed, some practical, some ridiculous.
âHow would a district student even afford the travel?â
âWould university waive tuition?â
âCould sponsors choose anyone they wanted?â
âWhat if a student donât want Capitol sponsorship?â
âWhat kinds of studies are offered?â
One of the younger boys asked whether attending university meant a person never had to work the fields again, which made half the room laugh and the other half go painfully silent.
Lancaster answered what he could and polished over what he could not. Rose was smart enough to hear the seams. There were details he either did not know or would not yet say. Still, the core of it remained: something had opened. However narrowly or conditionally or dangerously, it opened.
And everyone in the room knew it now.
By the time the assembly was dismissed, the ordinary hunger for lunch had been replaced by something strange. The children rose from the benches in clusters, talking too fast, too low, too hungry, each trying to decide whether they had just witnessed a miracle or a trick.
Maybe both?
Rose lingered.
She watched Lancaster move toward the side exit, already intercepted by the headmaster and two other instructors, all of them talking in that clipped adult way that meant logistics and worry. For one second, she thought better of it. Then she didnât.
âMayor Lancaster!?â Her voice carried farther than she meant it to.
He paused and turned.
âMs. Tempest-Strix,â he said, and there was a faint note of amusement in his face now, though it did not erase the caution. âHow may I be of service?â
Rose crossed the room toward him, aware in a distant way that several people had stopped pretending not to listen.
âThank you, sir,â she said first, because her father had not raised her to rush a question without manners. âIt was⊠it was good to hear. I only wondered⊠about the sponsors. How exactly does one meet one?â
Lancaster regarded her for a moment. Not long, just long enough for Rose to feel the question land its full weight.
âYes,â he said at last. âActually⊠later this week, an⊠event will be taking place in town. During that occasion, I believe there may be a Capitol sponsor present.â
Roseâs whole body went still with attention. âWhat?â
The word escaped her before she could refine it into something more dignified.
A sponsor. Here?
Not in a story or on a Capitol broadcast! Not somewhere unreachable and polished and sealed off from the dust of District 9! Here.
Lancaster gave the smallest smile. âI said may, Ms. Tempest-Strix. And I would advise you not to build too much upon possibility before it arrives.â
Though, Rose being the girl that she was, already began building.
âWould I be able to attend?â she asked, then corrected herself so fast she nearly stepped on the words. âSir?â
âYes,â he said. Then, after the slightest hesitation. âProvided⊠you are prepared.â
Prepared? Rose almost laughed. What did prepared even mean to a Capitol sponsor?
Still, she only nodded.
âYes, sir,â she replied.
âGood.â His eyes softened, but only to a degree. âYou will be informed soon enough.â
He took his leave in the manner of a man who had already said as much as he safely could. And Rose? Rose stood where he left her.
The cafeteria had begun congregating in earnest now, students flooding straight toward their lunches and their gossip with their ordinary little grievances. The room was loud again. Hungry again. And for Rose, something had shifted in its dimensions. The walls seemed no less narrow than before, the windows no less stingy with air, the benches no softer, the smells no sweeter. And stillâŠ
Somewhere inside her, something had opened.
Not fully. Enough.
By the time Misea and I reached the academy yard, I had already broken her heart once.
She rode beside me in a silence that did not feel empty so much as overfull, like a vessel one hard jostle away from splitting down the side. Every now and then she would press the heel of her palm against her mouth, not dramatic, not theatrical, just as if she were trying to hold something inside herself that had no business being carried out in public. I couldnât blame her. If Iâd had anything left in me worth containing, I mightâve done the same.
The academy bell had already rung, though the children hadnât yet spilled properly into the yard. We dismounted and stood off to one side near the hitching rail while teachers moved about the steps with that marred, tight-backed look adults got when they knew routine had just been interrupted by something larger than routine had been built to hold.
Misea kept her shawl gathered close around her shoulders despite the morning warming by degrees.
âSheâll know by your face,â she said quietly.
I didnât ask who she meant. Rose or Waaska, it didnât really matter. Grief had a way of showing its hand before words ever got the chance.
âProbably,â I answered.
Misea nodded once, though it looked more like a flinch.
For a moment neither of us spoke, and in the pause my mind went backward whether I wanted it to or not, right back into the Mniwakan lodge and the shape grief had first taken there.
When I had arrived, Gami had been with her. That had been the first surprise.
Misea, still in her merchantâs coat, dust at the hem and her utility belt not yet taken off, had clearly only just come back into town. Gami stood beside her with both hands braced on the kitchen table like the wood beneath them might steady whatever news Iâd come wearing on my face. He was a broad man, river-still most days, the sort who didnât waste movement when words would do, and words when silence might serve better. Even he had lost all color in his face the second he looked at me.
Nobody had to ask right away. That was the awful thing. Sometimes, news arrived so far ahead of itself that by the time it reached a room, half the room was already grieving.
âItâs Virgil, ainât it?â Misea had said, her brown eyes worn with defeat over the mention of her elder brother.
I had wanted, for one childish, shameful second, to lie. Not forever. Just long enough to keep that room untouched. Long enough to let Gami still stand there under the illusion of an ordinary morning or to stop myself from becoming what Rolette had made me⊠the man carrying devastation from one place to the next like a coal in his bare hand.
But Virgil was dead, and lies did nothing for the dead except insult them.
So⊠I told them.
Misea folded in on herself first, though not all at once. It was stranger than that. Her face stayed upright, stayed listening, stayed almost composed while the rest of her seemed to lose whatever invisible scaffolding had been holding her together. Gami caught her by the forearms before she could miss the chair entirely, and she made a sound I hope I never hear again so long as I live. It wasnât loud. No, it came out of her like something torn low and deep, something old enough to know exactly what it meant to lose blood of your own.
Gami bowed his head and shut his eyes.
He didnât cry right then. He just stood very still beside his wife, one hand on her shoulder, one braced on the table, and looked like a man trying not to let the house feel him coming apart.
The others had gathered in pieces after that.
Minaha came from the back hall wiping her hands on her apron, asking what was wrong before the answer reached her on her own. One of the little ones, I couldnât have said whose child it was at that moment, froze right in the doorway and stared like children do when they know the room has changed but not yet why. Somewhere overhead a floorboard creaked, and then another, and the lodge itself seemed to go quiet around the news as if listening for what would follow it.
But it was Ziibi I remembered most.
Old Tunka Ziibi had been seated near the window where the light was best, wrapped in his blanket with his hands folded atop his cane. He did not lurch. He did not ask me to repeat myself. He did not curse the Capitol, or the dead, or chance, or fire. He only lowered his eyes and went so still I thought, for a terrible instant, that the grief had taken him too.
Nobody disturbed him. That silence of his felt older than any of us. It wasnât vacant nor stunned. It was sacred, almost. Like he had gone somewhere inside himself to stand beside Virgil one last time where the rest of us could not follow.
It told me more than tears would have.
Virgil had not merely married into that family or hovered near its edges as some useful relative. He had belonged there. Deeply. In the marrow of it. The kind of belonging a man earned not by blood, but by labor, laughter, and years of showing up when he was needed.
For a while the whole lodge seemed to grieve in different dialects of the same wound.
Minaha whispered prayers under her breath while Misea cried into Gamiâs shoulder. Gami himself asked the practical questions because somebody had to; where, when, and who else, was it quick, had he suffered? I answered what I could and hated each answer for being smaller than the life it described. One of the younger grandchildren started crying only because everyone else had, and that somehow made it hurt worse.
Then came the next cruel necessity. The children needed telling.
Waaska. Nibs. RoseâŠ
At that, Misea wiped her face hard with both hands and stood upright in a way that reminded me so sharply of Virgil it near took the wind out of me.
âWe go now,â sheâd said.
Gami wanted to come too, I think, but the lodge was full of people suddenly needing containing. Minaha had the little ones. Ziibi still sat in his silence by the window like an old tree weathering a storm no one else could stop. So, it was Misea and me who left, her grief only half-buttoned, mine hardly buttoned at all.
And now here we were, standing in the academy yard beneath a clean sky that did not deserve to be clean.
Children began trickling out in clumps, their voices too loud for the hour, their satchels bumping their hips, their faces still bright with whatever announcement had just stirred the place up. Some looked excited. Some suspicious. Some merely hungry. I saw it all without really seeing it.
Then I saw Waaska.
She moved through the crowd like she always did, neatly, decisively, one hand latched around Nibsâs wrist to keep him from wandering where his curiosity might otherwise take him. Her hair had held. Her collar was straight. Nibs, by comparison, looked as if the day had already happened to him in at least three separate unfortunate ways.
As the children fetched their horse from the paddock, Waaska spotted her mother first. Children always did know their own grief by instinct. Her face changed before she had even crossed half the yard.
Nibs, slower to read such things, only frowned and looked from Misea to me and back again, his free hand gripping the strap of his satchel.
âMama?â Waaska said, and that one word came out too small.
Misea went to them immediately.
I think she meant to do it gently. I think she truly did. But gentleness is a poor scaffold once the truth has already entered the body. She dropped to her knees in the yard, abandoning her reins, and gathered both children to her before sheâd even spoken, and that alone told them enough.
Waaska let out a broken sound and clutched at her motherâs shoulders. Nibs just stared.
âM-Mama? What-â he asked, because children sometimes still grant the world one last chance to be merciful.
Misea closed her eyes. And I, coward that I was, answered for her.
âThere was a fire,â I said, hating how steady my voice sounded. âYesterday morning. Uncle Vigil, he⊠didnât make it.â
Waaska gave out at once. All the neatness went out of her. She began crying in those hard, breathless bursts that looked like they hurt coming up. Nibs did not cry right away, which somehow made him seem even younger. He stood stiff in his motherâs arms, eyes gone wide and shining, as if the meaning of death had arrived a split second before his body learned what to do with it.
Around us, the yard had slowed. Nothing in District 9 ever got to stop altogether, not really, but enough heads had turned that I could feel the scene we were making settling into public sight, and public sight in Panem was rarely a neutral thing.
Misea knew it too.
Even through her own tears she kept trying to hush them, smoothing Waaskaâs hair, drawing Nibs closer, murmuring. âEasy, baby, easy now, câmon, câmon, donât make a fuss, donât let them-â before grief overtook the sentence and left it unfinished.
It was one of the crueler truths of district life that mourning had to mind its manners.
âExcuse me, maâam, I apologize, but I need-ââ
The voice cut itself short. A younger peacekeeper from the other side of the yard, broad-shouldered but not yet hardened fully into the shape Capitol service liked best, was in the beginning stages of setting the District standards straight⊠if not for his mutual recognition.
Stand Up. Obviously, that wasnât his real name, but a nickname adopted by both keepers and catchers alike. I knew him well enough from town and from the outer roads besides. He had the cautious eyes of a man trying to remain a person where personhood was discouraged.
He slowed when he recognized me.
âRhodes?â he said quietly, taking in the sight of the three of them. âWhat happened?â
I told him with my face more than my mouth. âUh, Chief Tempest. HeâsâŠâ
I didnât need to finish, possibly due to my expression. Something softened in his own.
He glanced once over his shoulder at the watching yard, at the teachers and other peacekeepers pretending not to monitor the disturbance, then back at Misea and the children.
âIâll walk âem home,â he said low enough that only I could hear it. âNo oneâs gonna trouble them with me beside âem.â
For a second, I could only look at him. Panem did not often offer grace without first making a spectacle of the fact. However, there it was anyhow, plain as daylight.
Misea mustâve understood what had passed between us, because when she looked up at Stand Up there was exhausted gratitude in her face beneath all the ruin.
Waaska clung to her mother and cried openly now. Nibs finally broke too, not loudly, just with those stunned silent tears children wore when the world had moved and left them standing in the wrong place.
I crouched before them despite my legâs sharp protest and steadied a hand on Nibsâs shoulder.
âRose?â I asked softly. âWhereâs Rosie gone?â
Waaska tried to answer and couldnât the first time. Nibs beat her to it, voice wobbling. âShe left.â
âWent off right after the mayorâs talk,â Waaska managed through a hitching breath. âMorton Valley.â
My stomach dropped. Of course she had.
Stand Up took hold of the moment, grabbing the reins of Miseaâs horse, whilst Misea took the childrenâs mare, before guiding the little family gently out of the center of the yard, one measured step at a time, shielding them from the worst of the eyes on them, as I slowly rose on my uneven feet. Misea gathered Waaska close. Nibs clung to her skirt with both fists. Stand Up walked at their side like he had all the right in the world to protect sorrow from becoming nuisance.
I simply stood.
My leg complained fierce enough to make the edge of my vision pulse, but by then pain had become only one more voice among many. I looked once toward the road east where Stand Up was taking them home. Then I looked north, toward Morton Valley.
Rose had gone to the one place in the district that still believed in hidden things.
Morton Valley sat just far enough outside New Bisman to make a person feel they had stepped out of the districtâs official body and into one of its hidden thoughts.
The land changed gradual on the way there. The roads thinned first, then the fences, and finally, the sense that every acre had been measured for usefulness by some man in an office. My dapple gray, Errante had a slightly troublesome time riding through the grass, further down into the valley. So, I dismounted from the gelding, much to my hipâs complaint.
By the time I reached the valley proper, the prairie had begun giving way to something softer and stranger. The red soil dipped inward. Cottonwoods leaned over the cut of the earth. Wild grasses gave way to low shade, creeping vines, and patches of green stubborn enough to feel almost private. And my leg hated every step of the journey.
By then the injury had settled into a hot, needling throb that made the whole of my left side feel borrowed and poorly fitted. I kept moving anyway, limping down the narrow path cut between brush and stone, one hand sometimes braced to the slope when the pain rose sharp enough to dim the edges of my sight and the other holding Erranteâs reins as the horse trailed lazily from behind. I donât know if it was duty or cowardice that kept me going. Maybe both. If I stopped too long, I mightâve let myself think. And if I let myself think too much, I might not have made it the rest of the way.
And the rest of the way mattered, because there were places in District 9 Rose went when the world got too loud inside her. Some kids took to colorful meadows or riverbanks or front porches gone quiet in the afternoon. Rose went where things grew.
I knew before I saw the pony.
Wildfire stood beneath a cottonwood just off the path, reins looped loose over a low branch in the sort of careless knot that only made sense if the horse knew better than to wander. The little mare flicked an ear at me and huffed once through her nose, practically glaring at Errante, but did not startle. She knew me too well for that. I laid a hand to her neck in passing and felt the warmth of her hide beneath the sun.
âEasy, girl,â I muttered, setting my own reins in a similar manner. Unlike Wildfire, Errante was younger, a bit more adventurous, meaning I didnât have nearly as much trust as I fastened the gelding to the tree. Then I went the rest of the way in.
The Secret Garden was not much to look at if a person had never known what it meant.
It was not walled, not manicured, not arranged in any Capitol sense of beauty. It had no marble, no ironwork, no proud rows of hedges trained into shapes that announced ownership. What it had instead was miracle enough for District 9. Water. Shade. A bend in the valley where the wind softened and the soil held more mercy than the rest of the prairie seemed willing to spare. Mint and yarrow grew low in thick patches near the trickle of a spring. Wild plum tangled itself among the brush. Moss clung to stone where it had no earthly business surviving that far out. In one corner, half-hidden by tall grass and stubborn vine, the old frame of a broken trellis leaned like a relic from some life before ours, guarding the narrow tunnel that led to somewhere deeper, more remote, or terrifying if you asked Capitol folk. Even at first glance, the Secret Garden looked like, well⊠a garden.
I⊠well, someone else and I had found the place years ago.
Rose had made it into a kingdom.
Not in any childish, make-believe sense. She had simply loved it with such seriousness that the place had taken on the shape of her mind. The wild prairie plants decorated the place near the tributary leading to the Blood River. It looked as though the floral arrangement was protecting something, specifically the split rock face on the creek side cliff...
She was seated on the big flat rock near the spring when I saw her.
For one suspended second, I just stood there in the shade and looked... or rather worried.
Her satchel had been dropped beside her in the grass, half-open, a corner of school paper sticking out. One of her braids had loosened a little at the shoulder from the ride out, and the green ribbons threaded through her hair moved lightly every time the breeze found them. She had her sleeves pushed up and her skirt tucked careless at the knee where she had planted one boot on the rock and bent over with a pencil and paper resting in her lap.
The scene was so offensively ordinary it near made me angry, though not at her. Never at her.
At the fact that the world had let her keep that posture for even one more hour while I carried what I carried toward her through the valley-
A twig snapped under my boot and Rose turned at once. For the briefest instant her whole face lit in recognition.
There was no caution in it. No startle. Just that immediate easing she got around people she did not have to armor herself against. She pushed herself upright, one hand braced behind her on the stone.
âAuphie!â she said, and there was a smile already rising into her voice. âI knew if anybodyâd sneak up on me, itâd be you.â
She said it like a fact she had never once doubted.
I tried to answer and found I had not yet arranged my face into anything usable.
Rose, not noticing at first, moved on as easily as water finding its old channel.
âYou probably heard something about the mayorâs assembly.â She laughed softly, breath still quick with whatever bright agitation had sent her out there in the first place. âNo, truly, the whole place near came apart over it! Carrigan thought Lancaster was about to cancel lunch entirely, and Dax kept pressing him like he was already some kind of district attorney, and then- â
She broke off just long enough to reach down and grab the folded paper from beside her. Whatever notes sheâd been making, she held them the way she always held new ideas, carefully, but like she couldnât wait to get them into the air.
âFor the first time, district-born students might be able to attend Capitol University!â she said with finality.
Even then, through everything in me screaming ahead toward the truth, I heard the shape of the sentence. MightâŠ
That was Rose all over. Give her half a splinter of possibility and sheâd still know how to hold it without pretending it was certainty. And goodness, she could light up over even the thought of a splinter.
She was talking faster now, all thought and motion.
âThere was already some girl from 3 accepted yesterday, Lancaster said, so now theyâre saying students from the districts could qualify too, if theyâve got the marks and the right sort of sponsorship and-â
She stopped herself, laughed once under her breath, then looked almost sheepish at having gotten ahead of her own words.
âI know how it sounds,â she said, waving her notes uselessly. âI do. Iâm not stupid⊠well, not that stupid. It could be nothinâ. Or worse than nothinâ. ButâŠâ
She turned and gestured around her with the folded page still in hand, as if the garden itself might help explain her.
âWhat if it isnât?â
The question settled between us.
Rose stepped off the stone and came nearer, not close enough yet to read me properly, but near enough that I could see the color high in her cheeks and the shine in her eyes that only ever came when her mind had gotten hold of something bigger than the day itself.
âThey used the word sponsor,â she said, lower now, like the thought had become too delicate for her earlier excitement. âAnd I know that sounds ugly. I know where else that word gets used. But if there really is a way in, and if someone from 9 could go, and if they could come backâŠâ
Not leave or escape or even forget.
Come back.
âI asked him,â she went on. âI asked Lancaster, I mean, plain whether a person would be expected to stay in the Capitol after or whether theyâd be allowed to bring what they learned home.â She gave a little huff, half pleased with herself, half still startled she had said it aloud in front of everybody. âHe didnât answer cleanly, which means thereâs more to it than he wanted to admit. But he didnât say no either.â
She had come within armâs reach of me by then. Close enough to see. The change in her face was small at first. The sort of change a stranger might miss.
Her smile did not vanish all at once. It faltered a bit. Tilted. Then stilled. Her eyes moved over me with sudden exactness, taking in what enthusiasm had spared a second ago; the soot still ground into my heavy, navy duster, the dust of travel on me, the set of my jaw, the way I held myself off the bad leg as if the earth beneath it had gone unreliable.
âAuphie?â Everything in her sharpened. Her hand lowered, taking the folded paper with it. âWhat happened to you? You look a bit⊠beat up.â
I opened my mouth⊠but nothing useful came out.
Rose looked at me harder then, all the brightness in her face rearranging itself at speed into something wary and close to afraid. She had always been quick that way. To hear what had not yet been said. Even quicker to notice the thing under the thing.
She reached out without seeming to think about it and caught my wrist, firmly.
âWhat⊠What happened?â she asked again, genuine compassion laced her tone.
I looked down at her hand on me.
It was such a familiar gesture I nearly couldnât bear it. Rose had done that since she was little, taking hold when she wanted the truth of something, as if flesh might answer faster than words. She used to do it to Virgil too. Tug at his sleeve when she knew he was making some joke to soften a hard fact. Stand there small and stubborn till the truth gave itself up.
I couldnât lift my eyes.
âI got back from the border this morning,â I said, my voice didnât taste right on my tongue.
The second I spoke, she knew. I felt it move through her before I saw it. Her fingers slackened, though she didnât let go completely.
âNo,â she said.
It was not loud. It was not denial in the grand sense. It was smaller, more precise. A person hearing the first crack in a thing and refusing to call it broken yet.
âRose-â
âNo.â This time she stepped back from me. âNo, because if it was Papa, youâd have said it already.â
I wanted to tell her that was exactly why I hadnât. Instead, I stood there like a fool with death in my mouth and mud on my boots.
She shook her head once, sharply, as if clearing away the thought by force. Then, in one desperate turn of instinct, she tried to outrun it.
âHeâs still out with the catchers,â she said quickly, too quickly. âHeâs been gone near a month, thatâs all. Maybe there was another catch or a brushfire or-â She looked over my shoulder like the rest of the explanation might be standing there behind me. âDid he send you? Is that what this is? Did he tell you to come find me because Iâd left school early? I knew I ought not have but I just needed- I-â
Her voice caught. Though not because she had run out of words. Finally, she looked fully at my face.
I donât know what she saw there. I have wondered since. Maybe the truth? Or only its outline? Maybe the part of me that had already been breaking since the field and had no strength left to disguise itself.
Either way, she went still.
The folded paper slipped from her fingers and landed in the grass by her boot. The whole garden seemed to narrow around us. The spring kept moving over stone. That felt unforgivable.
Roseâs mouth opened once, then shut. When she spoke again, she sounded younger, though not childish exactly. Nearer to the version of herself that still expected the world to answer plainly if she asked it right.
âWhere is he?â
I swallowed.
She took one step toward me. âWhereâs my papa?â
There are truths a person remembers saying for the rest of his life not because of the words themselves, but because of what they struck on the way out. I had carried that sentence all across New Bisman. Through the station, the trolley, the southside roads, the Mniwakan lodge, the whole damn cut of Morton Valley. I had held it in my body like something hot enough to brand me through. By the time it reached her, it no longer felt like speech. It felt like failure given grammar.
âRosabel,â I said, and even then, I think some part of me tried to soften it with her name. âThere was a gas fire on the border yesterday morninâ.â
She did not move. I kept going because stopping there wouldâve been its own cruelty.
âVirgilâŠâ My voice nearly failed on him. I made it say his name anyway. âYour father was caught in it.â
Her face emptied. It was the look of a person whose whole body had turned toward one unbearable point and could not yet decide whether to believe in it.
âNoâŠâ she whispered.
I had already learned by then that grief did not care if the first answer was no.
âHeâs gone.â I said.
The words fell between us and did what fire does.
Rose just stared at me, but didnât start crying. Not yet.
One hand had risen without her seeming to know it and come to rest just below her throat, fingers pressed there as though something inside her had struck hard enough to bruise from within. The sunlight still touched the loose ribbon at her braid. Her paper lay open in the grass at her feet. The garden, with all its hidden green and impossible gentleness, went on being alive around her.
A blazing future had been sitting bright on her tongue.
Death of a Wildfire (25th Hunger Games) - Prologue
âYou canât go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.â
â C.S. Lewis
NEXT CHAPTER >>>
If you were to tell me a month ago that Iâd be burying the love of my life six feet in the ground, I wouldâve told you to eat a batch of nightlocks. Now⊠I wouldâve eaten those berries myself.
Youâre headed for heaven
Sweet olâ here after
And I got one foot in the doorâŠ
My youngest, try as she might, belted the lyrics as loudly as she could while I continued digging. I had my girls face away from their mother's grave. I didnât want their last memories of her to be lifeless and gone in a wrapped deer skin.
But âefore I fly up
Got loose end ta tie up
Right here in the olâ therebefore
When nothinâ is left anymore
The song she was singing⊠it was an old farewell ballad back during the Dark Days. A commemorative idea for a family to say goodbye to their loved ones during the war. A way of saying âso longâ and âmaybe weâll see each other again, alive.â
Now its meaning soured on my tongue as I lifted what was once a perfect spirit off the ground and into the endless abyss that could only be seen as a death bed. Her weight in my arms felt endlessly light yet worryingly heavy at the same time.
The worst part was not her weight. It was that my arms still knew her living shape. They remembered how she leaned into me in bad weather, how she slept curled small when the cold got mean, how she laughed with her head thrown back like winter had never yet earned the right to touch her. The body in my arms remembered none of that, and mine remembered all of it.
The bitter sight of her face being obscured by the pelt urged me to uncover it, remove the sickness that had robbed her of life, and bring her back to the children in one piece. I wanted to do that, but that didnât mean I could.
Iâll catch ya up
When Iâve emptied my cup
When my bodyâs broke down
When my boots run aground
When Iâve tallied the score
And Iâm flat on the floorâŠ
In the present, I hardly noticed her singing the wrong lyrics. For only being in this wretched world for three years, she certainly was a songbird. Her elder sister, only reaching the age of five, couldnât sing, the poor thing. Although her voice was still powerful, she was open to speaking as freely as she wanted around us, blurting out what was on her mind. In some places, it may have been dangerous for her to be so⊠brash. Though for me, I felt a sense of pride in her hidden strength. Their mother had always told them that their voices would be different from the next. That their natural talents were powerful, yes, but that their strengths were only as much as they pushed themselves to be. And, for me? I believed it.
When Iâve conquered my fears
When Iâve cried all my tears
Right here in the olâ therebefore
When nothing is left anymoreâŠ
As the last remaining features of my love vanished within the earth, all I could think of was our girls. How fortunate we were to survive as long as we did in the North. In conjunction with this, I could also feel how much further we had to go. How much she wouldnât be seeing, watching our babies grow up into the strong, determined ladies we both knew they would be. Now she wasnât here for any of that. Now it was just meâŠ
âPap?â My eldestâs voice, once filled with vigor and courage, was trembling as I patted the dirt with my handcrafted shovel, using it for all the wrong reasons. âCan we see Mam now?â
My eyes shifted to the pine trees sheltering us from above, not that there was much to shield us from, though. The sky was cloudy, probably full of angry sleet. The autumn breeze alerted me to an early, hard winter. Harvest season will be cut short this fall, no doubt.
âYeah, prickle briar,â I sighed, dropping the shovel to the ground with a deep thud before my gaze landed back on the girls, huddled together. âEverythinâs okay now.â
But as the two of them turned in my direction, their reddened eyes told me a different story. No, nothing was okay in this situation. Every tear that they spilled was a storm cloud to my soul. No child should endure the loss of a mother, yet in this world, it was far from uncommon...
The girls wandered forward, tired yet restless from days of traveling. Their small footsteps left frosty indents in the dirt as my eldest held onto the youngest. Both were shivering, not from the chill but at the prospect of what was before them. My oldest seemed to understand the calamity of this situation better. Her bottom lip trembled at the dirt pile. The place where her mother was laid to rest. Her sister stared onward, a worried look glazed over her brown eyes. Should she continue singing? Should she try telling her sister that everything was going to be okay?
The elder of the two was quick to answer that question.
âMa?â She approached the poorly constructed grave, nearly withering away at the sight. Unabashed tears flowed freely down her rosy cheeks. Her gray eyes swerved across the burial ground as though she were still hopeful that her mother would pop right out of the earth and explain how this was all just one big, horrible joke. âMam? Can she hear us?â
The eldest asked like the grave was a threshold and not a fact. The youngest kept looking between us like sorrow was a language she hadnât learned yet but knew she was expected to answer in. Every time her sister cried, she looked at me first, as if I might still turn the whole thing into something fixable.
âYes, prickle briar,â I lied as I shifted uncomfortably in my spot. âShe can still hear usâŠâ
It sounded like the sort of thing a father was supposed to say. That did not make it true. By then, I was already beginning to understand how much of parenthood was stitched together from tone, touch, and whatever words could keep children from breaking all at once.
âMama. I love youâŠâ The young girl knelt closer to pat the ground with her trembling little hands, far too thin for her age and far too cold to be wandering from home. Well, what was once a home? âCan you give us a sign that you⊠you can hear us? Mam?â
In that very moment, a part of me wished I believed in a higher power, whatever that truly looked like. A heaven. A spirit road. A mercy that could survive cold earth and still sound honest in a fatherâs mouth. Tales that would certainly pay you a visit to such places if you werenât careful⊠but out here? Belief was a luxury, not a sin. Was my love still listening to us? Was she protecting us?
If only I could give them such a sign. If only the clouds would part in the sky, revealing a halo of sunshine to beam down on the girls and me.
However, I knew no sign would arrive as I sank to my daughterâs level. The youngest stared at me, then back at her sister, still trying to discern what she could possibly do in this situation. It wasnât until I decided for her by scooping her bundled form into my arms. I tried to do the same to the oldest who was now shaking, to which she immediately swerved from my grasp.
âPrickle briar- â
âN-No!â She pouted, her bottom lip trembling as her dirty, brittle fingers dug deeper into the soil, her face red and puffy. The girl desperately hung onto the last remaining relics of her mother as I made my way to carry her once more. âMam still needs taâ give us a sign!â
âAnd she will, sweetheart,â I gently took her arm in my hand, but not before she wriggles her way out of the coat sleeve, freeing herself from my grasp once more.
âPlease, Pap!â She cried out as she lay flat over the grave. âI donâ wanna leave her!â
Her insistent cries only grew louder as my youngest began to cry on my shoulder quietly. I didnât really know what to do. On one hand, night was waxing near, liable for the autumn chill to grow even more unbearable, especially for a baby girl without her coat on. On the other hand, I couldnât understand why Iâd want to leave either. Leave somebody dead in the dirt, all alone, for no one to protect or mourn them? I felt myself apologizing tenfold to a person who was no longer around as I rested a gentle hand over my eldest's back.
For one weak little second, I wanted to wait with her. Wanted to believe grief had rules. That if we sat there long enough and begged politely enough, the sky might yet pity us. That love, if it had been true enough in life, might still know how to answer once buried.
âShh, honey,â I could barely bring myself to ask her to leave. âMam? Sheâs gonna be alright. Sheâs somewhere safe now.â
âH-How do you know?!â the girl blurted out as she buried her hands deeper into the frosted soil. âShe canât hear us, can she?â
âNo, prickle briarâŠâ I gulp as I pull my youngest further into my side, all while grabbing the eldestâs coat. ââŠshe can. She always can. Even when you donât believe it.â
I said it like a man borrowing faith from somebody already dead. The lie left my mouth softer than truth would have, and that, maybe, was the cruelest part of it. They needed comfort more than honesty, and I was ashamed at how quickly I chose one over the other.
I laid the coat softly over the girl as her tears turned to ice atop the dug-up crust. Her sobs seemed to weaken at the prospect of my words. Possibly giving me more sense of hope than her.
Eventually, I curled my youngest deeper into my navy-blue duster and simply⊠sat there, collecting frost in my lashes and beard as I soothed my older daughter. She kept crying and crying, even after the light had left the sky, and the world soothed into a somber rest. Critters of the forest made noises from a distance, though they never came to intrude on our mourning. Eventually, I lost most sensation in my hands as I snuggled the youngest for warmth, fearing she might catch a chill. The eldest, still buried in the dirt, paid little attention to the cold bite as the night droned on.
Finally, as the clouds parted for the moonlight to shine, the eldest began to breathe slower, more easily as I crept back to her side. Finally, I was able to pick her up as the child descended deeper within her coat.
âI want MamaâŠâ my eldest quietly cried out. I gently shushed her before pulling both girls closer, warding off the freezing chill.
It was the first night I understood the burial would not be the end of anything. Grief did not stay in the ground with the body. It climbed back out in smaller voices. In questions asked at the wrong hour. In children waking afraid. In the awful, ordinary places where a person ought to still have been.
âI do too, prickle briar.â I finally said. âI do tooâŠâ
It had been nearly a week since the burial, and the girls had begun to wear their grief the way the North wore down everything else. The eldest talked less. The youngest slept hard and woke crying. Their mittens never seemed to dry clear through. Their cheeks kept that hollow little flush children get when the cold and hunger start conferring behind your back. I had waited too long to leave. By then, even the land felt like it had begun takinâ more than it gave.
âPap!â My oldest chirped as she pointed her small, mittened hand in the distance at some foggy lights. âThatâs⊠is that- â
âPanem?â I answered her question, albeit cautiously. âYes. Weâre hereâŠâ
Panem. A country gloated and touted as having the only systematic government that could remotely withstand the dangers of today. According to them, all twelve of its districts lived in harmony, which they considered beneficial for each districtâs survival. Even if said survival is dangling by a thread.
The worldâs salvation against humanityâs extinction. Ironic, considering what they did to their own children.
I slowly ushered the girls to keep low as I surveyed the area. The small town was surrounded by grassland and distant hills, each rugged with blanketed patches of snow atop the red soil. This place? It had to be District 9, no doubt about it, and if my memory was correct, the settlement was Willowâs Hatch, right near the-
âWhy canât we just walk over, Pap?â My eldest held her sister close as both girls gave me a perturbed glance. âWhy do we need to hide?â
District 9 came back to me wrong, but it wasnât in the land itself, the prairie still stretched mean and familiar beneath the winter light, and the silos still stood up ugly against the horizon, but in the feeling of it. Too much wire. Too much order. Too much steel where there ought to have been weather, want, and ordinary hardship. Panem had always liked to own a place by naming it. Now it looked intent on owning it by force.
âBecause,â I turned to look back at the girls, smoothing a hand over each of their heads. âWe need to be safe. Not every settlement is⊠peaceful.â
Unfortunately, the girls knew this mentality all too well. They knew that some nomadic groups in the Northlands were just as unfriendly. That idea gnawed at my heart. I wish they had never known such brutality, but in a world like this?
We slowly made our way closer to the small village before approaching a nearby gully. The leaves and grass had all shed away, leaving behind branches and shrubs in their wake. Just the right amount of cover.
âGirls?â I quietly whispered over my shoulder as I directed them towards the thicket. âTake cover here. Make sure you keep quiet, and if anyone approaches or calls out, stay put. Understood?â
The girls nodded. Again, something that they were much too young to know about. A necessity that shouldnât have been necessary, especially for children.
I watched as the girls navigated the gully with seasoned practice; their coats, mended from critters of the Northlands, which helped blend them into the thicket floor. Like two young fawns hiding in the prairie grass in summertime.
Now, with my daughters as safe as they could be, it was time to see how different Panem truly was since⊠well, six years at this point.
I carefully crouched my way amongst the grassland brush, hiding my figure enough to keep any trace of me hidden from the outside world. I hadnât visited these lands in a long time, yes, but I still felt familiar with the grit of the dirt, the brush of the grass, the hush of the wind. Slowly, but surely, the memories came flooding backâŠ
The fog began to disperse as I could make out the lights of Willowâs Hatch. A sparse few buildings covered the landscape. Their architecture felt old, yet sturdy, as the sodhouses kept their integrity. On the edge of the settlement, rusted steel silos grew erect from the ground. Ominous structures that guarded any District 9 settlement like a lonely watchman. I then noticed the concrete factories built near the silos; those big, ugly structures always had a knack for smudging District 9âs hidden beauty. Though today, that wasnât the singular thing that caught my eye.
Surrounding the lonesome town was a large, electrical fence, standing tall and proud as if its inhabitants were prisoners. From the nearby electrical generators and wiring, I could only assume that it was electrified, no doubt. Not that anyone sober enough would try to shred themselves through that giant mess of barbed wire.
Another new decoration to the settlement was⊠a peacekeeper encampment? Why in all of Panem would there be a peacekeeper encampment so far out from the border? The strong metal structure stuck out far worse than the silo factories yet seemed almost pristine and new compared to the miniature buildings surrounding its domain. It was then that I noticed the number of flags covering the settlement, the lack of coloration, and the immense number of military vehicles scattered throughout the roads of Willowâs Hatch. Yet not a single decorative piece for District 9 itself.
All of this? In six years?
Panem was already unbearable with its military and patriotism before, but this? What was happening?
Before I could answer that question, the main gates to the fence swung open with a mechanical creak, followed by a convoy of military grade trucks, holding what I assumed were peacekeepers. After around five vehicles left the settlement, my vision followed to see where the convoy was headed. They seemed to be in some sort of hurry as they continued to kick up dust along the beaten, gravel path. Fortunately, though, they were tracking opposite of where the girls were hidden.
Good. My mind was put at ease as I decided to make my way back to the girls, knowing that there was no way they could possibly integrate into Panem, especially in this state. Along with this reservation, I came to realize that our last resort may not be much better. Though, as long as the girls were safe, thatâs all that-
âHEY! STOP RIGHT THERE!â
I froze. My adrenaline spiked as a ticking time bomb went off in my head. My hands began to sweat profusely as I slowly reached for my crossbow, narrowly reaching for an arrow as I prepared myself. I wasnât going without a fight, yes, but I would rather not go out at all. This couldnât be happening; this couldnât be happeningâŠ
As I slowly forced myself to turn back around, it was then that I realized something. The voice? It wasnât talking to me.
A man in casual wear jumped off the back of the vehicle as he made a run for it through the field. His eyes scanned the landscape frantically as the convoy screeched to a halt, followed by a squadron of peacekeepers making their way after the man, their guns raised. The man himself seemed to be wearing boots far too big and far too wrecked to be stable for running. Despite this, he seemed to be maintaining a moderate distance between the soldiers. He cautiously looked behind him as he continued running, running in the direction of North, until-
BOOM!
The ringing of a gunshot rang out, and the man fell forward to the ground as the bullet made contact with the back of his head. With that, the peacekeepers lowered their weapons before reentering their vehicles as though nothing had happened. And the man? Dead on impact, I assumedâŠ
âKeep moving! Letâs go!â The head peacekeeper demanded as the convoy continued its way further down the road, until it descended over a hill, out of sight.
Slowly, I crept my way to the dead manâs person, uncertain of what I may find. Once I got close enough to where the scent of iron and lead intermingled into a deadly concoction, I was able to see. This man⊠he was a field worker, not a peacekeeper. His worn overalls, his beaten-up lunch satchel, and the gray work shirt with the bold number 9 written on the back. I couldnât help but note how injured the man was, aside from the obvious wound in his skull. He was in feeble health to be working the fields. His fingers were stung with frostbite. From what little skin I could see, he was dehydrated, possibly malnourished from how bony his wrist appeared to be. No, there was no way this man would be fit for the fields. Maybe the factory, but never the fields.
âWhat the hell?â I slowly whispered as I carefully reached for the manâs satchel, at least expecting some herbs or medicines in case he had some underlying health conditions. Instead, a measly piece of bread wrapped in paper was all I could uncover.Â
The bread in his satchel was so small it looked less like a meal than proof somebody had once remembered he was still alive. I stared at it longer than I meant to. Not because it was much, but because it wasnât. A whole life narrowed down to one heel of bread, a paper poster, and a body left in the frost like the district had run out of room for mercy again.
This? Was this it? This was hardly enough to provide for a whole field worker!
I shoved the heel back in the satchel so as not to draw suspicion, before I remembered the paper I had unceremoniously crumpled up whilst removing the bread. I was about to shove it back in the bag until⊠I noticed something.
The paper was too bright for a dead manâs satchel. Too clean. Too expensive-looking beside the dirt under his nails and the blood stiffening through his coat. A word, no, a name was plastered upon the sloppy scrap of paper...
What?
The poster itself was made out of poster stock and seemed to shine the brightest of colors compared to the stale bread casually shoved in the satchel. The paper, the print⊠it all looked expensive.
I finally uncrumpled the paper, careful not to rip it until I was able to revealâŠÂ him. Him. I was staring directly into his eyes, his fiendish, ice blue eyes. Into a face that seemed to appear unafflicted by the pain and sin and misery that he caused-
âN-NoâŠâ I began to panic at the realization. âNo, no, no, no, noâŠâ
The man plastered upon the poster gave the figurative audience a stern look as a phrase practically thundered its way back into my mind. A tidal wave of induced nausea almost spilled forth onto the paper as my hand began to tremble with genuine terror this time. How could this happen�
âSnow Lands on Topâ
Now, like I said before, there was only one place where my girls could truly be safe. A place that, well, brought about seething memories that probably wouldnât have awoken if not for-
âPap? Whoâs Cor- uh- Cornelius Snow?â
I hated that name, Coriolanus Snow, and I wish I hadnât brought that darn poster with me either.
As we continued our journey east, my youngest fast asleep in my right arm and my eldest trekking along, holding my left, I let out a painful sigh as I was reintroduced to Snow once more.
âA bad man, prickle briarâŠâ I softly responded as I squeezed her hand gently. âThe kind that thinks other folksâ lives belong to him.â
âBut if heâs so badâŠâ My daughter curiously pondered. She frowned at the paper as though badness ought to be easier to spot on a face than that. â⊠then why is he president of Panem?â
Why was he? That was a question I still wanted to answer myself.
âBecauseâŠâ I slowly hesitate to answer as we keep walking further. âLife isnât fair. They control choice when choice is the only thing ya got left. And sometimes? Sometimes they donât get punished for that.â
âOhâŠâ she quietly puffs out, her eyes scanning the ground as she sadly thinks about this fact. âWell⊠they should be!â
âReally?â I let myself chuckle as I hear my youngest let out a faint cough in her sleep.
âYeah!â my oldest furiously nods, her chest pushed out proudly as she continues. âBad men need ta know that theyâve done somethinâ bad! And if they donât now than they should lata!â
WowâŠÂ I didnât have the words to explain what her feelings were. Though her thoughts showed a bit of naivety in their syllables, I couldnât help but admire her conviction. Her strong-willed mind. Something that I wished I had enough of.
As we stopped for the night to set up camp, my youngest had started to shiver from the cold, prompting me to start a fire. Fortunately, based on the ground we covered, I wouldâve said we were well a ways away from the District 9 borders by now. Safe from Panem, and SnowâŠ
âPap?â My eldest asked. âWill Mama give us a sign soon?â
We had gone through this conversation over a dozen times, and the answer always remained the same. I could skin game, build a fire in bad weather, and drag us south through country that seemed dead set on refusing us shelter. But I could not do the one thing they kept asking of me, which was bring their mother back in words they could live with. There are some hungers a body can feed and some that sit quietly behind the ribs and take what they please.
âYes, prickle briar,â I nod out before the kindling caught fire. âMama will tell you when youâre ready.â
Despite this, my eldest seemed to be catching on that maybe I wasnât being entirely honest. That maybe Mama truly wasnât coming back, that we really did leave her behind. Her eyes began to glisten with tears as she began to unravel her bedroll, her younger sister following suit.
I wished I could do something, anything. Maybe less talk about how horrible and tragic Panem was? Less talk about Snow and bad men? Just⊠any way to prevent those feelings from surfacing, their tears from spilling, their little voices screaming in the middle of the night because their mother wasnât around. AnythingâŠ
I made my way to unpack some of our items and put away the fresh game I had caught earlier that evening. As I did, my hand contacted the poster. Thatâs when I decided. I decided to put that stupid poster away, somewhere where the girls wouldnât reach it. I proceeded to dig around in my coat to put it somewhere that wouldnât be easy to reach. Somewhere in my duster where-
As my daughters finally got their bedding out on the ground near the fire, I felt my finger trace the hard spine of something in my left inner breast pocket. That was it.
âPap? Whoâs Cor- uh- Cornilius Snow?â
The question rang in my head once more as I felt myself finally piecing together the answer. The real answer.
I couldâve told them about Snow. About presidents, bad men, and all the ways a country learns to call cruelty necessary once itâs dressed clean enough. But that wasnât the story I wanted living in my daughtersâ heads first. There had already been too much of him in the world. Too much of men like him deciding what should be remembered.
My hand found the journal before I had fully decided to reach for it. The red of it looked almost foolishly alive in the firelight. Worn at the corners. Held together by time, weather, and the stubbornness of the girl whoâd once written in it. I thought then that maybe a life could still speak even after the body had failed it. Maybe not back from the grave. But forward. Into the hands of those left behind.
âGirls?â I quietly call back to them as I turn to see their little faces looking in my direction. âIâd⊠like to tell you a storyâŠâ
âIs it âbout that Snow guy?!â My eldest jumped on her bedroll excitedly as her face lit up. âIs it âbout how he fails and dies!?â
âNo, butâŠâ I made my way to sit next to their seating spots, plopping down in the grass as I finally found the courage to open the small, red journal fully. âItâs about⊠someone else⊠someone who never gave away someone elseâs choice.â
Both girls gave me a questioning look at the journal, then at me. My eldest, as inquisitive as she was, then asked me the real question. âWho?â
Dude, I just discovered the miracle that is bloodymary & now Iâm addictedâŠ
(also, I know thereâs other names besides Bloodymary. Is there like⊠Hail Lung? Project Iron Mary? Whatâre we calling it?? This is the closest Simonâs ever gonna get to true happiness & Iâm losing my mind)
bro, just got done going back and editing Chapter 3 of my fic to shave down the beast⊠HOW TF DID IT DOUBLE IN SIZE???!? I FEEL LIKE I STRAIGHT UP ADDED JUST LIKE 2 SENTENCES OR SOM, I CANT TAKE THIS ANYMORE!! FML!!! đđđ
(On a serious note, Iâll probably just break down exposition talk or apply different plot points for the next chapter lol)
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