Chapter Text
“Guess who.”
Liam figures Hayden is already rolling her eyes before his hands come down to cover them, and sure enough, she answers in a flippant drawl, “Mason.”
“Nope,” he chirps, releasing her from his hold, and hops over the log where she’s slumped so he can join her. “The one and only.”
“You’re a child,” she says primly. “What did you bring?” She starts rooting around in Liam’s rucksack before he’s even slipped it fully off his shoulder and set it down between them.
Liam gives a playful smack to her hand. “More rope, the good kind that you’re always asking for,” he says, showing her the roll triumphantly. She lunges for it, only for Liam to hold it up just out of her reach, earning him a pair of her grabby hands and then an unimpressed stare.
“Liam,” she growls. “Give it.”
“I don’t know,” Liam pretends to muse. “What did you bring?”
Still glaring at him, she empties her rucksack onto the grass between their feet and out tumble two rabbit carcasses, bound together at the heels. It would be embarrassing how swiftly Liam’s mouth waters and his stomach rumbles at the sight, but then again, everyone in District 7 has learned to move past the shame and just grasp what they can get.
“Okay,” Liam says, just a tad breathless from his fixation on the meat. “You’re forgiven.”
“Thank you.” She plucks the rope from his hands and sniffs it. “Don’t tell me you got this straight from the factory.”
“Not me,” he explains distractedly. “Corey’s friend got it, passed it on to him, then Mason got it to me.”
“Well, thank you,” Hayden says again, this time fixing her eyes on Liam’s and infusing some sincerity into her voice. “We’ll really need this if you hope to get any more prime rabbit meat this season.”
Liam’s tooth chomps down on his bottom lip before he can help it. He winces and glances away, down at his bag on the log between them, and starts pulling out a fresh roll of twine and a round of wire for her to distract himself.
Hayden accepts the gifts without a word, but she certainly doesn’t miss the darkening of his face. “What.”
“You sure sound optimistic about us being able to get back here and check the traps after you set them,” Liam says. He’d briefly considered lying, but his best friend has the eyes of a chimera and he’s never been able to control his chemosignals around her, anyway.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she says softly. Her hands are already working to unknot the rope and thread it between her fingers. A soothing and unconscious movement, just like his.
“You know why,” Liam says, just as quiet. “You keep trading with name slips. Your chances this past year alone have to have shot up five times.”
“It’s for Val,” Hayden says shortly. “Medicine is fucking expensive. What do you want me to do, live in fear of something uncertain while I watch my sister slowly die?”
Liam huffs. “I didn’t say that. You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Let’s not fight,” Hayden says. Pleads. “We only have a couple hours to kill before we get back. We shouldn’t--I don’t want to fight.”
Liam nods. She’s right, of course.
He finally moves to bend over and dig around in his bag for his special surprise, wrapped in reused brown paper at the bottom and covered with an old cheesecloth. He produces it with a flourish. She takes one whiff of the baked goods and her pupils dilate at a comical speed. “Is that--”
“Yeah-huh.”
“Oh, my G-d.”
“Well, try them. They’re getting cold.”
She pounces on the package and practically tears it open to reveal the four perfect little rolls inside, steaming through the cross-shaped indents across the top. She throws Liam one glance for permission before sinking her teeth into one of the rolls. The moan she lets out is almost obscene, except that Liam has known her for close to five years now and that’s precisely the sound he craves whenever he brings her the very occasional snack from his bake shop.
“Wait,” Hayden gasps. “Is that…?”
“Butter?” he mouths at her around a grin, because they may be out in the preserve, but they can never be too sure whose ears might be trained on them.
She whacks him solidly on the arm. “What if they check the supply?”
“I told Mom the whole first batch got burned. I took the four out early and left the rest in the oven, so if anyone checks the top of the garbage bin, it’ll look about a dozen bits of burned bread underneath all the other shit.”
“Liam,” Hayden says. It makes Liam flinch a little, whenever she says his name like that, like she thinks she doesn’t deserve him.
“Hey,” he protests. “You got me two rabbits. Two.”
“You gotta make them into a victory stew later,” she says, ever the grating optimist, because of course she would go on assuming that neither of them will get reaped today.
It feels wrong, of course. To indulge in the balm of fantasies of getting through today unscathed, and going home with his hand in Hayden’s and having her over for dinner with his mother and stepfather and Mason, sharing a rich stew full of rare meat to celebrate their relief, while some other pair of poor kids is shuffled off to the train that will shoot off into the horizon, possibly never to return again. Liam thinks briefly about Corey. Gwen. Garrett. G-d, even Nathan, and that guy gets on his nerves.
“Liam,” Hayden says. “Hey. Where did you go?”
“Nowhere,” he says, and it’s the truth, because that’s the whole point of it. They can’t go anywhere.
“Have a roll.” She presses the other two into his hand. The butter almost burns his palm. He tears apart the first piece between his fingers and lets the white, fluffy texture melt on his tongue. They never have bread like this on the daily. The semblance of a loaf that his mother brings home every day and saws with their serrated knife is grainy, packed with the cheap seeds that make it feel a little fancier but get stuck between everyone’s teeth.
“We could run,” he blurts out.
Hayden sucks in a breath.
“We should run,” he goes on, more forcefully. He doesn’t miss how Hayden’s eyes dart wildly around the forest, checking for spies. He ignores the movement. “We could do it. Why wait around to hear our death sentence? You’ve got your name in the bowl at least fifteen or eighteen times. Our parents--our families--we can’t live like this forever.”
Hayden fixes him with a look that’s equal parts sorrowful and understanding. Liam tries to feel his face from inside out. He must look crazed. Between the two of them, Hayden’s always been the more level-headed one.
“Liam,” she says.
“Hayden. I’m dead serious.” He looks at her, and he wills her to believe him.
“Liam,” she says again, and he wonders briefly how she can make his name sound so different the three separate times she utters it. “I know. And we can’t.”
“Why not? We can make it back in time. I’ll go run to Dad at the clinic, then tell Mason--he’s only a couple blocks away--and then you can get Val and my mom, because they work so close to each other. There’s that break in the fence a mile from here. You know the one. With the reaping going on today, all the Peacekeepers will be occupied in town.” Liam’s practically crushing the roll in his hand with his desperation. “C’mon, Hayden. We can do this.”
“And my sister?”
“We’ll take her with us! Didn’t I say?”
“Li,” Hayden says. “She’s terminal. She goes two days off meds, and it’s over for her.”
Liam knows this. He knew this. He remembers all too well the day the Romeros tumbled off the refugee train from District 6, Valerie’s arm over the shoulder of her tiny sister, with darkened pewter blood streaming from her nose down her mouth and chin. He remembers how Valerie would have crumpled right then and there on the platform if his stepfather David hadn’t surged forward and caught her and carried her to the clinic next door, where he mixed the precious ingredients for the temporary antidote against mercury poisoning. And how David has been mixing that medicine for Valerie every week for years since then, the two-day cure costing Hayden an arm and a leg to make up with her illegal game trade.
“Then we’ll--we’ll--”
“Liam. Stop it. Please.” To her credit, Hayden’s look is just as torn as his. She drops her head into her hands, mushing the heels of her palms into her eyes. “You know if it were up to me, you’d just say the word and I’d go with you.”
“I know,” says Liam. Conceding. “It’s always been the same for me.”
She shifts her head sideways to consider him. She shoots him a flicker of a smile. “Puppy pact?”
He rolls his eyes a little wetly at her. “If we don’t find anyone else to marry, it’s you and me till the end of the line, baby,” he recites.
Hayden grins. It’s a little shimmery around the edges, too. “I mean, I don’t know I’ll find any guy who’ll put up with my ace ass, so it’s probably more likely than you think.”
“Don’t say that,” says Liam. “There’s loads of guys who would put up with your ace ass.”
She levels him a look like really, Dunbar? to which he dissolves into quiet snickers.
“Okay, maybe not loads. But there’s always me.”
“Yeah,” says Hayden. It sounds somewhere between hello and goodbye. “There’s also you.”
“Pinky swear on it?” Liam’s hand is already up.
Hayden graces him with another grin and grabs his pinky in hers in a tight hold. She beckons with her head. “C’mon, Dunbar. We’ve got some traps to set before we head back. Race you to the clearing?”
“Oh, you’re so on, Romero.”
----
Three hours later, Liam and Hayden duck under the small break in the fence dividing the town and the preserve. From this distance, their supernatural hearing can already pick up how hushed the square is, even though the Peacekeepers must have already begun the task of herding the entire population of District 7 into the cramped space. Even the mockingjays that never rest from their jabbering song seem to have disappeared into the thick of the woods.
As if by tacit agreement, or perhaps by a mutual jangle of nerves that neither of them cares to admit--not now, not when the memory of their unbridled desperation from that morning still hangs between them--neither Liam nor Hayden utters a word on the trek to the square. At some point, as they cross the main street and pass by the bakery where Liam’s mother would ordinarily be working but now has the Be Back Soon sign displayed against dimmed windows, Liam pauses to scoop up Hayden’s hand in his and squeeze it. Hayden flashes him a grateful smile sideways and squeezes back.
They slip into the streams of teenagers filing toward the ranks of Peacekeepers and blend into their places, ready to be checked in. After all, this is far from the first time either of them have experienced a reaping where their names are lying in the bowl; but it is the first time since last year’s epidemic shrank the district population by almost a quarter.
Liam doesn’t like the odds of that.
Hayden takes her turn to brush her shoulder reassuringly against Liam’s before they are separated by gender into distinct lines. Moments later, Liam is ushered up the narrow makeshift aisle between his fellow classmates and neighbors up toward the row of surnames beginning with D. Dunbar.
“Liam!” a voice hisses.
Liam’s been searching for Mason in the crowd, and sure enough, his hearing picks up on his stepbrother’s beckoning. Mason is there with Liam’s stepfather David, in the G row for Geyer, both their heads craned for him and Mason’s hand out to grasp his.
Liam jogs up to clap his palm in Mason’s. They don’t have much time before the Peacekeepers notice and prod him forward.
“You weren’t with Mom today,” Mason says.
Liam nods, then shakes his head minutely. He doesn’t have to say a word for Mason’s eyes to fill with understanding, and to automatically rove over the crowd of girls in search of Hayden. He knows that the two of them were in the preserve. Something like mourning passes through Mason’s irises, but he doesn’t permit it to dwell there long.
“Good luck, Li,” Mason says. And his voice shakes, just a little, and it’s in complete violation of the pact they made years ago to never speak too seriously on this day, but--Liam is no stranger to breaking that kind of promise behind Mason’s back. Especially not when just three hours prior, he was begging Hayden to let them all pack up and race for the woods.
“Same to you, Mase,” Liam says bracingly. On an impulse, he goes in for a swift hug. It’s not so uncommon a crime between families that the Peacekeepers will stop to punish every instance.
As Mason claps him twice on the back, Liam glances over his brother’s shoulder to make eye contact with David. The doctor’s face is inscrutable.
“Good luck, Dad,” Liam mouths at him.
David smiles. It’s pained, but genuine.
Liam has no more time to look for his mother on the other side of the square. He stumbles as the Peacekeepers finally catch up with him and shove him away from Mason and David and up, up the aisle toward the D row.
Mrs. Finch, as always, is the one presiding over the reaping ceremony. She wastes no time in tapping the microphone with an audible screech that stills whatever little conversation was floating through the throng. She stands like a tiny insect on the stage, Liam thinks to himself with a brief smile, with her puffed green sleeves like beetle wings and the uneven hem of her skirt that juts out at an angle. She’s always attempted to emulate the styles from the Capitol that trickle through the media into their district, but with her mouse-brown hair lacking any of the expensive coloring treatments that are all the rage over there, she seems but a pale imitation: somewhere between here and there, a slight woman who stirs reluctant and ironic sympathy among her neighbors whose fates she now holds in her hands.
“Welcome to the seventy-fifth annual Hunger Games!” Mrs. Finch says. Liam remembers her grating voice perfectly from biology class.
She goes on in the affected peppy voice she has prepared just for the occasion. Goes on about what an honor it is to come to this time of year again when District 7 may have the chance to prove its loyalty and worth to the Capitol (though Liam is sure he’s not the only one who notes the subtle catch in her voice as she blazes through the script), and how now is the time more than ever to respect the stories of those tributes from their district who either lived or died as heroes.
Now’s the cue for the pre-edited video to feed into the town square screen directly from the Capitol. The opening soundtrack, normally a layering of trumpets playing the Capitol anthem, has recently been replaced with a more modern and meditative rendering with cello. Liam decides he hates that it stirs something in him.
The reel goes through dozens of faces from District 7 from more than seven decades past. He knows how this goes. There hasn’t been a victor from their district for over twenty years, and that was Bobby Finstock, waving now at the camera in grainy footage during his first interview. His hairline had not receded yet and was gelled back in a style that is practically unrecognizable from the electric-shock look that Finstock sports permanently around town these days. He was young, or at least younger, with a weirdly ageless kind of face and an unsettling anxiety in his eyes that coupled strangely with his asymmetrical smile.
He also wasn’t a drunk yet.
The video cuts to flashes from the arena footage of Finstock’s victory. His desperate and ingenious plot, as the last human hunter left standing without an alliance, to lace traps with wolfsbane in places where they would be least suspected. His final showdown with Ennis with the wolfsbane in his wooden whistle.
After that, the video speeds through the rest of the tributes who fought valiantly but went to their slaughter in the arena anyway, year after year. And finally, the reprise of the anthem, and President Monroe’s dramatically edited one-liner: Unity and loyalty; loyalty to the nation; and nation, above all. May the odds be ever in your favor.
Mrs. Finch clicks in her heels back onto the stage at the fade of the screen. Without further ado, she announces, “Let’s get on, shall we? Ladies first.”
A Peacekeeper rolls the table with the glass bowl toward her. It’s filled with the strips of folded white paper, but not filled enough, not nearly as much as last year. Mrs. Finch drops her hand through the opening and circles the pile contemplatively. Finally she digs deep into the slips and draws one out.
Mrs. Finch’s face always does something funny before she reads aloud the name on the paper. It’s definitely doing something funny now, and Liam has no doubt it has to do with the fact that last year’s girl was a twelve-year-old who didn’t make it past the bloodbath on the first day in the arena.
“This year’s female tribute from District 7 is...Valerie Romero.”
Liam doesn’t understand what’s happening, at first. People are looking at him, the crowd rippling from his row outward to steal furtive glances his way. He doesn’t hear. He doesn’t understand.
Until he hears a scream that he knows like the back of his hand. A voice from the other side of the square, yelling, “Val! Val! No, you can’t take her, she’ll die before she even gets there!”
Liam whips his head toward the unmistakable sound of Hayden’s agony. There she is, wrestling against the grip of two Peacekeepers and her jacket practically hanging off her arms, face contorted as she reaches in vain for Valerie who’s being led up the aisle by another pair of men. Valerie, who’s white-lipped and resolute but about as stable as a sheet in the wind.
“No! No, no, no, no! I--I volunteer!”
“What?” Mrs. Finch says inelegantly into the microphone.
Hayden sloughs off the Peacekeepers’ hold from her arms. Sticks her chin out and says, “I volunteer as tribute.”
Liam’s heart thumps wildly in his chest.
His thoughts tumble over each other too rapidly for him to snag onto a single one. He wishes viciously that it were Val--she was always terminal, anyway. But on the heels of that, he’s gutted by shame, by humiliation that he could even think Hayden would choose her sister over anybody else. She owes him nothing. She owes her sister everything. And it’s not all about the owing, is it? It’s about--
But his turmoil of emotions swirls to a halt as Hayden is marched right past his row. Hayden, Hayden, he wants to call out, but his throat is stopped up with tar.
She passes him without a glance in his direction. Taut as a bowstring, head held resolutely high, struggling, perhaps, with every ounce of control left within her not to give way to tears.
“Your name?” Mrs. Finch prompts Hayden once she joins her onstage. Not a true question, but a formality, because Mrs. Finch already knows who this girl is. She’s taught her in the same classroom for years.
“Hayden Romero.”
“And that was your sister you volunteered for, correct?”
Hayden nods.
“A round of applause then, please, for our brave young Hayden.”
Nobody stirs. Not even a finger to consider the temptation of the fanfare. In the silence, Liam can hear the thudding of his own heart gaining speed in his ears.
“All right. On to the gentlemen. Let’s see…” Mrs. Finch makes quicker work of choosing a name this time. Perhaps she’s still shaken by the turn of events she has just witnessed.
Liam has never been religious, at least not since his birth father died, but he finds himself offering up a prayer now to anyone out there that whoever gets picked--whoever gets picked will love and care for Hayden’s life like their own sister.
Mrs. Finch clears her throat.
Would watch out for Hayden in the arena, protect her from the sharks in the Capitol.
“Liam...Dunbar.”
Would die for Hayden like Liam would for her.
This time his row erupts with a scuffling of confusion. Liam himself is in a daze, finding himself prodded forward by those standing near him, and it’s not until he’s out in the aisle being escorted toward the stage stairs by Peacekeepers that he remembers that in an instance of the fastest answered prayer in all of history, Mrs. Finch picked his name from the reaping bowl.
His heartbeat pounds.
Liam remembers the first time his heart was jackhammering in his chest. Mason had come home with a broken arm from some knuckleheads who'd thought that making hell for the doctor's kid would make their own misery any more palatable. Mason's forearm had been split in different places, the shards of bone jutting straight out of his skin past a sheen of blood and flesh, and Liam had gagged at the sight and felt his heart beat right out of his chest as David set to work healing Mason.
That day, as gruesomely as it haunted young Liam's nightmares for weeks afterward, cannot compare to the flood of nausea that washes over Liam now as he is prodded forward by the Peacekeeper down the dusty path and up the stairs to the stage. He thinks his heart has taken up permanent residence in his throat and he might spontaneously keel over from self-asphyxiation.
Hayden meets his gaze from across the stage. Her eyes are wide and dark and stripped of every trace of hope that lingered in her words from this morning. Liam doesn't need to stretch out his hearing or his senses to know that her heart and her chemosignals are going haywire, too.
Mrs. Finch is still droning on about the next proceedings. Liam doesn't hear her, and he doubts Hayden does, either. It's all white noise, fuzzy-edged vision, and all he can think and smell and see is the terror and the ash in the air and the way Hayden's arms used to hold him when he came back from a thirteen-hour day at the bakery.
Used to. Used to. The way his own damn brain is already preemptively speaking about his best friend, his anchor, his Hayden in the past tense, is making him sick. He's caught in a snarl of thoughts, but the one that emerges with painful clarity is that Hayden will live. They will get through this, and Hayden will live. Fuck all the odds.
And without a second thought, he crosses the stage in three steps, brushes right past Mrs. Finch, and he grabs Hayden's face between his two roughened hands and he mashes their mouths together in a kiss.
It speaks to Hayden's overarching shock at the whole situation that she doesn't so much as squeak or startle backward. She brushes a hand over his arm as he stands there kissing her, all breath and teeth and knocked-together noses, until he steps back and glances up at her to check on her.
She's not angry. She's not even surprised, it seems.
The crowd is making some kind of incomprehensible noise from behind them. The rumble of the people melds together with the other white noise ringing in Liam's ears.
"There we have it. The young lovers of District 7, inseparable in life and in death!" Mrs. Finch screeches into the microphone.
They're manhandled backward then by a cluster of Peacekeepers through the double doors of the town hall. Thrown dazed and speechless into an unused room at the side of the hall, one stacked high with useless law books and layers of dust on the abandoned wood.
"I'm sorry," Liam blurts. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, oh G-d. I know that was your first kiss and we don't see each other that way and--I just thought--remember Ken and Noshiko Yukimura? From District 5?"
Hayden is breathless but lucid. "I remember, I remember. Yes. That was quick thinking."
"I'm sorry," Liam says again. He fidgets.
"Liam, stop. I know I always give you shit for being impulsive, but this was one of the best instances of you thinking on your feet." Hayden sinks onto the nearest dust-mantled desk. "Ken and Noshiko didn't win that year, but they got tons of sponsors. I think they broke an actual record in the Games because of their love story. Honestly, if it hadn't been for the Berserkers--"
"--And their dehydration, because they hadn't figured out the clock, then they would've made it to the other side," Liam finishes for her.
Hayden's answering look is searching. Alert. "So that's what we're going with, then? Star-crossed lovers from District 7?"
Liam wants to choke. "You heard the crowd back there."
"It's not hard to sell. Everyone we know here knows we're tight."
"Exactly." Suddenly it hits Liam again, square in the gut, just what kind of chain of events he might have triggered two minutes ago by lunging across the stage and kissing Hayden. All the times they'll have to posture for the camera now. Exchange kisses, be seen sneaking off for privacy, throw each other meaningful looks like they're truly in love.
"I'm sorry," Liam says once more. "In advance. For everything we're going to have to do--"
"It's fine. I'm asexual, not an idiot with a death wish." She offers him a bracing smile. "This is the plan now. We stick to it, all right?"
“The plan,” he nods back. “We stick to it.”
They move in synchrony to go in for another hug. A longer one this time, less tortured but somehow more fraught, in the stolen privacy of their room borrowed from another time. Liam thinks he can sense Hayden allowing herself to sob once before she reaches out to latch onto the rhythm of his breaths and even out her own in time with his. Anchoring herself. Anchoring him, too.
“Liam--”
“I know why you did it. There was no other way,” Liam says quickly.
“Still. I know what you must have been thinking…”
“No. You don’t,” says Liam gently into her hair. “You know what I was actually thinking?”
“That we’re a pair of g-ddamn disasters?”
Liam finds it in himself to bark out a wet laugh. “No, although that has never not been true. I was thinking, G-d must absolutely be real if he answered my prayer within thirty seconds to let me join you on that stage.”
Hayden pulls back with a reproachful, “Liam!” but all he does is cast her a rueful smile, as if daring her to really believe that he had anything to do at all with their own fucked up odds.
“Liam,” Hayden tries again, and Liam knows her, he has known her well enough for the past four or five years, to sense that she’s going to say something absolutely idiotic now like don’t you dare go dying for me.
“I’m going to kiss you for real if you finish that thought,” Liam threatens shakily.
Hayden glares. “That’s a low blow.”
Liam tries to pull his mouth up into a nonchalant grin. It rakes at the corners of his face. “Not low enough if it will get you to shut up.”
“I will punch you like you punched me in sixth grade.”
Liam groans at the memory of their first meeting. “You punched me. Not the other way around.”
“We punched each other.”
“Can we at least agree we’ve outgrown the mutual punching? There’ll be enough of that in the arena, as it is.”
The frost settles between them faster than Liam can stop the words from leaving his mouth. Hayden sighs, and he sighs, and he walks forward and folds himself into her arms with his forehead against her shoulder.
“I really can’t believe you wanted to be up there on the stage with me.”
“I didn’t,” Liam breathes out honestly into the crook of her neck. “But I wanted to be wherever you were going to be.”
And that’s truth enough for their heartbeats to settle as much as they ever will again, from this point onward.
The double doors knock back as the Peacekeepers barge back in, herding their families into the room with a harsh, “Five minutes!” before enclosing them all again into the dusty space.
No one is saying a word.
Liam glances over his shoulder and everyone and disentangles himself from Hayden first, practically shoving her toward Valerie, and insists, “Go.” Hayden needs no further prompting and throws herself into her sister’s arms. Valerie wobbles back but catches her--being firmly set and broad-shouldered herself--and she starts running her shaking hands through Hayden’s waves because she’s like that, she’s always been the cedar to Hayden’s poplar, and there’s nobody else in the world right now who needs more comforting in the face of certain death than her little sister.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad,” Liam says quietly. Hands fidgeting in front of him. His gaze swerves to Mason’s, whose gaze flicks between Liam and Hayden and then back, and suddenly Liam understands why the look in his parted lips and stony face is so especially stricken.
One sibling in this room volunteered, while the other stood back.
Liam doesn’t blame him. G-d, the last thing he would ever do is blame Mason.
His silent communication with Mason is interrupted by Jenna enveloping her first in one of her bone-crushing hugs, and then David. David has always been close to a head and a half taller than Liam, and now, tucked up under his stepfather’s chin like it could very well be the last time, Liam feels smaller and more alone than ever.
Jenna’s tugging at Liam’s arm again as David reluctantly relinquishes him from his hold. The next thing Liam knows, his mother is pressing something small and warm and crinkly into his palm. He glances inside the paper bag and then back up at Jenna, wide-eyed. “Is that--”
“For the road,” Jenna says. She stills the wobble in her upper lip masterfully. “You can’t go forgetting so easily about home, all right?”
The knot in his throat thick, Liam shakes his head. “Wouldn’t ever dream of it.” Then his gaze shifts to Mason, still hovering behind David’s shoulder like he doesn’t belong here--like the first day he moved into Liam’s house with his dad, really, and it’d taken a solid week for him to get used to the feeling that he wasn’t actually intruding on the Dunbars’ lives--and Liam offers him a pale but genuine smile.
Liam steps through the space between his parents and opens up his arms for Mason to crash into. Liam takes the brunt of the impact, rubbing his hands up and down his brother’s back. “Stay and take care of Mom and Dad, okay?” he murmurs into Mason’s ear.
“It should’ve--”
“No,” Liam says fiercely. “It could’ve, but it shouldn’t. No thinking like that, okay? No spiraling.”
Mason pulls back with a protest already visibly halfway to his lips.
Liam attempts to push some steel into his eyes, even though he knows it’s them, and that shit never works between them. “Say something, Mase. Promise me. You won’t spiral. You’ll go on and keep going, right?”
“Don’t make me make promises I can’t keep, man,” says Mason, like this is the most unfair thing Liam has ever asked him to do. And maybe it is.
“Well, promise me you’ll stick around for our family.”
“You don’t even need to ask.”
“Promise.”
“Yeah, shit, I do, Li. I do.”
“I know.” Liam claps him again on the back. He runs his eyes one more time over the lines of Mason’s face, committing their every slope and shadow to his memory. He tilts his head to catch sight of his parents and do the same. From this angle, he sees their profiles as they engulf Hayden and Valerie in hugs of their own.
“Remember,” Mason says suddenly. “You’re a werewolf.”
Liam glances back at him. “What?”
“You’re a werewolf. You can take them, Liam. You can.”
Liam opens his mouth to say, but I’m only seventeen. Wants to say, but there are human hunters who were born to take us down, and werewolf volunteers from other districts who’ve been training for this all their lives because they haven’t had to fill their time working their knuckles raw in factories to scrape by.
But these are their last minutes together for a long, long time, and Liam doesn’t want the stain of telling the truth to his ever-hopeful brother to haunt him in his dreams.
So he settles for the next-best truth.
“I’ll try.”
“And you come back home, you hear, Liam?”
“Mase,” Liam says. Almost a groan. He tips his forehead into his brother’s shoulder. “Don’t make me make promises I can’t keep.”
“You’ll keep this one,” Mason breathes, and Liam doesn’t think he’s ever heard this edge of fierceness in his tone before.
He takes it, drinks it in, impresses it upon his brain to drudge up later when the smell of the Capitol and the drift of the train threaten to unspool his memories and his identity.
The Peacekeepers move in at the exact five-minute mark. They’re already pulling Valerie and Jenna and David and Mason away when David calls out, “Take care of each other. Both of you.”
Liam acknowledges his dad with a soft salute, because he doesn’t trust himself anymore to speak. Perhaps his silence, in lieu of a shaking voice, can be his best gift to his parents in the eleventh hour before the train jets him and Hayden away.
Hayden loops her arm through his a moment later. “I never want to do that again,” she whispers.
Liam knows exactly what she means.
----
They’re packed onto the train without further ado, prodded through the endless stretch of empty cars by Peacekeepers from the Capitol who are looking less rough around the edges than the local ones from District 7. They pass narrow hallways that appear to open up into sleeping cars--no doubt where Hayden’s and Liam’s rooms are already set up with the cold, generic essentials--and then past other cars in the rear, some with new-fangled technology perhaps meant to be some semblance of entertainment, and finally into a large, open space at the back that can only be described as nothing short of a banquet hall.
Hayden and Liam balk in tandem in the doorway. Sweep their eyes over the pearly-tableclothed spreads of ham and fish and salads and fancy fruit desserts and cakes that Liam hasn’t ever come up with names for.
Hayden, for her part, takes one look at the tower of muffins in the corner, arranged in a pyramid of every color and flavor imaginable, and she doubles over and barfs on the carpet.
----
Finstock shows up less than a minute later, after Liam has tried in vain to ward off the nearby female Peacekeeper who was trying to shoo them away to get the mess cleaned up.
“Oh,” Finstock says gratingly. “Oh. Your girl’s not an old wasted addict already like me, is she?”
Hayden wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and accepts Liam’s hand on her bicep to pull her to her feet. “Coach Finstock,” she greets him, and Liam has to give her credit for injecting every ounce of dignity possible into her voice and posture, given the circumstances of their first meeting as mentor and mentee.
“Romero,” Finstock returns. He swivels to survey Liam from head to toe. “Dunbar.”
“Coach,” Liam says, just as tensely.
Finstock wags a finger around his omnipresent flask. “In public, you call me Finstock.”
Makes sense, Liam supposes. At any rate, Finstock’s stint as their school coach lasted all of three weeks before his proclivity for daytime inebriation inevitably cut that short. The moniker Coach after that was always more for ironic effect than anything else.
“Finstock,” Hayden agrees. She shadows Finstock as the man beelines for the table with sliced meats and bacon. “So? What’s the plan?”
Finstock’s brow furrows. “The plan?”
Liam jumps in, “Yeah, Coach. The plan. The--the strategy. For, y’know, essentially staying alive in the arena.”
Finstock shakes his head at them as if not comprehending. If it were at all possible, Liam could’ve sworn his hair seems more electrified than before. “You just said it, Dunbar. Stay alive.”
Hayden turns to Liam with dread written in her very pores. Liam presses his mouth into a line in response.
Yeah, they’re both going to die under this fool’s mentorship.
----
They make their way to their respective bedrooms in the sleeping car because hanging around Finstock and his drunken breath and wild eyes for another moment is threatening to make both of them lose their meager breakfast--again.
Liam hovers outside Hayden’s bedroom door. He can already smell something offensively luxurious and almost clinical wafting into the hallway from her open doorway. She’s hesitating before her narrow bed, as if by climbing onto it she will be swallowed through the train tracks and straight into the earth.
“You okay?” he says softly.
“Never better,” she says without missing a beat.
Liam swallows. “Don’t do that.”
She sighs. She finally sinks down onto the mattress behind her. “I don’t like this vulnerability shit.”
“I’m not saying you need to be vulnerable. I was just asking you an honest question.”
“What do you expect me to say, Liam? We just got reaped. Val’s back home with G-d knows how long left to live, she’s probably worrying herself sicker over me, and then you’re here, too, because apparently the universe wants me to lose every single person I end up caring about, and then our mentor is a complete and total dickhead who spends more hours in a day drunk than sober. So--yeah. Excuse me if I don’t feel like answering your honest question.”
“Haydie,” Liam says.
He hasn’t called her that since they were fourteen.
She deflates at the sound of the word in his mouth, tilting forward with her head in the heels of her palms.
“Please, let’s not fight,” says Liam, quoting her very words from just a few hours prior. “I’m sorry I asked.”
“No, I’m--” She sighs. “I’m sorry. I know we’re always honest with each other.”
“We have to be,” Liam agrees, “especially if our plan is going to work. Communication is going to be the only thing that gets us through this.” He clears his throat. “I mean, other things will get us through the arena, of course, but I meant primarily when we get to the Capitol.”
Understanding crosses Hayden’s face. Because at the heart of it, the Games are rigged, ever in the favor of the human hunters favored by the Capitol: and the only fighting chance anyone supernatural has ever had in the past was winning over the sponsors and the audience with an unforgettable story.
“We should talk to Coach again later,” Hayden decides.
“What? I thought you just said--”
“Yeah, he’s a dickhead. But he’s our assigned mentor, and we have shit for options, Liam. What are we gonna do, play ping-pong in our rooms until we get to the arena? We have to push him to get to work training us, at some point.”
“And how do you suggest we do that?”
Hayden sucks on her bottom lip thoughtfully. “We have to impress him. Show him we’re not the same lost kids that kept getting reaped from District 7 before us. We’re gonna show him we just might be worth fighting for.”
We, Liam thinks, even though he’s forbidden himself from considering too deeply the implications of the plural. As if there’s ever been a pair of winners before in the history of the Hunger Games.
Liam gives a brief nod. “I’ll grab his flask and you get his attention. Later, at dinner.”
Hayden’s tired face brightens infinitesimally with a smile. She pats the spot on the bed beside her, and he wastes no time in joining her there, letting a line of warmth press between their legs and arms. “Hey, Liam? I’m...I’m glad you’re here with me. I mean. Everything is shit and I’d still tear into the next Peacekeeper’s throat if I had a choice, but. I’m glad it’s you.”
Liam enfolds her hand in his and quirks his lips back at her in a tiny smile. “Ditto.”
----
As planned, Liam and Hayden swoop down on Finstock the moment they’re fetched for dinner several hours later. The man is kicking back in his chair with his feet up on the table, flask swaying back and forth in one hand while in the other he contemplatively rolls an unlit cigarette. Liam goes straight for the flask while Hayden knocks the cigarette from his other hand.
Finstock flails for one glorious moment of drunken confusion, and then he lunges for Liam as the boy holds the drink high over his head and out of the man’s reach. In the scuffle, Finstock’s chair goes skittering back and Liam swerves to the side and ends up bashing his hip against the table of desserts. Finstock has him pinned to the edge with one arm bent behind his back shockingly fast, considering his inebriated state. Liam growls and breaks free, instinctively reaching out out a foot to trip Finstock. The man goes down to the carpet with a heavy thud. But a second later, his hand claws at Liam’s ankle, and Liam yelps as he, too, hits the floor and his skull crashes into the corner of the chair on his way down.
“Which one of you pinball machine losers had the brilliant idea of trying to take me down?” Finstock seethes.
Hayden is standing over him, her feet planted on either side of Finstock’s twisted legs on the floor, and she glares down at him with one of the butter knives gripped in her fist. Liam would snort at her impromptu choice of weapon, except that the dull ache at the back of his head is a little more pressing right now.
Finstock’s eyebrows rise in understanding. “It was you, wasn’t it?” His mouth curls into a bitter grin. “Forest princess thinks she has all the intimidation factor of a panther.”
“We need to talk,” Hayden spits.
Finstock snorts. “We are talking, sweetheart.”
“Don’t call her sweetheart,” Liam snaps, finally regaining his bearings enough to creak into an upright position without knocking his noggin against anything else.
“Okay, Romero. What do we need to talk about? What’s so urgent that you can’t leave your old mentor in peace for another minute with his drink?”
“You ignored us. Basically told us to fuck off,” Hayden says. “That’s not going to work. We’re going to talk about strategies, and you’re going to listen, starting now, because if you’re sick and tired of seeing kids from our district march right to their deaths, then so are we.”
Damn, Liam thinks. He couldn’t love his best friend more.
But Finstock just gives a full-bellied, rasping laugh and flops back against the floor with his arms starfished at his sides. Liam and Hayden take turns staring mutely at him in disbelief as he rides out the effect of whatever incomprehensible inside joke has him losing it like this.
Finally Finstock says with a low whistle, “Maybe District 7 did find a firebrand after all.” He cranes his neck to peer at Liam. “What about you, kid? You think you could do a little better than that soul-crushing baby face of yours?”
Liam scowls at him on instinct. Finstock roars louder with laughter.
“That’s it,” Hayden snarls. She bends down to seize Finstock by the arm and haul him to his feet and dump him in another chair. She and Liam join him at the table shortly. Liam can tell that Hayden is sorely tempted to drive the blunt point of her butter knife into the surface of the table, but she just barely restrains herself from doing so.
“Have at it, then,” says Coach, sweeping his arms wide and taking the liberty of spreading some spiced tuna filling on his bread.
“I’m a hunter,” says Hayden.
Finstock rolls his eyes. “No, you’re not. You’re a werewolf.”
“I meant I hunt game, not people. And I’m not a werewolf. I’m a chimera. If you’re so smart, you should know that.”
“Correction: you’re not a werewolf or a chimera. You’re a mutt. A science experiment.”
Liam tenses. But Finstock keeps going, gesturing in the air with his knife.
“That’s the truth, princess. No semantics. The Capitol ain’t about powers, they’re about politics.”
“That’s the same thing,” Liam mutters.
Finstock shoots him a look. “No. It’s not. See, this is precisely why you two knuckleheads aren’t going to make it a day in the arena. You feed off each other’s stupidity and ignorance.”
“So teach us,” Liam interrupts him. “Isn’t that what you’re here for?”
Finstock grumbles under his breath but concedes with a shrug. He jerks his chin back at Hayden. “Continue.”
“I’m good with knives.” Hayden graciously ignores how Finstock’s gaze dips to the very unthreatening butter knife still clenched in her fist. “I know other things, too, like basic survival in the woods. How to make traps, how to find game, how to track animals and look for sources of water.”
“I can recognize plants, too,” Liam chimes in. “I spent a lot of time with her in the preserve. I could tell which berries are poisonous and which aren’t. I’m also...well...strong.” Liam hates how his voice trails off at the end, because it’s true, he is stronger than the average werewolf at his age or three oxen combined.
“You’re seventeen,” Finstock sneers. “There will be grown men in that arena. They’re ‘strong’ too.”
Liam bites his tongue and works his jaw. “Point taken.”
“But it’s also about brains, isn’t it?” says Hayden. “Liam, you’re really smart. Like all that history stuff you remember.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Liam squirms. “I like to study battle plans and war strategies.”
“So you’re good in history,” Finstock drawls. “Everybody has a hobby.”
Hayden’s face darkens swiftly, and Liam is briefly reminded of why he never dares to cross his best friend. “He isn’t just good in history. He’s the best. Tell him, Liam.”
“Oh, I mean--I do really well with--”
“Stop with the modesty and tell him.” When Liam still balks, Hayden sighs and says to Finstock, “He’s been the top of our class in history for five straight years. There was that one time he left his report at home and he had to recite orally in front of everyone, for ten straight minutes, all about the five factions before World War III, and he did it from memory, no mistakes.”
Finstock seems at least vaguely impressed, if his glance from over the rim of his freshly acquired is anything to go by.
Liam licks his lips. “I think what Hayden’s trying to say is, I have a really good memory.”
“An excellent memory,” Hayden adds. Liam shoots her a look, trying to communicate both his gratitude and his need to take it from here. She nods in understanding.
“So,” Finstock slurs. “You think you’re going to outlast everyone in that arena by your…‘excellent memory’?”
“No--yes--look. I know all the victor’s strategies. I’ve been learning and memorizing their stories for years now. I can watch people, observe them, remember things that will be useful down the line… And I can remember every winning move from at least the last four decades.”
Finstock draws a hand over his face. “They never make the same Game twice.”
“No,” Liam concedes. “But in every Game there’s bound to be a pattern.”
At his side, Hayden’s heart rate picks up infinitesimally. Hopefully. Under the table, Liam reaches for her hand on her thigh and gives it a furtive squeeze. He would be loath to dash her characteristic optimism now.
Finstock cards his hands through his hair, driving it up in wilder spikes than before. “So you’re the hunter," he says, pointing roundly at Hayden with his entire hand and sandwich. He turns to Liam. "And you--you think you're the strategist."
The way Finstock spits out the word, somewhere between derision and outright laughter, makes Liam's gut clench. Could this guy at least drudge up some vestige of empathy?
"Oh, your faces." Sure enough, Finstock is already dissolving into a mass of incoherent, drunken giggles. "I don't know about you, baby face, but your pain brings me a special kind of joy."
Liam squeezes Hayden's hand and jerks it toward him under the table fiercely. He pushes back his chair with a grate, knocking it back to the floor, and he yanks Hayden to her feet. "We're going."
Finstock is hollering something predictably uncalled for behind them, but Liam ignores him. Just hauls Hayden behind him and keeps going through each of the hissing double doors till they've passed through enough ridiculously long and empty cabins to put some distance between them and the pathetic excuse for a mentor back at the dinner table.
When Liam's vision begins to shimmer and the periphery of his eyesight starts to glow red, Hayden tugs him to a stop. He finds his chest is heaving against the mounting pressure of the weight of his rage over his ribs.
"Liam," Hayden murmurs. "Your eyes." She grabs his face between both hands and flattens her palms against his skin. "C'mon, Li, you can hold it in. You can't shift here."
"Why not?" Liam growls, and the points of his fangs that have suddenly descended make twin punctures in his bottom lip.
"Liam," Hayden says more sternly. "You can't shift and cause any trouble here. And especially not when we're at the Capitol. Your family is back home, and you're not there to protect them anymore."
That knocks the wind straight from Liam's lungs. The next moment, his fangs retract audibly and his flared eyes dim.
Hayden sees. "Do you understand?" she asks softly.
"Yeah," Liam sighs. "Perfectly."
Hayden lets her hands fall away from Liam's face, but he catches them in his own before she can pull away. "We have to watch our every step now, Li. Every move we make will be micromanaged. Televised. It could have dire consequences on both our families."
If it were just him, just them, Liam wouldn't give a damn. Fuck the Capitol. Fuck the Capitol and fuck President Monroe and fuck--fuck every victor that ever lived to tell the tale as some pale shade of a hero.
But Hayden's right.
"Remember why you kissed me?" says Hayden.
Liam offers her a weary nod. Moves closer to rest his forehead against hers. "The plan."
"That's right," she breathes. "The plan. So we stick to the plan, starting now."
“And Finstock?”
Her face flickers with a smile, deeper and more genuine than it was a few hours ago. “He won’t let on, but I think we’ve made some progress.”
Liam pulls away an inch to give her an incredulous look.
“Trust me,” says Hayden. “He wouldn’t have said those useful things about Capitol politics and Game design if he wasn’t at least a tiny bit impressed by now with our skill set.”
“Thank G-d I didn’t just up and say I can throw sacks of flour at the enemy,” Liam groans.
----
As much as a part of Liam was hoping Hayden’s statement was an exaggeration, she’s right: every step they take after disembarking from the train is flanked by a line of Peacekeepers on either side. Liam wonders why they would be kept under such ridiculously tight security when everyone knows that the Capitol’s retribution on tributes’ families is swift and merciless. But then Liam’s imagination fills again with the sound of the anthem, of the cannons booming at the opening of every Games, and he thinks of the lightning-bright flash of desperation and stupid hope in the eyes of every tribute before they’re gutted onscreen, and he remembers with stomach-twisting clarity just how it feels to know you’re about to die without once trying to escape.
Hayden and Liam are guided into a glass elevator that shoots upward through an equally fragile-looking glass tower of a building, from which they can see the shooting sights of hoverjets, neon-colored citizens milling about on the streets, and cars and lights moving to and fro in an endless and indiscernible rhythm below.
From there, they are assigned a suite where their separate beds are laden with a nauseating number of pillows and blankets. The bathrooms are not any better--with three different options of a standing shower, a regular bath and what is essentially a miniature pool, neither Hayden nor Liam knows what to do with the cascading display of dozens of soap options on the wall.
“You will have three hours for refreshment,” one of the Peacekeepers tells them. “You must be ready at the end of that for the tribute dinner.”
The two of them balk after the Peacekeeper even long after she’s left. They literally just got here, and Liam is pretty sure that if they aren’t about to pass out right now from the sheer trauma of their morning, then in the next three hours they will find their way to unconsciousness.
“You know what I’m thinking?” Hayden murmurs.
“That everyone in the Capitol is fucking batshit insane?”
“Not as insane as we are,” Hayden says with a glint in her eye and a meaningful glance at the bed.
“No,” says Liam. “No, what if we don’t wake up in time?”
“I’m sure Finstock will get us.”
Liam fixes her with a look. “I’m sure Finstock will do shit.”
“Liam. I just--I just want to nap, okay?”
When Hayden puts it that way, and in that specific tone of hers, all of Liam’s resolve crumbles. “Well, I guess it would be good for us to be ‘caught’ sharing a room. Let our reputation precede us.”
“Exactly.” Without waiting for further confirmation, Hayden grabs him by the wrist and yanks him to the bed. They tumble in unceremoniously, their fall cushioned by the copious pillows, and Liam lets out an embarrassingly loud groan as the cloud-soft mattress and silky sheets meet his tired skin. Within minutes, both of them are out.
----
As it turns out, they are awakened an hour later by neither Finstock nor the Peacekeepers, but by a team of stylists who seem overly appalled at the fact that neither of them bothered to wash up beforehand.
Liam couldn’t care less. He and Hayden are forced into the role of putty in the stylists’ hands as the team scrubs them down, relieving them of what feels like a pound of dirt brought straight from the district, then pulls and plucks and snips and buffs in places where Liam never knew people could be bothered by extra hair or dry skin.
At the end of the process, both Liam and Hayden are a bit glassy-eyed from the lull of the stylists’ chatter above their heads. He has to admit, though, that all things considered, the Capitol workers have done an unsettlingly impressive job of masking and polishing away the tired lines in Liam’s and Hayden’s faces. One would almost never think that the two of them had just uttered their last goodbyes to their families eight hours ago.
Liam is out first, pacing the hallway under the watchful eye of a pair of Peacekeepers at the end. A few minutes later, Hayden emerges from the suite and shuts the door quietly behind her.
Upon meeting his eyes, Hayden does a sarcastic little twirl. “What do you think? Does my trauma look palatable to you now?”
“It looks dashing,” Liam says solemnly with a nod at her ensemble. They’ve placed her in a short crimson number that seems to consist of an almost tutu-like skirt and a...bell-sleeved bolero, for lack of a better term, with structured shoulders and layers of lace emerging from the hems.
“It’s itchy, is what it is,” says Hayden. “Christ, this thing is embroidered in places where it has no business being embroidered.”
“At least you won’t have to worry about stains,” Liam comforts her. He sticks out the crook of his arm, and Hayden loops her hand readily through it.
“As opposed to you?” Hayden teases, arching a brow at Liam’s off-white getup and blood-red tie.
“I hate you,” Liam says sincerely.
“Baby, that’s what gives us chemistry,” says Hayden.
----
Fuck this shit. Fuck this dinner, fuck these Capitol faces, fuck the lights and fuck the mountains of food and--honestly, fuck everything.
The place is loud. Liam is the first to clap his hands over his ears as they’re escorted into the gigantic banquet room, and then Hayden swiftly follows. They had a few school dances here and there, thrown together by the parents back in District 7 who wanted to give their kids a time to remember once every year or so, but Liam doesn’t remember the music pumping this aggressively or the throng pressing in on him from all sides with such a landslide of over-rich smells inundating him.
He doesn’t realize his eyes are starting to shimmer on the edge of gold or that a subvocal growl is stirring in the pit of his chest, until Hayden’s hand presses insistently at the back of his neck. He relaxes marginally and shoots her a look of gratitude.
“Eat,” she says. “It’ll get your mind off things.”
She’s right, of course. They go for the simpler foods--tucked away in between the obscene platters spilling with whole pigs with apples in their mouths, complicated fruit salads served in intricately carved pineapples, cakes decorated in ten times the amount of time it would take to demolish them--and even then, Liam is caught between moaning and gagging on the strangely rich flavor of even some unidentified piece of fowl leg in a dark sauce.
He’s caught, too, between ravenous hunger and his ravaging guilt, as he stares down at the leg on his plate and thinks of all the times Hayden risked her life sneaking through the break in the fence on Sunday mornings at the crack of dawn to shoot a single animal and bring it back to the town hub to sell on the greasy market. That remembrance inevitably leads him down memory lane to the time his father couldn’t go into work at the textile factory for two weeks straight because of his lung condition worsening, and how Jenna had scraped up the measly herbs that grew in the dirt under their kitchen window and cut them up and boiled them in something she called soup because there was no way they were eating meat without money.
“If you start feeling guilty about every single piece of food they shove at you, you’re gonna starve before even setting foot in the arena,” says an unfamiliar voice by his head.
Liam startles. It’s a tall, tanned girl, lithe and a few years older than him, her hair chopped raggedly at chin length in an obvious self-hacking despite the best efforts of her stylists. Or perhaps she escaped them entirely. He wouldn’t put it past her, considering that she somehow has on a comfortingly ugly cropped anorak over her dress.
“I’m not guilty,” Liam protests, swallowing down his meal. “I’m infuriated.”
“Okay, yeah, well. Save that fury for the Games, puppy.” She pats him on the side of his face and goes in for a taste of his leftover wing and sauce on his plate.
Liam should be offended, he thinks, but instead he finds he likes her. “Um,” he says. “I’m Liam. From District 7.”
“Malia Tate, from District 5.” She shakes her still-sticky hand with his. Liam realizes he really, really likes her.
“Metals and mining, right?” he asks, deciding a little small talk won’t hurt.
“It’s where we get our irresistible glow,” Malia pretends to whisper. She nods over in the direction of an equally tall, muscular man with a sweep of black hair and, as far as Liam can tell from the partially concealed side of his face, a jawline sharpened by years of glaring at Peacekeepers and plotting their demise. “That’s the guy who got reaped with me. Derek Hale.”
“He’s a tank,” Liam says inelegantly.
Malia gives him a sage nod. “He is a tank.”
Liam suddenly notices that in the time he’s been picking at his food and Malia has been making conversation with him, Hayden has disappeared from his side. He casts about as furtively as he can for sight of her, though from Malia’s snort he’s probably anything but subtle.
“Your girlfriend’s over there,” she says, pointing with her chin.
“She’s not--” Liam starts to say, but then bites down on his tongue. He has to kill his knee-jerk reaction, fast, or else their ruse will be unraveled in no time. Instead he deflects. “How did you know?”
“The stylists gossip,” Malia says breezily. “The two of you are already heartbreakers, you know. Kissing onstage. Falling asleep all cuddled up in each other’s arms and having to be woken up to get ready for dinner.”
To be fair, Liam thinks just a little resentfully, they did come from the district at the furthest territory limit and had to go through hell on the train ride just to get their mentor to give them the time of day.
He says none of this. He may like Malia, but he’s not an idiot. Trust still has to be earned.
Instead, he follows the direction of where Malia pointed earlier, and finds Hayden, a spot of crimson in the crowd, standing with a guy about their age dressed in a dark olive jacket and a creamy shirt. Liam attempts to stretch out his hearing in their direction, but only catches bits and pieces because of the g-ddamn thump of the music around them.
“Who is that?” he asks.
“Theo Raeken,” says Malia, now chomping on a stack of marinated meat cubes on a skewer. “District 6. He’s here with his girlfriend too, you know. Looks like you guys might have some competition for the cameras.”
At least Malia seems to know everything about everyone and doesn’t waste her breath with pleasantries or euphemisms. Liam can appreciate that.
“And where’s she?”
Malia points wordlessly with her skewer. On the other side of the banquet hall, a raven-haired girl with almond eyes and a sloping nose fidgets restlessly at her updo while a tall blond boy chats her up. An impossibly tall guy, really, who fills up the entire space around him with an oozing air of confidence that hasn’t ticked off Liam this badly since--
Since Brett Talbot.
“Is that Brett?”
Malia pauses in her chewing. “Why, you know him?”
“You could say that,” Liam seethes. He doesn’t tear his gaze away from the guy. Not yet.
Their last encounter might have been five years ago, but it would be pretty damn hard to forget the smug face of the asshole who was supposed to play a casual game of lax ball with him and his friends but ended the afternoon instead pelting Liam in the shoulder and stomach and back with the balls because Brett’s team lost.
Liam was swearing up a storm around his broken nose when he got home, quivering with rage and promising his mother that he would kill Brett if he got the chance. But he never did. Barely a week later, Brett and his sister Lori packed up and were whisked off somewhere mysteriously. Liam had suffered another week of turmoil, this time of chest-crushing guilt, because at that time everyone knew that children who disappeared ended up in District 6.
In the hellhole of science experiments that spits back so few souls like Hayden and Valerie and Corey.
“How?” says Malia. “They’re from District 2.”
District 2. The third most prosperous district after Districts 1 and 3--weapons, and medical technology--because of its lumber industry, its geographic proximity to the Capitol and the tendency for District 3 residents to retire there.
“He used to live in our district,” Liam mumbles distractedly. His eyes widen. “Is that--Lori?”
It is. The girl with a blonde bob slides up to Brett and says something to him, and as Brett bends down to listen to his sister, his gaze sweeps the room and lands on Liam. They both freeze in tandem. Liam swears he could almost hear both their pulses galloping even with this much space and noise between them.
“I see Malia’s giving you the gossip channel,” says a peppy guy’s voice from Liam’s other side. It’s a skinny, freckled boy with his tie impossibly askew, flanked by a redhead who seems to be studying Liam with far too much intensity to be casual. “I’m Stiles,” says the guy. “This is Lydia. District 4.”
A part of Liam wildly wonders what about him seems to attract other tributes to flock to him and introduce themselves, but then he remembers Finstock’s infuriating endearment--baby face--and decides they must all see him as a weak target.
He doesn’t know how to feel about that yet.
“Liam,” he introduces himself.
Stiles and Lydia nod. “District 7. We know,” says Lydia.
“Christ,” says Liam. He needs to steer this conversation away from what he and Hayden have--or don’t have--as quickly as possible. “What’s up with Brett and Lori? How’d they get reaped together?”
Stiles stares bug-eyed at him. “They’re volunteers.”
Now it’s Liam’s turn to widen his eyes at the news. His throat is doing a strange spasming thing. “What kind of werewolf would volunteer for this?”
A werewolf who has a family to protect, his mind supplies helpfully. But Brett and Lori have no family.
“Dude,” says Stiles. “They’re born werewolves. They’ve been training for this for years, under Satomi, the District 2 victor. She adopted them. Did you seriously not know this? Didn’t your mentor prep you with this information?”
Liam shakes his head, already making a grim resolution that he’s going to try his hand again at intimidating Finstock into either giving him the information they need to be decently prepared for training and interviews, or pointing the way to the footage of all of today’s reapings and tribute profiles.
“Stiles,” says Lydia pointedly. “Bobby Finstock. That’s the victor from District 7.”
Stiles’ eyebrows climb higher on his forehead. He hangs his hands on his hips and shrugs with his entire face and body. “Yeah, that--that tracks.”
“Hey,” Lydia says, with a tinge of kindness this time in her tight smile. “Which of those dudes do you think will choke on a bone if they eat any more of that pig?”
Malia and Liam swivel in sync toward where Lydia is pointing. Up on the second floor of the banquet hall--on a balcony that Liam never noticed there before--a cluster of middle-aged men and an auburn-haired woman among them are picking their way through an entire platter of roast pig with their manicured fingers. The Gamemakers.
Liam whips back around, hissing at Lydia, “Somebody could hear you!”
She shrugs. Winks, even. “What are they gonna do? We’re already being carted off to the butcher, as it is.”
Liam realizes she has a point.
He also decides he likes Lydia, too. The vibes he’s getting from Stiles are a bit varied, haywire and a bit all over the place, but he thinks if they had all met under better circumstances--under circumstances where they knew they would all live--they could all have been fast friends.
“Oh, there’s Scott,” Malia says distractedly, and she drifts off in the direction of another black-haired guy who nods at her from across the room with a thousand-watt smile.
“So,” says Lydia. She gives Liam that strange and obvious once-over again. “Have you been considering any alliances?”
Well, this pair certainly cuts to the chase.
Liam stammers through a half-formed response. Finally he manages, “I don’t know that we’re supposed to--s’posed to talk about that yet. I mean. I haven’t run it by Finstock yet.” He coughs into his fist. “’Cause, y’know, he’s our mentor and stuff.”
“Sure,” Stiles says in a tone that says anything but. He claps Liam on the shoulder. “Never too early to start thinking. Well, if we don’t see you around before the night ends, I guess we’ll all see each other again during training.”
Liam nods. And then blurts out, stupidly, because his brain never had too much of a rein on his tongue: “Wait, you two aren’t werewolves, are you?”
Information he could easily squeeze from Finstock later, but what the hell.
“I’m a banshee,” Lydia says with a smile.
“And you?” Liam asks Stiles.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Stiles jokes, with a wink, a click of his tongue and a pair of finger guns in Liam’s direction, before the two turn and cross the hall to pick up their desserts.
Hayden materializes again at Liam’s side just in time. “Looks like you attracted quite the crowd.”
“I know, right?” Liam huffs. At least Hayden gets his confusion. “And they wanted to form an alliance. What the heck?”
“Must be our irresistible baby faces. They probably think we’re a good catch for sponsors.”
“Yeah, and probably the fact that we’re the only ones around here who actually seem ‘in love,’” Liam grumbles. He nods over at Theo and Tracey as if in illustration. The two are conferring in whispers by the pudding selection, but they’re both alert to a degree that nobody else in the room seems to be, glancing around every few seconds as if surveilling their surroundings is second nature.
Hayden’s face grows somber. “Oh. Them. District 6.”
“Yeah. Theo, was it? What did he want with you?”
“Just--” Hayden purses her lips. “Giving me some advice.”
“Advice? What kind of advice?”
“Nothing major. It’s nothing.”
“Haydie,” Liam says. It’s quickly becoming a thing between them: a reminder for complete and total honesty.
“Fine. It’s a chimera thing,” Hayden reluctantly admits. When Liam prompts her with a silent quirk of his brow, she goes on, lowering her voice, “He was just...reminding me that chimeras here need to be on their A-game. It’s different for us. Finstock hinted at it, back on the train, and I think he’s right. We’re not--we’re not humans, but we’re also not real supernaturals. We’re kind of freaks, at least in the eyes of the Capitol.”
“That’s not any of your fault,” Liam says hotly. “You were sold to the--”
“It doesn’t matter,” Hayden interrupts him. “People in District 6 have a lot of reasons for going through with the experimentation, you know. Not just the money. Like Theo--he was a volunteer.”
“Oh?” Liam can’t deny that there’s the faintest hint of venom lacing his voice. “And why on earth did he volunteer to be a lab rat?”
The hurt flashes across Hayden’s eyes before Liam realizes what he’s done.
“Wait--no--I wasn’t--oh, G-d. Crap, Hayden, I didn’t mean it like that. I was annoyed, and tired, and I don’t trust this Theo guy and--”
Hayden says tersely, “It’s fine.”
“It’s not. I’m sorry.”
“I know,” Hayden says, just as shortly, but a little softer this time. “Well, did you know his sister was in the Games a couple years ago?”
It doesn’t take a lot of mental calculations for Liam to figure out what happened. District 6 hasn’t had a victor in forever, not since the Doctor. This sister of Theo’s undoubtedly must have died.
A fraction of his inexplicable irritation at Theo Raeken deflates. Still, he can’t help the whining voice of his wolf at the back of his head that nobody else, not even a fellow chimera, should be able to slip so easily between him and Hayden. Well-intentioned or not.
“I didn’t know that. Apparently we don’t know shit, or so says Stiles--District 4--because Finstock didn’t prep us.”
Hayden’s mouth thins into a line. “We’ll get on track. Don’t worry about it.” She swirls at the creamy sauce in her plate. “So. Are you considering anyone for alliances yet?”
Liam shakes his head. “I like Malia from District 5, but I have yet to meet the other tribute, Derek. It’s hard to get a read on him. And I’m betting they’d be a package deal. Stiles and Lydia though...they could be a possibility.” His eyes rove over the crowd, find the guy with a sunny aura that Malia had sought out before. Scott. Beside him, a pale-skinned brunette with dimples and a somber expression that looks like it could easily be persuaded to kill if push came to shove. From their body language, Liam assumes that would be his fellow district tribute.
“What do you think of those two? Scott and...that girl,” Liam asks Hayden in a low voice, directing her attention to Scott and the girl at his side.
Hayden hums. “Scott looks like he might have been training for this. Physically, I mean. Looks powerful. The girl…” She cocks her head. “Honestly, they both could probably kick ass, but I don’t sense any malice in them.”
“You got their chemosignals from that far away?”
Hayden shakes her head. “You can read people even without pheromones, Li. You just pay attention. That’s how I got by, before the operations with the Doctor changed me.”
Liam nods. He doesn’t like to think of that period in Hayden’s childhood any more than she does.
“I’m guessing those are the District 1 hunters,” Hayden says with a gesture toward the pair by the wall.
Liam turns to look, and he swears everything in his veins drains cold.
The woman has some age on her--looks deceptively young, but could very well be in her forties or fifties--and something about the way her golden hair is pinned and her simple black outfit drapes around her seems to scream calculation and authority. Her eyes flit sharply from one end of the room to another, and when she catches sight of Liam staring open-mouthed at her, her mouth pulls into a venomous smile around the rim of her glass.
Some feet away from her is a kid. A beanpole of a thing, dirty blond, pacing in his uncomfortable clothes and yet bearing some semblance of the woman’s sharpness in his own features, despite the fact that they don’t seem related by blood at all. There is a practiced weight to his footsteps, as if he’s been trained how to move across different terrain and be prepared to crouch and point and shoot at any second.
Liam swallows. His throat feels thick, dry, like it’s stopped up with the microscopic fibers that found their way into his father’s lungs and killed him.
“Getting a drink,” he murmurs to Hayden, and slips away.
Liam is only half-focused on the options of drinks before him when his senses prickle from a presence behind him. He turns, just in time to hear the new and gravelly voice say, “Gives you hives, doesn’t it?”
“Theo Raeken,” Liam greets him. Something about this guy raises his hackles. It could be anything, really, from the slant of his brows to the wave of his dark hair to the strange wavering of his eyes between sea green and gray.
“Liam Dunbar,” Theo responds with a smirk, and now Liam thinks he officially, inexplicably hates Theo.
“What gives you hives?” says Liam, pushing a challenge into his voice.
Theo nods over his shoulder in the direction of the woman and the boy in black. “Them. The hunters. They reek of the Capitol’s influence, don’t they.”
“How would you know?”
Theo sweeps up a flute of something bubbly and burgundy from the table and downs it in one go. When he smiles at Liam, his teeth are stained with the faintest traces of red. "Haven't you heard, Dunbar? The Games are rigged."
Liam picks his way through the table and pointedly chooses a glass of something flat and golden, the furthest thing from whatever it is Theo drank. It tastes like fruit, almost like the sweet green squashes that Jenna bakes as a substitute into the pies, and Liam figures this must be the real thing: apple.
"Yeah, well," Liam says belatedly, "there's only two of them, and twelve supernaturals in the arena."
Theo clicks his tongue and leans back against the wall to sip at another drink, leaving only the side of his face to Liam who is still standing stiffly at the banquet table. "If that's your idea of strategization, you're fucked," he says.
"I'm just pointing out the numbers," Liam snaps.
"You wanna talk about numbers? Which district has won seven times in the last ten years?"
Liam doesn't need his historical expertise or his photographic memory to know this one. "...District 1."
"Ding, ding, ding."
"Well, if you're so knowledgeable about all things related to hunters and the Capitol, then what's your strategization?"
Theo lifts a single brow at him. "That's for me to know," he says with a lopsided smile, "and my allies to find out."
Liam narrows his eyes at Theo. "Something tells me you're not the alliance-making type."
Theo drawls back, "Something tells me you may be right." He sets his soiled glass down on the designated cart to his other side and turns back to Liam, arms crossed over his ridiculous chest, and gives him a slow and deliberate once-over that is about seventeen times more irritating than Lydia's.
"You know, statistically," says Liam like an utter buffoon because he just can't help himself, "with the exception of the hunters, nobody makes it past day three if they don't have an alliance."
"Aw, Dunbar," says Theo. "Is that concern I hear?"
"No," Liam huffs. "It's me taking advantage of the opportunity to point out your stupidity."
For some reason, that makes Theo's entire face fold into a wide and ironic smile.
"Nolan Holloway," Theo says.
Liam blinks. "What?"
"The hunter kid who's pacing back and forth. His name's Nolan. I don't think anyone should underestimate his training, but there's something volatile about him that could be his weakness."
Liam knows. He sensed it on the guy immediately because he's well acquainted with the look on himself.
"And the woman?"
"Kate Argent. I'll let you in on a little secret," Theo murmurs, leaning closer. "See that brunette over there?" He indicates the girl by Scott's side. "That's Allison Argent. Some cousin something-something-removed from Kate, but they come from the same hunter family."
That seizes Liam's attention. "Allison is a hunter?"
"Trained as one, but not for a living."
Ah. A renegade. Liam has heard of those--thought they were just legends, because those are so few and far between. He supposes Finstock as a formerly trained hunter would count as a renegade since he hasn't killed another creature since the Games, but with his constant state of unconsciousness, Liam figures Coach could fill out a new category of his own entirely.
"Why are you telling me this?"
Theo turns and plucks the glass from Liam's hand, throwing back the dregs of his apple juice down his throat. "Consider it a bit of free advice," he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Yes, well, you do seem to be full of that tonight, don't you?" Liam says.
Theo slowly shakes his head. "I didn't mean to get into your girlfriend's head. It was just--a chimera thing. You wouldn't understand."
Something in Liam flares at the provocation. Theo seems to know exactly what he's doing, because a moment after Liam's eyes cross over from their normal blue into inhuman, Theo's own eyes shift from their indecisive blue-green into gold.
"I wouldn't do that here if I were you, pup," says Theo.
"Tough words from the guy who started it, lab rat."
Theo grins bitterly. The glint of his canines is straddling the edge between human and chimera. "Damn, does your girlfriend know that's how you feel about her?"
The pinprick reminder of the ruse--Liam and Hayden's plan--is enough to make Liam's fangs and flared eyes recede in shock. He attempts to recover his dignity. "You're a real charmer, you know that? I don't think even the sour wolf over there could make an alliance with you if he tried." He jerks his head toward Derek some distance away.
"Good thing I'm not looking for one."
"Then why are you giving out free advice? Not just to me. To Hayden, too."
Theo licks his lips contemplatively. Then he says, "Your mentor is Bobby Finstock. Mine and Tracey's is the Doctor."
Liam's heart lurches. The Doctor is here? In this very building? What if Hayden--
"Relax, he doesn't come to events if he can totally avoid it. I--I'd make sure he doesn't cross paths with Romero, if you want. All I'm saying is, it's obvious you two are getting thrown into the deep end without a paddle."
Liam juts out his chin. "And why would you care."
Theo shakes his head. "Because shoving a bunch of teenagers in an arena against mercenary-level hunters and sadistic traps is evil enough as it is. Leading a pair of baby faces like yours to your deaths without any fighting chance at a strategy? That's just slaughter."
And before Liam can come up with a response to that, Theo has sauntered off and rejoined Tracey on the other end of the hall. Liam makes eye contact with Hayden, whose glaze flickers upward just for a fraction of a second. Liam follows her line of vision and startles to see the auburn-haired woman from the group of Gamemakers leaning over the edge of the glass balcony, pinning Theo's retreating figure with a pensive look.