"SO," EVANDER SAID, declaratively, sending Iko a surreptitious smile over the rim of his wine glass, "now we get to the good stuff. Game strategy. Murder plans."

Aeneas cringed. Rhea and Janus exchanged uncomfortable looks. Iko hid a grin behind her glass of water. Unsure how to respond, Alex blinked.

Enobaria rolled her eyes, biting into a piece of her steak with a savage vehemence. "I thought we agreed to veto calling it that."

Waving his fork in the air, Evander dismissed Enobaria's blatant disapproval. His eyes glistered with a malicious edge as he sent both Iko and Alex a devilish wink. "And I elected to ignore our agreement."

Although it wasn't her first time sitting at a full dining table, Iko still doubted she would ever get acclimatised to the noise of company. For years, it'd just been her and her mother and the stringent silence between them that'd been stitched together by all the words unsaid that didn't know how to be said. And now there were her two mentors, their escort, her district partner, and their two stylists. Even here, seven people seemed too much of a crowd, despite this being barely a notch on the magnitude of noise Alex's large family could create

After the parade, Aeneas had led Alex and Iko to the elevator, lion tail swishing excitably, talking their ears off about sponsors and crowd favours.

"They absolutely loved you!" Aeneas said, beaming, a delighted gleam in his cat-like eyes. "Unfortunately, I can't seal the sponsors for you, but you've both given Enobaria and Evander a lot to work with here, especially you, Alex..."

Iko tuned him out as he rambled on, even as the elevator doors shut, sealing them into the enclosed space with nothing but Aeneas' ceaseless chatter. It didn't look like it—since he did a better job of being less conspicuous about his inattentiveness—but iko knew Alex was doing the same, studying the buttons on the panel with feigned interest, nodding occasionally to keep the facade up. In truth, both tributes couldn't wait to get off the elevator. Each District had been relegated to one level. Since they were on the second floor, Iko had hoped for a short trip leading to her quick getaway, albeit, the universe decided that the seconds should stretch into what felt like an eternity in there.

Between Alex and Iko, the silence grew limbs and flesh, a third, overweight passenger inhibiting the small space of the elevator. The stiff tension hanging over them like a deadweight on a fraying thread prickles her skin, even though a vent somewhere was piping in warm air, the cold slipped between Iko's ribs, carving and carving to the sound of her mind rambling its aggravated mantra—it's all falling apart, it's all falling apart, it's all falling apart—until it exhausts itself with the jarring conclusion: he shouldn't be here.

They didn't speak of the handholding throughout the parade. Didn't speak even when Aeneas tried engaging them in conversation. Alex merely gave Aeneas a tired smile, and Iko had ignored him completely, instead, fixing her gaze on the view beyond the glass walls of the elevator, overlooking where the Capitol and its flamboyant colours flooded the streets in celebration, all shattered lights and colours.

Did they realise they were celebrating sending twenty-three children to their deaths? Iko wondered, watching as Capitol people in their hideous garb and strange, almost unfathomable accoutre poured onto the streets outside the Training Centre. Of course, in the aftermath, it would be her name on their lips that they'd be celebrating. It would be her, they would be worshipping as she emerged from the arena, bloody but unbeaten and unbreakable.

When the elevator halted, an the doors slid open, Iko was the first one out. Aeneas was quick on her tail, like a dog that wouldn't quit yapping at her heels.

Two hours.

Two hours, she'd shut herself in her quarters, alone with the silence and too much space she didn't know what to do with. Everything in the Capitol was scaled exponentially larger than everything back home. The windows were floor-to-ceiling, and engineered to zoom in and out of different parts of the city, wherever iko chose. The bed in the centre of the room, its polished wooden headboard pushed up against the wall, was twice the size of the one at home. After casting her tribute parade costume off with a savage vehemence, Iko lowered herself onto it tentatively, muscles tensing, preparing for the frame to groan and creak like her old bed back in her house, but it didn't. It held as she sank her full weight into it. There was no half-collapsed frame, nothing on the verge of crumbling feebly. A strange, chemical cocktail of relief and disbelief curled off Iko's guts.

Her fingers went to her wrist, until she realised her bracelet was still in the Gamemakers' possession, still being inspected, and she wouldn't get it back until the day of the Games. Blowing out a puff of breath in irritation, Iko distracted herself with the shower and the various options on the control panel. There was one to programme her favoured scent of shampoo, and another to manually regulate the shower temperature. Iko spent a good fifteen minutes figuring out the options, turning up the heat on the water until it burned her skin and the steam filled the bathroom with an angry hiss. Back home there was only ever freezing cold water, piped in through a broken heater which never did its job, and five minutes of shower time before her mother banged on the door of the bathroom to chase her out, so she omuodn't waste their water supply. Now, Iko took her time, standing under the hot spray, letting the day's exhaustion wash down her body in a cascading pool of melted make-up and grime and murky water swirling down the drain. 

Iko stepped out onto the mat and a blast of warm air jets upwards, instantly drying all the water off her body, leaving her hair floating down in a soft, dark curtain past her shoulders. Despite being far away from home, and, subsequently, far away from her mother, Iko dresses quickly—programming the closet to spit out a simple black shirt and comfortable grey sweats. Some irrational part of her can't help but expect her mother to come barging in at any second, brandishing a cane, demanding to know what's taking her so long. Another part of her couldn't help the crippling guilt of wasting too much time in the shower. Her fingers itched for a knife or the hilt of a katana. It didn't feel right, being able to idle this long at her own liberty.

Most of her hours back home were spent training with weapons and without. If she wasn't in the academy, learning how to be better, faster, stronger, she was at school, her mind straying from World History to how to take down a grown man in 58 different ways. If she was doing neither of those things, she was fantasising about the Games.

She couldn't shake that military-grade structure in her life. She wasn't trying to. It would keep her alive, after all.

Just so she wouldn't be sitting around doing nothing, Iko ran through a circuit of various exercises, until her body burned in protest and sweat dripped down her back in rivers. She was on her hundredth push-up when Aeneas called her out of her room for dinner through the door. Blowing out an explosive exhale, Iko straightened to her feet. Chest heaving as she caught her breath, she tapped a few buttons on the panel of her closet, which procured a fresh set of clothes to change out of her sweat-soaked ones into.

Presently, Iko sat amongst the others, enclosed in her fortress of silence, with only the exhausted scrape of her fork against her plate as she cut up her venison to indicate that she was present at the dining table at all. Across from her, Evander speared a piece of steak with his fork and jabbed it at the two tributes. Alex lifted a brow.

"So, here's the thing, Enobaria and I already know what you're good at since we got your training files from Minerva," Evander said, pausing only to sip from his wine. "But we want you to sell it to us. Make us believe you're what your trainers' reports say you are. That you're the best two candidates in all of District 2."

Brows furrowing, Iko fixed Evander with a narrow-eyed stare. "What's the point?"

"What he means is," Enobaria said, running her tongue over the tapered edges of her teeth and flicking the tributes a pointed look that chilled Iko to the bone, "You convince us you have a shot at winning. You're not only working to impress the Gamemakers who'll be watching you at your group training sessions for the next three days. There's a whole audience of sponsors out there who still need to believe that you're the tributes they want to bet on. Treat this as practice for your interviews. Iko, you start."

Straightening her spine, Iko felt the corners of her lips tug upwards—barely the ghost of a smile, yet something vicious and precise, the promise of a bloody demise. "I'm good with knives, the katana, and short swords. Guns come naturally to me, and I haven't been beaten in hand-to-hand combat since I was fourteen. I've never missed a target in six years. How can we not be the best?"

Evander smirked, clapping slowly.

"A katana, but not a traditional sword?" Enobaria pressed, elbows propped against the edge of the table, fingers laced together in a tower, leaning forward with mild interest.

"They're a little too awkward for me," Iko admitted. Since she was smaller than most, she'd had to overcompensate for the disadvantage of wielding weapons built for brute strength and power in other departments, like agility and speed.

Most kids in her age group were larger than her. They'd grown up on the less impoverished side of District 2, with a variety of food at their disposal to hone their strength. Their advantage was in their upbringing. They could throw axes from fifty yards away, swing maces twice her weight, and destroy practice dummies in one clean stroke of a sword. But they didn't have the most important factor: that little extra something that drove them to constantly search for optimal performance, never satisfied with good or better until it was best. They didn't have the same determination to leave, the desperate need to change their lives, to drag them out of barely skimming by. They didn't want this enough, but Iko did, and so she discarded the conventional weapons for something that could make her deadly. Something that could make her the right kind of monster. Throughout her training years, Iko could never quite get accustomed to the weight of swords and machetes, nor could she find the perfect balance during spear-throwing exercises. Distance weapons were her best suit, but if someone got in close, she could take them down with her bare hands under ten seconds. Even more efficiently with a knife.

Enobaria hummed in contemplation. Janus and Rhea watched the exchange in measurable curiosity. From periphery, Iko spied Alex grinning as he switched his gaze between the mentors and his district partner.

"Are you ambidextrous?"

"I can throw with both hands, yes."

"Good," Enobaria said, the cogs in her brain turning, the glimmer in her piercing eyes, calculative. "Good. Alex, your turn."

Alex's face lit up with a brutal sharpness, a focus that was knife-bright and sharp where it needed to be. The same look he wore when he was practicing archery on moving targets. A challenge he knew he could knock down in one sweep of his bow. He set down his fork and steak knife and laced his fingers behind his head, stretching back, lounging with leonine arrogance.

"I've got a good range on weapons," Alex mused, a cocky smirk on his lips.

"Like?" Evander prompted, lifting a brow.

"I've done archery my whole life, so the files will tell you I've never missed a single shot since I was ten. Guns and spears are among the top five favourites. Swords aren't really a preference, but some might say I'm a natural," Alex said.

Evander chuckled. "You're a sharpshooter."

Alex nodded. "Yes, sir, I am. I've been told I've got a good eye."

"How's your hand-to-hand combat?" Enobaria asked.

Alex slid Iko a surreptitious glance. "Second best. But I like to think I can hold my own."

"He's not wrong," Iko added, before she could stop the words from tumbling out. Alex's burning gaze snapped to her instantly, shock registering in his eyes.

Evander shrugged. "Well, I'm convinced. Are you?" He glanced over at Enobaria, who shot him a deadpan look. A corner of his lips pulled up in a lopsided grin. "Last year, Enobaria hothoused me and Lei—my district partner, bless her—" a shadow of indecipherable emotion flickered over his boyish features, aging him ten years, for only a transient moment, before it vanished— "until we both almost broke down and started questioning our own abilities. Almost. You're both lucky I'm here to help you avoid that psychological torture. Anyway. Moving on."

Amusement lighting up his feline features, Aeneas chuckled. His golden lion's tail swished from side-to-side. Iko had almost forgotten that the Capitol natives were here. A minute stab of hatred struck her core. Although, technically, neither of them had given her any reason to hold that sort of vendetta against them personally, Iko couldn't help the intrinsic resentment burrowing deep into her flesh. District 2 was the Capitol's most favoured district, out of the twelve, and Iko knew that already gave them an advantage in the Games that she should be grateful for, but gratitude was a little difficult to come by these days when all the higher-ups tended to do was throw her a bone and expect her to beg. Iko didn't do begging. Fighting, however, she did. They would never know what it's like to have to fight for a day in their lives.

"Winning is not all about strength," Evander said. "You need to use your head too. Don't forget all the useful little tactics that could save your life."

"Not only do you have to manipulate the viewers," Enobaria added, "you have to know how to manipulate your fellow tributes too. Make them see what you want them to see. Perception is everything. Which means that hiding some of your talents could come in useful in the long run. Iko, which hand are you most comfortable throwing with?"

Iko shrugged. "I'm good with either."

An approving smile stretched Enobaria's lips. "Perfect. But as far as anyone knows, you're left-handed."

Blinking, nonplussed, Iko fixed Enobaria with a confused look. "Does that make a difference?"

"If you overplay your disadvantage with your right hand during the three days of training that you've got, your allies will only see what you let them, which is, that your right hand is weak, so they'll only learn to watch for your left. If you're ever forced into a situation where they think they've got your hands tied down..." In a flash, Evander mimed slashing Aeneas' throat with his right hand. His movements were so quick Aeneas didn't even have time to flinch.

"It's a small trick, but it could save your life," Enobaria said. She turned to Alex. "Same goes for you. You're a sharpshooter, but save the flashy technique for the private assessments. And I'm getting the sense that you tend to lead by nature, so make your allies respect you. Make them know that you're better, but don't forget to make them fear you. In order for that to work, the both of you need to have each other's backs. It's easier to win crowd favour with support. The allies you're looking for should come from the prime Career districts, but if anyone else catches your eye, be sure to run it by each other first."

"That is," Evander mused, as a perfunctory afterthought, "assuming you've both sorted your shit."

Alex's self-assured smirk withered at the edges. Glowering, Iko bit down on a piece of venison with more vehemence than required.

* * *

IKO KNEW SLEEP WOULDN'T COME the moment she lay her head on her pillow. Soft as the bed was, she couldn't help but suspect that something was going to spring out of the dark and sever her spine. And so, clutching her paranoia to her chest, she crept out of her room, wrapping the soft quilt around her like a heavy cape and snatching the clean steak knife she'd stolen from the dining table off her nightstand.

When she entered, the lights in the living room flared on, revealing a relieving lack of company. Even the Avoxes were gone, retired to their chambers, if they even received that sort of luxury throughout their capital punishment. With the press of a button on a panel mounted to the wall, Iko turned the lights off, plunging the living room in partial darkness, letting the full weight of solitude seep into her pores, letting the quiet pounding of music from somewhere below leak in.

Perching herself on the window ledge, Iko drew her legs up to her chest and pressed her temple against the cool glass. Watching the light shower of rain lashing against the window, the lights flicker in the streets below, the soft wail of distant sirens serenading the buildings of marble, crowned by the moonlight fading into a polychrome of the technicolour city, Iko let her mind fade. Let the silence take her apart and put her back together, piece by piece. The knife in her hand turns, flipping idly over her knuckles, always in perfect balance, always in tandem with the purposeful motion of her deft fingers.

In the corner of her eye, Alex was a ghost, just a shadow of her hyperactive imagination, until he lowered himself onto the ledge opposite her, their feet separated by three inches of space. Without tearing her eyes away from the window and the oblivious world beyond it, Iko watched them both in the reflection, faces pale in the darkness, smudged and distorted from the rain streaking down the window. Two ghosts forever melting, but never diminishing, in the glass.

He didn't say anything. Didn't ask what she was doing up so late. It was midnight, and back home, they'd either be in Alex's room, talking about their lives like they were divinity, seeing into the future, or they'd be sneaking back into the training facility, alone, knives in her hands and an arrow notched in his trusty bow. In any predicament, no matter how they messed with each others' aims, their weapons would always land true. They'd always find their homes. No explanations were required. In their stead, there was the silence they'd nurtured into near-corporeal form, comatose on the sofa behind them. It fed on the warmth of their breaths, the sound of the rain lashing against the windows like static filling up the space, the heavy tension lifting off their shoulders, Atlas acquitted.

Setting her jaw, Iko considered Alex for a moment—this boy-god with perpetually glistering eyes and mussed blonde hair, the sun to the world's Icarus of melted wax wings—and she considered his unapologetic presence, the undeniable light staking out through the cracks—his eyes, lambent and soft; his mouth, golden and quicksilver. In the halflight slanting through the window, setting his flaxen hair aglow in a halo of gold, the horrific beauty in the sharpness of his features and the devilish glint in his molten eyes hit her full-force and without ceremony, like a kick to the chest. But she stuffed the ugly feeling down—it was of no use to her, anyway, not in a time like this—compartmentalised until it vanished. For one endless moment she let the messianic inferno of hatred flare in her blood, just to wash the previous distraction away. For volunteering. For putting them both in a position where only one could come out alive. For, if she were to survive this, leaving her behind.

"Why?" Iko asked, the first to shatter the silence.

"Why, what?"

"Why did you do it?"

Alex fixed her with a level look. He was tired of her constantly dogging at the same question, though there was never a time where he'd given her a straight answer. "Which version would you like to hear? The reassuring lie or the harsh truth?"

"Spare me," Iko snapped, rolling her eyes. "Why did you really volunteer? And don't give me that 'Minerva told me to' bullshit. I know you better than that. You're not a blind follower. Why did you let her do this to us?"

Alex appraised Iko for an endless moment. His eyes flickered down to her hands, the constant motion of the blade weaving between her scarred fingers, flashing in the illuminated light from the streets.

"Because I don't trust anyone else to watch your back. It's a me thing, I know you could make it on your own, but if anything happened... if you took your eyes off the horizon just for one second... I don't know," Alex said, in a laugh wrought with nervous energy, carding both hands through his hair as though there was nothing solid in the world left to hold onto. "I would never forgive myself if you never came back."

The world stopped spinning. The knife in her hand stalled.

Iko blinked, the ice in her eyes faltering.

"What about me?" Iko asked, her voice barely above a whisper. Desperation seeped into her tone, bordering on hysterical. She hated it. Hated how he had the power to reduce her to this state of weakness. No one won the Games with softness in their hearts. But try as she might, there was no immolating it. It was a part of her for as long as Alex lived. "Did you ever stop to think about how I would feel if you're not there if I come back?"

"When," Alex rectified, pinning her with a pointed look, and an uneasy smile—the face of a boy who knows he's about to face the guillotine, "when you go home, you'll start your new life in your fancy new house. Your mother won't bother you again, and Cassie and Heron would be in your hair forever. You'll never get rid of my siblings. Most of all, you'll be happy. You're where you want to be. You don't have to fight the world anymore."

"You're wrong," Iko said, her voice, a horrific sound of cracking ice. "It won't be home because you're not there. There's no point in living that life if I have no one to share it with."

"You don't need me." Alex shrugged, but there was no heart in his feigned nonchalance. Deep down, he knew, too, that his sacrifice was for nothing, unless by some miracle, the both of them could come out of this alive. But since that wasn't even a possibility, it was an unthinkable, insubstantial thing to hope for. "You'll find a way."

Iko swallowed. "Then you don't know me very well, do you?"

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

brenton thwaites as evander????? (his character is so minor but i already love him so much and he's a CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS series regular so...........)