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Glory sharpened her knife on a stone, her silver eyes fixed on the back of Wade's neck.

Stupid, stupid boy, she thought with a soft snicker. Don't you know better than to fall asleep when there's only six of us left in the Game?

Only six, and that cursed ranch-girl was somehow one of them. Glory was utterly confused at how the brat had lasted so long, but at least nobody had claimed her trophy just yet.

Glory's knife sliced a line down the stone. She would get revenge. She had to. Nobody humiliated her like that in front of all of Panem and got away with it.

Not when her parents made a fool out of her day after day back home, and she could never fight back. Now, she could fight, and she sure as hell wasn't going to let the opportunity slip through her fingers.

But first, she had to get rid of just another obstacle standing between her and victory. Glory stood, her newly polished knife glinting in the early morning sun.

Wade's eyes flew open, but it was too late. With one clean swipe of Glory's knife, Wade was dead before he even fully woke.

Stupid, stupid boy, she thought once again, a dangerous smile blossoming across her face. Don't you know better than to think I would really show you mercy?

***

Daphne sat with her head propped on Caelum's shoulder. The sun had long since risen, but there was something relaxing about sitting on a dock watching the rippling water with your favorite person.

Caelum's legs were stretched lazily out in front of him, one crossed over the other. It was pristine, how they'd managed to catch a moment of such serenity and contentment. In this dangerous arena where anxiety and bloodshed was the norm, it felt delightfully heretic. Daphne was afraid to say or do anything, feeling that any small disturbance would send this peace slipping right through her fingertips.

Caelum eventually reached up to poke her on the cheek. "Should we start talking about the elephant in the room?"

"No, shut up," Daphne grumbled, swatting him away. "I'm pretending we're at the lake behind the schoolyard, and everything is fine and normal."

Caelum chuckled, shaking his head affectionately. Daphne's own lip quirked. She wanted to commit this image of him to memory, to never forget how beautiful it was to see him laughing and enjoying himself after so long spent in the shadows of his own prison.

But Daphne knew she was only delaying the inevitable. She huffed a sigh of defeat.

"Fine, I suppose we should probably start discussing it. Since, you know, it's kind of important to figure out how to both survive."

"And with only six left-" Caelum was interrupted by a sudden cannon shot in the distance, making Daphne jump in surprise. The timing was almost comical. Foreboding began to build in Daphne's chest.

"Five," Caelum corrected himself. "Five left, damn it-"

"I hope it was Glory. Or Sylla." Daphne muttered bitterly.

"You know what this means, right?" Caelum said, looking around as if expecting someone to jump out at them. "It's the endgame now, Daph. The Gamemakers are going to start driving the remaining tributes together for the final stretch."

"We can do this," Daphne quipped quietly, more to convince herself than Caelum. "Sylla and her stupid little girlfriend Lua should be easy enough to get rid of. Plus, it would be pretty funny if we were the ones to kill Sylla after all her racist raving. I'm just worried about Glory and the other Career."

"The Careers are good at fighting, yes, but even they can die from an arrow through the throat." Caelum smirked, a darkly amused shadow crossing his face. Daphne socked him playfully.

"If you had a villain era, it would be terrifying," she said. "Kind of hot, too."

Caelum arched his eyebrow. "'Kind of?'"

Daphne's face began to burn. She scrunched her nose at him. "Stop, we're going off topic. Now, since you're so eager, got any ideas? That hopefully don't include threatening a double suicide?"

Caelum squinted his left eye, like he always did when deep in thought. "We could-"

He was once again interrupted, but this time by a thump against the bottom of the dock. Daphne scrambled to her feet, unsheathing a knife. A wave of nausea washed over her senses, buzzing her vision and nearly causing her to collapse right back down. She screwed her eyes shut, her head beginning to pound like she was being stabbed repeatedly in the brain. A horrendous, inhuman snarl sounded from the end of the dock, and Caelum cried out in surprise.

As her vision cleared and she squinted through her headache, she was greeted by a sight that had her adrenaline spike. It was a mutt; a gross, scaly, slimy abomination. It resembled an anaconda, if anacondas had three jaws and four times as many eyes.

It heaved itself out of the water and onto the dock, the wood boards creaking beneath its mass. One, two, three arrows whizzed by Daphne's ear, each of them stabbing into one of the snake's many eyeballs. Blood streaked down its horrible face, and Daphne thought it would collapse and die.

It did not. It reared its head back, standing just taller than Caelum, roaring with all its three mouths. Spittle burned Daphne's skin like acid where it landed.

Daphne exploded into action, despite her throbbing skull. She flung a knife, watching as it embedded itself into the snake's exposed underbelly. The snake doubled over, shrieking, and Daphne used a second knife to slash at its remaining eyes. She managed to tear through most of them, leaving only two functional ones left, before the snake lunged.

Its jaws missed Daphne's arm by a hair, only because an arrow slammed into its skull at the last possible moment and knocked it to the side. Daphne sprang, tackling the snake to the ground and wrestling its head against its own neck. The snake was strong, but Daphne had to be stronger. With brute force alone, she pinned its head down onto the dock, crushing its skull with her arm.

Its body thrashed around, bucking to throw her off. It almost succeeded, but Daphne kept her grip nailed to its skull.

"Cut off the head!" Caelum yelled to Daphne, dashing forward and leaping atop the snake's tail to pin it to the ground. The snake writhed pathetically, trying to no avail to throw the two of them off. Daphne straddled the snake, holding it in place as she wielded her knife.

She brought it down again and again on the snake's neck, stabbing and slashing as it shrieked and thrashed with a newfound ferocity. Daphne kept hold of it, snarling as its foul-smelling blood splashed onto her face.

The snake fell limp, but Daphne kept hacking. She didn't stop until she'd completely severed the head from the body in a gorey mess, coating her hands with oily blood splintered with bone shards. Just to be sure, she kicked the snake's remains off of the dock, watching as it splashed into the sea and sank into the darkness.

After that, her headache surged with a raging intensity, knocking her to her knees and clutching at her temples. It felt like the world was spinning, like she was suspended in time and space, barely able to feel the wooden dock beneath her.

Caelum's voice was just a buzz by her ear. Steady hands gripped her shoulders, the only thing solid she could feel. She held onto them like an anchor in the tide of nausea.

"Migraine..." She gritted out through clenched teeth. "Oh, it hurts."

She wasn't sure how long it took, but eventually she was able to regain her senses after vomiting once or twice. She allowed Caelum to help her wash off her hands before dragging her to her feet, staggering against him as they made their way back to their shelter. Daphne felt considerably woozy as she plopped down on the kitchen floor, but at least the gnawing in her skull had reduced down to a dull ache.

Caelum dug around the supply bag for some medicine, but Daphne refused. "It'll probably just damage me more somehow," she insisted. "Like how you became too unconscious after the anesthetic that you stopped breathing, and how you still can't feel your left ribs after the numbing ointment days ago."

Caelum reluctantly agreed. He slumped down to the ground beside her. "I did use that numbing ointment on your forehead when I stitched you up. You may not be able to feel your right eyebrow for a while."

Memories flashed through Daphne's brain. Memories of frantically dashing from behind the house to find Caelum after hearing him cry out, then a force slamming her into the wall and her head striking a jagged wood board. Daphne groaned. "That's why I'm having a headache. Because Az–the Cortex smashed my head to knock me out. How rude."

"Rude indeed. Haven't mutts got any manners these days?"

"I know right?"

***

"Ponce, we've tried everything." An assistant Gamemaker insisted, staring at the holographic projection of the arena before her. She squinted her eyes at the two red dots cozying up together in a house by the artificial sea. "Feng and Caflisch just won't die."

Emeric Ponce pursed his lips. The pressure was on his shoulders, as the head Gamemaker, to keep the Hunger Games interesting and entertaining for the viewers. Right now, the viewers were eating up the romance brewing between the two remaining District Ten tributes, as it had been so long since a good love story had graced the arena. But at the same time, Ponce knew what had happened to Seneca Crane seventy-five years ago, when two rebellious lovers had been allowed to win the Games. On the other hand, if there was no victor of the sixth Quarter Quell, Ponce's life was still in danger.

He also knew that if he were to obviously kill off one or the other, there would be an angry uproar with the viewers. The last time there had been an angry uproar from purposely killing off fan-favorites, the President had executed the Head Gamemaker as well.

For the first time, Ponce sat back in his seat and really regretted his career choice.

He'd already sent that serpent mutt to deter Feng and Caflisch from discussing ways to manipulate the system into allowing two victors again. Hopefully, one of them would've been killed then. The viewers would've thought it was just a coincidence, that a mutt in the waters had caught scent of them lounging on the docks and decided to catch a snack. There would be no way to know that it was a deliberate, targeted attack.

For the most part, he'd left the two alone, focusing his attention on torturing the other remaining tributes as he thought about what to do with them. All he knew was that he had to be subtle. Make it seem inevitable, because it was.

There were only five tributes left. On the dock, Caflisch had been right. It was the endgame now. And the little book-boy had predicted Ponce's exact strategy.

Ponce smirked. Good.

About time we showed the consequences of being a little too hopeful.

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