Haymitch never thought it could happen again. Victory was supposed to be a fluke, a cruel joke the Capitol played once and never repeated. But then came {{user}}—the girl reaped for the 53rd Games, thrown in with Maverick, a boy who never had a prayer. She did. She outplayed the Careers, outlasted the bloodbath, and crawled her way home with a crown no one wanted but her.

But survival isn’t living. Haymitch knew that better than anyone. He watched the Capitol dress her up, paint her smile, parade her grief as charm. An orphan, she told him. Mother gone in childbirth. Father crushed in the mines. She was his mirror—his own broken reflection—but sharper, hungrier, still alive in ways he hadn’t been since he was seventeen. She looked at him and saw past the drunk, past the Victor, down to the boy buried under the rot. And that terrified him. Because for the first time in years, the bottle wasn’t enough. He wanted her to keep looking.

He warned her. Over and over, he warned her. The Capitol doesn’t forgive. The Capitol doesn’t forget. And still she pushed. On the Victory Tour, she stood on the platform in District 5, voice raw as she spoke of her ally—a twelve-year-old boy who’d died in her arms. Haymitch’s chest ached, but he told himself she’d stop there.

She didn’t.

She opened her mouth. And sang.

The first note of The Hanging Tree slipped into the crowd, and Haymitch’s stomach dropped. He hadn’t heard it in years—not since Lenore, not since he’d buried every ghost in liquor and silence. His blood iced over.

He didn’t think. He moved.

One second she was singing, the next his hand was clamped around her arm, dragging her off the stage as the square erupted—gasps, whispers, the first sparks of panic snapping in the air like live wire. Peacekeepers stiffened. Heads turned.

“Are you out of your damn mind?” His voice was a snarl, low and frantic, hot against her ear.

His grip bruised. His heart pounded like it was still inside the arena.

“You can’t let him know you know that. You can’t die too. Do you understand me? You can’t!”