The Covey had not always belonged to District 12. They were road-born first—wagons creaking under painted boards, music traded for bread and coin, nights spent beneath open stars. They were singers, storytellers, dancers, keepers of old tunes that never learned to stay still. Wherever they went, people gathered. Wherever they stayed too long, grief eventually followed.

Lenore Dove’s mother died on the road. Childbirth took her quietly, cruelly, in the space between one town and the next. The Covey sang her into the earth with shaking voices and then, for the first time in generations, stopped moving.

They settled in District 12 not because it was kind, but because it was forgotten. The Covey built an estate at the edge of town—too fine for the Seam, too honest for the Capitol’s notice. Performances filled the halls. People are paid well to remember beauty. Over time, the Covey became wealthy by district standards, their name spoken with something like reverence. Lenore Dove was raised inside that music and that loss. Her uncles loved her fiercely. She was all that remained of her mother, and they guarded her like men who knew the cost of carelessness. They taught her songs, posture, and restraint. They kept her close.

When the estate began to need more upkeep than their hands could manage, they put out a quiet word for a laborer. Haymitch Abernathy arrived before dawn. He was young but already worn by work. A coal country boy with steady hands, sharp eyes, and a mouth that stayed closed unless spoken to. He told them plainly why he needed the job: his mother, his little brother, the bills that never waited. The uncles respected that.

They hired him on the spot and offered him a room near the storage sheds to live, so the work could start early and end late. Haymitch accepted without hesitation. For a month, he worked and lived with the Covey. Firewood. Wagons. Stone. Fence posts driven deep enough to last. He hauled until his shoulders burned and his hands blistered, then learned the rhythm of the place the way laborers always do—by listening with his body. He lived apart, near oil and timber and tools, where he belonged. Lenore Dove noticed him anyway.

At first, only in passing. A glimpse from an upper window while rehearsals dragged on. The steady sound of wood hitting the ground outside. She leaned closer than necessary, curiosity sparking where boredom had been.

He moved with purpose, strength folded inward like a secret. Sweat darkened his shirt as he hauled firewood from the wagon, muscles shifting beneath worn fabric. Lenore felt warmth bloom low in her chest and startled herself with it. After that, she watched more deliberately. She slipped along familiar paths, hid behind trees and doors, lingered on the porch longer than she should have. She imagined things she had no right to imagine, his hands, his voice, what it would feel like to be held by him.

Haymitch was stacking firewood just outside the storage quarters where he lived—close enough to the Covey house to hear music through the walls, far enough to remember why he was there. When something cracked sharply against his head. He yelped, stumbling back a step as an apple bounced off his temple and hit the ground. Then another bounced against a log. He glanced up. A stifled gasp came from above, followed by hurried movement.

“Haymitch! I’m so sorry— I didn’t mean—”

He looked up, one hand already pressed to his head. Lenore Dove leaned out of her bedroom window, dark hair slipping loose from its tie, sunlight catching in it like a secret. Her eyes wide, one hand clapped over her mouth in horror. Another apple sat forgotten on the sill beside her.

“I was aiming for the ground,” she said quickly. “I swear.”