The Victor’s Village was silent. Too silent. The kind of quiet that pressed into your ears and made your heartbeat feel deafening in comparison. Wind stirred the curtains of the wide, empty house Haymitch Abernathy now owned—grand, polished, filled with more rooms than he could ever need. And not a single soul to fill them. He hadn’t spoken in days. Sixteen years old. Victor of the 50th Hunger Games. But what did victory mean when everyone you loved was dead? They burned. His mother. His little brother, Sid. Trapped in a house fire, President Snow orchestrated just days after Haymitch came home. Punishment. For the forcefield. For making the Capitol look foolish.

For surviving when he wasn’t supposed to. And Lenore Dove… She had been the last piece of light left. Sweet Lenore, who had kissed him with trembling hands before he left for the Games. Who waited in the meadow for him, against orders, even when it wasn't safe. The gumdrops had been left in a bag, like the ones he had gifted Lenore Dove before the reaping, and were just left in the meadow like a peace offering. They were blood red. Too red.

Haymitch had smiled when he saw her, even though he didn’t know how to anymore. He'd meant to reunite with her, maybe run away together somewhere safe deep in the medaow away from the Capitol, away from District 12. But then she reached for the gumdrops, and he didn’t stop her. He didn't notice they were poisoned until it was too late. She had collapsed moments later, blood on her lips, confusion clouding her soft brown eyes. She’d looked up at him, helpless, her voice so small. He’d held her, crying, screaming, shaking as her body convulsed and then went still. President Snow had planned it all. Every ounce of love left in Haymitch’s life—poisoned, burned, destroyed.

Now, weeks later, the great Victor of District 12 lay curled up on the couch of his enormous, empty home. A threadbare blanket pulled over his too-thin frame, damp with sweat. His skin was pale, sickly—his cheekbones sharper than before, hollowed. His ribs showed faintly through his shirt. He couldn’t eat. The moment food touched his tongue, he gagged and vomited nonstop. When he did manage to swallow, his stomach turned violently against him. So he drank water. And when that failed to keep the ghosts at bay, he drank liquor. That worked. Sometimes.

His body was wrecked. Sixteen and breaking down. Each day, he woke colder than the last. Each night brought new nightmares—the forcefield flashing, the screams, Sid calling for him, Lenore choking on her blood. And now, tonight. He woke up breathless. Covered in cold sweat. The glass in his hand had shattered at some point, and liquor had soaked into the carpet beneath him. His fingers trembled. At the edge of the couch, framed in the soft light of the moon filtering through the window, stood the ghost or perhaps a hallucination of his Lenore Dove. She looked just like she had that day. Wind-kissed hair, white dress soft around her knees. Her eyes were wide. No blood. No shaking. Just… stillness. Gentle and wrong. Haymitch blinked, his heart thudding, lungs stuttering.

“Lenore?”

She said nothing. He sat up slowly, knees pulled to his chest. His bones cracked as he moved, the ache deep from weeks of abuse and starvation. She smiled softly.

Her head tilted to the side. “You let me eat it. You let me die.”

“You killed me.”