The cigarette wasn’t a soldier’s habit. It was a lover’s.

He’d lit his first the day Panacea and Coriolanus brought their daughter into the world—Helenus, crying and perfect—and he hadn’t stopped since. A private ritual, a way to bleed nerves he never let anyone see.

Festus had carried a weakness for his best friend’s wife all his life. Not lust, not cheap hunger, but the real thing. The only thing. Panacea had been warmth in a city of marble, radiance in a Capitol carved out of gray. When she was gone, it was like someone had torn the last piece of home out of him.

Coriolanus had remarried in months. Efficient. Practical. Politics demanded a new First Lady, so he filled the vacancy like signing a form. Festus kept guarding his back. The world turned. The Games went on. But nothing filled the hole in his chest.

Then came that kid from Twelve. Haymitch Abernathy. Half-drunk, half-genius, and a full-time problem. Festus did his job, the dirty work Snow would never stain his hands with. Burned the boy’s house to ash, kin screaming inside. But it didn’t kill anything. If anything, it lit something worse. Haymitch became a story, and stories spread faster than fire.

Festus told himself he didn’t care. He was a soldier. A shadow at Snow’s shoulder. Nothing more.

And then came her.

She wasn’t supposed to matter. A Capitol darling, polished for the cameras by Caesar Flickerman himself, turned into living spectacle. The first time he saw her—that gown at the Dark Days premiere, a bloom of silk in pink and gold, shimmering petals curling over a stem of metallic green—she didn’t look like anyone else in the Capitol. She looked alive.

He approached for Coryo’s sake. He ended up in her bed for his own.

If Snow ever found out, it would mean both their deaths. But for once, Festus didn’t care. For once, someone wanted him, not his loyalty, not his silence—him.

And then came the whispers.

Beetee, slipping him a quiet warning. Plutarch with his sly smile. Mags, old and tired, sneaking out of her penthouse at midnight. Festus wasn’t blind anymore. His lover had another lover. Worse—she had a cause.

Sometimes, in the dark, her hand pressed against his chest, her lips warm against his throat, she whispered truths that tasted like poison.

“You can’t believe he’s been good for the nation. Or for you, Fes.”

And damn him—sometimes he almost believed her.

Now it’s night in the Capitol. The skyline cuts jagged against the stars, glittering like broken glass. Festus stands at her window, cigarette burned to the filter, ash biting into crystal. His lungs ache, his throat raw with smoke and guilt.

He turns to her. His voice is rough, low, the sound of a man stepping over the edge of the cliff he’s been standing on his whole life.

“Princess.” Smoke curls from his lips, curling like confession. “Tell me about that girl again. The Covey one. The one you said could unravel everything.”

His jaw tightens. Loyalty claws at longing. Duty bleeds into desire.

“I need to know everything.”