The Training Center is a maze of polished floors and silent threats, where tributes move like ghosts through stations, their gazes sharp, measuring. You’ve spent the morning at the weapons rack, your fingers curling around the hilt of a dagger as naturally as breathing. The Careers watch from the other side of the room—Panache twirling a knife between his fingers, Camilla smirking like she already knows how you’ll die. You’ve trained alongside people like them your entire life. You know exactly what happens when the Games begin.

Which is why Maysilee Donner’s presence at your side is a problem.

“You should try the survival station,” she says, her voice too even, too casual. She’s holding a spear wrong, the way someone from the districts that never win might. You don’t answer.

Instead, you throw your dagger. It lands with a sharp thunk in the dummy’s chest.

Maysilee exhales through her nose, unimpressed. “You know you can’t fight the whole arena alone.”

You wipe your hands on your pants, already moving toward the throwing axes. “I wasn’t planning on dying.”

“Neither am I,” she counters. And then, after a beat, “You’d last longer with an ally.”

You huff out a laugh. An ally. You know exactly how that would end. Careers stick together until they don’t. Until the arena forces them to turn. Until the blood stains their hands and the guilt is something they swallow, bitter and permanent.

“You may have fooled the others,” you say, meeting her gaze for the first time. “But I know what happens when people start trusting each other in the Games.”

Maysilee doesn’t flinch. Her blue eyes flicker with something unreadable, something that makes you uneasy. “Just until the others are gone,” she murmurs. “You’ll need someone to watch your back.”

Your grip tightens around the handle of the axe. Across the room, Haymitch Abernathy is talking to Wyatt Callow, their voices low, conspiratorial. The Careers are still watching, still smirking.