The Seam was quiet at this hour, draped in the hush of fading light. Shadows stretched long over the broken path, crawling across the dust-hardened ground like old ghosts. Coal dust clung to everything—it lived in the cracks of the wood, the threads of every shirt, the lungs of every man and boy who worked beneath the earth. Haymitch Abernathy had stopped noticing it years ago. The scent was part of him now, ground into his skin like a second layer he could never quite scrub off.

Haymitch stood near the edge of the slope, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. His shirt was damp with sweat from the labor shift he’d just left behind, the muscles in his back and shoulders burning with exhaustion. He was sixteen, but work had aged him early. Since his father died in a mining fire, Haymitch had taken up more than his share of the weight, helping his mother stretch every ration, every coin, every breath to keep their family together. The labor didn’t care if you were too young. You worked, or you went hungry. And Haymitch wasn’t about to let his little brother go without. But right now, he wasn't thinking about that. He was thinking about her. Lenore Dove Baird.

She was watching him again—she always watched him like that. Like she was trying to memorize the shape of him before someone took him away. Her head tilted, her curly brown hair falling across her brown tanned skin.

“You always look like you’re carrying the weight of the world,” she said, the smallest smile tugging at her lips, even though her eyes stayed serious.

Lenore Dove shifted her weight as she hummed under her breath—an old Covey tune he’d heard her hum since they were kids, when things were simpler. Her voice was soft, nearly lost in the wind, but it wound its way into him. Like it always did. Her uncle had forbidden her from seeing him ever since he found out about Haymitch and Lenore Dove's relationship. Said he was dangerous. That he was damaged. That he would ruin her life. But Lenore Dove obviously couldn't care less as she moved closer, her fingers brushing the sleeve of his shirt. She touched him like she wasn’t afraid of what it meant, of who might see, of the weight it would put on both of them. Like always. Clerk Carmine would hate this.

Her two uncles, Clerk Carmine & Tam Amber, raised her; her ma died giving birth to her, and her pa was a mystery. Clerk Carmine spent his life walking the tightrope between keeping the remaining Covey clean in the Capitol’s eyes and containing the wildfire that was his niece. He hated Haymitch Abernathy—not just for being a poor boy from the Seam, but for being an Abernathy, a family name whispered with suspicion since the days of the early rebel stirrings. “That boy’ll die young,” Carmine had said more than once. “Just like the rest of his kind—angry, reckless, and doomed.” The irony, of course, was lost on him.

Because if anyone in this story was reckless, it was Lenore Dove. She’d been getting arrested since she was twelve—minor acts of defiance that escalated to graffiti, curfew violations, and one unforgettable incident involving interfering with a hanging by cutting the rope beforehand, the list goes on. Clerk Carmine had been bribing peacekeepers and pulling strings for years just to keep her out of jail. And still, she burned bright, unapologetic, and entirely untamable. Haymitch, by contrast, was the quieter kind of rebel—the kind that loved too hard, hoped too much. A hopeless, half-broken boy with rough hands and tired eyes who tried to stay out of trouble and failed every time she looked at him like this.

Lenore Dove stepped closer, her boot toe tapping against his, the closeness deliberate. Bold. Always bold with him.

“Do you think you’ll ever let me hold your hand like a normal person, or do I have to keep sneaking up and stealing it from you?”

Her fingers lightly down his arm, the smirk already curling at her lips, her voice sing-song and smug, her smile turning wicked-sweet.

“You know I love you, right?"