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1. CREED
It’s not that Alec refuses to talk on purpose. Not like in the Capitol when he tried and the words got stuck and he had to force them out, or in the Arena when he reached inside himself and found nothing, no desire to make up a conversation between himself and the invisible audiences for ratings purposes. They had his every move pinpointed on cameras from any angle they could want; they didn’t need to hear his internal monologue, and even though the trainers had stressed commentary as a good way to connect with the sponsors, Alec had hit a flat grey wall of stubbornness and refused to dig his way underneath it.
Here it’s just … easier, that’s all. No more cameras, no more crowds, no more winking Capitolites with their toothy grins and elaborate hair and clothes that cost more than the average worker’s salary asking him stupid questions and pushing him further inside his shell. Emory doesn’t talk much herself, by nature, she’s more the companionable silence type, and so when he’s not dozing under the haze of his new medications she drags Alec outside to sit under the trees or stumble sleepily through the apple orchard. They spar every day, even though Alec’s reflexes have slowed to a crawl and it’s little more than baby wrestling with Emory pinning him and then pulling him in for a hug and a hair ruffle, and there’s no need to talk during any of that.
He’s not sure what to say, anyway. The idea of food preferences is absolutely baffling; when Emory tries asking him what he wants for dinner Alec stares at her blankly until she snorts and pulls something out of the fridge. After that she offers him a choice of two things, and he’ll nod at one or the other while marvelling at the entire concept. Growing up, his parents made dinner and he and Creed ate what was offered to them, so the transition to the Centre-approved diets had been less difficult for him than some others who had apparently been used to “What do you want to eat?” every day for years.
After so many years of pretending to be someone else, practicing his Creed voice and putting on his persona and never letting it slip, even in private, it’s nice to take it off and not worry about it anymore. It’s just that once he’s done it, Alec isn’t entirely sure what’s left. Years and years and years of suppressing himself, hiding every doubt and fear and protest so it wouldn’t slip out at the wrong time and give him away — to the sponsors, to the trainers, to Dad, even to Aunt Julia — and now that Alec has the freedom to be himself, he can’t even remember what he’d locked away.
When he does remember, the funny thing is that most of it doesn’t even matter anymore. He didn’t want to be in the Program; he didn’t want to fight, didn’t want to learn to hurt people, didn’t want to have to pretend to be aggressive and start fights so the trainers would notice him. Didn’t want to compete with Creed and feel that razor’s edge of jealousy in all their interactions. Didn’t want to watch Selene slip away as the odd light in her eyes grew and the blood stained her fingers. Didn’t want to become a Peacekeeper, serving away twenty years of his life only to slip into the picture-perfect life of marriage and a wife and children at the end when he knew, deep in his gut, that he could never be happy. Didn’t want to watch his brother die and pretend to be proud of the sacrifice he’d made.
Nearly every one of those fears came to pass, in the end.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Emory says, out of nowhere.
Alec shoots her a betrayed glance. Here they are, having a nice, quiet bonding time, Alec on the couch watching the trees through the wide window, Emory in an armchair with a folder of paperwork, and now she wants him to talk about his feelings. He shakes his head.
Emory studies him for a moment, eyes keen, then sets her work aside in a deliberate gesture and comes over to sit next to him. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” she says again. “No wrong answers.”
Alec exhales through his nose, and for a second he imagines fighting back and forcing a stalemate except he knows how that will end: Emory dragging him up for a sparring match and him giving in eventually, so it would be a huge waste of time to no purpose. Plus the thought has already started nagging, wiggling back and forth and getting sorer each time like a sliver in his thumb.
Emory reaches down and rubs her thumb behind his ear, massaging his scalp, and Alec sighs. “Everything I was scared of when I was a kid happened,” he says, closing his eyes. “I thought I’d never make it through the Program. I thought I’d never survive if Creed died. I thought I couldn’t watch Selene go into the Arena after him. And now it’s over, and I did survive, and it’s like I can hear this voice in my head telling me it’s not that bad and it doesn’t matter anymore, I’m stronger than I thought I was and it’s all in the past. And I have this new house and this new arm and I have you and everything should be great now, and other people died trying to get what I have, and it’s like, see, all that stuff you were afraid of, all the things you thought you wanted, none of that matters because you’re here and you made it. It’s fine now.” Now the fear rushes back, and he has to fight not to swallow the rest of his sentence. “But it does matter. And it’s not fine.”
“Of course it matters,” Emory says, firm, and Alec wants to laugh because of course she’d say that, she’s his mentor, but it’s so nice to hear that he can’t do anything but close his eyes. “Some of us, we walk out with the Arena on our shoulders and that’s it. Some of us carry our training with us too. Some of us got stuff from further back. Doesn’t make you better or worse which one you are, but it always matters. Whatever you bring with you, we fix, and that’s all there is to it.”
It takes Alec an embarrassing three minutes to fight the band around his throat this time. “I’m not ungrateful,” he says finally, his heart hammering in his temples.
“Never said you were.”
“No, but —” Panic again, and Emory’s hand stays steady and soothing on the back of his head, and she counts him through a breathing exercise until the wave passes. “I’d trade all of this if we could just be alive and happy and normal,” Alec whispers finally, squeezing his eyes shut tight. “Me and Creed and Selene, like we used to be. I meant what I said, wanting someone to believe in me, and I’m glad I found you, I just — I wish I could’ve had that without losing everything else.” His face feels hot, and Emory’s pant leg grows damp beneath his cheek. “I’m sorry.”
Emory says nothing for a few seconds, stroking her fingers through his hair, then she lets out a long breath. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s go outside, spar a bit, and then I’m gonna tell you about my win.”
2. CALLISTA
Alec takes a deep breath and steps out into the crisp fall morning, shoulders tense as the trees loom overhead and a low mist curls around the trunks. He forces himself to raise his head, to pick out the swaying branches silhouetted against the sky. No mutts, Alec reminds himself. He’s safe here. Nothing will ever try to kill him again. He takes a few deep breaths, closes his eyes and inhales the sharp scent of pine and lets it ground him, and when he opens his eyes again he’s back, safe and solid and home.
He wishes he could carry a knife on his belt to protect him from the invisible monsters, but Emory says it’s too soon, his reflexes get triggered too quick and it’s not safe. Alec knows she’s right, if he tracks how many times he reaches for a weapon on instinct before slapping his empty thigh over the course of an ordinary day it’s an embarrassing number, but it doesn’t stop the wanting. Selene’s cleared for comfort knives now, though she doesn’t carry them when she’s hanging out with Alec; he sees her out and around the Village sometimes, pulling them out of her sleeve and flipping them around her fingers.
She thinks Alec is weird for getting up early when he doesn’t have to — “Half the point of winning is you get to sleep in as long as you want!” Selene told him, sprawling dramatically on Alec’s couch and stealing one of his many blankets — but even though he knows it’s fine, he’s a Victor and he earned the right to do what he wants with his time, staying in bed past dawn gives Alec an itch between his shoulder blades. It’s lazy, it’s wasting time, it’s disrespecting everyone else who works hard, does he want them to think he’s a layabout — and so Alec pulls himself out of bed, even if it’s just taking a walk around the Village.
Walking calms the voice in his head, and when he gets back Emory will be there making breakfast with quiet efficiency. He probably shouldn’t need it, but — the Emory who lives in his head and combats the other voice says with quiet, understanding firmness — it’s what he needs right now, and that’s what’s important.
He’s halfway up the path when he runs into Callista, wearing casual clothing and carrying a shopping bag that’s dripping red onto the pine needles.
“I —” Alec’s heart pounds in his chest. Emory has introduced him to a handful of Victors by now but Callista isn’t one of them, and she hasn’t made a social call of her own yet. He fights the immediate impulse to cover the empty socket at his side, feeling naked and exposed with his left sleeve hanging empty, but he can’t imagine that Callista would appreciate the attempt to hide any more than his father would.
Good morning, his brain urges him, prodding him hard in the ribs. Say good morning like a normal person!
“Is that blood?” Alec says out loud.
(Callista onstage at the Reaping in a muted crimson gown. Callista standing next to Creed, her hand on his shoulder, Creed turning to flash her a sharp-edged smile. Callista in a charcoal suit after the finale, carving his name into the brass plaque on the Centre’s Wall of Sacrifice.)
Alec sucks in a breath and waits, quite reasonably, for death.
Callista pauses, looks down at the bag. “I feed the cats raw meat from my favourite butcher,” she says, unperturbed. “The new girl must not have bagged things properly.”
“Oh.” Alec swallows. His missing arm twinges, and he tries to picture stretching out the fingers, clenching and unclenching the muscles in his bicep. It doesn’t work.
Callista’s gaze turns sharp, angling down to his left side like a hawk swooping at prey. “You appear to be missing an appendage. Did you forget it at home?”
In spite of everything, Alec can’t help sputtering out a laugh. Callista had a reputation for surgical bluntness — they’d all seen her interviews, dismantling unprepared opponents with a masterful phrase or two — but he didn’t expect her to use it so casual. Originally he’d thought Emory kept them apart because of the Creed connection, but maybe there was a more immediate, practical reason for her reticence.
At least he has practice with this answer now, having already explained himself to Emory and Selene and Claudius, so it comes out more smoothly. “I haven’t been wearing it. The Capitol tried too hard to make it look like a real arm, and it bothers me. I can’t pretend the Arena never happened and I don’t want to. Maybe later I’ll be more okay with it, but right now wearing it feels like lying.”
Callista narrows her eyes at him as another drop of blood hits the carpet of needles beneath their feet. Alec tries very hard not to look at it. “You’re as disgustingly sincere as your brother,” she says with deceptive mildness. “Did no one teach you how to shield your feelings?”
A flash of anger hits Alec hard enough he takes a step back, breath lancing through his lungs like ice in winter. “Maybe not Creed,” he says, his voice tight. “He was never made to feel ashamed of anything, so why should he? But for me, being who I am is a right I’ve earned.”
She eyes him still, tilting her head to one side and then the other. Alec’s heart continues to pound. “You don’t look like him,” she says.
This time the laugh comes out bitter, and the pressure behind his eyes leaks out in stinging tears. “Thanks,” Alec twists out, swiping at his eyes. He feels the words closing up in his throat but he refuses to let them, refuses to disappear into himself, not this time. “You’d know, I guess.”
“Don’t wallow, I am not your mentor here to wipe your tears,” Callista says as her tone turns biting. “But I chose your brother for his confidence, indeed his naïveté. He was a young god, pure skill and charm untouched by the hardships of the world. The Arena would be the crucible that forged him into the Victor he was meant to be. You have not his shine.”
Alec exhales slowly, his remaining hand clenching into a fist. “With all respect —”
“It is not an insult,” Callista says. “You simply do not look like a young god come to grace the earth with his presence. You look like a boy who has fought his way up from hell and is tired of the artifice of humans. It is not a bad thing, only different.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Callista’s gaze turns faraway, losing its sharp edge, though her voice never picks up any trace of softness. “The Arena was the first time your brother faced his demons, or anything of the sort. The night before, instead of confessing any hidden secrets or inner terror, all he spoke of was his fears about you. He seemed to think you might have a difficult time without him.” She looks back at him again, intent, and Alec shivers. “This, too, appears to have been genuine, but ultimately unnecessary.”
“I —” Alec wets his lips. “Nobody told me about that.”
“Indeed.” Callista moves as though to cross her arms, though the bag of meat, its bottom now soaked through, impedes the gesture, and she makes a low sound of displeasure in her throat. “So if you think, going forward, that you need to avoid me because seeing your face will throw me into spasms of grief in memory of your dead brother, please relax. You look nothing like him, and the sight of you does nothing but remind me that his dying wish for your protection has been well met.”
Alec nods, not trusting himself to speak. He manages a ‘thank you’, which Callista waves off with a flick of her fingers, then sweeps past him down the path toward her house. He stares after her for a long moment until the spell finally breaks. When it does it’s like a giant rubber band snapping, propelling him back toward home at top speed. He nearly trips and smashes his face open on a tree root all over again, but Alec manages to make it home without a mishap and bursts through the front door.
Emory looks up, startled, and without a word she turns off the stove and crosses over to pull Alec into her arms. He buries his face in her shoulder and cries, hard, shaking sobs, and she strokes his hair and rests her cheek on the top of his head and doesn’t ask questions. “I saw Callista,” Alec says finally, when he can breathe. “She said — she told me about Creed. That he talked about me.”
Emory goes still. “After he died, she tried to get you pulled from the Program,” she says in a tone so casual that Alec misses the content for a good five seconds. When the words sink in he rears backward and gapes at her, but Emory looks out over the front porch. “They wouldn’t let her, the higher-ups had already pegged you as a future volunteer, but she tried. Fought them good, said she promised her tribute she’d keep you safe and she intended to do just that. They told her that a mentor’s rights to a tribute’s family are only valid if they win. Nothing she could do, in the end.”
“Oh.” Alec swallows hard, the pressure building in his chest again, and Emory holds her hand to the side of his face to keep him steady.
“You belong here,” she says. “We’ve been fighting for you long before you ever knew it. Now come on in and help me finish cooking.”
Head spinning, Alec lets Emory tug him all the way inside and shut the door, but he can’t help looking over his shoulder and imagining the winding path toward Callista’s house.
3. LEANDER
The first night, Alec tells himself it’s a fluke, the latest weird psychological flotsam his brain has decided to dredge up in the months post-Arena, and he does his best not to think about it. The next night he wakes up in a slick sweat, his t-shirt hitched up around his ribs, mind and body swirling in dark, ugly confusion. It takes him over an hour to calm down. The night after that Alec reverts to an age-old trick and tries calisthenics before bed until his muscles tremble in an attempt to exhaust himself, but it doesn’t work — this time the thoughts slip into his mind before he falls asleep, and worse, with conscious control behind them, shift into a far more elaborate fantasy than the muddled half-realities of dreams.
By the end of the week Emory hasn’t commented on the dark circles or the miasma of guilt and confusion that has to be clinging to him like jungle sweat, but she does spar more and speak less, leaving the silences open for Alec to speak whenever he’s ready. He’s grateful but also a little horrified, knowing that she’ll be expecting the usual nightmares about twelve-year-olds with their throats slit and waking up imagining blood-soaked hands, not … whatever this is.
Finally he can’t take it anymore, and the more patient and accommodating Emory is about the whole thing the more Alec really wants to climb in a hole and never come out, but no, no he won the fucking Hunger Games, he can do this. And so one evening after dinner he fortifies himself with Emory’s borrowed sweater and a bowl of fresh apple crisp balanced on his knees, and he makes a run for the stupid Cornucopia.
“If I ask you a personal question and you don’t want to answer it, can we just pretend I never asked it?” Alec says in a rush, staring down at the trickle of cream mingling with the cinnamon and nutmeg at the bottom of his bowl. Emory poured the cream with a reverence undimmed by twenty years of living on a Victor’s salary, which tells him more about her life before the Arena than he wants it to. The fact that Alec didn’t think twice about giving himself a big splash of expensive cream but expected a trick when Emory offered him cinnamon and brown sugar probably says something about his.
Emory studies him a moment, balancing her fork between two fingers. “I’m not with anybody, never have been,” she says. “Weren’t never interested, in boys or girls or anyone, though I’ve had offers if I changed my mind.” She smiles a little at that, a private one aimed down at her bowl, somewhere between amused and rueful. “And for the record, just because I’m one way doesn’t mean you have to be. It isn’t wrong to feel things.”
Alec goggles at her, close-mouthed only through years of habit enforced by immediate punishment for jaw-dropping. “I —”
“You had the look,” Emory says, her mouth twitching. “Sooner or later everybody asks. And you’ve been ghosting around the place looking skittish these past few days, so that narrows it down.”
“Oh fuck me,” Alec mutters, dropping the bowl onto the table and pulling his legs up to his chest so he can hide his face behind his knees. “It’s … fuck.”
Emory shifts but doesn’t try to touch him while he’s spontaneously combusting, thank Snow. “You know it’s fine. It’s normal, it’s a good thing. Means you’re getting better, if your brain and body are going there.”
He sucks in a breath, the innocent embarrassment — the normalcy of it, how nice it would be to be a teenager mortified about having the sex talk with his designated adult — vanishing as the true nature of his feelings choke up in his throat. The worst part is watching Emory notice, seeing the light of recognition in her eyes, the subtle change in her posture, as she readies herself for whatever new horror he’s about to vomit all over her. Except whatever it is she thinks she’s expecting, it won’t be this.
“I’ve been thinking about Leander.” It hurts to say, the words scraping jagged across the soft insides of his throat, tearing a line down the roof of his mouth and blocking his tongue with blood. “From — the boy from my Arena.”
Emory blinks, and Alec has the amused-not-amused thought that he finally surprised her, but he can’t let her think what he knows she has to be thinking. “I didn’t — it wasn’t on purpose, not at first, it was just a dream, and I tried not to, I know that’s wrong, and weird, and —”
“Alec,” Emory interrupts, gentle but firm. “Your thoughts are your thoughts, that’s all. Try again without the value judgements.”
He breathes — in, out, focus on the repetition — and starts over. “It felt weird to think about him when he’s dead, when I — killed him, basically, so I tried not to, but it kept happening, so I … changed it. I didn’t want to keep thinking about the Arena, and it’s not — it wasn’t a hot thing, I just …” Alec pushes a hand through his hair, biting off a low noise of frustration. “I was thinking about how he was from One, and how he’d never — about what it must have been like for him to end up that way, what might have happened to him. And so I started thinking about if we’d — if I could have shown him what it’s like not to be scared or guilty.”
Alec’s face flushes hot. He can’t look at her, and Emory still keeps her distance, but he can tell it’s for his comfort and not because he disgusts her. He’s still getting used to the air not turning frosty when he admits something weak or undesirable. “I know it’s stupid,” he says — then stops without Emory having to tell him, Games damn it all, and tries again. “I know he’s dead and all of this is in my head and it doesn’t affect anyone but me,” Alec says, and Emory makes a small, satisfied sound. “But I still, I’m —” say it, Alec, just grab the sword and run — “I’m having sex dreams about somebody who’s dead. And not normal ones, they’re all this weird fantasy where I’m some kind of … I don’t know, gay expert who helps him find himself and not be scared anymore, which is absolutely fucking bullshit —” He stops, clicks his tongue, “which is ironic when I’m still figuring this whole thing out myself. The only reason I had any sort of courage to ‘find myself’ is because Creed died and I stopped caring what anyone else thought, but Leander thought I was so confident just because I used Selene in my persona.”
Finally Emory reaches over and rests her hand on the back of his head, and Alec leans into the touch, just a little, letting her steady him. “Is that stupid?” he asks, knowing that’s a stupid question, knowing she’ll never say yes because she’s his mentor and he could decide to do cartwheels through the Village in his underwear and she’d come up for a psychologically justifiable reason for why that’s somehow developmentally appropriate.
“You saw someone hurting and you wish you could have helped,” Emory says. “That’s not stupid.”
Something twists inside him, savage and ugly. “It’s not some kind of noble saviour thing, it’s fantasizing about somebody that I had sex with on camera and then murdered, where I pretend he’s terrified and traumatized and I’m gentle and patient and like I have any fucking idea what I’m doing. Like I wasn’t a complete fucking hypocrite the whole time in there.”
Emory doesn’t pull away, doesn’t take the bait. “Explain?”
Alec lets out a shaky breath. “I said I knew who I was, and he believed me, his district partner probably told him I was gay as a leverage thing and then I proved him right, and he thought I was so sure of myself and it’s all a lie. I only did it because I knew I shouldn’t, it was immature and bad for my image and the cameras and I didn’t care, I was going to die so why not do something stupid and reckless and selfish, why not disappoint my father one last time. I was only brave because of the Arena. If we’d been in the real world, if we were actually boyfriends and my dad caught us I would have been terrified, I probably would have pushed him away and lied about the whole thing.”
He leans forward, hiding his face in his knees again. “And now I have these fantasies where I get to be strong and wise and understanding instead of a fucking coward, and I get off on them, and that’s not about him at all, that’s about me. What’s wrong with me? Why am I like this?”
Emory says nothing for a minute as Alec struggles to breathe, until finally she clicks her tongue and pulls him into her arms. Alec fights her for all of three seconds before he gives in and cries into her shoulder, humiliated and relieved all at once, and the only up side about all of this is after everything he’s already dug himself so low a hole that if she was going to fling him away in disgust she would have done it by now, so there’s not much point in clinging to pride now.
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting not to be confused,” Emory says finally. “You were made to feel ashamed and afraid of something that’s part of you. You’re trying to make sense of that. It won’t help that you were spending all your time learning how to kill when other kids would have been figuring this stuff out for themselves. Doesn’t make you a bad person, Alec. Being a Career means we get to do things out of order, sometimes.”
He chews on that a minute, fingers twisted in her shirt. “For the record, for all the ‘fuck my Dad’ shit, he never — I mean, I was thirteen. I didn’t know anything about myself when I left, not yet. But he’d said a few things, and I knew, so when it happened I always heard him in the back of my head, being disappointed in me. He would have been disgusted by what I did in the Arena.”
Emory runs her fingers through his hair, a pause growing as she considers her words, and Alec laughs, this time hiding his face in her shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking. For a tribute who said his motivation was ‘fuck my dad’, I spend a lot of time obsessing over what he thinks about me.”
“Alec,” Emory says in that way she has, amused without an ounce of judgement, “did you really think I thought you went into the Arena and kissed a boy on camera to spite your father because your relationship is uncomplicated?”
He stops dead, startled out of his anticipated brush-off response into a burst of startled, incredulous laughter. “Oh god,” Alec gasps out, and he’s a mess, a complete and total trash disaster, but at least Emory isn’t throwing him away. “I’m sorry, it’s not funny, it’s all awful, but oh my god. I bet my files didn’t say anything about you having to deal with all this.”
“Never mind the files.” Emory rubs her hand across his back, quick and bracing, before coming back to hold him against her side. “And I’m going to repeat myself: you’re not wrong. You have nothing to be ashamed about. Parts of you are coming back now that you’re getting better, and it’s not your fault it’s still twisted up in the Arena and everything else. You’re not the only one it happens to, and it’ll pass. You’re not hurting anyone, so ride it out and don’t blame yourself.”
Alec thunks his head against her collarbone and groans. “I think you have the right idea. Nothing for anybody, nice and simple.” Emory doesn’t bother to dignify that whine with a response, and Alec sighs. “I’m sorry if — I don’t know, are we supposed to talk to our mentors about our weird sex dreams? Or is that a thing I should have kept to myself?”
“If you need to talk about it, like today, then we talk about it,” Emory says, and as always Alec admires her for making things he agonizes over sound so simple. “But if everything’s fine, you don’t have to check in and tell me everything. Having a mentor doesn’t mean signing away all privacy.”
“Okay,” Alec says, ears burning. “I’m —”
“Don’t apologize unless you really need to,” Emory says, interrupting him with an invisible punch to the chest. “Just be yourself.”
He sits there, dumbfounded, sucking in bigger and bigger breaths, until Emory claps him on the side of the face and stands up. “Come,” she says. “We’re sparring.”
Alec will never, never, ever figure out what he did to deserve this — deserve this life, this freedom, even with its conditions, deserve her — but he lets her pull him to his feet and tug him in against her side as they step out into the cool autumn air.
4. NERO
It’s funny, all the little things they don’t prepare you for. Like how everyone’s house looks different. Alec isn’t sure why he thought everyone would have the same architecture, except that a lot of the homes back in the Peacekeeping village where he grew up were prefab designs, and the way each family made them their own was through paint or window decorations or gardens.
But no, everyone in the Village has their own house, their own design, and it makes him wonder who’s behind it all. Obviously the mentors aren’t architects, they’re not sitting there in the days before their victor wakes up sketching out blueprints and ordering materials, but someone has to be doing it, and he’ll eat his artificial arm before he believes these are Capitol builders. The whole place feels Two, from the warm wood to the limestone to the open porches that wrap around the front of almost every house. They don’t look like the place he grew up but it feels like home, with all the love built in.
He likes to stroll around and check out the houses, trying to guess who lives there without Emory telling him, but with fall in full swing and the weather at its crispest, the risk of getting caught is higher.
Which is how he winds up running into Nero on his front porch, a knife and a block of wood in his hand and a pile of shavings at his feet. “Hey, kid.”
“Hey.” Alec hopes Nero doesn’t notice the way his weight immediately shifts in case he needs to run, except he immediately flicks the knife closed. Nero is technically connected to Selene and Claudius through the mentor line but Alec hasn’t met him yet, or heard anything about him, really. But being neighbourly is important and he was technically spying on his yard, so instead of fleeing Alec says, “Carving?”
“Yup.” Nero holds up the wood and turns it around to show a pair of wide eyes and a swept-back head that Alec realizes with a start is the beginnings of an owl. “You wanna try?”
Alec is still getting used to the whole ‘make, don’t break’ part of being a victor, but carving looks satisfying, and the more things he can learn with a knife that aren’t slicing through someone’s skin or searching for the vitals sounds good to him. He’s not banned from knives anymore, just not allowed without supervision, and Nero is even Emory’s senior in the Village hierarchy. “Yeah, okay.”
Nero produces another knife and a chunk of smooth white aspen, hands them over with a wink, and goes back to work. Alec turns the wood over in his hands, tracing the grain. Maybe he’ll make a cat and give it to Selene. He slides open the blade and places it against the edge.
Stops. Pulls back, heart tripping in his chest. Tries again, placing the point of the blade against the middle of the block, ready to start digging. Again he stops. Again his chest twists in palpitations. Alec huffs a frustrated breath between his teeth, flips the knife into the kill position in case that helps.
It doesn’t. No matter what he can’t mark the surface. Once he does it won’t be wood anymore, it will be the start of a sculpture, and if he makes a mistake it will be there, carved into the surface and staring at him and Nero and whoever else comes to laugh at it, and why did he think he could do this —
“It doesn’t have to be anything.”
Alec’s head whips up and he turns to stare at Nero, back of his neck reddening in humiliation. How long was he watching? But Nero only tilts his head back and forth, one ear to one shoulder and over to the other side, so the tendons in his neck crack. “You don’t have to make something that looks good. You don’t even have to make anything. Just start carving and see what happens.”
It’s the same advice Emory gave him about cooking and finding his talent, learning the joy of immersing himself in a skill he’s bad at without the pressure to excel, but it’s one thing to watch Emory hide her grin over burned pancakes or have to say with a straight face that maybe the leftover pasta sandwich was a better idea in theory than in execution. In the end, the worst case is a meal that doesn’t taste great, and he’s still learning. But if he messes up here, what is Nero supposed to do with a messed up block of wood? He can’t use it for anything or turn it into something functional. As soon as Alec puts his knife to it he’s dooming it to the compost heap with his inexpertise.
Nero watches him for another moment, then slaps his knee and stands up. “New plan,” he says. “Leave that, come with me.”
They loop around behind Nero’s house, around the path and through the trees, and finally Alec frowns. “This is —”
“Yep,” Nero says again. He takes the porch steps in one go and knocks on the door, then calls, “Misha, borrowing your clay!” A vague, affirmative shout floats out from inside, and Nero tosses Alec a thumb’s up.
Artemisia’s shed is a scatterbrained disaster. She has a full metalworking studio inside — her actual official talent — but boxes pile the shelves and stack in various corners and Alec is pretty sure there’s a mock human skeleton over in the back. Nero apparently has enough knowledge of The System (as Misha calls it) to zero in on exactly what he wants, grabbing an airtight tub and hauling it out over his shoulder.
Nero directs Alec out to the picnic table behind his house, and follows a few minutes later with a tarp, a large bowl of water, and a another container under his arm. After they set up he plops down the tub, pries off the lid, and reaches in to hand Alec a lump of something cool and smooth.
A distant memory of grade school stirs, and Alec squints at the beige lump in his hands. “Clay?”
“Yessir.” Nero dips his fingers in the water and starts working his own chunk of clay, rolling it over on the table and pinching it with his fingertips. “Can’t mess it up.”
Alec swallows hard. He wets his fingertips and pokes the clay experimentally, feeling the surface give just slightly. The other box Nero brought out is full of brightly coloured cookie cutters, rolling pins, and wire cutters, just like when he was a kid. He presses both thumbs into the clay and pushes down until two divots form in the surface, then rolls it out until they’re gone.
Alec laughs, breathless, and wets his fingers again.
Emory finds them later, coated to the elbows, half a dozen ugly bowls and misshapen lumps lining the table’s edge. “Oho,” she says. “This looks fun. Mind if I join?”
Nero nods at her, then picks up one of the lumps. “This one’s you.”
Emory regards it with seriousness. Alec waits, holding his breath: it’s absolutely nothing like a person, no arms or legs, not even anything resembling a face, but he thought about Emory while he worked it, using strong, purposeful motions. “Captured my essence,” she says, straight-faced, then grins and sets it down with a reverent little pat.
Alec beams.