Chapter Text
It began with a lie.
Lady Katniss Abernathy, the heir to the province of Twelve, loved autumn. The crisp breeze not yet made bitter by winter, the tall, limber grasses that danced in the valley turning tawny as the nights began to cool, and the way the green of the forest gave way to bursts of color enchanted her. Green had always been her favorite color, but she couldn't help how her breath would catch at the first sightings of bright yellow, crimson, and orange. The hills and mountains were saturated with so much color, matching the setting sun as it dipped behind them.
She sank to her knees on the ridge outside her home and gazed out over the vibrant landscape she adored. Horse hooves scuffed impatiently at the worn trail behind her, the beasts eager to move the carriage onto its destination and be free of their confines. Heels crunched over fallen leaves, and Lady Katniss could feel the reprimand of her escort in the air. The escort's distaste for the lady's actions was so thick that the reprimand practically coated her skin. It had rained during the night. The overlook was muddy, and her crouched position was sure to have soiled her fine silk skirts, not to mention the state of her satin slippers. This wouldn't have been a problem if they had let her wear her hunting boots or the trousers she fancied. But a lady was elegant. A lady didn't spend her time exerting herself in the woods with a lowborn stable hand. A lady was demure and polite, the supreme example of beauty and grace. It's a good thing Lady Katniss Abernathy was no lady. She wasn't even an Abernathy, but anyone in Twelve old or keen enough to remember her true heritage knew better than to speak on it because the Lady Katniss Abernathy was who they pinned all their hopes on.
"Lady Abernathy," the escort, Lady Effie Trinket, a petite woman with a voice that was both shrill and saccharine sweet, called out. "We mustn't dwell here any longer. The light will be gone soon, and the road is much too dangerous for someone as valuable as you to be traveling on at night."
Katniss pressed her gloved fingers into the earth, inhaling deeply. She breathed the scent of home into her lungs and held it there, letting it linger until her chest ached, and she exhaled her last deep breath onto this land. Looking out past the rolling hills, she could just make out the highest spire on the duke's estate. She imagined her sister Primrose in that spire, a book in her lap as the waning afternoon sun cast shadows across the pages. Prim could always be found there with her books and her precious cat, Buttercup, at her feet. Katniss imagined she could see Prim's hand sticking out through the spire's high arched openings, waving goodbye. Katniss forced herself to stand.
Effie released a heavy, peeved sigh and clapped her hands together. "Good, good. We must make haste if we are to arrive at the castle on time. The king waits for no one, not even his son's betrothed." The sound of Effie's heels crunched once more through the undergrowth until they disappeared back into her carriage.
Katniss purposely paused, a smile threatening to creep across her lips at Effie's growing displeasure. It wasn't that she disliked the woman, but more that she loathed what someone like Effie Trinket stood for, the wealth and privilege of the monarchy that ruled over this land. Katniss's gaze lingered once more on the autumn foliage, on her home, and she hoped that this view would be the one that flashed through her mind as her life came to an end. She knew she would never set foot on this ground again. She'd never again hear Prim's laughter or sing with the mockingjays that perched in the forest's canopy.
Lady Katniss Abernathy straightened her skirts, brushing the luxurious fabric and shaking the silk free of dirt and debris. She masked her sorrow and squared her shoulders, summoning any morsel of poise that may have been hidden in her body before she turned back towards her waiting carriage. Discreetly, three fingers of her right hand brushed against her lips as she silently said goodbye.
The carriage lumbered through the wooded divide between two worlds for seemingly an eternity before it halted to a stop. Katniss jerked awake; her body heaved into the empty space between the two tufted velvet benches of the carriage's interior. Sick of staring at the white rose embroidery that carpeted every inch of the space, she had closed her eyes and must've fallen asleep.
She scrambled from the floor back to the bench on which she had been riding, her behind sore from the endless jostling. The small, hidden dagger tucked into the bodice of her dress poked at her ribs. The ruined lace gloves and satin slippers taunted her from the empty bench across from her. Luckily, Effie found it undignified for two ladies of such high status to travel in one carriage together, so at least Katniss didn't have to endure the incessant mindless chatter and constant nagging that seemed to be Effie's specialty. Well, at least not yet. Lady Trinket had already been assigned to be a member of Katniss's court, along with a gaggle of other women Katniss had never met.
She reached an ungloved hand toward the frosted and iced-over carriage windows. It hadn't been cold enough to cause ice before she had fallen asleep. And despite Effie's assumption that someone of Katniss's stature mustn't travel at night, the windows were painted in darkness. She had been sleeping for some time.
“Stupid girl,” she thought, as the duke’s disapproving look flashed through her mind.
Haymitch Abernathy was the widowed and childless Duke of Twelve, a small, outlying province in the kingdom of Panem and Katniss's legal guardian. His late wife, Maysilee Abernathy, the Duchess of Twelve, had been Katniss's mother's dearest childhood friend. Even with all the wealth and privilege that the highest provincial title a person could hold afforded her, the Duchess remained a loyal friend until her untimely death. That wasn't to say that the friendship between the two women was without controversy, especially among the more socially ambitious members of the province's merchant class.
You see, the Everdeen’s, the true bearers of Lady Katniss's lineage, were members of the lowest class of people, living in an area of the province referred to as the Seam. Her family lived as most do in Twelve: wearily, day by day, toiling away with their farms or the trades, hoping to come up with the yearly taxes the king imposed. An amount that inexplicably rose each year. And the penalty for not paying your taxes? A lifetime sentence of slavery in the mines outside of the Capitol City and the palace walls that housed the king and his court. Year after year, citizens of Twelve were carted away, never to be seen again. There was nothing anyone could do to stop it. People had tried. Katniss's father had tried and paid the price for his disobedience with his life. That had been during her eleventh year, the year everything changed.
Heartbroken, her mother shrank into herself, leaving Katniss and Prim to fend for themselves. Their home and the land it sat on, a tiny but good, fertile piece of farmland, fell into disrepair. Katniss had tried to keep up with the daily chores, the crops, and her sister's care, and for a time, she had succeeded, but she was only a child herself, and soon enough, the work had become more than she could handle.
By winter, her mother's condition had deteriorated to the point that Katniss had been left with no choice but to drag Prim to the gates of the duke's estate to beg for any assistance, hoping that her mother's friendship with his late wife would mean something. Although benevolent and kind, the duke was an infamous drunk, and losing his beloved Maysilee had only made him chase the bottom of his liquor bottles with more gusto. His butler had answered the door, slamming his hand against the wood, attempting to frighten the girls away, but Katniss stood tall in the face of the angry man, her shoulders back and chin high. She needed to do this, and she wouldn't leave the doorstep until she had spoken with the duke.
It was then that Haymitch appeared, wobbling down the grand staircase - the only visible part of his home from the doorway - his hand tightly gripping the glossy surface of the polished mahogany railing while his eyes remained abnormally clear. He pinned those eyes on the dark-haired, scrawny, defiant girl at his door and the frightened blonde clinging to the girl's back. As he looked at Prim, the hard lines of his face softened, and the fingers on the railing flexed.
With her blond curls, porcelain skin, and bright blue eyes, Primrose Everdeen was the spitting image of her mother and the polar opposite of Katniss, who took after their father with his obsidian hair and olive complexion. Where Katniss wore a near-permanent scowl, Prim seemed perpetually happy, smiling at everyone she met. Peeking out from behind her sister's back, Prim had smiled at Haymitch. Katniss had watched as the duke's clear eyes became misty, as he inhaled a shuddering breath, then blinked and bowed to Prim with a sort of wistful demeanor. It wasn't just that Prim took after their mother; she also looked strikingly, in both beauty and disposition, like Maysilee Abernathy.
Haymitch's eyes had turned back to Katniss, who still stood shoulders squared against the belligerent butler. The duke's gaze lingered on her for a long moment to assess something that she didn't understand.
"You have a fire in you," Haymitch had said. "Good. Perhaps together, we can burn the world down." Then he turned, exiting the stairs with a relaxed and steady gait, nodding at the butler to allow the girls to enter.
The following day, Haymitch Abernathy, Duke of Twelve, had formally requested legal custody of both Everdeen girls. Knowing that she would never be able to provide them with the life and education that the duke could afford, their mother tearfully agreed. That was the day the eldest daughter of a poor Seam farmer became Lady Katniss Elizabeth Abernathy, heir to the province of Twelve. That was also the day the wheels of the duke's plan were set into motion.
Not long after the girls were transferred into the duke’s care and thus formally adopted and legitimized, the newly titled Lady Katniss had her first meeting with the duke’s stablehand, Gale Hawthorne. It had been a secret meeting behind a faux bookcase in the duke's study that led to a hidden room outfitted in a variety of weaponry, obstacles, and other training devices. Gale had been four years her senior and a good foot taller with dark hair and eyes that had reminded her of her father and herself. A look so strikingly similar they could be mistaken for cousins.
Even at the young age of fifteen, Gale was highly skilled in combat. The eldest son of a decorated general in the king's army, Gale had been trained in the art of war from infancy. His father had often whispered into the ears of his family and faithful allies of the desperate state of the kingdom and the need for his children to know who the real enemy was. Even while other military officials of his father's stature lived amongst the royals and courtesans in Capitol City, they'd maintained their home in Twelve. Gale's father demanded that his children be raised in his homeland on the soil and in the trees that reared him.
He often traveled, leaving his family for months to do the king's bidding, and during his father's departures, Gale grew tall, strong, and, sadly, too accustomed to his father's frequent absences. But his father always came home, road-weary and sometimes with new scars. Gale, his younger brothers, and baby sister would watch him as he crested the hill at the boundary of their property on his sleek, black stallion.
That is until the day that he didn't return, and in his stead came a messenger on a brown horse with a letter sealed in wax bearing the king's sigil. Gale's father was dead. He had been killed in an apparent skirmish with a neighboring country, although there had been no talk or rumors of war. Gale had been thirteen.
The following year, Haymitch spotted Gale fighting full-grown men - soldiers and regular folk - in a back alley combat pit for extra coin. After his father's death, Gale's mother had taken on the burden of supporting an entire household. With little education and no other family to fall back on, his mother had started taking in the laundry of the more wealthy province residents. It wasn't enough, and the family spent many nights cold and hungry.
That's how Gale ended up in the pit. He was tall for his age, but his body was scrawny and long-limbed, still very much a child's body. The grown men who had laughed in his face when he entered the pit soon discovered that he was as trained as they were despite his outward appearance. Haymitch quickly employed him as a stablehand - and a personal guard in secret - for his estate, which allowed Gale to continue to hone his craft while also caring for his family.
When Katniss had crossed the threshold into that hidden room, Gale had stood with a stature far beyond his years, his arms crossed over his chest and a smirk of amusement slanting his lips. His grey eyes danced with a childish gleam as they looked her over. Katniss had instantly disliked him, and as her daily lessons began, that dislike grew into a foul loathing. She had hated him. Hated his skill. Hated his agility. Hated his humor and stupid laugh. Hated that he got to train in trousers - sometimes bare-chested - while she was restricted to skirts and long-sleeved blouses that stuck to her sweaty skin.
But somewhere along the way, as she trained with him, trained with her hands, her body, blades, and arrows, trained until her muscles ached and her bones felt near breaking, her hatred for Gale Hawthorne turned into a kinship forged through the exhaustion, pain, and sweat. She began to laugh at his jokes. She smiled with him and sought him out during their individual free time. He taught her to hunt, fend for herself, and develop a love for the woods that ran much deeper than a simple appreciation for the scenery. Before she realized it, she began to love Gale as she loved Prim, as she knew she would never love anyone else because her shattered heart only had room for those two. He became her brother. He became her best friend.
As the years passed, Katniss and Prim were educated in the arts, books, history, and languages. They learned geography and poetry, music and science. They became everything that was expected of well-bred and eligible ladies. To the outside world, they became the darling daughters of Twelve: beautiful, intelligent, shining beacons of a mostly forgotten, poor province. Word of the sisters had spread across Panem and right into the heart of Capitol City just as Haymitch had conspired.
Two months shy of her eighteenth birthday, a letter bound in the wax of the king arrived at the duke's estate. The letter requested the duke's consideration in the arrangement of marriage between Lady Katniss Abernathy of Twelve and The Crown Prince Peeta Mellark-Snow, the bastard son of King Coriolanus Snow and heir to the throne of Panem.
Katniss knew little of the prince outside of the rumors of his lowborn upbringing. The whispered gossip told of his mother, who had been a castle servant and an exquisite beauty that caught the eye of the king. Like many before and after her, she became the king's mistress as his marriage to the queen was one born of political necessity and nothing more. Yet, something happened with this mistress that had not happened with any of the others nor with the queen; she fell pregnant with the king's child.
The king, unwilling to have his legacy marred by a bastard child born of a lowly servant, stepped in and generously dismissed the woman from castle grounds, effectively banning her from ever stepping foot in Capitol City again.
The prince's mother, heartbroken and destitute, traveled on foot to the province of Nine. It was there that she met and quickly married a widowed baker with two young sons named Emmer Mellark. The couple proclaimed the pregnancy to be a product of their union, and Mr. Mellark raised and loved Peeta as if he were his own blood, never revealing the boy's true lineage.
Yet, during the winter of Peeta's eighth year, things quickly changed for the bastard prince. The queen had been expecting a royal heir, and Capitol City was in a state of constant celebration with the news. However, within the castle walls, courtesans and noblemen whispered about the baby's true heritage for it was well known that the queen had a handsome, young lover.
Seneca Crane was forty years King Snow's junior and everything the now elderly king had once been: strong, charismatic, handsome, and most importantly, healthy. The king had been in failing health for years, and many, not knowing of the prince's existence, had come to expect that the king and his much younger queen would never bear children. Time passed, and the whispers about the queen and the child she carried grew until one night, Seneca Crane found himself alone in a room with nothing but a note from the king and a bowl of poison berries.
His body was discovered the next morning, and it was said that the queen's cries could be heard throughout all of the districts. Two nights later, she was found dead in her chamber, her lips stained red from the same berries that ended her lover. The child and heir Capitol City had celebrated was never to be. Their deaths became the newest on a list of those lost by the king's hands.
Poison, it seemed, would become Snow's favorite weapon and his savior. Years passed, and the already elderly king grew weaker yet still able to continue to breathe when anyone who crossed him was not. Once again, rumors were whispered that the poison that had ended so many lives was also what was prolonging the king's life, but his health had deteriorated to the point that there would never be an heir to his throne. Or, at least, that is what the people thought.
When Peeta had turned thirteen, palace officials and Capitol City officers called Peacekeepers arrived on the bakery's doorstep demanding that Peeta, as the rightful heir to the throne, be relinquished from his mother's care and returned to the Crown. His mother and the man Peeta had grown to love as a father were given no choice but to let him go. So, Peeta Mellark, the youngest son in a family of bakers, became Crown Prince Peeta Mellark-Snow.
At first, people had gossiped that a mere commoner, a low-born merchant, would one day rule the kingdom, but the prince had inherited his mother's exquisiteness and a captivating eloquence that was all his own. Soon, people forgot about his early upbringing and showered praise on both the prince and the king, for the prince had seemingly become precisely the sort of successor that Snow had hoped for: someone with enough cunning, charisma, looks, and wit to continue to rule a corrupt country propped up on the backs of its enslaved citizens. To the world, the prince was every bit as ruthless and commanding as his father. With his family and common upbringing forgotten, Peeta was the legacy the king never thought he would be able to carry on.
Haymitch Abernathy had silently watched all of the scandals while obediently leading his district to the king's satisfaction. But the duke was neither as gullible nor as drunkard as he appeared. He used those facades to gain access to the things people said when they thought no one was paying attention, and with that information, he began to formulate a plan that started in earnest the day the Everdeen sisters arrived on his doorstep. He knew the fire he saw in Katniss's eyes would be enough to break the chains of bondage every citizen found themselves in.
So he took the girls in. He cared for them and gave them every luxury available, and in doing so, he carefully forged a weapon to end the fear and tyranny and free his people. The duke would often talk about Katniss during his visits to the castle and Capitol City. He told of her intellect and her unmatched splendor. He spoke of her wit and humor, natural artistic ability, her articulate gift with words, politeness, and social graces. He lied, of course, but that is what any good salesman does. They exaggerate the truth and speak only praises until their goods become the only thing anyone wants until those praises reach the right set of ears.
"I do not care if the horses need to rest! There must be a more appropriate setting to stop for the night," Effie's crisp, high-pitched voice spoke outside the carriage door.
A guard muttered in a low apologetic tone, followed by the sound of his heavy armor as he walked away. The carriage door jerked open, and Katniss frantically grabbed her soiled slippers and gloves from the adjacent bench just before Effie's perfectly porcelain skin, rose red lips, unnaturally long lashes, and tightly coiled curls - mysteriously still elegantly pinned on top of her head as if they hadn't been traveling for hours - peeked through the door.
"The guards have insisted we stop here for the night," she huffed, a lace fan unfurling from her hand and flapping open as if it were the height of heat in the summer. Her wrist flicked back and forth, cooling her skin, and Katniss counted the movements, doing mathematical equations in her mind about how easy and quickly she could rid herself of Lady Trinket and escape through the woods back to her home before the guards even noticed a disturbance. But as quickly as that thought occurred, so did the image of her father being shackled and pulled away in an iron prison carriage headed for the gallows in front of the courthouse in the province center. Her mother had forbidden her to go, crying that she didn't want her child's last memory of their father to be of his death. So the last memory Katniss had was of his face, bruised and beaten. And of his hair, slick with blood, sweat, and tears. She couldn't run away. She couldn't abandon this cause.
"Come, come," Effie said, closing her fan and flicking her fingers in the direction of the darkened exterior beyond the carriage door.
Katniss quickly pulled on the slippers and gloves and gathered her skirts to exit the carriage. But as she approached the door, a hand clad in the rose-gold armor of the king reached out to offer assistance. She grasped the surprising warm metal fingers, trying to play-act as if she were dainty and demure, not someone who regularly climbed trees, ran through the mud, and was deadly with a variety of weapons.
"Your Highness," a smooth tenor voice greeted as she stepped onto a road outside an outpost tavern. Katniss had heard of others taverns like this one for traveling soldiers and tradesmen near the borders of every province. Gale had told her tales of all sorts of debauchery that took place inside. She fought the urge to reach for her hidden dagger.
"Captain Odair," Effie tittered girlishly, linking her arm through Katniss's and pulling her toward the tavern entrance. "She isn't royalty…yet. Lady Abernathy will do for now."
The captain bowed his head. "Of course, Lady Trinket." He followed the two women to the entrance. A pair of soldiers fell in step behind them. "I'm just as excited as anyone in Capitol City is about our new princess," the captain continued. "I've never met anyone from such a far outlying province aside from Duke Abernathy…and that was only when he stole all our money playing cards and drinking us under the table!" The captain laughed, his men in the ranks behind joining in. Effie clicked her tongue, shaking her head. The captain reached for the tavern's door handle. The lantern above the door illuminated his sea-green eyes as they roved over Katniss's face before landing on her stained gloves. His lips twitched. The captain leaned closer and whispered, "I must say that the duke didn't exaggerate about your beauty. Peeta will be pleased." Then, he winked, a lock of copper hair falling free of the confines of his helmet.
Katniss fought to keep her face neutral. If they had been in Twelve, she would've laughed at his flirtatious wink and made a snarky comment about how informally the captain used the prince's name and how he must not be fond of his pretty head staying attached to his shoulders. But Lady Abernathy didn't speak like that. She didn't tease members of the King's Guard, especially not someone as high ranking as a captain. She didn't speak out of turn or make untoward assumptions about the familiarity between the heir to the throne and a foot soldier, and she definitely didn't notice the way the captain's eyes seemed to lock onto hers for a split second too long or the gleam of something curious…something like knowledge, that shone in their depths for that brief moment.
No, Lady Katniss Abernathy, future princess of Panem, smiled politely and graciously thanked the captain as he held open the tavern door. She kept her eyes on her hands and took soft, gliding steps across the dirty, worn wooden floor. She didn't count the number of armed men in the room or the prostitutes with discreetly hidden weapons like her own. She spoke only when spoken to. She was polite and gracious, sweet and soft-spoken, the very picture of a lovely trophy piece for the future king. Yet, underneath the veil of corsets and gowns, satin and silk, the trained warrior inside waited, curled, sleeping like an unexpected leopard hidden high in the trees. And after she had played the part long enough, charmed the right people, and wed the prince, only then would she allow the leopard to strike.
What they didn't realize was that Katniss Everdeen was not meek or timid. She was as skilled as any member of the King's Guard. She was a weapon, an assassin, and they were welcoming her right into the prince's bedchamber, right to the only hope Snow had of maintaining his power, his chokehold over the nation, his bloodline. They had no idea that the closer they traveled to Capitol City, the closer she came to saving her people, putting an end to the nightmare of their lives, and to killing the prince.