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Daphne, blood-splattered and discombobulated, staggered down the path towards the house with the memories.

Caelum's cannon shot had been a dagger through the heart, solidifying that her boy was gone. He was never coming back. She would never see him break a beautiful smile again as he laughed at her joke, the excited spark in his voice at the mention of a book. How his left eye would squint whenever he was thinking hard. The small scrunch of his eyebrows as he took aim with a bow. The tiny freckles across his nose that nobody noticed but her.

She'd lost consciousness soon after, curled beside Caelum's still body, clinging onto him because she couldn't bear to let go. She'd let herself imagine that his chest was still rising and falling, that they were merely taking a nap in a peaceful meadow. When she'd woken, his body had been gone. The Capitol had finally stolen him from her, too.

A dangerous sense of hunger had washed over her then. Hunger for vengeance. Hunger for blood. She wasn't sure how, but she'd managed to track down Sylla several blocks away from the clearing, where she'd stopped to dress her wounds with the supplies from the bag she had run off with. The bag that could've saved Caelum's life, had it been there.

Daphne hadn't hesitated before gutting her alive.

After, Daphne had collapsed and screamed and wailed and sobbed until she tasted blood in her throat and a migraine had her in its claws. She'd cried out for Caelum over and over as her world buckled beneath her, needing to feel his arms around her, for him to tell her everything was okay and they were going to be fine. Instead, she found nothing. Nothing.

She'd dragged herself onto her feet after a while, shattered and numb like a wraith. She'd wandered down path after path, not knowing where she was going. She was alone. Utterly alone. There was nowhere to go. Not after her one home had died.

And somehow, Daphne now found herself staring at the house with the memories.

She hadn't purposely planned to return here. She'd just found herself drifting back like a moth to a flame.

Seeing it now sent a whole new wave of grief crashing over her. Was it really only less than twelve hours ago that she'd woken up in Caelum's arms, and he'd taken her out to dance beneath the sunrise? Only the night before when they'd kissed for the first time?

She climbed onto the porch and stood leaning against the railing, feeling heavy and hopeless. Like someone had reached into her soul and hollowed it out. This house wasn't the same without him. The heart was still there, but it wasn't beating.

Her gaze drifted to the hedge at the side of the porch. A single white rose grew from the tangle of leaves, now dead and wilted. She hadn't noticed it before. Now she wished she had, for it must've been beautiful when it was still alive.

A white rose.

Like the one she'd given him on the chariot ride.

Like the one that had adorned his suit during the interviews.

Daphne pulled a knife from her belt, her hand trembling. Tears once again pooled in her eyes.

I can't lose you when I've just found you.

She pointed the knife towards her own heart.

In the next life, the life after that, I will find you.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes.

I love you, Caelum.

"Do it."

Daphne's eyes flew open. She'd expected a surge of boiling hot rage to flood her veins the next time she saw the red-haired, silver-eyed Career standing before her. Instead, she felt nothing.

Glory, on the other hand, had a viciously delighted grin on her pinched face. "What are you waiting for? Plunge that knife into your chest. It'll make my job a lot easier."

There it was, that spark of heat. It had caught on the husk that had been her heart, a slowly growing fire. Daphne put down her knife.

"Now is not the right time to provoke me, Glory," she rasped.

"Wow, I'm so scared," Glory mimicked, then giggled. "When would be the right time then, huh? As far as I'm aware, we're the last two standing. The people want a show and I want my riches, so let's get this over with."

"I don't want to fight you."

"Well, that's unfortunate, because I surely want to fight you."

"The thing is, Glory, we can't all get what we want."

Glory snarled, drawing a blade from her belt and hurling it. Daphne lurched to the side just in time, and the knife stuck with a thud in the wooden wall of the house instead of her forehead.

Daphne turned back to Glory, her face now shadowed with something venomous. Inside, the fire was catching. Spreading.

"Fight me," Glory hissed. "Fight me like a real woman."

With a yell, Daphne vaulted over the railing, launching a knife towards Glory fast as an asp. Glory barely had time to dodge. The knife vibrated as it sank into the tree behind her.

A second blade already drawn, Daphne whirled and spun like a tornado. She slashed at Glory from all sides, her vision tunneling, seeing only scarlet as blood welled up where her knife went.

Glory began parrying her strikes, forced to go in defense. Blades clashed and the screech of metal-on-metal sliced through the air again and again. Daphne would not slow down. Not when her wounds were screaming in agony, not when her head was about to burst with another migraine.

Glory attacked within seconds. Daphne may have been fast, but she was foolishly inexperienced when compared to Glory. Glory had already calculated Daphne's rhythm and fighting style, pinpointing her blind spot, which she stabbed right into.

Daphne gasped as pain spiked across her back. Glory's knife had pierced her right shoulder blade, grinding against the bone. Daphne lunged away before Glory could plunge the blade in further, whipping out her knife almost blindly. Glory slashed it aside with frustrating ease.

Daphne was bone-tired. She hadn't eaten much, just a fruit here and there as she'd traveled with Caelum. She'd fought off the serpent mutt just that morning, then battled Sylla and Lua. She'd been fighting the entire damn day.

Glory shoved her hard, sending her toppling to the ground. Daphne's body was shot through with pain. From the stab wound on her back, which she hoped hadn't hit any major arteries, to the gash on her cheek, her raging headache, her shattered heart.

There was no way she could win against Glory hand-to-hand. Daphne scooted back on her elbows, inching closer to the stairs up the front porch. Glory could easily kill her right then and there. Instead, the Career merely snarled in frustration.

"Get up," she demanded. "Get up and fight me, damn it. What's wrong with you?"

Daphne stared at her incredulously, gasping for breath. "You stab someone and then you ask what's wrong with them?"

Glory kicked her hard on the flank. Daphne yelped, her body instinctively beginning to curl in an attempt to shield itself.

"Have some honor, ranch-girl." Glory sneered. "Stand up and finish this. I wanted a good, satisfying fight. This is boring."

"Where's the honor in murdering?" Daphne spat. "Forty-six lives were ripped away in the past eleven days. Forty-six innocent children who did nothing to the Capitol, nothing to deserve this. All forty-six of them had families back home. Jobs. Friends. Lovers. They will never return now and for what, some failed uprising that happened a hundred and fifty years ago?"

"Watch your mouth," Glory hissed, slowly, threateningly.

"Just look at yourself," Daphne continued, glaring at the Career with disgust. "You and everyone else in your entire district are brainwashed. Completely brainwashed into thinking that the only way to make it in life is to murder a bunch of other children and just so happen to be the one who was not murdered. Don't you see how stupid it is?"

"Shut up," Glory rammed her foot against Daphne's ribs again, prompting Daphne to shrink away as pain reverberated through her body.

Daphne coughed out a wad of blood, hauling herself onto the porch steps. "You don't tell me what to do."

"I'm not just saying that because your voice is so damn annoying," Glory snapped. "You don't seem like you value your own life very much right now, but do you value your family's? Would you really want to drag them down with you? If I were you, I would shut the hell up."

Daphne merely smirked. "You're so confident that you're going to kill me, huh?"

"Please, we both knew that you were no match for me," Glory snorted, rolling her eyes. "I just wish you could've made it more fun."

As Glory set her grip on her knife, her face lit with the triumphant beam of a victory already claimed, Daphne reached up and tugged on the near-invisible tripwire.

The crossbow bolt whizzed past her ear. Glory doubled over with a blood-curdling howl as it slammed straight into the center of her chest.

She kept her frozen silver eyes locked on Daphne's dark ones as she sank to her knees, scrabbling at the bolt protruding from her sternum. It was embedded too deep to pull out, and even if she did, it would just grant her a quicker death.

Daphne heaved herself to her feet. She took two heavy steps, her feet feeling as if they were dragging through tar. She stood before Glory, watching the front of the Career's vest run red with blood.

"You were right, Glory." Daphne said quietly. "You are no match for me."

Glory began to sputter, drowning as her own blood flooded her lungs. She pitched forward, hunched on her hands and knees.

"I... I want to go home..." she croaked, collapsing onto the ground. "I want to go home..."

Daphne once again felt her ruined heart crack. Beneath the agony and shock on Glory's face was anguish, despair, hopelessness. For the first time, Glory looked like what she really was: a young girl who'd been blindfolded for far too long.

Daphne bent down, softly brushing a strand of red hair from Glory's cheek. She felt it when the cannon shot tore through the air.

The final cannon shot.

The arena was silent for a moment. Just a moment, but it seemed to pass in slow motion.

Daphne had done it. She'd done what forty-seven others could not. What hundreds of others could not.

Jade, Glory, Sylla, Lua, Mellie.

Azalea, Theron, Rye, Makani, Pavel.

Caelum.

Aedon.

She'd done what none of them had been able to.

She could go home.

So why did she still feel so hollow inside?

The victory trumpets began to blare. Emeric Ponce took the mic.

"Ladies and gentlemen–the victor of the One-hundred-fiftieth Hunger Games: Daphne Feng of District Ten!"

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