𝐒𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 || Narnia x The Hunger Games Crossover

Chapter Four

Lucy barely heard a word President Gumpas spoke from the balcony of the presidential mansion, white walls dancing with colorful light displays, heroic scenes of Victors playing through sweeping views of cities and fields that followed his booming voice, almost identical to the mayor's speech at the Reaping but spoken with such eloquence and embellishment that the crowd actually applauded at all the right parts, the energy in the stands soaring.

Even now she couldn't stop smiling, alien street lamps dazzling her eyes as the crimson sky faded to dusk, and the chariot jerked into motion as the tributes took their last lap around the city circle and turned up a wide street to their new home, the towering Tribute Center.

Lucy raised an arm to wave again, bathing in a final shower of rose petals and clinging to every last cheer, beaming up into the stands until they descended out of view into a vast underground parking garage and the street lights vanished.

The chariots pulled to a halt, horses stamping and blowing as attendants and mentors and stylists rushed in to collect their tributes.

Caspian's shoulders relaxed.

Lucy pried her stiff fingers from his arm, frozen so tightly around the velvet of his suit that she wondered how he hadn't said anything. "Thanks," she said, massaging her hand and attempting to shake some life back into it.

He just nodded, stony mask having already slipped back into place by the time she glanced up into it, any hint of a smile now gone as if it had never existed.

Had it even been real? The smile, the laugh, the rose she still clutched between the fingers of her free hand?

"You were marvelous!" cried Polly, and Lucy spun as their team reached the chariot, all smiles as Digory reached up to help her off, legs trembling as if the solid ground were still rumbling on wheels beneath her feet, but it only amplified the electric buzz flooding through her body.

"Marvelous indeed," beamed Digory, "you two made quite a splash out there. Whose idea was it to link arms?"

"Hers," said Caspian as he dismounted, and Polly took them both by the shoulders and led them across the busy floor into the lobby.

"It was a brilliant move, the cameras loved you two!"

Lucy opened her mouth to say it had really been more of an accident, but caught Caspian's eye at the last second.

He shot her the faintest ghost of a smile, and she shut her mouth and smiled back just as they stepped through the glowing doors of the Tribute Center into what Lucy could only describe as a cathedral, towering white marble stretching up so far her head spun, archways and lifelike carvings climbing higher than she could see even when they took the glass elevator up to the eighth floor and the doors opened into a level of the building dedicated exclusively to them.

She gasped.

Spacious rooms flowed up and down into each other, even more lavish than those on the train, all connected in a vast open floor plan that made Lucy want to run around and lean over every half-wall and balcony and peer around every pillar at once.

To her delight, they kept their ceremony clothes on for dinner, served in three courses at a long dining table with a chandelier glittering overhead like a shower of diamonds, and when it came time to watch the replay of the Opening Ceremony in the massive sitting room filled to bursting with plush furniture, she found Polly hadn't been lying when she said the cameras loved them.

"And here we have District Eight, our textile— wait now, what's this?"

The noise of the crowd almost drowned out the announcer's voice as the camera zoomed in on the two of them, arms linked like old friends, and the Lucy on screen burst into laughter.