FIGHTING FIRE | The Capitol Games

II. Petronius and the Watchmen

It was the forty-ninth breakfast.

Eighteen-year-old Petronius Lyre had been counting. Every morning, there would be a knock on his door and the young rebel guard named Crinoline would peek her head inside and ask him if he was ready, and he would follow her downstairs to breakfast. At breakfast, there would be a roll call, and if everyone was present, then the teenagers would be given a meager breakfast of toast, oatmeal, and water.

Before breakfast number forty-nine, as Crinoline waited for the elevator with Petronius, she said, "They got Themis last night."

Petronius had just woken up a few minutes ago and was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, so at first he didn't understand. Confused, he looked down at his guard. "Pardon?"

"The twenty-fourth tribute. Her trial's over." Crinoline's voice was more solemn than usual, and her pretty dark eyes were downcast. Petronius wanted to empathize with her, but quite frankly, it was hard to think right now. He racked his brain.

"Oh. Well...good for her," he said at first, not knowing what he was hearing. Then he remembered. For the past thirty breakfasts, the number of names on the roll call had lingered at a steady twenty-three, always listed in order in which they had been brought to the Training Center, beginning with Petronius Lyre and ending with Rosemarie Snow. Every breakfast, every day. They were waiting for someone — Themis Gossamer, the fourteen-year-old girl who fled the Capitol after the end of the war and killed a rebel soldier. But now they had her, completing the set.

"Oh," Petronius said again.

"Yeah." Crinoline sighed. "So it's any day now."

She was focusing rather intensely on a scratch on the elevator door. When the empty elevator arrived and they stepped in, she kept staring into nothing, her expression like stone. She wouldn't look at Petronius, but he couldn't look away from her — her smooth brown complexion, her soulful dark eyes, her curls tucked under a white headscarf. She was nineteen, just a few months older than him, but had seen and done so much that he couldn't help but think of her as immortal. In a way, he mused, she would be. He would pass on and she would remain.

He really couldn't explain why he felt this way about her. When he had been imprisoned here in the Training Center tower, he knew he should have been angry with the rebels, but instead he couldn't help but face the trial with quiet resignation. And then he'd met Crinoline. He couldn't help but like her, even if she was a rebel. When they talked — and they had done quite a bit of that; it got lonely here — things just happened so naturally; they were best friends within weeks. And somehow, now there was something else.

For few seconds, the back of his hand brushed hers. It was an accident, really, but out of curiosity he let it stay. She didn't pull away. He touched his pinky against hers. She moved her hand, but then her fingers tentatively began to weave through his —

Until the elevator door opened. Crinoline hastily set her hand on the hilt of her combat knife and Petronius made a show of coughing and adjusting his glasses.

She led him out into the cafeteria, where most of the teenagers were already seated and waiting for roll. Petronius had known a lot of them from school, but couldn't say he was close to any of them. Like everything, it had a lot to do with family. Petronius' moms, Atla and Camilla, were nothing special. A housewife and an owner of an obscure undergarment shop. Why the rebels had thought them a big enough threat to have them imprisoned and their son thrown into the Last Games, Petronius hadn't the faintest clue.

On the other end of the spectrum, there were kids like Rosemarie, eleven-year-old granddaughter of President Snow; Electra, eighteen-year-old daughter of the Senate Pro Tempore; and Julius, sixteen-year-old son of the Peacekeeper General. High-profile political families that had known each other for years and raised their children like cousins. All of them, about six in total, sat together at some tables in the center, laughing and joking as if this was the school cafeteria.