² MANIA ─ catching fire

[ 011 ] woke up on the wrong side of reality

NOW

ALECTO REMEMBERED THE FIRST DRESS she'd ever been put in by her stylist. It'd only been two years ago, and yet, Alecto could feel the uncomfortable phantom prickle of satin on her skin.

Back then, she'd been softer, her face more rounded with youth, flushed with promise. When she'd first stepped into it, Alecto hadn't known what to expect. It was a short, baby blue number that matched her eyes, with puffed sleeves and a white apron-like detail stitched to the front, tied at the back in a white bow. Her buttery hair had been swept and sprayed into a neat, flaxen waterfall of curls cascading over her back, secured away from her face by a black headband—like a long taffy pull, so pretty, one of her prep team had giggled. They'd slathered and massaged some kind of product into her locks that made them springy and glossy. Even now, Alecto could still smell the heady scent of lavender lingering in memory. She remembered her shoes—the first pair of heels she'd ever worn—a pair of shiny, black platform Mary Janes that pinched her feet at the front and bit into her Achilles heel.

After that one night, she never wore them again. She'd felt like a doll, buffed and shined and stuffed into clothes that weren't hers. They loved her innocence, her vicious naiveté, her child-like eagerness to get into the arena and see what horrors she was capable of. They were frightened by her, yet endeared. They called her the Nation's Sweetheart Doll, a term coined by Caesar during that first interview.

The girl in the mirror did not look like a doll.

In the mirror stood some caricature of a creature forged from iron and blood. This time, her dress was red. Blood red. The sleeves were thin and sheer, a sparkling vermillion with an uneven cuff that looked as though she had blood dripping down her wrists. The crimson corset body was sleek and fitted snugly around her midsection, black lace thorns and roses embroidered around her ribs and over her chest, embellished with little heart details on the cascading tulle of her skirt like crystallised blood, which dripped past her knees and ended in a red pool around her feet. Rose petals had been sewn into the back of her skirt, and one of her prep team had adorned her head with a bright red tiara that glimmered menacingly each time she tilted her head and the rhinestones caught the light.

They'd done something new with her face, too. Made it thinner, her features sharper, made the arctic blue of her eyes stand out more brightly against her face. One of her prep team had massaged red dye into the tips of her hair, and they'd slicked it back with gel so it looked wet, the curls wavy but not too wild. Like she'd dipped the ends of her hair into a pool of blood.

The girl in the mirror did not look like the Nation's Sweetheart Doll.

The girl in the mirror was the Queen of Hearts, the girl who'd ripped her own district partner's heart right out of his chest with her bare hands.

Alecto blinked.

In the mirror, she saw a flash of teeth. Standing next to her, Nikolai, a wicked grin on his devastatingly handsome face, his eyes meeting hers in the reflection. Blood poured from a gaping wound in his chest, running in rivers of red down his chest, staining the train of her dress. A live heart in the left hand of her reflection, still pumping, still beating, all ventricles and veins, oozing blood and carnage. And there it was, that flash of memory, of ripping his heart from his chest, the blood spraying from the wound, drenching her face, painting the white roses around them red.

All the breath was crushed from her lungs. All she heard was the slow beat of her racing heart and the estranged ringing in her head drowning out all the pounding silence in the dressing room.

Nikolai winked.

Alecto flinched.

When she looked back at the mirror once more, Nikolai was gone. And so was all the blood. But the walls scintillated with red light reflecting off the gemstones on her dress like blood splatter. Alecto breathed out a controlled exhale, ignoring how constricted her chest had become, as if an invisible hand had clamped over her torso and kept squeezing until it could wring every drop of air from her lungs.