𝐆𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐆𝐎𝐑𝐄 ▸ HUNGER GAMES [ 1 ]

TWENTY EIGHT

When I find my voice, nothing can stop the hurricane. Fuelled by rage and grief, I round on Sidonia with claws raised. "They can't do this. You can't do this. You can't do this!" I'm shrieking, tears welling in my eyes. "It wouldn't matter to you! You've never loved anyone, you don't know what it's li-"

Sidonia's hand flicks out to latch around my necklace, pulling it tight until the chain digs into my neck. Her single dark eye is cold as ice as she glares down at me. All of a sudden I realise why people are so afraid of her. "Do you want your sister to die as well?" She mutters.

I'm shaking, still bristling with fury, but the mention of Loren has stopped me in my tracks. With Cato gone, Loren is all I have left. I can't lose her. "No." I whisper.

She lets out a slow, rattling breath. "Then do as I say."

Leant up against wall, Haymitch shakes his head. "We'd never have had this problem if you two had gone over the edge instead. At least the guys wouldn't have had any problem killing each other."

Before we leave the room to head back to wherever we're staying until tomorrow, Sidonia and Haymitch retreat to the corner to discuss plans, leaving Katniss and I together. Every time I look at her I want to scream, cry out. I wish for a knife to materialise in my hand, to pin her beneath my feet and plunge it through her chest. I wish I'd just got it over with earlier at the feast, hadn't spent so long chatting. I'd only wanted to make a good show of it. Because that's what Cato would've done.

Instead, she's sitting beside me and he's probably on his way back home already in a wooden box. They'll bury him in the mountains with his brother and sister, sing my bird song with every step of the climb. It dawns on me that I probably won't even be able to go to the funeral. Not if they think I wanted him dead the whole time.

The whole District will turn on me. Like they turned on Sidonia after she came home instead of Knox. And something tells me they won't just be ignorant, but hostile. What kind of home will I be going back to tomorrow? Now the whole of Panem believes I have allied myself with the enemy.

"Why didn't you shoot me?"

Katniss turns slowly, blinking a couple of times as if she can't believe I've actually spoken. "What?"

I clear my throat – my voice still hasn't quite recovered from the screaming on the cornucopia. The screaming as I watched the boy I love die. "Why didn't you shoot me? You had plenty of opportunities and my back was open. You could've avoided all this and gone home. Why?" I ask.

She looks down at the broken floor tiles. "Honestly, I don't know." When she lifts her head again, I realise that her eyes are like Loren's. Hazel, but darker around the edges. The similarity bothers me, and I have to look away.

I don't make any attempt to talk, but after a couple of minutes of nothing, she does. "He really loved you, didn't he?" She says softly. "And you loved him too."

I'm stunned into silence. I should be angry. I should burn this girl on fire to the ground where she stands for having the nerve to even mention him. But we are still dressed for death and the scent of blood still hangs in my hair, clinging to my shirt and ingrained in my skin. I'm too tired and too desperate to wash it all away to even curse her.

"Yes. I did. And now I won't even be able to go to the funeral. They won't even let me say goodbye."

° ° ° ° °

Tonight, I will sleep back on the second floor, where Cato and I stayed for the pre-Games week. It hasn't changed. When I step out of the elevator, Tallulah and Brutus bustle forward to greet me, but Sidonia holds them off. I think she feels guilty about earlier.

I run into my old room to find it exactly the same. Even the tight black pants I wore all week in the Capitol are splayed across the floor, half turned inside out. I ignore them and jump straight into the shower. It doesn't matter what buttons I press – I will have to spend the next year here if I want to have any chance at washing all that blood down the drain.

At some point I collapse against the floor of the shower and begin to sob. Real, gut wrenching, anguish pours from my heart and soul beneath the spray. The cut across my forehead from Thresh's rock is barely a scratch now but it still stings as the water touches it. If anything it just makes everything worse.

He saved my life, carried me to safety and watched over me as I healed. Held me in his arms as I cried through the storm. Might have even been willing to take a spear in the back if it meant I could go home. The boy I've been challenging since I was thirteen years old. Cruelly ripped from my grasp at the last hurdle. We barely got a week to be together.

One week. Now he's gone, and not only that but I have to convince Panem that I never loved him at all. 

Because if I don't, my sister will die.

AUTHOR'S NOTE -
Hey guys! I just want to apologise for my previous chapter, please do not kill me in my sleep. I know some people guessed it but I'm pretty sure everyone else was completely clueless :') I'm sorry for all the hearts I hurt! For those of you asking whether these two are now gon be gay, I am sorry to disappoint you but no (however that does not mean that there are not going to be gays, do not worry, as a raging bisexual myself I could not make a book without them) Either way hope you enjoyed this chapter, we've only got a couple left until the end :') Much love - Vee xx