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It’s late by the time Tigris reaches the outskirts of the Presidential Palace, drawing her cloak close so that none of the remnant revellers staggering past will think to recognize her. Not that it matters, really, not anymore, but it’s a habit woven in as deep as the fabric around her.
Augustus Braun has just won the 67th annual Hunger Games. He won it through trickery and deceit; he won it by shattering his competitors into dust when they refused to fight back; he won it by happening to be from the richest district and getting the most sponsors by default and training for the Games when none of the tributes are supposed to train for the Games.
He is, in essence, the perfect victor. The one any Capitol citizen has their mouth watering for. She wonders, idly, as she walks towards the half-hidden gate, if Coryo planned it that way. She wouldn’t put it past him. He loves his straight corners and neat lines. He loves victors that will be obedient and ever willing to serve the greater good of Panem.
Damned Coryo with his damned straight lines.
This is not a personal visit. In fact, if one were to count—as she does now—they would realize that in the past five years, she has only spoken to Coryo in person twice. It has not been intentional, some planned boycott by her or him, but simply who they have become and what has changed. Every time they’ve spoken in recent memory it’s always been stilted, verging on argumentative. Coryo will always make some authoritative statement about power and the need to control the districts, and Tigris will always quietly demure and point out flaws. So in the end, they’d rather not talk to each other. Because then they don’t fight. And then they can pretend they’re still on speaking terms.
But not tonight. Tonight, Tigris has to speak with him, no matter how it might upset the balance of any future relationship. There are things she has to know.
The entrance she uses to gain access is far from prestigious. It’s been a long time since Coryo has trotted her out to the populace as an important link in his family. Tigris doesn’t know the exact why on her cousin’s end, but it suits her purposes just fine. She is not a part of the Grand Snow Family, intent on establishing its permanence and saving Panem from itself. She is simply Tigris. You may have seen her creations on the shoulders of Capitol citizens and district tributes. Or you may not have. Tigris is content with either.
At least the Peacekeeper at the gate knows her—or knows of her—well enough to let her pass with only a brief glance at her face. Instead it’s the woman standing at the top of the stairs who poses the bigger issue.
“Well,” Livia purrs, “look what the cat dragged in.”
Even with her subtle alterations to lengthen her youth, Tigris thinks she has never seen a woman look more weary and pressed down by life than Panem’s First Lady. “Mrs. Snow.” Tigris inclines her head politely, knowing she needs allies and wanting to be kind when she can. “I need to speak to Coriolanus.”
“Hmm,” Livia says disinterestedly. She has a wrap on that has only haphazardly been thrown across her shoulders. She must be expecting to go back to bed soon. “He’s very busy these days, you know. Panem is coming more and more to rely on him. The districts would be lost without his guidance. Honestly, between you and me, most of the magnates here in the Capitol would be as well.”
Tigris drops a degree of politeness. “Livia, this is important. I need to see him.”
“Oh, dear, lots of people need to see him. They line up all day to try to see him. And when they can’t, they press their complaints on me. As if he listens to me a whit. Well, it doesn’t matter in the end. Even if he did listen to me, he still wouldn’t have time to see them all.”
Tigris has expended the length of her tolerance. “Should I ask the Peacekeeper downstairs instead?”
Livia wraps the shawl a little tighter around herself, finally taking some measure of self-preservation. “Where else do you think he is? He’s in the garden, of course. He always is.”
The moon is full as Tigris steps down from the verandah and into the garden proper. Quiet here, even if the President’s mansion is smack dab in the core of City Centre. But Livia didn’t mislead her. There, in the centre of his beloved roses—upturned towards him as if in awe—is Coryo.
She isn’t certain she likes his quiet contemplation, the way he calmly just stands there and stares at manicured nature. Not that he didn’t know how to be quiet when they were younger, but there was always a certain frenetic energy just rippling underneath the surface, waiting for the right moment to rise up. Now there’s something far deeper beneath the waves that she can’t fully shape. It’s time and age and maturity, she supposes, but she still doesn’t like it.
He senses her approach before she can greet him. Turns up his pure white head and says, “Tigris.”
Even after all these years, there is still that thread of familial affection in his voice.
Her little brother, almost.
“Coryo,” she greets in return and pulls back the hood of her cloak.
He is good with his emotions, but she has known him too long. She sees that infinitesimal look of disgust cross his brow before his face is neutralized again. “More alterations?”
“Just a few.”
“I see.”
She says nothing. When politics isn’t fraying them apart, it’s her alterations. Actually, Coryo has been fairly good at keeping his thoughts to himself. Aside from that initial conversation after her first procedure when he voiced the opinion that her desire to visually turn herself into an animal was more disturbing than anything he ever thought her capable of, he’s kept quiet. But she knows what he thinks. True, it’s not as if she hasn’t dealt with others flinching back at her appearance—tributes especially—but she wishes that at least Coryo, her almost little brother, wouldn’t.
But, like increasingly all things between them, it’s better not to be picked at. Coryo looks away, stepping back to majestically survey his garden. “I’m glad you found me here. There’s a lot of work I’ve been doing in the garden these days. It’s difficult to keep the roses alive during the summer, but we manage.”
“They do look lovely,” Tigris agrees. She feels her mind fray with pent up emotion, wanting to let loose her troubles, but she knows well from previous experience that she cannot rush her cousin. This is his way of getting to the matter at hand. She will have to wait.
So they traipse up and down the garden, with that large glowing moon staring down, her admiring strands here and there, both natural and genetically altered, of every rose imaginable.
Of course Coryo likes roses that have alterations.
Having completed a full circuit, Coryo stops them at the steps that rise to the verandah. “How did you find the Games this year?” he asks mildly, correctly guessing that her troubles will veer along these lines.
“My experience or the actual event?” A stalling tactic. He probably knows it, too.
“I was asking after your experience, but I could stand to hear what you thought of the Games.”
“My experience was fine,” she says neutrally, the answer she gives practically anyone who asks her these days. “As for the Games…” More stalling, more thinking up a neutral answer. “You must be pleased that Augustus Braun won.”
“Well, I won’t deny that.” Smiling with a bit of a sheepish glance. A practiced look. “As victor, he will do Panem some good.”
“We’ll have to see what he does.”
More than a proper politic answer, but Coryo seems to take it in stride. “I suppose we will. But District 1 makes good tributes.” Meaning: winning tributes. Meaning: loyalty to the Capitol unto death tributes. He gives her a side-eyed glance. “And I hope this doesn’t mean you’re regretting your district choice after all these years.”
His voice is teasing, as if they’re kids again and he knows something she doesn’t—briefly inviting in a familiarity and warmth that he rarely does with anyone. She should be grateful at this attempted link to their shared past. But she isn’t. Even though they’ve done this routine dozens of times over the years, tonight is the time it squeezes at her heart.
Nearly four decades ago, when Coryo first took power, he’d asked her which district she had wanted to be a stylist for in the Games. Any district, her pick. Of course at the time she’d been thrilled. She was only starting out her fledgling shop, and she needed all the business and exposure she could get. And, most importantly, she reminded herself a guilty heartbeat later, this would be a good way to personally help the poor tributes. Every informal tribute she’d ever worked with prior to this had responded beautifully to her attentions, and she imagined future ones would be no different.
“District 8,” she’d said after only a few moments’ thinking.
She then had the brief honour of watching Coriolanus Snow be completely speechless for exactly four seconds. “Are you certain, Tigris?” he finally asked. “Their tributes don’t win.”
“I cannot believe you chose District 8,” Fabricia Whatnot had told her two weeks later. “My dear, this is an opportunity, so don’t go about squandering it. I wouldn’t wish 8 on my fashion nemesis. You’re smack in the middle, so you have no advantage at being memorable on either end. And those children all die in the first few minutes, ask anyone. And just how are you going to represent textiles in the chariot rides, hm? What in heaven’s name could you possibly even make for those children to wear?”
Tigris had seen none of these problems. Helping Coryo figure out a shirt for the 10th Hunger Games had awakened something inside her. She liked the puzzle of how to represent textiles in the parade each year, liked making the tributes stand out when they were so likely to slip away unnoticed. And it worked. She was applauded and raved year after year by dozens of commentators for boldly highlighting her tributes when everyone knew they weren’t going to win.
They didn’t win. Coryo and Fabricia had been right about that. So had everyone else. The number of tributes she’d had who’d tentatively touched the lovely fabrics they’d only ever seen in pieces in a factory who were then ripped apart days later in the opening bloodletting were innumerable. Work in the factories seemed to make them all pale, rail-thin, worn into almost nothing. The victors were rare, remarkable fighters, and extremely lucky.
When her inevitable failures lay in boxes, ready to return to their district of origin, she’d always handed the homecoming mentor (usually Woof, now of late Cecelia) two envelopes for the families of each tribute. Pressed inside was a swatch of fabric of what they had worn during the parade and her reminiscences of her brief time with their child. So many had been afraid, but she tried not to focus on that. Instead she would talk about a funny remark they’d made as she did a final fitting. Or perhaps a moment of kindness as they comforted their fellow tribute travelling to the arena. Or maybe a remarkable cleverness in managing to maneuver the Capitol’s technology when only first being introduced to it days ago. It was no lie to say that all of them had made a unique imprint on her.
She had no idea how the families felt about her letters. They couldn’t respond back, after all. But she hoped they had the sense that one person in the Capitol at least cared for their child.
And maybe that was at the heart of her choosing District 8. It wasn’t about a challenge in fashion or an attempt to prove to her cousin that she could (and would) choose her own destiny, it was about making those children from a forgotten district matter, if only for a moment, if only to her, before the Capitol swept them aside.
“No,” she says finally in reply to Coryo, in a voice that is now far from neutral, “I never have.”
Coryo merely raises a palm upwards in response, a gesture of graceful defeat. “So if not your choice of district, what is it that you’ve come to see me for?” A direct question now that he’s failed to flush her out through elusion.
She takes a glance around the desolate grounds. Even if she can’t see them, she knows he has his bodyguards watching them, listening, waiting. “Is it possible we could speak in your study?”
She hasn’t asked for that in a long time. “Of course,” he says, his eyes probing. Finally he’s curious.
Livia unfortunately decides to make an encore appearance as they enter the hallway. “She’s making the Peacekeepers talk,” she hisses to Coryo. “I heard them downstairs.”
Coryo pats her hand absently. “I appreciate your concern, my dear, but I have it under control.”
“Her arrival will be noticed by others. On tonight of all nights.”
“It’s all in hand, darling. Nothing for you to worry about.”
“People will talk, Coriolanus. The Cranes will use any advantage they have against you to further their son.”
Tigris finds this reference to the Cranes vaguely intriguing, but Coryo just continues in that same soothing, half-interested voice he’s used throughout this entire conversation to say, “It’s fine, dear.”
Livia deflates slightly. It strikes Tigris that this is about the cruellest fate a woman who adores attention like Livia can endure: to be trapped with a man who will give her none. But then she straightens a little and snaps as a parting blow, “You should know better than to bring a stray cat inside.” And Tigris considers how unfortunate it is that Livia seems incapable of inviting sympathy to her circumstances.
Livia doesn’t wait for a response, instead smartly retreating back to the bedroom. Coryo only watches her turn to leave before his attention focuses on the door to the study—his wife apparently like a being he only remembers exists when she’s in his line of sight. Then he opens the door, gesturing for Tigris to come inside.
It’s larger and richer, but this study has always reminded her of the spaces her cousin would eke out in their old, long since abandoned, apartment. Even he has to have a place to rest, where his corners don’t have to be so neat or so tidy. There can be personal touches, signs of weaknesses, placed here that can’t be placed elsewhere.
He sits at the desk, leaning back slightly, eyes on her. “What’s going on?” His eyes are awake, the gears behind them spinning, calculating, like they used to do when he was younger. He needs to know what she knows.
But Tigris doesn’t want to talk suddenly, even if she is the one who pushed constantly for this ending. She has to force herself to speak: “It’s about Finnick Odair.”
His eyes alight fractionally, his posture straightens. “What did he say to you?”
“He didn’t say anything to me. I…I saw something.”
Therein lies the entire problem. She saw something that changed everything.
Two hours before this moment, she was at a party near the Corso. It was the sort of thing she has never particularly liked, but that she periodically needs to do in order to meet new people, new business partners, new clientele. She stayed her hour, marking the time assiduously, and when she was finished she eagerly departed, ready to return to her cozy shop and familiar customers.
It was as she was coming down the front steps that she saw young Finnick Odair, wildly popular even two years on, with a woman several years his senior on each arm. He’d been laughing with them, talking in the fast-paced, slurred rambling of someone deeply drunk. That disturbed her, due to his youth. It all disturbed her. Those women on his arms weren’t looking at him only with hero worship.
And then he’d looked up, perhaps sensing her watching eyes. She will never forget that look. Even if his mouth was turned up in a smile, his eyes held nothing but desperation and despair within a deadened glaze.
She knew that look well, recognized it from the faces she’d seen during the Dark Days of those willing to do what they needed to in order to survive.
In her own reflection, once.
This was not the first time she’d heard of such things for victors of the Games, but it was the first time she’d seen one so young.
“He was with two women,” Tigris finally forces herself to say. She leaves out the details, but Coryo will know. He always knows.
He says, reassuring, “That hardly means anything. You’ve seen the way he flirts in the Capitol.”
Yes, she has seen that. She has seen a great many tributes flirt their way through the Games in their childlike, artless, desperate way, and it has always sickened her. “He didn’t want to be there. With them.”
“You don’t know—”
“I know.”
Coryo pauses. He looks calm, but only she would notice the way his pupils never rest, the slight twitch of his smallest left finger. This upsets him more than most things, this reference to her past, to their shared suffering, to the things Tigris did so they both could survive.
Good. She stares right back and thinks, Lie to me one more time, Coryo.
“Mr. Odair is a unique case,” Coryo says, finally. Almost reluctant in this admission. “He’s made quite an impression on the Capitol. Perhaps too much. He and I have had to come to an agreement to ensure his gifts are used for the good of Panem.”
Only Coryo would talk about selling sex in such an elegant manner. He’d done no less with the previous victors he’d pawned off in similar ways, though he’d always emphasized then that it was their sole choice and none were under eighteen. She feels like a fool now for believing any of that. “Meaning what, exactly.”
Annoyance now distinctly starts straining through his tone: “Tigris, you’re behaving as if I want to do this, but I don’t. I don’t have any choice. There are those in the Capitol who will get him whether he or I agree to them or not. The best I can do is make something out of this—to keep both him and Panem safe.” He pauses, watching her. “I’m in a very precarious position here. Can’t you understand that?”
Yes, Tigris thinks she does finally understand. Since the very beginning, Coryo has always had an excuse for everything. When he was a child it was endearing to watch the stammered way he’d try to weasel out of trouble, even as his mother would hold up the broken glass statue. Tigris had been willing to hear his excuses during the war, and afterwards, for a long time. Perhaps too long. But he’d suffered so much. Of course she wasn’t going to call him on it when he lied about eating an entire can of beans himself during the worst year of the war. Of course she wasn’t going to call his bluff when he lied about his nightmares and flashes of terror in the years afterwards. Of course she wasn’t going to pry into the horrors that Coryo hadn’t felt like sharing during the 10th Hunger Games and his time in District 12 as a Peacekeeper. And of course she’d accepted his platitudes in the months afterward when he’d become a Gamemaker that he was doing this only because he had to claw their family out of the pit, that he owed everything to Dr. Gaul as much as she made his skin crawl.
But then it had continued, even as Coryo’s power had increased. Tigris had started pressing him: With all this power, couldn’t he maybe do more to help the districts? Couldn’t he do something to stop the abuses that so many in the Capitol inflicted even against their own?
Couldn’t he, perhaps, try to stop the Games themselves?
His answer had always been the same, always dancing on the same theme: This was not the right time, he had too many enemies, he was just in far too precarious a position. He wanted to stop the Games—no one in the entire world knew how much he above all others wanted the Games to end—but he just needed a few more years, enough time for the districts to stabilize, for them to truly understand the price of their rebellion, before he could put a plan in place to phase the Games out forever.
Tigris can have the small comfort now that she didn’t always believe him, that she has stopped talking to him largely because he’s persistently refused to change or listen to anything contrary to his excuses, but there still has always been that part of her that’s thought, hoped, for a good core within him, as she had known in their youth. That hope has gotten her through so many years, convinced her time and again to bide her time, to wait because one day he might listen.
But now they have reached this. Where her cousin is willing to sell a sixteen year old to the highest bidder in the Capitol, and even setting that unique horror aside, he has to have known, given her personal history, how much this would intimately hurt and horrify her.
If he is willing to do this, then there is nothing that he won’t do.
He will never dissolve the Games. They give him far too much power to wield, far too many tools to use. He has so many arenas and concepts and people to play with here that he’d never have elsewhere. The level of control is overwhelming.
She wonders if he ever did mean to stop the Games. When did this man before her turn from her sweet cousin into the twisted monster he is now? At what point when he showed her empathy was he actually just fabricating a response?
“I’m not sure I do understand,” Tigris says finally, which is the truth, but still painful to give voice to. “There is nothing that would induce me to ever sell anyone like that, other than myself.”
Yes, another reference to their past. Coryo taps a finger on the desk. She is clearly wearing on him. But why does he care so much? Is it really care for her, or is it just their family honour that he constantly frets about? “Running a fashion boutique is quite different from running a country.”
What he means: You don’t know what you’re talking about so shut up. The response of many a man she’d encountered on the streets in her youth—all the way up to the oh so reputable Academy—when she’d tried to dissuade their line of thought. The men of this great country have always filled her with an emotion she doesn’t know how to describe. Stripped bare, they are all the same with their grabbing hands and leering grins and constant dismissals of her capabilities. All except Coryo, she always told herself. He wasn’t like them, her sweet-natured cousin, who was so kind and considerate and good.
But she supposes that even he has now been caught in the same trap. They forget that, at heart, she is still a Snow. And she doesn’t give up without a fight.
“They might be different,” she concedes, eyes on him, voice deceptively quiet. “But I know even you have your exceptions. You wouldn’t have sold Lucy Gray Baird to the highest bidder.”
It’s the sort of thing that her cousin would probably kill someone for saying if it wasn’t her. It’s not even fully meant as a cruel dig, more as a prodding to wake him up. Tigris doesn’t fully know what happened between her cousin and Lucy Gray except that it ended poorly, and she’s never seen Lucy Gray again no matter how many mentors and victors they trot out from the days of old. But she knows, even as she doubts everything else, that Coryo cared about her in some form once.
Her cold remark makes an actual honest to goodness expression cross his face, something strange and violent and yet tender at the same time that’s unsettling to watch. He’s actually angry when he says, “Every tribute that has come under my mantle has been treated better than she ever was by Ravinstill. You behave as if I’m beyond redemption, but at least I don’t treat them like animals as he did.”
No, you just treat them like tools. Which is almost worse. She is disgusted with herself, for ever believing half of the things he’s said during his presidency, perhaps during his entire life. And she’s angry, too, for honestly thinking that she could make a difference in the Games. All she’s done is be stringed like her cousin’s puppet, moving in whatever direction he wants her to go, acting whichever role he wants her to play. Just the same as any tribute or victor or hapless member of the districts.
“Why?” she whispers. She doesn’t want to debate schematics anymore, he’s beyond that, perhaps always was, but she does need to know this. “Why do we need to continue the Games?”
They’re both running on more volatile emotions now, both having had weak points observed and then trespassed. It’s a sign of his vulnerability that Coryo looks away. “You wouldn’t understand. You never have. It’s about correction. It’s about keeping order. It’s about a contract between the Capitol and the districts that existed long before either of us were even born.”
Even now, he is still lying to her. “Don’t give me something that Dr. Gaul’s shoved down your throat,” she snaps, nearly trembling with anger. “I don’t care what she thought. Why are you doing this?”
He’s silent for a long moment, enough that she can hear time being counted and collected by some cavernous clock in his study that should long be obsolete. “Because,” he finally says, his voice trembling with more emotion than she’s ever heard before, “they deserve it for what they did to us during the war.”
Is this what it really comes down to? That after everything—after more than seven decades, and a steady climb to power, and the control of all Panem beneath his fingertips—her cousin is still just that scared boy who’d press into her arms during the bombings, begging for her to make it end? It’s somehow equal parts endearing and yet pathetic.
She thinks of the hundreds of children who’ve died in innumerable arenas.
“Punishing them won’t change what’s happened,” she says. Finally. Gently. She knows this won’t work, and yet she has to say it. “Augustus Braun has won, but your parents will still be dead, just like mine.”
“Yes, the finality of time is frustrating in that regard,” he murmurs. It sounds like something he would say, though he’s still not looking at her, lost in the past. Then he collects himself, piecing himself back together like the Snow he is. “I know you don’t understand, Tigris. But the people in the districts aren’t like you or me or anyone else in the Capitol. Given the chance, they’d strip you to the bone in seconds. All they know is violence, and the Games is the only way they’ll learn.”
Ah, so it’s this as well, then. Unsurprising. Even if Coryo once held empathy for the districts, it has always been chased quickly by fear and disgust. And she can trace their origins easily.
Your own father used to say those people only drank water because it didn't rain blood.
Tigris doesn’t actually remember Coryo’s father saying that—though she doesn’t doubt that he did—but she remembers well the first time Grandma’am spoke of it.
The very first Hunger Games, so long ago in memory but still crisp at the edges. No one in the Capitol then had been quite certain what to think about these Games being implemented. There was a lot of talk, a lot of open revulsion, a lot of questioning whether district children, who just months ago had been working together against the Capitol, would really rip each other to pieces in a Capitol arena. It all seemed a bit too dramatic to believe. Most people predicted the event would be a failure.
Grandma’am had made them watch, Tigris and Coryo both. She’d said she wanted them to see what their enemies were really like, as well as the districts punished for their crimes. Even after everything they’d endured during the war, Tigris could only sit there feeling sick to her stomach, disbelieving as the rest of the Capitol that she would really see children barely older than herself kill each other.
Coryo had been perched next to her, looking with wide eyes from her to their decaying television. “They won’t really kill each other, will they?” he’d whispered with concern.
“Of course not,” she’d reassured him, because she hadn’t known what else to say.
Then they watched as cameras, not well placed, showed the district kids being dumped into the broken Capitol Arena. They shivered from fear and their threadbare clothing, looking at each other wildly while the opening countdown had begun, as if they themselves didn’t even expect that they’d really fight to the death.
And then one boy—Tigris didn’t know which district he was from and still doesn’t to this very day—ran forward to the bundle of weapons before the countdown had even ended, and within seconds it was all over. They turned on each other instantly, as if there’d never been any alliance between them at all during the war, skewering and stabbing and slicing through each other with wild abandon and what almost felt like delight. In the end, it wasn’t even the boy who ran up first who won. Instead, it was the hardy, well-fed boy from District 2.
“You see?” Grandma’am had said certainly when the broadcast was over. “You see how they treated each other? Like a pack of wolves. No Capitol child would ever have behaved like that, no matter what arena they’d been thrown into. Just remember this, Coryo: your father liked to say that those in the districts only drank water because it didn’t rain blood, and you’d do well never to forget that.”
Their grandmother gone, Coryo had looked up at Tigris with childlike betrayal. “You said they weren’t going to kill each other.”
“I can’t convince you,” Tigris says now, the finality of it thudding in her chest. It’s ridiculous how even at this late hour she still held out a strand of hope.
He smiles, almost amused. “Funny, I was just going to say the same thing about you.”
“Coryo…” But that thought goes nowhere. They’ve just admitted they can’t change each other. She needs to think on what she can change. To what she can live with in herself. “I can’t do this anymore,” she says softly. She means all of this, but she becomes specific: “I can’t work in the Games anymore. Tell them what you must, that I was unreliable, that you couldn’t stand my alterations, that it was you who had to fire me, but I can’t stay.”
“You’re certain? You can’t go back.”
“Yes.” And it hurts her to say yes, the knowledge that a part of her life is now over forever, but she knows it’s right. She will never be able to look Finnick Odair in the eye again unless she does this.
“I see.” Coryo flicks his eyes away only for a moment. Not an emotional response this time. “I suppose I won’t be seeing you again, either.”
He knows her. “No, you won’t,” she agrees. “You’ve done me enough favours.”
He doesn’t try to dissuade her. “You should be careful,” he says instead. “You will be watched. Don’t associate with elements you’ll come to regret.” Don’t give me a reason to have to kill you.
In truth, she doesn’t know how she feels about any of that yet—whether she wants to be part of a formal rebellion, or even if there is a formal rebellion—though her cousin’s comments and off remarks she’s heard in the Capitol make her wonder. For now, she will withdraw from the Games and see where that takes her. “I’ll take that into consideration.”
He says nothing further, so she just stands there looking at her cousin, looking at Coryo who she can’t stop calling Coryo even here at the end.
She still loves her family.
Impulsively, she rushes over to where he sits, leaning down to press her forehead against his. “Goodbye, Coryo,” she says breathlessly. “I hope we don’t ever meet again.”
If he has a reply, she never hears it. She turns to leave, walking quickly out to the hallway and the staircase she knows well. She is eager to leave this place now.
She turns a corridor, nearly colliding with an unsuspecting body. She shrinks back a little, half-expecting it’s some guard Coryo’s sent after her, because of course he’d never let her leave alive once she’s turned against him. But no, it’s just Livia. Weary, pressed to the earth Livia who stares at her with gaunt eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Tigris says, still feeling a bit jumpy. “I didn’t see you were there.”
“No one ever seems to.”
That might be the truth. But Tigris doesn’t want to drag this out any further. “Goodbye, Livia. You don’t have to worry about seeing me here again.”
Something in Livia’s demeanour changes. She takes a slight step to the side. “So that’s it, then,” she murmurs. “You’ve seen enough of what he does. Or else he’s gotten sick of you.”
“It doesn’t really matter which it was.” Tigris skirts past her, managing it with a thread of space to spare. “But I won’t be a worry for you anymore.”
Livia doesn’t respond until Tigris is halfway down the hall. “He had her killed, you know.”
Tigris doesn’t want to turn, but she does. “Who?” She has a sickening feeling that she already knows the answer.
“Lucy Gray Baird,” Livia says in an almost wistful tone if it wasn’t tinged with such bitterness. “He told me one night. He meant it as a compliment, that he would give me so great a confidence.” She snorts. “I knew he was infatuated with her during the Games, but I never expected to what extent. The only woman he ever truly loves, and he murders her. That sounds exactly like Coriolanus.”
Tigris won’t pretend she isn’t disheartened to hear this, though she’s less than surprised. It explains Lucy Gray’s lack of presence and some odd comments Coryo’s made over the years. So even then. Even back then he was starting to change. “I’m sorry, Livia,” Tigris says, and means that genuinely. No woman should have a husband like that. “You deserve better than him.”
Livia lets out a laugh, the most humour Tigris has seen on her face in years. “Oh, pish,” she says, throwing a hand gracefully. “I’ll have you know, Tigris, that I got exactly what I deserved. I always wanted to marry the best, and I did. I knew it wasn’t going to be love, and it wasn’t. We can’t all be romantics like you. I’ll survive until I can’t. But somehow I suspect that Coriolanus will find a way to have me properly die long before then.”
Yes, he very well might. He’s capable of anything. And he’s never loved his wife. “Come visit me, Livia, if you ever have the chance.”
“I won’t, but I appreciate the offer.”
Tigris leaves her in the corridor like that, with the light hollowing out her eyes. Half looking like a ghost already.
Gulping fresh air, Tigris traces the familiar route to her shop. Even still at this hour she passes revellers stumbling out of parties and merry their entire journey home. Everyone loves it when a crowd favourite wins.
Inside what greets her is an empty shop that will hopefully be her home for the rest of her life. She goes behind the counter to her living area, messy and hardly worth comparing to anything within the Presidential Palace. She still has her tribute letters to do, her final ones that she will ever send back to District 8, but she feels far too weary to write them now.
It says something that even after all these decades the place she seeks comfort is her coats. She sits in a pile of them, finding comfort in the warmth, in the feeling of being tucked away. Here, for one brief moment, she is safe.
And yet, even as her body relaxes, sleep starting to tug her away, her mind is filled with memories.
Coryo at birth, when he would sleep so much that she wasn’t even sure he was alive. “He’s like a doll,” she’d whisper to her aunt who’d beam down at him with pride.
Coryo excited beyond belief for the parades the Capitol would put on during the war, jumping up and down and chattering so fast about the uniforms that sometimes Tigris couldn’t even tell what he was trying to say.
Coryo the day after he and his political rivals had an unfortunate dinner, poisoned by a killer who was never formally found. “I did it, Tigris,” he’d said, the happiest she’d ever seen him, the blood dripping between his teeth.