Hello everyone! I know it's been awhile since I've published a story, but it's just because I've been working on this one for so very long. It's kind of been my baby for about 10 months (off and on). It is FINISHED, although I will only publish one chapter at a time. How quickly I update is based on you! The more comments each chapter gets, the faster I update. I appreciate all of you, and hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

I own nothing of the Hunger Games, but I do own the characters I have created like Analeigh Snow.

Prologue

I have an allegiance to my husband and to my country. But I also have an allegiance to the people. The choices I make could make or break the revolution. My name is Analeigh Snow, and I am the wife of President Coriolanus Snow.

Everyone told me I was a beautiful child. I never really thought about it much, and thankfully my parents never made that my best feature. They would tell me I that I was beautiful, but more that I was smart and funny and kind. They wanted me to know that those things were the most important in life.

Growing up in the Capitol, we had more luxury than most. And my parents always emphasized to my sisters and I how lucky we were. Viewing the news reports every evening, we could see the slums and lack of health and food in most of the other districts. At dinner, my father would make each of us say three things we were thankful for. My older sister, Arabelle, was usually thankful for whatever affected her that day, a good grade in class or the smile from a special boy. Avalina, my younger sister, was always thankful for her friends. She would list them by name to get her three. But mine never changed. I was thankful for my family, for the food we eat, and for the love we have.

We would watch the Hunger Games every year when the district children were forced to fight to the death. It made my mother physically sick, so much so that she would sit in the bathroom during the reapings and cry. My father could barely watch from his reclining chair, his hands clenched into tight fists. We didn't understand it when we were younger. We thought it was a show. Everyone else in the Capitol seemed to look forward to this event with such enthusiasm. Surely it was not real. These children were not really dying. But as we got older, we realized…it was no show. And we better understood our parent's reactions.

It was understood in the Capitol that you showed no compassion for the districts, so outwardly we were just like everyone else. We kept our opinions to ourselves. My mother and Arabelle indulged in the latest fashion trends. Arabelle especially loved the makeup and clothes and hair. Her skin was always unnaturally white. Purple was her favorite color and every bit of her was wrapped in it. From her hair to her nails and lips. Every shirt, pant, skirt, dress, and shoe…it was all in shades of purple. Avalina was still too young and too much of a tomboy to care. And although most of the other girls my age at that time indulged in at least some form of body modification, I preferred not to. Natural beauty is not normally seen in the Capitol, and maybe that's why they all thought I was so extraordinary.

My sisters and I did not share all the same features, and I think Arabelle might have always been a bit jealous. She was exquisitely gorgeous, of course, underneath all the makeup and dyes. Arabelle and Avalina received my father's curly dark brown hair. I received my mother's hair, straight and shiny and a shade of dark red that lights up in the sun. We shared our father's icy blue eyes, which was sometimes the only way people could tell we were sisters.

I was 16 when President Snow visited my school to give a speech. He had recently risen to the highest in command of Panem, although I don't remember any election. It was a huge honor to have him at the school, and everybody was dressed in their best. I remember my dress perfectly. It was the same shade of blue as my eyes, adorned in white, sparkling jewels, and hung to my knees. Mother combed my hair down my back, curled it under, and pulled the front of it out of my eyes with a jeweled clip. All the other girls and boys stopped and stared as I walked in.

You would think with the bright lights and cameras in his face he wouldn't notice a young girl sitting in a crowded auditorium . But somehow he spotted me, and I guess he liked what he saw.

Coriolanus Snow was in his forties, more than double my age. He had a full head of black hair and a thick beard which was graying quickly. His eyes were small and slanted, but the color was a soft brown.

He started by sending roses. Every Friday they arrived for me, white with a thick aroma. They filled the whole house with a sweet smell. The first time he came to visit, it was unannounced. He merely showed up at the front door, carrying a large bouquet of those beautiful flowers. I could barely contain my excitement. The President of Panem had come to visit me. My parents didn't like it much. They chatted politely and my mother fixed a wonderful supper to feed us, but I could tell by the looks in their faces. Arabelle flirted with him overtly, batting her fake eyelashes, crossing her legs and leaning into him at the table. But he was only looking at me.

He made me feel like a queen. I suppose I was smitten from the start. It would be hard for any young woman to ignore, the most powerful man in the country taking an interest in them. I was so young that I could see nothing else. My parents tried to warn me. They talked to me incessantly about how he was not a good man. How he encouraged the Hunger Games and forced the obedience of the 12 districts through manipulation and cruelty. My mother worried about how old he was and how he had been married before with a daughter older than me. And the little talked about fact that his previous wife had died only a few years ago under mysterious circumstances.

But as soon as I turned 18, President Coriolanus Snow proposed. We were married in a quiet ceremony in the sunroom overlooking the snow-covered gardens at his mansion that winter. It was everything I had dreamed. My mother told me I was positively radiant. I was formally announced as his wife at the commencement of the 56th Hunger Games in front of the entire country. The crowd cheered and applauded enthusiastically. Coriolanus gave me a big kiss in front of everyone and told me how beautiful I looked and how much he loved me. I had never felt happier.

And I would never be that happy again. Because soon after that my entire family died in a fire. And the President of Panem began showing me his true colors.