The Girl with the Traitorous Heart

by Lucy Dreyar 4 Life

It was a plan, a plan I would follow, no matter what. I would love Peeta Mellark. It could save our lives and I wasn't risking anything. But my heart was. It was risking my life, my soul and my love. Stuck in an arena, killing teenagers for fun, no way out but to survive, and I want to risk it all for him, my enemy, my rival, my murderer? But can I?

1. Prologue

Prologue

I woke in a cold sweat, writhing and twisting in my tomb of bed sheets. I saw him again. After 20 years, he still haunts me. No, not haunts. 'Haunts' implies that he's still here and that I don't want him to be. It's the wrong word for two reasons: 1) He's not here, he hasn't been for 23 long, long years and 2) I wish he was. My name is Katniss Everdeen and I lost the only man I ever truly loved to the Hunger Games.

Peeta's snores follow me down the hall as I try to escape the guilt that gnaws at my heart. For a second I pause at Prim's doorway and peer into the darkness. I see her small body curled around a scruffy looking cat with a dirty yellow coat. He looks so much like Buttercup, but Prim? She's nothing like my sister. She has my chocolate hair and Peeta's eyes, but most of all, she looks like herself. She looks happy, without a single day of fear on her face. When she was little she placed her hands over my eyes and told me, 'mummy, don't look at the bad memories. They take you away from me'. I cried for hours, just holding her as we cried together. I remember Peeta coming home later and finding us in the same position. He sat and cried with us. I try to keep faith that she will never know the horrors I saw, ever. It doesn't work. I continue down the corridor and briefly stop to peer into Finnick's room, but he's covered himself with his blankets and isn't visible to the human eye. My kids remind me of people I lost and loved, but not of the one person I wanted to remember. My mind screams his name as I fly down the stairs and into the garden. I pause, just for a second, to consider the beautiful, living souls breathing peacefully just metres away before fleeing to the woods. After everything that happened to me, especially the 74th games, Haymitch still finds my safe place highly ironic and a source of great amusement, but as I scamper up my favourite tree, I couldn't care a less about what Haymitch thinks. Only one person matters to me in this moment. And he's dead. A silent tear streams across my cheek as I whisper his name into the darkness.

"Cato."