Chapter 25
The girl Sara dies screaming.
Rowan had been following her, hunting her. But whenever she would turn, feeling his eyes on her, he would disappear into the shadows, as if he were never there.
He had herded her into a glen, where he had rigged a trap. She swung like a pendulum by her feet. When dusk falls, he cuts her on the leg. Not enough to kill her. Just to get the scent of blood on her. After all, the mutt wolves hunted at night.
So a safe distance away, he climbs into a tree, and listens as the mutts tore her apart. Her cannon finally fired when the sun began to rise.
Her words haunt me though, through the next night.
She had asked why, to Rowan. He had looked at her, monster in his eyes, and told her; "You know why."
And he had walked away, as she half-sobbed-half-screamed at him, saying she did nothing to him. Oh but she did. By attacking his sister, Sara had attacked him.
The numbers in the arena dwindle quickly after that. For the crown, Rowan fights the girl from 3, the one with calculating eyes. She is quite crafty, laying about traps close to the Cornucopia.
Rowan loses a few fingers on his left hand from her manipulations. But when it comes to the final encounter, even her smarts aren't enough. They scrabble for a knife. It slashes across her throat.
It went so deep that her head nearly falls off her body.
….
I stare at the wine bottle on my table. It was there when I finally got home from the Capitol, with a pristine white bow tied around the neck. A note written with a careful hand also comes with it.
Congratulations on your first successful tribute.
Heh. Success. That Rowan is as much of a monster as I am?
The temptation to guzzle from the bottle hits me like a slap to the face. I reach for the bottle just as I hear my front door creak open. I turn to find Rowan there. He takes off his jacket and throws it onto the coat rack, the stand rocking with the force of it. He leaves his boots at the door as well before approaching me.
I don't say anything as he wordlessly sits down at the table. He looks at the wine. He yanks off the cork, and guzzles it back. He slams it back down.
Seeing him sit at the table, where Sam used to sit, makes me realize how lonely I am. Hollow in the soul, gut-twisting loneliness. It's my own fault as I made my lonely world by pushing everyone I loved out of it. For their safety.
But when I look at him, I see myself. After leaving Sara out to die in the arena, the people that he used to call friends avoided him. Too scared of his actions. How truly monstrous they were, leaving his district partner out to die.
People were also scared of the monster that lurked underneath my skin. But I had come to terms with it. After all, when you worked in the Capitol, fear was currency.
I feel his gaze on me like a physical touch. I stare a moment into his dark eyes. The loneliness in my chest surges.
I don't know who reaches for who first. One moment, I'm leaning on the table, him in the chair. The next we're tangled in each other, my hands in his hair, his grasping my hips.
The wine bottle rolls off the table, and shatters as we end up half standing, half on the table. Rowan's mouth is hot and rough on mine. We're both desperate to soothe the aching hole in our souls.
We head upstairs in a hurry.