We find out more about Amaryllis Snow in this chapter and meet our Head Gamemaker. Still feel free to submit as much as you like. I am really excited for this story.

Amaryllis walked through her once beloved childhood home, her parents and happy memories now long gone. The silent rooms made her feel helpless and lost yet she inherited and kept the house in a futile attempt to bring happiness back into her life. The woman had a good life, she really had no need to feel so sad and lonely but spending your life around death grinds you down in the end. She trained children to kill, stood trial for her parent's unsolved murders more times than she could count and now, every day she woke to wonder which presidential candidate her brother had killed to further his own chances. It seemed every day her life was starting to drag even though she should have been overlooking the bad things and focusing on how good her life was.

The bright lights above flickered to life as the sound of her high heels on the hard wooden floor echoed through the halls, then slowly shutting off when she had passed them. It was the latest in Capitol technology that her brother had installed for her. She never really cared for them but she had to admit they were better than the wasted energy it would take to find a switch.

The clanking of her high heel shoes continued until she came to a holt in front of a pair of large wooden doors. She dug her hand into the pockets of her baggy, baby blue pants and pulled a pair of golden keys out and held them up towards the light, trying to catch the engravings in the vanishing light. She noticed a small engraving of a rose on one of them and smiled, pulling the key towards the lock and twisting it. She fiddled with the lock until there was a small mechanical click. She pushed on the door but they stayed firmly shut.

Amaryllis growled in the back of her throat at her stupidity for not locking it before she left and placed the key inside the lock once more until she heard a click, slightly different in pitch, and pushed the door and it opened to a small room that was already brightly lit.

She slipped her hand in the white, leather bag that was slung over her shoulder and pulled out a small pocket knife. The knife was heavy with a silver blade and marble handle, another twisted gift from her brother. However, with her training, it was enough to kill and that was all she needed. She crept slowly into the room, her eyes darting all around.

The fire was on but by the looks of it, not for that long. On the table was an unopened bottle of red wine with two glasses. She turned to close the door when her eyes fell a short figure. She grunted and thrust her knife at the intruder, only for her hand to be caught by the figure's hand.

"I just want to talk," the man said, lowering Amaryllis hand to her side and straightening out his baby blue suit. "We match," he laughed nervously, looking the blue haired woman's jump suit out up and down.

"Why are you here, Cadmus?" she snapped, watching the nervous man move past her and towards the small table and sofa in front of the fire. She watched her ex-lover with a careful eye as he fumbled around with some paper before quickly hurrying over to her again

"I still had the key you gave me and...well, I wanted to show you this," he sighed, a glisten of sadness in his eyes. He offered her a thick binder covered in rainbow diamonds. Amaryllis raised an eyebrow as she looked up from the fabulous looking binder and to the short, stocky man in front of her. Cadmus looked confused for a moment before his blue eyes widened, quickly glancing down at the binder. "Oh, yes, it was classified so the only way I could get the copy out was through my son's binder-"

"What is it, Cad?" Amaryllis asked, slightly frustrated by the blabbering man. It was a wonder how he got the job of Head Gamemaker. Sure, he was an excellent architect but a Gamemaker? she wasn't sure.

"This year's Arena and Parade theme and designs,"

"I can't have this, I will be killed-"

"Then burn it after," the dark skin male snapped, pushing the binder towards the much taller woman. "Please, this is my first year and I need reassurance plus, I know you will love it,"

"So you did this to try and impress me?" Amaryllis asked. "Because I doubt seeing the children I have trained and put so much hard work into just to be killed by one of your glorified mutts is going to that," Amaryllis was stern, glaring at the dark haired man who threw the binder down on the sofa, deflated.

"At least have a drink with me, it cost a lot of money," he said nervously, scratching the back of his neck. Amaryllis opened her mouth to protest but Cadmus cut her off. "Please?" he begged, gesturing towards the two glasses on the table.

"Fine, one glass," the blue haired woman groaned walking over to the sofa and sitting down. Cadmus smiled like a small child as he started to pour their drinks while Amaryllis took her coat and bag off.

Every time she gave in. Every time he was able to find an emotion so few people could ever hope to experience from her and bring it to the surface and use it to break her down.

As she laid in bed next to Cadmus, she wondered how he was able to do such a thing as making her love him without even trying. That was just Cadmus, though. He just stumbled through life while things went his way without him even knowing. She just wished he would keep his oblivious luck far away from her.

For a girl who had grown over the years to hate love and the weakness that came with the emotion, Cadmus was terrifying. Love was cruel and cold, it made you care for people and become attached only for them to be torn away, whether by death or betrayal. To Amaryllis, love was the worst emotion under pain. Yet, Cadmus did nothing but make her feel the warm, fuzzy feeling until all the pain she felt melted away. That was wrong, though, when you ignore the pain, that's when it hurts more. That is why she broke up with him after all.

He did nothing wrong, Cadmus was one of the only person that never hurt her but that just meant it would hurt more when he betrayed her or was taken away. When he got the job as Head Gamemaker, it posed the perfect excuse. She always told him it was because it was too dangerous to date him with her brother running for President but really, Cadmus was the only boyfriend her brother had ever agreed with but that might have just been because he was easy to manipulate.

Amaryllis sat up in the bed, the early morning light making her white, silk bed sheets shimmer. She looked over to Cadmus who was still asleep next to her, his toned chest coated in the slight fuzz of black hair. His, usually slicked back, black curly hair was now dangling in front of his eyes. She watched his chest move up and down, once again feeling the warm fuzzy feeling so decided to focus on his worst assets instead. There wasn't much. The raven claw wrinkles in the corner of his eyes and large, hooked nose were due to his fear of surgery and the only other things she didn't like was his well groomed white bared and eyelashes, not very stylish. But even that couldn't make her dislike him.

In an attempt to remove him from her mind, she picked up the rainbow binder that had been thrown on the floor after Cadmus had tried to make it read it when they moved up to the bedroom. As she ran her hand along the ridged surface, her blue, chipped nails scraping along the plastic, she thought of Cadmus young son from his previous marriage, Minos and thought about waking him up. She quickly dismissed this thought, trusting that Cadmus would not have left his son alone and still spent the night.

Giving herself a quick nod, she opened the binder and started to read through the Parade outfit theme. By the time Cadmus had woken, she was just finishing up the section on the mutts. The moment she saw him reading the files over her shoulder out of the corner of her eyes, she looked over to him, a large smile on her face.

"Thank you, I love it," she whispered, her eyes glistening in the morning light. Cadmus gave a shy smile, a slight blush appearing on his cheeks. In fact, she loved it so much, she allowed the man to walk her through it, explaining every small detail to her.

It was amazing, no, it was beyond amazing. For his first year, he had far surpassed that of any Gamemaker before him. It was cruel, it was twisted, it was strange and exciting but most of all, it was beautiful. He had taken something Amaryllis loved and condensed it into something as small as the Arena. She didn't know how to feel about it, she wanted to scream at him and send him away before she got hurt again but her heart wanted to squeeze him with happiness like she was a little kid again. However, one thing she did know was that no one with a heart was going to succeed this year.