A very short last chapter before the end, just to get you in the mindset of the final two. Enjoy!
-x
Carden POV
Final two. The words felt so ethereal on my tongue, I had to clamp my jaws shut just to keep them from escaping.
Sleep had not come easily after the first cannon blast, but it had been wrenched away from me with the second. Who could even think of sleeping with only one other person left in the arena?
I couldn't stop thinking. What would I do if it was Kali? Even worse, what could I do if it was Diane? I had come too far to just die. I hadn't come far enough to kill someone, though. With the fact growing closer and closer, I felt myself feeling less and less prepared.
Morning was scary. Everything was quiet and still, even the birds in the stand of trees on the other side of the island. The wind was holding his breath, watching me for the cue.
Stretching, I pulled myself out of the cozy sleeping bag. It was like a game that some of the elders played back in District Seven, called chest. It doesn't look anything like a chest, but they call it that. The game usually starts with thirty-two pieces, all different shapes and sizes and movements, though it had been twenty-four in this game. Now we were down to two, both the most important ones in the game.
It wasn't quite like chest, though. When there are just two kings left, it's called a stalemate, 'cause no one can win anymore. The kings just won't hurt each other.
The Capitol makes one of us win, though. So there's no easy way for the game to be over. We have to keep playing chest, until one of us is dead.
It's my move, now.
Diane POV
What am I? I'm not Diane anymore, obviously. She was human, and she had feelings and wants and needs. She smiled sometimes, and cried, and laughed, and loved her little brother even when he was naughty.
The person I was trapped in wasn't her. I was certain of that.
Diane never would have killed someone who hadn't tried to hurt her. She wouldn't have wanted to, wouldn't have needed to. That girl would never made it past twenty-two deaths, just for a fifty-fifty chance of living. She would have died nobly, probably. She would never ever even think of winning, just keeping her humanity.
I had to bring her back. That much was clear. No matter what it took.
There was no man in Panem who could make me take another life. There was no way I would go back to the hopelessness of being who I really was, a killer.
In all likelihood, I was going to die. Not a martyr, not a murderer, not an innocent, but a girl. From District Nine. Who made a whole lot of bad choices.
-x
This was the last point of view from one of them, because I'm setting the stage for the final battle. You won't be with the tributes, though. Bell Voyeur, announcing…