+ Terra back on the intrigue hunt for this chapter. Thanks again to all the people reading and following along!

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I hid my face in my hands, clamped my eyes shut, and did my best to drown out the noise. Reducing Finch's criticisms to an annoying hum was the best I could do to nurse my headache.

"Are you even listening? Terra, stop trying to hide and look at me," said my mentor, a little louder this time. I looked up and scowled as she lectured on. "I get it. I get that it's hard. That's not an excuse to shut your brain off and stop thinking."

"I just got drunk. Daud gets drunk. Haymitch gets drunk," I muttered.

She snorted. "And do you want to end up like that?"

"Why's it such a big deal what I do in private?"

"Because it's not private! All it takes is one enterprising person to stumble upon your drunk, passed-out body and suddenly everyone can know about it. Caesar and Cicero can plaster it on the television. Do you think about who you are? You aren't a nobody."

"It was the Training Center, Finch, sheesh. I don't think even Drake wants to screw me over for no reason to that level."

Finch grabbed my arm. "Maybe it's not Drake next time. Just because you're starting to fit in with a little group doesn't mean every victor's decent. Some wouldn't bat an eyelash at taking advantage of a drunk girl. Hey – don't walk away."

I headed for the office door as quickly as I could. "Going to try for sponsorships again," I mumbled. "With Elan."

"Elan's with the other escorts. He told you that earlier. That's what I'm saying –"

"Then I'm just going!" I shouted, retreating out the door and slamming it behind me before Finch could get in another word.

I knew I was bringing this on myself. The more I hid from her, the worse her questioning would become – but I couldn't tell her the things that circled around the inside of my head. She couldn't understand how desperately I needed an outlet, hells, someone just to share with. If that meant getting drunk with near-strangers in the other victors my age, so be it. She'd had two decades to get accustomed to this. I'd had less than a year.

Beyond that, I especially couldn't tell her where I was actually going.

Parting rich fools and their money was the last thing on my mind. I had more to do than just being a victor, and Varno Rensler's counsel had me searching for a couple new faces in the Capitolian crowd. He'd told me to search out Taurus Sharpe's daughter and Creon's granddaughter at the Sharpe estate, but I didn't have any good excuse to show up there out of the blue. I certainly couldn't waltz up to any guards and charm my way in. Fortunately, I'd relied on connections to help me out.

Julian Tercio hadn't been happy to see me when I'd cornered him in the Presidential Mansion the day after my evening report. "Of all the times you can stop by for a chat, you choose now," he'd bemoaned beneath a bronze statue of some old, dead president in a forlorn hallway. "I've had enough of sponsorship pitches for the summer, if that's what you're here for."

"You probably flushed your money down a sewer pipe. And I'm not here for it," I'd said. "I doubt you're that eager to get back to whatever work you do anyway."

"Do you know how stressful it is ensuring the idiots of this city don't crash a hovercraft into the lake at least once a week?" he'd contested. "The president pays me well for good service. Last month someone's villa extravaganza backed up the pipes in the underground for a square mile. For a week shit rained, and shit reigned. I've earned that money you accuse me of flushing. Keeping the city running is a twenty-four hour job. I can't ignore it."

"Mm-hmm. Scintillating."

"I was actually going to go gambling. What is it?"

I had to give props to the man for his strange sense of humor. At least one person on the president's council could make a joke. "Sounds fun. I'm trying to find the president's granddaughter. Cassandra? I want to meet her."

Julian snorted. "A bit young to cajole for money?"

"I'm not looking for money, dammit."

"A joke. You might try them out some time. But you didn't choose a great spot for this conversation, even though we're in the bowels of this boring building."

I sighed. "I'm just trying to meet her. The president and Calla both dote on her from what I hear, so…"

"Not a very good lie," he scoffed. "But far from me to dissuade someone's intrigue. I'm not going to set you up, if that's the question. Especially since she's nine, and probably doesn't understand what 'setting up' means."

"That's gross. And I just want to get to know her. I can't really go up to the president and be like, 'Hey, introduce me,' though."

"So…"

"I heard Taurus's daughter tutors her at their villa. I need an excuse to go there."

He laughed. "Your hovercraft broke down and you couldn't find a bathroom."

"Seriously."

"There aren't good excuses. That's a terrible idea, even if most people around here know you. If you're trying not to be suspicious for whatever reason you want to get to know the president's granddaughter, that's an easy way to look suspicious. You might try on subtlety. I've conveniently forgotten when you went charging into fights in the arena, sword held high."

"Probably because it didn't happen. That's a dumb strategy."

"That's a tactic, not a strategy."

"Whatever. What's your idea, then?"

He frowned. "Run into her by accident, of course."

"Hm?"

"Weekday afternoons in the summer, Bera Sharpe tutors Cassandra after lunch in Caro's Gardens. Humidity and exotic flora go well with education, apparently. You might try a stroll. Random chance has a way of making things work like that."

It was a better idea than wandering up to the Sharpe estate without a clue, and I could get into the Presidential Mansion without more than a few words. The Gardens were as beautiful as ever. Birds with two-foot long tails of emerald and blue feathers squawked from atop the branches of white-barked trees. Bright orange fish dashed around the reflecting pool, tiny tangerine darts flitting in and out of the sun's glare on the water. It was quiet, quieter than the previous times I'd walked the loose stone paths through the plants, and much less crowded. Only a few people dotted the garden here and there, barely diverting my gaze as I strolled by.

Swish! Leaves fluttered nearby. A tired, deep woman's voice said, "Stop. Cass, I have things to do and we have to get through this. Put those away and find someone else to play with later. Bug your mom."

"She doesn't wanna."

"I don't care. I'm not here to play."

I pushed aside a branch and nearly stumbled into a harried-looking young woman leaning against a tree, arms folded, lips curled down in a frown. Her curly black hair jostled as she started at my arrival. She was long, lean, and by her bony, gaunt face, I could tell who her father was immediately. Bera Sharpe was hard to miss, but Cassandra Snow was the spitting image of her grandfather. She had his square jaw, his serious eyes and narrow eyebrows, even his same thin, pursed lips. Long blonde hair and short stature aside, she resembled Creon far more than Calla did.

In temperament she did not: Cassandra's angry grimace disappeared the second she laid eyes on me. The girl dropped a long wooden pole she was whacking a branch with and rushed forward two steps, only stopped by Bera's stiff hand.

"Cass!" chided Bera, before turning to me with a bewildered expression. "Terra Pike? Why're you here?"

I hadn't thought about what to say after finding these two. For that matter, I didn't know what to do next. Neither Rensler nor the president had given me much direction in that department. "I, um…I had a meeting with a few people. Needed a breather. Didn't want to go back to watching the arena –"

"Why not?" Cassandra interrupted. "It's been so good so far! When Cerise – she was my favorite, of course, until you know – fought off that dog in the jungle, I was thinking things were gonna be bad, so I wanted to turn it off, but –"

"Take a breath!" Bera pleaded. "Cass! Let us talk, okay?"

Cassandra folded her arms and frowned. A light went on in Bera's eyes as she did, and Taurus's daughter looked quickly back and forth between me and Creon's granddaughter. "You know what? Don't really care why you're here, Terra. Why don't you hang out with Cassandra a bit, huh? She keeps wanting to learn to swordfight, and I have no idea what goes into it. She's not listening to whatever I'm trying to teach right now, anyway."

"I don't really know how to either –" I started to say, but I hardly finished my sentence before Cassandra opened her mouth excitedly.

Bera cut her off and pulled me aside. "I actually have a splitting headache, and if I stick around for another minute, I'm going to kill the next person I see. How about you don't tell my dad I've run off with Calla, and I'll owe you later sometime, hm?"

Fortune favors the randomly lucky! "Um, sure. Why's your dad care?"

"I know you've met him," she said. "Figure it out."

"So…I hear you're tutoring, or something? Teaching her? What do you want me to do?"

"Just entertain her. Who cares? I need to go blow off steam and have some fun."

Between have some fun and run off with Calla, I had a feeling Creon's and Taurus's daughters were closer than I'd expected. Maybe even closer than that, given by the subtle smile creeping across Bera's lips.

"Yeah, um…cool," I stammered. "Sure."

"If you want money, I'll throw some your way. No big deal."

"I don't need money. Or…I mean…"

"Don't worry 'bout it."

She was off before I could answer. Bera wasn't what I had expected from a child of Taurus Sharpe: I'd figured she'd be cold, serious, ambitious, maybe even power-hungry…but normal? Bera didn't look more than a few years older than me, and she could've stood in for Phoebe without missing a beat. Girl stuff. Headaches. Blowing off steam. It was a bit average for the daughter of one of the most intimidating men I'd ever seen, but maybe that was the only way to deal with having someone like that for a father.

"So are we gonna whack people?" Cassandra interrupted my thoughts.

"Hm?"

She hit a branch with her stick for effect. "Like when you whacked the one guy. Whack! And there was the snake, and his head went all gross. Like, bloosh! Then all the blood and other stuff was everywhere. It was gross but it was cool."

I bit my lip. "You watched all that?"

"Yeah. My mom doesn't care. My grandpa wouldn't let me watch until last year, though. He was all mad when I wanted to the year before. You know? It's so dumb."

Yeah, I can believe that. In fact, I was surprised Creon even let Cassandra watch the Games now. "Whacking" the boy from District 7 hadn't been exactly kid-friendly.

The strangeness of having a light conversation about blood sport with the nine year-old future president of Panem hadn't quite sunken in.

I spied a stick nearby like the one Cassandra whipped around and put together a plan. She sure liked talking – what kid her age didn't? – and I figured it wouldn't take much to steer the conversation to the places I needed to look into. I just needed to grease the wheels first.

"Tell you what," I said, grabbing the stick and sizing Cassandra up. "Bet whatever Bera's teaching you gets boring, huh?"

"Yeah! She keeps going on about spelling and stuff, but it's dumb, and I don't wanna –"

I pointed my stick at her. "We don't have time for boring lessons. We're the last two in the Hunger Games. You have to beat me to win."

Cassandra's smile disturbed me. It wasn't so much the girl that unnerved me, but how easily I had put the Hunger Games in the context of an actual game. Here in the deepest bowels of the Capitol, it was easy even for me to forget what was going on hundreds, thousands of miles from here to Fenton and the others in the arena. It all seemed so distant through the television screens that were so easy to step away from.

But dammit, if I had to play fake Hunger Games to earn Cassandra's trust, so be it. Telling her about the reality of watching Glenn ask to die wouldn't go over so well, if she could even understand what that kind of a thing even meant at her age. For this afternoon, the fantasy could remain just that.

For all her enthusiasm, Cassandra was unsure of what to do with her stick when she wasn't hitting trees. I tapped her on the hip before she even reacted to my swing. "Don't let me push you into the pond!" I laughed. "Hold your stick up. You have to block."

"It's not a stick, it's a sword."

"It's not doing sword things hanging by your side."

Play-fighting against a child made me look a lot better of a fighter than I actually was. In five minutes, Cassandra only hit me twice, triumphantly declaring victory on the second strike after I nearly toppled backwards into the pond when I slipped on a rock. It was enough to get her to sit down for a spell.

"Bera never lets me do stuff like that," she exhaled, swishing her stick around in the water as I took a seat on the stone bench next to her. "Neither does my mom."

"What's your mom do with you?" I asked, sensing an opening.

Cassandra shrugged. "She keeps meeting with people."

"Yeah? I met her once. Few days ago. She seemed really busy."

"Mm-hmm. With Bera's dad and that blue woman and that Gar guy. She keeps talking with them."

I could figure out the first two, Taurus and Lucrezia. It didn't surprise me one bit that they had a tight grip on the future president. But Gar? I hadn't a clue who that was. I had to keep working Cassandra for information.

"Bera's dad has always been a meanie to me," I told her, scrunching up my face. "He's boring, too."

"Yeah. I don't get what they talk about."

"What kinda things?"

"Not fun things. Just things I don't remember that sounded boring. The blue woman and Gar were more fun."

Getting somewhere. "Fun things like you do with friends, or…"

She scowled and kicked her feet at the dirt. "Mom doesn't let a lot of other girls around. Friends and stuff."

"That's okay," I said, quick to cover up my misstep. I didn't want to dive into sensitive subjects with the girl in our first meeting. The last thing I wanted to do was upset her. "When I was younger I didn't have a lot of friends, either. But hey, I'm here."

"You're not even that old!"

"Yeah, but…like, if I had a little sister, she'd be your age or so. So if you start swinging a sword now, you can fight off nasty things when you're fifteen, too. Probably better than me, actually. All I did was fix power plants before last year. Boring, huh?"

Her eyes widened. "I read that's really exciting! Like there's fire and lightning and things happening. Is that what you do?"

"Uh, usually I just hit things with a wrench. Where'd you read that?"

"On my mom's computer. She wasn't looking when I got on it one day."

She was an interesting girl, I thought, watching her pitch pebbles at fish in the reflecting pool. I supposed most nine year-olds yearned for adventure, but in this city I couldn't be so sure that the allure of fancy clothes and gaudy parties wouldn't take hold – especially with someone like Calla for a mother. Not for Cassandra: If anything, she seemed bored by all this luxury and comfort. Maybe her ideas of life outside of the Capitol didn't exactly mesh with reality, but I could get along with them. At least she wasn't threatening me or kissing me.

And there's something to be said for having an in with the future president. Taurus and Lucrezia had the right idea. I was just thinking one generation ahead of them.

"I met the blue woman," I said, staring off into the water. "What's this Gar guy talk about with your mom?"

She shrugged. "He came to our house two years ago I think. I don't really remember. Last time was a couple weeks ago, though, and Mom was like, 'Someone's going to hear about you!' and he got all angry, and they talked about my grandpa and his dad."

"Did you know your great-grandpa? I never met him, but your grandfather talks about him a lot to me."

Cassandra nodded, her eyes downcast. "Yeah. He was always busy though. My mom doesn't let me see my grandpa much either."

"He's busy too," I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I see him a lot. Want me to tell him you want to come by?"

She nodded and smiled, and I scrounged up an excuse to leave her in the garden. Whatever Rensler had wanted me to find out from Cassandra, I figured I'd learn more from whoever this "Gar" character was – and I didn't think there was much more I could learn here. I've have to find someone better connected in the city to pursue my next lead, and not someone who'd blab to the first face they saw. Whatever I was digging into, I wanted to keep it a secret until I had something solid to tell Creon.

I was so caught up in my thoughts I didn't notice someone watching me from between the trees.

"What are you doing?"

I spun to find a boy resting against a thick tree trunk, watching me with narrow black eyes. His black hair and gaunt face made him look even more suspicious of me. His attire was quintessential Capitol, from the long golden tunic he wore that ran down to mid-thigh to his black trousers, lined with silver and sparkling purple stones down the sides. He could stand to eat more, but given the Capitol's obsession with staying thin, I imagined he was following the norm.

"Excuse me?" I said, stepping back.

"Victors shouldn't be here," said the boy, stepping out from the brush. He didn't look much older than me, if at all. "Why're you talking with Cassie, Terra?"

"Do I know you?"

"Doubt it."

"Are you spying on me?"

"You're not very subtle talking in the open, especially when you were talking to my sister."

"Your sister?" I said, my head whirring. "Bera?"

"Yeah."

"You're Taurus's son?"

He shrugged. "Marcus Sharpe. Please don't talk about him in the open like this."

"What –"

"Terra, I heard what you were saying to Cassie, getting her to talk about people coming to her house and all. I don't know what you're up to, but that's not very smart."

"First off, I don't even know you," I said, narrowing my eyes. "And I don't care who you are, either. Secondly, that's a private conversation. Private."

He slumped his shoulders and frowned. "Look. I've seen you around here before, everyone with eyes has. Clearly you're not just a normal old victor, but if you're going to go prodding people like Cassie in the open when everyone can hear…I mean, if I can hear it, are you thinking about who else can?"

"The hells do you care? Whoever you are spying on me?"

"Well, more than me are probably listening on this very conversation we're having right now," he said. "I…I mean, I watched you in last year's Hunger Games, and I know you're coming around here and talking the president and everything. I don't know how things work in District 5, or how you even waltzed in here, but…I mean, if I can figure out you're up to something by overhearing you for two minutes, so can the rest of the world."

I scowled. "Not sure what your problem is with me getting to know people."

"I'm trying to give you advice. You're not from here, I just…"

"Well, thanks. Now go listen in on someone else's private conversation."

I shoved past him and hurried out of the garden. I had things to find out about this Gar character – and wanted to put as much distance between myself and Taurus Sharpe's son as possible. Creep.