The yearly approach of the reaping, crawling toward her day by day, has taught Katniss about the indifference of time. And yet she somehow hopes that the ten weeks heralding her wedding will sprawl out forever. It will be like an endless summer Sunday, and she will hunt with Gale and braid her sister's hair with flowers, and all the evils of her future will remain distant and quiet, and leave her at bay.

But it is November, and this is a barren time. Time passes relentlessly and her joys are few. The ground is bone-hard and there is little game to be had, yet she is still most at peace lodged in a tree, watching the ground, the hunter and not the prey. How she will miss the trees when she relocates to the Capitol. She sits and feels the rough bark and inhales the smell of pine, and she tries to learn the shapes of her favorite perches so she can remember them later. There will be no forests where she is going, and everything will smell of roses.

Everyone continues like nothing has changed. What else is there to do? Katniss hunts, Prim studies, their mother works. They stop watching television altogether. Any time President Snow appears, Katniss has to leave the room lest she choke on her own anxiety.

But once or twice a week, without warning or preparation, an unfamiliar car appears in their driveway. Out of it steps television crews and stylists, and Katniss is expected to drop everything to make a public appearance. She supposes she should be grateful that she doesn't have to trek into the Capitol for these interrogations, but it's hard to feel gratitude for anything. A scriptwriter provides her with lines she must memorize and repeat ad nauseam in a dozen variations. A stranger strips her and prods her and complains that her figure doesn't fit whatever dreadful dress they've brought, as though Katniss is to blame for the unfashionable shape of her body. At least in the Games they occasionally respected that she was a child; now, at nineteen, the stylists think nothing of grasping at her breasts and genitalia as they dress her and pin her and make her perfect for the cameras. Katniss wonders if President Snow knows how much they touch her, and if he condones it. She wonders if it's his idea.

The interviewers ask the same questions again and again; and, sometimes, new ones that make her skin vibrate with nausea.

'Tell us how you fell in love with President Snow!'

She gives the same fabricated answer a dozen times in a dozen different outfits. 'Oh, it was the moment he crowned me, really…' 'I think it was that moment at the coronation…' 'The moment he put that crown on my head…' She starts to forget which versions she's told.

'Tell us what the dress will look like!'

Every time, she laughs and shakes her head. 'That's a closely guarded secret…' 'Oh, that's a secret for my stylists…' 'You'll have to wait and see!'

Sometimes they ask something more off-kilter. 'What does Peeta Mellark think of your engagement?' 'When did you and the President first kiss?' 'Who is the better kisser, Peeta or the President?' She deflects these questions with coy smiles and head-shakes that she practices in the mirror.

Other questions ask for a story of rags-to-riches romance. 'How did you, just a girl from District 12, win the heart of the President?'

She so loathes when they call her girl, but she smiles her rosy smile and says the line her scriptwriter provided. 'I think I just loved him with so much of my heart that he was blinded by it.' She finds that one particularly idiotic.

They tell her how charmed the Districts are by this romance. Why, if a little nobody like her can first win the Hunger Games and then the heart of the President, then anyone can achieve anything! Panem, a shining meritocracy! Katniss smiles until her face burns.

'Some people think that in District 12 everyone amounts to nothing,' she recites. 'But I'm living proof that if we set our minds to it, we can rise to the top.' Originally, the line read we can do anything. But someone said that smelt of sedition, and so they replaced it. Rise to the top. How insipid. It makes it sound like she's talking about climbing on top of the President.

Which is what they're all imagining.

One particularly rancid interview, conducted for some vile little gossip program, drives incessantly into the topic of her sex life. Crammed into the parlor, an overfed fire scalding Katniss' freshly hairless legs, the interviewer asks four times if she's a virgin. Katniss, running out of ways to deflect, is given the signal by her scriptwriter to relent.

'Well, yes, I am,' she says, and the interviewer coos as though she's in ecstasy.

'Tell us, Katniss: did you always intend to save yourself for marriage?'

Katniss doesn't need to glance at her scriptwriter to know the right answer to give to that one. 'Ever since I first met President Snow, I knew I had to save myself for him.' She feels like there are cockroaches crawling under her skin.

'And isn't he handsome!' the interviewer squeals, and a hologram throws up some picture of Snow. Katniss regards it with indifference. He doesn't look like a real human being. He is marble and dust; a statue of an old man, and nothing more.

'Oh, I love him so much,' she says vaguely to fill the awkward silence.

Then the reporter leans in as though it's just the two of them and not an audience of however many thousands of bored morons. 'So, Katniss, are you nervous about the wedding night?' She grasps Katniss' hands and Katniss wonders if she'd prefer to cut off this woman's hands or those of President Snow. 'Are you worried about your first time?'

Katniss feels her jaw calcify and tries to sound as sweet as a newborn doe. 'Of course not,' she croons. 'I trust Coriolanus completely.'

Calling him Coriolanus is like ash in her mouth, and whenever she's not on camera she calls him Snow. She shouldn't, really: should get into good habits. Can't afford to slip up. But somehow, being on first name terms with him is almost worse than having strangers ask about her non-existent future sex life.

And when these interviews are concluded, the cameras and the stylists and the awful, inhuman interviewers fold back into their cars and drive away, and then everyone can pretend life is normal again. This is how the ten weeks pass: hunting, and loneliness, and public humiliation, and pretending. Might as well get the practice: she has a life of pretense to look forward to.

At sunset of the first day of her final week, Katniss walks in from hunting with nothing but an emaciated hare to show for her eight hours of effort, which she will butcher and send to the Hawthornes. Even if Gale must be avoided, his siblings still need to eat. She finds her mother at the sink, washing the same plate over and over again, and Katniss tries to keep their gazes apart as she throws down the hare on the counter and starts to dress it. The silence surrounding Katniss' engagement has grown so ripe that it could burst.

'Katniss,' says her mother suddenly, her tone forced and bright. Katniss does not look away from the dead animal.

'Yes?'

'I wanted to ask…'

Katniss does not want to hear this question. She wants to think only about the hare: bend back the leg, expose the joint. Cut off the feet, one by one. Some say these are lucky. Katniss thinks they're only lucky to starving dogs.

'I wanted to ask,' her mother tries again, 'if you're happy?'

Katniss turns sharply. This is not the question she anticipated. Happy? She no longer thinks of happiness as an available emotion to her. Warm food, her sister's safety, no one she knows dead in the past few months: this is happiness.

'If I'm happy?'

'Yes. With… I mean… Are you and President Snow… Will you be happy with him?'

Her mother's face is terror floating in sour milk. Katniss' mouth falls open. Her mother, who lost her husband; her mother, who has seen her twelve-year-old daughter reaped; her mother, who has watched Katniss kill children: now she wants reassurance that her daughter is going to be happy to marry the man who is, let's face it, responsible for all these things. Katniss wants to throw her knife into something soft that bleeds. But instead, as she has done since she was twelve, she provides for her mother.

'I… Well, he'll keep me safe – and he'll keep you and Prim safe, too.' She tries to think of good things about Snow. He is polite – even when threatening to kill you. He's rich. He's organized. He dresses well. Katniss runs out of good things to say. She takes a breath, and once she's begun the lies flow like wine. 'Yes, mother, I'll be happy with him. He's kind to me. He's really quite a sweet man. He's…' She thinks back to Caesar's interview. How much easier was that than lying to her mother. 'He'll be good to me and he'll care for me. I'll be happy.'

Relief breaks over her mother's face. 'Oh, Katniss. I… Well, I do hope that… Oh, I love you. My little girl, going to be married.' She is crying now, and probably hopes her daughter will flood into her arms and tell her everything is going to be alright. Instead, Katniss turns back to the hare and starts to cut off its head. Its eyes are like clouded pearls. As she slices open its hide, she finds herself filled with envy. How much simpler it would be if Snow only wanted to cut her in two and eat her raw.

The next day, when a gleaming white Capitol truck pulls up in the driveway, Katniss starts to panic. It's not a television crew. Are the team here to take her already? Did she get the date wrong? She has another week! She doesn't need to leave yet! She hasn't said goodbye!

But the figures that pour out it are not Peacekeepers or Snow's team. Katniss feels relief, annoyance, and then relief again crash through her as two elaborately dressed Capitol citizens and, then, Effie Trinket descend from the vehicle. They are carrying something between the three of them that Katniss immediately assumes is a dead body: long, pale, wrapped in shiny plastic. Her eyes nearly roll out of her skull when she realizes what they're bringing to her front door. Her wedding dress.

Katniss is only grateful that she isn't covered in blood today. She glances at her hands as she goes to answer the door. Well, there is still a thick layer of black blood and grime beneath her nails – but that's ever-present so she doesn't feel like it counts.

Effie greets her in an explosion of smiles and cheek-kisses. 'Oh, my dear, it is so wonderful to see you again!' They clatter into the entrance hall, filling the tiny space with Effie's baby blue curls and strangely triangular skirt-suit. Effie takes Katniss' hands in her own, then catches sight of the grime and seems to regret the decision. 'My, oh my, you do look…' She purses her lips, shakes her head, then beams. 'You look like you're in need of our help.'

The stylists and Effie float into the house. 'Not that I mind, but why are you here, Effie?' asks Katniss.

Effie frames her face atop her hands. 'I'm your maid of honor!'

'Don't I get to choose my maid of honor?'

'No!' says Effie, as though this is perfectly obvious. Katniss rolls her eyes again. She knows nothing about the wedding, the preparations, the styles, the guests, anything at all. Snow – or Snow's team – will decide everything. She is merely the offering. The sacrificial lamb is in no place to critique the quality of its bindings or the comfort of the stone upon which it will have its throat slit.

A voice comes from the top of the stairs. 'What is going on?' Prim is leaning over the banister, her nose wrinkled in adolescent sulk.

'Dress fitting,' says Katniss, flatly.

'We have one for you too, darling!' says Effie. 'You'll be a bridesmaid, of course!'

'Oh, hooray.' Prim's voice mimics the flat tone of her sister's, and Katniss breaks into her first smile.

'Come on,' says Katniss. 'Let's go to my room and get this over with.'

'Absolutely not. No way. Is this a joke? This has to be a joke.'

Katniss is standing in the middle of her bedroom with Effie, Prim (already dressed in an ugly pink-white meringue of a dress), and the two stylists perched on the bed and chairs around her. Thus far, Katniss has only managed to get into the underwear. She couldn't understand it at first: some kind of paneling, an abundance of net, wires, and a minute pair of underwear. The stylists explained to her the mechanics of the fastenings, and after much pinching and pulling they have managed to encase her in the first layer of the bridal attire. This involves a corset that clenches her waist so tightly she feels like she's been shot; a bustier that squeezes every inch of her breasts into cleavage; stockings and a garter-belt; and, most ludicrously, a pair of satin underwear that are so tight she can feel her most intimate parts start to go numb.

'You look absolutely fabulous!' Effie exclaims.

'No, I do not. I look…' She turns, evaluating the new shape of her body with mesmerized offense.

Prim snorts and points. 'Those hide literally nothing.'

Katniss glances at the reflection of her crotch, which is indeed embossed by her genitalia. 'Yeah, I'm not wearing those. Or any of this. This farce is bad enough; I don't see why I have to be dressed up like a… a…' She cannot think of any comparison obscene enough, and so she jabs her finger toward her reflection. 'Like that.'

Effie looks like she's in real emotional distress. 'But… you know, Katniss, this is the absolute height of fashion right now. Isn't it, girls?'

The other two stylists nod vigorously. One says, 'They say that Mayor Slowbeth's wife wore underwear so small that he accidentally swallowed them on the honeymoon.'

'That's stupid,' says Katniss. 'I'll wear whatever stupid dress he's picked out for me, but I'm not wearing the underwear.'

'First of all,' says Effie, a little peeved, 'President Snow did not design this outfit. Valentina and Lyssie here designed it, and they did an absolutely spectacular job. Didn't you, girls?' The stylists have the good sense to look sufficiently humble and bashful. 'Secondly, Katniss, the marital lingerie is integral to the wedding outfit. It cannot be simply cast aside.'

'Effie.' Katniss' voice is bulldozer-flat. 'No one is going to see this. I'm not going to fuck President Snow. I don't need the underwear.'

'But…' Effie looks stricken. 'My dear, without the support of the bustier, the dress shall lose its entire structure!' And then, with a tone of real tragedy, she adds: 'It's such a shame your bosom is so small.'

'I can get you a couple of apples to stuff down the dress,' offers Prim, and Katniss hurls a sock at her. They are almost having fun.

'I suppose we can dispense with the panties,' says Effie, as though this is a terrible, personal sacrifice. 'But the rest is essential. It simply won't work otherwise. And you need to look perfect!' At this, her smile wavers. 'It's your wedding day, after all. It should be the happiest day of your life.'

A thin silence settles over the room. There is understanding in Effie's shaky smile, and Katniss realizes that she is trying, in her limited capacity, to help.

Then Effie makes the mistake of trying to help a little bit more.

'Oh!' she says. 'That reminds me. I brought you a wedding gift. Of course, President Snow has declined any formal gift-giving, but I wanted to give you something just from me. Just between us girls.'

She rifles in her handbag and removes a beautifully wrapped rectangle, which Katniss is sure must be a book. She pulls at the golden ribbon, then pulls it some more, then has to spend a full minute undoing the elaborate knot. When the cover is finally revealed, Katniss' eyebrows disappear into her hairline and she has to bite her tongue to stop from either screaming or laughing.

'I haven't read it myself,' says Effie (though Katniss doubts she has read much of anything), 'but it came very highly recommended.'

It's a self-help book. The title reads, Silver Linings: Negotiating Age Gap Relationships.

Katniss looks at Effie and wonders if she could bludgeon her to death with it, but there is a strange, confused, painful understanding in her expression that cuts into Katniss and, for the first time since Snow appeared at her door, makes her want to cry.

'Thank you, Effie,' she says, very quietly.

Effie wipes away a tear with a perfectly manicured fingernail. 'I'm sure that you and President Snow will… Well, I'm sure it will all work out. Weddings are so beautiful, don't you think?'

Katniss catches sight of her reflection once again. You can, indeed, see her entire vulva. 'Yeah. Just beautiful.'

Katniss rises early the day before the wedding. Snow's team will arrive at 10am to convey her to the Capitol. What will happen if she refuses to go? Will they drag her, kicking and screaming? Will Snow call the whole thing off?

She checks in on Prim, who is sleeping deeply. She looks so small, coiled beneath her sheets, and it seems impossible to Katniss that Prim is now nearly the age that she was when she volunteered for the Games. Katniss didn't feel like a girl, then. She no longer knows what she feels like.

She walks the streets, which are empty and smoke grey in the hour before dawn. She wishes there was time to hunt, just to feel the smell of pine in her lungs and forest beneath her feet one last time, but there is no time left. No time at all. Every footstep is another wasted second, and the sky is lightening at an alarming rate.

Katniss walks out of the Victors' Village into the town and her feet take her to their old house in the Seam, by which point the sun has already started to loll over the horizon.

Not yet! Not yet!

The house has not been their home in so long. The door half falls off its hinges when Katniss pushes it open, and a rough leak has eaten away a good section of the roof. But Katniss tiptoes to the old bedroom she shared with Prim, and there the old bed is, mostly in one piece. She pulls back the blanket and its thick layer of dust, and there she cocoons herself.

She hasn't felt like a child in so long. Not since she was twelve and she became the parent their mother could not be. And since then she's killed, lost people, and feared for her life more moments than not. She clutches her hands around her stomach, still slim with youth, and rubs her hands over the fuzz of her thighs, the small swell of her breasts, her collarbone, the backs of her hands which are cool as ice, the weight of her braid, and between her legs, where she rarely touches herself. Whatever Snow might say, she is giving this body away just as she did at the reaping. They wiped away every trace that the Games left on her body. Could they do the same with her marriage? If Snow marks her, inside or out, can that be scrubbed away?

Within the musty warmth of her familiar blankets, Katniss hears the thrum of a hovercraft. It is distant at first, but then so loud she knows it can only be descending outside the house. She jerks upright, then goes to the window. A huge craft is landing brutally in the street and what used to be their garden, compacting a beaten fence beneath its hull.

Why are you here? Why are you so early? Why are you not at the new house?

She tries to keep her face composed as she strides outside to meet the strangers who file out of the craft. She hopes for Effie. She hopes for Cinna. She hopes for anyone, really, that could provide a friendly face. But no one here is known to her. A half dozen armed security emerge and then a man with a clipboard, dressed in neutral grey, flanked by two figures that must be the assistants to the assistant. Katniss stands with folded arms.

The man appraises her. 'Miss Katniss Everdeen,' he proclaims. It isn't a question.

'How did you know I was here?'

The man gives her a wearied expression. 'We could find you anywhere, Miss Evedeen.'

She tries not to let her anger show. 'You're too early. I was told the pickup was at 10am. It's not even eight.'

'It's past eight, Miss Everdeen.' The man is peevish and addresses Katniss like he would like to be anywhere else. 'But it is ten of the clock in the Capitol, which is the schedule we are on. We will leave now.'

'Wait,' she flounders. The security have begun to advance on her, not with aggression, merely with quiet insistence. 'Aren't my mother and sister coming too? They'll be at the ceremony, right? And I need to say goodbye to my friends, and I need to pack...'

The peevish man breathes in with a kettle hiss. 'Your family will be conveyed by train. You are being flown in; as fiancée to the President, you do not take the train. If goodbyes were of such importance to you, Miss Everdeen, you should have made them earlier. You have no need to pack; everything will be provided for you. Now, we have a schedule, and we are now ninety seconds behind it. If you will please board the vessel, we shall be on our way.'

'I… But… Can I please—'

Two members of the security team place hands on her shoulders. Katniss feels her heart sink through her and fall into some faraway, dark place. The security push her and she steps forward, her arms folded like two tight snakes, and she counts the beautiful seconds while the smell of pine and coal fill her until the hovercraft door slides pneumatically shut behind them and all she can smell is that strange, artificial, Capitol smell.

The desire to cry rises in her throat, hangs there, then falls away. Katniss stares at the awful little pale leather chairs, the coffee table, the refreshments, the windows. All of it is hateful and sickening to her.

She locks her gaze onto the man with the clipboard. 'Is Snow here?'

The man chuckles as though she's simple. 'My goodness, no. President Snow is in the Capitol. He is a very busy man, you know.'

This, oddly, does not comfort her. She is just another piece of luggage, summoned from one side of the country to the other to serve someone's whim.

Not a whim, she reminds herself. You got yourself into this. So deal with it.

For a long time, Katniss doesn't sit. And then she does, and it feels like a surrender, but she doesn't know to whom. She looks out of the little windows and watches the ground collapse beneath her, the trees giving way to mountains, huge rocky shapes and, everywhere, that deathly coating of snow. People used to freeze to death in the winter, sometimes. She wonders how that would feel. When the hypothermia sets in you start to feel lovely and warm, and then you get sleepy, and then you curl up like a pet cat… What a pleasant death, that would be.

The flight is far shorter than the train. Only a couple of hours pass before the Capitol emerges beneath them. The suburbs first (Katniss didn't even know there were suburbs), yawning out in every direction, and then the mass of buildings that climb so tall she doesn't know how they can possibly fly between them. She is able to pick out the City Circle below, where she and Peeta once rode in chariots, three years ago. And there, vast and green, is the President's house. The hovercraft continues on, unhurried.

She turns to the clipboard man. 'Aren't we going to Snow's house?'

The man regards her as though she is now ill as well as stupid. 'We will not be landing at President Snow's mansion. You will be taken to a hotel near the venue to be…' He pauses and gives a long, unimpressed look at her body. 'Prepared.'

Katniss wonders if all of Snow's team are going to treat her like this. She wonders if he has instructed them to be particularly unpleasant to her. Or perhaps he doesn't care at all: perhaps her comfort and her degradation mean as little to him as a coin toss.

She realizes, quite suddenly, that despite the million evil things for which she knows President Snow is responsible, that she really knows nothing at all about what her fiancé is like. What if the things she told her mother weren't lies? What if he is kind to her? What if he tells her jokes?

'Knock knock,' says President Snow's voice in her head. 'What do you call a 12-year-old tribute? A warm up.'

Katniss shuts her eyes. Pictures dead Rue. Pictures Snow's strange smile. Pictures him gazing into her as he placed that crown atop her head.

'We're here!' crows the clipboard man, and Katniss keeps her eyes shut even after the hovercraft thumps dully onto the landing platform.

She is not even given the opportunity to stand: the security haul to her feet like she's a prisoner (which she is, of course), and then she is marched out of the hovercraft and onto a building top so high that even the heaviness of her braid streams in the wind. She is suddenly grateful to be so manhandled; it keeps her from falling over.

Ahead is a glass dome enclosing a viewing platform for hotel guests, and when the doors open the windchill is replaced with odd-smelling, artificial heat. The doors shut behind her, and Katniss realizes that neither the security nor the awful clipboard man have followed. It is very silent. Windows curve around on all sides, exposing the city below and its screaming lights and haze of people. This is where she will live, forever. No quiet, no dark. Stars you cannot see over the artificial glow. Electronic chatter, cameras, endless crowds, eyes watching her forever and ever…

'You do not look in what I would describe as a conjugal mood,' comes a cool voice, and Katniss' head whips around. Snow is stood some way from her. He is wearing a silver, swanlike suit, and smiling as though they are sharing a private joke.

Which they are not.

Katniss has never liked sharing jokes.

'Your team wouldn't let me say goodbye to my family,' she says. She is satisfied to hear the metal and acid in her voice.

Snow only frowns. 'It's not goodbye, Miss Everdeen. You will see them at the ceremony tomorrow. And on other occasions, if you like. I have no objection to entertaining your family for dinner.'

Katniss forces herself to keep her arms at her side, not to fold them again and broadcast her defensiveness. Don't look weak. Appearances are all she has.

Snow seems completely at ease. He looks better than he did ten weeks ago: a little healthier, a little less worn through. Perhaps their ridiculous plan has really worked and the rebellion is dying down and he is sleeping easier.

'I had them bring you to this location because I have an important political meeting here today, and I wanted the opportunity to speak with you before…' He breathes out a little note of amusement. 'Well, before our wedding tomorrow.' He glances at his watch. 'I'm afraid I only have, oh, seven minutes to spare in my schedule, but I wanted to allot them to you.'

'How generous of you.'

His smile is buttermilk smooth. 'We have seen so little of one another of late. I thought it might be pleasant to spend a little time together. Perhaps you have things you would like to discuss with me.'

'Things I would like to discuss before the wedding? With you? In seven minutes?'

He glances again at his watch. 'Six and a half.'

Katniss clenches her teeth so hard she can feel her jaw pulse, and then she makes herself relax them. She walks along the panel of windows, gazing at the mess of the city beyond. Snow moves to join her and Katniss forces herself to stay put, though anxiety prickles her skin.

'It's a beautiful city,' says Snow, standing close enough that she can smell his rose perfume.

'I hate it.'

'How unfortunate,' he says without reproach. 'What would you change about it?' His voice rolls out low and intimate. Katniss thinks about cutting out his tongue, throwing it in boiling water, then serving it back to him with black pepper.

She surveys the buildings: the skyscrapers like the legs of a dead insect, the vast streets, the shopping districts, the people… Oh, the people. Once upon a time, Katniss could attempt an empathy with them. But Katniss is too tired, now. She has woken too many times to the memories of dead children. She has grown dry inside.

'I'd burn the whole thing to the ground.'

She glances at Snow's reflection. His eyes are fixed on her. He is, still, ever-smiling.

'Hm. An expensive solution,' he says, as though she has made a reasonable suggestion. 'It would certainly be messy. Not exactly a populist move, either. And imagine the smoke pollution.'

'In District 12 the top cause of death for men is black lung,' she says, her voice as placid as a lake.

She can smell his perfume so, so strongly. It is winding into her like vines. She swallows a cough.

'There are worse ways to die, Miss Everdeen,' he murmurs, and Katniss is not sure if he is threatening her. 'I only have four minutes left. Is there nothing you want to ask?'

She turns to look at him and tries as hard as she can to see him not as the President but as – ridiculously, horribly – the man to which she will be married, this time tomorrow. She sees nothing. She sees his smooth smile and the depth of his eyes, and she sees within him the deaths of everyone she has ever loved.

'Do you want to do this?' she asks.

'Marry you?' A wisp of something - uncertainty, consideration, anger? - floats through him. 'Well, you have expertly woven another love story, and a most effective one.' The lightest of furrows and the faintest of smiles touch his face. 'Of course, I cannot say our troubles are entirely over, but… Well, Miss Everdeen, let us just say that I have made my peace with this decision.' He smiles again, as though nothing could ever trouble him. 'Is there anything else you'd like to ask?'

Katniss thinks about running back out the doors, taking a flying leap, and hurtling down to the sidewalk below.

'No, President Snow.'

He seems amused. 'My dear, it would not be inappropriate at this juncture to address me as Coriolanus.'

'I don't want to call you Coriolanus,' she snaps back.

'Then what will you call me when we're married?' he says pleasantly.

Death, she thinks. Death with a cold scythe at my throat. Harvestman for the winter. Dead birds in the frost. A frozen sky.

She tries to twist her mouth into her own cold smile, but her lip trembles with disgust and a terrible, aching sadness that this – this! – is where her life has ended up.

At last she says, quite simply, 'Husband.'