Katniss cannot face another week of stewing in her own depression until Snow has need of her again, and so she finally decides to venture beyond her chambers. The mansion – labyrinthine, gaping, haunted by emptiness – seems hostile to her presence. She finds and then loses a library, a conservatory, the ballroom where their reception was held, another completely different ballroom, a four-room art gallery, a music room, a swimming pool, and what seems an endless number of parlors and rooms that serve no purpose but to house expensive couches and art. Katniss hates all of the paintings. Forests that don't look like forests, grey faced men, big animals long since dead. She preferred Peeta's pictures of the Games.

She meets no one but servants, and they do not speak to her. Some are avoxes, some are not, but unless she gives them a specific, answerable question – 'Is this the way to the entrance hall?' – even the speaking ones don't respond to her. Katniss had long wondered at the wealthy's ability not to see their employees as people, but now she is struggling to see them as anything more than resentful appliances. She wonders how many servants Snow has. She never meets more than a dozen in a single day, but perhaps he has hundreds and he switches them out so she can't learn to recognize them. Keep her isolated. Keep her alone and disoriented. Keep her dependent on him.

Or perhaps she's just too unwell to remember faces anymore.

One morning, when she is awake uncharacteristically early, her wanderings take her to a dining room that she has somehow never managed to discover before. She glances inside and is about to move on when a tiny voice suddenly calls her name: 'Katniss?'

Prim?

Katniss stops, turns, stares. It's not Prim. The girl is so similar, though: wide, baby animal eyes; neat, perfectly contrived features; big, hopeful smile. Twelve or thirteen years old, perhaps, and shimmering with joy. She is sat at the far end of the table, a tidy little breakfast laid out before her. Katniss wanders over. She recognizes this girl.

'I saw you at the wedding,' says Katniss.

The girl's smile gets very big. 'Yeah, I was grandpa's ring-bearer!' She points at her bowls of cereal and strawberries and cream. 'Do you want some breakfast?'

Katniss hovers. Is this allowed? 'Sure,' she says, and awkwardly sits. The girl seems ecstatic to slide over some of her excess of food.

Katniss reaches for a strawberry, uncomfortable under the girl's intense gaze, and eats it. The girl's smile gets, somehow, even wider.

'Oh, I'm so happy I get to meet you at last,' bubbles the girl excitedly, and it seems this act of breaking bread has opened the floodgates. 'I was so, so excited when grandpa told me you were coming to live here. I've been a fan of you for ages, ever since you won the Hunger Games. I used to wear my hair just like yours.' Her smile shrinks a tiny bit. 'Well, before grandpa told me to stop. Why don't you wear your hair in a braid anymore? Did he tell you to stop, too?'

Katniss touches the edge of her hair unconsciously. When she doesn't need it styled for an event, she just lets it hang loose. She's lost the energy for braiding it, as she's lost the energy for so many things.

'No,' she says. 'I just… changed it.' She tries to compose herself. 'So… you're Sn… Coriolanus' granddaughter?' His name burns her tongue.

The girl extends a hand and Katniss awkwardly takes it.

'I'm Caltha Snow,' she says, and then the happy gabbing recommences. 'I just could not believe it when grandpa said he was going to marry you. I was so upset. I thought you and Peeta were forever. I had a picture of you both on my wall. Why did you break up?'

This question is asked with such guileless charm that Katniss is caught completely off guard.

'Uh…' Somehow she thinks her usual invented narrative of Peeta's boyish immaturity is not going to play with a teenage girl. 'I just… fell in love with someone else. It happens sometimes.'

The girl, Caltha, screws up her nose in a way that recalls Prim to a shocking degree. 'Why would you stop loving someone who cared about you so much? Peeta almost died for you! And why marry grandpa? I still don't understand that at all.' She takes a mouthful of cereal and Katniss is terrified she is expected to respond, but Caltha continues with the force of which only teenage girls are capable. 'I mean, he is so old. You're not much older than I am, right? Your birthday is May 8, and mine is September 21, which means you're six and a bit years older. Grandpa is way older than that. Isn't it weird? I would think it was really weird to marry someone that old.' She pulls a face of theatrical disgust and Katniss cannot help but smile. 'I cannot think of something grosser than kissing someone that old. Why do you like him?' She pops a strawberry into her mouth and fixes Katniss with an expectant stare.

Katniss shifts in her seat. 'Um… Well…' Her line about Snow's supposed sexual prowess is certainly not appropriate this time. But this question does present her with an opportunity. 'What do you like about him?'

Caltha's large, lamb eyes stare at her. 'He's grandpa,' she says, as if this is a stupid question.

'Would you like him if he wasn't your grandpa?'

Caltha does not seem to like this question, but then she laughs. 'I don't know, I've never thought about it! But you like him and he isn't your grandpa.'

'Yes,' says Katniss, slowly and faintly. 'I like him very much.'

'Why?'

She swallows. 'Sometimes you just… fall in love with someone. And I fell in love with—' She catches herself just in time. 'Coriolanus.'

The girl looks at her, unsatisfied and quizzical. 'Really weird,' she says. Then her smile is back. 'I have to go to school now. But we should do breakfast again. I want to know everything about Peeta.' She slides off the chair and grins. 'I collect all of his trading cards.'

And with that she is gone, half-running from the room, off to wherever she'll be conveyed to school. Katniss stares after her, perplexed and transfixed. Snow has a granddaughter? Peeta has trading cards?

As she sits contemplating these equally bizarre questions, Katniss feels an unfamiliar warmth in her chest. It's like happiness. It's the most basic, warm form of happiness humans get from social interaction. At least, the kind of interaction where no one is trying to traumatize or torture or kill the other. It feels so wonderful to speak with someone… good. Someone real, whose kindness isn't embellished with threat.

Someone who could be her friend.

Well, Katniss will need to sort out her explanation about her love affair with Snow, and she will no doubt need to endure a lot of embarrassing adolescent questions about Peeta, but so what? She could actually have a friend in this new, awful insanity she calls her life. There might be something in her days other than boredom and disgust.

Katniss finds an alarm clock in her chambers and ensures she will arise early enough to find the room again and meet Caltha for breakfast the next day. When it wakes her in the morning, she hurries downstairs, only getting lost three or four times, and eventually finds the dining room again. It is deserted, but the breakfast is there. At first she thinks that she's too late, or that Caltha isn't coming, but then the girl arrives, bright as a daisy in a white-and-yellow dress.

'Katniss!' she exclaims, and Katniss is caught off guard as the girl runs up to her and gives her a hug. 'I am so glad you came back! I worried all day that I had annoyed you too much with my stupid questions.'

Katniss smiles, and for once it's a smile that doesn't hurt her face. 'You didn't annoy me at all.'

Caltha grins, and they settle into a vertiginous conversation that roves over Caltha's thoughts about Peeta, her thoughts about the wedding, her crush on a school boy, her crush on another school boy, her favorite and least favorite subjects at school, and a dozen other absolutely banal and pointless topics that make Katniss want to cry with happiness to hear about. No talk of rebellions. No one asking her about her sex life. No one touching her. This girl is frothy, childish joy, and Katniss soaks it up like she's been starving for it.

They are enjoying their third breakfast together and Katniss is catching up on the ongoing saga involving Caltha and a third, totally unrelated school boy she likes ('But does he like me? Or did he just really need to borrow a pencil?') when both their attention is drawn by the arrival of another guest.

'Grandpa!' says Caltha. 'I finally met Katniss! She's so fun and way less scary than she seemed in the Games.'

Caltha smiles wide and Katniss does the same, but then her smile slips as she sees Snow's face. She hasn't seen him since she attacked him with the scissors, and his parting expression was one of unsettling delight. There is no delight in him now. Standing there, severe in a charcoal suit, seeing her side-by-side with his granddaughter, his expression is black wrath.

Snow glances at Caltha. His voice is sweet and gentle. 'My dear, you should run along to school.'

'No way, I don't have to leave for twenty more minutes!'

Snow inclines his head. 'You should leave now. You don't want to be late.'

Caltha's smile also slips. 'Okay.' She gets off her chair and lifts her hand in a little goodbye wave to Katniss, who returns it, then watches the girl disappear.

She expects Snow to remain – surely he has something unpleasant to say to her? – but he follows his granddaughter out without sparing Katniss so much as a glance. How unusual for him to ignore her. If there's one thing to say about Snow, he at least pays her attention.

Well, what does Katniss mind to be left alone? That's just what she asked for.

When Katniss comes to breakfast the fourth day, the dining room is empty. There is not even a breakfast laid out. She walks a slow circuit around the table, and then she yanks out a chair and sits in her usual place. She sits and she waits, and the minutes tick past, and even though Katniss knows that Caltha isn't coming back she stays there until it's almost lunchtime.

She is absolutely furious.

This is how Snow finds her. Katniss has interlaced her fingers so the knuckles glow white. This stops her from chewing her nails.

'Where is she?' Katniss asks, mouth set in hatred, refusing to meet Snow's eyes.

Snow's voice is perfectly calm and amiable. 'Caltha has gone back to live with the rest of her family. She'll be much happier there.'

'Why did you send her away?'

For a moment, she thinks Snow is going to spin her some pointless lie about the girl's health or education or something insipid, but he answers her straightforwardly. 'It is not appropriate for you to fraternize with my granddaughter, Katniss.'

She looks at him, then. He is wearing a white and very pale blue suit today, almost celestial, and Katniss wants to ruin it with blood and breakfast strawberries.

But there are no strawberries today.

'Why on earth not?' A crazed laugh erupts from her. 'I could have had a friend! I actually felt like I had a reason to get up in the mornings! Do you know what it's like when the only reasons to get out of bed are either to hang off your arm and let you kiss me or to do absolutely nothing at all? Just day after day rotting in my rooms. I actually felt okay for once! And you had to take it away from me. Just to punish me more.'

Snow lets her get through her little tirade. 'Katniss,' he says, very calmly. 'She is my granddaughter. Not my daughter. Not my sister. My granddaughter. You absolutely cannot be a friend of my granddaughter. You know how difficult it is to sell the charade of our marriage; what would people think if they saw you and my granddaughter as peers?'

'No one needs to know!' She is trying to shout, but her voice is stretched thin. 'We can just have breakfast together! That's it! There doesn't have to be anything else!' Her heart is wringing itself out. The first good thing in her new life, taken away. She even forgets about dignity. 'Please, Snow,' she says. 'Just let me have this one thing.'

There is something deeply, peculiarly unpleasant in Snow's expression. He doesn't even look at her when he speaks. 'Absolutely not. Let you know her…' He shakes his head in revulsion. 'It's unthinkable.'

Katniss has regained the ability to yell. 'What, am I too common? Am I going to drag your family down?' She slams her palm against the table. 'What have I done that you're not happy with? I have smiled, and held your hand, and posed, and kissed you, over and over and over, and I've done a good job at it. And now you dangle the possibility of friendship in front of me, and then you yank it away.' She laughs again. 'It's so hard to keep track of all the different ways I hate you. You're the reason my father died, and all the children in the Games, and the reason I grew up starving, so I hate you for all that. Then I hate you for having to kiss you and let you touch me. And now I have to hate you in whole new ways.' Her eyes are rabid-wide. 'You know, sometimes, before we were married, I wondered what you were really like. Maybe you were one of those "clock on, clock off" kind of men. Show up at work, sign a few death warrants, then when you get home you're nice and funny and loving or whatever. I thought the best I could hope for was marrying a man who might be tolerable to be around when he wasn't massacring civilians. But no. You're cruel. You're so, so cruel. You're worse than I ever imagined.' She offers her best, foxlike sneer. 'No wonder you don't want me around your granddaughter. You're worried I might teach her some fucking morality.'

Snow takes one step toward her. When he speaks, it is deep and rough and incredibly loud: 'I don't want you near her because it is disgusting.'

It is not the volume but the honed, gleaming hatred secateuring through her ears that makes Katniss fall back. She is suddenly terrified. She has been terrified of Snow before: as dictator, as father of the country, as a man who can kill her. This is the first time she has been terrified of him as a husband.

'Seeing you two together,' Snow continues, his voice a lethal rumble, 'is the most revolting sight I have ever had the misfortune to witness. You will not see her again. You will not speak to her again. Is that understood?'

Katniss nods.

'It's obscene,' he says with torrid loathing, and his eyes slide from her face to her body. 'The way you talk, the way you behave… Just look at you.'

Katniss tries to do as she's told and looks down. Is there something wrong with her outfit? It's one of the most sensible things she could find in the closets: an inoffensive flowery sundress, and white flat shoes.

'Is this dress not okay?' She fingers the lace hem. 'I can wear something else. I just try to pick the simplest things in my wardrobe, when I'm allowed. I don't have any pants, so…' She swallows around her fear.

With terrifying immediacy, the indecipherable fury in Snow's face eases, replaced by affable warmth. Katniss feels even more frightened.

'There is nothing wrong with your dress,' he says, and a moment later he is perfectly composed. Katniss cannot move for fear. 'I apologize if I gave you that impression. I misspoke.'

Katniss watches him and does not know if she is in danger. Should she run? She could outrun Snow easily. She could be a hare flying over the fields before he could even ready his limbs.

Snow exhales slowly. The tension remains hanging thick and wet in the air.

'We have an event tonight,' says Snow. 'We'll leave at 7pm. Is that alright?'

She nods again. It's not as though she can say no.

'Good.' He bows his head as though this is the conclusion of a polite conversation. 'Then I shall see you later.'

And with that he leaves her, and Katniss realizes she is trembling. She pinches the skin of her arms and then punches her leg, trying to dissipate the anxiety, and is unable to comprehend what their fight was really about.

An evening out with Snow is about the last thing Katniss wants in the world right now, but she has no choice. She has no choices at all anymore, except which entrée to eat first or which of her husband's arms to hang off. She lingers in the foyer, waiting for Snow, dressed in what the stylists left her. She is unusually self-conscious. The dress is too low-cut, so she keeps her arms folded to hide the cleavage. She begged them for a jacket, but the stylists seemed to think that this was some sort of hilarious joke, so she stopped asking.

Snow is late, which is unusual for him, and Katniss finds herself avoiding his eyes when he arrives. He does not comment or speak to her at all; he only gestures at the door for her to exit first. In the limousine, neither look at one another nor speak until the car is well out of the drive. Katniss realizes she is pulling threads out of her dress and tries to sit still, but it's impossible. Eventually, she forces herself to look at her husband. She cannot stand this silent threat, this idea that he might at any moment shout at her or have someone shot.

'So, where are we going?'

He takes a little breath, then speaks to her quite normally, as though the fight never occurred. 'We're going to an auction.'

'An art auction?'

'Not exactly,' says Snow, delicately. 'This is an auction for people.'

Katniss stares at him. 'People? What, slaves?'

'No, no… Entirely willing participants, you will be glad to know.'

'Willing participants? Like I was for the Games?'

Snow seems to think this is an ironic joke. 'Yes, if you like.'

Katniss can feel her heart start to go with anxiety again. 'Same age demographic?'

'Oh, no, no… That would be unseemly. Sixteen and up.'

Katniss' mouth falls open. Snow looks perfectly content. 'Are… is this… Snow, are you taking me to an auction to sell sixteen-year-olds into… what, prostitution?'

'That is accurate,' says Snow mildly. He turns his blue eyes on her and there is absolutely no remorse or humanity to be seen. 'It's interesting to me that this offends you so much. You watched twelve-year-olds die in the games. Is death less troublesome to you than prostitution?'

Katniss feels her fear and her anxiety melt away into hot, grinding anger.

'You tell me,' she says. 'Why do you make the cut off at sixteen?'

'Because the threat of death against a twelve-year-old is useful. It is extremely evocative. Look at the effect it had on you, volunteering for your sister.' He smiles as though this is a happy, loving memory they both share. 'But the purchase of a child that age for sexual use… That has a limited and problematic utility. It would be an indulgence for the most powerful to explore their less attractive appetites. Encouraging such depravity is counter to maintaining order.'

Katniss stares at him. He speaks so rationally and believes so completely in the consistency of his own nightmare morality. Quite calmly, she says: 'I want to hurt you.'

He regards her as though this is a perfectly reasonable thing to say. 'Would that make you feel better?'

'Yes,' she says immediately.

He smiles and holds up his hand, the one still bearing her fingernail gouges. 'These haven't even healed yet. You'll just have to wait.'

'I want to burn you,' Katniss says quickly. 'I could burn your arm. No one would see. Just get me a lighter.'

Snow's expression sharpens into something she cannot interpret. He is suddenly intense and foreign to her, gilded, his eyes shimmering. Then it is gone, and he is calm, controlled President Snow once again.

'Perhaps another time,' he says, and breaks the gaze.

Katniss decides she will hold him to that.

The drive is longer than Katniss would like and she is soon fidgety, flicking the door handle, drumming her fingers on the seat, then pawing at the minibar and tossing savory biscuits and sweets and tiny bottles of alcohol around the floor. Snow mutters complaints, but does nothing to stop her. What does it matter if she makes a mess? Some servant will clean it up, some servant whose name she'll never know and who probably hates her.

'You know, one day it might be really nice if you just took me to a restaurant or something.' She laughs and it sounds more hysterical than she intends. 'We could have a date night where no one dies or gets raped. Wouldn't that be a novelty?'

To her surprise, Snow makes a sound of agreement. 'That's a good idea. If we are to be stuck with one another for the next ten, twenty years, we might as well make some attempt at normalcy. Many of the ways you and I spend time together seem to disturb you. I don't want you to associate me entirely with trauma.'

Katniss turns her entire body very slowly and fixes Snow with a look of utmost disgust. 'Don't you?'

'Of course not. I told you, Katniss, trauma is only a tool. There are other tools.' He gives her a smile Katniss finds repulsive and evil. 'Perhaps we could go to a ballet. Or an opera. Do you like music?'

Katniss' gaze is uncomprehending and hateful. 'I hate music.'

'That's a shame. Perhaps the theatre, instead.'

'What, find a nice dark backseat corner where you can grope me?' she retorts.

Snow's expression shifts. 'No, Katniss. I was only trying to think of something you might enjoy.' He frowns, discomfited by something more than Katniss' crude comment. 'You do understand that I have to touch you, don't you? It's necessary. I have tried to do it as little as possible.'

That hysterical laugh shakes Katniss once again. 'The man taking me to a prostitution auction is pretending to have morals about sex… Just fantastic.' She realizes she is shivering a little and her teeth are starting to vibrate together, and it's not from cold. She reaches into the chaos she's made of the mini bar and pulls out two identical bottles of white spirits, then falls back on the seat beside Snow, unscrewing one with relish.

'You're not going to get drunk, are you?'

'Just a little bit.' She pours the first down her throat, but before she can get the other uncapped Snow snatches it from her fingers.

'Katniss, I do not want you throwing up again. I need you to hold yourself together tonight. If this is going to be too difficult for you, I have some diazepam you can take.'

Katniss turns her body away from him again and rests her head against the cool window. Thinks about Rue. Thinks about Rue surviving the Games, grieving Thresh, smiling on a Victor's stage… Thinks about Rue, grown a little older, sold like a prize goat… 'I don't want your fucking drugs,' she murmurs.

'It would be better for your health than drinking.'

'Do you think I care about my health?'

He pauses. 'No, Katniss, I don't. And that concerns me.'

She gives him one final, knowing stare. 'Worry about your own health.'

The auction house hums with activity and wet breathing. Candlelit tables fill the room around a catwalk stage, and everyone is eating and drinking and laughing. The attendees are fluorescent and garish, the excitement in the air is sticky and sexual. Everyone here wants to fuck someone. Katniss doesn't want any of them near her.

She is grateful when Snow leads her by the arm to a dark table at the very back. A red velvet rope separates them from the other guests, marking them as special and different. But are they so different? Does Snow taste that particular sexual edge on the air, like burnt marshmallow? Is he here to find a new girl to entertain him? Katniss does not know. This time, she remembers to pause as he pulls out a chair for her.

They sit in silence for a few minutes, then a waiter takes their order and Katniss requests two large vodkas before Snow can stop her. He only orders elderflower water.

'I need you sober, Katniss, and in good form,' he says. 'You need to be seen to publicly approve and, indeed, celebrate these sorts of events, just like the execution. The entire reason we are here is so the Capitol can see that the girl on fire from District 12 is not hostile to their ways.'

Katniss bends her head over the table and whispers loudly. 'But I am hostile to their ways.'

'They can never know that. Smile. Look content.'

Katniss does her best sweet-and-devoted-wife smile and tries to keep the sarcasm out of her face. Once her drinks arrive, she sips slowly. She doesn't want Snow to confiscate her alcohol, which is her lifeline, and maybe he'll be lenient if he sees she's not taking it too fast.

She's going to end up like Haymitch. Incoherent, reviled… But it lessens the anxiety in her stomach and the ache in her chest, and it makes it easier to ignore the slimy way everyone here is talking to one another.

'Perhaps you should spend more time in the gardens,' Snow says after a minute of silence. 'Some exercise might do you good.'

Katniss rolls her eyes and keeps sipping. A mountain to climb and a bobcat to hunt… That would be good exercise.

'Or perhaps you would like to go into the city. Under escort, of course. See some art galleries.'

She doesn't even bother to roll her eyes at that one. One night you watch a woman cooked alive. One night you watch children sold like meat. Then you go and look at a pretty picture to feel better. This is how you live your life.

'Katniss,' says Snow, and his voice is uncharacteristically harsh. She locks eyes with him. 'We need to make conversation. People can see us. We are newlyweds. You cannot sit there like a sulking child. Even if no one can hear us, we can't be seen sitting in resentful silence.'

Katniss gives him a sour look. 'I don't want to make conversation with you. I can't think of anything to say.'

'Well, is there anything you want to ask me?'

She stares into the clear depths of her drink. The edge of the glass is wet with her saliva, and there is a little lipstick on the edge. She hates wearing lipstick.

'Do you regret marrying me?' she says idly, her finger tracing the rim of the glass.

'No. It was a solution to an extremely pressing problem, and one that worked – at least in the short term. It has created other problems, of course… Managing your fits of pique among them.'

'I'm sorry I'm not more to your liking.' She gives a wolf-grin. 'Maybe you'll find a better child bride at the auction tonight.' She hesitates, and then she spits out the little stone that's been nestling in her mind ever since Haymitch first mentioned it. 'I heard you liked to whore out Victors.'

'Did you?' says Snow, his voice hard. 'It's quite true that I have suggested to certain Victors that they might enjoy the wealth and security a certain kind of sensuous lifestyle affords. But it is also a question of necessity. Allowing prostitution helps maintain order. It provides an outlet for people's sexual appetites that might otherwise be spent on more violent and unsavory practices. It contributes to an overall public good. You would not believe what the unregulated brothels in the outer Districts are like. Or perhaps you do know?'

Katniss watches him with lightless eyes. 'Yeah, I know. I know what happens to the girls there. Or are you suggesting I frequented them?'

'I don't know, Katniss.' His eyes glitter darkly. 'Did you?'

She looks at him with disgust. 'Fortunately for me, the hothouse in the Seam didn't take kids under sixteen, and I was thrown into the Hunger Games then. If I hadn't, well…' She shrugs. 'Yeah, probably. We were starving most of the time. That's where I might have ended up.' She sneers at him. 'But you don't need to worry, darling. Your bride is a virgin. I'm intact.'

He ignores that comment. 'So you know how terrible those places are. This is, I assure you, a preferable alternative. And so, yes, I condone a certain well-organized form of prostitution.'

She scoffs. 'How many of the, uh, items for sale actually want to be here, do you think?'

'Some of them,' he says, smiling.

'And what about the others?'

He shrugs, impassive and unconcerned. 'They made the choice to be here. Even choices made under duress are still choices.' He looks deep into her. 'You should know that better than anyone, Katniss. But if it's concerning you, as much as I endorse prostitution, I do not participate.'

'Oh, yeah, you're above all that.' She can feel that she's already a little tipsy. 'You only get with teenagers if it's politically useful.'

Snow looks like he's about to say something less polite, but then the house lights dim and a hush falls over the room.

The auctioneer is in late middle-age, hair black and shiny, dressed in a black suit. There is nothing about him suggestive of lasciviousness. Katniss had expected something more exploitative. He steps up to the podium and introduces the commencement of the auction without any extravagance.

'Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Harrisby's Auctionhouse. You can find all of today's listings in your catalogues.'

Katniss glances around. Every other table seems to have a catalogue, but Snow hasn't cared to pick one up. She feels like a school child who has left her textbook at home.

'Please note that lot 14 has been removed from the auction for undisclosed reasons. We begin with lot 1.'

A spotlight clicks on. An electric whisper passes through the crowd. A girl walks on stage.

Katniss stares, open-mouthed. The room of strangers politely applaud. The girl is completely nude, stripped of her hair as Katniss has been so many times, though cosmetic highlights outline her eyes, lips, her small breasts, and bare genitalia. She is blank-faced and silent. She looks so tiny. She could be made of glass.

'Lot 1,' continues the auctioneer, 'is eighteen years old and may be recognizable to some of you as Stellar Garness, best known for…'

Katniss decides she would prefer to be at the execution. The girl rounds the stage, and then the bidding commences. The amounts of money are ludicrous to her. Enough to live on in the Seam for a year, just to buy a night between the fragile legs of this child. The girl has no reaction when her price is decided and the hammer brought down, and Katniss wonders if this is her first time or her hundredth. This girl is the first of twenty lots, most of them girls but a few boys among them, and nearly all of them look like schoolkids to Katniss. Two of them are Victors from previous years, one of which she vaguely recognizes as Finnick Odair. As he rounds the stage he catches her eye and winks at her, and Katniss frowns back.

Do they think I'm a potential buyer…?

At least the execution only had the one participant. And it was over quickly.

It's a real struggle not to down both of her drinks, but Katniss distracts herself from the auction by making a game of it. One lot called, one sip. Two sips if it's a boy – that's a bonus. She tracks the liquid as it decreases, fascinated by the way the surface tension lifts the vodka a little bit up the sides of the glass… If she just doesn't look at the stage, she can pretend she's at home, maybe having a drink at Haymitch's… And he would be making fun of her for being such a lightweight…

'Katniss, are you alright?'

Katniss raises her head slowly and turns her sneering cat eyes upon her husband. 'Am I alright? Are you alright? Aren't you enjoying this?'

'Not particularly,' he says, with immense calm. 'It's quite dull.'

Katniss looks at the stage. This current naked girl looks a lot like Prim, if she were a little older, a little more vacant. Silver glitter rings her eyes and tiny areolae.

Something that feels like evil slides into Katniss' stomach. She leans over to Snow, her smile as small and perfect as the girl's breasts, and whispers smoothly. 'This one looks like Caltha.'

Snow's expression is pitch. She could drown in it. It could set her on fire.

Katniss glances around her, looking at the strangers' faces, the refracted lights, the drinks that glimmer like colorful little pools. She and Snow are in their own tiny, private world, their little glowing fishbowl of hate and disgust. Everything spins a little bit. She is drunker than she realized.

Katniss leans further over the table. Her voice runs low and viscous. 'You know, I think you like this. I think the man who married a teenager likes this.'

'You would be incorrect.'

He avoids her eyes. She pushes closer. She feels her body lift away from the chair and she places one hand on the table-cloth, one hand on Snow's shoulder.

'Katniss, sit down,' he whispers.

'Why? Aren't we in love? Don't we need to show everyone how in love we are?' She is closing in on him. She can discern the waves of silver crashing on the blue in his eyes. He holds her gaze. 'I love you,' she lies sweetly. 'You make me feel things that no one else does.' This much, at least, is true. She touches his face.

'Katniss, stop.'

'Oh, "Stop, go," make up your mind.' Her voice is a frenetic whisper. '"Touch me, don't touch me, more passion, more intimacy, now it's too much, behave, Katniss, behave." Is this not what you wanted?'

'No, it isn't.' He puts a hand on her arm. It looks like affection and feels like restraint. 'You're making a scene.'

'So? Let them think I can't help myself. I just want you so much. How could I possibly control myself?' She holds her tongue between her teeth and touches her lips to his. He returns the kiss: he has to. Too many people are watching. She has him trapped. She is having a sort of fun, and there is a silvery twist of delight in the depths of her belly.

'Katniss,' he says, and whispers into her ear so deeply that she shivers. 'Stop.'

'No,' she whispers back. She puts more of her weight on him. Some people are staring at them. She's almost in his lap.

'Katniss, I don't want to threaten you.'

'Go on, threaten me,' she says. 'Be honest with me, for once.'

'I am always honest with you.' His voice is hot and rough in her ear. 'Sit down and control yourself, or I will need to hurt your sister.'

Her pleasure sours. She leans back, sits again. Picks up her drink. 'You spoiled the game.'

'You forced my hand,' he says. 'There are too many people watching us, and you are drunk.'

Her enmity is palpable, and people are still watching. Snow reaches out and grasps her fingers in his. She tries to pull away, but he holds her firm. 'Stop touching me.'

'I can't.' His voice does not bend. 'People are staring. Act normal. Pretend you're happy.' He turns back to the stage, feigning interest.

Katniss smiles, all teeth and no joy. 'You're the worst person in the world.'

Her trapped fingers twitch against him and her fingertips seek out the little scars she wrought on his skin, and for once her smile is genuine as she rubs the scabs. Snow glances at her, hiding irritation, but he lets her play. Everything she does is at his discretion; she has no real freedom, only a leash long enough to choke him with, just a little bit. She works at the biggest scab with her thumbnail and does not take her eyes off it for the rest of the evening, ignoring the auction, ignoring the children, watching the blood slowly bloom from the dry skin of her husband's hand, and it makes her feel a little better.

Katniss simmers all the long drive home. Her anxiety spikes all over her skin and she sets herself loose on the minibar again (all of its contents have been mysteriously replaced, tidied away as though she was never there) and gets herself drunk enough that the anxiety abates a little bit. She feels like her lips are burning from where she touched them against Snow's, and her hands are stained from where he held them.

They do not speak. Snow watches her drink, and Katniss tries not to think about blinding him so he can never look at her again. He so loves to watch her. She will never have privacy again.

She stumbles out of the car when they reach the mansion and pushes Snow away when he tries to steady her. She will go to bed and sleep… Sleep and hope she never wakes up…

'Katniss?' Snow follows her into the foyer, depositing his coat and scarf on some unfortunate servant.

'I just want to sleep,' she slurs.

'I want to talk to you first. I am not happy with your conduct this evening.'

'Oh, for…' She stalks into the first room she finds, one of several parlors, and rounds on him. 'What have I done wrong this time?'

Snow follows her and he is the picture of tranquility. Nothing touches him, nothing surprises him. He is the cliff-face against which her beaten, red pulp of a mind is thrown again and again.

'You got drunk. You're still drunk. You embarrassed me. You practically climbed into my lap. That was a high society event and a lot of important people were there. How do you think that looks?'

Her arms give a huge, drunk shrug. 'I don't know! I don't know what you want from me! Before you said we weren't passionate enough. Wasn't that the kind of thing you wanted?'

'You looked unhinged. You cannot behave like this.'

Katniss points a wavering finger at him. 'You are such a fucking hypocrite. I know what all this is about.'

'And what is it about?'

She laughs, long and hollow like a living thing falling to its death. 'You tell me day after day that you don't want to touch me, that you're not interested in sex… Then you take me to a fucking prostitution ring. Now you have to be angry with me, because it's easier to blame me than admit what you are.'

Snow's placidity has frozen into ire. 'I have been nothing but honest with you, Katniss. Tonight was a necessary event. I do not want to touch you. I am not interested in sexual intimacy with you.'

'You're a liar,' she says, the words thickly intoxicated.

Her hatred for his hypocrisy climaxes, as does a hundred memories of his hands on her. She is always the rabbit, waiting to be caught by the neck. Let him feel what it's like to be the game. Let him suffer fingers and teeth puncturing his psyche.

She crosses the room like lightning. When she forces her body against him, he is too confused to stop her. It is so easy to shove her mouth against his, giving him her most violent of kisses. She has never kissed anyone like this and if she could bruise him with her lips, she would. She wraps her hands in his hair and digs her nails into the back of his neck, snaring him. His whole body is against her now, but she doesn't care. This is her choice, her destruction. She can feel him struggle. With delight for his discomfort, she pushes her tongue into his mouth and tastes a rush of blood and iron. There is something wrong with his mouth: her tongue finds openings and ridges of skin and peeling flesh that should not be there. She is repulsed, and she is jubilant, and something golden is plucked in the depths of her: let him suffer, let him suffer…

Snow tries to pull her off, but Katniss' hands are wound like copperheads around his neck. He breaks his lips away. 'Katniss, no.'

She returns her lips to his. 'This is what you want, you fucking pervert,' she mumbles into them. 'Just be honest with me. You're just like the rest of them.'

Snow manages to free his hand, and with it he strikes Katniss across the face.

She falls back, more stunned than hurt, clutching her burning cheek.

Snow looks furious in his dishevelment. 'I told you, I am not interested in that! I never wanted that from you!' He is breathing hard.

They look at one another, Snow in his anger and Katniss in her drunkenness and pain, and something like shock crosses Katniss' face and something like regret crosses Snow's.

'I am sorry,' he says, and his voice is much softer. 'I don't want to hit you. Not like that.'

Katniss has been hit enough times to know that this will bruise. Good. Let him remember that he hurt her. Let him feel shame.

'You've hit me before,' she spits.

'It's different. You know it is.'

He's not wrong. She punches him, he punches back: that's one thing. A smack across the face is a new, intimate kind of violence. Katniss suddenly recalls being thirteen or so years old and watching one of the older men in the Seam, a stranger to her, smack his wife in public. Onlookers had been outraged, but more than that, they had been embarrassed. And that day Katniss had promised herself she would never marry a man who hit her like that.

Well, look at her now.

Katniss lowers herself into a chair and the room stabilizes. Snow comes and sits down beside her, and Katniss wishes she was anywhere else. In the forest, among the trees, hidden and untouchable.

'Katniss,' he says, voice like warm chocolate. 'Remember that you were the one who came to me with this scheme. You proposed marriage to me. And I promised you that sex would have no part in it. I promised you it wouldn't be like that.' Katniss can see him frown in her peripheries. Her eyes remain fixed on a huge vase of petunia flowers. She refuses to look at him. Snow's voice comes strangely uncertain: 'Do you… Do you want it to be like that?'

Her head turns with a whipcrack. 'Do I want to have sex with you? Are you fucking insane? You disgust me. Do you have any idea how much I hate you? How repugnant I find you?' She feels again the urge to bite him and flay him with just her teeth. 'I want to burn off every part of my skin that you have ever touched. Kissing you is the most repulsive thing I have ever experienced. The way you taste is awful.' Her voice drops to a hiss. 'You are a murderer. You are everything I despise. And you're a disgusting old man. That's what I think of you.'

She cannot tell if she has hurt him at all. He is, once again, an impassive arctic landscape.

'Alright, Katniss. I understand.' He stands slowly, with difficulty, exhausted. 'I suggest we spend some time apart for now. There are no events for which I urgently require you, and some distance might do us good. I will need you for a gallery opening in a fortnight, but perhaps we should keep apart until then.'

'Fine,' says Katniss, voice flat. 'I don't care either way.'

He says nothing to this. He moves to leave, but pauses at the door. 'I am truly sorry I hit you,' he says.

Katniss says nothing. She listens to his retreating footsteps and waits until silence meets her, and then she collapses on the couch. It won't be the last time he hits her. She knows that much.

She will just have to find ways to hurt him more.