What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again.

Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Buttercup the entrails. He has stopped hissing at me. Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.

Plutarch rushes to reassure me. "Oh, no, Katniss. Not your wedding. Finnick and Annie's. All you need to do is show up and pretend to be happy for them." "That's one of the few things I won't have to pretend, Plutarch," I tell him.

I stand there, feeling broken and small, thousands of eyes trained on me.

Never having been in love, this is going to be a real trick. I think of my parents. The way my father never failed to bring her gifts from the woods. The way my mother's face would light up at the sound of his boots at the door. The way she almost stopped living when he died.

Let the Seventy-forth Hunger Games begin, Cato, I think. Let them begin for real.

Whatever the truth is, I don’t see how it will help me get food on the table.