The ones I loved fly as birds in the open sky above me. Soaring, weaving, calling to me to join them. I want so badly to follow them, but the seawater saturates my wings, making it impossible to lift them. The ones I hated have taken to the water, horrible scaled things that tear my salty flesh with needle teeth. Biting again and again. Dragging me beneath the surface.

I have not wept since the death of my parents," said Luxa quietly. "But I am thought to be unnatural in this respect.

District 12: Where you can starve to death in safety.

Shame isn't a strong enough word for what I feel. "You could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him, you know," Haymitch says.

Instead of satisfying me, the kisses have the opposite effect, of make my need greater. I thought I was something of an expert on hunger, but this is an entirely new kind.

Positioned on my dresser, that white-as-snow rose is a personal message to me. It speaks of unfinished business. It whispers, I can find you. I can reach you. Perhaps I am watching you now.

I know what blood poisoning is, Katniss," says Peeta. "Even if my mother isn't a healer." I'm jolted back in time, to another wound, another set of bandages. "You said that same thing to me in the first Hunger Games. Real or not real?" "Real," he says. "And you risked your life getting the medicine that saved me?" "Real." I shrug. "You were the reason I was alive to do it.