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His mind could fixate on a problem like that — anything, really — and not let go. As if controlling one element of his world would keep him from ruin.
his only real currency was charm, which he spread liberally as he made his way through the crowd.
“And last but least, District Twelve girl . . . she belongs to Coriolanus Snow.”
Coriolanus let that sink in. So ten years in the Capitol and the privileged life it provided had been wasted on Sejanus. He still thought of himself as a district citizen. Sentimental nonsense.
Lucy Gray Baird stood upright in a dress made of a rainbow of ruffles, now raggedy but once fancy. Her dark, curly hair was pulled up and woven with limp wildflowers. Her colorful ensemble drew the eye, as to a tattered butterfly in a field of moths.
Singing transformed her, and Coriolanus no longer found her so disconcerting. There was something exciting, even attractive, about her.
The endless dance with hunger had defined his life.
“I need to make a connection with her. As you always say, your roses open any doors.”
He could not say he had felt great love for the remote, strict man, but he had certainly felt protected by him. His death was associated with a fear and a vulnerability that Coriolanus had never been able to shake off.
he had not prepared himself properly for this encounter in the flesh, and a wave of pity and revulsion swept through him. They really were creatures out of another world. A hopeless, brutish world.
He was beginning to consider making a break for the chute and attempting to climb it when a voice behind him softly said, “Own it.” Without turning he knew it was the girl, his girl, and he felt immense relief that he was not entirely alone.
She always seemed to be improving her appearance. Arranging her ruffles in District 12, grooming her hair at the train station, and now adorning herself with the rose. He extended his hand to her as if she was the grandest lady in the Capitol.
“She in District Twelve?” Lepidus asked. “Just her bones, darling. Just her pearly white bones.”
On those dreary days when he’d slogged through the wintry slush to trade back a bag of lima beans for more cabbage, it was her silly, silky warmth that had consoled him. It upset him to think of Boa Bell ending up in the lab.
“People love children,” said Coriolanus. But even as the words came out of his mouth, he questioned them. During the war, he had been bombed and starved and abused in multiple ways, and not just by the rebels.
His mother used to sing him a song at bedtime. Not this one, exactly, but it had used those same words, roses are red and violets are blue. It had mentioned loving him.
The death of his father came right on the heels of his mother’s, but that loss had not hollowed out the world in the same way. Coriolanus still kept his mother’s compact in a drawer in his nightstand. In difficult times, when he had trouble falling asleep, he would click it open and inhale the rose scent of the silken cake of powder within. It never failed to calm him with the memory of how it had felt to be loved like that.
Maybe it was best to take after his father. His mother had not really been tough enough for this world. He finally drifted off, thinking of her, but it was Lucy Gray, spinning in her rainbow dress, who sang in his dreams.
there’d been little music in his life until Lucy Gray appeared.
“You do matter,” he said.
“You matter to me,” he insisted. The Capitol may not value her, but he did. Hadn’t he just poured his heart out to her?
“You matter to me, Lucy Gray,” he repeated. His words drew her eyes back to him, but she still seemed distant.
“Hey!” she said with a certain urgency. He turned back. “Hey, I want you to know I don’t really believe you’re here for grades or glory. You’re a rare bird, Coriolanus.” “You, too,” he said.
tried to imagine conducting himself under those circumstances, until he realized this was undoubtedly what Sejanus was doing, and snapped out of it.
God forbid you have any empathy
So now that loudmouth Arachne was a defender of a righteous and just land. Yes, she laid down her life taunting her tribute with a sandwich, thought Coriolanus. Maybe her gravestone could read, “Casualty of cheap laughs.”
Typical just like racist cops bein martyred
Her hand found his, intertwining their fingers and sending a buzz through his body at their closeness. At this small intimacy in the dark. He gave her hand a final squeeze and released it as they headed into the sunlight at the end of the passageway, where such a display would have been inexplicable.
For a moment he laughed, forgetting where they were, how depressing the backdrop. For a moment there was just her smile, the musical cadence of her voice, and the hint of flirtation. Then the world exploded.
“It’s just the kind of story that catches fire.”
Ehhh reference
Lucy Gray had been nibbling around the edges of his thoughts, but now he could think of no one else. How was she? Healing and fed, or suffering and starving in that awful monkey house? While he had been lying in the air-conditioned hospital with his morphling drip, had the veterinarian attended to her hands? Had the smoke damaged that remarkable voice? In helping him, had she ruined her chances for sponsors in the arena?
Tigris’s gentle reminder that the situation with Lucy Gray was not of his making. They were both, after all, still children whose lives were dictated by powers above them.
“Yeah, that’s a better strategy for me,” she agreed. “Enduring horrible things is one of my talents.”
“We control it,” he said quietly. “If the war’s impossible to end, then we have to control it indefinitely. Just as we do now. With the Peacekeepers occupying the districts, with strict laws, and with reminders of who’s in charge, like the Hunger Games. In any scenario, it’s preferable to have the upper hand, to be the victor rather than the defeated.” “Though, in our case, decidedly less moral,” Sejanus muttered.
When they were released, Sejanus followed Coriolanus down the hall. “You have to stop rescuing me.” Coriolanus shook his head. “I can’t seem to control it. It’s like a tic.”
The loving way she handled the guitar, as if it were a sentient being, gave him a hint of a past so unlike his own he had trouble imagining it. She took her time tuning the instrument and then played song after song, seemingly as starved for the music as for the meals he brought.
adjusting a hot pink rosebud in her hair. It matched the one on his lapel, just in case anyone needed a reminder of who Lucy Gray belonged to.
“Well, you know what they say. The show’s not over until the mockingjay sings,” she said. “The mockingjay?” He laughed. “Really, I think you’re just making these things up.” “Not that one. A mockingjay’s a bona fide bird,” she assured him. “And it sings in your show?” he asked. “Not my show, sweetheart. Yours. The Capitol’s anyway,” said Lucy Gray. “I think we’re up.”
When I was a girl I fell into your arms. We fell on hard times and we lost our bright color. You went to the dogs and I lived by my charms. I danced for my dinner, spread kisses like honey. You stole and you gambled and I said you should.
And I am the one who you let see you weeping. I know the soul that you struggle to save. Too bad I’m the bet that you lost in the reaping. Now what will you do when I go to my grave?
His girl. His. Here in the Capitol, it was a given that Lucy Gray belonged to him, as if she’d had no life before her name was called out at the reaping.
Even if Lucy Gray was confused on the issue, in the eyes of the Capitol, she belonged to him.
Wow possessive from the start
You could put a turnip in a ball gown and it would still beg to be mashed.
“Then be kind, Coryo,” she snapped. “And try not to look down on people who had to choose between death and disgrace.”
The security that could only come with power. The ability to control things. Yes, that was what he’d loved best of all.
Coriolanus felt disconnected from their “romantic notions,” as he didn’t share a romanticized view of the war. Courage in battle was often necessary because of someone else’s poor planning. He had no idea if he would take a bullet for Festus and had no interest in finding out.
And it wasn’t just about the accolades she’d brought him. He was genuinely fond of her, far more than he was of most of the girls he knew in the Capitol. If she could survive — oh, sweet only if — how could they help but have a lifelong connection? But for all his positive talk, he knew the odds were not in her favor, and a heavy melancholy descended upon him.
Tigris laid a linen napkin in a small cardboard box decorated with brightly plumed birds and arranged the feast, topping the snowy white fabric with one final rosebud from the Grandma’am. Coriolanus had chosen a rich shade of peach tinged with crimson, because the Covey loved color, and Lucy Gray more than most.
Coriolanus felt something inside him unravel as he saw her helplessness and felt his own. He reached for her. “Oh, Lucy Gray . . .” “I don’t want to die,” she whispered. His fingers brushed the tears from her cheeks. “Of course you don’t. And I won’t let you.” She sobbed on. “I won’t let you, Lucy Gray!”
“Like roses,” he said. “Like you,” she said. “It really would be like having you with me, wouldn’t it?” “Go on,” he urged her. “Take me with you. Take it.”
“You’re all I’m going to think about in that arena,” she whispered. “Not that guy back in Twelve?” he said only half-jokingly. “No, he made sure he killed anything I felt for him,” she said. “The only boy my heart has a sweet spot for now is you.” Then she gave him a kiss. Not a peck. A real kiss on the lips, with hints of peaches and powder. The feel of her mouth, soft and warm against his own, sent sensations surging through his body.
How he hated the pair of them. Gloating. Baiting him. Still, all he could allow himself was an indifferent twitch of the shoulders. “Well, as they say, it’s not over until the mockingjay sings.” He felt satisfaction at the puzzlement on their faces.
