Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)

by Suzanne Collins

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.

“Perhaps we’re a little more necessary to the war effort than you give us credit for,” says Plutarch, unconcerned. “Of course you are. The tributes were necessary to the Games, too. Until they weren’t,” I say. “And then we were very disposable — right, Plutarch?”

In other words, I step out of line and we’re all dead.

One, two — Mitchell and Boggs lost on the block. Three — Messalla melted by the pod. Four, five — Leeg 1 and Jackson sacrificing themselves at the Meat Grinder. Six, seven, eight — Castor, Homes, and Finnick being decapitated by the rose-scented lizard mutts. Eight dead in twenty-four hours.

First I get a glimpse of the blond braid down her back. Then, as she yanks off her coat to cover a wailing child, I notice the duck tail formed by her untucked shirt.

“My failure,” says Snow, “was being so slow to grasp Coin’s plan. To let the Capitol and districts destroy one another, and then step in to take power with Thirteen barely scratched. Make no mistake, she was intending to take my place right from the beginning. I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, it was Thirteen that started the rebellion that led to the Dark Days, and then abandoned the rest of the districts when the tide turned against it. But I wasn’t watching Coin. I was watching you, Mockingjay. And you were watching me. I’m afraid we have both been played for fools.”

A majority of four will approve the plan. No one may abstain from the vote,” says Coin. “What has been proposed is that in lieu of eliminating the entire Capitol population, we have a final, symbolic Hunger Games, using the children directly related to those who held the most power.”

I thought we had agreed not to lie to each other.” He’s right. We did. The point of my arrow shifts upward. I release the string. And President Coin collapses over the side of the balcony and plunges to the ground. Dead.

“You love me. Real or not real?” I tell him, “Real.”

My children, who don’t know they play on a graveyard.