"Evelyn Brinley, better known as Lady Red, victor of the 72nd Hunger Games. Won her games at 15."
"Why Lady Red?"
"Because she always wears red. Oh, and she won her games by burning the remaining tributes alive."
✮
"𝑮𝒊𝒓𝒍 𝒐𝒏 𝒇𝒊𝒓𝒆? 𝑯𝒐𝒘 𝒄...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
SASHA HAD SPENT A COUPLE OF DAYS IN THE HOSPITAL, but his wound had healed fairly quickly. His arm was in a sling and it was a bit uncomfortable, but most of the pain had come from everyone asking him who had shot him. Cass had only been in there twice, and she asked about it but when Sasha just shrugged she let it go. Xanther responded similarly to Cass, but Apollo refused to let it go. So it wasn't anything, it was Apollo. It was always Apollo. On the bright side, Lea was awake and in stable condition. Although, like he suspected, she wasn't very happy with him. But it was fine, if she needed time to process that their whole family was dead then that was fine. It was fine.
"You know, most people don't trip and shoot themselves in the arm," Apollo said as Sasha sat next to him and the whole group in the cafeteria.
Sasha groaned and ran a hand down his face, "Well, that's what happened. I tripped running after the person Boggs told me to go after and shot myself in the arm."
"Who were you running after?" Apollo asked, crossing his arms.
Cassandra cut in, "Leave him alone, if he wants to hide something let him hide something."
Apollo looked disappointed and turned to talk with his father, Cassandra turned back to her food, but the new girl, Ella, or whatever her name was, continued to stare at him. Ella Feiner was a quiet person, Sasha had gathered that much. He didn't see her a lot, she was usually down with Apollo in Beetee's lab, but he'd learned a few things. She'd lived in 13 her whole life and her father had died during the epidemic a couple of years ago. And she was smart.
"You're a terrible liar," She told him.
He laughed bitterly, "Glad to know you know me."
"You don't keep eye contact with anyone when you answer questions and your foot starts tapping. You're lying."
Apparently, she was observant too. Sasha didn't know if he liked this girl or hated her, but at the moment, because she was talking about how he was lying, he hated her.
He shrugged, turning back to the plate of mush. If he chose one thing to miss about the Capitol, it would be the food. At least annual games meant living in luxury for a couple of weeks. And watching kids die, but he tried to ignore that part of it. Over his seven years of mentoring, he learned that he couldn't do everything to save a kid. That helped with a bit of the guilt. Just a bit. "I'm not lying."
Ella raised her eyebrow and looked at him for another minute before starting a conversation with Apollo. Of course, he was lying. He wasn't going to tell everyone that Evelyn was some murdering machine that mindlessly listened to stupid orders the Capitol gave her. Sasha didn't know Coin that well, but he knew she wouldn't like that. She didn't even want to grant the victors full pardon.
Sasha's train of thought was interrupted by an alarm blaring, and he looked up to see everybody scrambling toward the cafeteria doors. The noise was too much to understand what the alarm was saying, but he got up when Cass, Xanther, and the rest of the table got up and started following the crowd.
