Two weeks passed since Coriolanus had gone. I stayed by the television as much as I could, and if I wasn't there, I made Damian or Selsa take watch. Every morning I woke up without news from Coriolanus it was agonizing. Even reading was unable to soothe me.
I applied minty salves to Selsa's back, helped bathe my mom and then administer her medications, cooked, hunted, chopped wood, and cleaned. My mom gave me the odd smile, but I knew she was hardly there. My dad shuffled around the cabin doing what he could. If he wasn't shaking and felt well, he tried to bring levity by whittling little toy carvings for us out of some stray branches I'd brought in. He made a cat for Selsa, a squirrel for Damian, and a deer for me. The last he handed me was for Coriolanus. It was a bird of some sort, a raven or perhaps a mockingjay.
It made me think of the eerie songs I'd heard in the forest. I considered this often, how uncomfortable Coriolanus had become when he'd heard me singing. I wished I knew more about his life before. About Lucy Gray and Sejanus. They were important pieces of his past, and I wished I could uncover them because ultimately it would let me know him more. But maybe he didn't want me to know that part of him. Maybe he was afraid to tell me for some reason.
When I bathed there were times I couldn't stop my hands from roaming. From imagining him and his generous hands and cock. I wanted to soak up his pretty features and wash myself in his fucking cum.
Maybe there was something wrong with me.
Still, I went about my business. I tried to stay present. I attempted every single day to grit my teeth and bear the unknown.
One day the sun was shining and me, Damian, and Selsa went outside to distract ourselves from the pangs of hunger in our bellies. Dad was manning the television, whittling away in the rocking chair.
"Days like these I'm thankful I'm alive—all thanks to you sis," Damian chuckled and then tossed a snowball my way. I ducked too slowly and it splattered across my shoulder. I hurried to throw one back at him, and Selsa joined me, laughing in a spirited way. We aimed them back and forth for a while, running, hiding, dodging, and rolling in the snow. Finally Selsa jumped on him.
"Help me, Lena!" She giggled.
I laughed and pinned him. In all of the commotion Selsa began to cough violently, and I soon realized that she wasn't bouncing back. She doubled over and my chest flooded with panic.
"What's wrong?" I asked, but it was an irrelevant question. I went to her, laying a hand on her back and she gasped for breath. Then I saw the red droplets hit the snow. Three little teardrops of blood had sunk into the white, signifying that her lungs were getting much worse.
"Let's go inside," I said, glancing at Damian. His expression was one of intense fear and worry. I grabbed one side and he grabbed her other.
"I'll be alright...I'm just a little...tired is all," she murmured.
Once inside I told Damian to heat her up some water for tea. I searched through our storage of herbs and found them all becoming low, especially the ones that benefitted the lungs and circulatory system—something I'd read about. When I went to the cabinet to look through our supply of medicine, I became even more uneasy. It had been dwindling for a while, and I was nervous.
I hadn't been able to make Coriolanus a list before he left, and I didn't know when he'd be back. Part of me wondered...did I risk heading down the path to district twelve? Did they have stores I could slip in and out of with ease? The threat of peacekeepers and being discovered seemed to lose weight the more time that passed and the worse Selsa's condition got. Not to mention my mother's health was on a consistent decline, and my father was also showing signs of aging that were concerning. I worried about him whittling with such shaky hands, though sometimes they didn't shake as much, if he were having a good day. Yet the good days seemed to dwindle. The only one who didn't worry me as much was Damian. He was full of fire I knew wouldn't be extinguished easily.
"Nothing on the television?" I asked my dad.
He shrugged.
"I'm afraid not."
***
Coriolanus' POV
It had been two weeks and we had nothing to show for it. No progress whatsoever. It would have been embarrassing if it weren't so complex, but even with the added layers the fact was that we were no closer to getting our generals back was a hard one to swallow. They could have been dead for all I knew.
I sat in the tent with the others strategizing rescue missions. We plotted our moves on a map, but every time there was more risk involved than I wanted to bargain with. I could tell they were all getting anxious. Everyone was sweating bullets, worried that they were already dead. And were we really going to send out a rescue team for dead bodies?
That evening, with no plan decided on and nosy reporters clamoring with messages for me, I returned to my tent and downed a bottle of wine. God I wished I could hold Lena. Just touching her brought me back to earth. She made me feel like I had a reason—a purpose for living. Something more than the urgent sting of living up to the family name and making myself an invaluable asset to the Capitol.
Tonight I felt like a failure, and I despised that feeling. It brought me back to the early days when I was under Dean Highbottom's tutelage in a barren apartment building with cabbage soup every night of the week.
Outside my tent I heard conversation and then one of my men warned me that I had a visitor.
"Come in," I shot out tersely. I wasn't in the right headspace for visitors.
Nor was I prepared for who entered.
"Dr. Gaul?" I must have sounded shocked.
Though she appeared all too amused. Her multi-color eyes were bright and mischievous, and her white teeth gleamed in the low light. She wore a dark ensemble, and her hair still reminded me of a mad scientist.
"Mr. Snow," she replied breezily, as if this meeting had been planned. "I think you know why I'm here."
I stared at her, almost unable to speak. My throat felt dry and my tongue thick.
"Though I do wish we had time to recount the night your precious slave escaped the arena with her brother conveniently on the very same night you left for your work here, something tells me your truth wouldn't be the shade of translucent I like," she sighed and offered a knowing look.
"I owe you nothing," I said, remembering what Lena had told me about her.
She chortled in an unbecoming way, and I felt my skin prickle. No matter how old I got, her presence would still chill me to the bone.
"Ah, such a pity. And here I was thinking our goals were aligned," she said. "I still hold quite a bit of influence in the Capitol. I'm up to become the dean of the Academy, did you hear? Top researcher for President Ravinstill...you can't be that foolish to think he'd demote me and toss me aside like a bag of trash."
Now that I thought of it, she'd been left alone with President Ravinstill. I wasn't there to guide him or whisper anything in his ear, leaving him wide open to her manipulations. This I hadn't considered.
"What do you want?" I said, glancing at her and taking another drink from the wine bottle. I couldn't confront her on killing my mother without truly betraying the fact that I'd helped Lena escape, and I didn't want to give her any ammunition at all. Regardless, my chest hurt when I imagined this woman being the reason, or part of the reason, for the destruction of my family. Interestingly, even with all the money in the world my tycoon father and sweet mother had died. Nothing could have saved them, and this fact made me even more paranoid.
