The Girl Who Sparked the Capitol - Book 2 - Peeta

Chapter 9

Someone gives Alessia's shoulder a shake and she sits up. She's fallen asleep with her face on the table. The white cloth has left creases on her good cheek. The other one that took the lash from Thread, throbs painfully. Gale's dead to the world, but his fingers are locked around her's. Alessia smells fresh bread and turns her stiff neck to find Peeta looking down at her with such a sad expression. Alessia gets the sense that he's been watching them for awhile. 

"Go on up to bed, Alessia. I'll look after him now," he says.

"Peeta. About what I said yesterday, about running--" Alessia begins.

"I know," he says. "There's nothing to explain."

Alessia sees loaves of bread on the counter in the pale, snowy morning light. The blue shadows under his eyes. Alessia wonders if he slept at all. Couldn't have been long. She thinks of his agreeing to go with her yesterday, his stepping up beside her to protect Gale, his willingness to throw his lot in with her's entirely when she gives him so little in return. No matter what she does, she's hurting someone. "Peeta--"

"Just go to bed, okay?" he says.

Alessia feels her way up the stairs, crawls under the covers, and falls asleep at once. At some point, Clove, the girl from District 2, enters her dreams. Clove chases her, pins her to the ground, and pulls out a knife to cut Alessia's face. It digs deeply into her cheek, opening a wide gash. Then Clove begins to transform, her face elongating into a snout, dark fur sprouting from her skin, her fingernails growing into long claws, but her eyes remain unchanged. She becomes the mutt-tion form herself, the wolflike creation of the Capitol that terrorized them the last night in the arena. Tossing back her head, she lets out a long, eerie howl that is picked up by other mutts nearby. Clove begins to lap the blood flowing from Alessia's wound, each lick sending a new wave of pain through Alessia's face. She gives a strangled cry and wakes with a start, sweating and shivering at once. Cradling her damaged cheek in her hand, she reminds herself that it was not Clove but Thread who gave her this wound. Alessia wishes that Peeta were here to hold her, until she remembers she shouldn't wish that anymore. She remembers how Gale feels about her. But then she realizes she shouldn't choose Gale because of Katniss... She reminds herself that she has chosen to not choose Peeta because that future with Peeta is the Capitol's design, not hers.

The swelling around her eye has gone down and she can open it a bit. She pushes aside the curtains and sees the snowstorm has strengthened to a full-out blizzard. There's nothing but whiteness and the howling wind that sounds remarkably like muttations.

Alessia welcomes the blizzard, with its ferocious winds and deep, drifting snow. This may not be enough to keep the real wolves, also known as the Peacekeepers, from her door. A few days to think. To work out a plan. With Gale and Peeta and Katniss and Haymitch all at hand. This blizzard is a gift.

Before Alessia goes down to face this new life, though, she takes some time making herself acknowledge what it will mean. Less than a day ago, she was prepared to head into the wilderness with her loved ones in midwinter, with the very real possibility of the Capitol pursuing them. A precarious venture at best. But now she is commiting to something even more risky. Fighting the Capitol assures their swift retaliation. Alessia must accept that any moment she can be arrested. There will be a knock on the door, like the one last night, a band of Peacekeepers to haul her away. There might be torture. Mutilation. A bullet through her skull in the town square just like how her parents were killed in front of the whole Capitol. If she's fortunate enough to go that quickly though. The Capitol has no end of creative ways to kill people. Alessia imagines these things and she's terrified, but let's face it: They've been lurking in the back of her brain, anyway. She's been a tribute in the Games. Been threatened by the president. Taken a lash across her face. She's already a target.