The 10th annual Hunger Games are creeping up on the Districts
as Academy students of the Capitol prepare to mentor the
tributes and prepare them for their imminent deaths, all except for one.
In which Coriolanus Snow and Enyo Briar find a deeper con...
People did terrible things for love. This was a truth Enyo Briar knew better than she knew the back of her own hand. To truly love someone, one had to wonder the lengths they would go for said person.
Enyo Briar had done some terrible, horrific things in her life. But, she'd never regretted a single one, not for even a moment. Because to regret something you did for someone was to regret that person's health, and existence.
But there were also terrible things people did that were for anything but love. For money, for power, even selfishness perhaps. People were like that, humanity was like that. People would go to great lengths for reasons so pointless that all Enyo could do was sigh.
For example, a rich student might decide to jump another student for no good reason, and leave said student with nothing to do but fight back. It was that, or be beaten and bruised. And as tough as Enyo was, she did not enjoy the feeling of her ribs being kicked in.
And so there she stood, in the bathroom of her apartment. The tiles were chipped, faded, battered and some just gone. The ceiling light flickered in and out, filling the room with a dim, inconsistent glow. The mirror was caked with dust and gloom, and so Enyo brushed a bloodied hand over it to clear the reflection.
Staring back at her, dark in the lightless room, was a savage. Her dark hair was scraggly and messy, strands sticking to her forehead like cobwebs. Her eyes were hooded with exhaustion, dark circles underneath them. She looked pale, or at least her skin was in comparison to the blood spilling for her nose and the giant cut on her cheek.
Enyo reached over and turned the hot water tap on, her hands covered in blue and red. But as usual, all that rushed from it was freezing cold water with the brittle temperature of pure ice.
Anyone else would have let out a hiss as the water seeped over Enyo's cuts and bruises, but she instead stared at the red rawness of her hands emotionlessly.
She grabbed a cloth from the bare cabinet and soaked it in the water, beginning to harshly scrub at the wounds. The light above her flickered on briefly before sizzling and cutting out entirely.
The dark didn't bother Enyo, it never had. She quite enjoyed the dark, it was comforting. How was she supposed to fear the abyss, where nothing existed? It was like fearing a black hole, fearing something so empty it rivalled her soul.
