Strictly Prohibited ➳ THE HUNGER GAMES ✔️

|01| Calm Before The Storm

Gloss's POV

I won the 68th Hunger Games when I was sixteen. There, I said it. Normally that's the sort of thing that merits handshakes and pats on the back. It's like...being a Victor should be a celebration or something. But I've been a Victor for six years now, and I'm telling you, it doesn't get any easier. Sure, there's the fame, that everyone in Panem knows your face. But it's an empty fame considering that you had to give up your humanity to achieve it.

I didn't volunteer because I wanted the fame and glory. Well, actually, that's a lie. I wanted it, but that wasn't the main reason. The main reason was because of Cashmere. Three years older than me, she'd won the 67th Hunger Games the year before. That was back when I was naïve and I thought the Victors were treated like superstars. And they are...most of the time. But there are always things you have to do to stay like that, prices you have to pay. When I found out the price Cashmere was paying, I didn't want her to be alone anymore.

It was scary to see how much my sister had changed, when she returned from the 67th Hunger Games. Cashmere had been confident to the point of near arrogance, but after all that she had experienced she seemed...well, no less confident really, but she was withdrawn. Introverted. She wasn't the same sister I'd grown up with. That scared me, the thought that the real Cashmere died in the arena along with the other twenty-three tributes.

She was horrified when I volunteered. She knew that she would have to mentor me and for some time, all she could do was berate me for how stupid I had been. I didn't care though. I was filled with a steely determination: I would win the 68th Hunger Games, no matter what. My district partner was a girl a year younger than me, Honey. I still remember watching District 6 cut her open in the final eight.

It's the sort of thing you don't forget. Every death you see haunts you. It plagues your dreams. You are never safe from what you've done in that arena, and to be honest, I don't think you should be. It would be way too easy to forget the people you've killed, the lives you've destroyed. I don't see myself as a human anymore. I was a Career, and some of the things I did during those Games were the actions of a monster.

The 69th Hunger Games were no better. It was like I was reliving my own Games, watching as tributes died once again. Thank God I had Cashmere or I don't think I would have survived. It's been like that these past few years – mentoring tributes, basically shaping them up and them sending them in to their deaths. Sometimes, they're kids you vaguely know. It doesn't make it any better or worse seeing them die if you know them. After a while, you just become numb to the whole thing, because feeling hurts too much.

Cashmere told me once that I should never fall in love. I sneered at that. How could a Victor ever fall in love, when they had already lost so much? The prospect was almost amusing. For some time I wondered why she was warning me about this. Cashmere herself had long ago lost the ability to love when she had been forced to serve herself to greedy Capitol men. The only person she loved anymore was me.

There would be a day when I would remember Cashmere's words, when I would think on them carefully. Love...it makes people weak. It makes them do stupid things. The prospect of it made me sick. That was before everything changed.

~~~~~~~~~~

"Gloss! Get up."

I sit bolt upright at my sister's sharp voice, tossing around to free myself from the prison of my cotton sheets. That happens sometimes, when my nightmares are extreme. I toss and turn and tie myself into knots in the bedclothes. Once I've unwound myself from the bedclothes, I stagger to my feet, raking a hand through my blond hair.

Cashmere is leaning in the doorframe watching me. By the wry look about her face and the sympathetic light in her eyes, she knows that last night was especially difficult for me. Both of us know what today is, what it means. The nightmares of the past few years are about to repeat themselves.