Strictly Prohibited ➳ THE HUNGER GAMES ✔️

|17| Fortune Favours The Bold

Chapter 17 x

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Storm's POV

President Snow wants to speak to me. The notion sends shivers down my spine, for although I have seen the President on many a public occasion, he has never requested to see me privately. I can't help but panic, although I am not quite sure what about. At least I should be grateful that I'm feeling something again. Although the fact that I'm marched to his office by armed guards makes me feel like the criminal I was arrested for being. But Hyperion inducted me back into society. That means I was let off the hook – doesn't it?

"Ah, Miss Asterbury." The President is sitting in a plush chair in front of a mahogany desk. He makes no move to rise as I enter. The door clicks shut behind me and suddenly I am alone. Being in a room with only an old man across a desk shouldn't be a frightening experience, but it is. Snow indicates the chair opposite him. "Please, do sit."

I swallow and do as I am told. I've become rather good at that lately. I keep my mouth shut about Gloss, and especially about the baby. I let Hyperion give me a kiss on the cheek goodnight, and sometime pepper kisses on my neck. Inside, I shrivel away into nothing, burrowing away inside myself until I fear I don't even exist anymore. I don't want to marry Hyperion. I don't.

"I wanted to congratulate you personally on your engagement to Hyperion Dormer." Snow presses his fingers into a steeple and surveys me over the top of them. I squirm in the chair, for it's slippery and it's hard to sit still without sliding around in it. "He is not a man easily pleased, so it is...interesting that you have acquired his attention."

You should consider yourself lucky, that's what he's trying to tell me. I should feel lucky that Hyperion saved me from whatever awful torments they put Gloss through. Do I care if Gloss suffers, after he took my baby from me? I should feel lucky that Hyperion has not attempted to force any attentions on me, but I know why that is. He thinks I will submit to him in my own time, that I will approach him. I no longer known if he's wrong or right, what's up and what's down.

"Thank you, sir," I manage, although my tongue feels thick and it's hard to force words around it.

"Perhaps you think me ignorant." Snow's voice becomes firmer now, although it doesn't lose that saccharine sweetness, the tone that's no doubt to be fatherly. "But I know everything there is to know about you, Miss Asterbury. Oh yes, I am very much aware of your repellent relationship with that Gloss Delucan from District 1. I even know that you carried his child, before he beat it out of you. Is that how you wish the Capitol to perceive you? As a Victor's whore?"

The word 'whore' makes me flinch, because I didn't expect it. No one has ever addressed me in such a manner before. I have heard plenty of Capitolian men jeering about Cashmere and calling her that – but I don't want to think about Cashmere, because that's like a white-hot knife to the heart. I didn't know that my reputation had become something so low, and I think that perhaps Hyperion has saved me after all.

"No, sir," I whisper, because I can't think what else to say.

Snow sniffs disapprovingly. "Fortunately for you, Hyperion is offering you a new chance. You can have a life with him and all of your past wrongs will be forgotten – provided you cooperate. If there is any hint of resistance, of involvement with this...rebellion, then I can assure you that things will turn out very bad, very quickly for you. Am I understood, Miss Asterbury?"

I don't want to let go of the past, but I guess I can keep it inside myself like an anchor, something that will point out the truth in times when I begin to doubt myself and my allegiance. I will hold Cashmere inside my heart, her courage and her defiance, and her memory will be the light inside the darkness I am forced to accept. So I nod, and force a bitter smile across my lips.