TROJAN HORSES // finnick odair

PROLOGUE

Winter, 74 ADD.

On the morning that her Victory Tour is scheduled to start, Katniss Everdeen, co-winner of the 74th Hunger Games, walks into her opulent new study in her opulent new mansion and finds President Coriolanus Snow sitting calmly behind the desk, paging through a book as he waits patiently for an audience with her, looking for all the world like this was just another day in Panem, as if he regularly pays house visits to the children he tried to kill.

He holds up a finger, telling Katniss to wait. A mind game, someone will later explain to her, to make her feel unbalanced in her own house, to establish himself as the one with all the power and her as the one without any before he even says a word. He scans the rest of the page and then closes the book, handing it to a young woman in the shadows that Katniss hadn't yet noticed (for until this moment she'd stood entirely still), and fixes his cold, watery gaze on the only female Victor from District 12. Katniss fights to stop the mingled fear and rage welling up in her chest from showing in her face, but she suspects President Snow senses it anyway, from the way his eyes gleam triumphantly as they fix on hers.

"Miss Everdeen," he says softly, dangerously, like a copperhead poised to strike, "might I suggest that for the sake of simplicity, you and I agree not to lie to one another in this conversation?"

Katniss did not win for nothing, and her quick mind has already figured out what she is supposed to say. "Yes. It would be simpler." She agrees.

She thinks her easy agreement will take Snow by surprise, but he only smiles knowingly. The woman standing behind him in the shadows, however, twitches almost involuntarily, alerting Katniss to her presence once again. She looks a little familiar, somehow, though Katniss knows she's not from District 12 and she isn't dressed in the excessive fashions of the Capitol. But where else would Katniss have seen her before?

She is quiet, Katniss notes. She hasn't yet made a sound, this woman, and this is what makes Katniss think that she must be an Avox, though why Snow would bring one all the way on a low profile visit to District 12 is beyond her comprehension. Though perhaps it is the fact that an Avox would be unable to tell anyone of the proceedings that explains the woman's presence in the room. Katniss feels a stab of pity for the young woman. She is not much older than herself, maybe twenty-one or twenty-two, and has large eyes that should be expressive but instead are unnaturally blank.

"You see, Miss Firewell?" Snow says to the woman, though Katniss cannot fathom how he discerned her movement when his back has been turned to her all along. He gestures for Katniss to sit in front of him, watching her closely as she follows his orders. "Miss Firewell was of the opinion that you'd be far more resistant. Belligerent, I think, was the word she used. I, however, had more faith in your good sense. After all, you do have much to lose. Your life, for one, which you fought so hard for in that arena. Not to mention your sister, who you sacrificed yourself for, your mother, who's worked so hard to make her unexpected guests so comfortable . . . and those cousins of yours."

Katniss thinks about Gale, about how her and Peeta's masquerade in the arena had forced his family to claim relation with hers, in order to explain the closeness she shared with Gale in the years before Prim had been Reaped. And she thinks about how all of Panem and the Capitol seemed to believe Gale's moodiness to come from a brotherly affection, worry for a cousin who'd been more like his sister all along. She knows, deep down, that Gale has feelings for her. But he'd never acted on them, not before the Games. And even after, there had only been one time, one kiss out in the woods, a secret one he pressed to her lips and then pretended never happened. She'd been all too relieved to go along with pretending, because she hadn't a desire to sort out whether she wanted to be with him or not.

Somehow, she thinks, President Snow knows the truth.

She meets his gaze evenly, determined not to let her panic show. President Snow smiles, but there is a hint of something harder. Anger, maybe? No, it isn't quite so strong. It's more like irritation, like she is a disobedient pet or a fly buzzing around his head.