Author Games: The Last Cannon

TASK EIGHT: Valeria Thracius [3]

Different perspectives will tear people apart forever. All it takes is one little shift in opinion, and suddenly years of work and love can fall into a fissure of our own creation. When I look over at Claudius, I see the man I have loved for as long as I can remember knowing what love is. He is, no matter his views of the world and his action, the father of my child, and that is something that is far from easy to forget. If I dare to look into his eyes, which are now so much colder than they were during my glory days, I still see the kindness I was surprised to find in the man who taught me how to slit someone's throat without a second's doubt, but managed to hold me together at night when all I could see was the face of my former victims.

I would have forgiven him for just about anything, but endangering our daughter with his poisoned ideas of the world was the one thing I couldn't sweep aside.

The girl I see on the screen is so like the one I once was that it scares me. She radiates confidence, and from the very beginning there was no doubt that, even if they added hundreds of tributes, she would be able to win it. She won't end up like me, though; she's stronger than that. What she may lack for in glamour, she makes up for inside her head. She will never allow the world to see that she is breaking. But, whether we see it or not, I have lived through it. I know that slowly but surely, she is losing hold of everything she thought she knew. And I know that, if something should kill her, it will be that.

I trained her. I know she can do it. She's made mistakes, of course, but it would have been unreasonable of me to expect any different of her. Even the strongest and most assured tribute I have trained would slip up once or twice, and what is key is that she will recover from it. Her mother had her fair share of mistakes, and she won the whole damn thing. And so will Valeria. If there is one thing that Valeria has learned, besides how to win, it's how to recover. No matter how far she may be led astray from the path to victory, she always finds a way to come back onto it.

Nothing matters much to me at this point if it isn't my daughter. My former wife, sat on my favourite chair, rolled up in a ball but unable to take her eyes away from the screen, is just a blur in the corner of my eyes. Normally I might tell her off for having her feet on the leather, but I have neither the energy nor the heart to do so. She showed up at my door the day Valeria left the Career pack, shaking in fear, and I didn't bother asking a question before I let her in. In a time like this, we're both in need of company.

Valeria appears on the screen, washing her hands of the blood that has coated them since last night, scrubbing furiously at them in the water by which she has set up camp. There are no tears running down her cheeks, but her eyebrows are creased in the way they always are when she's disappointed. When she was younger, it would always appear when she missed her target, sending her knife inches from the fatal zone. Now it's killing that brings this look to her face, and for a brief amount of time I wonder what it is that made her decide against my teachings. She would be much better off today if she had never tried to betray her own pack. The cameras zoom onto her red hands and Albia flinches, my focus switching to her for something as simple as simple as a moment.

"She had no choice but to kill him, you know."

I blink once, shaken from the peace and quiet of my thoughts by Claudius' voice; in the week that has passed since my arrival to his home, we haven't once spoken to each other. Instead we've stared at the screens placed right before us, our gazes and thoughts captivated and hoping different things for our daughter. I pray for her safety and he prays for her life. He doesn't seem to understand that there's a world of difference between the two. He should – he was married to me, after all.