Defying the Odds (The 4th Quarter Quell) [The Hunger Games Fanfiction]

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Layla

My wrists are coated in a layer of dried blood.

I tried everything to get the rope off from around my wrists until I actually did, and then came the shouting in my ears and the beating of my body. I screamed and screamed and screamed until cool metal cuffs snapped around my wrists, and I have been trying to get them off ever since. The parachute surprised me; weren’t Asher and I the ones with a lot of sponsors?

The image of Asher’s broken face in my head plays on repeat, and I remind myself to stop thinking of him in front of the Careers before I start crying.

They were angry, no furious, when I had shouted at him to leave. They had slammed my body into the ground and their fists hit my body senselessly until I was screaming, and then the rope had tied on my wrists, and they dragged me away from the campsite. I have screamed a lot today.

“He’ll come back for her,” Brennan had said. “When he comes back, we’ll kill him first.”

Her.

Brennan has been referring to me as ‘her’ or ‘she’ all day.

“She’ll see him killed in front of her face and then we’ll kill her.”

The other careers didn’t have much of a choice but to go along with Brennan’s plan.

So here we are, sitting at the Cornucopia.

The silver cuffs are wrapped around my sore wrists and the rope is around my ankles. I watch them fill their stomachs with food – more than I have even laid my eyes on in the arena – and sip on their bottles of water. They chat about the other tributes alive, and I remember that there are only eleven others alive.

“So what happened to your face?” Brecken says, and my head lifts when I realize he is speaking to me. I raise an eyebrow. “Oh, please. We all saw those bruises before we got you.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” I mutter, and I hear Astria let out a scowl.

“Was it your boyfriend?” Brecken continues. “Did he put his fists on your pretty little face?”

My eyes narrow at him, and he lets out a sharp laugh.

“We could see if he put his hands on your pretty little body, too.”

“Go to hell,” I snarl. When I glance at Brennan, I can see his eyes are locked on Brecken. Is he angry?

“I’m joking,” Brecken says, his voice stony when he looks at Brennan.

“I bet she killed the girl from three and the boy from eleven,” Ember says. “Why else would she have those bruises on her face?”

“Please,” Astria says, rolling her eyes. “She didn’t kill them. I bet her boyfriend did the dirty work for her. I could take her on any day.”

“I’m sitting right here,” I add, my voice cold and hard. “And I’d like to challenge that theory.”

“What theory?” Astria spits, her bright eyes glaring into my own.

“If you think you could beat me in a fist fight, then let’s see,” I say. “You take these cuffs off of my hands and this rope off my feet and I’ll fight you.”

“There’s no way in hell we’re taking those off of you,” she says.

“Why? Are you afraid of me?”

“No,” Ember chimes in. “And you’d be dead right now if we weren’t trying to hunt down that stupid boy from seven.”

“His name is Asher,” I say to Ember, not daring to let my throat close up. “It’d do you good to learn the name of the person who’s going to be holding all of your dead bodies in his hands.”