75th Candidate Rose Valfierno

The last thing Lethe wanted to say was, “because I have to,” but it slipped so quickly out of her mouth she couldn’t stop it, blurting it out before the Peacekeeper had even finished his question. Something about his piercing blue eyes had entranced her and now she was left blinking in the wake. Her cheeks burned.

“What makes you think she’d be a worthy candidate?” The rest of the statement, turning into a question, floated past Lethe’s ears, mingling with her quickly shot out answer. Because she’s Patricia’s sister, Lethe almost said, but she tempered her tongue, speaking quickly to make up for her last answer. “Because I have to,” she began again, hoping he wouldn’t notice her bright cheeks, “protect the children and workers. Didn’t you hear her speech?”

It wasn’t untrue. It was just that the real answer to all of that was much more complicated. Because I owe Patricia something, she could hear herself saying in her head. Because someone who gets it finally gives a damn about this District. This someone who has probably seen Patricia thrashing around in bed. Looked her in her eyes, dead, stolen and hollow, and asked, where have you gone?

And it wasn’t just that. It was more that Rose seemed to care about something far greater than her. Where Lethe drew her remaining son close and shut the doors, Rose saw the syringes, the lines, the powder that dusted the ground like snow. Lethe, upon on her hill, behind mahogany doors complete with brass bolts, did not. And she never would. Lethe was all about survival and therefore, unlike Rose, she kept to herself.

For some reason though, she didn’t say all of this. Why would he believe her anyway? Lethe Turner, Mrs. Turner-Somerset, pale as a ghost, and far-removed from her District CARES about the drug problem? Unbelievable. Besides, and at this thought, Lethe’s own green eye met Helmsby’s own blue ones and narrowed, would he even care? If the rumors were true about him, about his love for morphling, that last part wouldn’t at all be what he wanted to hear?

In fact, Lethe had seen him and had drawn Eden closer to her once while shopping in the market. No one would dare touch a Victor’s daughter, but it wasn’t him Lethe was afraid of; it was Eden—or rather both of them together. There was something enticing about him, from the blue, unfocused eyes, to the sweat above the lip. Sirens were going off in Lethe’s head to keep her daughter closer and closer lest he smile in their direction. Lest her daughter wish for something more thrilling than her life of comfort and security, be it another’s warm arms or a whiff of something higher than her mother’s walls.

But, now her arms were cold. Her daughter had found that one thing and Lethe bitterly returned to her first point.

“Rose wants us all to survive. She wants our kids to live,” she emphasized the last word. She leaned forward, but catching a whiff of his cologne, she pulled back. The sign of his charm had burned her. “She wants our families together. She wants everything I’ve wanted for my kids, and everything you would want for yours if you had any.” She intended the final words to sting, but now she considered that that last part might not be entirely true. Sucking in a deep breath, she continued, but this time the truth in her words was growing and with it, her voice too, louder and firmer. “Rose gives a shit. People like you don’t. She knows the sacrifice we make for our children. And she knows the temptations we give in to along the way.”

That last part hadn’t meant to come out, but she suddenly remembered the bruises she saw on his inner arm when he leaned in to take something from the butcher. It was stirred something deep within her stomach and Lethe suddenly forgot they needed meat that day and had hurried Eden away.

Desperately, Lethe rolled her eyes, making her voice gruffer. Return to the reaping, she thought, that’s what Victors know best. “She said she wants our kids to take out less tesserae and I think that’s most important to save kids from the Reaping. A reaping means absolute death.” She crossed her arms. “Especially since everyone knows I’m such a shit mentor.”