Cutting the final string (Deja DP; Day 4)

Her thrust was weak. It scraped the back of girl’s skull, her sword a paintbrush splattering red onto a rocky canvas. Another girl – Samira – had smashed her wrist into a fractured mess, and Hyacinth knew her heart was fading. This girl could fight, she could be fury, she could believe in defying death, but sometimes loss was inevitable. She could believe she had all of the power in the world, and then fate would snatch it way from her. There was dormant anger still stirring in Hyacinth’s core after the day of her punishment. The one person she could blame was dead, and the Peacekeeper responsible for her scars had forced himself into her life. Another man to please, another night to forget. Another reminder that she could be powerless.

This girl wanted so badly to live, but so do I. Cannons bellowed in the wind, warning them again and again that players on the board were dropping. Maye was among them, dead before Hyacinth could witness a second of it. Her voice was swallowed up by the perils of this place. Such a beautiful day wasted on death, sun beams streaming between the cracks in the earth to glisten against the silver of their blades. The cloudless sky seemed so far away. They were ants trapped between two walls, carrying the weight of sins rather than food. This girl believed she could escape fate.

Not today.

She pivoted, angling her sword for another strike. Time froze. A red stain blossomed from the girl’s abdomen, and she didn’t remember a knife having been embedded into her skin. She had yet to move, yet to breathe, she had only blinked and it was over. Someone else had stepped in and caught fate by surprise. A sinner, not a savior. The girl collapsed.

”It hurts.” This wasn’t a quick death, but something sharp and terrible. She asked for Bolts, and Hyacinth found herself standing beside her remaining allies, hands clutching the hilt of her bloody sword. The girl was in a pitiful state. Defeat was here, and the realization that she had to die would strike down like a hammer. This was the truth no tribute searched for, but one everyone would witness. Her raw emotion, her honesty, seeping out of her like the blood in her veins and the tears in her ducts. Celia would relish in something as sweet as a slow, painful death. She would not.

Hyacinth’s expression didn’t change. She pursed her lips, knowing that she was not her sister, yet also knowing what had to be done. She let Ansgar say a prayer, she let Bolts say his goodbyes, but this girl was fading breath by breath, and none were painless. They could not leave her here to bleed out like an animal. Hyacinth was not an empathetic woman with a gentle soul and stars in her eyes. She was still cold, inside and out, and felt as empty as she did when she found Mordecai’s face in the sky. Nothing would save her.

But she still had a conscience.

”I was right,” she said, because someone had indeed killed this girl, a simple death sentence with one toss of a knife. Now, it was matter of delivering the final blow before her heartbeat gave out. ”I wish I wasn’t.”

Because despite everything, they didn’t just kill each other. The Capitol reaped all of them. Every player was manipulated by their manicured fingers, and she would never forget how painfully pointless it was.

She looked Deja in the eyes, and plunged the tip of her sword into her heart.