Filed To Story: Sunrise on the Reaping Book PDF Free
“Forty-one, minus the Booker Boy fee.”
“Guess you are a long shot, for your pa to hold you so cheap,” I say.
“Never pretended otherwise.” Wyatt turns and walks over to our van, one of the few still left in the stable.
“Boy, that was mean, even by my standards,” Maysilee says to me. “You can’t choose your parents.”
“You could reject their business,” I point out.
“I couldn’t,” says Maysilee. “I was going to spend the rest of my life behind that candy counter, no matter how much I hated it. And I’m guessing you’d have been wearing miner’s overalls to your grave. We never, none of us, had any choices.”
She follows Wyatt to the van, leaving me to ponder the possibility that I’ve out-meaned Maysilee. Not something to be proud of. But neither is factoring Louella’s death into our odds. Her body’s not even cold, and he’s reduced her to a number. But she was not a number, she was a little girl I met on the day she was born when Mr. McCoy, his face alight with joy, held her up at the window for all us kids to see. A terrible, dark grief begins to well up inside me, threatening to drown me, but I force it back down. Swallow the sadness, clamp a lid on it, dam it up. They will not use my tears for their entertainment.
The effort leaves me dizzy, so I sit against a pillar and watch the birds flitting around the rafters. Horses and chariots disappear into the depths of the stable. Tributes straggle in from the avenue and join up with their districts. A couple of Peacekeepers stroll around, cuffing the strays. They give me the eye but leave me be.
I find myself staring up at an electronic board that lists all the tributes. We don’t seem to rate last names.
SECOND QUARTER QUELL
TRIBUTE ROSTER
DISTRICT 1
Boy
Panache
Girl
Silka
Boy
Loupe
Girl
Carat
DISTRICT 2
Boy
Alpheus
Girl
Camilla
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.