Filed To Story: Sunrise on the Reaping Book PDF Free
“No, Haymitch, we need someone exactly like you.”
“Just luckier?” I say.
“Luckier, or with better timing. Having an army at their back wouldn’t hurt.”
“Sure, that would’ve helped. Where’re you going to get an army, Plutarch?”
“If we can’t find one, we’ll have to build one. But obviously, finding one’s easier.”
“And then we can all kill one another, like back in the good old Dark Days?”
“Well, you know better than anyone what we’re up against with Snow. If you think of another way to stop that sunrise, you let me know.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil! –
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted –
On this home by Horror haunted – tell me truly, I implore –
Is there –
is there balm in Gilead? – tell me – tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us – by that God we both adore –
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore –
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
I avoid speaking to Plutarch for the rest of the Victory Tour. Through all the districts, where I stand on stages looking down at the families of the dead tributes. Through all the parties that culminate in the Capitol, where I’m returned to my comfy cage. Through all the strained festivities in District 12.
My team heads to the train. Plutarch and his crew do a style piece on my new house and tape a parting shot of me in the yard. As I stand there, staring at my prison, unwilling to cross the threshold and resume my sentence, he joins me.
“All right there, Haymitch?”
“I have nothing to live for.” I say this without even a note of self-pity. I am simply stating a fact.
“Then you have nothing to lose. That puts you in a position of power.”
I would like to kill him at that moment, but what would be the point? Instead, I say, “You think you’re a good person, don’t you, Plutarch? You think you’re a good guy because you told me about the sun and the berms. When what you really did is help create the Capitol’s propaganda and broadcast it to the country. Forty-nine kids died for it, but you gave it the old Heavensbee spin and, in that propo, you’re some kind of hero.”
Plutarch takes a moment to answer. “I’m nobody’s idea of a hero, Haymitch. But at least I’m still in the game.”
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting –
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
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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.