第98章

  my eyes open and the sense of security vanishes. i’m not
  home, not with my mother. i’m in a dim, chilly cave, my bare
  feet freezing despite the cover, the air tainted with the unmis-
  takable smell of blood. the haggard, pale face of a boy slides
  into view, and after an initial jolt of alarm, i feel better. “pee-
  ta.”
  “hey,” he says. “good to see your eyes again.”
  “how long have i been out?” i ask.
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  “not sure. i woke up yesterday evening and you were lying
  next to me in a very scary pool of blood,” he says. “i think it’s
  stopped finally, but i wouldn’t sit up or anything.”
  i gingerly lift my hand to my head and find it bandaged.
  this simple gesture leaves me weak and dizzy. peeta holds a
  bottle to my lips and i drink thirstily.
  “you’re better,” i say.
  “much better. whatever you shot into my arm did the
  trick,” he says. “by this morning, almost all the swelling in my
  leg was gone.”
  he doesn’t seem angry about my tricking him, drugging
  him, and running off to the feast. maybe i’m just too beat-up
  and i’ll hear about it later when i’m stronger. but for the mo-
  ment, he’s all gentleness.
  “did you eat?” i ask.
  “i’m sorry to say i gobbled down three pieces of that groos-
  ling before i realized it might have to last a while. don’t worry,
  i’m back on a strict diet,” he says.
  “no, it’s good. you need to eat. i’ll go hunting soon,” i say.
  “not too soon, all right?” he says. “you just let me take care
  of you for a while.”
  i don’t really seem to have much choice. peeta feeds me bi-
  tes of groosling and raisins and makes me drink plenty of wa-
  ter. he rubs some warmth back into my feet and wraps them
  in his jacket before tucking the sleeping bag back up around
  my chin.
  “your boots and socks are still damp and the weather’s not
  helping much,” he says. there’s a clap of thunder, and i see
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  lightning electrify the sky through an opening in the rocks.
  rain drips through several holes in the ceiling, but peeta has
  built a sort of canopy over my head an upper body by wedging
  the square of plastic into the rock above me.
  “i wonder what brought on this storm? i mean, who’s the
  target?” says peeta.
  “cato and thresh,” i say without thinking. “foxface will be
  in her den somewhere, and clove . . . she cut me an then . . .”
  my voice trails off.
  “i know clove’s dead. i saw it in the sky last night,” h says.
  “did you kill her?”
  “no. thresh broke her skull with a rock,” i say.
  “lucky he didn’t catch you, too,” says peeta.
  the memory of the feast returns full-force and i feel sick.
  “he did. but he let me go.” then, of course, i have to tell him.
  about things i’ve kept to myself because he was too sick to ask
  and i wasn’t ready to relive anyway. like the explosion and
  my ear and rue’s dying and the boy from district 1 and the
  bread. all of which leads to what happened with thresh and
  how he was paying off a debt of sorts.
  “he let you go because he didn’t want to owe you any-
  thing?” asks peeta in disbelief.
  “yes. i don’t expect you to understand it. you’ve always had
  enough. but if you’d lived in the seam, i wouldn’t have to ex-
  plain,” i say.
  “and don’t try. obviously i’m too dim to get it.”
  “it’s like the bread. how i never seem to get over owing you
  for that,” i say.
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  “the bread? what? from when we were kids?” he says. “i
  think we can let that go. i mean, you just brought me back
  from the dead.”
  “but you didn’t know me. we had never even spoken. be-
  sides, it’s the first gift that’s always the hardest to pay back. i
  wouldn’t even have been here to do it if you hadn’t helped me
  then,” i say. “why did you, anyway?”