Chapter 25 : The Debt
Blood ran down my side with every step.
The knife was gone—I'd pulled it out reflexively while running, stored it somewhere in the chaos of escape. Stupid move. Should have left it in, slowed the bleeding. But my body had other ideas, and now I was leaving a trail of red across the Cornucopia clearing.
Behind me, Clove screamed something. Rage, pain, promises of murder—the words blurred together. She was wounded too, my knife in her thigh, Katniss's arrow in her shoulder. But Career training meant fighting through damage. She was still coming.
The tree line was twenty feet away. Fifteen. Ten.
My legs buckled.
I hit the ground hard, the District 12 pack flying from my grip. The wound in my side shrieked protest, ribs grinding against torn muscle. My healing factor was working—I could feel it burning through calories I didn't have—but not fast enough. Not nearly fast enough.
Clove's shadow fell over me.
"The volunteer," she spat. Blood ran from her shoulder wound, staining her jacket dark. She'd pulled my knife from her thigh at some point; it gleamed in her good hand. "Cato wanted to kill you himself. But he'll understand."
I tried to roll, to move, to do anything. My body refused.
"Saw what you did to our supplies." She knelt beside me, knife pressing against my throat. "Watched the explosion from the woods. Cato cried. Did you know that? The great Cato, crying over lost food." Her smile was a wound. "I'm going to make your death last."
The knife bit into my cheek, tracing a line from jaw to eye. Pain flared, blood welled, and something in Clove's expression shifted.
"You're not screaming."
"Sorry to disappoint."
"You should be screaming." She pulled the blade back, examined my face. The cut was already closing, edges knitting together while she watched. "What ARE you?"
I smiled through bloody teeth. "Still figuring that out."
Her hesitation lasted maybe two seconds. Long enough.
A shadow blocked the sun.
Thresh was enormous.
I'd seen him in training, watched him throw weights that would crush normal men. But up close, wounded and pinned, he seemed like something from mythology. A titan descended to end mortal squabbles.
He carried a rock the size of a skull.
Clove scrambled backward, knife coming up defensively. "Thresh—we can work together—the District 12 tributes are right here—"
"You killed her."
Three words. Flat, certain, final.
"I don't know what you're—"
"The girl from my district. The small one. Pretty." Thresh's voice was quiet, controlled. More terrifying than shouting. "She was alive when the Feast started. Now she's not. And you're covered in blood that isn't yours."
My mind raced. Someone else had died at the Feast—someone I hadn't seen. One of the hidden tributes, maybe. And Clove had found her first.
"She was alive when I left her!" Clove's composure cracked. "I swear—I just—she was already hurt—"
"Liar."
The rock descended.
I rolled away as Clove's cannon fired, the sound eclipsing whatever noise her death made. Gore splattered across the grass. I didn't look directly. Some images stayed with you forever.
Thresh stood over the body, breathing hard. Then his eyes found me.
We stared at each other across three feet of bloody ground.
I was still on my back, wound in my side bleeding sluggishly, cuts across my face closing visibly. The healing was obvious now—impossible to hide, impossible to explain.
Thresh had seen everything.
"Rue," he said. Not a question.
"Alive." I forced the words out past the pain. "She's with my ally. Safe in the forest. A Career tried to kill her—I took the hit instead."
His expression didn't change. "The spear."
"Through my shoulder. Would have gone through her chest." I gestured at my side, the wound that should have been fatal. "This is nothing compared to that."
Thresh studied me—the closing cuts, the steady pulse of blood that should have been a flood, the way my body refused to die properly. Whatever calculation happened behind those dark eyes, I couldn't read it.
"You saved her," he said finally. "From the Career with the spear."
"Yes."
"And she's alive. Right now. Safe."
"Yes."
Long pause. The rock dripped beside him, Clove's blood mixing with arena dust.
"Take your pack." He stepped back, clearing a path to where the District 12 bag had fallen. "Go."
I forced myself upright, ignoring the scream of abused muscles. The pack was three feet away. I grabbed it, tucked it under my arm.
"Thresh—"
"This settles the debt." His voice was granite. "For Rue. For the bread you gave her during training." He turned toward the forest. "There won't be a second chance."
He walked away. No looking back. No hesitation.
I watched him disappear into the trees, then ran for my own escape route.
Katniss found me at the secondary rendezvous point.
She emerged from cover with her bow raised, arrow nocked, face tight with fear that dissolved into something more complicated when she saw me standing.
"You're alive."
"Mostly."
"Your side—" She moved closer, saw the wound that should have killed me. Already closed now, pink scar tissue where raw meat had been minutes ago. "That went between your ribs."
"I know."
"That should have—you should be—" She couldn't finish.
"I'm fine. The pack is secured. Clove is dead." I retrieved water from storage, drank deeply. My healing factor was ravenous, burning through every calorie I'd consumed that day. "We need to move. Cato will find her body soon."
As if summoned by the name, a scream echoed across the arena.
Raw, primal, filled with grief that transformed into rage. Cato had found Clove. The Career alliance was down to one—and that one had just lost everything he cared about.
"Move," Katniss said. "Now."
We ran.
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