There was a cold feeling resting in my heart as I woke up on reaping day. A shiver ran down my spine as I sat up on the sofa. My bones ached and I could feel the gnaw of hunger in my stomach, but I didn't feel able to eat anything that morning. I knew I might regret that later in the Games when I didn't have the privilege of a hot meal waiting for me on the table, but I thought if I even tried to eat what Drew had laid out for me, I'd be sick.

"You should try and have something. I don't want you fainting as you walk up to the stage," Drew told me as he chewed on a piece of bacon. "How is this going to work? Is only your name in the bowl? Do you know how you're going to play this? What's your angle?"

I didn't know the answers to any of his questions. President Snow hadn't told me much. Only that he'd rigged these things before. He'd know what he was doing, surely?

Valeria came over to Drew's house briefly to hand me a cotton dress to wear for the reaping. It was a plain, but well made outfit, clearly befitting of some of the District's richer residents, but when Drew saw it, he shook his head.

"No, that won't do. It needs to be dirtied up. No one around these parts is rich enough to look that clean, but me."

He took me into the backyard and smeared some dirt onto the dress until it looked just as dusty and dull as anyone else's. I think he enjoyed making my dress dirty far too much, but I said nothing. My nerves were too frayed to care that I'd never have been seen dead looking such a state in the Capitol. And soon, all eyes would be on me at the reaping as I stepped up to the stage as a female tribute. Everyone would know my name. Everyone would know my fate. Everyone would be waiting for my death to come on live television.

I didn't want to think about that. Even when Drew sent me onward to the reaping alone, I tried to distract myself by looking at my surroundings. The people of District 10 had a way about them - hunched shoulders, dirty skin from all the mud and eyes that seemed to have no life left behind them. I knew the livestock District provided the bulk of our meat and milk in the Capitol, and the likes of leather, wool and cashmere came from here too. Without District 10, my studies in fashion would never have been able to go ahead. Perhaps if I won and could provide the District with money and food, it would be a step toward paying them back for their labour.

But even I didn't believe that. I could barely believe the amount of time I'd spent fawning over expensive clothes and indulgent meals and crazy parties in the Capitol when the people of District 10 were barely able to drag themselves out of bed in the morning. I'll never pay back what I owe you all, I thought.

And I'd never be able to stomach the kind of fear they endured each year as they marched toward the town square for the reaping. The fear I knew was from something certain, something unavoidable. But the girls walking into town had no idea that they were safe from the horrors of the Games. They didn't know that everything was going to be alright for them for another year. Even if they did, they'd still know that they'd have to go through it all the following year, and the year after that.

And the mothers and fathers who gathered on the sidelines would be sick to their stomachs, knowing they had no control over whether their children lived or died, were picked or weren't picked. The ones who had been forced to take tesserae would feel the fear of how that a handful of extra grain added another handful of their names into the bowl. Older brothers and sisters felt the fear that their siblings names might be called, and that they might be expected to volunteer in their place.

I was only realizing then, as I walked among the damned, how much politics was woven into the Games. President Snow wanted to crush these people? He'd succeeded. The rebels were too scared and tired to fight against their own oppression anymore. These people were worked to the bone until they couldn't help giving up their dreams of another revolution. I'd been told so many times that they'd brought this fate upon themselves. But thirty-five years had passed. The people in the District probably hadn't even been a part of the uprisings that sent Panem into chaos. At that moment, I couldn't understand why they were being made to suffer because of their ancestor's places in our history.

But my thoughts weren't going to stop the reaping. My doubt in the system wasn't going to prevent the Hunger Games. There was still a sacrifice I needed to make, and I was edging closer to it with every step. I walked through the sea of Peacekeepers, signing my name on the registration sheet. I didn't have much clue what I was doing, but I soon realized I was being herded off to stand with the other female tributes of my own age.

As I stood solemnly among the other girls, I noticed things I'd never seen on TV before. How the girls locked hands with their friends and wiped each other's tears silently. How they barely said a word, but they somehow all knew they were there for one another.

A girl who was standing next to me watched me with curious eyes. I guessed she'd realized she hadn't seen me at a reaping before. I didn't know what I was supposed to do so I tried to keep my head down, but she kept watching me until eventually I lifted my eyes to meet hers. There was a kindness in her warm brown eyes that I wasn't expecting.

"You okay?" the girl asked me. I blinked in surprise.

"Me? I'm fine."

The girl sighed. "You don't have to pretend, you know. It doesn't get easier, even if it is our last year." She reached out and squeezed my hand. "It's alright to be afraid."

I wished I could tell her she was going to be okay. I wished I could tell her that I would try my hardest to win for her District when they called my name. But it had to be a secret. I couldn't tell her why I was there. I squeezed her hand and she squeezed mine back. I wondered what it would be like to have a friend who was truly rooting for you. It felt like the first time I got to experience a taste of that life.

Mayor Golding stood up then and made his way to the front of the stage. The whole square fell silent. The girl beside me gripped my hand so hard that her knuckles turned white.

I never even found out her name.

The Mayor reeled off his speech about Panem and then it was time for the reaping to begin. Eli Thimbletooth, one of my favourite escorts from the Capitol, stepped forward to reel off the names. I caught Drew's eye from where he sat up on the stage. He'd turned very pale and his hands were visibly shaking. Valeria's cold gaze bore into me even as she touched Drew's hand gently to steady him. I took a deep breath. I waited for my name to be called.

"Mariana Rothwell!" Eli Thimbletooth cried.

My heart stopped. That wasn't right. It couldn't be. It was my name supposed to be pulled from the pot. Something must've gone wrong.

Behind me, I heard a young girl begin to wail. She must've been fourteen or fifteen at most. A Peacekeeper tried to take her arm and bring her up to the stage, but she was distraught, falling to her knees in the dirt. I was so shocked that I could do nothing, but watch. Why didn't he call my name?

And then I realized something. There were a few options which might be true. Perhaps there was some mistake and Snow's plan to have me reaped had gone awry. Perhaps he hadn't managed to pull any strings to force some Capitol girl into the Games. Or maybe, this was his plan all along. To have me shipped out to the Districts and force me to live my life out here as a punishment for trying to play him like a puppet.

Alternatively - the most likely reason - he wanted this to happen. He wanted me to have to stand in fear at the reaping and choose my fate a second time. He wanted to know I was all in with the plan. He wanted me to volunteer in this girl's place and prove to him that I was serious about going into the arena. Plus, no one forgets a volunteer. He wanted my name to be on everyone's lips. The girl from District 10 - a volunteer, a martyr, a braveheart.

And the first one to die in the bloodbath.

I felt anger rise inside me. I should just defy him completely and let the girl go to her fate, I thought harshly. I was never meant to be there. But it was my fear talking. It was eating away at my moral compass with every passing second. And even as the girl was slowly dragged toward the stage, I felt my resolve leaving me.

Until I snapped.

"I volunteer."

I said it so quietly that only the girl beside me even heard me. She shook her head at me. She was silently telling me not to do it. To let whoever it was back there just take the fall. But I couldn't do it. It wasn't just about my Mom anymore. It was about believing in myself. It was about keeping my promise. It was about saving an innocent life, even if it meant ending twenty-three others.

"I volunteer!" I shouted so loud that the sound of my voice echoed off the Justice Building. Everyone turned to look at me. Cameras honed in on my face. I was a nobody in that District. No one recognized me or knew my name to whisper it through the crowds. I was a rarity in the District - volunteers were rare. And why me? Why would I save a girl who didn't even know me, and I didn't know her? The people of the District were talking, but it was time for me to step up. I let go of the girl beside me, missing the heat of her clammy hand almost immediately. But I'd done it. I'd passed the test.

"We have a volunteer! How peculiar!" Eli Thimbletooth cried, clapping his hands together in glee. He looked amazing with his green hair parted down the middle, his cheeks studded with emeralds and his suit paired with a billowing green cape, but his brilliance made me feel small. I imagined how I must look to him, my hair shorn short to rid me of my identity, my expensive clothes left long behind me and my face covered in dirt instead of makeup. He'd never see the Capitol girl standing in front of him, but that was the way it had to be. I didn't just look like a District girl. I felt like one too as the reality of what was happening weighed heavy in my heart.

"This young beauty has chosen to give her life in place of another! What a beautiful thing we're witnessing," Eli said, looking at me in awe. It made me realize how easy it would be to hate him if I'd lived in the Districts all my life. "What's your name, sweetheart?"

I tilted my head up and looked out at the crowd. I had planned to give a fake name, to dissuade anyone who knew me from home from believing that I was the girl they were seeing on their screens. I thought perhaps I could pass for someone else with my shorn head and my unpainted face. But I wasn't about to conceal my identity now. For once, I felt proud of myself. Even if I'd done it for impure reasons, I'd saved a girl's life. She stood in the crowd, snivelling to herself and I knew that what I'd done was a blessing she'd never expected from anyone.

"My name is Aurelia Thorne," I told the crowd confidently.

"Aurelia...what a beautiful name. Almost like something we might hear in the Capitol," Eli mused. "Tell us, Miss Thorne...why did you volunteer?"

I fixed my eyes on the nearest camera and hardened my gaze. I kept my breathing steady even as my heart raced in my chest. I looked straight at the lens as though I was staring into the eyes of President Snow himself.

"Because I want to win."