She couldn’t say a word. Her throat felt like sandpaper, and when her hand came away from her tangle of necklaces they came coated with blood red as rust. For what it was worth, she knew what the Capitol meant by sending her those waterbirds – she was too loud, she spoke too much. They wanted to silence Maysilee Donner.

But her having to die didn’t come as a damn surprise to anybody, and she was always going to go screaming. Little Maysilee and her tight-clenched fists; little Maysilee and too many promises to say. I’ll try my best, Merrilee. Sure, Haymitch, I’ll be your sister . How many people did she owe and how many debts would die with her?

“You’d never keep your mouth shut long enough to win,” Merrilee had said the night before the Reaping, folding the laundry with stiff arms. They weren’t fighting, exactly – just bracing for the hypothetical that would eventually come crashing.

“Sure, sis, maybe I wouldn’t. But I’d make sure they choked on every bloody word I said.” Maysilee had laughed like it hardly cost her anything. But back then, it really didn’t.

Haymitch held her hand as she stared unblinking into the sky. Sixteen and angry, she gurgled filthy blood right onto snow and felt the fever light catch in her eyes and thought, Okay then, look at me. They wanted a show and she would deny that last thing to them if it meant she could do this her way. What more could they do to her that could bring her any lower than she was now? She was thankful for Haymitch’s silence, because anything he said would turn her into a sob story she was not.

The cannon didn’t fire yet. The hovercraft didn’t come. For the length of a heartbeat it felt as if the world had stopped for her – and in that moment of silence Maysilee Donner was alive.

She thought of her family – twin and mother and father and all the brothers she found along the way. Of the candy-shop and the half-mutt pin and the tokens she’d helped make that carried little tunnels of home. Of the way she had screamed and screamed and screamed when the birds came – until they skewered their beaks through the only thing that ever mattered to her.

Violet pain blossomed like a bruise behind her ribs.

Ha , she thought, nothing but rage and pride and spite as the world stuttered out. Let them zoom in on her blood on the snow, her slackening fingers. Let them search for a whimper, a tear; let them search for the meaning of her brother’s silence. She hoped that the Capitol was bored out of its mind, watching the dullest death of all. She hoped she’d wasted everybody’s time. So go on then – there goes the meanest girl in town.