Coriolanus threw the handful of cabbage into the pot of boiling water and swore that one day it would never pass his lips again. But today was not that day. He had to eat a big bowl of this tasteless stuff and drink every drop of the broth, so his stomach wouldn’t growl during the reaping ceremony. This was one of the many precautions he took to hide the fact that his family, even though they lived in the penthouse of the Capitol’s most luxurious apartment building, was as poor as the outcasts from the districts. That at eighteen, the heir of the once-great House of Snow could rely on nothing to survive except his own wits.

His shirt for the reaping worried him. He had a decent pair of dark dress trousers he’d bought on the black market last year, but the shirt was what everyone looked at. Fortunately, the Academy provided the uniforms he needed for daily use. For today’s ceremony, however, the students had been instructed to dress smartly but with the seriousness the occasion demanded. Tigris had told him to trust her, and he did. His cousin’s skill with a needle was the only thing that had saved him so far. Still, he couldn’t expect miracles.

The shirt they had dug out from the depths of the closet—his father’s, from better days—was stained and yellowed with age, half the buttons were missing, and there was a cigarette burn on one cuff. Too damaged to be sold even in the worst of times, and this was the shirt he would wear to the reaping? Early this morning he had gone to her room at dawn, only to find that both his cousin and his shirt were gone. That was not a good sign.