Safe and Sound || Hunger Games

Chapter Twenty Eight - To Save and to be Saved

"But what if my fingertips didn't have flame? What if, as you fell, you extinguished it? What if they had ice instead?" I asked. Grayson smiled.

"Then it shall be the warmest ice I would have ever felt. It's impossible to truly extinguish a flame, not for a while at least. When you blow out a candle, smoke remains. Heat remains. When you put out a fire, there is still heat and there are ashes and small sparks and flames that weren't caught, waiting to be put out by the wind." Grayson said. Another thing about talking with Grayson: he always seemed to say the most beautiful and intelligent things. Well, that's what I thought of them at least.

"Come on," I muttered to him, "We've got to get to sleep. We are nearing the finale every second and I think we've got to be ready for whatever is going to be thrown at us."

I felt Grayson nod from beside me and then bury his head into my shoulder, where I felt his breath in the crook of my neck, tickling my skin. It was peaceful, but it still felt tense. Now that we had touched on the subject, it was going to linger between the two of us until the end. The very end. And perhaps some more.

"Harper." He whispered. I had to hold in an exasperated sigh.

"Yes?" I asked. Grayson didn't move, his breath still tickled my skin and his thick hair brushed my jawline. I felt Grayson yawn from underneath my chin.

"I don't love you, Harper," He whispered. It hit me like one of his knives hit a target; it pierced me and kept going through, making a hole. I was about to move away, but Grayson held onto me tighter, squeezing me, "But I always will."

I froze. My breathing stopped. My blood seemed to go cold and my heart seemed to slow down and then pick up pace, giving me an odd sensation in my chest area. I blinked and tried to breathe again, seeing as I was beginning to go light headed.

What did that mean? He had told me that he didn't love me, but that he always will. That was confusing for my tired brain. Grayson was still squeezing me tightly around my middle, which made me fear that he was going to cut off the circulation to the lower half of my body. I needed my legs, they were important for being in the Games. But I wasn't concentrating on that, I was concentrating on trying to decipher Grayson's words. When I said he sounded intelligent, I meant the way he spoke and worded things, not how many riddles he could put into his speech. But I guessed he was good at that, too. He honestly was good at pretty much everything he tried. And if it meant getting me confused at night, then so be it. He would use his talents in every way he could. Grayson was far too intelligent for his own good. I guessed that was his fatal flaw, his Achilles Heel. His sheer intelligence would probably put him in a sticky situation and I didn't want to think about that. I also didn't want to think about mine.

"I'll tell you the true meaning later, when I feel like it's the right time. Now, are you going to sleep or not?" Grayson asked, then demanded. I smiled slightly and snuggled into him, his warmth giving me a tingling sensation throughout my body. I hated myself for feeling whatever this was, but I couldn't help it, 'it' just seemed to come back to me even when I tried hard to get rid of it. It was inevitable.

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"Can you smell that?" I asked Grayson as we walked onward in the early morning. The air felt quite odd, to me it seemed to be almost thick, and seemed to smell like rust. "It's rust or something, but I don't understand what could be rusty." Grayson sniffed the air, and his nose instantly crinkled. He then seemed to taste the air, biting it almost. He then grimaced.

"It smells like blood. Blood smells quite like rust." He said, confirming my exact thoughts, "And it tastes like blood." Grayson then walked over to a tree and plucked a leaf from a low hanging branch. He then held the leaf upside down and a faint red coloured liquid trickled down it and fell onto the forest floor. He nodded. "And it looks just like blood, too. Watered down blood, though. The air reeks with it. But how and why..." He trailed off, adjusted his backpack and drew a knife. He then walked onward, beyond the tree and off into the ticker trees. I followed him.