He hadn’t meant to drink too much, especially after the night he’d had before, but everywhere there were reminders of painful things. The blue on his suit meant to support Bellona, who was now dead. He was betraying her by wearing the color at all. The screens mounted on the walls, showing the faces of people he’d hoped would have remained ghosts from his Arena. And the people... God, they were the worst part of it. The ones who liked the Games, talking to him as if he should be having the time of his life. The ones who didn’t but were trapped under the Capitol’s threats. The survivors like him, just trying to make it through the night, looking just as haunted and exhausted as he felt.
The worst in the room were, by far, the Gamemakers. He’d been seething watching them laugh and drink and twirl on the dance floor, indifferent to what was going on in the Arena at best, taking delight and pride in the tortures they were inflicting at worst. The people who had stood between him and not only saving Bellona, but so many tributes prior. That had let their lives vanish into nothingness in the name of entertainment.
He downed another shot of whiskey. Maverick was gone talking to someone, he was left to his own devices. As if summoned by his rage, Lysander appeared nearby, and Alder’s vision tunneled. Bellona had deserved fucking better. She had deserved a second life that didn’t need to be bought in blood. She deserved better than the abject terror and cruelty of Silver. He marched up to him with every intent of saying this, of making a sound argument, but somewhere on his tongue the words twisted and came out instead in a forceful, “Fuck you Lysander. Fuck you.”
