28. Why We Wear Masks
Chapter 28
Why We Wear Masks
The Game Warden
Three Years – Two Months Ago
T he Game Warden slammed a fist into the bathroom mirror, shattering it.
His mind was loosening. His nerves shot and frayed as he tried to detach himself from what he had seen. He shut his eyes, but it only had the effect of flashing images behind his eyelids.
Men screaming and begging. The slaughter. The blood. The heart shattering pleas. The deadening silence as only one victor remained.
He thought it had been bad enough when he was in the games, but it was nothing compared to watching it play out from above.
Without the distraction of his own imminent death, he was forced to focus on the horrors. His job was to analyze every moment of it.
I can’t do this.
He spun from the mirror, he couldn’t look at himself anymore. He couldn’t stomach his own image.
Is that why we wear masks?
Blood dripped from his hand to the carpeted floor as he walked into his bedroom. Stomping to his dresser, he shoved the items around until he found what he was desperately searching for.
A single image. It was the only item he had that he treasured, and Nightingale had given it to him.
A picture of Raven. A recent photo of her.
The image was a bit blurry, but she was unmistakable. Raven was stretching behind the doctor’s house in a patch of grass, the vantage point coming from behind the fence that wrapped around it.
Raven is alive.
The Game Warden fell to his knees, clutching the image desperately to his chest. He wanted more than anything to fall apart and allow his sorrow to overtake him, but he couldn’t.
Sparrow is safe. Raven is alive.
The thoughts propelled him out of the madness that crept its slimy tendrils into him. He rose shakily from his knees, and pulling the picture from his chest, he gave it one more full examination.
Memorizing it.
The darkness of her hair, the arch of her brow, the jut of her nose, the fullness of her lips, the curve of her hips.
I love you and miss you so fucking much.
Raven and Sparrow were his sole reasons to carry on. To shoulder the burden of an impossible title. To accept his fate that while he might have won his life, he was now a prisoner for the rest of his days.
I can’t be Julian. I have to change. I have to accept that I am now a game warden.
Before he could think it through, he ripped up the picture, shredding it as thoroughly as his damaged and shaky fingers would allow. Collecting the pieces, he let out one last sob before walking to the toilet and flushing them away.
Sparrow was bad enough, but he couldn’t let anyone else know of his ties to Raven.
Inside a place as cruel as this, love would be his downfall. Any sign of weakness and the sharks would smell blood. They would come for him and use it against him.
In this hell he was not a man.
He was The Game Warden.