Chapter 13: Peeta Breaks Protocol

The bread arrived at dawn.

Maren heard the parachute before she saw it — a soft pneumatic release, the kind of sound that did not belong to water or wind or the settling of concrete under its own weight. She was already awake, sitting against the east wall with her thumbnail pressed to the mark she'd made the previous morning, calculating. The waterline had risen another three centimeters overnight. She had revised her estimate of the third floor's viability from four days to three and a half, and had been revising it further, in the gray pre-light, when the silver capsule came through the window slit and landed on the floor between her and Cael's sleeping form with a sound like a coin dropped on stone.

Cael woke at the sound. His hand went to the blade before his eyes opened.