They didn't even need a reaping.

Well, of course, they had a reaping, but everyone knew who the tributes would be. People high up in the government, people who had played a part in orchestrating the original Hunger Games. And I, as President Coriolanus Snow's granddaughter, was absolutely guaranteed a spot in the reaping.

As soon as they announced the Seventy Seventh Hunger Games -Seventy Seventh, because the storm on the Capitol, according to the Mockingjay, had been the Seventy Sixth- I steeled myself and prepared myself for the arena.

It would be a Hunger Games like no other - the ultimate Quarter Quell. The Games to end all Games. I wanted to be furious at the rebels for using us as the tributes, but looking at it through their eyes, it was perfect. What better way to punish the Capitol than to use their loved ones-their childrens' deaths-in the Hunger Games, in the very way that the Capitol punished the districts for all of those years?

"Giving us a taste of our own medicine," my mother had said. She had pursed her lips and looked me over, and I could almost hear her saying what I knew she wanted to: "you wouldn't be in this if you hadn't been so close to your grandfather." I knew she was right, knew that I was probably the very first name that would be called out, but what she didn't know was that my grandfather had been teaching me what it took to be the president of Panem: not just the politics and speeches, but the strategizing and the careful, subtle elimination of enemies. I was sure that I could get far in the Games, if not win, with what I had been taught. It wasn't like the son of the arena designers was going to come into the Games knowing how to kill.

Of course, I would know nearly every one of the tributes, which would make them harder to kill, but I needed to win. Although I wasn't certain that even if I did win, the rebels would let me stay alive. They might kill me just to make a statement.

Either way, I was going to have to make peace with my inevitable death, everyone had practically said. No one wanted to say it to me outright, but I could tell they were all thinking it. My mother and father, my cousins, all of my classmates from the academy. They all knew how much the new government hated the name Snow.

Before the Capitol fell, my grandfather had a room full of poison. It was hidden in his rooms, in a door in the wall only accessed if you pulled over a vase of white roses. He had brought me there, shown me how to grind plants into powder, mix poisons, and which antidotes cured which poisons. My father, his son, had never known that the room existed, and I had never told him. My father, my grandfather had told me time and again, was a disappointment. I was the hope for the Snow family.

When the rebels took over, I had assumed that they had found the room, so I hadn't gone back. Even if there weren't, I was sure that they had closed off his rooms after his death. If only I could take the poisons from that room into the arena with me: I'd be guaranteed to win.

They had a reaping a few days later. It was jarring to stand in the bombed-out Capitol square., in my nicest dress, in a clump of other Capitol children eligible for the reaping. How many times had I seen this throughout my life? Never once had I participated in it. It almost felt like a dream.

This reaping wasn't the same as the ones in the districts had been. Instead of a boy and girl from each district, the tributes were to be picked from the pool of Capitol citizens that the rebels most wanted dead. And since none of those people were eligible for the reaping, it would be their children, their grandchildren, their nieces and nephews who were reaped instead.

Instead of two glass balls, there was only one, and it contained the twenty-four slips of paper that had already been decided on by the rebels and the remaining victors of previous Hunger Games.

Johanna Mason read the list of names. She was almost as happy as the district escorts had been as she pulled name after name out of those glass balls and read them aloud. I wasn't first to be called, so I supposed I'd be last. As I waited, I studied my competition. I knew most people, either because their parents or grandparents had worked for my grandfather, or from the Academy, from my own classes or from seeing them around.

There were five relatives of previous Head Gamemakers, including Seneca Crane's niece, which had been surprising since Seneca Crane had been executed for treason. But he had still been a key piece of the Hunger Games.

Unsurprisingly, all seven members of my grandfather's board of advisors had children that were reaped. Though I had been expecting it, it didn't hurt any less when my best friend Leto's name was called. We had both known it would happen but I could still see the alarm and fear in her posture as she walked up to the stage.

I swallowed hard. One of us was going to have to kill the other.

Claudius Templesmith's daughter Aphrodite was called, followed by her long term boyfriend, Zeus, the great-grandson of Casca Highbottom, who had originally come up with the Hunger Games. She took his hand and collapsed into his arms, sobbing. I rolled my eyes. Aphrodite was a notorious drama queen.

Ptolemy and Gaea, daughter and son of the arena designers, were called next. I knew them, but not well. They walked up to the stage looking almost bored. They would die soon.

The grandson and great-grandson of the creators of the Avoxes and the mutts were next. Ares, who had boasted of his great grandmother Dr. Gaul, was in my year at school.

The son of the Head Peacekeeper of Panem was called next. Then the son of Romulus, Thread, who had come from the Capitol to reform District Twelve right before the last Quarter Quell. I hadn't expected him, but I assumed that the Mockingjay had picked him. She had been from District twelve, after all.

Johanna smiled before she read the last name, and even though I knew what was coming, I could feel my stomach start to sink, my heart start racing, and jump into my throat.

"Caelia Snow," Johanna called, and I walked forward. Everyone had already parted to let me through before my name had been called, and all of the rebels watching me looked pleased. Johanna hadn't announced who I was related to that had caused my being in the reaping pool because she didn't have to. Everyone already knew who I was, and everybody already wanted me dead.