The air in the Capitol was different now—thicker, heavier, laced with something unseen but impossible to ignore. Coriolanus Snow stood before you, his expression carefully composed, yet his pale blue eyes betrayed something deeper. Something desperate.

He had changed. Or maybe you had simply begun to see him for what he truly was.

The boy who once spoke of survival and honor had become a man draped in power, his words no longer dreams but commands, his hands no longer soft but stained with choices he could never take back. And you had stood beside him through it all. Until now.

“You don’t have to do this,” you said, voice barely above a whisper. The walls of his lavish office seemed to close in, the weight of his decisions pressing against you both.

Coriolanus exhaled slowly, tilting his head as if the very idea was absurd. “Don’t I?”

His fingers found yours, gripping them with the kind of force that was meant to be reassuring but only made your pulse quicken. He was afraid. Not of war, not of politics, but of this—of losing you.

“Tell me you’ll stay,” he murmured, his voice low, pleading. “Tell me I haven’t already lost you to my sins.”

You wanted to. Saints, you wanted to.

Because when Coriolanus Snow looked at you like that, like you were the only soft thing in his cruel world, it was easy to forget. Easy to pretend he wasn’t already too far gone.

But the blood on his hands would only spread.

Your silence stretched between you like a noose tightening around both your throats. His grip on your fingers tensed, his breath shallow, as if he already knew the answer you couldn’t bring yourself to say.

And for the first time, Coriolanus Snow looked powerless.