“Okay, Lucy, what did you want to talk to me about?" he asked."Us." "There is no us," Val reminded her firmly—although he had gotten misty just a moment before while holding her hand. She had given him both the best years of his life and the worst. "There used to be an us," she suggested, "which was a good us, a great us. Now there isn't an us, but that doesn't mean there can't be an us again. And a great us, not just a good us, because without us, I do okay and sometimes not even okay." Val's eyebrows wrinkled and he stared hard at her. "That didn't come out quite like I imagined," Lucy said. Romantic it certainly wasn't. "I meant to say, I'd like us to have a second chance.”

“I hugged her because she was proof that Luke had good taste in women and he had settled on me which said a lot about both of us.”

“Ashamed of what she had thought, Rycca lowered her eyes. “I am sorry.”“For what? Assuming I took the stone by force? But that’s what Vikings do, isn’t it?”He sounded exasperated and she could not blame him. But neither was she prepared when he suddenly asked, “Why did you not want us to marry? Because I am Viking?”She had wondered if he would ask, then decided her reasons would likely mean nothing to him. But he was a man of surprises, this hero of her strange world. And very good at biding his time.“It is true, I did not wish to wed a Viking.”“Because of what you have heard about us?”

“Sometimes, she said, mostly to herself, I feel I do not know my children... It was a fleeting statement, one I didn't think she'd hold on to; after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us. That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit.”

“What about Gale?""He's not a bad kisser either," I say shortly. "And it was okay with both of us? You kissing the other?" He asks. "No. It wasn't okay with either of you. But I wasn't asking your permission," I tell him. Peeta laughs again, coldly, dismissively. "Well, you're a piece of work, aren't you?”

“Julita was being spinned like a top by a drop-dead-gorgeous Dominicano. Later she told us that he’d asked for her number and she had given him the wrong one.“Why did you do that?” I asked her.“He smelled married,” she said.”