[Emily’s POV]

The ice feels different when you’re skating into a rigged game. Like walking into a casino where the house always wins and they’re not hiding the loaded dice.

“Ready?” Maddie asks, adjusting her costume with hands that shake slightly despite her best efforts to project Olympic-level confidence.

“As I’ll ever be,” I say, squeezing her hand before we step onto the ice. The cold bites at my face like it’s personally offended by our existence.

The crowd noise fades as we move through opening positions. Maddie’s hand finds mine during our starting pose—a quick squeeze of solidarity or terror, hard to tell.

“We’ve got this,” she whispers. Our music starts and the opening lift goes clean, her timing perfect, my positioning solid.

“Nice,” Maddie murmurs during our transition, her breath quick against my shoulder. I can feel the tension radiating from her like a human-shaped stress ball.

“Stay with me,” I say as we set up for the side-by-side triple salchows. They land in unison, which should feel triumphant but mostly feels like avoiding disaster.

The throw triple loop sends her soaring. She rotates perfectly before landing clean. I catch her for the combination spin and we hit every position.

“Almost there,” I breathe during our final transition, gripping her waist. Everything clicks. Our final lift finishes with Maddie’s arms extended like she’s presenting herself to the skating gods.

It’s the kind of performance that should have us pumping our fists. Instead, I feel hollow, like we’ve won a participation trophy at the apocalypse.

The scores come up and I stare at the numbers, with my brain instantly refusing to process them. “That can’t be right,” Maddie says, leaning forward like getting closer will somehow make the numbers change.

“Those are…” I trail off. Just aggressively average numbers that suggest we performed while insulting someone’s grandmother.

The crowd makes that collective disappointed noise. Very slow, very sad, very much not the reaction you want after skating your hearts out.

We sit in the kiss-and-cry with Coach. Maddie’s beside me, her smile plastered on for the cameras recording our misery for posterity.

“That was clean,” Coach says through gritted teeth, her jaw working like she’s preventing clipboard-related violence in front of international audiences.

“What do we do?” I ask quietly, keeping my camera smile frozen while my stomach drops through the floor.

“We file a complaint. We document everything,” Coach says, her knuckles white on her clipboard. “This pattern has gone on long enough.”

I nod, forcing my smile wider. Maddie’s hand finds mine briefly before we stand, her fingers ice-cold despite the arena temperature.

Then I see David near the competitor area, heading straight for Maddie with sympathy and barely concealed satisfaction that makes me want to throw something heavy.

After the competition, I watch David intercept Maddie near the judges’ entrance. He puts his hand on her shoulder, leaning in close. Maddie’s posture shifts—shoulders dropping, head tilting down. Whatever he’s saying, she’s listening in a way that makes my chest tight with panic.

I want to interrupt. But Coach beats me to confrontation, storming toward the judges’ panel with the energy of someone completely done with diplomacy forever. She moves like she’s ready to commit professional murder if given half an excuse and a good alibi from our team.

I stand there like a lost puppy, unsure of what I’m supposed to do in this mess. Twenty minutes later, another coach pulls me aside, glancing around like she’s worried about skating federation spies or officials with grudges and recording devices.

“Marquette really went after them,” she says, voice low and almost impressed. “Called out the scoring pattern directly. It got heated.”

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify