Chapter Thirty-Four
The door to Nilas’s office slams behind Petra with the finality of a judge’s gavel, the sound ricocheting off the ceilings that seem designed specifically to make human beings feel insignificant. The vast room operates on the principle that power requires space.
Nilas sits behind his mahogany desk in a large leather chair like it’s a throne, fingers steepled. He doesn’t invite her to sit. Instead, he deploys silence like a weapon, letting it stretch until the air itself feels hostile.
When he finally speaks, his voice is cutting: “Tell me, Petra. Are you trying to ruin your career?”
Her breath catches, but she holds herself rigid, a statue pretending not to feel the foundation faltering. “No, of course not.”
“Then explain to me,” his voice rises, “why the hell I woke up this morning to see one of my dancers—one of my soloists, no less—reduced to nothing more than a viral spectacle?”
Petra’s throat goes desert-dry, but Nilas is just warming up. He rises from his desk and begins to circle her.
“This company has operated for decades under an unwavering standard of excellence, discipline, and most importantly, discretion. We are not a publicity stunt. We are not fodder for online gossip.”
She starts to speak. “I didn’t—” but he cuts her off with a sharp hand gesture.
“Don’t interrupt me.”
The words land with the heft of institutional authority.
He continues orbiting her. “The rehearsal studios are for company members only. That is a strict policy, one that every dancer before you has had the respect to uphold. But you? You waltzed your little hockey player onto sacred ground, using the company’s space as if it were your personal playground. ”
The dismissive way he says “little hockey player” makes Petra’s nails bite into her palms hard enough to leave crescents.
“Did you think no one would find out? Did you think that because you used the back entrance, you were somehow above the rules?” His mockery possesses the cruelty of someone who’s been waiting for this moment. “How naive. How utterly disappointing.”
Each word is a precisely placed blade, designed to cut without killing—yet.
“Your actions have made a mockery of what I am trying to build. I am deeply, deeply disturbed that you felt entitled to behave in such a manner.” His voice drops to that low register that makes threats sound like prophecies.
“And frankly, if I were you, I’d be questioning whether you even have a future here at all. ”
The walls seem to contract, the oxygen thinning like they’ve climbed to peak altitude without moving.
“You should have taken the Saint Petersburg offer when you had the chance.”
The cruelty of it—throwing her sacrificed opportunity back at her like a weapon—is breathtaking.
“If I were you,” he murmurs as if delivering a final, killing blow, “I would be asking myself a very important question: Are you still useful here? Because as of now, you are suspended pending further review.”
A knock at the door interrupts before the silence can fully crystallize into despair.
Nilas sighs. “Go,” he says to her.
Petra turns to leave, desperate for air, when something catches her eye. A flash of purple on a chair in the corner, peeking out from under his jacket.
Purple mittens.
She knows those mittens. Only one person in the company wears mittens like that. One person who’s been visiting Nilas’s office with increasing frequency.
Meanwhile, Liam has to get to practice so he leaves Lincoln Center and heads back underground, boarding the 1 train as it rattles through its underground path. The notification barrage continues, even deep under Manhattan where the Wi-Fi is suspect.
The messages and comments blur together: “Bro…have you seen this?” “Liam LeClerc: NHL forward by day, ballet prince by night???” “This can’t be real…is it???”
Whoever did this understood exactly how to maximize damage. The subway lurches to his stop.
The walk from Penn Station to the locker room usually takes five minutes.
Today it stretches before him like a death march.
Each step brings him closer to what will undoubtedly be the single most humiliating moment of his professional career, and he’s had some doozies, like that time he accidentally scored on his own goal during the playoffs three years ago.
His phone keeps buzzing with the insistence of a cardiac monitor, each notification another spike in his anxiety chart. He’s stopped looking.
The thing about locker rooms is they’re not big on the occupants being ballerinas.
He pauses outside the doors, listening to the familiar sounds of pre-practice chaos. His hand hovers over the door handle. He could turn around. Go back home. Hide under his covers. But his contract doesn’t have a “mortification clause.”
So, he pushes open the locker room door, stepping into what will either be his finest hour of taking chirps on the chin, or the moment he finally understands why witness protection exists.
The locker room has transformed into what can only be described as the world’s worst adult ballet recital.
Dewey Carter grips a hockey stick as if it’s a ballet barre, attempting a plié with little success. “Knees over toes, right?” he calls out.
Across from him, two players attempt changements—not well.
“Wait, are we landing in fifth position or fourth?” one player asks the other.
Will Kelly stands attempting a pas de bourrée. “So, is this all in the legs, or more of a core thing?”
Liam stares at his teammates, these monuments to traditional masculinity, earnestly attempting ballet as they study the clips playing on their respective phones.
“What the hell are you guys doing?” Liam says.
Dewey, still clutching his stick-barre like it’s the only thing keeping him upright, nods firmly. “You’ve been holding out on us, Clerky. If ballet could do what it did for you on the ice, you gotta help us learn some.”
Will Kelly pipes up: “You looked like a different player last game. Faster, stronger, more balanced. We thought it was just the training staff, but…” He gestures toward the viral video playing on loop. “Turns out you were becoming a literal ballerina.”
The absurdity of it—instead of mockery, they want tutorials—breaks something loose inside Liam.
“Alright,” Liam says, surveying the carnage of attempted ballet around him. “First of all—stop mangling the plié. My god.”
“Alright, Baryshnikov, then help us figure it out,” Dewey says.
And just like that, Liam isn’t the guy exposed in a viral video. He’s the guy with the secret weapon. The training edge everyone wants.
The locker room has become his kingdom, and ballet—improbably—has become the team’s new religion. Liam stands in a locker room full of hockey players performing horrific tendus, having accidentally started what might be the NHL’s strangest training revolution.