Chapter 3
CECILIA
Rodrigo skates off the ice huffing and puffing, and I can sense the whine incoming because the session is over. This is one of my favorite things about him—he wants to act like a man, but he’s still a kid and finds so much joy in this it’s impossible not to feel it.
His guards are only halfway on, laces loose, and he’s talking before this breath even settles. “Did you see the second Axel? The one in the corner? I had it. I had it.”
“You had the first one,” I say, matching his pace down the hallway because if I don’t, he’ll sprint straight into the lobby and disappear into the crowd of people. “The second one was…”
He huffs a laugh and bumps my shoulder with his. He’s damp with sweat, cheeks flushed, hair flattened at the temples. Seventeen looks like this: too much energy, too much emotion, and a body that doesn’t understand moderation yet.
“I was fine,” he insists.
“Mhm.” I lift my eyebrows. “You popped it.”
“I was marking.”
“That wasn’t marking,” I say. “That was you deciding that physics is optional. And what’s the first rule in figure skating?”
He groans, dramatic as always. “Te odio.”
“Me amás.”
He shoots me the look he always does when I call him on his own bullshit, and it’s so familiar it almost makes me forget where we are. Not home, not in our rink. Not in our corner of the world where people know his name and pronounce it correctly.
Here, everything is bigger and shinier and colder. Even the hallway feels like it has strict rules.
Rodrigo tugs at his sleeves, fiddling with them in the most impatient way. “What time is the next practice again?”
I stop in front of the schedule board and scan it.
The paper is taped up crooked, like someone’s printed it last minute and then got called away immediately.
Groups, time slots, locations. The whole thing is, as always, a suggestion.
But I like to stick to it regardless, maximize our ice time as much as possible, especially in facilities like this one.
“You’re group B,” I tell him. “Después.”
“How much later?”
“Later later.”
He makes a face like I’m personally responsible for the time slots and for the misery that waiting a few hours—hours he needs to rest and recharge and probably eat—will cause him. “But I feel good now. Can I go now?”
“You feel good because you’re still riding the adrenaline of getting here,” I say, tapping the board with my finger. “You’re going to feel different tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after, especially as your training intensifies.”
Rodrigo’s shoulders drop a little, not because he agrees, but because he hears the truth in it.
He leans closer to the bulletin board anyway, scanning for his name like it might disappear. “Okay,” he says, pretending calm. “And… where’s the next session? The fancy rink?”
“The fancy rink,” I confirm.
His eyes brighten at that. “That one has the big screens.”
“Yes.”
“And the cameras.”
“This one also has cameras.”
He grins. “So maybe I should go freshen up my hair?”
“You should drink water.”
He laughs and moves as if he’s going to keep walking, but then he stops again, his head turning slightly. The shift is subtle. The kind of shift I only notice because I’ve been watching this boy almost daily for five years.
He’s clocked something, or most likely, someone.
“What,” I say, not a question so much as a warning.
Rodrigo doesn’t answer immediately. His gaze lifts over my shoulder, then drops to my face, then lifts again. He’s trying to decide if this is something he can say out loud without me shutting him down.
“Ceci,” he murmurs, voice low, “is that… her?”
I don’t turn right away, because I don’t have to.
I feel it.
The sensation of the air changing behind me. When someone’s attention lands on your back with weight. The hair on my arms lifts under my jacket and a chill runs through my body, and it’s not because I’m inside a facility that exclusively trains winter athletes.
Rodrigo’s eyes are wide in that way that has nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with being suddenly starstruck. I’ve seen it only twice before, and I know he’s trying to play it cool and failing completely.
“Who,” I say, still not turning.
He makes a sound of disbelief, like I’ve offended him by pretending not to know. “The Ice Princess.”
The nickname hits me like ice running through my veins.
Even now, it sounds stupid. It sounded stupid back then, when we were both competing at the same time, but nobody said it like it was.
They said it like it meant something, like you were supposed to curtsy a little when it left your mouth.
A sponsor-friendly moniker and a neat label for the daughter of skating’s most famous dynasty, as if her parents’ crowns were something she could inherit without question.
I turn.
And there she is.
I’ve been here before.
Not like this—not in a hallway lined with pictures and framed awards and cameras humming softly in the walls—but close enough that my body recognizes it. Close enough that I know exactly where the bruise is, even if I’ve spent years pretending it healed clean.
It wasn’t personal. That’s the thing people like to get wrong.
It was a sentence said in passing, during a quick interview I rewatched hundreds of times on a cracked phone screen years ago, when I was still skating and still hoping the world might tilt my way if I worked hard enough and showed how I could also be technically perfect.
Something about clean lines and about how skating didn’t need embellishment when the fundamentals were strong.
Harmless, if you were already sitting on the right side of the table with federation-backed money, teams of people buzzing around you, and a last name that carried so much weight, it was probably heavy on your back.
But where I was standing, it landed differently.
It was almost like a verdict, confirmation of what the sport had already been telling me in quieter ways—that some of us were allowed to be simple because we were already seen, and some of us were expected to sparkle just to earn the right to exist at all.
Isabella Pierce.
The world’s most decorated figure skater.
Taller than most of the people moving through the corridor—or at least she reads that way because she carries the height like she owns it.
Five-ten, maybe. Long limbs and pin-straight posture.
She’s dressed in a sleek off-white coat with what looks like feathers at the ends of her sleeves that probably cost more than my monthly rent, and she still looks like she belongs on ice even standing on cold, unforgiving concrete in flat velvet shoes.
She doesn’t look like she’s aged much.
That’s my first thought, unfair and automatic. As if time should punish her for having what she had.
I retired before she did. We did our last seasons in parallel lines that never fully crossed, and then mine ended in a quiet fade and hers ended in a final burst of applause and a shiny gold medal.
After that, I lost track of her. She was still around, I’m sure, in the way this sport likes to keep its familiar faces nearby. Supporting Team USA athletes and attending functions, maybe at some of the Worlds and possibly commentating during the Winter Olympics.
Isabella is standing with a small orbit of people around her: two stocky men in suits, several inches shorter than her, and a woman holding a stack of papers and scrolling on her phone.
There’s a gaggle of teenage girls across the hall, leaning against a wall and recording everything on their phones, giggling and whispering in each others’ ears.
But she’s not paying those people attention.
She’s not doing anything, actually. Just standing there with a smile on her face. And still, everything adjusts around her.
Her gaze is on my skater, whose grin is exploding. Rodrigo bounces slightly on his guards, like he might levitate if his legs weren’t as heavy as lead, especially after the long session he just had. “Ceci,” he whispers, “she’s literally right there.”
“I see her,” I say.
My voice is calm. My pulse is not.
Isabella’s eyes shift to mine for a second, quick and assessing, then slide back to Rodrigo, like he’s the point of this moment—until her attention returns to me.
“Do you think she saw me?” Rodrigo whispers.
She holds my gaze like she’s confirming something. Like she’s deciding whether I’m who she thinks I am.
The corridor keeps moving around us. People pass and a group of boys laugh loudly behind us. The sound of blades on ice filters faintly through the walls.
Rodrigo, completely oblivious to the undercurrent, leans closer to me. “Should I say hi?” he asks, breathless. “Should I ask for a picture? Not, like, now, but—”
“No,” I say, sharper than I mean to.
He flinches, then tries to hide it. “Oh.”
I soften immediately because he doesn’t deserve my reaction. He’s just a kid who grew up watching videos of the people who had resources and cameras and choreographers flown in for a weekend.
“Not because of you,” I say, quieter. “Because it’s warm-ups. Because we’re working. I’m sure you’ll have an opportunity at a later time.”
Rodrigo nods like he understands. He doesn’t, not fully at least. He’s never had to live inside the politics of all of this.
I turn back to the schedule board as if my attention belongs there. Then a man passes behind her and says, too loud, too pleased with himself, “Princess.”
And I feel the way she stiffens before I turn my head slightly to look at her. It’s quick, almost invisible. A slight lock through her shoulders, a tightening in her jaw that she smooths out with a smile before anyone can clock it. But I see her reaction to that designation.
And for one ridiculous second, I almost enjoy it.
Rodrigo hears it, too, and his eyes go impossibly wider. “They really call her that to her face,” he murmurs, like it’s sacred.
I swallow. “It’s marketing,” I say.
Rodrigo grins. “It’s iconic.”
“It’s annoying,” I mutter, mostly to myself.
Rodrigo doesn’t catch that. Or he pretends not to, because he’s learned when to let me have my moods without making it a thing. He studies the board again and says, “Okay. So. Later later.”
“Yes,” I say.
“And then tonight there’s…” He trails off, scanning the paper lower down, then points. “Reception.”
I glance where he’s pointing.
Of course there’s a reception.
A welcome something. A networking event with sponsors and officials and media people who talk about skating like it’s a product and not kids throwing themselves into the air and hoping their blades find the ice again.
Rodrigo reads the line out loud, eyes shining. “Coaches and athletes welcome.”
I stare at the words and feel my stomach tighten.
He looks up at me. “We have to go, right?”
“We don’t have to, no,” I say automatically.
He waits. He’s good at waiting when he cares.
I exhale through my nose. He wants this, so much. He wants to be seen and he wants the sport to know his name and he wants that shiny gold medal in less than a year because he did an amazing job representing his country.
And this sport won’t give him anything unless we step into the rooms where people decide things and make ourselves visible to them.
I glance down the hall. Isabella is still there, nodding along to someone wearing a crisp, stiff suit.
Laughing once, short and controlled. Professional.
She tilts her head in that old familiar way, like she’s listening but also measuring with that polite smile on her face.
“Ceci,” Rodrigo says as he follows my eyes and practically vibrates. “She’s looking at us.”
“She’s looking at you,” I say.
Rodrigo beams. “That’s insane.”
“Okay,” I say finally. “We’ll go.”
Rodrigo’s whole face changes. Relief. Excitement. Something like hope.
“Really?” he asks, like he doesn’t trust it.
“Yes,” I say. “But you can’t call her Princess.”
His grin falters. “Why?”
“Because it’s stupid,” I say, and when he opens his mouth to argue, I add, “Because it makes people feel like they can own her. And no one owns us.”
Rodrigo’s expression shifts, thoughtful now. He nods slowly, as if he’s filing that away the way I’ve taught him to file away corrections that aren’t about jumps.
“Okay,” he says. “No Ice Princess.”