Chapter Fourteen
Isaline stood in her race suit with her jacket thrown over her shoulders, boots buckled, helmet in hand.
The air up was thin and bright, radios hissing with course reports.
She’d already done her visual inspection, walked through the key sections with Matthias, and now waited for her own training slot.
While she was waiting, Blaire’s name came over the radio.
The small monitor beside the coach showed Blaire dropping into the steep sections, solid and aggressive, exactly as expected.
Isaline watched with the detached attention of a professional at first—tracking line choices, pressure points, tiny corrections.
Then Blaire hit the blind transition. One moment she was perfectly stacked over her skis; the next she was pitched wrong. The ski hooked.
On the screen, it happened fast and slow at the same time. She could see that Blaire had fought it for a heartbeat, then exploded into a spray of snow and flying gear before disappearing into the fence. The radio spiked with clipped voices.
Around Isaline, the usual start chatter died; even other teams went quiet. Her stomach bottomed out. She realized she was holding her breath so hard her chest hurt.
Those few seconds before Blaire finally moved felt like a small private hell. When the camera caught the American rolling to her knees and waving patrol off, Isaline’s knees went weak with sheer relief.
In that moment, it stopped being about rivals and results. All she wanted was for Blaire to stand up and walk away. The idea of winning anything because Blaire was broken suddenly felt like the ugliest outcome possible.
She forced herself to look away from the monitor. Her fingers bit into the edge of her poles, and she tried to steady her breathing before anyone noticed that her hands were shaking.
Matthias appeared at her shoulder. “You saw?”
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
“She walked away on her own. That’s good.” His tone was neutral, but his hand squeezed her shoulder once.
Isaline swallowed hard. Around them, other racers started moving again, resuming warmups, shaking out nerves. The training run would continue. It always did. But the image of Blaire’s body hitting the fence had burned itself behind her eyelids, and no amount of blinking would clear it.
Everyone in Isaline’s camp pretended to focus on clips of different racers’ lines.
Reto handed her water without comment. A younger teammate rewound footage of a gate sequence, narrating angles that had nothing to do with the American who’d just scattered across fifty meters of course.
Still, Blaire’s crash had sat in the air like static.
Nobody said her name, but the silence surrounding it was louder than any commentary.
Reto watched his sister from the corner of his eye, noting how often her gaze flicked across the hill to where Blaire was talking to Tess and Jordy. The American’s jaw was tight, and her shoulders were squared in that stubborn way Isaline recognized from breakfast tables and darkened hallways.
Matthias ran through practical details—where the course was breaking down, what needed adjusting in their own approach.
His voice stayed level, but even in his cadence there was a hint of that sober recognition: if someone as precise as Blaire Hollis could blow up like that, the margin for error was razor thin.
“The compression’s eating people who press early,” he said, tapping the tablet. “Have patience through the blind section. Let it come to you.”
Isaline nodded, answered their questions, and made the right sounds of agreement.
But the image of Blaire disappearing into the fence continued replaying in the back of her mind.
The earlier fourth place in Super-G, her father’s arena speech, and today’s crash braided into one tight knot inside her chest.
She wasn’t distracted in the way Reto had warned her about before the Super-G.
She was frightened in a way she didn’t want to admit—less of losing a medal, more of losing the chance to even stand in a start gate again.
She trembled at the thought of becoming another name called over the radio with a long pause held with fear of injury afterward.
When Matthias told her to get ready for her timed training run, she nodded and tightened her boots with disciplined focus. She silently promised herself she would not be the next racer carried off this mountain.
Her bib number was called ten minutes later. She clicked in, tapped her poles against her boots, and stared down the mountain. Everything felt sharper now—the cold, the gradient, the knowledge that at this speed, control was always one fraction away from catastrophe.
At the start, Isaline clicked into her downhill skis.
The long boards felt heavier than usual.
She took a breath, set her poles, and pushed out when the timer cleared.
The first gates went by in a blur of muscle memory.
She hit her marks, stayed in a clean tuck, and did exactly what she and Matthias had agreed on during inspection.
Except that everywhere the hill whispered, you could push here, she eased back just a fraction.
In the compression that had thrown Blaire, she gave the terrain more respect than she would have yesterday, letting the skis run but pulling her center of mass slightly back. It kept her safe, but it cost her time.
The middle section came fast. She managed the blind roll cleanly, absorbed the next pitch without drama, and held the tuck through terrain that had eaten two other racers earlier in the week.
Technically, everything looked solid. Practically, she knew she was leaving hundredths on the table with every conservative choice.
At the bottom, the clock confirmed what her body already knew: her training time was fine. Respectable. Not remotely dangerous to the top of the board. She skied into the Swiss pen and tried to pretend she didn’t care, that saving the risk for race day was part of the plan.
Blaire was standing off to one side near the USA tent. Her helmet was off, and her hair was slightly mussed. She kept her posture stiff but upright. Bruised clearly, but not in a sled. That visual grounded Isaline even as her own legs still vibrated with leftover adrenaline.
Reto handed her water without meeting her eyes. A tech took her skis to check the edges. The usual post-run routine unfolded around her while she stood there feeling like she’d just lied to everyone, including herself.
Matthias met her with a nod, then a look that told her he’d seen everything she hadn’t said out loud.
He didn’t pull her aside immediately—there were still logistics, other racers coming through, cameras scanning for reactions.
But his expression stayed on her like a question she’d have to answer, eventually.
She drank the water slowly, willing her pulse to settle, trying to convince herself that skiing smart was the same as skiing well. She scoffed at the lie her brain was trying to get her to believe.
Around them, other teams reviewed splits and debated wax choices. Someone laughed. A coach shouted corrections in Italian. The mountain carried on, indifferent to whether Blaire was okay or if Isaline had skied from courage or caution.
Isaline caught herself looking across the finish area toward where Blaire had disappeared into the USA team tent. The image of her hitting the fence replayed one more time, sharp and unwanted.