“Again from the entry,”Sokolov called.
We reset for another run-through, music echoing through the practice arena, the sound distorted in the mostly empty space. Morning sessions always felt strange compared to competition ice, quieter, more exposed somehow.
A few teams occupied distant corners of the rink. Coaches stood along the boards clutching coffee cups and clipboards while blades carved overlapping patterns into the ice beneath harsh fluorescent lights.
I caught sight of the Team USA jackets. Then a familiar figure skated into view, and my breathing hitched.
“Luka.”
I averted my gaze and snapped my attention back to my coach. I did not need to hand him more ammunition.
The headlines and social media had already done that.
I nodded, and Mila skated beside me as we circled back intoposition. Her hand slid into mine for the lift setup, warm even through the thin fabric of our gloves.
I never feared the lifts. They were physics and repetition and trust built so deeply into muscle memory that my body performed half the movement before conscious thought had a chance to catch up.
Backward outside edge, Mila’s toe assist, press through the shoulders, lock, extend… We had done it thousands of times, enough that sometimes it felt less like choreography and more like breathing.
The entry felt clean. I bent through my knee, loaded the weight into the lift position, and began the upward press?—
—and something caught, a deep, hot tightening low in the front of my hip as I straightened through the movement. It wasn’t sharp enough to stop me, however, and the lift still went up because it had to.
Mila rose above me, her body extending into position while my arms locked automatically beneath her weight. My core tightened hard to compensate before conscious thought even formed.
Something felt wrong, a fraction of instability that no audience would ever see and most judges would not even notice.
Yet I knew Mila felt it instantly.
I saw the microscopic correction she made midair, the subtle adjustment through her center as she trusted me to recover the balance before the dismount.
I did, barely.
I lowered her carefully back to the ice, controlled through the exit edge, posture steady enough that from the outside the element probably still looked flawless.
Inside was a different matter.
We finished the pass without interruption, and Sokolov nodded from the boards. “Better.”
I did not answer.
Mila glanced sideways at me but said nothing as we circled back again.
The music restarted.
“Again,” Sokolov called.
This time the pain arrived earlier, threading through the setup for the throw jump while I pushed harder against it out of sheer irritation.
I knew all the explanations already. Fatigue. Overuse. Nothing unusual this deep into competition.
My hip disagreed.
The strain flared again immediately, only deeper this time, not pain exactly but a warning. I felt it through the drive of the edge and the rotation assist, even as I adjusted automatically to protect it without visibly changing technique.
Mila landed cleanly.
The quiet murmur of conversation from the far side of the rink continued uninterrupted. No one else had noticed. Only when we reached the boards again did I let my hand drift toward my hip.
