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I stared at the Ice Prince, the Golden Boy, and watched the truth come up under the titles. He lived as a prisoner of his own standards, a machine terrified of the scrapheap. Perfection was not a crown on him. It was armor welded straight to the skin, protecting him from the terror that one crack could expose the meat underneath.

For a second, across the white line of tape, our eyes met in the blue dark. He looked exhausted. Haunted.

Then he looked back down at the screen and rewound the tape into its infinite loop.

I turned over and pulled the blanket up to my chin. The hate in my chest felt different now, complicated by a cold understanding.

He was just as damaged as I was. We were both products of the same brutal factory. I was just the one who knew I was broken. Felix was the one still trying to convince the mirror he was whole.

I listened to the rhythm of his breathing as he worked through the tape. I hated the Prince. I hated the Golden Boy. I would go on hating the ego that threw a drill rather than watch me shine.

But the maniac sitting on the floor at 5 AM, dissecting his own failures until he bled?

Him, I respected.

CHAPTER 14

FELIX

The whistle blew to end the session, and my legs didn’t stop moving.

The rest of the squad collapsed on the sidelines, tearing off shin guards and guzzling water, but I stayed on the line and ran sprints, box to box, one hundred percent intensity. My lungs burned in the thin, scrubbed air, a familiar fire that usually quieted the noise in my head.

Usually. Today it didn’t work.

Every time I turned at the goal line I saw Leander on the bench, icing an ankle the gel had rebuilt, pointedly ignoring my existence, treating me like a ghost haunting his periphery.

I finished the last one and slowed to a jog, hands on my hips, chest heaving. Sweat dripped from my chin into the black collar of the compression shirt I wore to hide the bruise he left on my skin, and the fabric clung to my throat like a constant reminder of what happened in the tunnel.

“Captain.”

The voice rumbled from the shadow of the goalpost.

Anatol Getha stood there, already out of his keeper kit, wearing the gray training sweats of the off-duty roster. He leaned against the upright and watched me with a look of predatory amusement.

“Great session, Felix,” he said, pushing off the post to block my path. “You really pushed the pace. It’s inspiring to watch.”

“What do you want, Getha?” I wiped my face with a towel and kept the motion bored.

“Just checking in.” He stepped in close, near enough that my options narrowed to retreat or contact. “You look tired. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, right?”

He reached out. I tensed for a blow. Instead his fingers curled around the golden captain’s band on my left arm, and he tugged it, rotating the fabric on my bicep.

“It looks loose,” he murmured, pitched loud enough to reach Sylla on the bench. “Maybe it doesn’t fit as well as it used to.”

I jerked my arm back. “It fits fine.”

“Does it?” Anatol smirked. “Actually, I’ll tell you the truth. You looked shaky today, Felix. You looked distracted. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were worried about something.”

He circled me like a shark investigating a splash, and I stood still for it. Sylla and Varo had stopped talking to watch, sensing the shift in the air. The hierarchy was bleeding.

“I’m focused on the Crucible,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “If you have a problem with my leadership, file a complaint with the Director.”

“Oh, I don’t want to bother the Director.” He stopped in front of me again, planted between me and the tunnel. “He hates being disturbed for petty theft issues. It gets messy. Audits, you know, court-martial. Executions.”

He let the word hang in the air.

“What do you want?” I asked again.