In The Cold

Chapter 6 Kneeling in Red

Calm.

Composed.

Thorough.

“The last time I saw that many words describing the same person, it was Jesus.”

The sports program murmurs from somewhere across the room, the host’s voice drifting in and out beneath the dull thud of punches. Sweat runs along Iris’s brow. A rare day off in the middle of a brutal schedule.

A boring day.

“Maybe she’s just a good actress,” the male host says with a laugh.

Iris pauses. She turns her attention toward the television.

Sweat slips into her eye.

“She does have a movie-star face, doesn’t she?”, the other male host joins in.

“You two certainly act more like hosts than she does.”

Bondi Ferrijoa, a former hockey legend known for her vicious tongue and now one of the sport’s most prominent commentators, doesn’t let them off the hook.

The male host raises an awkward eyebrow.

“Well, judging by the fact that nobody in the studio is laughing, I’d say that joke didn’t land.”

Bondi smiles.

“Or perhaps nobody is laughing because I wasn’t joking.”

The host’s face tightens. His delicate features look almost boyish beside the deep lines around Bondi’s eyes.

Iris pulls off her gloves. The cold surface of her water bottle burns against her palm. She walks over to the built-in refrigerator.

Hesitates between several flavors, then picks up orange juice. Thinks about it. Then switches to berry.

“But make sure that old man came from Hollywood. They get ‘better’ taste.”

“Exactly. Though I wouldn’t expect much from the guy sitting over there.”

The studio erupts in laughter. The two male hosts can only force smiles.

See?

Turn their joke back on them— and suddenly they don’t like it anymore.

At the black obsidian kitchen island, a small, polished black box waits in silence. Iris takes out a ring. She tosses it casually into the pile of other rings and doesn’t look at it again.

“I mean, look at her. Ryder Hart has been saying ‘Montreal or nothing’ since she was six years old. Everywhere she goes, she leaves a trail of victories behind her. Isn’t that kind of obsession frightening?”

Iris stops behind the sofa. The sweat running down her body. The chill becomes heat behind her eyes. She watches the television.

“Except for the Stanley Cup. This season, every team will be competing for the Tethys Cup. As the first season under the new format, this trophy will carry a significance unlike any before it. Ryder Hart and Montreal are among the strongest contenders.”

“An unpredictable style and an almost frightening sense of responsibility as captain. I’d say she’s one of the greatest hockey players of this century.”

Iris bites down on her fingertip.

“You really believe that?”

“If you want to question me, watch her play first.”

One of the greatest players of the century.

Iris repeats the words silently. The juice pouch crumples in her hand. Berry liquid spills over the sharp ridges of her knuckles, slowly crawling across her skin.

She looks down at it coldly.

Then tears off a piece of paper and wipes it away.

Montreal Bell Centre

Twenty Minutes Before the Game

“s**t. The forecast says this snow is going to last all night.”

Laura stares at her phone as if refreshing the weather app enough times might somehow change the storm.

“Why? You have plans?”

Ryder is taping her shoulder. Tonight’s opponent isn’t particularly difficult, and after several consecutive wins, the pressure inside the locker room has finally begun to ease.

Laura only smiles.

Ryder watches that smug little expression and immediately understands.

“Are you seeing someone?”

Laura’s smile widens. She finishes taping the back of Ryder’s neck.

“Seeing someone?”

Then, suddenly, she shouts—

“I’m in love!”

“Damn, Laura. Do you have to say it that loudly?”

Petty Mana is wiping down her stick, her expression the very definition of exhausted disbelief.

“Why? There’s nothing wrong with saying it loudly.”

Laura looks around. Everyone in the locker room seems completely accustomed to this. No one even stops what they’re doing.

She spreads her hands.

“Seriously? Nobody’s going to congratulate me?”

“I think everyone’s just used to it.”

Ryder carefully unfolds her home jersey. Like everyone else, she doesn’t take Laura’s declaration particularly seriously.

Laura refuses to give up.

“What about you, Katz?”

The nineteen-year-old defenseman shakes her head awkwardly. Then, with complete sincerity, says,

“Sorry. I think love is a false proposition, you know? People project their own lack of self-love onto a completely unrelated stranger, and I don’t think that’s responsible—”

“Oh, God. She’s doing it again.”

A collective groan rises from the locker room. Katz Olavi stops mid-sentence, completely defeated. Everyone laughs. Ryder smiles too. Whatever else love is— a relaxed locker room is useful before a game.

Laura turns toward her locker and mutters under her breath,

“You people are romantically allergic.”

Ryder smooths a wrinkle from her jersey. She is about to say something comforting when she notices Laura switching repeatedly between the Munich hotel page and the Montreal weather forecast on her phone. Again. And again.

Ryder watches the intensity in Laura’s face. Her smile disappears.

“You’re serious, right?”

She doesn’t really need to ask. She knows what everyone in this room looks like when they’re serious.

Laura’s voice grows heavier.

“It’s minus twenty outside. She’ll be stuck at the airport until tomorrow afternoon. I mean, obviously there are places to sit inside. She could find a chair, maybe even lie down somewhere, but…”

Laura exhales.

“I don’t want her to have to do that.”

Ryder is silent for a moment. Her fingers tap the screen of her phone several times. Then she says,

“I have a friend who owns a hotel near Munich Airport. She’ll make a room available for your girlfriend. I’ll send you the address and contact information.”

Laura looks up at her in disbelief. She looks at Ryder as though she has just seen an angel.

“Are you my angel?”

Ryder doesn’t even look up.

“I’m your captain.”

She puts her phone away.

“Get it handled within five minutes. I need you completely focused on the game.”

Laura claps her hands.

“Two minutes. Done.”

She practically skips out of the room to make the call.

Ryder watches her go, then slowly looks away. Something settles inside her, something impossible to name, suspended somewhere between happiness and emptiness, infinitely far away from herself.

“What does she mean, ‘I don’t want her to have to do that’?”

Petty appears beside her like a ghost.

“Quite a difficult sentence, isn’t it?”

She says exactly what Ryder has been thinking.

Ryder only smiles faintly.

“I just think everyone should be allowed to make their own choices.”

Petty nods solemnly.

“Oh, right. You see, the game is about to start, but my stomach is starving and I really want a chocolate pie, but I can’t have one. Is that my choice?”

Ryder gives her a helpless look. She reaches into the cabinet and takes out two protein bars.

“Double.”

Petty glances at them. A wicked grin appears. She takes one.

“Send my regards to Flamigo~”

Ryder laughs despite herself. She lowers her eyes and gently smooths the fresh jersey in her hands. The red catches in her ocean-blue eyes.

——She is already impatient to put it on.

“Another fierce battle for possession. Montreal is completely dominating the puck.”

“The second half is entering its final minutes, and you can see both teams becoming increasingly impatient. A collision along the boards—number nine from the opposing side commits the foul.”

“Katz!”

Ryder calls out to the player still tangled up along the boards. She presses one hand downward——easy, control yourself.

The score is 3–0.

Their opponents are already losing their heads. There is no reason to lose theirs too.

But the other team seems to have reached an entirely different conclusion.

Petty sends the puck toward Katz. Katz accelerates up the ice, looking for Ryder. The instant she crosses the center line at full speed—

number nine from the opposing side completely loses control. He drives his body straight into Katz’s leg.

Katz crashes onto the ice, her body spinning once across the surface.

Petty doesn’t hesitate. She swings a fist into number nine. Laura charges in after her. Petty already has a yellow card. She keeps throwing punches anyway. The referee blows the whistle. Ryder immediately wedges herself between the players. She pushes number nine away. The medical staff rush onto the ice. Katz appears to be fine.

“Get up! What are you pretending for?”

Number nine keeps provoking them.

“Easy, pretty boy.”

Petty lunges forward viciously.

The referee is already moving in. Another yellow card is a real possibility.

Ryder appears to be breaking up the fight. In reality, she is redirecting it.

She shoves number nine away. He refuses to back down.

Ryder pushes him farther. She looks directly into his eyes. Her stare is unwavering. It cuts straight through his cowardice.

Is he furious because he is losing?

Or because he is losing to women?

The answer is written all over his humiliated face. He charges at her again. To Ryder, his strength feels like a cat scratching at cardboard. But now there can only be one outcome.

A tactical foul.

Yellow card for Ryder.

A second yellow for number nine.

Red card.

He is sent off.

The opposing team erupts in protest.

So what?

The game continues. Ryder takes the restart. Passes to Katz. Katz receives it with perfect understanding. She drives forward. Shoots. 4–0.

That—

is the answer this rink is looking for.

The opposing players grit their teeth.

Then, from the right wing, another figure suddenly breaks forward. Fast. Too fast. He isn’t going for the puck. He is going straight for Katz.

Ryder reacts without hesitation. She accelerates. The wind screams beside her ears, almost solid enough to reach out and grab her, slowing her down, pulling at her. So she accelerates harder. Harder.

Then—

impact.

The two bodies collide like planets. They slide from the zone all the way toward the edge of the rink. Then both of them stop moving.

Iris is already on her feet before she realizes she has stood up.

On the screen, Ryder lies perfectly still. White against the ice. Like a sheet of snow across an endless frozen plain.

Iris stares. Her eyes widen. She doesn’t move.

Not until Montreal players and medical staff rush onto the ice and break through her line of sight does the dryness in her eyes finally remind her that she is still there.

Ryder’s vision blurs for a moment. Inside that blur, red arms twist and surge above her. Like something out of the Book of Genesis. She tastes sweetness. Faint. Almost exactly like the protein bar.

I’m your fan.

Fan.

The teammates around her are already grappling with the opposing players. A medic reaches for Ryder’s shoulder. She instinctively swings back, then sees the medic’s face and immediately releases the strength in her hand. Something snaps her back into herself.

She steadies herself with the medic’s help. The player who collided with her is in worse condition. Laura reaches her. Ryder removes her helmet. There is a bright cut at her temple.

Blood runs down.

A thin trail of it drips from her nose onto the jersey.

“Just bandage it.Quickly.”

The medic gives her a disapproving look.

“I can only stitch it temporarily here. You should come off and have your head checked.”

“Stitch it.”

Laura’s expression turns solemn. She wants to say something. But this is the captain’s choice. As always. So there is nothing she can say.

The medic hesitates. Then gets to work. The wound is cleaned quickly.

No anesthetic.

One stitch. Then another. Then another.

Ryder doesn’t even flinch.

Her eyes remain fixed on the rink. The disturbance in the game is still there. Barely contained.

But for now— it can wait. There is still one minute left. And she knows the other side does not have anyone capable of what Iris Brooks can do. The thought appears. Then stops.

Meanwhile, Iris sits rigidly in front of the television.

Blood from Ryder’s temple traces a long, senseless border along the perfect architecture of her face.

Her ice-blue eyes—

vast and empty as the sky above a dead sea—

tremble beneath the fire and blood.

She is still like that. Always like that.

Cold.

Silent.

Watching the madness of the world without exception. Without mercy.

Ryder turns her head. One side of her face is alive with blood and defiance. The other is swallowed by shadow.

And for one impossible second—

Iris feels as though God has finally seen her.

She bites absently at her fingertip.

Tastes berries.

Ryder is too good at stirring emotion— then leading people straight into her trap. And herself is standing at the edge of a collapsing snow cave, watching.

This thought is perhaps inhuman. But Iris wishes, desperately—

that the wound had something to do with her.

“Overall, everything looks good. But you should pay attention to this…”

Ryder lies against the medical-room bed. The moment she leaves the ice, Jivan pulls her straight in.

Her thoughts are clear, and hopelessly tangled. That night in Toronto keeps replaying.

Iris’s hand—

tense, then suddenly releasing—

begins to overlap with the way Ryder instinctively pulls her own shoulder back.

No.

Even if she and Iris use the same mechanics—that proves nothing. Ryder’s movement takes advantage of her own physical characteristics to generate maximum force.

But Iris—

“Five–nothing! What do you say?”

Laura leans against the doorway like she has just returned from battle carrying a trophy.

The medic stops talking when she sees her.

Ryder smiles.

“Good work.”

“We brought the win home.”

Katz hurries in behind her, only to be stopped by Laura, who blocks the doorway with one arm.

“Seriously? You’re not doctors. Stop crowding the room.”

“How are the leg and head?”

Petty asks from behind them.

Several worried faces turn toward the medic. She looks at Ryder.

“Nothing serious. She just needs rest.”

Only then does everyone breathe again. Petty grabs several people by the collars and hauls them out.

Laura closes the door. Then walks over to Ryder with a grin.

“The media are going to have a field day with this one.”

Ryder sighs.

“I hope not.”

Her eyes flicker. Maybe now is the right time.

“Laura, I need to tell you—”

“Oh, speaking of that…”

Laura cuts her off without noticing.

“Remember that classmate I told you about? The sports journalist. The paparazzi type?”

Ryder looks at her.

“What about him?”

“Before the season started, he told me that new number seven was weird.”

Laura lowers her voice.

“Always the last one to shower. Always the last one to leave. Barely ever joins team activities.”

Something tightens inside Ryder again. She catches the thread.

“Maybe that’s just how he is.”

She pauses. “Katz was like that at first too.”

“Katz is just like that.” Laura shakes her head. “But him…”

She narrows her eyes.

“I think it’s an act.”

Ryder frowns.

“Get to the point.”

Laura leans closer. Her voice drops to a whisper.

“I don’t think his relationship with the team is anything like what the media makes it look.”

“Poor chemistry? Trouble integrating?”

Ryder offers the obvious explanation.

Laura looks directly at her.

“No. I think he doesn’t actually want to integrate at all.”

Ryder’s brow tightens. Her shoulder begins to ache again. She looks toward the floor

“If he has never wanted to become part of the team…then that weakness will always exist on the ice.”

Laura nods solemnly.

“Team conflict.”

A pause.

“Just another thing he knows how to hide.”

Something drops into place. The curtain falls.

Clues that once seemed unrelated suddenly collide, revealing a new world through the cracks—

faint.

Terrifying.

Then Ryder understands. Maybe everything can be explained now. She presses a hand against her forehead.

Her temple throbs violently.

All of these traits appearing in a rising star whom the team is actively protecting—

it is almost impossible.

Maybe she has been looking at the wrong problem from the beginning.

The problem was never whether he was a starter or a substitute.

It was never him—

It is her.

Ryder lifts her eyes. Her glassy, inorganic gaze burns in the fire.

Shouldn’t she have realized it sooner?

Fierce.

Fearless.

Ambitious.

A person who wants only one thing— victory.

For one brief second—

her entire world lights up.