Chapter 1
At the downhill final of the Summit Alpine Championship, a blizzard slammed into the Asterfell Range without warning.
The entire course vanished in white.
Every racer ahead of me was suddenly skiing blind.
I pressed one hand against the comm unit in my helmet. A second later, Ethan Cole's voice came through my earpiece, calm and steady.
"Don't panic. Falcon's Crest Jump is five hundred yards ahead. Stay low, hold your tuck, and let it run. You can gain three-tenths on the next racer. After the jump, carve right into the turn."
I forced myself to ignore the fear clawing up my throat and followed his instructions through the wall of snow.
Ethan was my race coach. He was also my fiancé. More than that, he was the person I trusted most in the world.
Three seconds later, his voice came through again. This time, all the composure was gone. His words were low, almost gentle.
"Sienna. The truth is, Falcon's Crest Jump needs a left carve."
My blood went cold.
"If Vivian doesn't win a title this year, her sponsor is going to drop her," he continued. "You're already a Triple Winter Crown Champion. Letting her have one Summit Alpine gold won't ruin you."
My fingers tightened around my poles.
"I had three layers of impact mats placed below the jump," Ethan said softly. "I would never let anything truly terrible happen to you. Be a good girl. Close your eyes. It won't hurt as much that way."
Then he cut the comms. He did not want to hear the sound of me crashing into those mats.
But Ethan had forgotten one thing. I had trained on this course for seven years.
I knew every slope, every dip, every turn, and every subtle shift in the snow beneath my skis. I knew this course well enough to ski it blind.
"Ethan!"
I screamed his name and gripped my poles harder, but the only answer in my earpiece was dead static.
Sweat had soaked through the lining of my gloves. My speed was pushing ninety miles per hour. Even if I tried to brake now, I could not slow down in time.
The blizzard pressed against my goggles like a solid white wall. My skis chattered violently over the rutted ice. The hardest section of the Asterfell Range, Falcon's Crest Jump, was right in front of me.
And I could not see a thing. The wind roared in my ears, but Ethan's words were even louder in my head.
He had deliberately given me the wrong course instructions, all so Vivian Lane could take the title.
I lowered my center of gravity and stared into the whiteout ahead. My skis screamed beneath me.
My fiancé and the junior teammate I had built up myself were trying to destroy me on the world stage.
The name Falcon's Crest Jump alone felt like an omen, as if it belonged on a headstone.
Over the years, too many racers had been broken by that jump. Without enough speed, the lip would hook your skis. With the wrong angle, the crosswind would spin you in midair.
If you were lucky, you walked away with hairline fractures or torn ligaments. If you were not, you left the mountain with severe spinal trauma.
Every year, racers were airlifted off this course, and more than half of them never made it back to a starting gate. Yet Ethan had the nerve to call three layers of impact mats protection. Did he honestly think I was just three years old?
He had been there the last time I crashed into safety netting. He had seen exactly what happened.
Seven years ago, during our first trial run on the Asterfell Range, Ethan had been terrified I would get hurt. Before the run, he had brought in a crew early and had impact mats laid across the entire base of the jump.
I still fell. My nerves got to me. My speed dropped half a beat at the lip, and I slipped off the edge.
Ethan had been in the coaching box that day, with a radio in his hand and his eyes fixed on the monitor. The moment I went over, he almost lost his mind. He sprinted out of the coaching box.
Even with three layers of safety netting below, I still slammed into the steel pole of a gate and went limp in the snow. I curled up on the ground, shaking from the pain.
Ethan ran up the slope with nearly ninety pounds of emergency gear on his back. He even sprained his ankle on the way, and his face was white by the time he reached me. Still, he pulled me into his arms with red eyes and held me tight.
"It's okay. It's okay, sweetheart," he said over and over. "Sienna, you're the best ski racer in the world."
From that day on, I trained like my life depended on it. Lap after lap, season after season, I pushed myself down that course for one reason. I wanted to win for Ethan. I wanted to make him proud. It took me three years to finally stand on the podium.
When I finally held up that Winter Crown gold medal, the whole world was watching. Everyone expected me to thank my country. Everyone expected me to thank my team. Instead, I looked straight into the camera and made only one request.
"My only request," I said, "is that my race coach, Ethan Cole, gets a helicopter."
