Betrayed by My Ex, Crowned an Ice Queen

The sound of blades carving across ice should have been the most beautiful melody I'd ever heard in my life.

But right now, lying sprawled on the bone-chilling surface of the rink, all I could hear were gasps rippling through the crowd and the relentless clicking of camera shutters from every corner.

By the time team medic Aaron rushed over, searing pain had already spread through my entire left leg. I lay there on the ice, dazed, my mind a blank slate.

Aaron worked carefully to remove my skate, ordering me not to move a muscle.

"Could be a torn ligament," he said quietly, his voice trembling.

I bit down hard on my pale lips. Cold sweat had already soaked through the back of my training suit.

Less than eight months until the Winter Olympics.

If I could just win that gold medal, I'd be the youngest Grand Slam champion in our country's figure skating history.

I'd spent ten years working toward this. Even when I slept only a few hours a night, even when my toes were ground bloody inside my skates, I'd never slacked off—not once.

And now, of all times, fate decided to play this cruel joke on me.

The hospital corridor reeked of disinfectant, sharp enough to make me want to gag.

Aaron wheeled me toward the exam room to wait for results. As we passed the nurse's station, the TV mounted on the wall was broadcasting the latest sports news.

On the oversized screen, my fall replayed in slow motion. The anchor's voice sounded mechanical, merciless.

"Rising figure skating prodigy Selena Roland suffered a serious injury during today's Holly Invitational. Industry insiders reveal she's been in poor form recently, accepting numerous commercial endorsements and allegedly neglecting training, which may have led to technical errors. Viewers are questioning whether she's still fit to represent the country at the Olympics..."

I clenched the wheelchair's armrests so hard my nails dug into my palms. My whole body started to shake.

My phone buzzed furiously in my pocket, the screen lighting up and fading as private messages flooded in.

"Selena, are you faking an injury because you're scared of that new Russian skater?"

"Taking all those ads—serves you right that your leg snapped! Don't embarrass us at the Olympics!"

"Fallen genius? More like your head was never in the game to begin with!"

Each icy word stabbed at me, twisting deeper and deeper.

To maintain competition weight for the Olympics, I hadn't eaten a proper meal in nearly a year. When hunger made my stomach cramp in the middle of the night, all I could do was clutch a water bottle and force myself to drink.

During qualifiers, I'd skated on a taped ankle after getting a nerve block injection—just to secure a clean entry ticket for my country.

And now, the same people who once cheered for me were accusing me of faking injuries? Of having a bad attitude?

Grievance, frustration, despair, rage—emotions crashed over me like a tidal wave.

I couldn't stop trembling. Tears I couldn't control fell one by one onto my phone screen, blurring those vicious curses.

Passersby in the corridor turned to stare. Someone even tried to rush forward and shove a camera in my face.

Aaron immediately spread his arms and shielded me.

I stiffly bowed my head and yanked my hoodie down as far as it would go, letting bitter helplessness fill every corner of my chest.

My phone kept buzzing. Suddenly, I wanted desperately to talk to someone.

Damon was supposed to have come with me to the competition today, but he'd said something urgent came up at work. He told me to message him once the event was over.

So I opened our chat and started typing, wanting to ask if he could come pick me up from the hospital.

But just as I was typing, a notification popped up—a sync alert from a social media app on Damon's tablet, which was linked to my phone.

That tablet used to be mine. I'd handed it down to him last year. He'd used it for a while and probably never bothered logging out of his social account.

Instinctively, I tapped in to log him out. But then the messages in his pinned chat thread appeared before my eyes, one word at a time, sinking into me like shards of ice.

The contact name was Bambi.

The most recent message had been sent this afternoon—right when I hit the ice.

Bambi: Haha, she actually fell? I saw that wipeout on the livestream—looked painful. Aren't you going to the hospital to be with her?

Damon: Be with her? Just seeing her whine and cry makes me sick right now. It's just a fall. She's not dying.

Bambi: But what if she really can't compete at the Olympics next year? What about the sponsors?

Damon: Don't even get me started. I've spent all afternoon dealing with this mess. You have no idea—sponsors have been blowing up my phone.

Bambi: Poor thing. Who told you to get stuck with a "prodigy"?

Damon: Prodigy? Don't make me laugh. Off the ice, she's completely useless. Good thing I prepared in advance. The second her diagnosis is confirmed, I'm holding a press conference and resigning. When the sponsors cancel their contracts with her, all the penalty fees will fall on her. None of it touches me.

Bambi: Baby, shouldn't you leave her something? She's been with you for three years.

Damon: Sweetheart, you're breaking my heart here. Without me, she never would've even gotten close to the Olympics. I've put up with her for three whole years. Now that she's fallen, it's like the universe is doing me a favor. Leave her something? I'm being generous just letting her live...

In that moment, staring at the screen, I felt like I was reading someone else's story.

I didn't even feel sad or heartbroken. I just felt my blood freeze solid in an instant, a cold so complete I couldn't speak.

In the corridor, more and more people gathered around me. Amid the whispers, I heard fake concern mixed with mockery and insults.

Suddenly, someone pushed through the crowd and came running toward me, breathless.

It was Damon.

He dropped to his knees in front of me, gripping my ice-cold hands with what looked like anguished concern, apologizing over and over.

"I'm so sorry, Selena. I was stuck in meetings—I only found out half an hour ago that you got hurt. Don't be scared, Selena. I'm here now. I'll stay with you, I promise..."

I couldn't speak.

The words from those messages flickered through my mind, overlapping with the fake expression on this man's face. In a daze, I could even smell it—the perfume clinging to him, a scent that wasn't mine.

That sickly sweet, foreign fragrance invaded my nose, mixing with the hospital's harsh disinfectant. My stomach suddenly clenched.

A wave of nausea surged up from the pit of my stomach. I doubled over, retching uncontrollably.

"Selena? Selena, what's wrong?" Damon's voice echoed in my ears—anxious, tender, almost convincing.

But something was wrong. All of this was wrong.

I should still be on the ice.

That fall—it should have been a dream.

The torn ligament was a dream. The insults on the news were a dream. Those chat messages on my phone... they had to be a dream too.

I gripped the wheelchair's armrests with all my strength, desperate to wake myself up.

But then that unfamiliar perfume hit me again.

I couldn't hold it in anymore. I shoved my phone screen in Damon's face, eyes red, and demanded:

"Who is this Bambi?"