The game keeps going. Or at least it pretends to.
Nothing is really the same after the body hit the ice and the echo of my gunshot melted into the rafters, but technically, yeah—skates are still moving, pucks arestill flying, and blood is still being spilled like this is just another Wednesday night at the fucking Coliseum.
Except now it’s predictable.
Julian doesn’t let anyone touch the puck. Anyone who isn’t in black and gold gets stripped, humiliated, dropped cold. It’s not even showy—he’s not playing for the crowd anymore, or even for the team. He’s playing like the puck belongs to him and he’spersonally offendedevery time someone tries to take it. He moves like fire given form—blistering speed, perfect angles, sharp little edge cuts that don’t waste a single fucking motion. And all of it with a knife still lodged in his thigh, pulsing bright red against his dark gear like a fucking battle flag.
The other team gets twitchy. You can see it—flickers of hesitation, little stutter-steps, the way they start second-guessing every rush. They’re not just losing the puck—they’re losing the will to take it back. That’s what he’s doing to them. Not breaking their bones. Breaking theirnerve.And that’s worse. Thatlingers.
I’ve stopped tracking shots.
Haven’t had one come near me in four minutes.
Finn's hanging off the boards near center ice now, chirping at the rival bench like a rabid cheerleader with a grudge and zero self-preservation. I think he stole someone’s helmet and is wearing it backwards. At one point he starts mimicking a dying swan every time their goalie moves.
No one tells him to stop.
Kai’s skating like a blade in water—quiet, cold, impossible to catch clean. Misha knocked someone into the side wall and broke a rib three plays ago. Bishop’s chewing on tape again like it’s meat jerky and licking blood off his glove between whistles that never come.
It’s chaos.
It’s violence.
It’sboring.
I shift in the crease. Crack my neck. Tap my stick once, twice, blade down, just to remind the ice I’m still here. But nothing’s coming. Nobody’s charging. The other team won’t even look at me anymore. Their offense has collapsed, reorganized into slow, staggered rushes that die the second Julian hits the zone.
I’ve seen a lot of things in this rink—skulls cracked open, blades jammed into ribs, people crawling off the ice because they’d rather bleed out than show weakness. But I’ve never seen someone bore me with brilliance.
Until now.
Julian is dismantling them, and he’s not doing it with brutality. He’s doing it with perfection.
It’s almost worse.
Because there’s nothing for me to do. I can’t protect him if no one touches him. I can’t kill anyone if no one gets close. I can’t even move if nothing comes for me.
My fingers start drumming against the top of my pad, a slow, irritated rhythm that feels like the beginning of a snap.
Julian cuts past three men and feeds the puck to Luca, who laughs, skates backward, and then tosses it right back to him just so he can watch him do it again.
A quiet growl slips out of me, low and frustrated.
I need someone to make this interesting again. Because if this goes on much longer, I might walk out of the net myself—just to give someone a reason to bleed.
And then some absolute fucking genius in the crowd decides to “level the playing field.”
Two guns hit the ice. They clatter across the rink like loose teeth—skidding, spinning, flashing metal in ugly arcs until they slide to a stop near the enemy forwards. The moment they appear, the air changes. It snaps tight, sharp enough to cut. The roar of the crowd goes from blood-hungry to feral. Everyone knows what this means. Rules are gone. They were already gone. But now they are obliterated.
Shit.
The puck becomes irrelevant. The game becomes irrelevant. Those guns are the center of gravity now, and every fucking syndicate dog in the rink knows it. Every Fiamma player’s head lifts at the exact same second, instinct tightening vertebra by vertebra.
Julian is supposed to worry about the puck. But the rest of us—we’re worrying about the guns.
Finn glances at me. I nod. He knows what to do.
I leave the crease without a second of hesitation, skating straight out, abandoning my net like it doesn’t exist, because protecting Julian is the only job that matters. Finn slides his happy gremlin ass right back into my spot like this is a well-rehearsed waltz, banging his stick against the post as if welcoming the challenge.
