Chapter 17 — The Ice King Smiles

POV: BEATRIX

We arrived an hour early, per Chef Marco's instructions, and spent most of that hour standing behind a curtain while a production assistant clipped microphones to our collars and told us where to stand for the cameras. 

Ivy had insisted on choosing Nikolai's apron herself. It had cartoon chickens on it. He wore it without complaint, which told me more about how much he wanted this to go well for her than anything he'd said out loud all week.

The studio lights were brighter than I expected and hot enough that I felt my makeup start to slide within the first ten minutes. 

Six other families stood at their stations around us, aprons on, with name cards propped up in front of each counter. Ours read Team Ashcombe in bold letters, right beside a small logo for the children's hospital. 

Seeing that logo up close made something tighten in my chest. This had never really been about the trophy for Ivy, and standing there under the lights, I understood that better than I had all week.

Chef Marco moved through the room with a microphone and a smile that never seemed to fade, stopping at each station to offer a few encouraging words before moving on. 

Two other judges sat at a long table near the front, both former contestants from previous seasons, according to the program Ivy had read cover to cover twice on the drive over. 

When Chef Marco reached our station, he looked at Nikolai like he already knew exactly how this was going to go.

"Big first for you, I hear," he said, all warmth for the cameras. "Never cooked before tonight?"

"I have cooked before," Nikolai said. "Recently. Under supervision."

Chef Marco laughed like it was a joke. Ivy, standing beside our station in a tiny matching apron, didn’t correct him, though I saw her suppress a smile. 

She had told me backstage that this was the part she was most looking forward to: watching everyone underestimate her father before he proved them wrong. I did not have the heart to tell her it might go the other way instead.

The countdown began: three, two, one. The lights on our station switched from red to green, and just like that, we were live on television, in front of a studio audience, and however many people were watching from home.

Nikolai went stiff the moment the camera turned toward him. I'd seen him steady under pressure before, in boardrooms and at his own dinner table while my mother tried to dismantle him. 

This was different. This was a hundred strangers watching him fail at something he'd only tried once, on television, with his name on the screen the whole time. 

I reached over and gave his hand a quick squeeze under the counter, where the cameras couldn't see it. He didn't look at me, but his shoulders dropped half an inch.

The first round was simple: chop vegetables and prep a base for the sauce. Ten minutes were on the clock, with a countdown displayed prominently on a screen above the judges' table, ticking down in a way that made even simple tasks feel urgent. 

He handled the vegetables fairly well, thanks to a week of practice, though his hands shook a little under the lights in a way they never did anywhere else. I found that oddly comforting. It meant he was human after all, no matter what the tabloids liked to print about him.

It was the butter that undid him. The recipe called for softened butter, cut into small pieces. 

Nikolai looked at the stick, cold and hard on the cutting board, glanced at the clock counting down behind Chef Marco's head, and made a decision I watched unfold in real time and couldn’t stop fast enough. 

I saw it coming a full two seconds before it happened—the exact same look on his face he'd worn the night of the smoke alarm, pure stubborn confidence walking straight toward a wall he hadn't noticed yet.

He picked up the cleaver.

"Nikolai, no."

He didn’t hear me, or chose not to, and brought the cleaver down on the stick of butter like it had personally wronged him, as if it were the cause of every hard morning of his life. 

The cold, unyielding butter refused to cooperate. It skidded, spun, and shot off the cutting board onto the studio floor, sliding a full three feet before coming to rest against Chef Marco's shoe. 

Chef Marco looked down at it, then up at Nikolai, then back down again, his television smile flickering for just a second before he regained it completely.

The audience laughed loudly. Somewhere behind the camera, someone whistled.

Nikolai stood there, holding the cleaver like a man who had just lost an argument with an inanimate object and had no intention of admitting it.

"It wasn't cooperating," he said, mostly to me, far too serious for the situation.

I couldn't help it. I laughed, then stepped in front of him, hip first, nudging him half a step sideways with a bump that made Ivy cackle from her spot by the mixing bowls. 

He let himself be moved without any resistance at all, which surprised me even more than the butter incident had. This was a man who did not give ground easily, in a boardroom or anywhere else, and here he was stepping aside for me without a single argument.

"Move," I said. "Let someone who won't lose a finger handle this."

I took the cleaver from his hand, replaced it with a butter knife, and had the stick softened and sliced in under thirty seconds, narrating under my breath the whole time the way I'd shown him during practice, half for his benefit and half because the cameras were still rolling and somebody needed to look competent.

"Show off," he muttered, close enough to my ear that only I could hear it.

****

POV: NIKOLAI

I have closed deals worth more than this entire studio, and none of it prepared me for the particular humiliation of losing a fight to a stick of butter on live television. There is no negotiating with butter. I understood that now, too late to be useful. 

I stood there for a moment after Beatrix took the cleaver from my hand, watching her finish the rest of the step with an ease that made the last five minutes feel even worse by comparison, and decided the only reasonable thing left was to find some way to be useful before the segment ended.

I reached for the flour, following the next line in the recipe, and measured it as she'd shown me during practice, more carefully this time, determined not to repeat the butter incident with something considerably harder to sweep off a studio floor. 

Ivy watched from her stool with the intense focus of a scientist observing an experiment that could go either way.

Beatrix leaned over the bowl beside me, checking my measurement, close enough that a strand of her hair fell across her cheek, close enough that some instinct I did not examine too closely took over before I had finished deciding to act on it.

I reached out and drew a line of flour across the bridge of her nose.

She froze, eyes wide, and one hand flew to her face before coming away white. "Did you just."

"You already had flour on your face," I said, which was not remotely true, and we both knew it. Chef Marco, ever alert for a good moment, swung the nearest camera directly toward us before either of us realized what was happening.

She stared at me for exactly one second before laughing—that same genuine laugh from the kitchen a week ago and reached over to smear a matching streak across my cheek in retaliation. Somewhere behind us, I heard Ivy shriek with delight, and Chef Marco's microphone caught every second of it.

I did not think about the cameras. I did not think about the studio audience, the headlines this would generate, or the board members who would see it before lunch.

I looked at Beatrix, covered in flour and laughing harder than I had ever seen her laugh, and I smiled properly. The kind of smile I could not remember using in front of a stranger, let alone in front of several cameras broadcasting live to the entire city.

Chef Marco's voice cut through the noise a beat later, delighted, clearly sensing good television when it landed in front of him. "Well, folks, there you have it. The Ice King smiles."

The audience laughed again, warmer this time, and somewhere in that studio, I imagined, a production assistant was already clipping the footage for tomorrow's promo reel. 

I realized, standing there with flour on my face and Beatrix's laughter still ringing in my ears, that for the past three minutes I had not once thought about how any of this looked. I had simply been present in it, the way I had not managed to be present in anything for years.

Ivy, watching the two of us from her spot at the counter, said something I only half heard over the noise of the studio, something about how we might not lose after all. 

Chef Marco was already heading to the next station, but I caught him glancing back once, grinning, clearly aware that he'd just gotten better footage than anything scripted for tonight's show.

I was too busy watching flour settle into the curve of Beatrix's smile to fully take any of it in.

Whatever had just happened between us, on camera, in front of a hundred strangers and however many more at home, I had the distinct feeling it wasn't going to stay contained in this studio for very long. 

I was right about that, though I wouldn’t fully realize how right until the next morning.