MARKED FOR PRETEND - Chapter 60: Chapter 60

The blade still sat where they dropped it.Curved, clean, deadly in its simplicity. A threat with no venom because it didn’t need any.
Chelsea stood barefoot in the center of the great chamber beneath the Keep. Torchlight burned around her in a wide ring. Bevy stood at the far end. Kaden watched from the shadows above, but he did not step in.
This was her space now.
“Call them,” Chelsea said.
Bevy nodded once and sent the signal.
⸻
One by one, they arrived.
The witches.
The loyal wolves.
The outcast fae who had refused to kneel to the Keepers.
Even the cursed girl from the mountain tribes, who whispered to fire without burning.
Twenty-three in all.
Not many.
But enough.
“You were not summoned because you fear the ones gathering outside,” Chelsea said, her voice steady. “You’re here because you’ve already chosen to walk beside me.”
She stepped into the firelight, and the torches flared higher without her touching them.
“The others want a goddess, a gate, or a corpse.”
“You will get none of those.”
⸻
She walked the circle, looking each one in the eye.
“This is not a pack. It’s not a coven. It’s not a cult.”
“This is a stand.”
“You are not here to kneel.”
She paused in front of the youngest, a girl barely seventeen with rune-burned wrists.
“You are here because you choose to fight, not just for me , but for the world after.”
The torches turned blue. And her mark began to glow.
⸻
“We have three days,” she said. “They gave them to me like a countdown to my destruction.”
“They forgot that I don’t bend. I break.”
“So in three days…”
She turned to the blade still lying in the stone.
“…they will see that this bridge doesn’t fall.”
“It burns both sides and builds something new.”
⸻
Behind her, Kaden stepped from the shadows at last.
He said nothing. He didn’t need to.
He stood beside her eyes golden, chin lifted, silent as a vow.
The Choosing Flame had been lit.
The final stand had begun.