MARKED FOR PRETEND - Chapter 61: Chapter 61

Day One. It started with whispers. It was nothing loud, it was just a muttered doubt here. A late report there.
Bevy had noticed it first.
“Someone’s leaking movement orders.”
“From inside the Keep?” Kaden asked.
“Only a few people know the patrol routes. One of them’s working both sides.”
⸻
Chelsea heard it before Bevy told her.
A tug in her bones. A flicker behind her eyes when one of the mystics passed too close.
A feeling. That something trusted wasn’t whole anymore.
⸻
She didn’t react.
She couldn’t afford to.
Instead, she went to the place where her mother once drew blood to open a veil and began to craft the spell that might win them the war.
It wasn’t a weapon.
It was worse.
It was a mirror. A spell that forced others to see themselves through the eyes of their enemy to feel what they caused, to drown in the consequences they denied.
“If they want to erase me,” Chelsea thought, “then let them first see what they become without me.”
But as she traced the circle, her hand trembled once.
Just once.
And she knew why.
“Someone’s going to betray me before this is done,” she whispered aloud.
⸻
Elsewhere in the Keep Shadow POV
The traitor moved quickly, not out of guilt neither was it out of fear. They didn’t hate Chelsea. They didn’t even want her dead.
But the ones outside the gate had promised mercy.
They had promised to restore balance if only the bridge was removed.
And mercy was so much sweeter than blood.