MARKED FOR PRETEND - Chapter 62: Chapter 62

It was always going to be someone quiet, someone small, someone she hadn’t noticed fully not because they were invisible, but because they wanted to be.
Her mother once said, “A knife never sings before it strikes. It waits, still and cold, close to your spine.”
Chelsea had learned to feel cold steel long before it touched her.
⸻
She found the girl in the lower corridor, just before moonrise.
Not a warrior, neither was she a sorceress.
Just a maid, one of the twenty-three who’d stood in the flame-lit circle three nights ago, trembling with loyalty.
Chelsea stepped out of the shadow.
The girl flinched.
Good.
“Where were you last night?” Chelsea asked.
“Cleaning the west wing.”
“There was no patrol in the west wing.”
The girl’s breath hitched.
“What were you doing?”
The silence screamed louder than any confession.
⸻
Kaden appeared behind her. Quiet. Golden-eyed. Ready.
“Let me,” he said.
“No,” Chelsea replied.
She stepped forward.
“Did they promise you safety?” she asked the girl. “Tell you I was too dangerous to live? That this is the way to peace?”
Tears welled in the girl’s eyes. She didn’t deny it.
“Then you’re not a traitor,” Chelsea said coldly. “You’re a coward.”
The girl dropped to her knees.
“Please… I didn’t mean—”
“You didn’t mean for me to find out.”
⸻
Kaden growled low the kind of sound that made bones remember they could break.
“Say the word,” he whispered to Chelsea.
But Chelsea didn’t answer him.
She crouched in front of the girl.
“You’re going to walk back to them.”
“What?”
“You’re going to tell them you were never caught. That the spell they fear is unfinished. That I’m breaking. That I’m alone.”
The girl stared, stunned.
“You’re going to lie for me,” Chelsea said. “Because if I’m going to win this war, I’ll need more than fire. I’ll need someone who knows how to play afraid.”
The girl blinked.
“And when it’s over?” she whispered.
Chelsea stood.
“Pray I don’t still see you as a knife.”