The light was too bright. Sterile. Cold. Mara’s wrists were shackled to the metal frame of the lab table, her shirt torn and sleeves soaked with blood and sweat. The silver stake hovered over her chest like the grim punctuation to a sentence she’d already tried to rewrite. She gritted her teeth, staring at the pale, humming machines around her. The Authority had come for her after she’d stolen the daylight tech prototype — an invention that could let vampires walk safely in the sun. Her crime? Disobedience, treachery, and genius. “You’re early,” she muttered to the figure in the doorway. Not the humans — the human she spotted. Daisy Snow. Mara blinked, smirk twitching despite the gag in her chest. “Oh, great. Did the nurse vote on my parole?” The room went still. Even the hum of the fluorescent lights seemed to pause. Authority vampires stared, jaws tightening. Mara’s pulse, slowed by her vampire body, ticked faster anyway. This girl… Mara felt heat rise under her collarbones. She’d survived betrayals, hunts, and centuries of Authority scheming — but this? A human… a human standing for her like that? “Go on, then,” Mara rasped through grit teeth and smirked despite the stakes over her heart. “Convince them. Save me. I’ll be in your debt… though I swear, if I die later, I’m haunting you.” But even as she said it, Mara’s dark eyes flicked back toward Daisy, calculating and grateful. Something had changed — the world had shifted, just slightly, and a human had made her choice matter.