**Cassian**
The Ravencrest library felt different in daylight—less mysterious, more desperate. Cassian had been at the same table since dawn, surrounded by towers of books and increasingly frantic notes. Twenty-four hours. That’s all he had left before his father expected Ravyn to be delivered to the vampire courts.
The crystal vial sat beside his laptop, a constant reminder of the betrayal he was supposed to commit. But the more he read, the more convinced he became that there had to be another way.
His phone buzzed with a text from Marcus: *Any progress on those alternatives we discussed?*
Cassian typed back: *Still researching. Found some promising leads.*
It wasn’t entirely true. Most of what he’d found were fragments—incomplete laws, torn pages, references to protections that had
