At the park, with her mother right there, Mira had leaned close to Rhys and whispered a warning — don’t drink it, it makes you sleep — risking everything to try to stop what was coming.

It hadn’t worked; Sondra had talked him past it, had weaponized Mira’s own compliance to override Mira’s own warning, which is a cruelty so layered I still can’t fully hold it.

But Mira had tried.

And when the warning failed and Rhys went down, she tried again, the only other way she knew, with the watch.

Twice, in a single afternoon, an eight-year-old who had been trained her whole life into silence had found a way to break it to save someone else’s child.

She had not been able to save herself — she hadn’t even known she needed saving.