Moments later,

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She descended without hesitation, the holy core tucked into her gown, her senses extended to their maximum range. The air grew colder, damper, carrying the scent of fear and confinement that she had learned to recognize in her years as an operative.

At the bottom of the stairs, she found a corridor lined with iron doors. Most were empty. But the last two...

She opened the first.

Two children looked up at her from a cell barely large enough to hold them. Twins—boy and girl, no older than seven, with hair the color of starlight and eyes that glowed with an inner light that was neither wolf...