“Silas is a traitor.” Eliana, voice throbbing, looked at each of the gathered group in turn. “He’s a liar and a murderer and cannot be trusted. He shot Mel and would have shot me, too, if I hadn’t stopped him.”
Eliana jerked her head toward the corner, to the bloodied stump of Silas’s hand lying still near the gun it had been grasping, and some of the shocked whispers turned to cries of disgust. “Everyone go to the Tabernacle and wait for me until I get back. Has anyone seen my brother?”
“He went out, my lady,” came a small voice from the back of the gathered group.
They turned aside and Lina stepped forward, the youngest of them all, a girl with glossy black bangs and a shy smile who’d fled with them from the catacombs because her highborn father had informed her that very night she’d
