Silas’s gaze flicked over the children again. Fear radiated off them in waves sharp enough to cut, but so did exhaustion. Starvation. The kind of desperation that could make anyone snap a blade into someone’s chest without a second thought.
“I—” he started, but stopped. Words weren’t enough. Not for this. Not when the girl’s knuckles were white around the knife, when the smallest child shivered like a rag tossed into a storm.
“His name was Tom,” the girl said finally, her voice shaking. “He said we were nothing but trouble. That anyone helping us would be sorry.”
Silas swallowed. The warning cut close to home. He’d been Tom once—young, scared, trying to survive by any means necessary. He’d seen how a child could grow sharp and hard in the wrong hands.
