Free Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell by Brandon Sanderson

reached around, taking out the key and unlocking the door behind her. Theopolis grabbed her arm, yanking her away as she pulled open the door.
    “Going for one of your hidden weapons?” he asked with a sneer. “The crossbow you keep on the pantry shelf? Yes, I know of that. I’m disappointed, Silence. Can’t we be civil?”
    “I will never sign your document, Theopolis,” she said, then spat at his feet. “I would sooner die, I would sooner be put out of house and home. You can take the waystop by force, but I will not serve you. You can be damned, for all I care, you bastard. You—”
    He slapped her across the face. A quick but unemotional gesture. “Oh, do shut up.”
    She stumbled back.
    “Such dramatics, Silence. I can’t be the only one to wish you lived up to your name, hmmm?”
    She licked her lip, feeling the pain of his slap. She lifted her hand to her face. A single drop of blood colored her fingertip when she pulled it away.
    “You expect me to be frightened?” Theopolis asked. “I know we’re safe in here.”
    “Fort city fool,” she whispered, then flipped the drop of blood at him. It hit him on the cheek. “Always follow the Simple Rules. Even when you think you don’t have to. And I wasn’t opening the pantry, as you thought.”
    Theopolis frowned, then glanced over at the door she had opened. The door into the small old shrine. Her grandmother’s shrine to the God Beyond.
    The bottom of the door was rimmed in silver.
    Red eyes opened in the air behind Theopolis, a jet-black form coalescing in the shadowed room. Theopolis hesitated, then turned.
    He didn’t get to scream as the shade took his head in its hands and drew his life away. It was a newer shade, its form still strong despite the writhing blackness of its clothing. A tall woman, hard of features, with curling hair. Theopolis opened his mouth, then his face withered away, eyes sinking into his head.
    “You should have run, Theopolis,” Silence said.
    His head began to crumble. His body collapsed to the floor.
    “Hide from the green eyes, run from the red,” Silence said, retrieving the silver-tipped crossbow bolt from where it lay by the back door. “Your rules, Grandmother.”
    The shade turned to her. Silence shivered, looking into those dead, glassy eyes of a matriarch she loathed and loved.
    “I hate you,” Silence said. “Thank you for making me hate you.” She held the crossbow bolt before her, but the shade did not strike. Silence edged around, forcing the shade back. It floated away from her, back into the shrine lined with silver at the bottom of its three walls, where Silence had trapped it years ago.
    Her heart pounding, Silence closed the door, completing the barrier, and locked it again. No matter what happened, that shade left Silence alone. Almost, she thought it remembered. And almost, Silence felt guilty for trapping that soul inside the small closet for all these years.

Silence found Theopolis’s hidden cave after six hours of hunting.
    It was about where she’d expected it to be, in the hills not far from the Old Bridge. It included a silver barrier. She could harvest that. Good money there.
    Inside the small cavern, she found Chesterton’s corpse, which Theopolis had dragged to the cave while the shades killed Red and then hunted Silence. I’m so glad, for once, you were a greedy man, Theopolis.
    She would have to find someone else to start turning in bounties for her. That would be difficult, particularly on short notice. She dragged the corpse out and threw it over the back of Theopolis’s horse. A short hike took her back to the road, where she paused, then walked up and located Red’s fallen corpse, withered down to just bones and clothing.
    She fished out her grandmother’s dagger, scored and blackened from the fight. It fit back into the sheath at her side. She trudged, exhausted, back to the waystop and hid Chesterton’s corpse in the cold cellar out behind the stable, beside where