A Song of Silence

Chapter 1: A Shadow in the Dark

They never knew what to call her. Those that lived alongside her in their forest home. Storm-bringer. Deathly shadow. The ghost of the shadowed vale.

It mattered little to the owner of these names. They had been earned over a great number of years and she was proud for what they stood for. Others would never know their meaning for the living nightmare had long learned to never give away such precious secrets without care.For now though, Aerilynn was content to let the people she lived among not sense her presence watching them on her high perch in the trees.

It was calming, watching the townsfolk she protected going about their days, ignorant of the violence outside the towns borders. John, the local blacksmith would yell at his son for dropping a newly forged weapon in the dirt.
A little girl would frolic in the town fountain as her mother chased after her. Across the street Paige, the bakers wife and the local town gossip, would nervously chitter to her gaggle of other town mothers about who had gotten married recently and who had run off with a neighboring towns son.

The second was unlikely , seeing as the little town of SilverHollow we all called home was as far from civilization as one could possibly get. Nestled in the pocket of surrounding mountains,  SilverHollow hosted enough arable land to get by, with a plethora of clawed creatures in the surrounding mountains always trying to feast on the fat livestock owned by the fae citizens below.

That is where I came in. The silent, fearsome protector of the towns livestock. Killer of the beasts of the night that nobody wanted to mess with. That, of course, was only the job the townsfolk thought I did. Rumors spread by Paige, the bakers wife and many other town mothers hinted at my near constant "side-jobs" that I left SilverHollow to perform. Dirty, dangerous work that those who suspected the truth frowned upon. Deadly and unsuitable for a lady is what was whispered about most often.

The truth was far worse than the rumors that spread about, of course, but I wasn't going to tell the gossips that. My true source of income came in the form of killing. A Lady had to make a living somehow. An assassin some would call me but, I was most notably known as the silver death. I killed rapists, murderers, serial killers, pedophiles. You name it. I'd killed them. I'd killed a fair amount of good people too, but the price on their heads had been too large for my hungry belly to ignore.

As for where I'd learned such fearsome skills? Well, in the Guild of Shadows of course. An academy that took in whoever they could find at a young age and trained them in the art of torture, silence, and killing. Low born or high born fae, it didn't matter. What did was whether you could kill. That determined the pecking order and the pay for the jobs you were sent on after you graduated at the ripe age of 18. Under the supervision of the Grand Assassin it has flourished in the number of years since it's creation and it operated as I did now. Working for whoever could pay the highest price after they paid what they owed to the Grand Assassin.

Payment for my killing services depended on the prestige of the prey. A lords son was a  heavy sum while a measly bandit was barely enough to buy a night at an inn. I would often list the price beforehand and if someone couldn't pay my price, I would demand something far more valuable. The customers that came to me were bad, bad fae and one thing they all had in common was that they had something to hide. Something worth going to a lot of trouble to kill one fae. The valuable that I demanded? Secrets. Everyone had them. Nobody could keep them. And the person who knew them all, well they were not to be fucked with.