Page 13 of Orc’s Gallows

“Sorry to disappoint.” The words come out breathless. Weak. “What did you expect? Begging? Pleading? Tears?”

“Calculation.” His thumb traces along my jaw, a whisper of sensation that makes my whole body shiver. “Strategy. A death witch facing execution should be looking for angles, weaknesses, opportunities to escape.”

“Maybe I’m too tired for strategy.”

“Maybe.” His gaze bores into mine, seeing things I’d rather keep hidden. “Or maybe you mean what you’re saying. Maybe you don’t care if you live or die, as long as a worse fate doesn’t die with you.”

I can’t answer. Can’t think. His touch has scattered every rational thought, left me suspended between chains and heat and the impossible awareness of his body so close to mine.

“That would make you dangerous.” His hand drops away, and the absence of his touch registers like a wound. “A woman with nothing to lose is the most dangerous creature in the world.”

“Then hang me.” I force the words out through a windpipe that’s gone tight and dry. “Get it over with. I’m sure the crowd will be thrilled.”

He steps back.

The distance between us stretches like miles. I watch him retreat to professional remove, watch the composure slide back over his features—cold, calculating, the Gallows Warden who has executed people without hesitation.

“Dawn.” His words flatten again. Controlled. “The execution is scheduled for dawn. Sleep if you can.”

He turns toward the door.

“Warden.”

The word stops him. He doesn’t turn back, but he doesn’t keep walking either. Stands there, framed in the doorway, waiting.

“Whatever made that revenant isn’t done. It’s going to try again—maybe not tomorrow, maybe not for weeks, but eventually. And when it does, it won’t stop at one body.” I swallow hard. “It wants the gallows. Wants to make it a throne. And it wants me to help it.”

“Why?”

He stands motionless for a long moment.

Then the door closes, and I’m alone.

The darkness presses in.

I hang from my chains, arms screaming, power depleted, mind racing in circles that lead nowhere useful. The water drips. The names of the dead stare down from the walls. The greasy lamplight flickers and dies, leaving me in blackness so complete I can’t see my own hands.

I wonder how many death witches have hanged from these exact chains. How many waited in this same darkness, counting hours until dawn. How many carved their names into these walls before the rope took them.

I could add my name. Leave some mark, some evidence that I existed before I stopped existing. But even if my hands were free, I can’t imagine what I’d write. Ismerie Ashfall? The name belonged to someone else—a girl who had parents once, who lived in a village outside Blackhook City, who didn’t yet know what she was or what she’d become.

That girl died a long time ago. What’s left is survival. Instinct. The desperate clinging to life that made me attend execution after execution, feed on death after death, sustain myself on suffering I couldn’t stop.

Maybe ending is what I deserve.

Don’t.

Familiar as an old wound, that certainty. I’ve carried it for years—the conviction that a creature like me shouldn’t exist. That every day I survive is borrowed time, stolen from people more deserving.

But the thing beneath the platform…

That’s different. That’s dangerous in ways my death can’t justify.

I told him the truth. Whatever raised that revenant isn’t finished. It has plans, ambitions, a hunger that won’t be satisfied by one dead witch or even a dozen. It wants the gallows as its throne, and it wants me as its anchor—a living bridge between the world of the dead and the power source it calls home.

If I die, it feeds.

If I live, I might be able to stop it.