Page 66 of Orc’s Gallows

“It worked.” I press my forehead to hers, breathing her in. Ash and ending magic and the scent that means home. “The Judge is gone. The spirits are free.”

“Good.” Her hand finds my face, tracing the rope burns on my neck with trembling fingers. “You look terrible.”

“You should talk.” I catch her hand, press my lips to her palm. “You’re the one who’s barely conscious.”

“Worth it.” She curls closer, her head finding the hollow of my shoulder. “We killed the thing that was supposed to be unkillable.”

Around us, the Grand Gallows collapse.

Not the makeshift apparatus I built—that stands intact, the rope still dangling from its crossbar. The original platform. The centuries-old structure that has dominated Blackhook City’s skyline for as long as anyone can remember. With the Judge destroyed, with the anchor shattered, with the ending magic that sustained it dissipated—the Grand Gallows have nothing left to hold them upright.

The remaining beams groan. The iron reinforcements shriek as they twist. The entire structure folds in on itself with a crash that shakes the foundations of the execution square.

When the dust clears, nothing remains but a heap of smoking rubble.

The Grand Gallows are gone.

I hold Ismerie in the crater of everything we’ve destroyed, my sigil throbbing in rhythm with hers. The sky is lightening toward dawn. The city is silent around us—no bells tolling, no crowds gathering, no scheduled deaths waiting to happen.

For the first time in generations, no one in Blackhook City is scheduled to die.

“What happens now?” Her words are stronger, some of her color returning. Death witch resilience. She’ll recover—we both will—but it’s going to take time.

“I don’t know.” The honest answer. The only answer. “The council will want my head. The city will need answers. Two decades of what I called order—all of it gone in a single night.”

“What you called order was terror.” She lifts her head, meets my eyes. No accusation in her gaze—she’s as complicit as I am, and she knows it. “Time to build differently.”

“With you?”

“Where else would I go?” Her lips curve into a sharp smile—the one that shows teeth, the one that makes me want things I’d trained myself to ignore. “You claimed me before the city, remember? I’m stuck with you.”

“Is that a complaint?”

“An observation.” She reaches up, tangles her fingers in my hair, pulls my mouth down to hers.

The kiss is gentle at first—tender in a way neither of us has earned but both of us need. Then her teeth catch my lower lip, and the tenderness ignites into hunger. I pull her closer, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other pressed against the small of her back. She makes a sound against my mouth that goes straight to my blood.

We’re both battered. Both exhausted. Both covered in ash and blood and the remnants of centuries of wrongful death.

We’re both alive.

When we break apart, the sun is cresting the horizon. Dawn spills across the ruined execution square, painting the rubble in shades of gold and rose. The spirits of the wrongfully executed are gone—dispersed into the sky, freed at last after centuries of imprisonment.

And where the Grand Gallows once stood, there’s only empty air and the promise of a different future.

“We should probably go.” Ismerie sounds reluctant. “Before anyone comes to investigate the noise.”

“Probably.” I don’t move. Don’t want to. This moment—holding her in the ruins of everything I used to be—seems too important to rush.

She doesn’t push. Doesn’t pull away. We stay there, wrapped in each other, as the city begins to wake around us.

The bells don’t ring.

For the first time in centuries, the bells of Blackhook City stay silent. No tolling for sentences. No marking of executions. No constant reminder that death is always watching, always waiting, always hungry for more.

The silence is almost deafening.

FIFTEEN