Page 67 of Orc’s Gallows

BRANNOK

The Execution Hall still stands.

The realization hits me as I guide Ismerie through streets that have become unfamiliar in their silence. The Grand Gallows are gone. The platform that dominated Blackhook City’s skyline for three centuries has collapsed into rubble. But the building beneath it—the stone chambers where I’ve lived and worked for two decades—survived the destruction.

Cracks web the walls. The lanterns have gone dark, their corpse-fat oil extinguished by the shockwave that destroyed the gallows above. But the structure itself remains intact, a monument to the builders who carved these chambers from bedrock centuries before I was born.

Ismerie leans heavily against my side. Her weight is a constant reminder of what she gave to destroy the Judge—every ounce of stolen power poured into anchoring the entity while I hanged it. The ending magic that sustained her has been spent, and without it, she’s barely able to walk.

My hand never leaves hers.

Halvard meets us at the lower corridor. His face is gray with exhaustion, but he straightens when he sees us. “Varn and Thessa fled before dawn. Took what they could carry and left through the merchants’ gate.” He pauses. “Most of the others went with them. Marsh stayed. Said he wanted to be part of whatever comes next.” He hesitates, then adds: “Era’s been at the gate twice asking after you both. I let her through the second time.”

I absorb this. The council—two decades of authority, of orders signed and carried out—gone before the sun has fully risen. It should feel like victory. It feels like the silence after an execution: necessary, and empty, and strange.

“Get some rest.” I nod to Halvard. “We’ll need everyone standing by midday.”

He salutes with the easy familiarity of a man who has decided which side he’s on, and leaves us to the dark.

I’ve touched rope for two decades. Tested its weight, measured its strength, calculated exactly how much force it would take to snap a human neck. My hands are calloused in patterns that come from ending lives—scarred palms, thickened skin, the muscle memory of pulling levers seared into every fiber.

Now those same hands hold hers like she’s the only thing keeping me upright.

The corridors of the Execution Hall are dark, but I know them by touch. I’ve walked these passages thousands of times—to the interrogation chambers, to the holding cells, to the private platform where sensitive executions took place away from public eyes. I’ve navigated them drunk and exhausted and bleeding, always finding my way back to the spartan quarters that serve as both office and home.

Tonight, I navigate them carrying the woman I love.

Not physically—she’s walking, barely, her feet shuffling against stone worn smooth by centuries of condemned prisoners making their final journey. But I’m holding her upright, my arm around her waist, her head against my shoulder. The sigil on my neck thrums in answer to hers on her collarbone. Two marks, two killers, one destination.

My quarters are exactly as I left them.

A bed. A weapons rack. A desk covered in execution orders that will never be carried out. The walls bear no decoration except the crimson sash of my office, hanging from a hook beside the door like a shed skin.

I’ve lived here for two decades, surrounded by the names of everyone I’ve killed, and until this moment, I never realized how empty it was.

Now Ismerie is here. And the emptiness retreats.

I lower her onto the bed—my bed, the narrow pallet where I’ve slept alone for two decades. Her body sinks into the thin mattress with a sigh of exhaustion, her ash-blonde hair spreading across the pillow, her dark eyes half-closed.

“Stay awake.” My words come out rougher than I intend. “I need to clean those wounds.”

“Bossy.” The word is barely a whisper, but there’s humor in it—the same irreverence she’s wielded since the day we met. “You’d think destroying an ancient evil would earn me a nap.”

“After.”

I turn to the basin in the corner, fill it with water from the pitcher that survived intact despite everything. The liquid is cold—the pipes that usually heat it run through the gallows’ foundations, and those foundations are rubble now. But cold water is better than nothing, and the cloth I dip into it comes away clean enough to use.

When I return to the bed, Ismerie has managed to sit up. Her ruined clothes hang from her frame in tatters—the dark cloak shredded, the plain dress beneath torn and bloodstained. She’s still marked by the battle—soot and dried blood on her skin, the last traces of ending magic fading from her scars—and she’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

“Let me.” I reach for the ties of her cloak.

Her hand catches my wrist. “Brannok.”

“You need to be cleaned. Those wounds will fester if⁠—”

“I know.” Her fingers tighten around my wrist—not stopping me, but holding me in place. “I’m not objecting. I’m…” A pause. Her eyes meet mine, dark and exhausted and full of things neither of us knows how to say. “Thank you.”

The words hit me harder than any blow the Judge landed.