Page 72 of Orc’s Gallows

“I’m thinking about the other cities.”

Brannok doesn’t respond immediately. His arms tighten around me—not in question, but in understanding. Three months of sharing his bed has taught me to read his silences, and this one speaks volumes.

“Blackhook wasn’t the only place with gallows.” I continue, watching a little girl place a black rose at the base of a marker. “Wasn’t the only place where ending magic accumulated for centuries. If the Judge could form here…”

“Others could form elsewhere.” His chin rests on top of my head. “Already have, maybe.”

“The Veillands are full of places built on terror. Cities that maintain order through blood. Every one of them is a potential breeding ground for entities like the Judge.” I turn in his arms, face him in the golden light of late afternoon. “We stopped one. There could be dozens more.”

“Then we deal with them.” His words carry the same certainty that once pronounced death sentences—but the edge has changed. Less terror, more purpose. “When they arise. If they arise.”

“We?”

“You’re stuck with me, death witch.” He pulls me closer, presses his lips against my temple. The gesture is casual, practiced—the easy affection of two people who have stopped pretending they don’t belong to each other. “That’s how it works. You’re mine and I’m yours, and neither of us gets a say in that anymore.”

I lean into him.

“The memorial ceremony starts in an hour.” I don’t pull away from his embrace. Don’t want to. “The new council expects you to speak.”

“The new council can wait.”

I tilt my head back, study his face. Three months have changed him in subtle ways—the hard lines around his mouth have softened, the constant tension in his shoulders has eased. He still looks like a man who could kill you without breaking a sweat, but there’s less ice behind his gaze. Less emptiness.

“You’re staring.”

“You’re worth staring at.”

His lips twitch—the closest thing to a smile I’ve managed to coax from him in public. “Flatterer.”

“Truth-teller.” I rise on my toes, brush my lips against his. Quick. Easy. The kind of kiss that doesn’t need to prove anything because everything has already been proven. “You’re nervous about the speech.”

“I’m not—” He stops. Takes a breath. “I spent two decades speaking from the platform. Pronouncing sentences. Formal words that ended lives.” His gaze drifts toward the memorial, toward the names carved in stone. “I don’t know how to speak words that heal instead of harm.”

“You’ll learn.” I take his hand, thread my fingers through his. “We both will.”

The memorial ceremony draws a larger crowd than I expected.

Three months ago, these same citizens would have gathered to watch executions—vendors selling meat pies, families claiming balcony seats with premium views, children playing hanging games in the shadows of the gallows. Now they stand in quiet rows, holding candles that flicker in the evening breeze, their faces solemn with an emotion I’m not sure they know how to name.

Grief, maybe. Or guilt. Or the uncomfortable awareness that they were complicit in the system they’ve come to mourn.

Brannok stands at the front of the crowd, where the platform’s base used to be. He’s wearing his old black armor—the execution black he wore for two decades—but the crimson sash is gone. In its place, a simple gray band circles his arm. The color of ash. The color of new beginnings rising from destruction.

He’s not the Gallows Warden anymore. The title died when the gallows fell. Now he serves a different role—a peacekeeper, a protector, a man who uses the fear he cultivated for decades to maintain order without executions. It’s not comfortable. I watch him struggle with it every day, watch him reach for habits that no longer serve, watch him learn new ways to be powerful that don’t require nooses.

But he’s trying. That’s more than most would manage.

“Citizens of Blackhook.” His words carry across the silent crowd without effort. Two decades of pronouncing sentences have trained him to project, to command attention, to make people listen whether they want to or not. “We gather to remember those who died on this ground. The guilty and the innocent alike. The criminals who earned their sentences and those who were condemned by convenience, by politics, by a system that valued fear over truth.”

The crowd shifts uneasily. This isn’t the speech they expected—not the sanitized remembrance that politicians typically deliver. This is a reckoning.

“I was part of that system.” Brannok doesn’t waver. “For two decades, I served the gallows. I pulled levers. I tied nooses. I told myself that terror was necessary, that fear was the price of order, that the deaths I dealt kept worse violence at bay.” His gaze sweeps the assembly. “I was wrong.”

Murmurs ripple through the crowd. Some faces show surprise, others discomfort, a few show the dawning recognition of complicity acknowledged.

“The gallows are gone.” Brannok gestures toward the memorial garden, toward the names carved in stone. “The platform that stood here for three centuries has been reduced to rubble. But the system that built it—the belief that enough death can purchase peace—that lives in all of us. In the citizens who cheered at hangings. In the merchants who paid bribes to ensure their enemies faced the noose. In every person who watched innocent people die and told themselves it was necessary.”

He pauses. The silence is absolute.