Page 14 of Orc’s Gallows

Simple calculation, if you ignore the part where staying alive means convincing the most feared man in Blackhook City to defy the law he’s enforced all his life.

The darkness seems to press closer. The water keeps dripping. Somewhere above me, the city sleeps—or pretends to sleep, while whispers spread about the death witch who saved the Warden and the revenant that shouldn’t have risen.

I close my eyes.

His face appears immediately. Those pale eyes, cold and assessing. Those scarred hands, gentle where they shouldn’t have been. The way his words dropped when he told me I wasn’t what he expected.

What did he expect?

What do people think death witches are—cackling monsters who delight in ending? Twisted creatures without conscience or humanity?

Maybe some of us are. I’ve met others who’ve lost themselves to it entirely, and I can feel myself moving in that direction with every execution I witness, the guilt growing quieter each time.

That’s the real reason I saved him.

Not instinct. Not stupidity. Not even some noble impulse toward heroism.

I saved the Gallows Warden because I needed to prove I still could. Needed to know that there was a part of me left capable of choosing sacrifice over survival.

And now I’m going to die for it.

The irony is bitter enough to taste.

I let my head fall back against the stone wall, ignoring the pain in my arms, the cold creeping into my bones, the darkness pressing against my closed eyelids. Tomorrow the sun will rise. Tomorrow the crowds will gather. Tomorrow the Gallows Warden will do what he does best.

But tonight, for a few hours, I let myself remember the sensation of his touch.

And wonder what might have been different, in some other world, some other life.

Where death wasn’t entertainment.

And monsters got to choose what they became.

FOUR

BRANNOK

Sleep doesn’t come.

I lie on my narrow bed, staring at the ceiling I’ve stared at for two decades, palm pressed to my neck where the mating mark throbs with steady heat. The sigils glow—not painful, but impossible to ignore. A heartbeat that isn’t mine, keeping rhythm with a presence in the cells below.

Her.

I should be reviewing execution protocols. Checking schedules, confirming guard rotations, ensuring tomorrow’s hanging proceeds without the complications that plagued today’s. The council will want a show of strength after the revenant incident. They’ll want the death witch’s execution to be clean, a demonstration that order has been restored.

Instead, I’m lying in darkness, my body responding to a woman I’ve sentenced to die.

The mark blazes exactly as it did in the first moment it appeared—as if twenty-three years of silence were nothing. As if she were always supposed to be here.

I push myself upright, abandoning the pretense of rest. The movement sends a fresh wave of heat through the mark, and I grit my teeth against the sensation. She’s directly below me. Her presence presses against my awareness, a constant pressure that won’t be ignored.

I cross to the washbasin, splash cold water on my face, force myself to breathe through the urge to go down there. To see her again. To touch⁠—

No.

I grip the basin’s edge until my knuckles ache. This is chemical. Biological. An ancient magical imperative that has nothing to do with who she is or what she’s done. The mark responds to compatibility, to a fundamental resonance between two people’s magical signatures. It doesn’t care about morality. Doesn’t factor in the small detail that she’s a death witch feeding on my executions.

I dress in the darkness, pulling on leather and iron by touch alone. The routine helps—buckles and straps, the familiar weight of armor across my shoulders. By the time I’ve finished, I resemble myself more.