Page 29 of Orc’s Gallows

“No?” The Judge’s voice sharpens. “You refuse my offer?”

“I refuse your manipulation.” I straighten my spine, meet the shifting faces without flinching. “You’re not offering freedom. You’re offering another kind of ownership—a different master, a different chain. The claiming bond binds me to Brannok. Your ‘partnership’ would bind me to you.”

“The bond is slavery⁠—”

“The bond is a choice.” The words come faster now, surer. “He didn’t ask permission because there wasn’t time. Because I was dying, and he couldn’t let that happen. Because whatever instinct drove him, it was about saving me, not owning me.”

“You believe that?”

“I believe he could have let me die.” I step toward the Judge, feeling the skull-paved floor shift beneath my feet. “He could have pulled the lever, completed the execution, fed you exactly what you wanted. Instead, he attacked his own platform. Destroyed his career. Made himself a target for every authority in Blackhook.”

The Judge’s faces cycle faster now, agitation rippling through its composite form.

“He did those things because the bond demanded it. Not because he cares about you.”

“Maybe.” I stop inches from the towering figure, feeling its presence press against my senses. “But the sigil chose me. Out of everyone in this city, out of all the possibilities in the Veillands, it chose me for him. I don’t understand why. I don’t know what it means. But I’m not throwing that away for a monster wearing the faces of the dead.”

Silence.

Then the Judge laughs—a sound of genuine amusement that echoes through the bone-walled courtroom.

“Oh, sister.” The shifting faces settle into an expression of dark delight. “I was right about you. You are exactly what I’ve been waiting for.”

The courtroom begins to dissolve around me. The skulls beneath my feet crack and crumble. The rib-cage walls collapse inward.

“We’ll speak again.” The Judge’s voice follows me as the dream fades. “Soon. And next time, I’ll have better arguments.”

I wake to darkness and the sound of a blade being drawn.

Brannok stands over my bed, his sword gleaming in the faint light from the window. His gaze is fixed on the corner of the room, on a shadow that seems darker than it should be.

A shadow with eyes that glow cold white.

And a mouth that whispers, in a voice of harmonized wrongful death:

“Soon.”

The shadow dissolves.

Brannok’s blade lowers.

The brand blazes on my collarbone, and I realize that the war for my soul has already begun.

SEVEN

BRANNOK

That night I don’t sleep. By morning, the riots have spread to three more districts, and I have work to do.

The riot organizer’s jaw breaks under my fist.

He crumples against the alley wall, blood streaming from his mouth, hands raised in a surrender that comes three days too late. I’ve been hunting him since the second night of violence—a dockworker named Crenshaw who thought defying the Gallows Warden made him a hero. His followers torched three buildings in the merchant quarter. His speeches turned angry citizens into a mob that nearly breached the Execution Hall gates.

Now he’s on his knees in a side street, learning why this city learned to fear me.

“The council didn’t send you.” He spits blood and teeth onto the cobblestones. “You’re acting alone. Protecting your witch.”

“I’m maintaining order.” I grab his collar and haul him upright, slamming him against the stone hard enough to crack mortar. “The same thing I’ve done for two decades. The same thing I’ll keep doing until this city remembers why riots are a bad idea.”