Page 4 of Orc’s Gallows

It took all of thirty seconds to destroy everything.

“Witch!” The cry goes up from a voice in the crowd. Then again, from a dozen throats. A hundred.

“Death witch! Necromancer!”

I don’t move. Can’t. My legs have turned to water, and the power still coursing through me makes everything seem distant and strange.

I saved them. I saved the Warden. I stopped the revenant that would have torn through this square and killed everyone in it.

And now they’re going to tear me apart for it.

A hand closes on my arm.

Not a mob hand, grabbing and tearing. A grip that’s firm and deliberate, pulling me backward against a body armored in black leather and iron. I catch a flash of dark green skin, a whiff of sweat and metal and an undercurrent I can’t name—one my magic responds to in ways I refuse to examine.

The Gallows Warden.

He cuts through the crowd’s roar with the same flat authority he used to read Mira’s death sentence.

“This woman is under arrest by order of the City Council. She will face judgment through proper channels.”

The mob hesitates. Not because they’re satisfied—their hunger radiates, their need for blood that won’t be denied. But the Gallows Warden has spent twenty years teaching Blackhook City to fear him, and that fear runs deeper than their rage.

He pulls me toward the gallows, toward the Execution Hall beyond, and I let him. What choice do I have?

I’ve traded one death for another. The revenant would have been quick.

The gallows take their time.

As we pass the platform, the ropes begin to move on their own.

Not wind—there is no wind. The nooses sway and reach toward me like blind snakes sensing prey. The ancient wood creaks and groans, the entire structure shifting in my direction as if drawn by my power. One rope whips out and coils around my ankle, pulling taut with enough force to drag me to my knees.

The Gallows Warden’s blade flashes. The severed rope writhes on the cobblestones, squirming for several seconds before finally going still.

His grip on my arm tightens. Tension coils through his body as he reassesses everything he thought he understood about this situation.

“What are you?” His words come low, meant only for me.

I look up at him—at those eyes I tried not to notice, pale amber in the morning light, cold as the execution he performed. At the rope burns around his neck from where the revenant tried to strangle him. At the way he holds his blade, still ready to cut me down if I become the next threat.

My smile comes out wrong. Hollow. The kind that belongs on a woman who has already made peace with what comes next.

“The kind of creature that should have died a long time ago.”

He doesn’t answer. He drags me toward the Execution Hall, toward the darkness and chains waiting below. His grip is iron, unyielding, the grip of a man who has handled struggling prisoners for twenty years and learned exactly how much force to apply.

And in the foundations beneath the gallows, an ancient presence stirs in its sleep.

Waiting.

Watching.

Knowing that I’ve taken the first step toward whatever it has planned.

Sister, the voice had called me. As if we were kin. As if we were made from the same dark cloth, woven on the same terrible loom.

Maybe we are. Maybe that’s what terrifies me most.