Page 68 of Orc’s Gallows

I’ve spent two decades being thanked by councilors who appreciated my ability, by guards who admired my discipline, by citizens who felt safer knowing the Gallows Warden was maintaining order. Those thanks were hollow—coins traded for services rendered, acknowledgment of a job well done.

This is different. This is her thanking me for choosing her over everything else. For claiming her when I should have hanged her. For fighting beside her when I should have been her enemy.

“Don’t thank me yet.” I free my wrist from her grip, but gently. “I haven’t done anything worth gratitude.”

“You destroyed the Judge.”

“We destroyed the Judge.” I begin unfastening her cloak, working the ties with fingers that have stripped armor off dying men but now seem clumsy against the simple fabric of her clothes. “And I helped create it. Twenty years of executions feeding the thing that almost killed us both.”

“Twenty years of keeping order.” Her words are quiet. “Twenty years of doing what you thought was necessary.”

“Twenty years of being wrong.”

The cloak falls away. Beneath it, her dress is worse than I realized—not merely torn but shredded, the fabric hanging from her shoulders in strips that barely preserve her modesty. Bruises mottle her skin, purple and black against her pale complexion. Cuts seep blood that’s already beginning to dry.

I’ve seen wounds before. Caused more than my share. But seeing them on her makes my hands shake as they never have holding rope or blade.

“This will be cold.” I press the damp cloth against the worst of the cuts—a gash across her ribs where the Judge’s rope-tentacles caught her.

She hisses but doesn’t pull away. “Colder than your bedside manner?”

“Much.”

I work in silence after that, cleaning each wound with the care I’ve never given anyone. The water in the basin turns pink, then red. Ismerie’s breath catches when I reach a particularly deep cut, but she doesn’t complain, doesn’t make a sound beyond that initial sharp intake of air.

Strong. She’s so gods-damned strong, and she doesn’t even know it.

“The dress needs to come off.” I keep my tone clinical, professional—the tone I use when giving orders to guards or pronouncing sentences from the platform. “I can’t clean the wounds on your back through fabric.”

“Such a gentleman.” But she’s already reaching for the remaining ties, her fingers fumbling with exhaustion. “Asking permission to undress the woman you’ve already claimed.”

“I claimed you to save your life.” The words come out before I can stop them. “Not to own you.”

Her hands still on the ties. Her eyes find mine, and in them I see the question she’s been carrying since I pressed my palm to her collarbone and seared my sigil into her skin.

“Then what do you want from me, Brannok Redrope?”

The answer is so simple it terrifies me.

“Everything.” I set down the bloodied cloth. Cup her face in my hands—scarred palms against unmarked cheeks, the executioner holding the witch he should have killed. “I want everything. I want to wake up with you beside me. I want to face whatever comes next knowing you’re there. I want—” My words break on the word, rough edges crumbling. “I want to stop being alone.”

She doesn’t answer with words.

Her hands find the collar of my armor, tugging me down until our foreheads touch. Her breath mingles with mine—ash and blood and the metallic tang of ending magic. The claiming sigils throb between us, awareness bleeding through the thin layer of air that separates our skin.

“Then take it.”

The words are permission and challenge and invitation all at once. And I’ve never been good at refusing her anything.

I strip her dress away with hands that have stopped shaking. The fabric pools at her waist, leaving her bare from the ribs up except for the bruises and cuts that map the battle we survived. She’s thin—too thin, the lines of her bones visible beneath pale skin—but there’s strength in her frame. A survivor’s body, built for endurance rather than comfort.

My armor follows. Buckles unfastened with practiced efficiency, leather and iron discarded on the floor beside her ruined clothes. Beneath the execution black, my skin is mapped with scars—rope burns on my forearms, blade cuts across my ribs, the faded marks of a dozen fights I should have lost.

She traces them with her fingertips. Every one. Starting at my shoulder and working down to my hip, her touch leaving trails of fire across my skin.

“So many.”

“Occupational hazard.”