Page 70 of Orc’s Gallows

“The council can go hang themselves.”

The words come out sharper than I intended, but I don’t take them back. The councilors signed death warrants from their comfortable towers, watched executions from their private balconies, traded human lives for political convenience. They built the system that created the Judge, and they did it knowingly.

“They might try.” A ghost of humor in his tone—dry and dark, the kind that comes from facing impossible odds. “Though Varn and Thessa are already gone. Halvard told me. They fled before dawn, took what they could carry.”

He’s right that the danger isn’t over. The Grand Gallows are gone. The system of terror that kept Blackhook in line for three centuries has collapsed along with the platform. There will be chaos—riots, looting, the kind of violence that erupts when fear loses its grip. Whoever remains of the council will scramble to restore order, and they’ll fail, because the tool they relied on has been reduced to rubble.

“Good.”

I lift my head, meet his eyes in the darkness. Amber finding brown, his gaze steady on mine.

“Good that everything I built is rubble?” One eyebrow rises—the closest thing to surprise I’ve seen on his face.

“Good that you have a chance to build differently.” I trace the line of his collarbone, following the edge of muscle and bone until my fingers find the sigil on his neck. The brand I wear on my skin, seared into his in return. “The system was broken, Brannok. You know that. You’ve known it for years, even if you couldn’t admit it.”

“Knowing and doing are different things.”

“Then do.” I push myself up on one elbow, ignoring the protest of muscles that haven’t yet recovered from channeling ending magic. “The platform is gone. The Judge is dead. For the first time in your life, you have a choice that isn’t between bad and worse.”

He’s quiet for a long moment. His hand finds mine on his collarbone, fingers intertwining, rough palm against rough palm.

“And you?” His words are careful—the tone of a man afraid to ask a question but needing to hear the answer. “What choice do you make?”

The answer comes easier than I expected.

“I go where you go.” I squeeze his fingers, hold his gaze. “That’s how this works. You claimed me before the city. I’m choosing to stay.”

He’s quiet for a moment, his thumb tracing slow circles on my palm. I know the question behind his silence—the same one the Judge tried to weaponize, the same one we’ve both been circling since the platform. Whether the yes I gave on that platform was real or simply the only answer available to a woman who was dying.

“I said yes the first time because I was about to die.” I hold his gaze steadily—no flinching from it, no softening the edges. “I’m saying it now because I know exactly what I’m agreeing to. I’ve seen what you are. What you’ve been. What you’re trying to become. I’ve watched you destroy a system that made you, stand in a graveyard full of your mistakes, and choose differently.” A pause. “That’s the man I’m choosing. Not the magic. Not the bond. You.”

“Even knowing what I am?” The words are rough with doubt I’ve never heard from him before. “What I’ve done? The innocents I’ve hanged, the system I maintained, the monster I helped create?”

“You know what I am.” I bring our joined hands to my lips, press a kiss to his scarred knuckles. “What I’ve done. The innocents I watched die so I could survive. The executions I attended because I needed the ending magic they released.” A pause. “I’m not innocent, Brannok. Neither of us is. We’re killers.”

“Killers.”

“Killers who destroyed a worse evil.” I lower our hands to rest against his sternum—that steady beat that’s become as known to me as my own pulse. “Killers who tore down a system that was feeding on fear and calling it justice. Killers who have a chance to be different than what we were.”

“That has to count for a lot.”

The words are his, but I hear them as a question rather than a statement. A lifetime of certainty shattered in a single night, and now he’s looking for a new foundation to stand on.

I can be that foundation. For him. With him.

“It counts.” I lower myself back to his shoulder, press my lips to the sigil on his neck. “Everything we did tonight counts. The Judge is gone. The spirits are free. The gallows are rubble. That’s more change than this city has seen in three centuries.”

“Change isn’t always good.”

“No.” I think of the chaos that will come with dawn. The power vacuum left by the platform’s destruction. The citizens who will wake to find their world transformed and won’t know whether to celebrate or mourn. “But it’s necessary. And we’ll be here to guide it.”

“We.”

“We.” I curl closer, fitting my body against his. “You and me. The Gallows Warden and the death witch. Whatever comes next, we face it as a pair.”

His arm tightens around me. His lips press against my hair—not a kiss, exactly, but a gesture of affection that seems more intimate than any kiss could be.

“I don’t deserve you.”