Page 8 of Orc’s Gallows

One rope whips out and coils around her ankle. She stumbles, nearly falls, and her weight shifts against me as the rope pulls taut. My blade is lost, but I still have a knife at my belt—I draw it, slash down, sever the attacking rope before it can drag her to the platform floor.

I don’t watch what the severed rope does. I shove her toward the Execution Hall doors and keep moving—threat neutralized, momentum maintained.

Wrong. This is all wrong.

Something beyond a death witch feeding on executions, beyond a revenant that shouldn’t have manifested. Something underneath all of it that my training has no name for. Whatever just happened on that platform was bigger than any of its parts.

“Move.” I shove her toward the Execution Hall doors. “Now.”

She doesn’t argue.

We plunge into darkness.

This is my domain. My world. I’ve lived in these chambers for two decades, surrounded by the names of everyone I’ve killed.

The death witch stumbles as I release her arm. She catches herself against the wall, leaving bloody fingerprints on centuries-old stone. Her torn gloves are gone, lost in the chaos above, and the sigils on her palms still shimmer faintly in the dim light.

“You need to chain me.” She sounds steadier than she has any right to. “Before I recover enough to be dangerous.”

I study her for a long moment.

She’s depleted—that much is obvious. Whatever power she used to destroy the revenant has left her gutted, trembling, barely able to stand. The violet light in her eyes has faded to a dull human brown, and the fever-heat of her skin has cooled to normal.

She’s no threat right now. But she’s right. She needs to be contained.

I retrieve the suppression manacles from their hook by the interrogation chamber door. Enchanted iron etched with death-dampening runes—the same kind of restraints that should have kept her from manifesting power in the first place. The same kind that held Mira Thornwood until a presence far stronger broke through.

She extends her wrists without being asked.

The manacles close with a click that echoes in the stone corridor. She flinches as the runes activate, and I watch her remaining power drain away. The shimmer in her palms dies. The trembling in her hands stills. She becomes simply a woman—pale, exhausted, marked with scars that tell stories I don’t need to know.

“The cells are through there.” I gesture toward the heavy iron door at the corridor’s end. “You’ll be held until the council can be convened.”

“The council will order my execution.” Not a question.

“Yes.”

She laughs. The sound is hollow, broken, utterly without humor. “Of course they will. The council loves executions. Good for civic morale.”

I don’t respond. There’s nothing to say that wouldn’t be a lie.

I escort her to the cells—stone boxes barely large enough to stand in, fitted with chains that anchor to the walls at multiple points. She enters without resistance, allows me to secure her wrists above her head, doesn’t flinch when the cold iron presses against her skin.

“You should rest.” I step back, examine my work with professional assessment. “Tomorrow will be difficult.”

“Tomorrow I’ll be dead.”

“Probably.”

A flicker crosses her features. Not fear—she’s past fear, I think, past the point where self-preservation matters. Relief, perhaps. Exhaustion. The look of someone who’s been running for a very long time and finally stopped.

“At least it will be quick.” Her lips curve in that grim, undeceived smile I noticed in the square.

I turn and walk away before I can think of a response.

The door to the Execution Hall slams behind me. I lean against it, breathing hard, trying to process everything that’s happened in the last hour.

A revenant that shouldn’t have manifested. A death witch hiding among the execution crowds. My guards dead, my gallows compromised, my understanding of how this city works shattered beyond recognition.