5. Brannok
FIVE
brANNOK
Dawn arrives like a blade across Blackhook City.
The execution square already fills when I step onto the balcony of the Execution Hall.
Citizens stream through the streets from every district, more people than I’ve ever seen for a single hanging.
Word of the death witch has spread. They want to watch her die, these good citizens who cheered her destruction of the revenant yesterday. Fear has made them hungry for blood.
Hypocrites. Every last one of them.
I dress in full ceremonial armor. Black leather and iron, polished until it gleams. The crimson sash of my office crosses my torso. My blade hangs at my hip—not the enchanted one I lost during the revenant attack, but a replacement from the armory. Standard issue. It will serve.
The mirror shows me the face of the Gallows Warden. Cold. Controlled. Ready to dispense justice.
The sigil on my neck radiates faintly beneath the armor’s collar.
I ignore it.
Captain Halvard meets me at the base of the stairs, his expression carefully neutral. He’s assembled the remaining guards—twelve men, all that survived yesterday’s chaos. They stand at attention, but tension knots their shoulders. Uncertainty clouds their eyes.
“The prisoner is ready, sir.” Halvard betrays nothing. “The platform has been inspected. The crowd control positions are manned.”
“Good.”
“Sir.” He hesitates. A fracture in the professional facade. “The men are asking—”
“The execution proceeds as scheduled.” I cut him off before he can voice the doubt I’ve been wrestling with all night. “Fall in.”
He salutes. The guards form up behind me. We march toward the gallows in perfect formation, boots striking cobblestones in unison, the rhythm designed to intimidate.
It used to make me proud, that sound. The discipline. The control. The fear it instilled in watching citizens.
Now it sounds like a countdown.
The execution square spreads before me, packed with bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder.
Vendors work the edges of the crowd, selling meat pies and ale and commemorative sketches of the death witch.
Someone has already written a ballad about yesterday’s events—I catch snatches of it from somewhere near the fountain, a tinny voice singing about the monster that rose from the gallows.
They’ve turned terror into entertainment. Turned survival into spectacle.
This is what you built. This is what you shaped yourself to be.
The ropes hang ready, witch-hair braids gleaming in the morning light. The trapdoor sits closed, waiting for my hand on the lever.
I climb the execution stairs.
Each step feels heavier than the last. The brand throbs with every footfall, heat spreading through my arms, my hands. She’s close. Her presence presses against my awareness, a constant pressure that won’t be ignored.
Focus. Do your duty. Pull the lever and be done with it.
The guards bring her up behind me.
She’s wearing the same torn clothes from yesterday, ash-blonde hair tangled around a face pale with exhaustion.
The suppression manacles still bind her wrists, runes flickering faintly as they drain what little power she’s managed to regenerate.
She moves slowly, carefully, like someone who knows exactly how fragile they are.
Her gaze finds mine as she reaches the top of the stairs.
Those eyes. Dark brown shot through with amethyst light that shouldn’t exist. Not afraid. Not pleading. Waiting. Measuring. Calculating what kind of monster I’ve chosen to be.
I look away before I can see the answer to a question I haven’t asked.
“Ismerie Ashfall.” My words carry across the suddenly quiet square. “You stand accused of practicing ending magic within the walls of Blackhook City. Of feeding on executions performed by lawful authority. Of concealing your nature from officers of the crown.”
The crowd shifts, murmurs rippling through them. They know these charges. They came to see justice done.
“The penalty for these crimes is death by hanging.” I turn to face her fully, letting the crowd see the Gallows Warden dispensing judgment. “Do you have anything to say before sentence is carried out?”
She smiles.
That sharp, desperate smile I’ve seen twice now.
“One thing.” She stands straighter, her words rolling across the square with surprising strength for someone so depleted. “When it rises—and it will rise—remember that you had a choice today. And you’ll have to live with which one you made.”
The crowd jeers. Someone throws a piece of rotting fruit that splatters against the railing. The guards position her on the trapdoor, adjusting her stance, preparing her for the drop.
I approach with the noose.
The rope feels wrong in my hands. Heavy. Alive. The witch-hair braids seem to thrum with anticipation, eager for the death they were designed to facilitate. I’ve handled these ropes thousands of times. They’ve never felt like this.
The gallows want this death.
The realization hits with the force of a blow. She wasn’t lying. She wasn’t exaggerating to save her life. The execution structure itself is hungry, saturated with centuries of accumulated ending magic, waiting to devour the most powerful meal it’s ever been offered.
A death witch. A woman whose entire existence is tied to ending.
If I kill her here, on this platform, surrounded by all this concentrated power…
I place the noose around her neck.
She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away. Watches me with those purple-shot eyes, waiting for whatever comes next.
“Any last words?” The question is tradition. Protocol. Expected.
“You know what happens if you do this.” Her words drop to a whisper, meant only for me. “You felt what’s beneath us. You know I’m right.”
I know.
The sigil on my neck blazes with sudden heat, and for a moment I sense everything.
The accumulated dark power pooling beneath the execution platform.
The presence stirring in that darkness, time-worn and hungry, reaching toward the surface.
The way the gallows themselves strain toward her, eager for the power her death will release.
If I pull this lever, I feed the monster.
If I don’t pull this lever, I lose everything I’ve built.
The crowd chants for blood. Thousands of voices raised in a single demand, the sound washing over the platform in waves. They want death. They need it. The fear that’s kept this city in line for generations demands satisfaction.
The council watches from their balcony—seven figures in expensive robes, their faces expectant. They signed the death warrant. They ordered this execution. They’ll accept nothing less than compliance.
My hand reaches for the lever.
The claiming sigil sears my neck like a brand.
She’s yours. Your mate. Your responsibility. Your—
I stop.
My fingers hover over the lever, trembling with effort I refuse to show. Twenty years of discipline and certainty. The weapon this city needed me to be.
And one woman. One death witch with eyes like captured lightning and a sharp tongue and the absolute conviction that killing her will doom us all.
What kind of monster do you want to be?
The question she asked without words. The question I’ve been avoiding since the sigil first blazed to life on my neck.
I know the answer.
I’ve always known.
I stride toward her.
The guards tense, hands moving toward weapons. The crowd’s chanting falters, confusion replacing bloodlust as the Gallows Warden abandons his position at the lever. The council members lean forward on their balcony, faces shifting from expectation to alarm.
I rip the noose from her neck.
The rope tears free with more force than necessary, leaving a red welt across her pale skin. She gasps—surprise, not pain—and stumbles backward into the guards who were holding her.
“Sir?” One of them reaches for his blade. “What are you—”
“Stand down.” The command comes out in the voice I use for riots. The voice that brooks no argument. “Release her. Now.”
“The council has ordered—”
“The council can go fuck themselves.”
The words land like a thunderclap. The crowd falls utterly silent. The guards release her arms and step back, faces pale with shock.
I take her hand.
The sigil blazes the moment our skin touches—recognition, completion, certainty that scorches through every doubt I’ve ever harbored. Her fingers tighten around mine, and her racing pulse beats against my grip.
“What are you doing?” Her whisper is ragged. “They’ll kill you. They’ll kill us both.”
“Probably.” I pull her toward me, positioning her behind my body, shielding her from the crowd. “But I’m not pulling that lever.”
The council has risen from their seats. Varn’s face is purple with rage, his aged hands gripping the balcony railing. Councilor Thessa stands frozen beside him, her expression cycling through confusion, fury, and calculation.
“Gallows Warden!” Varn’s words cut across the square. “You will complete this execution immediately or face charges of treason!”
“The execution is cancelled.” I don’t shout—I don’t need to. The crowd’s silence carries my words to every ear. “This woman is under my protection.”
“Your protection?” Thessa’s laugh is sharp and mocking. “You’re an executioner, not a sanctuary. You have no authority to—”
“I have the authority of blood.”
The words are out before I’ve fully decided to speak them. Old words. Binding words. Words I’ve heard only twice in my life, both times at orc mating ceremonies in distant cities.
Words I never expected to use.
I turn to face Ismerie. Her eyes are wide, lavender light flickering with confusion and fear and something else—hope, maybe, or the beginning of understanding.
“This is the only way.” I keep my words low, meant only for her. “The claiming supersedes human law. If I mark you as mine, the council can’t touch you without starting a war with every orc in the Veillands.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m always serious.”
“You’re insane.” But she doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t run. Stands there with her pulse hammering beneath my grip and her gaze locked on mine and her breath coming fast. “You barely know me.”