6. Ismerie #3
The words hit harder than they should. I’ve thought the same things, in the dark hours when the brand sears and I wonder what I’ve agreed to.
“You don’t know him.” I force steel into my words. “You don’t know what he’s given up.”
“I know what he’s taken.” The Judge rises from its bench, its composite form towering over me. “I know every life he’s ended on that platform. Every innocent who died screaming while he pulled the lever without hesitation. Every wrongful death that fed my becoming.”
It gestures, and the courtroom shifts around me. I’m standing on the scaffold, watching Brannok perform an execution. The condemned is a woman—young, terrified, proclaiming her innocence with every breath. The crowd jeers. The drums beat their countdown.
The lever pulls. The floor drops. The rope catches.
And ending magic floods through me, sweet and terrible, sustaining me with another death I did nothing to prevent.
“You’re the same.” The Judge’s words are soft now, almost gentle. “Both of you. Monsters who feed on death to survive. The only difference is scale.”
“I never killed anyone.”
“You let them die. Watched them die. Fed on their dying.” The shifting faces cycle through expressions of sad understanding. “The executioner pulls the lever. The witch drinks the magic. The innocent still ends up dead.”
I want to argue. Want to find words that will refute the accusation. But the truth of it settles into my bones like poison.
He’s right. The Judge is right. I’ve been complicit in every execution I witnessed. Every death I fed upon.
“The mating bond can be broken.” The Judge circles me, its rope-woven robes whispering against the skull-paved floor. “I can show you how. Free you from the executioner’s claim, from the ownership he seared into your flesh. You could be free. Truly free. Beholden to no one.”
“And then?”
“Then we become partners.” The shifting faces settle into an expression of benevolent purpose. “You and I, sister. Death witches both, born from wrongful endings, sustained by the magic of execution. We could change this city. End the system that created us both. True justice, finally dispensed.”
The offer is seductive. It tugs at parts of me I’ve tried to ignore—the guilt, the self-loathing, the desperate need to matter.
All I have to do is break the bond. Let the claiming dissolve. Let the Judge have what it wants.
“No.”
The word surprises me as much as the Judge. I didn’t plan to say it. Didn’t plan to refuse.
But the brand on my collarbone throbs warm, and I remember the feel of Brannok’s hand on my shoulder. The certainty in his words when he said he wouldn’t let me go.
He chose me. Destroyed everything for me. Whatever else he is, he’s mine now.
“No?” The Judge’s voice sharpens. “You refuse my offer?”
“I refuse your manipulation.” I straighten my spine, meet the shifting faces without flinching. “You’re not offering freedom. You’re offering another kind of ownership—a different master, a different chain. The claiming bond binds me to Brannok. Your ‘partnership’ would bind me to you.”
“The bond is slavery—”
“The bond is a choice.” The words come faster now, surer. “He didn’t ask permission because there wasn’t time. Because I was dying, and he couldn’t let that happen. Because whatever instinct drove him, it was about saving me, not owning me.”
“You believe that?”
“I believe he could have let me die.” I step toward the Judge, feeling the skull-paved floor shift beneath my feet.
“He could have pulled the lever, completed the execution, fed you exactly what you wanted. Instead, he attacked his own platform. Destroyed his career. Made himself a target for every authority in Blackhook.”
The Judge’s faces cycle faster now, agitation rippling through its composite form.
“He did those things because the bond demanded it. Not because he cares about you.”
“Maybe.” I stop inches from the towering figure, feeling its presence press against my senses.
“But the sigil chose me. Out of everyone in this city, out of all the possibilities in the Veillands, it chose me for him. I don’t understand why.
I don’t know what it means. But I’m not throwing that away for a monster wearing the faces of the dead. ”
Silence.
Then the Judge laughs—a sound of genuine amusement that echoes through the bone-walled courtroom.
“Oh, sister.” The shifting faces settle into an expression of dark delight. “I was right about you. You are exactly what I’ve been waiting for.”
The courtroom begins to dissolve around me. The skulls beneath my feet crack and crumble. The rib-cage walls collapse inward.
“We’ll speak again.” The Judge’s voice follows me as the dream fades. “Soon. And next time, I’ll have better arguments.”
I wake to darkness and the sound of a blade being drawn.
Brannok stands over my bed, his sword gleaming in the faint light from the window. His gaze is fixed on the corner of the room, on a shadow that seems darker than it should be.
A shadow with eyes that glow cold white.
And a mouth that whispers, in a voice of harmonized wrongful death:
“Soon.”
The shadow dissolves.
Brannok’s blade lowers.
The brand blazes on my collarbone, and I realize that the war for my soul has already begun.