7. Brannok
SEVEN
brANNOK
That night I don’t sleep. By morning, the riots have spread to three more districts, and I have work to do.
The riot organizer’s jaw breaks under my fist.
He crumples against the alley wall, blood streaming from his mouth, hands raised in a surrender that comes three days too late.
I’ve been hunting him since the second night of violence—a dockworker named Crenshaw who thought defying the Gallows Warden made him a hero.
His followers torched three buildings in the merchant quarter.
His speeches turned angry citizens into a mob that nearly breached the Execution Hall gates.
Now he’s on his knees in a side street, learning why this city learned to fear me.
“The council didn’t send you.” He spits blood and teeth onto the cobblestones. “You’re acting alone. Protecting your witch.”
“I’m maintaining order.” I grab his collar and haul him upright, slamming him against the stone hard enough to crack mortar. “The same thing I’ve done for two decades. The same thing I’ll keep doing until this city remembers why riots are a bad idea.”
“You betrayed everything—”
I hit him again. Not hard enough to kill, but hard enough to ensure he won’t be giving any more speeches for a while. His head snaps back, and consciousness leaves his eyes.
I let him drop.
Halvard emerges from the shadows at the alley’s mouth, two guards flanking him. They’ve been watching the interrogation without comment—standard procedure for these operations. The captain’s face is carefully neutral, but I catch the flicker of unease he can’t quite hide.
“Take him to the holding cells.” I step over Crenshaw’s unconscious form. “Make sure the others see him brought in. I want the message clear.”
“Sir.” Halvard hesitates. “The council has requested—”
“I know what the council requested.” I wipe blood from my knuckles. “They can wait. I have three more organizers to visit tonight.”
The guard detail moves to collect the body. I stride past them into the darkened streets, my pulse still elevated from the violence, my mind already cataloging the next target.
The third night of riots has been the worst.
I stand on the Execution Hall’s roof, watching fires burn in three districts.
The Bell Towers have gone silent—not from damage, but from the bell-keepers fleeing their posts.
Without the enchanted tolls to mark time and suppress magical activity, the city’s rhythm has fractured.
Citizens who’ve never missed an execution now hide in their homes.
Merchants who built their fortunes on scaffold-adjacent real estate are fleeing to Saltgrave and other port towns.
She’s in the Warden’s quarters below, resting after our excursion to the Gallows Quarter. Not any woman. Your mate. Safe. Protected. Alive.
That should be enough. It isn’t.
The door to the roof access opens. I know who it is without turning.
“You should be resting.” I don’t turn around. Can’t. If I look at her, I’ll want to touch her, and if I touch her, I won’t want to stop.
“I slept.” Her words carry exhaustion that contradicts the claim. “For a few hours, at least. The dreams make it difficult.”
The dreams. I know about those—woke her from one hours ago, found her gasping in darkness while a shadow with white eyes dissolved into the corner of the room. She hasn’t told me what the Judge showed her. I haven’t asked. Some battles have to be fought alone.
“The city is burning.” She moves to stand beside me at the parapet, close enough that I sense the warmth radiating from her body. “Your doing?”
“Some of it.” I keep my gaze on the distant flames. “The rest is opportunists taking advantage of the chaos. Looters. Old grudges being settled under cover of riot.”
“And the organizers?”
“Being dealt with.”
A long pause. Her attention weighs on the side of my face, her assessment pressing against my awareness.
“Dealt with how?”
The question carries an edge I don’t want to examine. I know what she’s actually asking. Know that she’s watching me with those purple-flecked eyes, cataloging my methods, measuring me against some standard I can’t see.
“The way I’ve always dealt with threats to order.” I finally turn to face her. “Fear. Pain. Public examples that remind citizens why defiance is a bad idea.”
Her expression doesn’t change, but I see the flicker in her gaze. Disappointment, maybe. Or confirmation of what she already suspected.
“And now?” She steps closer, close enough that I smell the herbs she used to wash her hair, the faint trace of ending magic that clings to her skin.
“Now that you’ve claimed me, defied the council, torn your identity apart—you’re still the same man?
Still the monster who maintains order through fear? ”
I want to say yes. Want to hold onto that certainty, that identity, the foundation I’ve built my existence upon.
But the claiming sigil warms between us, and I remember the feel of her in my arms. The way she looked at me on the platform, waiting for death with defiance in her eyes. The choice I made without hesitation.
“I know exactly what I’ve been.” The admission tears out of me, raw and deliberate. “But when I do it now—when I use those techniques—I see you watching. I sense you judging. And the satisfaction I used to feel…”
I trail off. Can’t find words for what’s changed.
“It’s gone?” Her words are soft. Almost gentle.
“It’s complicated.” I turn back to the burning city. “The satisfaction isn’t gone. The skills aren’t gone. I can still do what needs to be done. But there’s a voice now, somewhere in the back of my head, that sounds like you. That asks if this is truly necessary. If there’s another way.”
She doesn’t respond immediately. We stand in silence, watching fires burn across the districts, listening to distant shouts and the occasional crash of looting.
“There might not be another way.” Her words are quiet. “Not now. Not with the city already in flames.”
“I know.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to enjoy it.”
“I don’t.” The truth surprises me even as I speak it. “That’s what’s different. I used to take pride in my efficiency. In my ability to suppress rebellion with minimum casualties, maximum fear. Now I…”
“Tired?”
“Hollow.” The word fits better than I expected. “Like I’m going through motions that used to have meaning, and now they’re… habits. Reflexes. A ghost of the Gallows Warden, moving through routines that stopped meaning anything.”
Her hand finds mine in the darkness.
The touch is light, tentative—not the desperate grip of the claiming or the frantic contact of our flight from the platform. Her fingers against my palm, warm and constant.
The claiming sigil surges with heat, and tension in my chest releases.
“The man you were saved my life.” Her words are barely audible. “Whatever else he did, whoever else he was—he looked at a woman about to die and couldn’t let it happen.”
“The claiming sigil demanded it.”
“The sigil demanded you protect me. It didn’t demand you burn your entire life to the ground.
” Her fingers tighten around mine. “You could have claimed me and then handed me back to the council. Let them execute me in some other city, some other way. The brand would have been satisfied by the claiming itself.”
I hadn’t considered that. Hadn’t thought about alternatives, about compromises that might have preserved my position while still answering the claiming sigil’s demands.
“Why didn’t you?”
The question hangs between us.
“Because it wasn’t enough.” The answer comes from somewhere deep, somewhere I’ve been avoiding. “The claiming, the brand, the magic—none of it mattered if you were still going to die. I didn’t want to own you. I wanted you to live.”
Her breath catches. I sense it through our joined hands, through the claiming bond that ties us.
“Brannok…”
“Don’t.” I pull my hand free, put distance between us. “Don’t make this more than it is. I’m still the man who beat three people unconscious tonight. Still the monster who taught this city to fear the gallows. One moment of… whatever that was… doesn’t change who I’ve been.”
“Doesn’t it?”
I don’t answer. Can’t. The fires are spreading in the merchant quarter, and somewhere in the distance, I hear the crash of a building collapsing.
“Get some rest.” I move toward the roof access door. “Tomorrow will be worse.”
Tomorrow is worse.
The council’s messenger arrives at dawn, carrying a scroll sealed with the official sigil and an expression that suggests he’d rather be anywhere else. I read the summons while Halvard watches from the doorway, his weathered face carefully neutral.
“They’re demanding a meeting.” I toss the scroll onto my desk, onto the pile of execution orders that have been growing for days. “Formal session. Full council attendance. They want to discuss ‘the restoration of order.’”
“Will you go?”
“Do I have a choice?” I strip off the bloodied leathers from last night’s work, reaching for clean armor.
“If I refuse, they’ll use it as justification for declaring me rogue.
They’ll hire mercenaries, bring in outside enforcers.
The riots will look like a festival compared to what happens when professional killers start hunting through the streets. ”
“And if you attend?”
“Then I find out what they want.” I fasten the buckles. “What they’re willing to trade for a return to normalcy.”
What they’re willing to trade. I already know the answer—the certainty settles into my gut with cold weight. The council doesn’t negotiate. They demand. And the only thing they could possibly demand that would restore their faith in the Gallows Warden…
Her. They want her dead. They’ll make it a condition of any agreement.
I dismiss the thought. Cross to the weapons rack and select the blade that has served me for fifteen years. The one I used to carve through the scaffold’s wards. The one I’ll use to carve through anything that threatens what’s mine.