10. Ismerie #2
He turns his head, presses a kiss to my palm. The gesture is tender, vulnerable—nothing like the fierce claiming of last night. This is a man seeking comfort in the only place he knows to find it.
“Show me the rest.” His words come out rough. “All of it. I need to see.”
We walk deeper into the Quarter, hand in hand.
I show him the orphanage where children of the executed are raised—a crumbling building staffed by women who were once wives of hanged men, now caring for the next generation of execution victims. The children watch us pass with empty eyes, their faces bearing the resigned expressions of those who expect nothing good from authority.
Brannok’s grip on my hand intensifies until I sense bones shift, but I don’t complain. He needs this anchor.
Through it all, Brannok says nothing. He absorbs each image, each accusation, each piece of evidence that the system he’s maintained has rotted this district from the inside out. But he never lets go of my hand. Never pulls away, even when the evidence of his crimes becomes overwhelming.
When we finally emerge from the Quarter’s narrow streets, I pull him into an alcove between buildings. He looks at me with eyes that have gone raw with grief, with guilt, with the crushing weight of understanding.
I don’t speak. Just wrap my arms around him and hold on.
He resists for a moment—the instinct of a man who has never allowed himself comfort.
Then his arms come around me, crushing me against his chest, his face buried in my hair.
Tremors run through him. Not tears—I don’t think Brannok Redrope knows how to cry anymore—but the dry shuddering of a soul confronting its sins.
“I have you.” I whisper the words against his neck. “Whatever you’ve done, whatever you’ve been—I have you.”
His arms band around me.
We stay like that for a long moment, hidden in the shadows of the Gallows Quarter, two people who have survived by feeding on a broken system, holding each other while the world they’ve helped build crumbles around them.
The graveyard stretches behind the Gallows Quarter like a field of broken teeth.
Stone markers bear execution dates rather than birth dates—identity defined by ending rather than beginning.
The graves of the hanged are marked with rope symbols, crude carvings that identify them as execution victims rather than natural deaths.
Some of the markers have crumbled with age.
Others are freshly carved, the stone still pale and unworn.
I lead Brannok through the rows, watching his face as he reads the names. Some he recognizes. Most he doesn’t—anonymous dead, executed without witnesses, buried without ceremony.
“The council keeps records.” I stop at a grave marked only with a date and a rope symbol.
“Names, charges, sentences. But they don’t keep track of innocence.
They don’t note when the evidence was fabricated, when the trial was a mockery, when the execution served political convenience rather than justice. ”
“How do you know which ones were innocent?”
“I don’t. Not all of them.” I kneel beside the unmarked grave, trace the rope symbol with my finger.
“But the ending magic knows. Wrongful executions generate more power than just ones—the universe apparently notices when the innocent die.” I look up at him.
“I’ve sensed the difference, Brannok. Every time you hanged someone who didn’t deserve it, I sensed the surge.
The wrongness. The way the platform drank their death with special hunger. ”
His face has gone pale beneath the dark green of his skin. “How many?”
“I don’t know exact numbers. But more than you want to believe. More than the council would ever admit.”
He turns away, walks deeper into the graveyard. I follow, and when I catch up to him, I slide my hand into his. He doesn’t look at me, but his fingers close around mine—holding on like I’m the only thing keeping him upright.
He stops at a section where the graves are packed close, markers barely a hand’s width apart. Mass burial. The potter’s field, where executed prisoners without family are interred in trenches and covered with lime.
“I told myself it was necessary.” His words are barely audible. “That the fear kept worse things at bay. That without the gallows, the city would tear itself apart.”
“Maybe it would have.” I move closer, lean into his side. His arm comes around me automatically, pulling me against him. “Or maybe that’s what you needed to believe. What the council needed you to believe, so you’d keep pulling the lever without asking questions.”
“I asked questions.” He turns to face me, and I see the anguish he’s been hiding beneath that stoic mask. “In the beginning. When I first took the position. I questioned sentences, challenged evidence, demanded reviews.”
“What happened?”
“The council reminded me of my place.” A muscle in his jaw flexes. “Made it clear that the Gallows Warden executes. He doesn’t judge. He doesn’t question. He does his job and trusts that those above him have made the right decisions.”
“And you believed them.”
“I wanted to believe them.” The admission seems to cost him. “It was easier. Cleaner. Pull the lever, go home, don’t think about whether the person deserved to die. Trust the system.”
“You’re not the villain, Brannok—but you’re not innocent either. You’re complicit. We both are.”
“You?”
“I fed on their deaths.” The confession sears in my chest. “Every execution I attended, every hanging I watched—I drank the magic they released. I needed it to survive, yes, but I also… I also sensed the power. The rush. The way my scars brightened when someone died on that platform.” I meet his gaze without flinching.
“I told myself I was merely surviving. Doing what I had to do. But I was part of the system too. A different part, but part of it nonetheless.”
His forehead drops to mine. We breathe the same air, surrounded by the dead we’ve both helped create, and for the first time I think we truly understand each other.
“What would you have me do?” His tone is rough when he finally speaks. “Stop the executions and the city descends into chaos. Continue them and the Judge grows stronger. There is no good choice.”
“There’s a third option.” I press a kiss to his jaw—tender, reassuring. “You stop being the Gallows Warden. Stop pretending that terror equals order. And we find a way to destroy the Judge without feeding it more death.”
“The council will never allow—”
“The council is using you.” I pull back enough to look him in the eyes.
“They’ve been using you for decades. You’re their weapon, their scapegoat, their convenient monster.
When things go wrong, they blame you. When the public needs someone to fear, they point to you.
You’ve given them everything, and what have they given you in return? ”
He doesn’t answer. The truth is written in his silence.
“Be different.” I cup his face, my thumb brushing his cheekbone. “Choose differently. Or admit that you enjoy the killing too much to stop.”
“I don’t enjoy—” He stops. Swallows. “I used to take pride in my efficiency. In doing the job well. But enjoyment…” He shakes his head. “No. I never enjoyed it.”
“Then why did you keep doing it?”
“Because someone had to.” The words come out like a confession.
“Because if I didn’t, someone worse would.
Someone who did enjoy it. Someone who wouldn’t ensure the drops were clean, who wouldn’t check the knots, who wouldn’t—” He breaks off, runs a hand over his face.
“I told myself I was the lesser evil. That my competence was a mercy.”
“Was it?”
“I don’t know anymore.” He looks at the graves surrounding us, the evidence of his life’s work laid out in stone and silence. “I thought I knew. Thought I understood what I was building, what I was maintaining. But seeing it through your eyes…”
“What do you see?”
“Fear.” The word comes out heavy. “Not order. Not justice. Nothing but fear, wearing the mask of civilization.” He meets my gaze, and I see the decision crystallize. “You’re right. It deserves to collapse.”
He understands. Finally, he understands.
The relief that floods through me is staggering. I pull him down into a kiss—fierce and grateful and full of everything I can’t put into words. He responds instantly, his arms crushing me against him, his mouth claiming mine with a desperation that says he needs this as much as I do.
When we break apart, we’re both breathing hard.
“I love you.” The words slip out before I can stop them. Before I can think about what they mean, what they cost, what they change.
He goes still. His eyes search my face, looking for doubt, for deception, for the catch that surely must exist.
“Ismerie—”
“You don’t have to say it back.” I press my fingers to his lips. “I needed you to know. Whatever happens next, whatever we have to face—I love you. Not the Gallows Warden. Not the orc who claimed me. You. The man who’s standing in a graveyard full of his mistakes and choosing to be better.”
He pulls my hand away from his mouth. Kisses my palm. Then my wrist. Then the inside of my elbow.
“I stood in a graveyard today.” His tone is rough, the words coming slowly.
“With the evidence of two decades laid out in stone around me. Watched you show it to me without sparing a single thing. And you didn’t pull away.
” He cups my face in his scarred hands. “Every person I’ve ever known has either feared me or needed something from me.
You know the worst of what I’ve done, and you’re still standing here telling me you love me.
” His thumbs brush my cheekbones. “I don’t know what to call what I feel. But it’s real. And it’s yours.”
It’s not poetry. It’s not a declaration. It’s the most honest thing anyone has ever said to me.
I kiss him again—softer this time, a seal on a promise neither of us has fully spoken.