11. Brannok #2
“Execution.” I stand behind Ismerie’s chair, my hands resting on her shoulders. She leans back into my touch, and some of the tension drains from her body. “You’re saying we have to hang it.”
“I’m saying you have to end it.” Era continues.
“The platform is its anchor. The ropes are its arteries. The death wards that were meant to contain it have become the channels through which it feeds. If you want to destroy the Judge, you have to use its own power against it—execute the executioner, hang the hangman.”
“How?” Ismerie’s hand finds mine, her fingers tracing patterns on my palm. “The Judge is too powerful. We’ve fought it twice and barely survived. Getting close enough to bind it, to actually put a noose around its neck—”
“Would require a sacrifice.” Era’s blind gaze shifts toward me. “Someone the Judge wants badly enough to drop its guard. Someone whose death would taste sweeter than centuries of accumulated wrongful endings.”
The implications confirm what I’ve known since the graveyard.
“Me.” I say the word without inflection. “The Judge wants me. I’ve fed it more than anyone. If I offered myself willingly, it would be too tempted to resist.”
“Brannok.” Ismerie twists in her chair, her eyes wide with denial. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Think about it.” I move around her chair, kneel before her so we’re eye to eye. “The Judge has been hunting me since this started. It blames me for its existence—and it’s right. If I walk into that square and offer myself for judgment, it won’t be able to resist the chance to make me suffer.”
“And then what?” Her words break. “It kills you? It hangs you on your own platform while I watch?”
“No.” I cup her face in my hands, trace the line of her cheekbone with my thumb.
“Because while it’s focused on me, while it’s savoring its triumph, you get to the anchor.
The foundation stone Era mentioned—the original death ward that binds the Judge to the gallows.
You corrupt it. Turn its power against it. And when the entity is vulnerable—”
“We hang it with its own ropes.” Era finishes. “The Gallows Warden becomes the final execution. Poetic, in a terrible way.”
Ismerie shakes her head, tears gathering in her eyes. “There has to be another way. Some method that doesn’t require you to—”
I kiss her.
Not to silence her—though it does. I kiss her because I need to sense her lips against mine, need to memorize the taste of her, need to store up enough warmth to carry me through what comes next.
When I pull back, I lower my head until our foreheads touch.
“The Judge blames me for what I’ve done. It’s right to. That’s what makes me the only bait it won’t be able to ignore.”
“That’s not—” She chokes on the words. “You can’t decide to die. Not now. Not when we finally—”
“I’m not deciding to die.” I pull her close, wrap my arms around her, let her bury her face against my shoulder.
“I’m deciding to fight. To give us the best chance of winning.
And if that means walking into the square and letting the Judge think it’s won…
” I press my lips to her hair. “Then that’s what I do. ”
“I can’t lose you.” The words are muffled against my shirt. “I found you. I can’t—”
“You won’t.” I tilt her face up, make her look at me.
“Because you’re going to be the one who saves me.
When the Judge is distracted, when its guard is down, you’re going to tear its anchor from the earth and turn its own power against it.
You’re going to destroy the monster that’s haunted this city for centuries. And then you’re going to come get me.”
She stares at me for a long moment. I watch her process the plan—the risks, the variables, the thousand ways it could go wrong.
Then she kisses me.
Fierce. Desperate. Full of all the things we haven’t had time to say.
“If you die,” she breathes against my lips, “I will find a way to bring you back so I can kill you myself.”
Despite everything, I smile. “That’s my death witch.”
Night falls over Blackhook City.
The riots have died down—not from resolution, but from exhaustion. The streets are quiet in the way of held breath, waiting for dawn, waiting to see what happens when the platform stands empty for the first time in generations.
I stand at the window of my chambers, watching the Grand Gallows rise against the moonlit sky.
The ropes sway without wind. The platform seems to throb with malevolent awareness.
The Judge is there, waiting in the foundations, growing stronger on its accumulated power even without fresh executions to feed on.
Arms wrap around me from behind. Ismerie presses herself against my back, her cheek between my shoulder blades, her hands flat against my ribs.
“Come to bed.” Her words are soft. “We have hours before dawn. We should rest.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Neither am I.” She moves around to face me, slides her hands up my torso to loop behind my neck. “But I want to be with you. I want to sense you against me. I want—” Her words catch. “I want to make memories. In case…”
She doesn’t finish the sentence. Doesn’t need to.
I lift her in my arms, carry her to the bed, lay her down with a gentleness that feels foreign in hands built for violence. She pulls me down with her, and for a while, we don’t think about the Judge or the council or the chaos consuming the city.
We hold each other.
Later—much later—she lies curled against my side, her head on my chest, her fingers tracing patterns on my skin. The claiming sigil warms between us, a constant reminder of the choice I made on that platform.
“Tell me about it.” Drowsy, content. “The moment you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That you loved me.” She tilts her head up to look at me. “The exact moment.”
I consider the question. Try to pinpoint when attraction became need, when need became devotion, when devotion crystallized into love.