15. Brannok #2
The first time we fell into bed was desperate. Fury and relief and the primal need to prove we were still alive after nearly dying on the Judge’s platform. We tore at each other, fought for dominance, left bruises and bite marks that took days to fade.
This is different.
I lower her to the bed with care I didn’t know I possessed. My hands are gentle as they trace the curves of her body—not because the violence is gone, but because I’m choosing tenderness. Choosing to touch her like she’s precious instead of consuming her like I’m starving.
She arches into my touch, a soft sound escaping her lips. Her fingers dig into my shoulders, pulling me closer, but there’s no desperation in the grip. Only need. Only want. Only the certainty of two people who have stopped fighting what they sense.
I learn her slowly.
The spot below her ear that makes her breath catch. The curve of her hip that fits perfectly in my palm. The way her back arches when I trail my lips down her neck, following the path of the claiming sigil that brands her as mine.
She learns me in return.
Her mouth finds the rope burns on my neck—the fresh ones from the Judge’s noose layered over decades-old scars.
She presses her lips to each mark, each reminder of death I’ve dealt and death I’ve survived.
The sensation is electricity through my veins, pleasure and pain blurring until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
When I sink into her, we’re looking at each other.
Amber locked on dark brown. The executioner and the death witch, joined in the most fundamental way two people can be. The sigils blaze on our skin—mine on my neck, hers on her collarbone—throbbing with awareness that matches the rhythm of our movements.
She whispers my name like a prayer. I answer with hers like a vow.
We move in unison—not fighting, not claiming, but building. Creating a new rhythm from the wreckage of who we were. Each thrust is a promise. Each gasp is an answer. Each moment stretches into eternity and ends too soon.
When she shatters, my name is on her lips.
When I follow, hers is on mine.
And in the darkness of the Execution Hall, surrounded by the names of the dead, the executioner and the death witch find a feeling dangerously close to hope.
ISMERIE
Afterward, we lie tangled in each other.
His arm is draped across my waist, heavy and possessive even in the drowsy aftermath of pleasure.
My head rests against his shoulder, my fingers tracing idle patterns across the scars that map his torso.
The narrow bed wasn’t built for two people, but we’ve made it work—bodies pressed close, legs intertwined, no space between us that doesn’t serve a purpose.
The sigil on my collarbone hums in answer to his. Not the desperate blaze of battle or the fierce sear of claiming. This is quieter. Deeper. The steady warmth of embers that have found their hearth.
The city outside is silent.
No bells. No crowds. No scheduled deaths waiting to happen. For the first time in my memory—for the first time in generations—Blackhook City has nothing to fear from the dawn.
The silence should be peaceful. Instead, it feels like the moment before a fall.
“What happens now?”
The question escapes before I can stop it—a murmur against his skin, barely louder than the beating of his heart beneath my ear.
I’ve been carrying it since the Judge dissolved into ash, since the spirits scattered into the sky, since we walked through silent streets to this dark chamber beneath the rubble.
Brannok’s arm tightens around me. “I don’t know.”
His honesty surprises me. The Gallows Warden I met a week ago—gods, has it only been a week?—would never have admitted uncertainty. He dealt in absolutes. Guilty or innocent. Life or death. Order or chaos.
This man is different. This man holds me like I’m the only certain thing left in a world that’s come undone.
“The council will want my head.” His words are a low rumble against my hair. “I defied direct orders. Freed prisoners they’d condemned to death. Destroyed the platform they’ve used to maintain control for centuries.”
“The council can go hang themselves.”
The words come out sharper than I intended, but I don’t take them back.
The councilors signed death warrants from their comfortable towers, watched executions from their private balconies, traded human lives for political convenience.
They built the system that created the Judge, and they did it knowingly.
“They might try.” A ghost of humor in his tone—dry and dark, the kind that comes from facing impossible odds. “Though Varn and Thessa are already gone. Halvard told me. They fled before dawn, took what they could carry.”
He’s right that the danger isn’t over. The Grand Gallows are gone.
The system of terror that kept Blackhook in line for three centuries has collapsed along with the platform.
There will be chaos—riots, looting, the kind of violence that erupts when fear loses its grip.
Whoever remains of the council will scramble to restore order, and they’ll fail, because the tool they relied on has been reduced to rubble.
“Good.”
I lift my head, meet his eyes in the darkness. Amber finding brown, his gaze steady on mine.
“Good that everything I built is rubble?” One eyebrow rises—the closest thing to surprise I’ve seen on his face.
“Good that you have a chance to build differently.” I trace the line of his collarbone, following the edge of muscle and bone until my fingers find the sigil on his neck.
The brand I wear on my skin, seared into his in return.
“The system was broken, Brannok. You know that. You’ve known it for years, even if you couldn’t admit it. ”
“Knowing and doing are different things.”
“Then do.” I push myself up on one elbow, ignoring the protest of muscles that haven’t yet recovered from channeling ending magic. “The platform is gone. The Judge is dead. For the first time in your life, you have a choice that isn’t between bad and worse.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. His hand finds mine on his collarbone, fingers intertwining, rough palm against rough palm.
“And you?” His words are careful—the tone of a man afraid to ask a question but needing to hear the answer. “What choice do you make?”
The answer comes easier than I expected.