The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis

The palace looked different in winter light—harder, like someone had scraped all the softness off the wood with a knife and left the grain showing. Eaves threw longer shadows. Wind slid along the tiled roofs and hissed down the colonnades like it had secrets to tell if I'd only stop long enough to listen.

I didn't stop.

I ignored the stares. The whispers had been waiting for me since the first guard at the southern gate realized I wasn't a rumor. Servants dipped too-low bows they thought would save them from curses I had no interest in wasting. A pair of record-keepers froze with brushes mid-air and suddenly found the floor fascinating.

Fine by me.

At the turn of the covered walk, silk flashed. Lady Yuan stood just long enough to make sure I saw her here in the palace, that I saw her one step closer to the throne she said was hers. Our eyes met just briefly, but whatever she saw in mine couldn't have been that pleasant.

She flinched like my gaze had teeth and scurried down a side corridor, her maid tottering after her with a tray that rattled.

I didn't bother tucking the smile away.

Yaozu waited under a red-lacquer pillar at the next corner, mask shadowing half his face, posture loose in that way that let people forget he could break their necks without wrinkling his sleeve. When he fell in beside me, his voice was soft enough that the wind had to lean in to hear it.

"You're going to want to come into the audience chamber," he murmured. "And you aren't going to be happy."

While my feet might have continued to move forward; the rest of me stalled. Exhaustion hit like a delayed punch. It lived in my bones, behind my eyes, between my shoulder blades where months of bad sleep had set up camp and refused to move out.

The entire point of ending Baiguang was to end all this crap. I didn't want more councils that bled until dawn, I didn't want to see more maps heavy with pins, I didn't want to make more decisions that only had ugly answers.

It thought the solution was simple. Kill the snake's head, watch the body stop thrashing.

Then just breathe.

But apparently that wasn't what happened.

"What exactly is in there?" I asked, closing my eyes for a brief second. I let Yaozu take my weight as I tried to regroup.

His arms wrapped around me, but he didn't answer. I guess that was as much an answer coming form him as I was ever going to get.

We crossed the outer court. Frost clung to the edges of the stone like salt. The steps up to the audience hall climbed longer than I remembered… they were broad, with shallow treads worn smooth by too many knees begging for something.

Bronze braziers flanked the staircase, smoke coiling lazily into the pale air. Above, the doors stood open, vermilion teeth waiting to bite.

Yaozu could have warned me better. He should have. And I was more than a bit upset that he hadn't bothered. He knew that I hate to be prepared for the wrong thing.

Instead of lashing out, I kept my mouth shut and simply continued to climb.

By the third landing the hall's breath met me: incense, old paper, the sour tang of anxious men. By the fourth, the murmur of voices sharpened into conversations. I could hear the ministers clearing their throats, a scribe murmuring a title, someone shifting on a woven mat.

And under it all, a voice pitched just right to cut through the rest without sounding like it wanted to.

Light. Sweet. Practiced.

"…and what does Daiyu want, if not peace?" it said. "You keep saying you want to end suffering. So, let's end it. Aren't we civilized enough to be able to do that?"

Bai Yuyan.

Of course she'd make it sound reasonable while sliding the knife between someone's ribs.

Shadow appeared from out of nowhere, reacting to my inner exhaustion and whatever else I was feeling at the moment that I couldn't put words to.

He brushed against my leg at the threshold, a warm weight against cold bone. He shouldn't be this quiet, not with so many spears pointed politely at the floor because none of them wanted to be remembered as the man who raised a weapon at my wolf. People parted around us without looking like they were parting, which was a neat trick the palace had learned from survival.

Two ushers snapped to attention. "Her Highness—" one began.

"Save your breath," I sneered as I crossed the last strip of polished stone and stepped into the hall.

The audience chamber was a throat: long, high, red pillars ribbing the space, dark beams above carved with dragons that stared down like bored gods. Ministers stood in neat rows on either side of the aisle as they argued for one point or another. Scribes shifted on mats as they tried to take in everything and write it down for prosperity.

Mingyu sat one step below the empty throne like a man who'd been pretending he wasn't already carrying the weight. His hands might have been loose, but his eyes were not. Standing at his right was Deming, still as a sheathed blade and very obviously supporting his brother.

Sun Longzi and three senior ministers stood in a careful line that said "cooperation" and "don't breathe wrong" at the same time.

And halfway down the center path, exactly where the sight lines were best, stood Yuyan.

She wore gray like it was silk: travel cloak let just slightly open to suggest fragility without revealing anything, her hair was up in a simple knot that probably took a maid an hour to make look accidental even as a smudge of road dust on her cheek placed so perfectly I almost applauded.

Behind her stood bodyguards disguised as attendants, a physician with clean hands, a scribe hugging a ledger like a shield. I snorted as I studied them, wondering briefly how I could have forgotten about her when I went in search of the royal family.

Her gaze found me. She smiled. The kind meant to say see, we're the only two women here who matter.

I let mine say something completely different.