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

The market lane didn't look like much from the cart.

While I had been told that things had taken a long time to be built back up after the first Apocalypse to hit the Devil's Playground, and there hadn't been any big places to buy your supplies, the market in front of me was just… small.

The servants in the palace whispered about the market like it was THE place to be. But as far as I could see, it was just frost ground into stone and smoke rising thin from stalls that had burned their morning fires too fast.

However the moment my feet touched the dirt, Lin Wei shifted in my arms, his head lifting as if he could smell something better than fear in the air.

That, alone, was enough of a reason to be here.

I wore a plain robe, dark enough to blend into shadow and loose enough to keep blades hidden under the sleeves. No lacquer pins. No crown. Boots with dust already on them. If anyone in the crowd thought I looked more like a widow than an empress, then I had chosen well.

Deming fell in at my side, a basket looped over his arm like he was just waiting for me to tell him where to go and what to buy.

Yaozu walked two paces behind us, his hands empty, but his shadow was heavier than any weapon.

Yizhen had Wei's grip on his sleeve still, the boy refusing to let go no matter how I shifted him between us. Mingyu insisted on two guards trailing us, dressed as cousins carrying firewood. To anyone else, we were just another household stretching coins in winter.

Almost ordinary.

Lin Wei pointed once at a stall where candied chestnuts gleamed like lacquered stones in the weak sun. I stopped, peeled some coins from my sleeve, and bought them without bargaining. The vendor bowed too low when he handed them over, but I let it pass.

The boy's hand tightened when I held one toward him. His mouth worked, remembering rules I'd set last night. I bent closer so he could hear me over the clamor.

"You pointed," I told him. "So you get it. That was the promise."

He hesitated only a breath before taking it, teeth crunching through sugar. The sound was small but it filled the space around me better than drums ever could.

We moved through bolts of fabric, jars of pickled plum, skewers of meat turning too fast on their sticks.

Yaozu slipped a basket of winter apples into my hand without asking. Deming found a knife vendor and tested the weight of a blade as if the man were sharpening it only for him. Mingyu haggled for no reason at all, just for the joy of doing something new and to watch the vendor sweat.

For a moment, I allowed myself to think this was what the throne was worth—morning air, a child's hand sticky with chestnut, men around me moving like family instead of people in positions of power.

That was when the crowd shifted, and a different kind of space opened ahead of us. Not the natural gap people gave to strangers. The calculated kind, edged with courtesy and expectation.

Sun Longzi stood at the center of it, his fiancée walking close beside him.

He had dressed down for the market, but even without armor his posture gave him away—shoulders square, eyes steady, one hand always too close to a sword hilt. He stopped when he saw me. Or maybe it was when he saw WeiWei's hand clamped tight on Yizhen's robe.

Lady Huai stood beside him, jewels strung too bright for a winter morning. Her chin tilted as her gaze ran over me, my plain robe, the boots, the absence of pins in my hair. She smiled, sharp as glass.

"How refreshing," she said, voice carrying just enough to make sure the nearest stalls heard. "The Empress herself, dressed like a common woman. Tell me, do your ministers approve of such… simplicity?"

Her words snapped through the air like brittle wood.

I didn't stop walking. I let WeiWei settle heavier against my side, the boy chewing his chestnut with absolute trust from where he stood between me and Yizhen. My voice carried as flat as a blade laid on a table.

"Clothes don't keep gates shut," I said. "Loyalty does. Which do you have?"

The color drained from her face as the crowd around us murmured softly.

Longzi's jaw tightened, but his eyes never left me.

I saw recognition there, and something sharper—surprise at Yizhen, the brother he had dismissed, standing steady at my side with the heir's grip locked to him. Jealousy flickered there too, quick as a shadow across glass, before he looked away.

Lady Huai tried to recover, her mouth shaping another barb, but Deming shifted the basket on his arm with a thump, loud enough to claim the space. Yaozu's gaze followed, cold and unblinking. Mingyu only smirked, enjoying the spectacle more than he should.

I slowed then, long enough to let the moment breathe. "Markets are good for testing prices," I said, not to Lady Huai, but to Longzi directly. "Sometimes you learn what a thing is worth. Sometimes you learn it's already been sold to someone else."

Longzi's eyes narrowed, and for the first time he spoke. "And sometimes you find out a buyer isn't half as clever as he thought."

The words sat between us, heavy as coin on a scale.

Lady Huai tugged at his sleeve, flustered. "My lord, we don't need to waste time here—"

But Longzi didn't move. He stayed rooted, gaze fixed, measuring me the way I measured him. And the crowd leaned closer, the market suddenly louder with the hiss of oil and clatter of hooves, as if the whole city had decided to hold its breath until one of us gave way.

I stroked Lin Wei's hair as his fingers continued to still be tangled in Yizhen's robe. The boy's chestnut dropped to the dirt between us, rolling once before stopping at Longzi's boot. He bent, slowly, to pick it up.

"Children really will cling to anyone, won't they?" Longzi murmured softly, straightening up before handing out the dirty candied chestnut back to Lin Wei. "Or is it that my brother is not the man I thought he was."

His fiancée bristled, her voice cutting through the winter air. "You'd compare yourself to—"

"Enough," Longzi muttered without looking at her. His eyes stayed on me.

I smiled, small and sharp. "Finally," I said. "A man worth talking to."

And before Lady Huai could splinter the air with another protest, I stepped forward, the market crowd pressing in, and met Longzi's gaze head-on.