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

The kiln wall still held the ghost of day's fire.

I leaned my shoulder into the stone wall, listening to the river whisper against stone, and let the dark decide what it wanted to give me. If Sun Longzi meant to come, he would come. If he meant to posture, he would already be late.

He wasn't late.

Bootsteps angled down the alley, heavy enough to be a soldier's but not careless enough to be an amateur.

Longzi knew how to walk where men might be listening. He stepped into the faint spill of torchlight from the gate, scarf low, hair tied plain, traveling cloth still creased from folding. Not the dressed general, not the commander's son—just a man who wanted to be taken seriously.

Another shadow followed him.

I let my brows climb. "You brought someone."

"A veteran," Longzi replied evenly. His hand flicked once and the shape detached from him, broad-shouldered, scarred under one eye, the kind of man who had learned more from winter than from teachers.

The soldier bowed shallowly, waiting.

I looked him over the way a butcher looks at a slab of meat—testing weight, age, quality. "Fifty paces back. Chaperone distance. Eyes down, ears closed. If you breathe too loud, you won't breathe again."

The man inclined his head and melted into shadow, as if darkness had been waiting for him.

My mouth twitched. "You brought a chaperone," I said. "How proper. That way no one mistakes this for a tryst."

Longzi didn't rise to the bait. He simply stopped three strides from me and let his arms fall loose at his sides. His gaze was steady, not sharp. Not yet.

For a while, neither of us spoke. I let the silence stretch to see if he would waste words, but he didn't. He had more discipline than his fiancée, at least.

"You wanted a meeting," he said at last. "I came. What is it you expect from me?"

I almost laughed. "That's my question. You came because you wanted to be here, not because I begged for your time."

His jaw tightened. "If my brother, the Sun family's discarded bastard, can stand in your palace wearing the heir like a sleeve ornament, then there is room for me as well. I am not less than he is. Not in blood. Not in skill. Not in loyalty to Daiyu."

There it was. Rivalry, sharp as a spear.

"You think this is about proving yourself against Yizhen?" I asked, tilting my head. "That isn't a game I have time to host."

His eyes burned, though his voice stayed level. "Then call it what it is. I am a general who commands men. I've fought for borders you only read about in reports. Yet I watch a man who spent half his life drunk on pleasure stand closer to the Emperor and the Heir than I ever have. If he is allowed, then so am I."

It wasn't jealousy he wanted me to see. It was indignation. The insult of wasted blood.

I pushed off the wall and stepped toward him, closing the space until the alley felt more like a blade sheath than a meeting place. "Careful, Longzi. If all you have to offer is your pride, I'll cut it to pieces before I let you drop it in my halls."

His chin lifted. "You asked me what price I would pay to hold a gate. This is the price. My command, my banners, my men. I'll give them up. I'll walk into the palace as nothing more than another sword at your disposal. If that looks like madness to others, let them call me mad. But I won't stand outside while lesser men take positions I could hold better."

The words were steady, but the sacrifice behind them was staggering. To give up an army of his own — no one in Daiyu would think it anything but insanity.

I studied him, weighing what he wasn't saying against what he had laid bare. He wanted to be in the palace so badly, but I didn't know the reason why.

And that bothered me.

"Why should I waste a general on kitchen patrols and incense arguments?" I asked.

"Because you waste more by leaving me outside," he answered.

I let the corner of my mouth tilt — not approval, not yet. "You want a place in the palace? Then I'll give you one. But it might not be where you want."

"Then where?" he pressed.

"Mingyu," I said. "My husband is Emperor, but he is also a man who prefers parchment to blades. He has Yaozu watching me, but who watches him? No one. If I were Baiguang, I wouldn't strike at me again. I would strike at the easier target."

Longzi stilled. He knew I was right.

"I want you as Captain of the Emperor's personal guard," I continued. "That will be your place. You will eat and breathe for his safety. Every route he walks, you walk first. Every chamber he enters, you measure before he crosses the threshold. If he coughs in the night, you'll know before the physician does."

"That's not a post given to a general," he muttered, though there was no true resistance in his tone.

"No," I agreed. "It's a post given to someone I expect to bleed quietly if it keeps him alive."

His hand flexed at his side, calluses creasing under leather. "And if I refuse?"

"Then you return to your army and rot at the edges of the map until someone younger takes your banners." I let my voice cut sharper. "But if you accept, you step into a palace where no one dares question why you're there. Your fiancée can shriek until her throat breaks — the empire will still see you as the Emperor's shield. Whether or not that is an equal title to The Commander of the Red Demons… that is up to you."

The soldier fifty paces back shifted, his weight scraping frost. Even he knew what kind of bargain this was.

Longzi's gaze dropped for the first time, not in defeat, but in calculation. "Captain of the Emperor's guard," he repeated slowly. "That is what you offer me?"

"That is what I require of you," I corrected. "Personally, I don't care about your family situation or the jealousy and grudge that you have for your brother. Take it or leave it, those are your two choices."

He looked back at me then, and I saw the decision carve itself into his features. He wasn't smiling. He wasn't grateful. But he was caught.

"Then give me the seal," he said.

"You'll earn it," I replied. "Dawn. You'll present yourself to Mingyu as if it were your own idea. He will frown. He will argue. And then he will yield, because I will already have told him what a wise suggestion it was."

His laugh was short, low, almost bitter. "You really do move the board before anyone else has picked up a piece."

"That's why you're here," I reminded him.

The alley seemed narrower than when we'd started. The kiln wall had gone cold against my back, but his presence radiated its own heat — controlled, contained, dangerous.

"I'll take the post," he said at last. "Let the court call me insane. Let my mother rage. Let Lady Huai tear her hair. I'll still stand where you've put me."

"Good," I said, stepping past him toward the mouth of the alley. "Because if you fail, the next man I put in your place will be standing over your corpse."

He didn't flinch at the promise.

That was why I chose him.