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

Mingyu had always preferred precision to noise.

Noise belonged to the court—the bickering of ministers, the rustle of robes hiding cowardice, the sharp inhale of a man desperate to be remembered for words instead of results.

Precision belonged to survival. Precision meant a ledger balanced down to the grain.

Precision meant armies moving on signal rather than whim. Precision meant the empire still standing when storms blew themselves out.

And yet, even in his own palace, he found himself surrounded by noise. Not the noisy kind of courtiers, but a subtler, more dangerous sound: the silence of men who loved his wife and thought no one noticed.

That silence was louder than any petition.

He sat in the shadow of a column outside her chambers, posture relaxed enough to be overlooked by passing servants, but every sense sharpened.

He didn't belong here tonight, not that he wouldn't be sleeping in her bed tonight, just like he has every night.

Instead, he should have been at his desk, drafting responses to Baiguang's latest maneuver or confirming the accounts from the south. But his ink had refused to cooperate. His brush had stuck. His hand, steady enough to sign a man's death with three clean strokes, had stalled.

Because he had seen it too many times.

Deming. Yizhen. Longzi. Three men orbiting her like wolves circling the same fire, each pretending the warmth was accidental. Each pretending that silence was enough to disguise teeth.

And Xinying—his wife, his Empress, the only woman who could fold a kingdom like paper—was blind to it. Not by lack of wit, but by lack of care. She didn't spend her strength measuring hearts. She spent it measuring threats. To her, affection was a weapon too flimsy to catalogue.

So Mingyu catalogued it for her.

----

The first to arrive was Deming. It was always Deming.

Mingyu heard the measured weight of his steps long before the second prince reached the door.

They were soldier's steps, deliberate, neither rushed nor hesitant, but carrying a kind of burden that even steel couldn't polish away.

Deming didn't knock. He inclined his head once to the guards outside, who stepped back automatically, and then he went in.

Mingyu leaned further into the shadow and let his gaze narrow.

Inside, lamplight warmed the chamber. Xinying sat cross-legged at the low table, hair unadorned, robe simple. She might have been any scholar's wife—if one ignored the steel behind her eyes.

Deming carried a tray. Tea, steaming faintly. Preserved plums in a porcelain dish. He set it down near her without speaking. She didn't look up from her slips of bamboo. "Leave it," she murmured.

That was all. No thanks. No smile. No acknowledgment beyond a flick of her voice.

Deming's shoulders stiffened.

For a moment, Mingyu thought he might say something—that at last, the silence might break. But Deming only inclined his head, set the tray down carefully, and lingered one fraction of a heartbeat too long. Then he bowed out, closing the door softly behind him.

In the corridor, his masked face was unreadable. But his fist tightened once at his side before he vanished into the dark.

Mingyu exhaled slowly. Deming had always been steady, even as a boy. But steadiness could break, too, if left under enough pressure.

Yizhen came next.

Mingyu almost smiled at the contrast. Where Deming's approach was all iron and formality, Yizhen's was silk.

His fan tapped lightly against his palm, his robe loose, his hair tied with deliberate carelessness that whispered of perfume halls and midnight gambling dens.

He didn't enter. He leaned against the frame, tilted his head in, and let his voice spill into the room like wine.

"You'll blind yourself," he drawled. "If you keep staring at slips instead of men."

Xinying's hand paused on her quill. She turned just enough to give him one glance—dry, unimpressed, sharp as flint. "If I needed a lecture about my eyes, I'd ask a physician."

"Physicians would send you home with herbs," Yizhen countered, smile playing lazy across his mouth. "None of them would remind you that sometimes, rest is also a weapon."

She didn't dismiss him, but she didn't invite him either. She simply let him exist in the corner, where he folded himself down beside the brazier, fanning himself with unhurried ease.

Mingyu's throat tightened. Yizhen's ease was a lie. He had watched the man long enough to know that shadows were his real skin. He hid knives in his smiles. He measured silences as carefully as Mingyu measured armies.

And still, he sat by her fire as if he had earned it.

Finally, Longzi.

He never came to her door. He never intruded.

He stood instead in the courtyard outside, his Captain's uniform plain, posture rigid as carved stone. Tonight he walked the routes of his men again, checking posts already checked, lanterns already rehung, orders already given.

His voice was calm, commanding, efficient. But when he paused to glance at the lit window, Mingyu saw it. The pull. The restraint. The hunger pressed flat under discipline.

Always once. Always only once.

Mingyu's jaw tightened until it hurt.

By the time he returned to his study, it was long past midnight. The palace slept, save for the patrols Longzi himself had set. Mingyu poured himself wine, didn't drink it, and sat with it untouched.

It couldn't continue.

Xinying's blindness to these things was a strength.

She refused to waste time on emotions, so she missed the rot growing in silence. She didn't see how these men bent themselves around her, each in their own way, carrying devotion like a sickness they couldn't cure.

Deming, with his unspoken gifts.

Yizhen, with his honey-dipped barbs.

Longzi, with his discipline sharpened into obsession.

Left unchecked, they would destroy themselves. Worse, they would destroy her—through jealousy, through fracture, through the simple human need to be acknowledged.

Mingyu set the cup aside, untouched, and pressed his fingers together.

It had to end. Not their loyalty. Not their devotion. That could be shaped into something useful, something whole. But the silence—that had to end.

He would gather them. He would force the words out.

Because Xinying would never ask. She would never invite confessions she didn't think they felt. She would let them break quietly in corners while she counted petitions.

And Mingyu, who had already shared her once, would not let that ruin her—or the empire they built.

He looked out into the moon-washed courtyard, his face set into something colder than resolve.

The second prince, the shadow fox, the frontier general. Three wolves.

Tomorrow, he would call them. Tomorrow, he would put them in a room and make them bare their teeth where he could see them.

They would break themselves against her if he let them. Better to break the silence now, while it could still be mended into something whole.

He would gather them. He would make them speak.

Not for his sake. Not even for hers. Not even for the empire.

Because an Empress surrounded by wolves too afraid to bare their teeth was as dangerous as an Empress surrounded by knives.

And Mingyu would not have his wife threatened by silence.