The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 367: Live-ly

Before the Jackal could complete the move, Longzi arrived in the same space, his boot pinning the wrist that hunted fresh steel. "Stay," Longzi murmured. "We have some questions for you."

The Jackal spat the pellet.

It bounced, rolled, cracked under Yizhen’s casually dropped lid. Smoke coughed and died. Yizhen yawned.

"Your toys underperform," Yizhen noted.

"Your guards overperform," the Jackal countered, eyes bright.

Mingyu’s hand tightened just enough to speak in the language joints respected.

The Jackal leaned his head back against that slow force and grinned without any good reason.

"I only needed one clean cut," he went on, tone mild. "A neat absence. A palace waking to consequences. A country remembering emperors’ bleed."

"You brought ink for a knife and learned nothing about paper," Yaozu returned, voice near his ear, untroubled.

The jackal felt Yaozu’s breath against his cheek as he scanned the room. The window was blocked, the door guarded, the bed was occupied by a calm woman and two men whose calm did not look fragile.

The wolf lowered his head and watched his throat the way a hawk watched a rabbit. He slipped his left boot against the floor and felt for the thin seam at the sole.

Yizhen’s gaze dropped with him. "I wouldn’t," Yizhen murmured.

"Try me," the Jackal invited.

Longzi’s weight pressed an invisible nail through the tendons near the wrist.

The Jackal’s fingers went numb. The seam became a rumor. Deming’s forearm found his chest again and settled there with the impersonal certainty of masonry.

"Third attempt, third ruin," Deming noted. "Do you hire apprentices to write your endings or do you prefer handwriting that looks like yours?"

"Look at him," Yizhen breathed, amused. "He thinks this is still a game that behaves."

The Jackal smiled into Mingyu’s eyes. "You will lose her," he offered, soft and fond. "If not to me then to a wall you did not see. Men don’t keep fire in their hands forever."

"Mine does," Xinying returned, dry. "Yuyan keeps learning that."

Her name slipped through his grin like smoke. He let it hang and changed approach. "Northern Winds still breathe," he murmured. "You dammed a river; you forgot fog."

"Fog vanishes when the sun remembers its job," Longzi muttered.

"Shall we fuss with metaphors while he swallows the second pellet," Yizhen mused, "or confiscate it first?"

"Confiscate," Mingyu decided.

Longzi’s thumb pivoted at the hinge of the jaw with a pressure that made swallowing impossible and speech an unwise project.

Deming’s fingers hooked the cheek, gentle and barbaric at once.

The Jackal fought on principle and failed on physics.

A second bead tapped against his teeth, then his tongue, then Deming’s palm. Yizhen held out a hand like a courtier accepting a sweet and slid the prize into his sleeve.

"You have backups for your backups," Yizhen praised, tone honeyed. "Admirable. Wasteful."

He went for attention instead. "Yuyan’s bored," he murmured, eyes on Xinying. "She wanted this to prove a point about destiny. The boy-prince in her book never lay in anyone’s bed but hers."

"She should read more," Xinying returned. "It would broaden her horizons."

The Jackal let a laugh escape, short and bright. "You’re entertaining," he admitted. "A pity I only needed an artery and not an audience."

"You needed competence," Deming corrected.

"Try again," Longzi goaded, light as a whip.

He jerked the only thing free, which was not much—a shoulder feint, a shift of hips, a twist of a knee hunting purchase against the carpet’s edge.

Yaozu moved with him like a line folding into a new equation.

Mingyu’s forearm remained at his elbow.

The men moved with smooth movements that spoke of a lifetime together, even if that wasn’t the case. There was no version of the problem that left him a solution inside this room.

"Alive," Mingyu directed.

"Live-ly," Yizhen amended.

"Less lively," Deming recommended.

"Quiet," Yaozu concluded.

"Hungry," Longzi added, because the kitchen would hear about this in the morning.

Xinying’s fingers brushed Shadow’s ear.

The wolf settled again, its interest satisfied.

She looked at the Jackal as if she were trying to recall whether she had ever seen his face before today and deciding it did not matter. "Breakfast," she prompted, voice low.

"After," Mingyu agreed.

He eased weight off just enough to let Deming re-angle the grip.

They lifted the intruder like men moving furniture—carefully, to avoid breaking something important.

The Jackal tried one last insult because words were still cheaper than breath. "She bleeds like any woman," he offered to the ceiling.

"She bleeds less than you tonight," Yizhen countered, eyes dropping to the shallow cut on the intruder’s wrist where Longzi’s earlier pressure had chewed skin.

He chose silence, finally, not because he had run out of language but because language paid no dividends here.

He began to count exits he could no longer reach and paid attention to the rhythm of footsteps around him, hunting the moment someone forgot to watch a knee.

"Door," Longzi announced softly.

Deming shifted so the body could pass through without bumping wood.

Yaozu placed his shoulder under the Jackal’s ribs like a courteous shelf.

The emperor walked back to the bed, his hand loose at his side, the Jackal’s knife now his.

Yizhen went ahead, spinning the pellet lid once, catching it without looking.

Xinying leaned back onto the pillow.

The room’s air felt ordinary again, which was to say obedient. She turned her face toward Mingyu’s hand; he brushed her temple with the back of his knuckles and left the gesture for later.

"Take him breathing," Mingyu instructed.

"Breathing," Deming confirmed.

"With regrets," Yizhen added.

"Without noise," Yaozu measured.

"Preferably fast," Longzi concluded, almost cheerful.

Shadow rose, trotted to the door, and took position with the proprietary confidence of a sentinel who understood rank.

The Jackal studied the beast’s profile and conceded that he had misjudged the odds the moment he had counted only people.

"Try the roof," he suggested lightly.

"I prefer floors," Deming replied.

They moved. The latch lifted.

Air from the corridor washed over everyone’s wrists.

The Jackal rolled his shoulders to test the holds; three adjustments met him, tidy as cut cloth. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

He smiled again because he had never known how to do anything else in the face of competence, and he twisted hard enough to make at least one of them work for it.

Longzi’s knee planted. Yaozu’s forearm locked. Deming’s palm covered the mouth that wanted to bite.

"Now," Yizhen directed, already in motion.