The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 381: The Emperor Undone

The court ministers were already talking when she slipped into the hall.

Xinying crossed the stone floors and took the phoenix chair beside her lawful husband. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. Mingyu flicked his eyes to her once, one small glance that set the room’s spine straighter, then returned to the agricultural minister arguing about boundary stones and the need to take more grain from the farmers.

"We will not take more than what we are due," Mingyu announced. "If you don’t think that there will be enough rice and grain for the winter months, then feel free to plant the fields yourself and harvest everything for the sake of the court. That way, you will also understand what it means to labor for someone else’s profit."

His voice carried without force. The scribe’s brush scratched. The minister was stuck clenching his jaw, unable to protest now that Xinying was in the room. Bowing his head, he stepped back into place.

The minister of punishment came next. Then the minister of rights. Then the minister of war with a problem that was not a problem once Xinying offered her services.

The minutes seemed to stretch on forever as Xinying watched Mingyu work.

He was all control here: his pace, his tone, the way he listened and the way he ended a story before a minister could talk himself into a worse sentence. He did not look at her again. He did not have to. The quiet between their chairs said enough.

Her hand found the arm of the phoenix chair. She rested there, her ankle crossed over ankle, her braid loose against her shoulder because she hadn’t bothered with pins. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

A minister noticed and tried not to stare. He failed. Yizhen would have laughed; Deming would have sighed; Longzi would have blinked once and gone back to counting guards. Xinying sat still and let the court learn where their eyes belonged.

Mingyu’s day ended when he decided it ended. He stood. The room stood with him. "Enough," he said, and the scribe lifted his brush as if it had pleased him to write the word.

"Tomorrow—" a minister began.

"Tomorrow," Mingyu agreed, which meant not another word now.

Servants moved to clear the steps. Ushers lifted their staves. Ministers bowed backward, eager to be dismissed properly. Mingyu did not wait for the choreography to finish. He turned his head toward Xinying and held out his hand.

She took it and rose. He didn’t lead her away. He sat back on the dragon throne and pulled her onto his lap like a man who had never cared for permission that wasn’t hers.

A whisper breathed across the floor like wind over paper.

The nearest servants turned their backs at once, trained and terrified both. Far ranks followed, faces to the walls. The sound of one latch fell into the wide air.

Yaozu and Longzi walked through the western door together. One look from them had the servants rushing out of the throne room faster that a hummingbird could fly.

The two men didn’t hurry. They didn’t look around. They crossed the threshold and closed the door behind them, the bar dropping with a steady, final sound that told the court the day had decided to end differently.

Longzi put his back to the door, one hand on the crossbar as if it were an oath. Yaozu stood beside him, shoulders level, forearms folded, the sheathed sword in his hand like a statement more than a threat.

Mingyu’s mouth curved. He looked at them over Xinying’s shoulder. "Are you capable of watching without touching?" he asked, his voice soft and sharp all at once.

They said nothing. They didn’t need to.

Longzi shifted his stance a fraction... getting more comfortable. Yaozu let the smallest breath out and settled his weight. They would not leave. They would not interfere.

They would keep the world on the other side of a thick door and a thin patience.

"Good," Mingyu murmured, and turned Xinying to face him.

She didn’t tease him. She didn’t try to make him wait. Her hands came up to his jaw, to his hair. He was already hard control from the crown down; she curled her fingers into his hair and found the man under it.

His breath changed. His hands found her waist.

"Say the word," he told her. "And it will be done."

"Now," she said.

He opened her robe at the collarbone and pushed the silk from her shoulders, slow, deliberate, as if the throne owed him this and had always known it.

He did not look at the two men watching intently at every inch of skin he exposed. He did not care if anyone could hear her or see her. He knew that the others would protect her, he knew that she would never let him push too far.

And so, he looked only at her. The silk slid to her elbows, to her wrists, to the floor. The room learned a new kind of silence.

He stayed dressed in his golden silk robes.

He always started that way when control rode him too hard—clothed in his power, but bare with his wants.

He dragged his mouth along the curve of her throat, then lower, then up again to her ear. "Mine," he said, slow enough to be a promise rather than a claim.

"Yes," she said.

He bared her further with patient hands and no hurry, though his breath betrayed him.

He palmed her hip; his fingers pressed marks that would not show in daylight but would matter to both of them tonight.

She tipped her head back and let the hall ceiling witness what the servants on the other side of the door could only hear: her breath changing, the quiet sound she made when his mouth found the place that always unmade her.

Behind them, a shoe scuffed wood. Not a threat. Yaozu resetting his stance. The throne room was theirs.

Mingyu’s hands slid lower and her welcoming body took two of his fingers fully in. The sound of her wetness making an almost obscene sound.

He didn’t ask. He knew.

He moved her at his pace, slow at first, then not slow at all. When her hand clutched at his shoulder for balance, he took her wrist and laid it against the carved arm of the throne, pinning it there with a touch she could have broken in an instant if she had wanted.

But she did not want.

"Look at me," he said.

She did.

He was beautiful when he lost the first inch of control. No crown, no decree, no mask. Just Mingyu, breath running quicker than he liked, eyes darker than the court had the right to see.

"Faster," she whispered.

He gave her faster.

He kept her upright on his lap with one hand and used the other to coax the sound he wanted. His thumb move just enough to stroke her clit even as his fingers continued to move in and out of her.

When she tried to chase the edge too soon, he slowed his pace, edging her just enough for her to lost control.

When she wanted to slow, he pushed her right back to the place where choice ran out and need began.

She was not shy. She was not coy.

She let him have the sound because he had earned it a hundred times and would again.

"Still watching?" he called without looking away from her.

Silence from the door. A soft click as Longzi adjusted the bolt. No foot crossed the threshold. No eyes strayed.

"Good," Mingyu said, and smiled against her skin.

He dropped a hand and freed himself with quick, sure fingers, the only careless sound in an otherwise orderly day.

He lifted her up high and set her down again in one smooth motion that told the throne what it was for now. She took him with a broken breath that would have embarrassed another woman as her body accommodated his large size.

She let it ring.

The court had tried to take her voice once.

Now she kept it now and gave it to the only man allowed to spend it.