The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 365: Third Time’s A Charm

The palace at night belonged to cicadas and dripping eaves. Not even the servants moved, sleeping as peacefully as they could on cots in front of their master’s doors.

Courtyards stretched pale and still beneath the moon, pavilions were cut from shadow and silence.

Even the guards kept their patrols soft along the outer walls, their boots hushed against the flagstones, not daring to make any loud noises.

Through that peacefulness, a man who left no footprint moved with determination.

The Jackal slipped past lantern posts like he had drawn the map and posted the guards himself.

He might have—the Northern Winds answered to no throne, only to coin and cunning, and both had built him an empire in the dark before Mingyu’s court had learned his name.

He knew which corridors the guards walked twice and which they ignored because the emperor’s wife had never crossed them. He knew where kitchens dumped their ashes, where the trellises held against a man’s weight, and which doorframes squeaked like nervous servants if you leaned on them wrong.

Tonight though, he did not bother with the outer servants’ halls or the ministers’ wings.

Instead, he crossed a narrow bridge over the koi pond where the moon unrolled itself like silver silk. Stepping through the shadow of the cypress walk, he climbed the three shallow stairs that led into Bai Yuyan’s courtyard.

The courtyard slept beneath carved latticework and flowering plum trees. The light from a few candles bled soft behind the door panels, announcing to everyone that the woman in question had not gone to bed yet.

He smiled.

The Jackal liked women who waited for him without meaning to.

Ever so softly he slid open one of the side doors and double checked to make sure that his target was by herself.

When he stepped inside, his target didn’t even seem to know that he was there.

Bai Yuyan leaned against the table where a single lamp burned low, its wick trimmed to a thin golden tongue.

Her inky black hair spilled like ink over one shoulder, her robe the soft blue of courtiers who still remembered luxury even when living under the eyes of conquerors.

"You walk through emperors’ walls as if they were cloth," she murmured in English, each word clean and precise. "Aren’t you worried that you are going to be caught?"

The Jackal dropped into the nearest chair and crossed one boot over his knee, the grin on his face flashing wolf-sharp. "Walls only stop the men who believe in them."

Bai Yuyan’s face twisted in a smirk as she hummed. Pouring herself a cup of wine, she took a small sip.

She didn’t pour him a cup, nor did she offer to let him pour himself any. To her, it was important that this powerful man remembered just who had given him his power. "One day you will meet a wall with teeth," she reminded him.

"Teeth crack with enough pressure," he replied with a shrug, amused at her concern. "Everything cracks if you lean on it hard enough."

She studied him over the rim of the cup. "You leaned on this palace five times already. And yet, it’s still standing."

The Jackal stretched his arms along the chair’s backrest, his posture loose, and his eyes bright with the kind of humor that owned knives behind it.

"Ah, the boy-prince and his pretty empire. I gave you Lin Wei, didn’t I? Right into your lap. That should have cut them deep enough for you to step through."

Yuyan’s smile held no warmth. "You gave me a child for only a few before Yizhen stole him back. A handful of days doesn’t open doors, Jackal. It only wastes keys."

He shrugged, a slow roll of shoulders under black leather. "I built the Northern Winds out of nothing but frostbite and rumor. My men carry knives in seven languages. They own the roads from here to the northern passes. A boy slipping through our fingers means the knife-hand slipped, not the one who paid for it."

"Your knife-hand cost me months," she returned, sharp as the wine’s edge on her tongue.

The Jackal leaned forward, his elbows on knees now, the grin on his face fading to something thinner. "Then I tried your underworld prince head-on. Thought cutting off the South’s King of Hell would clear your skies. Yan Luo should have died with his throat open over his own ledgers."

"But he didn’t."

The Jackal’s eyes gleamed like lamplight on wet stone. "No. Because some half-drunk second son grabbed the fucking emperor’s wife along with him. Apparently, they underestimated the Witch of the Woods. I can assure you, we wont’ be making that mistake a second time."

Yuyan’s fingers tightened on the cup before she set it down.

The memory still burned...Mingyu’s fury scything through Baiguang’s remnants after that night, the way the city locked down like a throat closing. The Jackal had slipped back into snow and rumor before the soldiers caught him, but his networks bled for the failure.

"Two failures," she noted softly.

His grin returned, white and sharp. "Two attempts."

"Attempts that left your Northern Winds full of holes and my position in this palace worse than before."

The Jackal rose, restless now, and walked to the open doorway where the courtyard spilled moonlight across polished stone. His reflection stood in the threshold like another man listening.

"According to you, the boy-prince is madly in love with you and wants to marry you, doesn’t he?" he asked without turning, voice light as frost.

Yuyan’s pulse jumped once.

She hated when he did that... reminding her what she was supposed to have if that bitch wasn’t lurking around like a hound of hell.

Still, it was more than that. He never explained how much he knew about her or why he understood words like Wi-Fi and YouTube when everyone else in this world stared blank at them.

"You leave Baiguang in ashes," she answered finally. "He takes me north. The empire burns because he wants it to."

"And now?"

She thought of Mingyu’s wife—the one this world had handed him instead of her. Zhao Xinying moved through the palace like a knife wrapped in silk, quiet, merciless, beloved by generals and ghosts alike.

"Now," Yuyan said through clenched teeth, "I need to remind him why I am so much better for him than her. Right now, he barely sees me."

The Jackal chuckled, low and rough. "Then let’s fix that."

He turned from the doorway, hands loose at his sides, every line of him coiled with the kind of confidence men wore before kicking down kingdoms.

"Third time’s a charm," he told her. "We cut out the empress, the underworld prince, and anyone whose shadow reaches his throne. We will leave him with nothing but you to lean on when the walls start falling."

Yuyan’s breath caught, not with fear but with the sharp taste of want. The story she’d read had given her a Mingyu who burned the map for her sake. This one barely remembered she breathed the same air.

"You think killing her gives him to me?" she scoffed, not wanting to give him anything.

The Jackal’s grin widened. "I think killing her gives him nothing else to hold. Men break easier when they’re empty."

She considered the wine in her cup, the thin red sheen catching lamplight like a secret.

In the novel, Mingyu had slaughtered half the continent after losing her. Would grief crack him the same way in this rewritten world? Or would he turn colder, sharper, untouchable even to her?

The Jackal watched calculations move behind her eyes and leaned one shoulder against the doorframe. "We start with Yizhen," he told her. "Cut the fox’s throat so the South goes blind. Then the empress. Then anyone else who keeps the boy-prince warm at night."

Yuyan lifted her gaze. "You failed twice," she reminded him again, not willing to let that go.

"Twice without my own hands on the knife," he countered, tone mild. "This time I’m not sending boys with dull edges. This time the Northern Winds blow through the palace before anyone smells snow."

He pushed off the doorway, pacing slow across the floor as if measuring steps for a dance no one else heard.

"I still have men in the western passes," he went on. "Caravans that change flags at dusk. Couriers who don’t care which emperor’s face hangs over their gate as long as coin fills their bowls. You give me the times, the routes, the places she walks without guards. I’ll give you a palace that wakes up mourning."

Yuyan watched him the way courtiers watched tigers behind thin fences. She wanted Mingyu looking at her the way he looked at that woman. Wanted the empire to burn for her like the story promised. Wanted the world to make sense again under her feet.

"If this fails," she asked, voice soft as the plum blossoms outside, "what do you lose?"

The Jackal smiled without warmth. "I don’t fail three times."

Outside, the moon climbed higher, spilling its cold silver across the palace courtyard. Somewhere beyond the palace walls, the Northern Winds waited for a gesture from the man who had built them out of smuggling routes and sharpened loyalties.

Yuyan let her fingers rest against the wine cup but did not drink. "Then we start with Yizhen," she agreed.

The Jackal tipped his head, acknowledgment or amusement or both. "Third time’s a charm," he repeated, already turning toward the door.

Neither of them saw the shadow in the garden beyond the wall shift once before vanishing—a watcher Yizhen had placed weeks ago after the second kidnapping fell apart.

The palace might have been sleeping peacefully, but the traps laying in the darkness never did.