The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 334: The Left Prime Minister

Her lashes fluttered as if something behind them had just unclenched.

"I know," she answered, and then corrected herself, because the room now required that kind of honesty. "I hear it when you shove the fruit closer. When you send a maid away so I can lose a minute without being watched. When you walk the corridor at the hour the day breaks people. But I wanted to hear it here."

"Here," he echoed.

He lifted his hand, stopped short of her cheek, waited.

She didn’t move away. He let his knuckles trace the line where the morning had kissed her skin warmer than the rest. The comb caught the light like a quiet crown.

"Do you want me to kiss you," he asked, blunt because courtship had never been his language and he would not hide behind light words.

"Yes," she answered, immediate, as if she’d been waiting for permission to be asked.

He leaned in the way he crossed a dangerous bridge—tested weight, measured footing, then committed.

Her mouth tasted of tea she hadn’t finished and the kind of relief that makes a man stand taller because he has somewhere to stand at all.

She didn’t yield so much as meet him, steady and exact, like two lines drawn to intersect because someone intended the geometry to hold.

The door lattice creaked. He stilled. Shadow did not lift his head; he did not need to. Mingyu’s step never pretended to be anyone else’s.

The Emperor paused at the threshold, gaze taking in the comb, the distance that wasn’t distance, the look that lives on faces only when both people in a room remember they are allowed to be human.

He didn’t smile.

He didn’t interrupt.

He let the moment register and then set it on the shelf where he kept the things he hadn’t had once and was determined never to break now.

"Breakfast," Mingyu observed mildly, eyes flicking to the tray by the low table as if that had been the only reason for his visit. "And a new appointment to meet."

His gaze cut to Deming, warmer than a brother’s rivalry could ever be. "Left Prime Minister, the cabinet awaits your first cruelty of the day."

"Cruelty can wait while she eats," Deming returned, and if there was a challenge in it, it was playful enough to be permitted in this room.

Mingyu inclined his head, gracious as any courtier forced to cede precedence. "Then I’ll steal a pear slice and call it tribute." He did, with the easy theft of family, and folded himself near the window, content to be a witness without edge.

Deming touched Xinying’s wrist, reminding without scolding, and guided her to the table.

He served her first, not because she was Empress but because she was the person he had nearly lost to his own hesitation.

She ate because he watched, and because Jasmine tea tasted less like duty when a hand that loved her refilled the cup before it emptied.

"Do you like the comb," Mingyu wondered, breaking a slice of steamed bun with a neat thumb. "He brought me an earlier draft to abuse with critique. I advised fewer petals. He ignored me."

"The petals can stay," she decided, dry. "The men can learn to live with ornament if it’s useful."

Deming’s mouth ticked. "I’ll try to be useful."

"You are," Mingyu put in, too gentle to be teasing. He glanced toward the courtyard, where a runner lingered out of sight like a polite storm. "The cabinet will begin to shake the table if you don’t lay a map on it soon." 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

Deming rose halfway and then paused, looking down at Xinying as if asking a question he didn’t want the other man to answer for him.

"Go," she instructed, not because she wanted him gone but because she liked being the reason he returned. "Make them useful. Don’t let them bore you. Eat."

He leaned and pressed his mouth once to her hair above the ear, where the comb anchored the day, a soldier’s oath made into a kiss.

When he straightened, Mingyu’s gaze was not a blade; it was a cloak. The old shapes of the palace had learned a new geometry and chosen to be kind.

Deming moved for the door. "I’ll send a boy with ginger," he promised over his shoulder. "And a schedule that leaves an hour where neither ink nor knives are allowed."

"I’ll break it if I have to," she warned.

"Then I’ll learn how to make it harder to disobey," he countered, and the grin that escaped him then belonged to the boy who’d once offered her a green ribbon without daring to touch her wrist.

He stepped into the corridor. The runner straightened, took the orders that would feed a day and the city beyond it, and vanished at a pace that made old men swear.

Mingyu stayed, two fingers idling on the windowsill like a drummer idling before the march.

"You’re pleased," he observed softly, not requiring an answer.

Xinying sipped the tea Deming had pressed toward her one last time, and set the cup down with care. "I am."

"And you’ll let him take care of you," he pushed, because that had been the knife she turned against herself too often.

"I will," she allowed, and it sounded like a vow.

"Good." Mingyu gave the room back with a small dip of his head. "I’ll go let him terrify the cabinet with kindness."

He slipped out, the screen whispering shut behind him. The morning settled again—pear on porcelain, Shadow’s tail a quiet thump against the pallet, an hour that wanted to be ordinary and therefore precious.

Xinying lifted the comb from where it had rested her hair, just to feel its weight.

The spine warmed in her hand. She traced the tiny river Deming had cut into it, following the curve past the ridge, over the little bend where the path had once turned and he had not.

The door nudged. A familiar smirk leaned around it, silk tied too carelessly to be accidental.

"Am I interrupting the part where you two pretend to be practical," Yizhen drawled, eyes bright with mischief and something more honest waiting behind it. "Because I brought a story and a better tea. Also, I need to inspect that comb before the Left Prime Minister decides to issue them to the entire cabinet."

She didn’t turn fully.

She kept her fingers on the carved river, mouth easing into a curve he would call victory and Mingyu would call dangerous.

"Come in," she told him, and raised the comb like a challenge he would enjoy failing to resist.