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

I crouched slowly, one hand dragging the hem of my robe up to keep it from soaking in the filth. Not that it really mattered—blood had already kissed the silk. And the bottom of it was stained from the corridor.

But it felt like a ritual. A final, mocking bit of civility before I joined the savagery.

The man's eyes followed me now.

They were swollen and crusted, one nearly closed from swelling, but they tracked my every movement as I knelt in front of him.

There was pain there.

Good.

But there was something else, too. Something that looked almost like curiosity. As if he couldn't quite figure out what I was.

Woman? Weapon?

I didn't feel the need to explain myself.

Instead, I smiled—slow and soft. Not the seductive kind. The kind children give when they pluck wings from butterflies and want you to watch.

"You know," I said, brushing his blood-matted hair back from his forehead, "if you'd managed to kill me tonight… they wouldn't have buried you. They would have fed your corpse to the pigs."

I let the silence stretch between us before I continued, my voice honey-sweet.

"But you didn't. You missed. And now here we are."

He didn't answer, of course.

I let my fingers drift to his throat. He tried to jerk back, but the chains bit into his shoulders and held him still. My nails grazed his skin just above the collarbone, dipping into the blood that had begun to dry there.

"See, Yaozu is a surgeon," I said casually, casting a glance over my shoulder. "He works with knives and pressure points and has this quaint little belief in cause and effect."

I turned back to the assassin, tilting my head. "But me? I'm an artist. And art doesn't need to make sense to be beautiful."

Yaozu said nothing behind me, though I could feel his eyes on my back. Mingyu hadn't moved either—still seated, still watching. I didn't care. I didn't need their approval.

I reached toward the brazier and plucked one of the metal tongs resting inside it. The end was red-hot, still glowing from where it had rested in the coals. It hummed in the air as I raised it, the heat pulsing against my palm.

The assassin tensed.

Now we were getting somewhere.

"I'm not going to ask you who sent you," I said, the tip of the tong now hovering inches from his chest. "Because I don't really care."

He flinched as the heat kissed his skin.

"But I do want to see what happens when I do this," I whispered.

And I pressed it into him.

The sound he made wasn't a scream. Not quite. It was hoarse and feral, torn from the back of his throat like he hadn't screamed in years and had forgotten how.

The smell was worse than the sound—burned flesh and sweat and old blood.

I held it there longer than necessary, then finally pulled it away.

He gasped. Cursed. His eyes rolled back for a second.

I leaned in again, my lips nearly brushing his ear. "You're not going to die tonight," I told him sweetly. "You're just going to wish you had."

He jerked at the chains again—instinct, not strategy.

I stood and turned to the table of tools. Blades of every size. Twine. Hooks. Things that didn't belong in polite society.

"Do you know what I miss about the forest?" I asked aloud as I ran my fingers across a pair of pliers. "Everything was so… honest. You kill. You eat. You survive. There's no pretense. No courtiers with smiling mouths and knives behind their backs."

I turned back around with a thin, curved blade in hand—one meant for flaying.

"Here, everyone lies. Even you."

The assassin said something then—his voice low and broken. It was a whisper, barely a word.

I paused, stepping close.

"What was that?" I asked softly.

He lifted his chin a fraction, blood running down his neck like red ink staining parchment.

"If you were mine," he rasped, "I would've broken you already."

I smiled again.

Not the amused smile from earlier.

This one was cruel.

"You think I haven't already been broken?" I asked, raising the blade.

And then I carved a line across the underside of his jaw. Not deep. But enough.

His scream this time was full-throated. Honest. And they echoed off the stone walls before fading off into the darkness.

It wasn't a clean, cinematic scream. It was raw, like the sound of a man who hadn't screamed since he was a child and had forgotten what it cost to make noise like that. It scraped through his ruined throat, rasping and feral, before dissolving into broken coughing.

I didn't look away. I let him see me watching. Let him see the delight that didn't quite reach my smile.

"Better," I said softly, turning the curved blade in my hand. The blood on it glistened. It had already begun to darken near the base.

The assassin's head dropped again, sweat and blood dripping from his chin to the floor. His knees were shaking. One of his fingernails had cracked down the middle from where he'd clenched too hard against the chains.

Yaozu stepped forward and crouched in front of him, his blade clean, steady. "That wasn't a name," he said flatly.

The man said nothing.

Yaozu's blade slipped into the soft meat of his inner thigh. The man shrieked again—louder this time, real terror creeping into his voice.

I tilted my head. "Now, now. You're learning," I praised. "See how much easier it is when you don't try to be brave?"

I dropped the blade.

I didn't need to keep playing. Yaozu had already proved that he would make him scream again.

Instead, I turned toward Mingyu and walked back slowly, the silk of my robe brushing my calves. My fingers were sticky with blood, my feet damp and cold. I perched myself back on the armrest like nothing had changed.

He didn't speak.

His jaw was clenched, but he didn't flinch away when I leaned against him, resting my chin on his shoulder. Instead, he wrapped his arm around my hip and pulled me even closer into his side, ignoring the blood and stench that clung to my clothes.

Yaozu moved to the table and picked up a cloth, wiping down one of the longer knives. Efficient. Controlled.

The assassin was still sobbing.

"There are worse things than pain," I murmured to no one in particular. "But we'll start there."