Chapter Three: The Crown Seeks the Witch

The forest loomed like a forgotten god—vast, tangled, and silent.

Hollowmere had not seen a king's banner in over a century. The old woods were cursed, they said. Creatures with too many eyes, whispers that stole your name, trees that remembered blood. But King Augustin rode at the head of twenty men, fear tucked away behind armor and duty.

His horse snorted as they crossed into the dark.

“We shouldn’t be here, Your Majesty,” muttered Commander Thorne, a seasoned knight whose scars told more stories than books ever could. “No one comes back from Hollowmere.”

“I don’t intend to die here,” Augustin replied calmly, eyes scanning the shadows. “I intend to find someone.”

The witch.

He hated the word, even as he chased it.

It sounded too much like an excuse for fear. Like a name given to a woman the world didn’t understand. But the legends were clear: there had once been a woman in these woods who held magic older than the crown itself. And if there was even a sliver of truth in those stories, he would find her.

He had no other choice.

---

Miles away, Anne Ravenshade stood barefoot outside her cottage, staring at the sky.

The stars were wrong.

She didn’t know why that mattered, only that it did. The stars had shifted. The air had changed. And though no one had come, *something* was coming.

The forest had grown nervous.

The animals moved differently. The wind carried news she didn’t understand. Her instincts—*Anne’s* instincts—warned of movement on the edges of her consciousness. Riders. Horses. Steel.

And a strange heat in her chest, like a flame rekindling after centuries of sleep.

Anne pressed her hand to her heart and winced.

She still thought of herself as Rosie. Still remembered Chicago, iced coffee, subway delays, and crying in bathroom stalls at work because she hadn’t eaten in two days. That life had ended in a flicker, and now here she was—in the body of a woman who hadn’t just been feared, but *hunted*.

In the novel, the witch appeared once. Briefly. To curse the Saintess. To tempt the King. She was never meant to survive.

But Rosie had read the book. She knew the world’s rules.

And she had already broken them.

---

The riders came at dawn.

Augustin’s party stopped at the edge of a twisted path, where moss hung from the branches like old lace. A place unmarked on any royal map.

“I feel… watched,” one of the soldiers muttered.

Augustin dismounted, drawing his cloak tighter. Something in the air buzzed with power, a sensation like lightning before a storm.

And then he saw it.

A house hidden in the trees, half-swallowed by nature, but alive with something ancient. Vines clung to it lovingly. Smoke curled from its chimney in a lazy, defiant spiral. This was no ruin.

Someone lived here.

He stepped forward.

But as his boot touched the path, the wind screamed.

In the heart of the woods, Anne gasped and dropped the vial she’d been holding—its contents shattering on the floor in a hiss of blue smoke. Her hands trembled, eyes wide with sudden knowing.

The King had arrived.

And fate had rewritten the first chapter.

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