Dominant - Witches

The men exchanged glances. One of them, younger, bristled. “Now, see here—”

“High Witch Blackwood,” the lead diplomat, a man named Graves, began. He attempted a smile. It failed. “We’ve come to negotiate terms for weather stabilization.” Dominant Witches

“Then I let the droughts continue,” she said softly. “I let the hurricanes spiral. I let the fires dance another season. And you, Mr. Graves, will watch your cities burn while my sisters and I sip tea in this tower, warm and dry and patient .” The men exchanged glances

The rain over Salem’s End had a memory. It remembered the fires, the stones, the whispered names. Tonight, it fell in sheets, drumming a frantic rhythm against the stained glass of the Ivory Tower—the last covenstead in the Northeast. He attempted a smile

She stood. The air grew heavy, thick with the scent of ozone and wet clay—the smell of creation being unmade and remade.

“Let them wait,” Seraphina said, not turning. She watched her reflection in the rain-smeared glass. At forty-seven, she looked thirty. Magic was a magnificent cosmetician. “Fear is the only currency they understand.”

Seraphina glided to her throne—a throne carved from the petrified heart of a redwood she herself had raised from a seed a century ago. She sat, crossed one leg over the other, and let the silence expand until it hurt.