“Negotiate?” She tasted the word like spoiled fruit. “You misunderstand, Mr. Graves. You are not here to negotiate. You are here to submit .”
“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.”
“They’re here, High Witch,” a novice whispered, her voice trembling not from cold, but from the sheer gravity of the woman before her.
The men exchanged glances. One of them, younger, bristled. “Now, see here—” Dominant Witches
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.
Graves swallowed. Sweat beaded on his upper lip. “And if we refuse?”
“Here are my terms,” she said, walking toward them. Each step echoed like a gavel. “First: The Eastern Coven assumes governance of all climate policy. No votes. No oversight. Our word is the final weather system. Second: Every nation dismantles its nuclear arsenal within one lunar cycle. Not because we fear them—but because we find them tasteless . Third: A tithe. Not gold. Not oil. The old growth forests you’ve been saving as ‘carbon offsets’? They become ours. To rewild. To rule. To remember.” “Negotiate
“You have until dawn,” she said without looking down. “The novice at the door will give you tea and a blanket. My answer will not change.”
Inside, Seraphina Blackwood, the High Witch of the Eastern Circle, adjusted the obsidian choker at her throat. It pulsed with a low, amber light. Power. Authority. The kind that bent the knee of governors and made senators forget their own names.
As the delegation stumbled out into the suddenly silent night, Seraphina stood before her altar. The bones of saints, the feathers of extinct birds, a mirror that showed not her face but the face of every woman who had been drowned, hanged, or silenced. You are not here to negotiate
The younger man, mouth still sealed, made a muffled, desperate sound.
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.