Chapter Eight #2
Usually, there was a lot more hubbub about these denials, but at this point the process had been going on for nearly the length of a Marvel movie, and everyone was itching to get out.
Katherine let her gaze meet Lily’s as Sylvia ran through the last of the properly filed requests at lightning speed.
She’d sat the teen down next to Casey Saito, a formerly unsettled witch who had trained at Oak Grove and was now thriving in the coven.
He was one of the program’s biggest success stories—someone who had stuck around after learning to control his magic and had chosen to be a part of Aestas.
Katherine had tactfully avoided telling Lily about the half dozen unsettled witches who had left Oak Grove as soon as they learned to control themselves and avoided everything having to do with magic from then on.
Some even reached out to Noctis, arranging to give up their magic as soon as it settled to create a spellbook.
They chose to live the rest of their lives with that hole in themselves rather than continue in the witch community.
Lily would have that option too, when the time came.
But Katherine wanted her to choose to stay.
After her magic settled, she would be able to go back to her family, but the trauma of what had happened would still linger.
Katherine wanted Lily to use the support system Aestas provided to learn to move past it, rather than throwing her magic away and pushing it down entirely.
She wanted her to learn to embrace magic as a blessing, not a curse.
The only reason Katherine had made it through after her snap was this coven.
She wanted—needed—to know that Lily would have that same chance.
“And now, for the final part of our meeting,” Sylvia said. Katherine had been wondering if Sylvia would delay this part, considering it was heavily orchestrated for Divakar to see, but Joe was waiting for his sentencing, so it would need to go forward as planned.
“As you all know, we have rules in this coven that we take very seriously. Witches who break those rules are called before the coven jury for sentencing.”
Sylvia walked to a door along the wall and rested her hand on its surface.
The door lit up as the golden wards recognized her and opened, revealing Joe.
He was still in the suit he’d been wearing when Katherine brought him in, although she knew that was by choice rather than necessity.
Coven prisoners were very well treated—they had their pick of loungewear, and Tess served them three square meals of her finest every day.
Katherine would have preferred they get orange jumpsuits and gruel.
Joe, thankfully, had decided he was no longer going to be a problem, so he was able to walk to the stage without any magical coercion.
Katherine’s eyes drilled knives into the back of his head as he sat on the provided chair, waiting patiently while Sylvia presented the coven with the mountain of magical and non-magical evidence that Katherine had gathered against him.
“Do you have anything you would like to add to the record of these proceedings?” she asked as she wrapped up.
“Nope,” Joe said, leaning forward toward the gathered coven, his elbows on his knees. “I did it, and I have no regrets. I’m a witch, and I’m strong, and if I want to use that to my own benefit, then so be it.”
There was a tittering among the crowd, one bottle blond in the front row nodding so hard in approval that Katherine thought her neck might snap.
It was a massive, long-standing debate among witches—how much they were allowed to take, where the line was between being strong and being a tyrant.
If you were trying to buy a house and used a deterrent spell to scare away the competition, what was the harm?
What was the value of magic if it couldn’t be used?
Katherine didn’t agree with putting witches on a different playing field from ordinaries, and officially, neither did the coven.
But she wondered sometimes where Sylvia really stood on the question.
Wondered if the deals she made with ordinaries, the life force that she asked them to give up in exchange for something she could give away for free, crossed that line.
But intention mattered, and Sylvia’s deals helped people and the coven. Joe did what he did for his own personal gain.
“I propose to the coven jury that Joe be given a power dampener for one month,” Sylvia said, turning to Katherine, Fiona, and Henry. “All in favor, please raise your hands.”
Katherine shot her hand up, also aiming a kick at Henry under the table. He jolted awake with a grunt, noticed Katherine and Fiona’s raised hands, and then parroted their motion.
“All right,” Sylvia said. “Four in favor, none opposed.” She turned to the rest of the coven. “Would anyone like to propose the ruling be overturned?”
Katherine’s eyes fixed on Byron, but he kept his hand down, staring at her with a sly expression. The rest of the coven remained silent as well.
“Then the sentence will be carried out,” Sylvia said.
Sylvia cut into her palm, making an identical cut on Joe’s hand before joining their hands together.
Power dampener spells were always completed publicly as a reminder to the coven of the consequences of breaking the rules, but Katherine knew there was another reason for Sylvia to do this here.
Every witch’s power got stronger when they were around more people, their energy summoning magic to the surface.
Given the power Sylvia had gotten from the ordinary the day before, this spell shouldn’t be an issue, but doing it in a crowd would be an extra help.
The rune glinted between them, and Joe let out a low grunt as the spell took effect.
It wasn’t excruciatingly painful, but it was deeply uncomfortable, a cleaving away of a fundamental piece of self.
Katherine had had Sylvia do it on her once, shortly after being named Executrix—she wanted to understand the sentence she was carrying out, to feel it herself before she voted someone else into it.
Sylvia was extremely resistant to the concept, having undergone the spell in her own youth for reasons she wouldn’t share.
She had finally agreed to put the spell on Katherine just for a day, and it had been brutal, like slogging through a swamp.
Katherine didn’t envy Joe a month of that.
By the time Sylvia’s spell finished, Joe had gone white as a sheet, swaying in his seat. A friend of his walked to the stage, putting his arm under Joe’s and leading him toward the back of the room. He’d need a day or two to sleep it off before he’d be able to go back to his normal activities.
“Well,” Sylvia said, moving back to her place at the dais. “That wraps up our official business for the night.” The crowd started to move, gathering their things, but then Sylvia rapped her knuckles on the dais.
“Oh, wait, I’m sorry,” she said. “One more thing.” The assembled witches started to sit back down, a few grumbles rolling through the audience. Katherine shifted in her seat—she didn’t know what this could be regarding, which wasn’t a good sign. Her palms broke into a cold sweat.
Sylvia looked at the coven seriously for a moment—then broke into a smile. “Happy Halloween, witches.”
Cheers of relief and excitement sounded from the assembled witches. Katherine clapped too, her face splitting into a grin.
Until the door swung open.
The man standing in the doorway certainly wasn’t Divakar.
The room quieted as everyone turned to look at him—over six feet tall, his frame filling the entire space.
Perfectly tailored black suit, sharp jawline, dark brown skin and black hair and ridiculously white teeth shining in a crooked smile. With a dimple.
That motherfucking dimple.
“Silas Khatri,” the man said, as if the sole offspring of the most powerful witches in the country needed any introduction. “I’m your new Noctis rep. Sorry I’m late.”