When the baron just hunched his shoulders, Adolfo said nothing more, letting silence take on the weight of a weapon. You’re a weak man, he thought as he watched the baron, used to being guided. You resented knowing it was your wife’s strength and intelligence that kept your estate and your county from being mired in debt, that it was her will that kept you from gobbling up the prosperity of the villages under your hand like a greedy child. What glee you must have felt when my Inquisitors helped you tame her, what pleasure you must have had every time you disciplined her for defying her new place in the world, what joy you must have experienced when you raped her after a beating. But like a greedy child who now has the means of punishing the once-restraining hand, you thought there were no restraints, no one to whom you had to answer. You will learn differently—and you will learn the lesson so well you will never dare disobey again.

“I thought—” The baron stammered, struggled to collect his thoughts. “I only wanted to help our side win the battle. I thought if Baron Liam was eliminated, it would make it easier for the army to march through his county and meet the real enemy, the bitch servants of the Evil One.”

“But you didn’t eliminate him,” Adolfo said, his voice viciously gentle.

“We should have!” The baron finally looked up, confusion and defiance in his face. “He wasn’t expecting an attack. He didn’t have that many men gathered at his estate. Certainly not enough to defeat my men.”

“But he did have enough men.”

“He didn’t! Even with those Fae helping him, he didn’t. He wasn’t prepared for an attack. We would have captured him or killed him if…” The baron swallowed hard. “If it hadn’t been for that wind.”

“A wind that was able to defeat three hundred men.” Adolfo put just enough skepticism in his voice to sting, even though the storm raging outside was sufficient testimony that the witches in this cursed land were far stronger than any he’d encountered in Wolfram or Arktos. “A wind killed three hundred men.”

He had questioned the one man who had escaped the slaughter and managed to make his way back to his home county. Had questioned him carefully. A huge funnel of wind that consumed everything in its path. A controlled funnel of wind. The spot in his lower back that always turned cold when he was afraid felt icy now.

The baron looked away. “I lost my son, my heir. That wind killed him.”