Touch My Daughter, and You Die

"Surrender, or Norvald ceases to exist."

Wyatt Hale stood with his boot planted on the skull of the enemy nation's greatest Champion, his voice carrying across the frozen plain like a verdict from heaven. The wind cut through flesh and bone, but it was nothing beside the cold in his eyes.

The man under his heel had been unbeatable, a Champion who had broken every challenger across the Ten Nations. It had taken Wyatt five strikes to put him on his knees.

The Iron Legion, Norvald's proudest army, lay scattered across the snow, their blood soaking the ice until the ground itself looked like a wound. The battlefield ran past the horizon in every direction, heaped with the dead and choked with beacon smoke. The stench of blood was thick enough to lean on. And through all of it burned the will of the Nameless Legion, a force that had forgotten how to lose.

But worse than the slaughter was the pressure coming off the man standing above him. Wyatt did not fight like a soldier. He stood over the battlefield the way a god stands over ants. And Norvald's Champion understood, with perfect and terrible clarity, that he was the ant.

"I already know your answer."

Wyatt's face did not change. He lifted the Reaper's Blade, and the grey winter light ran along the steel like water.

Kill Norvald's Champion. March on the Norvald court. Make the King of Norvald pay in blood for invading the Draven Empire. That was the plan, and the broken man at his feet was not going to alter it.

The killing intent rolling off the blade had weight of its own. Snow cracked apart before it was touched, and the light of that edge drained the color from the whole battlefield. Norvald's Champion had never known fear, not in a hundred battles, not against armies ten times his own. Now his soul began to come apart.

This was the sword that had drunk the blood of nine of his comrades. The sword that woke his king screaming every night. If he died here, Norvald would have no Champion left, and no one in the country could stand against the blade of the Marshal of the Northern Army. Even the small, hungry nations on their borders would smell the weakness and tear what remained of Norvald apart.

He had come ready to die for his country. Now, with the edge hovering at his throat, that readiness cracked.

"No... I surrender..."

The words had barely left him when a phone rang across that silent field of blood and bone.

The Reaper's Blade stopped against his neck, a thin line of red sliding down the flat. Wyatt, who had killed hundreds of thousands without blinking, glanced at the unfamiliar number and raised one eyebrow.

He kept the sword in his right hand and put the phone to his left ear. "Who is this?"

A woman's voice came through, scraped raw by three days without sleep. "It's me. Elena Whitlock. The woman you... the woman you were with there at the arch under the old canal bridge in Savrenne State. Our daughter is missing. I've searched for three days. I can't find her. Can you? Is there any way you can find her?"

The words hit him like a thunderclap.

Wyatt, who had never stepped back from a million enemy soldiers, swayed on his feet. That face, cold as death, broke open with something he had no name for.

The woman he had hunted for six years had finally appeared. And she had given him a daughter.

There was no time to feel the joy. Before the warmth could reach his chest, something colder and far sharper took its place: killing intent so thick it felt solid.

"Where are you?" he said. "Where did she disappear?"

"I'm at..."

She got two words out. Then a door exploded inward at the other end of the line, and splintering wood crashed through the speaker.

"Elena, have you made up your mind? Are you marrying me or not? Keep stalling and you really will never see your daughter again."

A man's voice came through the phone, soaked in mockery.

"You took my daughter!" Elena's voice cracked with fury. "You disgusting animal, give her back!"

"I run a legitimate business. Why would I kidnap your daughter? Don't slander me. But I do know people who like to keep little girls. Maybe some boss in the underworld picked her up. Say yes to me, and I'll make a few calls. If it was one of them, I can get her back for you."

"Just spend tonight with me, and I'll have men out looking before morning. What do you say?"

He never admitted to a single crime, and every sentence told her he knew exactly where the young girl was.

Elena screamed, grief tearing her voice apart. "Did you hear that? If you are any kind of man, come back and save your daughter!"

She was not screaming at the man in the room. She was screaming at Wyatt.

"What are you doing? Give me my phone!"

There was a scuffle. Then the man came back on, lazy and amused. "So you're Elena's wild man. Lucky you. She gave you a daughter."

"But whoever you are, you will never find that bastard child. And don't come to Harborcrest. Come here, and you won't even have a grave."

A sharp crack burst from the speaker, the sound of a phone smashed against something hard.

Someone had dared to touch his daughter. Someone had dared to take her.

Did they think he was soft? Did they think he would not kill on Draven soil?

The air split with a grinding crack.

Killing intent poured off him in waves, each one heavier than the last, rolling outward until the ice for half a mile in every direction broke into jagged seams. Norvald's Champion, spared by the blade a moment ago, nearly died from that alone. Blood burst from his eyes, nose, and ears, and he curled into a crack in the ice, shaking.

Only then did he understand. Wyatt had never used his full strength. If he had, Norvald's Champion could not have blocked a single strike.

Wyatt was gone before anyone could see him leave. His voice lingered over the frozen battlefield, hanging in the air long after he had vanished.

"Seven days. Norvald has seven days to give the Draven Empire an answer. After that, Norvald will cease to exist."

"Marshal, forgive me. I couldn't find Lady Whitlock."

Scarlet Vance commanded the Northern Army's intelligence network. There wasn't a secret on the continent she couldn't uncover. Except in the Draven Empire. Every lead went cold the moment it crossed the border. The Emperor and the Imperial Council had made sure of that. And the moment Wyatt set foot inside the empire, his every move would be watched.

Wyatt's expression didn't change. "Light the Beacon.."

Scarlet stiffened. She knew exactly what those words meant. The realization sent a chill through her.

"Marshal, please. There has to be another way."

Wyatt stood aboard his fighter jet, the Reaper's Blade gripped in one hand. His gaze remained fixed on the eastern horizon, toward Harborcrest.

"That was an order. Light the Beacon."

"Yes, Marshal."

Scarlet's hands trembled as she reached for her device. Her face twisted with anguish. What should have taken seconds dragged on. Her finger hovered over the screen, unable to make the final move.

One tap. That was all it would take to lit the Beacon.

But she couldn't bring herself to do it.

She sank to her knees, tears streaming down her face.

"Marshal, please. Don't do this."

"Let me go to Harborcrest. I'll find Lady Whitlock and the young girl. And I swear, everyone responsible for what happened to them will pay."

Wyatt had never repeated an order in his life. No one under his command had ever dared disobey him. He did not punish her now. He only spoke, quietly.

"To the Emperor, to the people of the North, to this empire, I have nothing to answer for. The only debt I carry is to Elena and to the daughter I have never met."

"The North is quiet. No neighbor will test our border for ten years. With me or without me, nothing changes."

The wind tore at his coat, and he did not turn around. "I have done what I could for the country. Now I will do what I can for the woman I love and my daughter."

"Carry out the order. Then go back with the Imperial Oversight Corps."

Something inside Scarlet came apart. Fury and killing intent flooded her eyes, tears pouring down her face, her fingers fighting to stay away from the screen.

In the end, she lit the Beacon.