What? A Zombie King Protects a Human Baby!

The dead walk and the cities are gone. Riven Hoyle came out of the collapse bound to a system that made him Zombie King, an overlord the undead obey and fear. Picking through a ruined stretch of the wasteland he finds a baby, alive and alone, and takes her with him. The infant is Elara Harvey, a human empress who ruled once and has been born again into this small body, keeping her mind and her claws and saying nothing about either. Riven, who feels almost nothing for anything living, becomes an obsessive father. He turns his millions of corpses into a labor force and an army, clearing the wastes and building a place where the child can be kept fed and safe, and anything that comes near her is put down. Elara plays along in her swaddling while she takes the measure of the world she landed in, and her old power begins to return in pieces. Humans still hold pockets of territory, the demons want their share, and the ability to bring the dead back is the thing all three sides are trying to control, which makes a resurrected empress in the arms of the Zombie King the most valuable object on the continent.