His POV

I remember the smell of damp earth and rusted iron when they found me.

The knights didn’t know what to do with a creature half-alive, barely human anymore. I didn’t fight. I couldn’t. My body was too frail, my limbs nothing but brittle bones wrapped in shadows. I remember the way they looked at me—like I was some forgotten ghost clinging to the edge of death.

But she didn’t look at me like that.

She was so small back then. A crown too big for her head, ribbons tied unevenly in her hair, and a voice too loud for the silence of the castle. I still remember how she tilted her head, curious, unafraid.

“Can he stay?” she asked. Not to anyone in particular. Just… out loud. Like a question meant for the air. Like I was a stray cat she’d found and decided to keep.

No one dared to deny her.

That was the first time I ever saw the sun through stained glass.

And from that day forward, I stayed. Not locked away. Not leashed. But by her side.

They called me her “personal butler.” A ridiculous title, really. But she took it seriously. She demanded I braid her hair. Carry her books. Walk two steps behind her, always. She used to ask me to sing—until she realized I wouldn’t. Then she just started singing at me instead.

I didn’t speak much. I still don’t. But she never needed words from me. She filled the silence with her own, talking about flowers and food and books she never finished, and why birds should wear little coats in the winter.

She talked. I listened.

She grew.

Somewhere between losing her baby teeth and learning how to command a room full of nobles, she stopped calling me “Mister Vampire” and started saying my name with a softness that didn’t belong to a princess.

And I… stayed the same. Always the same.

Time does not touch me. But it shaped her.

She walks like a queen now. She orders without blinking. But she still seeks me out first thing in the morning. She still leaves space for me beside her on the garden bench. She still lets me hold the umbrella.

She still chooses me.

And I still choose her.

Tonight she returned late. Her hair damp from the rain, cheeks flushed with frustration. “That banquet was insufferable,” she muttered, kicking off her shoes, collapsing onto the velvet couch like a thundercloud wrapped in silk.

“Tell me something that’ll make the noise in my head stop,” she said without looking at me.

I placed the teacup down on the table in front of her, steady, precise.

“You don’t need a story, Princess,” I said quietly. “You just want me to stay.”

She didn’t deny it.

Just met my eyes. Long. Unblinking. That look again—the one that never grew up. The one that still sees me like I’m more than a shadow.

And I knew, right then, that if she asked me to follow her to the ends of the world, I would.

Not because of duty. Not because I owe her my life.

But because the heart I thought long dead only remembers how to beat…

…when she speaks my name.