The Kingdom of Aravell lay shrouded in a mist that never burned away, even under the weight of a midday sun. It was a land tucked between craggy mountains and ancient, whispering woods, where myths refused to die. Among the greatest of these tales was the one never spoken aloud , the legend of the vampire who lived beneath the ruins of the fallen cathedral.
Princess Elira had never believed in ghosts or the undead. At seventeen, she was sharp-tongued, clever, and known for scaling the palace walls at midnight to escape the suffocating court life. Her governess often said she had the blood of wolves, not royals. But the blood of royals, it seemed, had long drawn the attention of other creatures , things far older and colder.
On the eve of the winter solstice, when the moon hung low and bloated in the sky, Elira followed a silver stag deep into the woods, past the edge of reason. It was not fear that gripped her heart when she came upon the ruins , only awe. Ivy had clawed over fallen stones, and in the center stood a statue of an angel with broken wings. Beneath its gaze, she saw him.
He stood like a shadow stitched from starlight , pale skin luminous in the dark, eyes the color of forgotten embers. His name, she would learn later, was Corvin. And he had been waiting for her.
"Princess," he said, as though he'd spoken her name in dreams a thousand times. "You should not be here."
"Why are you?" she countered, chin high despite the shiver in her spine.
He smiled then , not with fangs, but sorrow. "Because I was cursed to wait."
As the days passed, Elira returned again and again, drawn not just by curiosity but by the pull of something ancient, something aching. Corvin told her stories , of a time when he walked under the sun, when kings and monsters made deals in blood, and how he had loved a girl with fire in her heart who wore a crown of bone. He never said her name, but Elira saw her in the way he looked at her ,as though she were both ghost and mirror.
She learned he could not enter her world without an invitation. She never gave it. Not truly. But she asked him questions and brought him books, and once , a rose carved from obsidian. He said no one had given him a gift in over three hundred years.
One night, a storm lashed through Aravell. Lightning tore open the sky, and the mist wept with fury. That was the night Corvin kissed her. His lips were cold, but it was not unpleasant. It felt like surrendering to something inevitable , like drowning in moonlight.
"You don't age," she whispered afterward, tracing the lines of his unmoving chest. "But I will."
"I know," he murmured, looking away.
There were stories of vampires who turned those they loved. She asked him once, her voice a tremble in the dark. He refused.
"It is not love to curse you as I've been cursed."
But time has teeth. It gnaws at memory, at desire, at resolve. When war came to Aravell and the king fell to a blade meant for Elira, she fled to the ruins with blood on her hands and a crown shattered in her satchel.
She found Corvin waiting, as he always did. "They will come for me," she said.
"Then let them," he growled.
And they did. Swords and fire and men screaming prayers to forgotten gods. But none of them left the forest alive.
They say the ruins of the cathedral are cursed now, and the mist never lifts from the woods. Travelers speak of a pale man and a queen cloaked in twilight, who rule from the shadows and drink only from those who come with bloodlust in their hearts.
Elira was never seen in the sun again. But on certain nights, when the moon is a thin silver scar, villagers claim they hear laughter from the trees ,wild and free, like wolves in love.