I am the king’s finest rat catcher—five years running, though no herald ever breathes my name. Not a coin earned. Not a line in the ledgers. Only the evidence of my labor: grain sacks unchewed, larders left whole, and the hush of night unbroken by the scutter of small, gnawing mouths.

Invisible. Essential. Forgotten.

Yesterday, the queen glimpsed me in the great hall, a limp rat dangling from my grasp. It was my forty-third kill this month. Her shriek rattled the chandeliers. She flung her wine at me as if I were the plague, not the deliverance.

“Filthy creature,” she hissed, lifting her silks as though contact with me might rot the hem.

Servants scattered. I withdrew to the dark places between torch pools, clutching my trophy. Tonight she will sleep in unblemished sheets, her dreams unspoiled by the knowledge that something diseased had been nesting beneath her floorboards. But gratitude has no home in her heart. Nor in this castle.

The king? He does not see me at all. I have crossed his desk as he signed decrees, brushed past the royal seal, and watched his gaze slide through me like smoke. Last week, I ended a behemoth that had been chewing through the foundation stones beneath his very throne. The servants whispered about it for days—how could such a monster have died? He never asked. Never wondered. His mind already wandering to treaties or tithes, never to the unnamed defender who keeps his walls from collapsing.

His son is worse. A boy-prince swollen with boredom and cruelty. He sees me as entertainment, something to chase, to corner, to dominate when his tutors bore him. Yesterday, in the library, he blocked my path between shelves and wouldn’t move. I had to choose between defying royalty and survival. So I endured his games while his nurse praised him for playing nicely with ’the help.’

Helper. As though the threat here is some storybook mouse. As though I did not purge an entire plague-breeding colony beneath their very feet.

Only Cook understands. Cook, who leaves a door cracked on cold nights. Who offers what scraps can be spared and greets each of my kills with a grinning “There’s my champion.” Cook sees me. Counts what no one else bothers to tally.

Last night, by the warmth of the hearth, Cook told me the queen has arranged for ’proper pest control.’ An exterminator from Pine Mire—a man with traps and poisons and a fee high enough to feed the staff through winter. A professional. Someone who will appear in the books and be paid handsomely for slaying rats that no longer exist.

“They don’t know,” Cook murmured, hand resting briefly on my shoulder in consolation. “They don’t know who keeps this place from falling apart.”

I stayed close to the fire’s warmth despite myself. Despite the insult of it. The injustice.

Tomorrow, the man will arrive. He’ll scatter his crude alchemy through the corridors I’ve already cleansed, kneel in corners where no vermin dare remain. And he will be praised. Fed. Paid. A savior—performing salvation after the fact.

If I am not cast out, I will watch from the shadows, unseen and uncompensated, compelled by instinct and by pride to continue the work. For I am what I am. What I have always been. The oldest guardian this castle has ever known.

The queen will laud him. The king will reward him. The prince will grow to adulthood never knowing how close his cradle once lay to the plague’s teeth.

And Cook—dear Cook—will save me whatever can be spared.

In the economy of kingdoms, perhaps that is enough. What did I expect? Recognition? Wages? My name spoken in the halls?

No. My victories are quieter.

I wipe the blood from my hands and slip once more into the blackened bones of the castle. The rats never stop coming, and neither, it seems, do I.

After all… I am only a cat.