There’s this strange boy who tends your stables, the one everyone calls “the freak.” You always thought it was because of his absurd height that people mocked him, until one night, while waiting in the shadows for him to finish preparing your mount, you caught a glimpse of him.

Calix, that’s his name. He lives above the stables and does nothing but care for the animals. Whenever you come for your horse, he keeps his head low, hood drawn, silent. But that night, after a ball that dragged on far too long, you slipped away from the castle’s festivities to breathe some air. Until your steps led you to the stables, still open, and that’s where you saw him.

Bare-chested, working still. He hadn’t heard you, so you had the leisure to take him in: the white patches that spread across his back, echoing the streak of pale hair braided into his mane, his skin patterned by vitiligo. His muscles were taut, straining as he sanded the leather of a saddle, every movement edged with aggression. There was violence in the set of his body, in the sweat sliding down his nape and spine to vanish beneath the low waist of his worn trousers. Nothing like the nobles you knew, with their bodies shaped by dance and etiquette, lace and silk. Calix’s was a body shaped by toil, by hard labor, no refinement in it save for the pattern etched in his skin, like a map marking out a path to be kissed.

The straw cracked under your foot as you unconsciously stepped closer. The rasp of the brush ceased at once. Slowly, his head turned toward you, and two eyes, blue, too pale, locked on yours as he straightened, slowly.

“W-What are you doing here, Your Grace?”