As Dusk Falls - gerudo__desert (2024)

Chapter 1: Midna

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Through a crack in the town gates, Midna watched a cloud of smoke and dust rise from Hyrule Castle to pollute the twilit sky. Zelda gazed inscrutably in the same direction. Link didn't look anywhere at all—just blinked hard, over and over, as he leaned against Midna and staunched the bloody wound across his chest.

"Sorry about the castle," Midna said to break the silence.

"Stone is a small sacrifice to make," Zelda replied. "I hate to ask this, but…"

"What, you don't want to terrify people further?" Midna joked. "I get it."

Despite a valiant attempt to stand on his own, Link wavered as she stepped reluctantly away. Zelda filled her place a heartbeat later, bracing her narrow shoulders against his weight and meeting his mumbled apology with graceful dismissal. Midna looked at these two people in the golden sunset—exhausted, filthy, harrowed, magnificent—and knew that if the Light Spirits hadn't saved her, she would have died happy.

She slipped into the shadows without complaint. The alarming presence of a Twili was the last thing Castle Town needed after months of nameless fear, capped off by the castle's destruction.

Zelda was reaching for the gate when someone pulled it open from the other side. She and Link both stumbled, and Midna was relieved to see that help had arrived in the form of the Resistance—some of the only Hyruleans brave enough to run towards danger instead of away.

"Link?" Rusl said breathlessly. "Golden Goddesses, what—"

"He needs a doctor," Zelda interrupted.

"Princess?" An older man stepped up to Rusl's side, hefting a large cannon over his shoulder, his face drawn with shock.

Zelda froze.

Auru had helped Link find the Mirror of Twilight, but Midna had also seen him through Zelda's memories: his eyes crinkling when she impressed him during their lessons, his arms holding her fast on the day her mother died, his horse disappearing on the horizon while she watched from the ramparts.

Before either of them could speak, Rusl disentangled Link from Zelda. This time—as hours of pain and blood loss and desperate battle compounded with months of the same—Link's knees buckled. Rusl caught him smoothly.

"I can walk," Link insisted, because he was all stubborn pride, because he wanted to reach the end of this long nightmare on his own terms.

"I know you can," Rusl said, lifting the boy he'd raised into his arms anyway. Shad ran ahead to warn the doctor; Ashei stuck to Rusl's side as he carried Link down the street.

"Auru," Zelda said at last. "My people are waiting."

He followed her into the city, and so did Midna. Link was in good hands, and she wanted to see how Zelda handled a homecoming that she herself would soon have to face.

The scene at the gates had drawn a few curious onlookers, but a larger crowd gathered at the plaza, watching the castle's central tower crumble and smoke. Chin up, back straight, the princess glided through their midst like a royal galleon parting the sea. By the time she sprang up onto the rim of the fountain, every pair of eyes was on her.

Thin from captivity, shaky from months without a body, her dress smeared with Link's blood: yet Zelda carried herself with exquisite grace. A statue of the Hylian crest spread its stone wings at her back. The last streaks of the dwindling sun crowned her in gold. In her right hand was a bow fashioned from magic, bright and pure, granted by the Light Spirits to rout the end of the world.

"The scourge is vanquished," Zelda declared. "The castle is damaged, but everything that matters is safe. I trust you have many questions. Answers will come in time. For now, I thank you for your courage, and I promise: Hyrule is ours once more."

Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Not cheers—people were too confused for that. But Zelda's presence kindled an unmistakable awe. Would Midna's people look at her that way when she went home? Would she deserve it?

Zelda did, without question. But she had never abandoned anyone.

Link was bandaged and clean and fast asleep in the spare room above Telma's bar by the time Midna arrived. The bewildered doctor was telling the Resistance that if the damage hadn't killed him already, perhaps nothing could. Rusl stayed after all the others were gone, unaware of Midna as she curled up in the shadows beneath the bed and closed her own exhausted eyes.

Link was still asleep when she woke the next day, and the day after that. She split her time between his side and Zelda's, popping out of the shadows to startle the other princess whenever she was alone. That happened rarely enough—with the throne room in ruins and monsters still about, Zelda had her hands full getting the castle back in order with the deeply incompetent Hyrulean guard and some volunteers the Resistance had organized.

On the dawn of the third day, Link opened his eyes. Midna, who had been watching the emerging sun and remembering her changeless homeworld, turned to look at him.

He blinked a few times, groggy and a bit shy—she was not the imp he'd known. She was herself again, tall and strong with the full force of her ancestors' magic flowing through her: the Twilight Princess who would never flee her people again.

"Hey," Midna said, settling into Rusl's chair. "We did it."

The knowledge settled like gentle snowfall. Link smiled, soft and sweet and truly content for the first time since they had met, and Midna made her decision there and then.

They talked for a while, about everything and nothing, until someone knocked on the door. Knowing that Link's awakening would create a great deal of fuss, Midna whispered, "See you later," and ducked into the shadows.

She was relieved to find Zelda awake and alone, clutching a cup of coffee like a lifeline as she watched the rosy sunrise from the castle ramparts.

"Link woke up," Midna said by way of greeting as she took form.

"Is he well?" Zelda wondered.

"Yeah." Midna rested her hands on the parapet, growing warm with the rising light. That garish sun would have hurt her, once, but something had changed since Zelda saved her.Everythinghad changed. She stared towards Gerudo Desert with desperate eyes.

"I know what you're thinking," Zelda said.

"Of course you do."

"Your concerns are well-founded. The risk would always be present. But with enough work…we could make both our worlds safe."

"You really believe that?"

"I dream of it," Zelda said sincerely, a response Midna had never expected of the self-contained princess, which made it all the more valuable. Early sunbeams scattered the world at their feet, shining softly across the grey stone of Hyrule Castle, turning the surrounding moat into a brilliant mirror. Long shadows shifted and loomed in every empty space.

"I dream of it too," Midna admitted. "I just don't think dreams are enough, after all we've seen."

Zelda said the kindest thing one ruler could say to another: "I understand."

"And…you'll take care of him?"

"I will be with him," Zelda promised. "Just…just as I will be with you."

Midna took her hand, small and warm against her own cool flesh. "I wish there was someone I could ask to take care ofyou. But you'll be all right, won't you, Princess?"

"Yes," Zelda answered. She was the product of everything Midna had seen in her memories, both the sorrow and the sweetness; she was indomitable. "But, Midna—aren't we past titles by now?"

"You're right, Zelda. We are."

The memory of her answering smile—careful and sad and utterly real—would stay tucked into Midna's heart for the rest of her life.

By the time she seeped along the shadowed streets and up through the floorboards of Telma's bar, Rusl was ruffling Link's hair and telling him to go back to sleep. After he was gone, Link murmured Midna's name—not in question, but with total certainty that she was here. Certainty that would be shattered twenty-four hours from now.

"Hey," she greeted. "Think you can make it to the desert tomorrow?"

"Think I'd better," he answered. "I know you want to go home."

And if she waited any longer, she would lose her nerve. Midna swallowed hard and lied through her teeth: "I'll come back in a week or so."

Even that time apart felt jarring, frightening. They had spent nearly every minute of the past six months together. Looking up at her with his fierce blue eyes, Link opened his arms.

Midna came from a world of perpetually mild temperatures. Hyrule's summer heat had shocked her; Snowpeak's bitter cold was even worse. That was where she'd curled up against Link's thick wolf-fur for the first time, terribly self-conscious about the whole thing, daring him to speak a single word of it the next time he was human.

He never had. And somehow, she found herself at his side the next night, and the one after that, no matter what form he took. They held fast to each other while the world dragged them away from everything else, and that was salvation.

When Midna climbed into his bed now, everything felt different. Tall in her true skin, she was the one gathering his small body into her arms this time, and he melted into it.

"Promise me something," she said.

"Anything," was Link's immediate reply—one that would have been ridiculous coming from anyone less capable of following through.

"Two things," Midna corrected. Her fingers brushed the clean white bandage that covered the deep cut on his cheek. Though she had been unconscious at the time, she knew it came from Zelda's sword, wielded by Ganondorf as he possessed her body. "We don't tell her about this. About what he did."

Link closed his eyes briefly—in weariness, certainly, but also to fend off the memory. "You sure?"

"Yeah. She's had her fair share of pain, and with Hyrule in the shape it is…all I want is to spare her more."

"Okay," he agreed. Where they touched, his heartbeat was steady and regular, not hammering from the horrors of that day or fear of the next. Right now, Link's profound relief eclipsed the physical pain, the soiled past, the uncertain future—but it wouldn't stay that way forever. "What's the second thing?"

Midna wanted a thousand promises. One to find peace. One to remember her, and forgive her if he could. One to show Zelda that trust didn't always mean danger.

But Link would forsake everything he loved to follow her, if he knew what she was about to do. Besides—two promises were already more than she deserved.

"I can't say I have no regrets," Midna said finally, swallowing hard. "But what we did together—what we achieved—was worth every cost. Remember that. Promise me you'll remember it was worth it."

Ordinarily, Link might have reacted with skepticism. Right now he was half-asleep, and healing, and happy, so he just mumbled, "I promise."

Already his eyelids were fluttering shut and his face slackening into that boyish softness that devastated Midna every single time. For her part, she stayed awake, waiting for the breaking of the last dawn she would ever see.

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Chapter 2: Wreckage

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Chapter 3: Medicine

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“Link,” Rusl said slowly, “Are you sure?”

Everyone else in the hallway buzzed with urgency. Following the princess’s announcement that both the dungeons and upper levels were clear of monsters, the castle was leaping to open its gates much earlier than expected.

“Ashei says the roads are safe,” Link replied, shifting from foot to foot. “You won’t have trouble getting the kids home.”

“That’s not why I asked,” Rusl said patiently. “When was the last time you were in Ordon?”

The longing rose up like a sudden summer storm. Grass underfoot. The first cry of a Cucco as dawn scattered soft light over the purple rooftops. Ilia humming to herself as she braided Epona’s mane. The taste of honeycomb and pumpkin soup, the laughter of children, the deep green smell of the trees.

Link had last been there to get the iron boots from Mayor Bo. He’d spent most of the intervening time in dungeons or wilderness; occasionally, he’d slept above Telma’s bar or at Kakariko’s inn. But never in his own bed in the creaking treehouse he called home. Midna had always wondered—

He killed that thought immediately, for her name was a blade twisting inside his body.

“The kids have waited long enough,” he mumbled.

Rusl sighed, unable to argue on that point. “All right. I know Princess Zelda has need of you. Say—did you ever get the chance to deliver our sword? Uli told me you’d reclaimed it from the monsters.”

“Not yet,” said Link, who had honestly forgotten until this moment that Ordon’s tribute to the soon-to-be queen was stashed at Telma’s bar with the other relics of his old life. “I have something for Colin, though.”

He pulled out a little wooden horse, painted by a town artist to resemble Epona. Rusl took it between his hands, looking suddenly, alarmingly old—weathered lines marking his eyes and mouth, beard growing longer than he let it.

“You remembered Colin’s birthday, in the midst of all this?” he asked softly. “Link…I don’t know exactly what happened here, but—I’m incredibly proud of you.”

You shouldn’t be, Link thought. I’m not.

He shrugged and instantly regretted it—the stitched wound across his chest didn’t appreciate the movement any more than it had appreciated yesterday’s journey to the desert or the sleepless fighting since. It hurt when Rusl pulled him into an embrace, too, but Link clung tight anyway, feeling light-headed and weak and five years old.

“Get some sleep,” Rusl said into his ear. “And come home when you can. You’ve still got to meet the baby.”

Nodding, Link waited for Rusl to disappear around the corner before his fingers found the doorknob and twisted it open mechanically. Amidst the shadowed unfamiliarity of the room the princess had given him last night, he shed the weapons, the shirt that reeked of monster blood, the chainmail underneath. Now, even in the summer heat, chills prickled at his skin. Someone somewhere probably needed his help, but he found himself leaning the Master Sword against the nightstand and crawling under the covers.

It hadn’t even occurred to him that Uli and Rusl’s second child must be four or five months old by now. His thoughts were always on the next task, the next fight, driving him forward before the fear caught up. But there was nowhere left to go besides home—and as badly as Link wanted his old life back, he would sacrifice it in a heartbeat to have Midna’s small body tucked against his.

Once again, he heard the Mirror of Twilight break open the world.

In the dungeons last night, he’d come across the exact spot where they’d met: him a wolf chained inside a cell, her a grinning shadow on the other side of it. I found you. She’d found him, used him, fought at his side, saved his life, and then—and then—

Link lunged for a basin and vomited into it, though barely anything came up. Shaking, his arms closed over his middle, he sank back against the mattress. How could she carry everything so easily, when it was burning a hole through his ribcage? How could she look him in the eyes and leave without saying goodbye?

Maybe the answer was simple: she had always been the strong one. She didn’t need him the way he needed her.

He closed his eyes. The next time he opened them, he wasn’t sure he was awake. Cold rattled through him like the wind off Snowpeak; his stomach roiled with nausea; the cut Ganondorf had left behind seared like nothing he’d ever felt. He slept, woke, slept, woke again from a nightmare of ripping out a shadow beast’s throat.

A silhouette stood framed in the open doorway, barely distinguishable from the thick castle night. But Link knew her anyway. He would know her blind, by the tugging of the string that had been drawing him towards her all his life. Every candle began to glow as she entered the room.

“You missed dinner,” Princess Zelda said in a tone that was somehow pointed and nonjudgmental at the same time.

Link directed his gaze at the ceiling to avoid hers. She had a way of piercing straight through to his core.

“I will send for a doctor.”

Half an hour later, Link was still staring at the ceiling throughout a lecture on the dangers of letting a wound fester. He’d worked himself much harder after countless other injuries without his body failing him like this before, but rather than point that out, he just waited for the doctor to grow annoyed with his silence.

He closed the door behind him, but Link had retained enough wolf-sense to hear him grumble, “That kid’s odd and no mistake, Princess. Those scars—who even is he?”

“I fail to see why it matters,” came the cold retort. “Thank you for your help.”

The door whispered open; Princess Zelda moved almost as quietly, sitting at Link’s bedside to offer him steaming bowl of broth. The belltower had struck midnight a while ago, but dust and dirt from the ruined throne room still clung to her pale blue dress and white gloves. The gold-and-sapphire diadem nestled a bit crookedly in her chestnut brown hair.

Link would die for her in a heartbeat but understood very few pieces of her puzzle. For one, she loved Midna as much as he did. And while he had handled yesterday’s events by rampaging through the remains of Ganondorf’s army and landing himself here in this bed, she was up rebuilding her kingdom while the rest of the world slept.

“The doctor would like you to eat,” the princess said.

Link watched the steam rise from the bowl.

“Or,” she went on, “perhaps you could explain why I am sensing powerful magic inside this room. The sort of magic I thought was gone from our world.”

He reached for the drawer of the nightstand and pulled it open. The Triforce of Wisdom glowed softly as Zelda held her hand over the terrible thing inside: the shadow crystal Zant had stabbed into Link’s skull to trap him in wolfshape, tightly encased in a leather wrap and attached to a string.

He’d found it in his pocket after they’d returned last night. He didn’t know why Midna had left it with him. He didn’t know whether he wanted to cast it into the fires of Death Mountain or wear it against his heart forever.

“I see,” the princess said neutrally, sliding the drawer shut. “I hope you know that she did not make the choice easily. She asked me to take care of you.”

For some reason, that made Link laugh: a strange, shaky, wretched laugh that hurt his injured chest. The room wheeled around him.

The princess sighed. “Try to eat, Hero. You did not defeat Ganondorf to be killed by an infection.”

She was halfway to the door when Link realized the implication of her earlier words. He remembered her standing in the Mirror Chamber with sunset in her hair, saying that she knew why the Goddesses had kept a path open between the Light and Twilight realms. Because it was their design that we should meet.

“You knew,” he rasped. “You were trying to stop her. You knew.”

“Yes,” Zelda admitted, stopping in her tracks.

“Why—” Link started, but something dark and vile was roiling inside him, and he closed his lips to seal it there.

“It was her choice. I disagreed, but I would never take it from her.”

There was nothing he could say to that. He rolled to face the wall, and she left without another word.

Midna flitted through his dreams that night. He chased her through desert sands and dark forests, through twilit halls and lakes of blood, but she was always just out of reach. The doctor returned the next morning, followed by Telma, who set down a tray of food and reminded him gently that there were still people who needed him. Including Ilia.

Link touched the horseshoe charm around his neck and tried to imagine the oaken walls of his treehouse around him, the chorus of summer cicadas replacing the bustle of a rebuilding castle. He reached for a slice of bread.

Five minutes later, he threw it back up.

The fever dragged him from sleep to wakefulness without much distinction between the two. He knew he wouldn’t die—a corpse couldn’t save Hyrule, so the Goddesses had shaped him to withstand anything. Even if they stopped protecting their weapon after his task was complete, Link still had his own relentless and inexplicable desire to live, even when death would be so much easier.

Still—the past six months had made him an expert in pain, and there was something different in the way he felt now. He was colder than he’d ever been in his life, and everything hurt. Everything tasted like poison.

Some indeterminable time later, he opened his eyes to two faces— Zelda, a source of shame; the doctor, a source of annoyance, peeling back the bandages to scrutinize the stitches beneath.

“He is no better or worse, Princess. But he needs to eat. He can’t take medicine otherwise.”

The doctor had the stool, so Zelda knelt beside the bed. “Can you understand me, Hero?”

He opened his mouth to reassure her, but a shiver ripped through him, and in its wake came a traitorous whisper: “My name is Link.”

He couldn’t see her well through his hazy vision, but he could feel the intensity of her gaze: severe and beautiful. Someone knocked on the door; the doctor opened it and returned with a tray of more dreaded food. Without taking her eyes off Link, the princess told him politely to set it down and leave the room. Her gloved hand gripped the edge of the mattress.

“Your name is Link,” she agreed when they were alone. “And mine is Zelda.”

“Zelda,” he repeated, feeling the rightness of it. “I’m sorry.”

Her face was completely unreadable. “For what?”

Link’s pulse hammered painfully in his ears, in the pads of his fingers, in his ruined chest. He must stink of blood and infection and vomit. The bandaged cut on his face screamed a reminder that he didn’t deserve to be anywhere near her—but he’d promised not to talk about that, and he kept his promises, even when the other side didn’t.

“I dunno,” he said. “Are—are things okay? Is it monsters? Do you need—”

“All I need is to ask you a question. I would like your mind to be clear when I do. Is this what you want to hear about? If I tell you news of Hyrule, will you eat?”

Let it never be said that Hyrule’s sovereign lacked perception. Link pushed himself upright, shocked by how much it hurt to do so, and accepted the bowl Zelda handed him. Then she perched upon the stool, waited for him to take his first slow sip of soup, and started to speak of her kingdom.

The castle had been sparsely populated even before Zant’s invasion for reasons she didn’t explain, but people were finally flocking back, including the nobles and administrators who comprised her new Council. The Gorons had also come—free of charge—to eat the rubble that suited their tastes and destroy the rest with unmatched efficiency. She had received word that Zora’s Domain would have a new monarch not long after Hyrule did, which made Link glad for Ralis and for Queen Rutela’s memory.

Zelda moved through other topics seamlessly—her plans to restore the battered and dysfunctional royal guard, the help the Resistance was lending her, the commerce that would resume now that the roads were safe. Despite how hard she was to read, Link thought she sounded proud. There was a steadiness about her, an unflinching calm he’d noticed from that first day in the Twilight, that captured his attention even through the fever-chills and the aching wound.

He was surprised to find that he’d finished both his soup and the medicine that followed—the first time he’d kept anything but water down since before the desert. Moving away from that thought at once, he said, “What did you want to ask me?”

“Oh, yes.” Zelda smoothed her skirts. “You are aware that most of our people know next to nothing of what caused their suffering, outside of rumors and fear. I owe them the truth, and I intend to give it to them when I am coronated tomorrow. But I cannot tell the story without mentioning you.”

Link pressed his spine hard against the headboard.

“I can say as much or as little as you choose,” she went on. “Some of your deeds are common knowledge—the Gorons and Zoras credit you for saving their leaders—but very little is known of the rest, or of you personally.”

He was sinking into the quicksand of Arbiter’s Grounds. He was drowning in the Lakebed Temple. To have people know about it, to have Rusl and Uli and Ilia and the children know what he’d done…

“I am afraid Midna must be left out,” Zelda added when he didn’t speak. “I am already asking people to accept the existence of a second world; I do not wish to complicate it further. All they need to know is that no further threats will come from the Twilight Realm. Besides…I believe she would want it that way.”

Link’s shoulders slumped, for he agreed. Midna wouldn’t want the credit any more than he did, even though she deserved all of it. She had saved him every minute of every day.

“Link?” Zelda prompted.

He ran a hand through his tangled hair. “What would you say? You’ll be queen.”

“People glean hope from the idea that someone was here to protect them,” Zelda mused. “That is what I would say. That you stopped the usurpers who threatened our very existence, and solved many other problems along the way.” She held his gaze with her pale blue eyes. “And…I could keep your name out of it.”

Link opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again to mumble, “You’d do that?”

“Of course.”

“I—thank you.”

“I am the one who should be thanking you,” Zelda said, blank-faced again, and she was gone before he could ask what she meant.

Link burrowed down into the covers again, still cold, but not so much as before. The food and medicine gave him enough clarity to understand that omitting his name would raise more questions and problems for Zelda during an already tumultuous time. But she had offered him anonymity regardless, and it was priceless; it was freedom from those who might turn him into a weapon or a trophy or a legend. The choice of what to do with the ruins of his life belonged to him alone.

When was the last time anyone had given Link a choice?

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Chapter 4: Crown

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Zelda’s coronation was simple and cost-effective, held atop the second-floor rampart that hung over the central tower’s main entrance rather than the throne room, as would be traditional. Most of Castle Town had squeezed into the gardens to crane their necks for a decent view.

In some ways, she had waited her whole life for this moment. In others, it was a formality. As the steward lowered a crown of golden wings onto her brow, she thought only of her parents—and of Midna, who must have been accepting a similar burden in her realm.

Zelda rose to face her people. They had seen the smoke on the day Zant invaded, the magic barrier Ganondorf erected, and the final destruction last week. They had heard rumors of trouble in the outlying settlements and among the Goron and Zora tribes. But mostly, Castle Town had experienced the invasion as an unutterable fear that lurked in solitary alleys and whispered from the shadows beneath every child’s bed.

She watched the crowd’s reaction as she began unraveling the truth: shock, sympathy, disbelief, derision. What Zelda needed most of all was for them to understand that surrendering to Zant was a choice between life and death, not between victory and submission. I did it for you, she wanted to say, looking at a child perched on his father’s shoulders, an elderly woman squinting against the sun, a girl in a butterfly dress. And you, and you. I wanted you to live.

After the ceremony came hours of accepting congratulations and navigating countless attempts to win her favor. Each conversation was a card game of veiled intentions, one Zelda had been playing her whole life and didn’t always enjoy—but tonight, after a year of apocalyptic threats, politics was a cool breath of fresh air.

Day dragged into night, and the servants emerged into the grand foyer to lay out a far simpler dinner than the luxurious feasts at her predecessors’ coronations. The wine cellar had survived the Twilight, at least, which went a long way towards shifting the atmosphere from ceremonial to celebratory. Everything glowed with candlelight and laughter and the heady relief of a kingdom seizing its second chance.

Zelda hadn’t forgotten the things she’d done and endured in this court, but she found herself surprisingly happy to have them back. She tried very hard not to look for missing faces, but when she thought she saw the back of a stranger’s curly blond head and thought it was her Uncle Adric, she knew it was time to leave. She owed her family cemetery a visit.

It was late enough that she could make her final rounds and step into the cool gardens without raising questions. Pausing outside the foyer, Zelda tipped her face up to the stars. She loved this time of night, when shadows smoothed the world’s sharp edges; the new crown and the thick layers of her white-and-gold coronation gown felt far lighter out here than in that room full of people and expectations.

A fragile hope sprouted inside her. She was the queen of Hyrule, unshackled at last, and her people had come ready to rebuild their ruined kingdom.

Footsteps behind her. “A word away from the snake pit, Lady Queen?”

Sighing inwardly, she looked up into Lord Hartwell’s broad, handsome face, framed by neat coils of black hair. Always current with the latest fashions, he looked elegant in a long cobalt tailcoat studded with pearl buttons. Zelda stayed within reach of the yellow light that seeped out from the foyer’s open doorway, waiting.

“I wanted to congratulate you,” Lord Hartwell said. “I doubt anyone in that room properly appreciates what it means to finally receive something you’ve earned.”

Here was a man who wouldn’t let anyone forget his unusual path to power. Born a commoner, he had grown rich off entrepreneurial spirit by age nineteen and spent the next year charming and scheming and bribing his way up the ladder until he’d coaxed a noble title out of Zelda’s father the king. She’d named him her Minister of Finance to fulfill an old promise, but one glance at his unassuming smile told her he wanted more—men like him always wanted more.

“I’ve been wondering,” Lord Hartwell went on. “This Hero you mentioned in your coronation speech—is he here?”

“No.” Zelda had already answered this question many times tonight. “He wanted no thanks for his role. He left Hyrule without naming his destination…perhaps he shall return someday.”

The truth—that Link was within these walls, sick from a heart that had broken forever—filled her with bitter shame. Midna had asked her to take care of him, and all she could offer was a cramped little room, a doctor who ridiculed him, and her own helplessness in the face of his pain.

“That’s too bad,” Hartwell replied. “I ask because one of the families that farms my land lost their daughter to the Bulblins. I’d hoped to enlist your Hero’s help.”

That got Zelda’s attention. Rusl had told her about the raid on Ordon Village, but this was the first she’d heard of any others. “The Bulblins kidnapped her?”

“Yes. I doubt she survived, but her poor parents still hope otherwise. And they aren’t alone…one hears such stories all across Hyrule.” His eyes glistened. “Even as we rejoice in your coronation, Lady Queen, we must not forget the grief that preceded it.”

Flattening her voice, Zelda said, “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I will see what I can do.”

She turned into the night without another word. The eastern gardens were nothing but barren, colorless flowerbeds, an insult to her mother’s memory. One stone wall had begun to crack during her father’s reign and then split apart from the top at some point during the enemy occupation. Zelda followed the repair crew’s scaffolding towards the cemetery.

I dropped the sword, she reminded herself. I chose life. But here was one more facet of the invasion, one more injustice inflicted upon innocents. She pictured Zant’s leering mask and the savage light in Ganondorf’s eyes as he crushed Midna’s helmet to dust between his fingers. What did you do? What did you do to my kingdom?

Lost in these thoughts, Zelda almost missed the sound. The Triforce of Wisdom blazed to life, and by some instinct she raised a hasty arc of raw magic above her head—not a second too soon, for weight crashed into the shield with enough force to knock her sideways.

On her hands and knees in the grass, disoriented and breathless, she drew her dagger from its sheath on her calf and scrambled up. But there was no attacker. She was alone in the garden with a heavy chunk of stone settling into the small crater its fall had produced.

The wall had been crumbling for years; it was only surprising that she was the first person to nearly get crushed by falling rubble. But Zelda stared up at the scaffolding, feeling her pulse flutter in the fingers that clutched the dagger. Something was wrong. She knew it the same way she knew when people were lying, the same way she’d known to save herself with that shield.

Kicking off her shoes and tying her coronation gown into a knot that would make her seamstress faint, she climbed the ladder to the scaffolding. The golden light she cast along the wooden walkway showed nothing of import. A second ladder brought her level with the battlement that connected this wall to the ring that surrounded the castle. The guards were at their proper posts, all too far away to see or hear the commotion; the ranks were too thin to man every part of the castle.

Zelda returned to the first platform and found the spot from which the rubble must have fallen, crouching to shine her light closer to the planks. Chills prickled at her spine: long scrape marks ran from the opposite side of the platform to where she stood. That rubble hadn’t fallen on its own. It had been dragged, positioned, and pushed over the edge as she’d been walking by.

Immediately she was down the ladder and striding for the nearest entrance. Inside the stony arms of the castle, she gave a guard calm orders to have the perimeter swept—just for her peace of mind, she told him, though something in her face made him stumble to obey without question. On the way to her quarters, Zelda pressed her thumb to the Triforce on the back of her right hand and thanked the Goddesses for her life.

Already a familiar hardness was closing over the brief hope she had started to feel under the stars. Freedom was not safety. Her great enemy was gone, but those created by her past ruthlessness remained. She would live the way she always had: watching, and waiting, and striking before anyone else had the chance.

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The clumsy loops of Colin’s younger handwriting were gone, replaced by tidy, blockish strokes of the quill. He wrote about the happy reunion in Ordon, his adoration for his new baby sister, and how much he loved his birthday gift. Not once did he ask Link to come home—probably at Rusl’s behest—but Link still fell asleep with the letter clutched in his hand.

He slid into an uncommonly peaceful dream of wandering barefoot among fog-filled trees older than time, alone but for the song of the forest. When he surfaced the next morning, he sat up and pulled the Master Sword into his lap, feeling awake for the first time in ages.

The blade hummed a gentle current in his hands. Link hugged it to his chest and remembered the day they’d met. How he’d bared his fangs to display his defiance towards the cruelty he’d been born to defeat. How the sword had stripped away the cloaking shadows and brought him back to himself, alive and unbowed and clean.

I’ll miss you, he told her in the silent language that belonged only to them, preparing himself to lose another friend. Iknow what I need to do.

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Chapter 5: Home

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The bell tower struck noon as Zelda left the first Council session she’d conducted as queen. Most of the castle would break for lunch, but not her—to stay on schedule, she’d have to cut through the gardens to make her meeting with the architect. The same gardens where someone had tried to kill her three days ago.

Auru fell into step beside her. Would his presence make her a better or worse target? He’d been a capable swordsman once, but he was older and out of practice; the only weapon he carried these days was a quill. Zelda, meanwhile, had added several hidden daggers to her person.

“I barely recognized anyone in that room,” Auru sighed, shaking his head. “Where is Lady Celia? Lord Herrin?”

“Celia retired to her estate. Herrin passed on some years ago.”

“That’s a shame. He was fairly young, and a friend to your family.”

Not to all of them, Zelda thought, weaving her way through the foyer of chatting nobles and out into the brilliant sunlight. Auru was quiet, shuffling his papers from arm to arm as he followed her through the gardens, not noticing her brisk pace or vigilant eyes.

“Lady Queen,” he said casually, “what was court like after I left?”

“It was court,” she replied. “Politics, gossip, spectacle. Some things changed…most did not.”

“I already know the public story,” Auru said, halting to fix her with a frank look she remembered from her childhood. “I’m asking for what’s behind it.”

The wise and necessary answer was right on the tip of Zelda’s tongue—but this was Auru. He’d taught her to read. He’d been like family. Lying to him felt like some sort of line, and she had already crossed so many.

Auru glanced behind her. “Is that Link?”

Zelda turned, and there he was—dressed in a plain brown tunic and tan breeches, he would have looked ordinary if not for the prominent bandage on his cheek and the Master Sword at his back. A second blade hung from his belt.

“Glad to see you up and about,” Auru greeted. “How are you feeling?”

“Good,” Link answered, tugging at the straps of the rucksack he carried.

“Well, when you’re able, Nayru knows we could use your help. If anyone could get our guard into fighting shape, it would be you. And Telma’s gathered all sorts of rumors about—”

“Auru,” Zelda interrupted more sharply than she intended. “Would you mind giving us a moment? I will join you and the architect shortly.”

He departed without complaint, but she could read unhappiness in his tense posture. Well, that made two of them. The shortcomings of her administration had already forced more than enough weight onto Link’s shoulders; she wouldn’t let that continue.

The rucksack on Link’s back made his destination obvious. They walked to the stables in a bubble of quiet, somehow undisturbed by the ever-present racket of the repairs. Passing under the wide doorway, Zelda breathed in warm hay-scented air and tried to stop searching for a pair of black-tipped ears and a familiar grey coat.

Link approached his mare with a tenderness that hurt to watch, scratching her behind the ears while she nosed at his pockets with the cadence of old habit. He said quietly, “The Master Sword wants to go home.”

“And you?” Zelda wondered, surprised to feel something sinking in her chest. “Is it time for you to go home as well?”

His answering smile was brave and thin and did not reach his eyes. Even so, it brought him closer to his seventeen years than he usually looked. Link had joked and laughed with Midna all the way to Arbiter’s Grounds; since returning, he’d either been ill or very guarded. The longer he stayed at the castle, the rarer those smiles would get, until they disappeared under falsity.

Zelda should be glad he was leaving: for his own sake, and for the sake of her promise to Midna. “I hope you spoil Epona rotten,” she told him, reaching out to stroke the horse’s neck. “She deserves it.”

There was something real in his smile this time. “You must like to ride. You were amazing, during…” He trailed off, not giving voice to that harrowing fight against Ganondorf and his ghost horde.

“The Bulblins took the castle horses, according to Zant,” Zelda explained, sensing his underlying question about the empty barn. “To ride, or perhaps to eat.”

Link shifted towards Epona ever so slightly, as if to protect her from the very idea. “What was yours like?” he asked softly.

“He was a dappled grey. Beautiful, and he knew it. He could canter like a dream if you gave him a compelling enough reason…I named him Peppermint after his favorite treat. I was young.” She stopped in abrupt shame. How callous she must seem to mourn a horse after so much human suffering, especially in front of the person who had carried the worst of it all.

But Link said, “I’m sorry,” with such perfect sincerity that Zelda didn’t feel callous at all. He inclined his head towards the stall. “Wanna come in?”

Yes, she did. She wanted to linger in this gentle place, which had long been a refuge for her. She wanted to work a brush through Epona’s chestnut coat while the horse stood by, patient and forgiving. Suddenly, inexplicably, she recalled that brilliant morning on the ramparts, the sunrise turning Midna’s hair to orange flame, the two silent words spearing through Zelda: Don’t go.

“Auru and the castle architect are waiting for me,” she replied calmly, even as her thoughts fluttered like trapped and confused birds.

Link nodded. Almost as an afterthought, he unbuckled the second sword from his belt. “This is from Ordon. I was supposed to deliver it to you, before…”

An incoming monarch traditionally asked tribute from each province, and Zelda had done so after her father’s death—not because she particularly liked the idea, but to gain a measure of legitimacy in her efforts to ascend the throne. Though separate from Hyrule proper, Ordona usually participated in the custom.

She pictured a world without the invasion, where she and had Link met as queen and messenger instead of captive and wolf. Would she have thanked him and sent him away without a second thought? Or would she still have met his fierce blue eyes, as she did now, and recognized herself in their reflection?

Zelda didn’t know which possibility frightened her more.

She accepted the sword and unsheathed it partway. The steel was fine and lethal. The leather-wrapped hilt bore the well-worn imprints of someone’s fingers underneath her own.

“I had to use it for a while,” Link said quietly. “We made you a shield too, but it kind of…caught on fire.”

Zelda decided not to ask. “The sword is lovely, Link, but…you already brought back mine, and you are about to give up your own. Why don’t you keep this one for yourself?”

“Are you sure? It was meant for you.”

“No…I think perhaps it was meant for you.”

For a long moment, Link regarded the sword with such a complicated expression that even Zelda couldn’t guess at his feelings. Then he closed his scarred fingers over the scabbard and brought it to his chest, breathing out a long sigh.

“Thank you, Zelda,” he said. “For everything.”

It was only the second time he had called her that. As she left the stables and turned to her next task, she couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be before she heard her name again.

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Ordon still smelled the same: hay and pumpkins and green growing things. Even asleep, every inch of this valley brimmed with life. Link could hear it in the singing of insects, the distant trickle of the river, the near-silent sweep of an owl’s wings across the thick canvas of stars: all the things he’d taken for granted.

Epona shifted impatiently. Whispering an apology, Link dismounted and untacked her by moonlight. There was already water in her trough and grain sealed away in a racoon-proof crate—someone had been expecting his arrival.

Nothing felt quite real as he stepped inside his treehouse, knowing how the floorboard would creak under his left foot. He’d expected layers of dust, but the house was cleaner than he’d left it. On the table was a covered basket of nuts and dried fruit, crowned with a note that read Welcome Home in Uli’s hand.

The kindness hurt more than it should have. Was there anyone in the Twilight Realm who would do such things for Midna? What had she felt upon returning to her own home after destroying the path behind her?

Stop thinking of her, Link ordered himself. Stop thinking.

The rucksack thudded to the floor, along with his outer layers and his weapons. Leaving the Master Sword in the Sacred Grove had felt like losing a limb. Though the night carried a summer-end chill, he trudged up to the loft without starting a fire, dragged away the dust cloth Uli had draped over his bed, and fell into the covers.

A flicker of light caught Link’s attention through the window: the last fireflies of the season, drifting through the grass. His last thought was that they glowed the same color as Midna’s eyes.

Morning found him still blinking away the haze of a nightmare as he scrubbed his laundry on the banks of the Light Spirit’s spring. His wolf-senses detected a pair of small feet bounding up the path from the village a minute before Colin came skidding around the corner.

Link knelt in the sand to catch the boy in his arms. Colin felt taller against him, stronger. Only a month had passed since they’d last seen each other in Kakariko, but it felt like lifetimes.

“You’re back!” Colin exclaimed, practically bouncing in Link’s embrace. “When did you—"

He paused, for he’d pulled back far enough to see Link’s new scar. The long slash began an inch below his right eye and carved a deep path along his cheekbone, stopping just shy of his hairline. There was no point in keeping it bandaged forever, and it wasn’t his worst or ugliest damage by a long shot, but the memory made him sick each time he saw it in his shaving mirror or felt the pull of the healing tissue.

Colin wore an expression of solemn sympathy far too old for his face. The hilt of a wooden sword poked over his shoulder. “What’s this?” Link asked with trepidation.

“My dad started teaching Talo and me. I’m not very good, but…maybe you could give us lessons too!”

“You never liked swords.”

“Not back then, but…” Colin’s forehead wrinkled thoughtfully. “Things are different now.”

You just turned ten, Link thought in despair. He didn’t want this for Colin or Talo. It was exactly what he’d fought to prevent.

“I was on my way to practice in front of your house, actually,” Colin went on. “That was when I saw Epona. Come on—let’s go tell Mom and Dad!”

There was no more avoiding it. Link followed him down to the village. Colin was chattering away happily, but by the time the purple roofs and scraggly pumpkin patches came into view, Link had lost the ability to reply.

He remembered nothing before Ordon. He only knew the story everyone told: during the coldest winter in living memory, Rusl had gone hunting in Faron Woods and returned carrying a scrawny little boy with a dirty face and pointed ears. The villagers spent weeks searching for any sign of who he’d been with, but all the forest yielded was an unruly young filly with a chestnut coat. When they’d finally wrangled her back to Ordon, Link toddled up, put a hand on her nose when she lowered it towards him, and said: Epona.

It was the first word anyone had heard him speak. Uli knelt beside him and murmured, So that’s her name. What’s yours?

And Link had answered.

The unresolved mystery of how a boy no older than three ended up alone in the snowy forest hadn’t prevented Ordon from taking him in. Now, standing on the porch of the house where he’d been raised, he was profoundly unready for Colin to open the door.

Rusl and Uli stood by the stove, his arm around her waist, their heads bowed over something. Link heard the baby’s soft coo and felt like an intruder.

“Look who’s here!” Colin announced.

They turned. Uli gasped. In three steps she was embracing Link, and she smelled just like she always did, and he was a child again, feeling like the whole world was right here in her arms. He hugged her back shakily, fighting the growing tightness in his throat.

“Link,” she breathed when she finally stepped back. Her gaze searched his face, found the scar, and returned to his eyes. “Thank the Goddesses.”

Rusl came to her side, holding their squirming daughter and smiling at Link. “Want to hold her?”

Link lifted the baby from his arms—she blinked up at him curiously through her blond curls and grabbed his thumb with a tiny hand.

“Her name is Eva,” Uli beamed. “She’s five months old now.”

He remembered lying beside Midna on that last slow, sleepy day, her cool fingers on his face, her voice uncharacteristically solemn. What we did together—what we achieved—was worth every cost. Remember that. Promise me you’ll remember it was worth it. Staring down at Eva’s little face, he could almost believe those words. She hadn’t been born into a safe world, but she would grow up in one. That was worth something, wasn’t it?

“I’m glad you’re home,” Rusl said, ruffling Link’s hair.

Colin grinned up at them all. “You should stay for breakfast!”

“Good idea,” Uli agreed. “Will you, Link?” Rusl slid an arm around her. Colin clasped his hands together hopefully. The baby burbled.

Link stayed.

Afterwards, Uli plied him with so much food for his empty larder that Rusl offered to help carry it back to the treehouse. They had barely passed the general store when Talo and Beth pounced, having stalked behind them in an effort to surprise Link, who could have heard them coming from a mile away. He dropped his parcels of food to gather them into a hug, all sharp elbows and cheers, while Malo stood aside and feigned disinterest.

When the barrage of questions began—“What’s Princess Zelda like?” “Did you really kill all the invaders?” “Is it true they came from another world?”—Rusl extricated Link with such smooth kindness that the children were barely disappointed. Following him up to the treehouse, Link’s cheeks burned with shame, though he wasn’t quite sure why.

“We got the queen’s missive,” Rusl told him. “That’s why they’re so curious.”

Zelda had distributed written copies of her coronation speech across Hyrule. It wasn’t fair for Link’s loved ones to learn the news so impersonally, but a cowardly part of him was relieved. He couldn’t explain any of it—the enemies, the Twilight, the wolf inside his skin, Midna, Midna, Midna. The only person who could possibly understand was Zelda herself, for she had lived through it too.

“I could scarcely believe it either,” Rusl admitted. “Usurpers occupying the castle right under our noses, the atrocities they committed…and the young swordsman who stopped it all. Did the queen write the truth?”

Link nodded mutely.

“I see.” Rusl clearly had a thousand questions—chief among them why Link had kept the magnitude of the threat from him and the Resistance—but he only said, “If you ever wish to tell the story, I will be here to listen.”

You don’t want to know the story, Link thought. You don’t want to know what I did. You’d never look at me the same way again.

Epona was notably absent from the clearing. Panic rose as Link remembered losing her to the Bulblins, then fell as he realized what had probably happened. Rusl offered to deposit the food and sent Link off with a knowing glance.

Ilia was ankle-deep in the spring, humming to herself as she sponged grime away from Epona’s wet coat. Her pants were rolled up to the knee. Her hair had grown long enough to brush her shoulders as she turned and noticed Link by the water’s edge.

They’d last seen each other when he stumbled into Kakariko with one of his worst injuries ever: dragonflame burns up and down his back, made far worse by the chainmail searing white-hot against his skin. He didn’t remember much after killing Argorok. He just knew he’d been saved three times—by Midna, who got him to safety; by the shaman Renado, who treated his wounds; and by Ilia, who held his hand through the pain and helplessness and shame.

Before that, though, Ilia had spent months thinking Link was a stranger, and he’d learned to guard himself from the knife of her presence. Now they were in an unfamiliar place of wariness and grief, and he felt it acutely as they stood in the same place where fate had first claimed them.

But she had been so central to his life for so long, and when she opened her arms, Link went into them without hesitation.

“I missed you,” she breathed into his shirt.

“Same here, Illy.”

Epona nudged at them, demanding attention and treats. Ilia laughed, and to Link’s surprise, he did too. Like puzzle pieces falling to place, they were friends again.

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Chapter 6: Crystal

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Under a thick net of grey clouds, the wind swept long and low through the tall grass. While the others huddled in their cloaks, Zelda raised her face to the open air and breathed.

It was the first time she’d left Castle Town since journeying to the desert with Midna and Link. Even before the Twilight, she had gone years without stepping foot outside the tall granite walls that enclosed the capital. When her mother was alive, they’d traveled all over Hyrule together—to the dusty canyon streets of Kakariko, the quiet sanctuary of Lanayru, the grand noble estates, and every forest glade or hidden cavern they discovered along the way. But those days were long gone.

The snap of an errant twig made Zelda’s horse flinch beneath her. She steadied him patiently, repressing unkind thoughts about how Peppermint, the creature of her heart, had been fearless and jubilant in the wide expanse of Hyrule Field.

“This isn’t cold,” Ashei scoffed. “Where I’m from, this is a warm summer day.”

The two of them rode at the center of a guard formation, the safest place for Zelda to be. She tried not to smile at the sight of Auru bundled up like a grumpy owl. She remembered suddenly that she’d given him that same nickname as a child: old owl.

Auru had discouraged this trip, concerned about a newly crowned queen braving the field with only him, three veteran guards who were barely competent, and three raw recruits that showed passable promise. Zelda wouldn’t forgo the trip, but she’d conceded to bringing Ashei, the Resistance’s strongest fighter behind Link.

King Ralis of the Zora was a new and very young monarch who needed her support; building a positive relationship with him was essential to restoring commerce along the grand river his tribe called home. Zelda had failed him once before—when he’d nearly died in pursuit of her help—and would do what she could to make up for it now.

In any case, Auru’s worries were moot: she was no safer in the castle than she was out here. Three uneventful weeks had passed since the assassination attempt, yet she couldn’t lower her guard; whoever had failed to kill her would surely try again.

“You mentioned you’ve visited Zora’s Domain before?” Zelda asked Ashei as the road tapered into a narrow ravine. She scanned the red cliffside warily; this would be the perfect place for an ambush.

“Yeah,” Ashei answered. “Tried to track down the beast-man of Snowpeak when he was bothering the Zoras. But that mountain isn’t friendly to visitors, and the trouble went quiet before I figured out a way up. Link had something to do with it.”

It seemed like Link had something to do with solving nearly every problem Hyrule had faced these past months, large or small. Zelda set her teeth, trying not to take her frustration out on her skittish horse.

The walls of the ravine sloped away to reveal the Great Bridge of Hyrule, looming on the cloudy horizon with ostentatious height. Far below, the lake churned restlessly in the powerful wind. The first two guards passed under the gatehouse arch, followed by Ashei and then Zelda. Out on the uncovered bridge, the wind tore at their clothes and carried the smell of marsh grass and murky lake water.

Zelda was drawing it deep into her lungs when all hell broke loose. She heard shouts and the clatter of hooves against stone, and then something seized her by the hair. Grey sky and grey stone flashed above as she got dragged from the saddle.

She went limp, but as soon as she had her feet under her, she drove her elbow into her attacker’s face like a battering ram. Bone crunched; the grip on her hair disappeared—but so did her horse, who was galloping down the bridge in a panic. Armed figures traded blows with her guards at the mouth of the gatehouse. Someone lay facedown in a spreading circle of blood. And there was no time to notice anyone else, for Auru was getting yanked from his horse’s back.

Zelda lobbed a quick spell of heat and static at his attacker, who went down with a yelp. She shoved through the press of people and horses to get Auru on his feet, giving him a chance to draw his sword while she reached for her own. A young man with a shaved head charged them, blood running from the nose Zelda had just broken; she dodged his spear and blasted out another wave of electricity that sent him crashing to the ground.

“Get the path clear!” she shouted to Auru, then whirled back to Ashei and the two guards with her, all of them bracing to meet the enemy reinforcements rushing from the other side of the bridge. The dead body behind her must belong to one of her guards. No one else. Not one more.

The spell was half-formed between her hands when she heard one of the approaching attackers shout, “Stop! Everyone stand down!”

The attackers reacted immediately, stepping away from Zelda’s people. Ashei took a step forward, but the warrior who’d issued the command—a mountain of a man with shoulders as broad as the axe he carried—snarled, “Don’t move. We have archers trained on you.”

Atop the opposite gatehouse, two figures stood silhouetted against the sky, bows at the ready. Zelda pulled up her hood, shooting Auru a look. He nodded. He’d have to do the talking—her identity would not do them any favors here.

Their attackers looked underfed and unclean. All wore mismatched, roughspun clothing. The axe-bearer had round human ears under a mess of dark hair as tangled as his beard. His face was sallow and harsh, his posture that of a trained warrior, and his black eyes were hardest of all. “For the love of the Goddesses,” he snapped. “We meant to take your Rupees and send you on your way, not start a bloodbath!”

Zelda almost laughed. How refreshing to be confronted by highway robbers instead of assassins or world-ending dark lords.

“Whatever you meant to do,” Auru said, “It’s ended with one of ours dead.”

“You fight like Hyrulean guards,” observed the dark-haired leader in a voice that scraped like gravel. “That’s what you are, isn’t it? What are you doing out here in plainclothes?”

“I’m a researcher at the castle,” Auru lied. “They are escorting me to survey some ruins up north. They’re out of uniform because we didn’t want attention…clearly, that failed.”

“Castle, huh?” said the woman at the leader’s left side, a slender Hylian with a dark ponytail swinging at her back, not far past twenty. She carried two knives better suited to a kitchen than a battlefield. “You must have Rupees.”

“They’re yours. We don’t want trouble.”

The woman started forward but halted when her companion held out a hand. The look that passed between them, the way the other bandits angled their bodies towards one another, reminded Zelda strangely of the unassailable partnership between Link and Midna.

“Remove your hood,” the leader ordered Zelda. She obeyed calmly, magic simmering at her fingertips, and he breathed out, “You.”

“Me?” she repeated guilelessly. She was crownless and dressed as plainly as her guards, so there was still hope. “I don’t know what—”

“Don’t play dumb,” he snarled with a viciousness that took her aback. “You look too much like your mother to be anyone else.”

That stung as always, but Zelda was more focused on the reactions among the other bandits: a shock that billowed among them like thunderheads, then shifted and warped into something else. The woman stared, dumbfounded. “You mean—” she started.

“Aye,” her leader confirmed, pointing his axe at Zelda. “That’s the new queen of Hyrule. And we have not forgotten her as she forgot us.”

He thrust a hand into the pocket of his cloak. There was a flare of orange light and the smell of desert air and cold stone. Zelda gasped in sheer horror, feeling the magic tug at something inside her, something she’d never expected to feel again. The man stabbed the sharp end of a black crystal into his forearm.

He fell to his knees as the thing burrowed under his skin. Long shadows seethed about him, and Zelda backed away, ordering her people to mount their horses. With a guttural yell that spattered the bridge with blood, the transformation ripped through the man all at once, and his scream became a roar loud enough to split the earth.

A massive bear lumbered forward, his bristling fur blacker than a starless sky, cut through by jagged lines that festered with eerie orange light.

Midna, Zelda thought senselessly, I thought it was over.

The bear roared again, bloody slaver spilling from his jaws, and charged.

The Triforce was alive and thrumming through her veins. She’d never casted so quickly in her life, weaving spell after spell together in a lattice of golden light. The bear crashed into it headlong and staggered back—Zelda was persuading the open air to function as a wall so convincingly that it might as well have been brick. Snarling, the beast pawed at the barrier, while his allies on the other side of it renewed their attack.

“Run!” Zelda shouted; her cowardly guards didn’t need much convincing to wheel their mounts around and flee down the bridge. Ashei slapped the hindquarters of Auru’s horse to force him away, then turned back to Zelda.

One guard had stayed: a young recruit, white-faced with terror, clinging to the reins of two rearing horses. Over Zelda’s protests, Ashei shoved her towards one of the terrified animals and mounted up behind her; as the horse tore away at breakneck speed, Zelda lost control of the spell.

The barrier came down in a shower of light, and the beast burst through it. She twisted around in the saddle, desperately forming a lance of raw magic. The bear bellowed as it struck home in his dark hide, but it didn’t prevent him from raising a massive paw and cleaving the young guard aside like a paper doll.

Zelda and Ashei shot under the gatehouse arch and towards the ravine, followed by a great roar of fury. He had no chance of catching them—the horses were faster and fueled by mortal fear—but this was no victory, only escape.

They rode hard for twenty minutes before Zelda called for the horses to slow. No one was injured; no one could speak of what they had just witnessed. Ashei radiated jittery energy. Auru was troubled and pensive. Three of the guards had bleak, frightened eyes; the fourth wept into his hands. And everywhere Zelda looked was the glaring absence of the two men whose bodies they had abandoned on the bridge.

Kye had only been nineteen, though he’d acted younger than she’d ever felt. Tobias had been a decent swordsman on the rare occasion he surfaced from the bottom of a bottle. They had died so that she could live.

Bone-deep weariness crushed down on her shoulders then, and if the ground had opened to swallow her whole, Zelda would not have protested. But her duty was to the living now, not the dead. Better to cling to that goal than to the feeling that everything she’d held true was slipping through her fingers.

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Chapter 7: Collateral Damage

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Autumn arrived in a riot of sunset-colored foliage, bringing what had once been Link’s favorite time of year. Home was a blessing in many ways. Harvest work was simple and satisfying; three good meals a day and the lack of constant mortal danger gave his body a chance to finally heal. He’d forgotten what it was like to live without pain.

The people helped, too. Ilia with her feet bare and her hands dirty as she worked in the garden. Rusl and Mayor Bo bending their heads together over harvest sums. Colin and Talo playing at swords while Malo feigned disinterest and Beth gushed over baby Eva. The women sewing winter blankets and the men loading wagons with surplus produce to donate to the struggling capital.

That was Ordon—tireless, loyal, big-hearted—and Link loved them for it. Something about the kindness hurt, though. Only the children asked about his time away; the adults knew to leave him be, but he shuddered to imagine their reactions to the truth underlying the pretty words in Zelda’s missive. Would they look at him the same way? Would they still consider him theirs?

Of course they would, asserted the child that remained deeply rooted in this earth. But the rest of Link, which had seen the wide world and done terrible things to save it, was far less certain.

Time alone at the ranch was a relief. He lay on his back, the goats grazing around him, and watched the sky deepen to lovely orange-gold. He always thought of her at sunset—but thinking was better than forgetting, like all the times he turned towards his shadow to tell her something funny before remembering that it was empty. And each time was like kneeling in the Mirror Chamber all over again, his thoughts circling a pathetic, childish scream: She didn’t even say goodbye.

Footsteps crunched through the yellow autumn grass. Malo came into view, wearing his typical scowl. “Link,” he greeted shortly.

Link shielded his eyes against the setting sun and waited.

“I want to go back to Kakariko,” Malo announced. “My business is there. I have responsibilities to fulfill.”

Coming from any other five-year-old, those words would be laughable, but this boy was something of a genius—responsible for opening two stores and rebuilding a bridge, all of which had yielded great benefits to Hyrule’s economy. Despite his curtness, he made Link incredibly proud.

“What do your parents say?” Link asked, sitting up.

“Would I be here if they’d said yes?” Malo wondered impatiently.

“Then I can’t go around them. I’m sorry, Malo, but you’re still a kid.”

“I am not,” Malo refuted, screwing up his face. “What about you? You’re the Hero, and you’re just going to herd goats for the rest of your life?”

He never raised his voice like this. Link remembered how desperate Talo had been to make himself useful in Kakariko, how Colin had saved Beth’s life, how Beth started taking care of the boys as she never had before. The Twilight had changed them as surely as it had Link.

“I can try talking to your parents,” he offered.

Malo scowled disdainfully and left Link to stare out at his goats. This was the life he had expected for so long: work the ranch and fields, watch the children grow up, marry Ilia someday. His world had been too small for any other possibilities.

The dreams assaulted him in full force that night. Ganondorf’s blood flowed down the length of the Master Sword to fill Link’s throat until he drowned. Midna flitted through the castle dungeons where they’d met, always out of reach. The shadow beasts screamed as he tore them open.

And then came the dream he feared most of all. The world around him was utterly dark and still, like every scrap of life was absent from the world. But when he turned, the Triforce shone above a hill of wildflowers and emerald grass, whole and golden and perfect. Link wanted it more than he’d ever wanted anything.

The woman beside him wanted it too. His eyes slid towards her, expecting Ilia—for it had been Ilia in the original vision and all the nightmares since—but this figure was taller and chestnut-haired, holding a longsword instead of a flimsy knife. Maybe she would win. The thought filled him with nothing but relief.

Then her eyes opened: yellow instead of blue, filled with hatred just as wrong as the dark lines of corruption snaking across her green-tinged skin. Link knew what dwelled inside her. He knew what he needed to do. But it was her, the person he’d been born to protect, and Link couldn’t hurt her, he couldn’t do this, he couldn’t be this—

But his fingers curled around cold metal. He lifted the unbearable weight of the blade towards her pale throat.

The sword was still in Link’s hand when he awoke. Clutching it to his chest, he threw himself down and out of the treehouse, stumbling senselessly through the dark until he fell to his knees and got violently sick.

When his stomach was empty, he sagged backwards to look up at the stars. The quiet Ordon night enveloped him: cicadas in the grass, leaves rustling in a chilly breeze, the rich smell of the earth.

That nightmare came from Lanayru’s warning of the corrupting nature of Fused Shadows—as if its fellow Light Spirits hadn’t sent Link after them in the first place. A false Ilia with blank white eyes and bared teeth had tried to kill him, but the true terror was his own sword opening her throat. He remembered it every time he looked at his friend; he would remember it all his life.

But it was Zelda this time. The scar on his face burned as though still bleeding. Link clutched at his middle, trying not to get sick again, trying to keep everything inside him. I had no choice. I had no choice.

Or so he’d told himself a thousand times.

What if the feelings of bloodlust and avarice in that vision hadn’t been manufactured? What if Lanayru had just exploited the wolf that already lived inside Link? Because that horrific warning hadn’t stopped him from killing for power. So many of the creatures he’d fought were just following their own natures; others still were corrupted by foul magic. Like Darbus the Goron patriarch, and Yeta on Snowpeak, and—

Link killed the thought, because carrying it any further would destroy him.

Noise and movement made him reach for his sword, but it was just Epona, drifting over to nose at him sleepily. Her warm breath coasted down his shirt, and he leaned his forehead against her cheek.

There were things inside Link that frightened him beyond belief. And he was no stranger to fear, but he had forgotten how to face anything without a sword in his hand and Midna in his shadow.

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A dark stone made of sharp edges and garish orange light. Zelda remembered it so vividly, plunging into the bandit leader’s arm and warping him into something monstrous.

Link still possessed the shadow crystal Zant had used to trap him in wolf form. She had lost a great deal of sleep in the weeks since that day on the bridge, wondering why a second one existed and how it had fallen into that man’s hands. Perhaps Midna had known something, but all Zelda had left of her was the tangled thicket of emotions that had passed between their hearts—none of it concrete, all of it painful.

“With me today is a citizen from the subprovince I represent,” Lord Cregan announced, and Zelda forced her mind to attention. “I thought the Council should hear her story.”

The woman rose from her seat, an island of patched wool in a sea of satin and silk. Life and loss gathered in the craggy lines around her eyes and mouth. Zelda watched the Council in her peripheral vision, noting who showed genuine interest and who smirked derisively and who was monitoring her reaction as she monitored theirs.

The woman swallowed, her gaze wandering the chamber before it settled on Zelda. “My name is Felsi. I come from River’s Edge, up northwest. Nothing I’ve got to say makes me special. There are plenty of others like me, at home and surely all over…”

“We understand,” said Lord Cregan with a hint of impatience, though he was the one who’d dragged her here. “Tell the queen what befell your village during the Twilight, if you please.”

“Right…it was those green monsters on their boars. They came after the fishers cast off for the morning and went straight to the schoolhouse where I taught the kids their letters. They only paid attention to the adults who got in their way…when my husband tried to save our girl, they killed him like swatting a fly.”

Felsi’s eyes were fierce and dry, never leaving Zelda’s face. The whole chamber was listening now, if only because the powerful loved hearing the stories of the powerless, like their suffering was a book to open and then cast aside when it lost its novelty.

“What happened next?” Lord Cregan prompted.

“Nothing,” Felsi answered tiredly. “The nearest guard post was deserted. We sent word to you here and never heard back. So we buried the dead and kept searching ourselves…and I’ve read your missive, Lady Queen. I see why no one could help us back then. But half a year my daughter’s been gone and still—nothing.”

Zelda remained still as the chamber rippled with murmurs and traded glances. She’d received letters from a dozen parents just like Felsi in the month since her coronation. Zant, who had liked to gloat, never mentioned these abductions while he held her captive. His cruelties had always served a larger purpose, but for the life of her, she couldn’t imagine a rational reason for targeting children.

Holding Felsi’s gaze, Zelda said, “I regret that we have found no trace of the children, but we will keep—”

“And what of the monsters themselves?” Lord Cregan interrupted lazily. “Have you found them, Lady Queen?”

“The Bulblins have shown no aggression since Ganondorf’s defeat,” she shot back. “In fact, they have actively avoided our people. Considering how much of this past month we’ve spent restoring our ranks, I need not remind you that the guard is unprepared to pursue them. Should I waste dozens of lives on a foe that poses no threat?”

“How do you like that answer, Felsi?” drawled another lord. “She doesn’t consider your husband’s killers a threat.”

Felsi paled and started to reply that she only wanted her daughter back, but the Council was already talking over her. The meeting descended into arguments, veiled and unveiled insults, and the constant hammering of a single point: Zelda had surrendered to the invaders.

No matter how many times she explained the logic of that choiceless choice, this room of prideful egoists might never forgive her; none of them had seen the shadow beasts. Faced with the squabbling flock, Zelda was tempted to remind them that a crowned sovereign didn’t need the Council’s input to govern as she chose—but that was what her father would have done. So she listened, debated, cajoled, and persevered until she had control of the room again.

She left the meeting knowing she’d only slapped a bandage across a gaping wound. The truth was that she had no idea how to learn what had happened to the missing children. Link might, pointed out a pragmatic voice that she shoved away immediately.

And this was just her latest problem. Travelers reported losing their Rupees to a band of thieves the rumor mill had nicknamed the Bear’s Fangs, proving that the man’s transformation hadn’t been some one-time fluke. Even Telma’s contact network couldn’t pin down any useful information about them. And Zelda still had an administration to rebuild and the encroaching winter to prepare for.

She was striding angrily towards her quarters for a marathon of paperwork when Lord Hartwell caught up to her. “I commend you, Lady Queen,” he said warmly. “Lord Cregan thought he was clever, bringing that poor woman here to shame you. But he underestimated his opponent. You were a vision in there.”

“And you are flattering me,” Zelda said mildly.

“Perhaps in another life I would have joined your long line of suitors, but alas—one good thing that came out of the Twilight was my marriage.”

“Oh? This is the first I’m hearing of it.”

“She’s not one for court,” Hartwell said, chuckling at some private joke. “She prefers the natural beauty of our estate.”

They had reached the passage that led to Zelda’s quarters. She halted before bringing him any closer. What he wanted was an invitation to lunch, and her head would explode before she gave it to him. “Did you need something, my lord?”

“No—I only wanted to compliment you on a job well done. I believe your Council will be an even greater success than your father’s.”

Ice crept over Zelda’s face and settled there. Smiling widely, Lord Hartwell bowed, turned on his heel, and left her in the hallway.

Did he think she needed a reminder of the axe they all balanced over her head? Trying to make her shoulders relax, she stalked the rest of the way to her quarters, conscious of her guard’s attention. She couldn’t afford a conspicuous reaction to Lord Hartwell’s seemingly innocent remark.

Zelda dreamed that night of a cold throne room, distant screams, and the smell of smoke. Metal weighed down her hand; men died all around her. You have the sword, snarled a voice in her ear as the shadow beasts loomed closer. Use it, girl! Use it!

She listened this time, slashing out at the beast’s head again and again. Black blood poured down its warped skull, then wisped away to reveal the face of her father. He laughed at the gore on her dress, the same way he’d laughed at the end of his life.

Zelda shot up in bed, kicking away the blankets that were twisted around her body like a noose. The gold-grey light that seeped through her curtains told her it was early morning.

Her hands found her wrists and slid down along the strange scars that followed her veins like the fronds of a fern. They matched the ones that feathered up her legs. She had no idea where they had come from, only that they’d been on her body when she awoke in the throne room with Midna and Link and the vengeful wraith of their nemesis. Looking at them filled her with an unnameable fear.

Someone knocked at the door. “Yes?” Zelda called.

A maid stepped in. “Lady Queen…you’re wanted in the kitchen. A—a boy died.”

“A boy? What happened?”

“He…filched some of the breakfast they were preparing for you.”

Cold slid through Zelda like raindrops down a windowpane.

At this time of morning, the kitchen should have been a flurry of noise and activity. Instead it smelled of the charred things someone had forgotten in the oven during the chaos. Some of the staff slumped on stools or wept beside tubs of dirty dishes; the rest clustered around the body on the floor.

Even the crying fell silent at Zelda’s approach. Conscious that she was intruding upon their grief, wondering if she was any better than the Council members who’d gawked at that poor mother yesterday, she drew her shawl around her shoulders and joined the crowd.

The boy was curled up as though asleep. He wore a shirt several sizes too big, his hands tucked up into the sleeves. Zelda had seen him scurrying around the halls and playing in the gardens. The bluish tinge to his skin meant he’d died of asphyxiation.

“I told you she’d come,” someone whispered.

Zelda looked up, but the speaker was impossible to identify. “I am sorry for your loss,” she told them all. “Did he have family I could speak to?”

“No, Lady Queen,” answered the cook, a perpetually frazzled woman with arms like tree trunks and an air of authority Zelda had long admired. “Just us. His name was Thom.”

The staff’s expressions ranged between devastation and fury. Some of these people had worked here since Zelda was a child, had lived through her father’s reign, had returned to the castle even so. They were viewed as disposable by those they served, but they would never put each other in danger—the poison had come from outside the kitchen.

“Take the morning off, with pay,” Zelda said. “I suspect the poison was only in my meal, but I will make certain the kitchen is safe.”

“But breakfast—” the cook protested.

“Can wait,” Zelda finished. The other staff ushered the cook away, leaving her alone with the body.

Everywhere she looked, she saw her mother’s death. The ultimate irony was that the Lionhearted Queen had known a poison-sniffing spell. Perhaps she’d let her guard down. Perhaps the poison had been applied in some clever manner she hadn’t expected. The doctors had never identified the substance or understood why Zelda’s father survived the illness that claimed her mother’s life.

But her parents were long gone; Thom was barely cold. It took all of thirty seconds to cast her mother’s spell and identify his killer: hemlock, a well-known herb that could be mixed into a tasteless solution and added to food.

The part of Midna that still dwelled inside her wanted to set the room ablaze. Zelda settled for tossing everything that carried a trace of hemlock into the hearth and rekindling the embers with a wave of her hand.

Watching the fire for a moment, hugging herself, she nearly jumped out of her skin when something brushed her leg—but it was only a skinny orange tomcat, blinking up at her with one eye. He’d lived in the kitchen for as long as she could remember and apparently survived the damn invasion to boot. Zelda leaned down to scratch him behind the ear, fighting a foolish urge to cry.

She made arrangements for the body, returned to her quarters to change, and swept out to meet the commander of the guard in her study. He sweated and apologized profusely over tea. He hadn’t been her ideal choice for this position—all her ideal choices were dead—but she gave him a second chance to find the killer.

Auru came in on the commander’s heels, pale and breathless. “Princess!” he exclaimed, apparently too distraught to remember her current title. “Are you all right? That poor child.”

“His name was Thom,” Zelda said blankly, because it was better than acknowledging that he’d died for her.

“Thom,” Auru repeated, sinking into a chair with a sadness that reminded her how keenly he felt the pain of events like this—really felt it, because empathy came easily to him. Zelda was suddenly tempted to tell him of the previous attempt on her life. Why not? He was trustworthy. He’d never given her reason to think otherwise.

He left, argued a small, childish voice. He made stupid mistakes, and he left when Hyrule needed him most.

While she warred with herself, Auru raised his head. “I’ve been thinking since the Council meeting yesterday…” he began. “Politics and trade we can deal with, but…the missing children, the Bulblins, those people who attacked us on the Bridge of Hylia …I wasn’t sure we had the resources to handle them before. And now this attempt on your life forces our attention inward.”

“If you believe the Resistance can help, I’m all ears.”

“I do. Specifically, I was thinking of Link.”

Zelda pressed her gloved palms hard against the sides of her coffee cup.

“Consider it,” Auru went on. “He’s fought more Bublins than anyone—he’d have the best chance of figuring out what they did with the children. And that man who transformed into a beast…that seems like a problem for the Hero to solve.”

Hero. The last time Zelda had called him that, he’d looked at her with feverish eyes, his face so fierce and so desperate, and he’d said, My name is Link.

“No,” she decided. “He has done enough.”

“I’m not suggesting you order him,” Auru clarified. “Simply tell him what we’re facing and leave the decision up to him.”

But Zelda knew—as Midna had known—that Link would interpret any mention of Hyrule’s struggles as an obligation. He did not neglect suffering. He did not give up. He did not spare a single thought for the consequences to himself.

These thoughts, so incompatible with the cold pragmatism she’d used to weather many storms, shocked her. Summoning the warrior worth more than her entire guard was undoubtably the wisest choice. But there was Midna’s last request, and Zelda’s own debt, and Link’s sweet, exhausted smile the day he’d left for home.

For the second time in her life, she found herself facing a line she wouldn’t cross for the sake of her kingdom.

“It’s a good idea,” she told Auru. “But solving these problems is not his duty.”

“And I suppose you think it’s all yours,” he replied, his voice quiet, but his brow furrowing with the beginnings of a stubborn argument. “But you cannot do everything alone. Princess, I—”

“I am not a princess anymore,” Zelda reminded sharply.

It wasn’t offense that traveled across Auru’s face and deepened his wrinkles. It was grief. “That’s so,” he agreed sadly. “You have my apologies.”

He left her there, still clutching a cup of coffee that had long since gone cold.

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Chapter 8: Letter

Chapter Text

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Ordon’s larders were bursting with harvest bounty, and as the work dwindled down, Link sought out new ways to stay busy. One of his self-assigned tasks was riding to the entrance of Faron Woods to collect the weekly mail. He told himself he was just saving the postman a long trip to the village, but truthfully, he did it for the chance to look down the path to Hyrule Field and imagine heading down it. He had no idea where he’d go—just away.

When he returned from Faron that day, Colin and Talo were hacking away at the practice dummies outside his house. Link tried to ignore the sloppiness of their fighting forms as he sat down to sort the mail. He wanted nothing to do with teaching them, but he kept imagining the calm criticisms the Hero’s Shade would offer the boys.

“Anything for us?” Talo wondered.

Link tossed him a letter from Luda, who wrote to her Ordonian friends often. Talo clutched it like gold between his hands. “I asked Ma again,” he sighed. “No dice.”

“They just don’t want to lose you,” Colin said.

Once, Talo would have snapped at him for being right; now he just sighed once more. He shared his brother’s longing to return to Kakariko and help the Gorons he’d bonded with there, but even Link’s encouragement hadn’t made his parents budge.

Colin poked curiously at an envelope of crimson parchment. “Link, who’s sending you fancy letters?”

Link flipped the envelope over and traced the wings of the royal crest stamped onto the wax seal. Zelda, he thought, his heart pounding with guilt. He climbed up to his treehouse and tore open the letter by candlelight, discovering that the sender was actually Auru.

Each piece of news felt like a piercing arrow. He’d thought the Bulblins’ kidnapping had been restricted to the incident here in Ordon. He’d thought the only existing shadow crystal was in his possession. He’d thought Zelda was safe inside her castle. But an innocent boy had died in someone’s attempt to snuff out the bright flame of her life, and that filled Link with a fear older than time.

At the end, Auru wrote:

The Resistance was grossly ignorant of the gravity of your task until the queen publicized the truth. Hyrule owes you a debt beyond reckoning, and I am sorry to ask for more. I do not write on the queen’s behalf. Rather, I am defying her express wish. In most things her judgement is better than anyone’s, but in this…I believe she is too accustomed to carrying the kingdom alone. I believe Hyrule still needs you, Link, and I believe the queen needs someone she can trust.

Link read the letter three times, and then he drew out a memory.

He didn’t recall falling after Ganondorf’s claymore opened him from collarbone to rib. Consciousness had found him lying in the mud, his enemy laughing like the crash of thunder. Link’s insensate mind could only produce one garbled thought as he watched the blade rise: Midna was dead, or so he’d thought, and joining her would hurt less than staying here.

But as he’d turned his face away, there was Zelda kneeling on the other side of the magic barrier, her hands aglow from the effort to break through. Link lay on the verge of failing her, failing Hyrule, failing everyone everywhere—but she hadn’t looked the least bit afraid. Instead she had met his gaze with an undaunted expression of luminous hope.

In that moment, it was all Link had left: the pale blue sky of Zelda’s eyes reminding him that he was still brave, promising that something better waited on the other side of the wall between them. And it had brought him back to his feet so that he could save the world.

There were still his nightmares, and the truth beneath the nightmares, but they couldn’t supersede that moment. How had he repaid her for tethering him to life? By pretending that the invasion’s consequences had died with Ganondorf, and leaving her to deal with them alone? Auru wrote that Zelda hadn’t even wanted to ask for his help, which could only mean one thing: even now, she was protecting him.

Link’s heart hammered like he’d just been in battle, but his mind was very clear. Shadows stretched across the familiar room. He held a corner of the letter over his wavering candle until flame chewed into the parchment. There was no need to pen a reply—by the time the postman returned, Link would be long gone.

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He packed and cleaned and waited until just before dawn, if only to let Epona sleep. While she ate breakfast, he crept down into the sleeping village. A well-tread path up and around the cliffside let him hop over to the roof of the mayor’s house and circle around to the front. He tapped a three-note pattern on the window a few times before Ilia woke and responded with the two-note knock they’d devised as children.

Link listened to her tiptoeing downstairs and out the door. The morning was chilly enough to make him wish for a cloak—he’d never replaced his old one after it went up in a blaze of dragonbreath. Thankfully, when Ilia settled beside him, she draped a blanket around them both.

“Heard you got a fancy letter,” she said, her eyes on the few remaining stars.

Link sighed. Colin would have stayed quiet, but Talo couldn’t keep a secret if his life depended on it. “It’s from Auru."

“Telma’s friend—I remember.” Ilia tucked her hands under her knees for warmth. “Is it bad?”

“Not…like before.”

“Then do you have to go?”

“No,” Link confessed.

“But you can’t stay,” she observed sadly, and in the silence that followed, she leaned her head on his shoulder.

The river drifted placidly by. Mourning doves cooed gently in the red-gold foliage. Link and Ilia sat together in the strange place between night and dawn, letting go of the unspoken future they had both imagined for so long: the one where the Twilight never came and they had their whole lives to grow up, to grow into each other.

But she was still Ilia, still the only person he could face right now. He knew how devastated everyone else would be when they woke to find him gone, particularly Colin—but somehow, after all Link had done, this was where his courage failed.

With that thought, he took his first step towards forgiving Midna, because he couldn’t bear to say goodbye either.

The clearing below his treehouse was beginning to lighten when they made it up the hill. He let Ilia fuss over Epona for as long as she wanted before she stepped away, turning to him anxiously. He remembered what she'd said before he left for Hyrule seven months ago, not knowing what was coming for either of them: No matter what happens on your journey, don’t try to do anything…out of your league. Just come home safely.

He’d broken that promise within an hour of making it. All of it had been so hopelessly out of his league—and hers too. Link looked at his oldest friend, really looked at her, and saw the slump to her shoulders and the dark circles under her eyes.

“Illy,” Link murmured. “Can you stay? After everything?”

“I don’t know.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Ordon’s my heart, but—I don’t know.”

He took her small, cold hands in his scarred ones. “I’ll be at Telma’s bar. You say the word if you need me.”

She flung her arms around him. “Take care of Epona. Be safe.”

Not come home safely. The change helped as much as it hurt. Link squeezed her tight, and then—impossibly—stepped back. When he turned Epona around, when she leapt into a canter that carried them away from Ordon, even when the trees closed around them, he knew Ilia was watching him go.

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Link had hated most things about saving the world. Midna was the chief exception. But this—Epona’s hooves tearing across Hyrule Field, their joined shadow pelting the ground, the wind in his hair, the world an open promise—he’d missed this too.

Of the several issues in Auru’s letter, there was one he could tackle immediately. The Bulblins might evade guards and Resistance scouts, but Link knew their old haunts, and knew they would react to his presence. He slowed Epona down as they reached the wide plains of Upper Eldin.

King Bulblin had surrendered to him at the castle. Link fervently hoped to maintain that peace, but he strung his bow and loosened the Ordon sword in its scabbard anyway, his blood humming at the prospect of a fight.

He trotted around, jumping broken fences and taking down a couple Kargaroks to kill the time. He didn’t wait long before the ground trembled with hoofbeats that did not belong to Epona. She pricked her ears towards the noise warily.

The first boar appeared against the morning sky, joined by another and another as they crested a hill. Link’s wolfsense brought him the sound of an arrow piercing through the air; he let it bounce off his shield. With Epona steady and brave beneath him, he raised his left hand to show that it was empty.

Another arrow pinged off his shield. That was no surprise—in the past, the Bulblins had been unreserved about attacking Link when he was halfway to his grave. “I just want to talk to your king!” Link yelled, but they either didn’t understand or didn’t care. All five boars were plunging downhill like an avalanche.

He met them with steel in hand. Epona burst forward, startling the first Bulblin with her speed, and Link found what he sought: the girth that fastened the saddle to the boar’s back. His sword snaked out and across the leather, and the rider fell howling to the ground. Epona swung around, allowing Link to catch a club on his shield and thrust forward with enough force to send that Bulblin down too.

Now he had room to maneuver. He ducked as an arrow flew over his head and urged Epona into a canter. She flanked the next boar easily—Link slammed the pommel of his sword into one Bulblin’s hand, making him drop his club with a screech, and disarmed the other rider simply by slicing through his bowstring. With a beautiful hairpin turn, Epona brought him close enough to the fourth boar to slice through another girth.

The last Bulblin rushed in with artless swings of a rusty machete. Link caught the first attack on his shield, the second with his sword, and then hooked his crossguard under the hilt of the Bulblin’s weapon to wrench it from his grasp.

“You put on a good show!” someone barked. One of the fallen Bulblins rallied to loose an arrow, missing by a wide arc; Link was raising his blade again when the voice ordered, “Enough. He has won.”

The archer lowered his bow with an insolent growl. Link risked a glance towards the leader of them all, who was ponderously descending the hill astride his enormous mount. He was twice the size of his counterparts, undiminished by the broken horns Link had left him with; across his back was a familiar greataxe.

“I see you came to play!” King Bulblin greeted.

All at once, the present peace felt like nothing. The moment he burst into Ordon Spring, this monster had cleaved Link’s life into two halves: childhood, and the wreckage that came after. He’d only been serving a greater evil, but still—Epona fidgeted restlessly, her blood up just like Link’s. He hadn’t held a sword since leaving the castle. Every beat of his heart chanted alive, alive, alive.

“I came to talk,” he said, as much to himself as to the Bulblins.

“Ha!” the king scoffed. “No rematch?”

It wouldn’t be a match, Link thought. It never was. Aloud he said, “If I ask you questions, will you answer honestly?”

King Bulblin grunted irritably, but no one attacked. Things weren’t likely to get any friendlier than that, so Link plunged onwards: “Seven months ago you stole four children and a girl my age from Ordon Village. Remember?”

“Good sport, that.” King Bulblin smiled with all his crooked teeth.

Link gripped the sword hard. So far he hadn’t killed anyone, and he wanted very badly to keep it that way, even though the wolf longed to open this creature’s throat. “What did you want with them?” he asked.

“Hmph. Wasn’t me who wanted them.”

“Then…Zant?” Link guessed. “What was he doing?”

“Didn’t know, didn’t care,” the king sneered. “It was his price for letting us have fun.”

“The other children…the ones who didn’t escape. Where did you take them?”

“Carting around soft-skinned brats is no task for a king! I let him order around my underlings, not me.”

“Fine,” Link said impatiently. “Where can I find the rest of your people?”

The king grated out an odd, snarling sound that his companions echoed. Link had never heard a Bulblin laugh before and did not find it enjoyable. “Boy,” the king wheezed through chuckles, “You killed them all!”

Good thing Link was astride Epona, because his legs went suddenly weak. Sickness lurched through him at the memory of countless swings of his sword, a hundred arrows flying true, blood dripping from his fangs. His thoughts screamed out a lifeline—I had no choice—and he clung to it before he drowned.

“That is all I can tell you,” King Bulblin growled as his people picked themselves up and mounted their boars. With a jerk of his horned head, they surged around him, up the hill. He gave Link a look that was equal parts scorn and respect. “Come back and give us real sport!”

Link hadn’t even learned anything useful, except that he’d already killed his only chance of finding the children. He was failing Zelda again. He remembered the last time he’d seen her in the gentle quiet of the stables, the way she hadn’t asked him to stay or help, the love in her voice when she’d spoken of her lost horse.

“Wait,” he said suddenly. “I have one more question.”

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Chapter 9: Peppermint

Chapter Text

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A maid appeared in Zelda’s doorway, framed by the twin mountains of paperwork that threatened to topple over and drown her in tedium at any moment. “Lady Queen, there’s something going on in the stables,” the girl said breathlessly.

“The stables,” Zelda repeated absently. They still sat empty—she couldn’t justify the expense of more horses to replace those they’d lost right now. “Is something on fire? Is someone dead? Are the esteemed members of my royal guard drunk again?”

“Nothing like that, Lady Queen, but—I really think you should see it for yourself.”

Reluctantly, Zelda lowered the parchment she was reading. The maid flounced along excitedly, forcing Zelda to match her brisk pace as they descended to the ground floor, which only pushed her irritation further into the stratosphere.

Outside in the biting autumn afternoon, a small crowd gathered before the unused paddocks tucked into the rear of the castle keep. A figure stood at the fence, looking very little like the bloodied warrior who had taken down Ganondorf. Blue Ordonian wool had replaced his green tunic; he carried a blade far plainer than the Master Sword; his tawny hair was longer and windswept without the hat to contain it. But Zelda knew him from the way he stood: not looking at or away from anyone, just watching the field of yellowing grass, his posture straight and alert.

Link noticed her approach before anyone else. As he turned towards her, she got her first glimpse of the unbandaged scar that slashed brutally across the right side of his face. His mouth tightened at the direction of her gaze, but when she met his eyes, they were soft and uncritical.

Zelda hadn’t summoned him. She didn’t need his help. He was supposed to be home, safe, happy, as she’d promised Midna. But those reminders fell away under a landslide towards the inevitable realization: I missed you.

Link tilted his head towards the paddock, where Epona was not alone. A dappled grey horse paced anxiously along the far side of the fence. His neck arched and sweating, his nostrils flared wide, he paid no heed to Epona or his audience. His ribs jutted out along his sides.

“Peppermint,” Zelda heard herself say.

She gripped the fence, hard, because otherwise she might fall. Peppermint had seemed so big when her mother first brought him home—too much horse for a ten-year-old girl, as her father had put it. Now he looked so much smaller, shrunken by cruelty and neglect, seeking only escape. Dimly, she was aware of Link speaking to the onlookers in a remarkably polite tone that somehow got them to disperse.

“The Bulblins had him for a while,” he told her after a few minutes of quiet. “But he and some of the others escaped; I found them wandering the field. He’s scared, but he let me bring him back, mostly thanks to Epona.”

Zelda could not fill the silence that followed. Link placed a hand on the fence, inches away from hers, and added quietly, “He’ll know you. The rest will take time, but he’ll know you, and he’ll know he’s safe. You okay?”

“Yes,” she managed.

“You ready?”

“Yes.”

She felt like she was dreaming as she followed him into the paddock, the hem of her lilac dress snagging in the overgrown grass until she hiked it up clumsily. Link grabbed Epona’s halter and sent her towards the other horse. She didn’t get close—just bent her neck to graze—but her presence halted Peppermint’s pacing, at least.

“Here,” Link whispered, digging some bits of carrot out of his pocket. Slipping off her gloves, Zelda accepted them.

Peppermint’s head was high, his ears swiveling this way and that. She approached slowly, clutching her dress in one hand, watching her shoes so that he wouldn’t perceive eye contact as a challenge. A few feet away, she tossed a piece of carrot to the grass between them.

He ate the vegetable cautiously. Now was the moment that really mattered. Zelda stayed very still, her hands open and visible, hoping against hope. She had cried into Peppermint’s mane after her mother’s death—and later, when all those tears hardened into ice, he was the one part of her life that made her feel human.

One hoof appeared in her line of vision. He took a second step towards her.

“Hey, Peps,” Zelda greeted unsteadily.

A grey muzzle stretched forward, lipped up the carrot—and withdrew.

But he had tried. They had tried. She closed her fingers on open air as Peppermint plodded away, trying to master herself before Link saw her for the mess she was. When she turned around, though, only Epona was behind her. So he’d given her another kindness: a badly-needed moment of solitude to hug herself until her heart felt steady again.

Zelda found him in the barn, running a whetstone down the length of the Ordon sword. She settled on a crate opposite him and said rather helplessly, “I cannot begin to thank you.”

Link shrugged. “No need. I was trying to find out what the Bulblins did to the missing kids, but....” he frowned down at the blade, flipping it to work on the other edge.

“Is that what brought you here?”

“That and the people who tried to hurt you. Here, and on the bridge …”

Zelda slid her gloves back on to buy herself a moment. Rumors about the missing children were commonplace, but she’d kept the assassination attempt and her encounter with the bandits as quiet as possible. “Auru wrote to you,” she guessed flatly.

“I never should have left.” Link’s hands stilled as he looked up at her. “I’m sorry, Zelda.”

It was too much: his return, Peppermint, this news of Auru’s defection after she’d been trying so hard to trust him again. Part of Zelda recoiled from this apology; another part drank in the sound of her own name like a woman dying of thirst. She counted to ten before she could construct a fragile composure.

“You had every right to leave,” she told him calmly.

Link just shook his head. “Will you tell me about the people with the shadow crystal?”

This was not taking care of him, as she had promised Midna. But he was here now. How could Zelda order around the person to whom she owed everything? And what would be the point? Link wouldn’t turn his back on Hyrule now that he knew it was struggling, no matter what she or anyone else said. Auru’s damage was done.

So—betraying Midna and her own desires in one fell swoop—Zelda told him about what had transpired on the Great Bridge of Hylia. Link listened without comment, sharpening the sword in rhythmic movements, until she fell silent. Then he drew out the pouch that contained his own shadow crystal, worn on a string around his neck. She didn’t like the odious feeling of the magic or the way it whispered to her, but he couldn’t have left it behind in Ordon.

“I never understood why Zant used this in the first place,” Link murmured. “Instead of just killing me.”

“If you had died, the Master Sword would have chosen another,” she mused, relieved despite herself to discuss this with someone who understood. “Ganondorf would have known that—perhaps he ordered Zant to render you unable to claim the sword. Little did they know that the sword’s magic was stronger than theirs combined…yet the bandit leader must have a different way to become human again.”

“How? Even after the sword freed me, I couldn’t do that, not without…” He closed his mouth around Midna’s name.

“I wish I knew. Another thing—his crystal hurt him physically. He coughed up blood. Was it ever such for you?”

“Well…it never felt great,” Link said with a breathy laugh. “But it didn’t make me bleed.” Abruptly, he slid the sword into its scabbard. “How can I help? Should I go after them, or look for the children? Or—what about whoever tried to kill you?”

Most of Zelda’s days were plagued by ineptitude; his breezy efficiency was a startling contrast. “We don’t know where any of them are,” she pointed out. “Telma has collected some rumors about the bandits…I suppose you could start there.”

“Good. I’m staying at her bar, anyway. I’ll leave Epona here to keep Peppermint company, but I just…I don’t—”

“You don’t have to explain,” she interrupted.

Link pressed his lips together. Despite an unexpected surge of disappointment, Zelda understood that the castle housed bad memories for him. Even she loathed this place almost as much as she loved it. She had never known any other home, but sometimes she found herself perversely glad that Midna and Ganondorf’s fight had destroyed the tower where she’d been imprisoned.

And the throne room, she added silently. The throne room most of all.

Carrying that thought hard against her heart, Zelda set off into the castle. She found Auru in the library, working at the same table where he’d taught her younger self to read. A glance around the comfortably cluttered room confirmed that he was alone.

“Link has returned,” Zelda said to him neutrally.

“I heard,” Auru replied brightly. “And your horse—”

“Don’t,” she cut him off. “Why did you send for him?”

Auru lowered his quill and gave her a long, measured look. The words that followed sounded like they’d been rehearsed. “It’s as we discussed. There are problems he can solve—I thought he’d want to know that. He cares for Hyrule, and he is our best defense. We cannot squander that.”

“You speak of him like a weapon to be used,” Zelda snapped.

“I don’t see him that way!” Auru protested. “I like the lad, and he means the world to Rusl, who’s one of my oldest friends. I would never do anything to harm him.”

You already did, she thought in despair. And so did I. She had wanted so badly to keep this one promise. To preserve the peace that Link had earned, that he deserved more than anyone alive. Her failure stung like salt in a wound.

“There are things you do not understand,” she said. “I wish you had respected my judgement.”

“What might those things be?” Auru asked, leaning back in his chair. Zelda recognized that analytical look from when he’d taught her to defend her logic against a political opponent. He was right to question her; she always wanted her people to question her, lest she become a raving dictator. So she tried to answer calmly.

“Link is the one who lived the invasion. I was only there at the end, when he had lost so much blood his clothes were dripping with it, when he got back up to win the battle anyway. There is something in him that makes him throw himself into the fire over and over without being asked, and the Goddesses exploited it. The rest of us are no better. We lacked the courage to save ourselves, so we just—we looked the other way while Link killed himself on our behalf.”

She stopped, overwhelmed by her own words. It’s Midna, she told herself. Midna watched from his shadow while the world ate him alive. Of course I feel her bitterness.

“So you see yourself in him,” Auru stated plainly. “And you want to protect him, as no one protected you.”

The world went blank. Zelda wasn’t looking at the cozy firelit sanctuary of the library. She was seeing a garden of dead flowers, a pile of ash and blackened wood, a yellow-haired girl crying in her doorway, a rope of bedsheets swinging in a sunbeam. The scream that had been boiling in her blood for five years seared up her throat and caught in the barrier of her locked teeth.

“That is ridiculous,” she accused, digging her fingernails into her palms.

“Is it?” Auru wondered gently, his eyes grim and worried.

“Yes, it is,” she spat in a voice like acid, “because you don’t know me. How could you? You weren’t here.”

She may as well have slapped him. Auru’s face crumpled into itself like a house of cards. And Zelda—queen of Hyrule, bearer of the Triforce, descended from a sacred bloodline—turned and fled.

She wasn’t lost enough to sprint through the halls like a madwoman, but she strode so quickly that her guard had to trot to keep up. Slamming into her bedroom and pinning her back to the door, Zelda found herself face-to-face with her own reflection in the long golden mirror on the opposite wall.

Her chestnut hair, her long nose, the arch of her brows, her pale blue eyes—all of it came from her beautiful mother, who had been slow to anger and quick to forgive. Appearance seemed to be the only thing she’d passed onto her daughter. Lashing out at an old friend who only wanted to help? Blaming him for things beyond his control? That was something Zelda’s father would have done.

She had carved her path to power and salvation by wielding deceit the same way Link wielded a sword. She would not be arrogant to count herself among the best liars alive. But she had never—not once in her life—been able to lie to herself.

Auru was right. And that was the worst part of all.

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Chapter 10: The Garden

Chapter Text

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The parchment stared up at Link with mocking blankness. He didn’t even know how to begin. Dear Uli and Rusl—too formal. To my family—but did he have the right to call them that, after he’d left without even a goodbye?

Maybe he should just get straight to the point: I’m sorry. Ilia would have told them enough to stave off immediate worry. They deserved more of an explanation, but two weeks since leaving, Link still lacked the words.

He leaned back in the rickety chair to watch rain fall across the grey stretch of Castle Town. The cramped room he rented above the bar offered a bed, a trunk, the tiny desk where he huddled now—and safety. Telma thought letting him sleep here during the Twilight had been a trivial favor, but she didn’t know how privileged Link had felt to spend those nights on a real mattress, warm and dry and out of danger, with Midna curled up at his back.

That last thought made his stomach lurch, for they had also spent their last night together in this room. He abandoned his unwritten letter and went downstairs.

Something always needed doing at the bar, especially during the dinner rush. Link slipped behind the counter and found dirty dishes waiting for him. Telma sent him an exasperated look—she seemed to think chores were beneath him, but Ordonians preferred work to idleness.

“She was at practice drills today,” groused an off-duty guard at the counter. “Can’t focus with her eyes on us. Commander says she’s pleased, but by Din’s flaming arms, it doesn’t look that way to me.”

“Sounds about right,” his companion snorted, raising his drink. “To the Iceheart Queen!”

They clanked their tankards together and shared an ugly laugh. Link focused very diligently on scrubbing Telma’s favorite skillet. Staying quiet was rarely a challenge for him, but this kind of talk never got easier to hear. The queen is a frozen lake, hiding everything, feeling nothing, people would say. The queen let us fall to save herself. The queen handed Hyrule to the usurpers.

They used Zelda as a dumping ground for all their troubles and needs and hopes. And even as she carried on with dauntless, uncomplaining grace, they still blamed her for having the strength to make that devastating choice.

Talk of Link was vastly different. The Hero slew the Dark Lord in glorious fashion, cleansed the castle of monsters, saved us from the queen’s mistakes. Children ran through the streets playacting his fight against Ganondorf with stick swords. Watching them and feeling the scars sear under his clothes, Link would silently thank Zelda for his anonymity.

Auru entered the bar a few minutes later, brushing rainwater from his sparse grey hair. He wouldn’t come to trade information with Telma during her busiest hours, which meant he must be here for someone else. Link told him that Shad had talked Ashei into accompanying him on some research trip up north.

“Actually,” Auru said, “Can I have a word? Somewhere quieter?”

Curious, Link led him to the kitchen and shut the door on the noise of the bar’s patrons. “I haven’t learned anything,” he said, leaning against the sink and letting Auru claim the only stool in the room. “Telma gets rumors about where the bandits last showed up, but the trail’s always cold by the time I get there. I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” Auru said with a frown. “There’s no need to apologize. I just wanted to thank you for coming, and for bringing back the queen’s horse.” He paused. “How is she?”

“Zelda? I help her with Peppermint sometimes, but she’s so busy. You probably see her more than I do."

Louise, Telma’s cat, sprang onto the countertop to demand attention. As Link obliged her, Auru’s gaze fell on the Triforce outlined on the back of his hand.

“I see her most every day,” Auru confirmed. “But she is...well, as my letter mentioned, she did not want me to write you.”

This reminder flooded Link with a heady mix of gratitude and shame. Between his mortifying illness after losing Midna and his subsequent departure, he hadn’t given Zelda many reasons to believe in him. But the last thing he wanted was for her to feel she had to protect him.

“I’m not angry,” he told Auru. “All you did was give me information I should’ve had in the first place. The rest was my choice.”

“I appreciate that,” the older man replied. “But…for the queen, I think what matters is that I joined the long line of people who have breached her trust.”

Link was about to ask what that meant when the door flew open and Ashei came through it like a stormcloud, black hair plastered to her pale face, mailed hands clenched into fists. Shad staggered in a few steps behind.

“What’s this about?” Auru wondered, exchanging a glance with Link. “I thought you two were surveying ruins.”

“It’s the Bulblins,” Ashei answered bluntly. “We found them dead in Upper Eldin on our way home. It’s gotta be the Bear. You saw him too—you think he could do it?”

“Certainly, but…why?”

“They were butchered,” Shad put in. “Torn apart. That sort of brutality implies a grudge, and there is no shortage of people who hate those creatures.”

“I mean, good riddance,” Ashei agreed, tossing up her hands, “but we probably don’t want their killers wandering around, yeah?”

The cat was nosing at Link’s hand, wanting to know why he’d stopped petting her. He stared vacantly at the Triforce, distinctly unmarred by the scars that surrounded it. Good riddance. According to their king, Link had killed so many Bulblins that there was no one left to ask about the missing children. Had that tiny band he’d met in Hyrule Field been the last of them? Was the whole species wiped out, everywhere, forever? Was that what he had done?

“If we go to the castle now, can you get us an audience with the queen?” Shad was asking Auru.

The old man nodded, grim-faced. Telma stayed to mind the bar; Link and the others waded through the rain and the evening market crowd to the castle. Zelda could have been anywhere, so Auru sent a page after her and brought the Resistance members to wait in his office.

He served tea that no one drank; Ashei was too busy pacing, while Shad leafed through a book half-heartedly and Link stoked the fire, watching them out of the corner of his eyes. The scene with the Bulblins must have been truly grisly—he’d never seen either of his friends so rattled.

“Look, are we wasting our time?” Ashei wondered impatiently. “Can the queen even help? Maybe we keep this in the Resistance. The guard is useless. Don’t look at me like that, Auru, I know it’s getting better, but not quickly enough to be on top of this sh*t. And I like the queen, but not that many people trust her either.”

“The problems in the guard began before any of you were born,” Auru said mildly, “and Queen Zelda has done more to resolve them in two months than her predecessors did in years.”

They all turned to him curiously. Zelda’s grandmother was called the Half-Century Queen for the long peace she’d maintained, broken only by a series of skirmishes when the southern king tested the strength of Hyrule’s border. Zelda’s mother led the defense as a young princess, earning her the nickname the Lionheart, which had stuck until illness cut her life short five years ago. The Council had named her husband regent until Zelda came of age, but he’d died before her eighteenth birthday this spring.

As far as Link knew, all three of them had been effective and sensible rulers—not that Ordon got much political news. Ashei came from a remote area too, but Shad was a native Castle Towner and looked just as surprised.

There was a knock on the door, and a pimpled boy in a page’s uniform stepped in. “The queen sends her apologies for keeping you waiting a little longer. She went to deal with an urgent problem in the garden.”

“What kind of problem?” Auru asked.

“That’s what it said on the note I brought her earlier,” the page shrugged. “Didn’t give details.”

“The note from who, lad?” Something like fear edged Auru’s voice, and Link’s hackles rose in response.

“I dunno…some guard? It’s not my place to question—”

Auru met Link’s eyes and said, “Go.”

Between the space of one heartbeat and the next, Link was through the door and sprinting down the hallway, leaving behind Ashei and Shad’s frantic questions and Auru barking for the guards. Even with panic choking him dry, he could trust his feet to land true: he threw himself down two flights of stairs, into the castle foyer, and through a throng of indignant nobles.

The large central doors parted for him like tissue. The gardens. Where in the gardens? West, Link guessed wildly. There’s more cover. If I was going to kill someone, I’d do it there.

He plunged into the hedges, drawing his sword. It had rained his first time in the castle too, limiting his visibility of the enemies’ countless hidey-holes on the parapets and amongst the greenery. Link had survived because he was a living weapon and because Midna had been watching his back. Zelda only had her pathetic excuse for a guard.

Keep her safe, he thought furiously at the Goddesses as he ran. You put her here, you made her queen, so keep her safe. He tried to cling to that galvanizing anger, but it was already teetering into desperate terror. Rain sheeted down his face. He could barely see. He could barely think.

Shouting ahead. Link put his head down and ran as fast as he’d run with Midna dying on his back. He burst into a courtyard, tripped over something, and scrambled for balance in the slippery grass. A dead body sprawled at his feet. He released a sound that might have been a sob, but it was a man in a dark cloak, not Zelda. Two paces away, another body: not her either.

He took off for the next gap in the manicured hedges, so deep in his fear that he didn’t anticipate what lay around the corner. Something struck him square in the face and fell away. Pain stinging his forehead, rain in his eyes, Link saw the blade flashing towards him before he saw who wielded it.

He reared back and brought up his sword on instinct alone. The small blade caught in the angle of his crossguard, and her eyes were so bright and wild that he could barely choke out the words: “It’s me!”

Metal screeched on metal as the pressure slid away. She stared at him through the downpour. The absence of her crown left her hair clinging messily to her face and neck. A dark stain splattered her pale green dress. Her hand clutched a dagger the size of a letter opener, coated red.

“Link,” she said in a small voice.

“Zelda,” he breathed, and for several beats of his heart, neither of them could say anything else. Her gaze slid to the courtyard; Link shifted his weight, blocking her view of the corpses. A drop of blood rolled down her temple, quickly chased away by the rain.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No,” Zelda answered, but the way she looked at him—shoulders straight, face pale and blank—was somehow one of the worst things he’d ever seen.

Gently, Link tucked her hair out of the way for a closer look. Thin trails of blood leaked from a few shallow cuts across her brow. He could guess why: the attackers had torn off her crown violently enough to break the skin.

“Yes, you are,” he replied, looking into her unreadable eyes.

The dagger thudded to the grass. Link flinched. Zelda didn’t. “My father never thought I had the strength for this,” she murmured so quietly that the rain nearly swallowed the words.

“You have strength for anything,” Link said wearily. “I’m so sorry.”

Zelda nodded once, and then she tugged off her soiled ivory gloves, dropping them beside the dagger. Her feet were bare in the mud. Despite unspeakable gratitude for her safety, Link would have done anything to take this burden away from her.

But he was too late for that. All he could do was hold out a hand. A tiny pool of rainwater had gathered in his palm by the time Zelda reached out. Her touch glided over him, then paused. My scars, Link realized in a rush of panic. He didn’t let anyone touch him skin to skin anymore; if only he’d remembered to get his own gloves before leaving the—

Zelda’s fingers slid through his. An unnameable feeling swam up inside Link, same as the first time their eyes had met through the Twilight, same as when he’d lost all hope and she’d brought it back. He squeezed her hand.

“One of them escaped,” she told him as they wove the long way around the courtyard to avoid the bodies.

Link nodded, keeping his senses open and his sword ready, but there was only the rain and Zelda’s tight grip on his hand. Just as they reached the castle’s central doors, Ashei burst outside with a handful of guards, and Link realized that only a few minutes had passed since he entered the gardens.

Everyone started talking at once, and Link opened his mouth so that Zelda wouldn’t have to answer, but she was already commanding: “Raise the drawbridge and search the gardens. You are looking for an imposter in one of your uniforms, short and stocky, wearing a helmet. His left forearm will be bleeding.”

They scrambled to obey the razor’s edge of her voice. Her hand slipped from Link’s; she glided up the steps and across the threshold. The crowd of onlookers who had been drawn by the commotion gawked as she entered the foyer. As the last conversation fell quiet, Auru shoved his way through to the empty center of the room.

Only the drumming of rain interrupted the silence as he stared at Zelda: bloodied, crownless, dark hair clinging to her pale face, water puddling around her bare feet.

“Lady Queen,” Auru said, kneeling before her.

Link’s first reaction was fury, but Zelda’s was much different. After a breathless moment, she lifted her chin and said, “Rise,” in a voice of steel.

He gave her what she needed, Link realized, watching Auru climb to his feet. He reminded her who she is.

More guards bumbled into the room from the adjoining corridors, directing the crowd to disperse with great self-importance. “How good of you to come,” Zelda greeted dryly, earning her a laugh from the onlookers. After she sent the guards peeling off in various directions, her gaze swept through the crowd like a scythe through wheat. Link had seen those hawkish eyes stare down Ganondorf while the castle smoldered on the horizon. One by one, the smile dropped from each face in the foyer, and Link knew that this was somehow a test.

“Well,” Zelda sighed finally, “I believe I must acquire a new pair of shoes.”

Another laugh as she swept from the room, her proud shoulders and her swaying hair nearly disappearing behind the trail of guards who were deciding, belatedly, to do their duty. The gazes of the murmuring court followed too, as if they were seeing her for the first time. And Link, remembering the feel of her hand in his—scars and all—followed her muddy footprints deeper into the castle.

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Chapter 11: The Truth

Chapter Text

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Zelda watched the guards bustle industriously around her quarters, checking behind curtains and inside wardrobes and under the bed. A simple bit of magic could have identified any intruders five minutes ago, but she had to let them feel useful somehow.

“I’ll oversee the search for the missing attacker, if that would help,” Auru offered.

She looked at the worn, wrinkled face of this person she’d known all her life, unable to find even an ounce of her earlier anger. “It would,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but—would you consider keeping Link close until we’re sure it’s safe?”

Zelda didn’t need Link’s protection. She wasn’t his responsibility. And seeing him would make it impossible to forget his gentle fingers tracing over her face in the rain. She had told him she wasn’t hurt, but he’d fixed her with those fierce blue wolf-eyes and said, Yes, you are, and Zelda couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been referring to more than the scratches on her forehead.

But no one besides Midna could see through her like that.

“It would put an old man’s mind at ease,” Auru added. Then, hesitantly, “I’m so glad you’re safe, little bird.”

Zelda hugged herself. He knew exactly how comforting it was to hear her mother’s nickname for her, just as he’d known what she needed back in the foyer—because he cared. Without conditions or ulterior motives, Auru cared for her. Why did she keep resisting that truth? Was she her father, to see a knife behind every smile?

“If Link is willing, I’ll keep him near,” she replied.

“I think he’s willing—he followed us up here anyway. I’ll send him in.”

The guards paraded out to assume their posts in the corridor, and Link slipped in without a word, planting himself in the bedroom doorway. No one could attack Zelda from the windowless washroom, so she sank into the steaming bath her maid had drawn.

She tried to gather her thoughts, but found them scattered, like a windstorm had blown through the neatly organized shelves of her mind. Why are you surprised? She asked herself. You knew you had enemies. You created them.

Her bloody dress lay crumpled on the tile like a dead thing. Zelda pulled on a clean grey one, plain and sleeveless, and wrapped her mother’s peony-pink shawl around her shoulders. Reemerging in the bedroom, which had grown dim as night fell upon the rainy grey world outside her windows, she waved a hand to light the candles.

Link was a silent shadow in the doorway. Remembering his hand in hers, the rough feel of the damage the Twilight had done to his skin, she watched him warily. Someone had brought him dry clothes while Zelda had been bathing, a plain sand-colored tunic over brown trousers that aligned with the nondescript way he dressed these days. His damp hair stuck out in amusingly disordered spikes. He looked so ordinary, and so dangerous.

“Would it be stupid to ask if you’re okay?” he ventured.

“If our positions were reversed,” Zelda countered, “would you answer that question honestly?”

“Probably not,” Link admitted ruefully.

She drew the shawl more tightly around her shoulders. Noticing, he went to the hearth to build up the low-burning fire, always with his body angled towards the door. He had suffered burns before—she’d felt their remnants on the fingers of his shield hand—but his hands darted in and out of the flames fearlessly.

“I cannot believe how foolish I was,” Zelda said, unsure where the words came from. “The guard handed me a note after I left my meeting. From my steward, he said, but there was no signature. I told myself perhaps the steward had forgotten to sign. I told myself to give my people the benefit of the doubt for once. The Goddesses have a sense of humor.”

Link closed the hearth’s metal grate and leaned back on his haunches to gaze up at her. With his face full of flickering shadows, he looked strange and untamed, more like the wolf who had loped into Zelda’s tower all those months ago than a man.

“I don’t think you did anything wrong,” he said. “You should be able to trust your people. You shouldn’t have been forced to…”

He stopped without saying the words.

Zelda had never needed to kill with her own two hands. Not that she lacked education: the royal family had learned much from their Sheikah bodyguards. Her mother had gifted her a dagger small enough to strap to her calf on her thirteenth birthday—the very dagger that saved her life today. She’d dropped it in the gardens.

The gardens. The courtyard. The note had claimed there was an emergency there. She’d been drenched by the time she reached it, failing to notice that her guard didn’t follow past the entrance.

The first assassin had stepped out from behind a topiary, dark-cloaked and calm, his blade flashing like lightning in the storm. Zelda flung out her hands to blind him with magic, buying enough time to draw her dagger and call for her guard.

No one came, and the second assassin was upon her. The stupid courtly slippers that were in fashion slowed her escape; he dragged her into his body with a vice-like grip, inadvertently tearing the crown from her head in his haste. With his next snarling attempt, he got a fistful of hair and yanked it back to bare her throat.

The first man, blinking his streaming eyes, had stumbled forward. The knife grinning in his hand was eight inches long with ridged teeth, as if he’d come to carve a pig rather than kill a queen.

Zelda couldn’t use her hands, so magic blazed up from the core of her to flood the air. The rain carried it in crackling currents, golden and divine and terrible, and a heartbeat later she stood in a circle of blackened grass with two dead men at her feet.

That was when her guard had stepped into the courtyard, sword loudly, and drew his sword. To protect me, she had told herself foolishly, but the next few moments were a blur of trading blows and disarming him and slashing out with her dagger. She must have hit something major, for the blood came sudden and shocking, and Zelda had frozen at the knowledge that she’d just taken two lives and might have to claim another.

That weakness let the third assassin escape. Kicking off her awful shoes, she’d set off after him, but the sound of Link’s footsteps made her fear a fourth attacker.

“I threw a shoe at you,” she realized aloud.

“Understandable, given the circ*mstances,” Link assured her.

Zelda laughed. It was ridiculous, morbid really, to laugh about this situation. She’d joked in the foyer to ease the tension, but her court hadn’t seen the bodies—Link had. But he was smiling too, a small secretive smile of relief. Feeling suddenly lightheaded and weak, Zelda sank down on the sofa before the hearth, and he sat beside her.

“Zelda,” he said. “Who do you think…”

“Many people stand to gain from a vacant throne. I have no husband or heir. My alliances were tenuous before the Twilight, and a great deal has changed since then. And you must have noticed the discontent around my surrender to Zant—I hear the townsfolk call me the Iceheart Queen.”

“Well, they never met him,” Link muttered heatedly. “What can I do?”

Tell me how you live with this, Zelda thought, remembering the circle of dead grass, the two bodies splayed inside it. Tell me how to bear it. But she couldn’t ask him that. They were people of action, and they would keep moving before the past caught up.

“You could ask the guards to find Ashei and Shad,” she suggested. “They had something to tell me.”

Link looked unhappy, but he obeyed without question. They waited in silence: her on the sofa with a pile of budget proposals for distraction, him leaned against the back of it, fiddling anxiously with his sword. He stayed there even after the other members of the Resistance came in—only when a maid entered with dinner did he consent to sit down.

Zelda’s mind seized eagerly upon the new problem Ashei and Shad brought with them. She agreed that the Bear was the most likely explanation for the Bulblins’ deaths—and that meant a skilled tracker might be able to follow his trail. The problem was what came next. Despite significant progress, her guard was unprepared to face the beast and his unknown number of allies. And violence wouldn’t resolve the crucial mystery of the shadow crystal.

“So we need information,” Shad mused. “Even if we could capture them alive—which is unlikely—they resent the queen too much to give us answers about how they got the shadow crystal, or if there are any others in Hyrule.”

Ashei stood and paced to the window. “What if the question came from a friendly face?” she wondered. “Telma’s heard that those guys take recruits. What if we sent someone to join them? Play the sellsword, figure out what they’re up to?”

Zelda felt, rather than saw, the way Link stiffened.

“Risky,” Auru said appreciatively.

“Too risky,” Shad agreed.

“I know,” Ashei sighed. “And I can’t go because the bandits saw my face on the bridge. But what else do we do, four-eyes?”

Rolling his eyes, Shad began to toss ideas back and forth with her, Auru chiming in occasionally. Zelda picked at her chicken pot pie and paid them no heed. She held her breath, waiting for the axe to fall, and still the pain surprised her when it did.

“I’ll do it,” Link said quietly.

Silence, but for the crackling fire and the drumming rain, until Auru asked carefully: “Are you a good liar, lad?”

Zelda imagined viewing Link through the eyes of someone less discerning and cynical than herself. He had hidden the end of the world from everyone in this room, even from Rusl, who had raised him. And it had taken Midna months in his shadow to understand that for all his courage and composure, the Twilight had him teetering on the edge of ruination.

“He is,” Zelda answered.

“But it’s dangerous to go alone,” Shad said uncertainly. “Perhaps you could send a guard or two with him, Lady Queen?” Ashei snorted at that, and he conceded. “Well—we could write to Rusl?”

“No,” Link said immediately, rising from the sofa. “I’ll go, but not until someone catches the—”

“The assassin is mostly likely still on castle grounds,” Auru interrupted. “That means the best place for you is with the queen.”

“Auru,” Zelda warned. “Might Link and I have a moment?”

Reluctantly, he ushered Shad and Ashei out and shut the door on the quiet room. Zelda watched them go, feeling strangely defeated, while Link turned back to her in askance.

“You told me once that I was not indebted to you,” she said quietly. “You understand that goes both ways. I have no doubt you can do this, Link, but you do not have to.”

“I don’t think anyone ever gives you an option, Zelda,” he pointed out. She blinked at that, but he was already adding, “And I want to do this.”

Take care of him, Midna had said. Somehow Zelda doubted that those instructions allowed for sending him undercover with the enemy. But she remained unwilling to rob Link of the choice. And if anything could kill him, it wasn’t a bunch of malnourished thieves, shadow crystal or no.

“Why don’t you get some sleep?” Link suggested. “I’ll keep watch.”

Heartsick and weary, Zelda gave in. She draped her mother’s shawl over a chair, snuffed out the candles, and crawled under the covers. Yellow light from the outer chamber seeped in through the edges of her bedroom door. She could see Link’s shadow, devoid of its former inhabitant, as he shifted soundlessly from foot to foot—keeping himself alert so that he could protect her, for no reason beyond his own goodness.

She closed her eyes. After the life she’d lived, assassins and bandits could not make Zelda afraid—but Link did.

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She dreamed the old dream: cold metal in her hand, cold marble under her feet, the great doors of the throne room groaning as they were shut and barred. Crumpled at her feet was a ghost of a man, wheezing with laughter, and all around them were corpses. Her mother. Her uncle. Her aunt. Two strangers on a bed of charred grass. The guards tossed them onto the pyre with those who were still living.

Outside, no one will hear a thing, said the man at her feet. Can you promise that, my Zelda?

No one will hear a thing, she echoed.

She woke all at once, remembering the rain, the gardens, the sawtooth blade. Magic roiling in her blood, she kicked away the blankets, ready to fight—but hands caught her wrists, calloused and gentle.

“It’s me, Zelda,” Link murmured, his face aglow in the light she was unconsciously casting. “You’re safe.”

“I am sorry,” she said blankly, dropping her hands into her lap in mortification. “Was I screaming?”

“No. You don’t have to apologize.”

Zelda reignited the candles—the rain had stopped, but the darkness was still thick outside her windows. She couldn’t have been asleep very long. “Have they found the assassin?”

“Yeah. He’s in custody now. He was trying to escape through the tunnels, but his blood trail led them right to—”

Link stopped midsentence. He was staring down at Zelda—not at her face, but at her bare arms and legs. At the odd marks that climbed up her skin like forked lightning.

“Link?” she said.

His face had drained of color.

Zelda rose to her feet, and he flinched back. His hand flew to the jagged line on his cheek, the one that had been weeping blood that day in the throne room—then dropped away. But she’d already noticed, just as she noticed the way he was half-turned towards the exit.

She feared what Link brought out in her, but never once had she feared him. The moment he’d loped into her prison as a dark wolf with a bloodstained muzzle, they were on the same side. Anything else was inconceivable. So why did he look so afraid?

“Link,” Zelda repeated. “Do you know what gave me these scars?”

His gaze flicked to her arms for half a second, then away. He shook his head, lying to her for only the second time—the first had been when he’d found her sword in the ruins of the throne room and said he’d just had a feeling it was hers.

“They were there after Midna returned me to my body,” Zelda said slowly. “I do not remember what happened before that. But you do.” He started to shake his head again, and she said softly, “Please tell me the truth.”

Link closed his arms around his middle and curled his shaking hands into fists. It took him a long time to speak, and when he did, his voice was so lifeless as to be unrecognizable. “Your body was in the throne room when we got there,” he told the floor. “She tried to protect you. He knocked her out.”

“And then?” Zelda prompted.

“He took control of you.”

“Took control of…how do you mean?”

“I don’t—it was—” Link’s voice rose, then lapsed back into dullness. “He used you like a puppet.”

No magic Zelda had studied could accomplish what he was describing. There were fairy tales of ghostly possession, but—was it truly possible? Maybe so, if someone had sacrificed her soul for someone she loved beyond reason and left behind only her uninhabited shell.

And Ganondorf had been capable of anything; with the Triforce of Power, he’d indoctrinated Zant and countless monsters. Suddenly Zelda was thinking not of Ganondorf but of her father, and how he’d looked at her like an empty vessel into which he could pour all his plots and desires and cruelties.

She turned away sharply, balancing her control on a knife’s edge, but still the question came out harshly: “Why did you keep this from me?”

“She…” Link started. “We thought that since you wouldn’t remember, we should spare you.”

“Spare me?” Zelda repeated derisively. “I have a right to know what happens to my body! And you are still holding back the full truth—he made me fight you, didn’t he?”

Silence stretched between them on a taut thread. When she turned, the red scar was violently prominent in Link’s bloodless face. If he hadn’t dodged in time, the sword would have plunged into his eye and clean through his skull.

Zelda had dropped that same sword to keep Hyrule alive, and what had that choice brought? A kingdom in tatters. Missing children and mourning families. Dead assassins at her feet. And Link, the bravest person anyone had ever known, staring at her with hollow-eyed helplessness. Just like the girl who had stood crying in her doorway three years ago—the consequences of Zelda’s weakness, given human form.

“I need some time,” she heard herself say.

Link wavered in her peripheral vision. “Mid—” he choked on the name and tried again. “Midna saved you. Please don’t blame her.”

He was gone without another word.

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Chapter 12: Mud

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Link stood still for so long that the carrion creatures he’d startled away returned to resume their feast. Their raucous cries forced him to act—vultures and crows wouldn’t bother him, but Kargaroks would. He loosed one arrow, then another, and watched two corpses join the pile at his feet.

Yesterday’s rain had washed out the morning sky, leaving it pale blue and clear, while here on earth everything was carnage and decay. Link thought there were about twenty dead Bulblins, but his mind kept slipping away every time he tried to count. In the center of the pile was the huge, horned king. Reminding himself of everything these creatures had done to the people he loved didn’t make this senseless massacre much easier to bear.

The king, in particular, had been torn and mauled to the point where only his size made him recognizable. Shad was right—there was intention here. Only someone hateful and vicious and utterly merciless could have done this.

Someone like me, Link realized desolately, wondering what right he had to judge this crime, after all of his own.

He made himself focus on the jumble of tracks in the mud. The only hoof marks here belonged to boars, not horses—the Bulblins’ attackers were on foot, and so was Link, since he was trying to pass as a sellsword down on his luck.

Missing Epona already, he shouldered his pack and followed the trail north to the Bridge of Eldin. His mind was less on the task at hand than on what he’d left behind: Zelda, the blood on her dress, the knife falling from her hand.

Killing changed everything. It left a stain that never washed out, made everything around you look fragile and fleeting. And he had left her alone among people who proved how little they understood that every time they sang the Hero’s praises.

But what was he thinking? So what if Zelda had been giving him slow and cautious glimpses of her true self, like a flower opening its petals to the sun? Now that she knew what Link was, she would never want him near her again. She hadn’t even shown the anger and horror and disgust she must have felt. She had shown him nothing at all, and that alone demonstrated how badly he’d hurt her.

Wind howled through the gorge, and Link’s foot caught on the raised part of the bridge where Zant had severed the stone and Midna had restored it. He stumbled, vast empty space wheeling on either side of him, and stood still for a long moment afterward, thinking about how even he wouldn’t survive such a fall.

The bandits. He had to find the bandits before the trail went cold.

They’d traveled north through the shallow ravine and left the path before it reached the Hidden Village. Link’s journey had never led him to this slope of yellow-leaved birch trees turned gold by the morning sunlight. Here, the trail started moving in snaky, disjointed patterns and across streams, which meant the bandits were smart enough to challenge all the hunting tricks he’d learned from Rusl.

They were also skilled enough that no one without Link’s wolf-senses would have noticed he was being followed. No snapping twigs or loud breath, just three sets of strategically placed footsteps. Link feigned ignorance as he headed deeper into the forest, setting his teeth against his protesting instincts as the enemy fanned out.

He heard the rustle of leaves as someone climbed a tree ahead of him. The other two were still behind—what he wouldn’t give to have Midna watching his back right now. He could only rely on the nebulous assumption that they wanted him alive; otherwise, they would have attacked outright.

A branch creaked above Link’s head. When the weight crashed down upon his shoulders, he let it carry him down, struggling with the appropriate amount of fervor for someone being jumped in the woods but not enough that he’d actually win.

“Quit it,” hissed a voice in his ear, “and I won’t hurt you.”

He allowed her to wrench his arms behind him. Her knee pinned him facedown in the wet leaves; the cold point of a blade touched his neck. Two pairs of muddy boots appeared in Link’s line of vision.

“Get his stuff,” ordered the woman holding him.

Holding still while they stripped away his things—his sword—was among the hardest things he’d ever done. He breathed against the panic clawing up his throat, wanting Midna, clinging to the knowledge that he could break free if necessary. The ensuing fight would be easy. He wasn’t letting them hurt him.

“What’s in the pack?”

“Bandages,” replied a young man. “Water, some food…”

“Food!” exclaimed a second man with a deeper voice, followed by the unmistakable crunch of someone biting into an apple.

The woman laughed, pressing the blade closer to Link’s neck. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“I’m Colin,” Link gasped; it was a common enough name, and always on his mind. “I’m just—running. I don’t want trouble.”

“Running from what?”

“The guard. They said I stole the apples, but I didn’t, I swear.”

“The royal guard of Hyrule making false accusations? Shocking! Unconscionable!” his captor joked, drawing snickers from her friends. “Then what really happened, kid?”

“Nothing!” Link exclaimed. “I bought them with my last Rupees!”

Through obnoxious munches of the apple, the second man said skeptically, “You got a nice sword here. Nice bow, too, and a Hylian shield—those aren’t cheap. If you were broke, you woulda sold these long ago.”

“They were my father’s,” he said defensively. Rusl had forged the Ordon sword, and the bow had belonged to the Hero of Time, so it was as close to the truth as Link could get.

Silence for a moment. The woman asked, “If I let you up, will you try anything stupid?”

“No,” Link answered meekly. When the pressure on his arms disappeared, he sat up warily.

He’d memorized Ashei’s Resistance report about the bandits on the Great Bridge of Hylia. The wiry, dark-haired knife-fighter had been at the Bear’s side that day. One of her companions was a reedy man with a shaved head, dark skin, and a crooked nose—crooked because Zelda had broken it during the fight. The other man was bulky and broad and had a surprisingly friendly face under his mess of orange curls.

“Where are you going?” the woman demanded. “There’s nothing in this direction but forest and the mountain border.”

Link shrugged bitterly. “Better than Castle Town.”

“You’re no Castle Towner.”

“Nah,” he agreed, stretching out his Ordonian accent for all it was worth. “I’m from a farm in the middle of nowhere. I left to sell my sword to merchant caravans and such, but the Hero went and killed all the monsters.”

“We owe a lot to the Hero,” said the broken-nosed youth sharply.

The protectiveness of his tone—as though he were speaking of someone he actually knew, rather than a stranger crafted out of rumors—was striking. “’Course,” Link said quickly. “It’s just that I’m out of work since the Twilight, is all.”

“How are you with that sword, then?” the woman wondered, her ponytail swinging behind her as she slanted him a sideways look.

“Saki,” both men protested in long-suffering unison.

Laughing, she produced a second knife and lifted her chin. “Want to spar a round, kid? You win, maybe we’ll give you something to do besides run from the guard.”

Link saw bright hunger in each of their faces—not just the physical kind, though there was that too. He held out a hand for his sword.

The ginger man passed it over and whispered, “Red Rupee on the stranger,” in his companion’s ear, too quietly for Saki to hear as she sprang to her feet and stretched with catlike grace.

“You’re on, dumbass,” the other man said.

Link drew his sword and waited.

Saki seemed all too happy to make the first move. She charged him with the right dagger pointing up and the left thrusting forward, forcing him to block one and sidestep the other, then to block again as the left came sweeping out. Link noticed an opening but ignored it—they needed to see an above-average swordsman, not a wolf.

His opponent fought with speed and efficiency, aiming for his vitals with a precision he wasn’t accustomed to after fighting countless monsters but few people. He wondered if Saki would pull back before she drew blood, the way he was doing. Probably not. He had valuable weapons and knew where they were hiding—they had to either recruit or kill him.

Link defended for a while, letting her tire herself out on an escalating assault, found himself almost enjoying her rapidfire attacks. From the surprise on her two companions’ faces, he could tell Saki rarely met her match; she’d be even better if she was well-fed and properly equipped.

Deciding he’d been patient long enough, he made his move: lightning-quick, he bashed her left dagger away with the flat of his blade and sidestepped her right. Now he was the one gaining ground with quick, piercing strikes that drove her back and back while she struggled to ward him off with her short blades.

It ended the moment her heel caught on a tree root. Link hooked his foot behind her ankle to send her sprawling, kicking one knife away and trapping the other beneath his boot while he angled his sword at her throat.

Saki gazed up at him, a little awed, a little afraid. “Not bad,” she said with a breathless laugh.

“You too,” he replied, offering a hand up.

Ignoring it, she bounced to her feet, her eyes sparkling with shameless exhilaration. “Oy!” she exclaimed, seeing a red Rupee change hands. “Nil, you bet against me?”

“Wasn’t wrong,” the ginger pointed out, pocketing the money.

“I had your back,” the other man groused, “and look what it cost me.”

Sneering at them good-naturedly, she told Link, “I’m Saki. That’s Nil and Rai. We’ve got a camp nearby. You want in?”

“On what?”

“On the chance to change this gods-damned kingdom,” answered Rai with absolute conviction.

“It’s not so glorious as all that,” Saki said with a roll of her eyes. “But watch our backs and we’ll watch yours. That enough for now?”

“That’s enough,” Link lied. Even if he’d been ignorant of their past deeds, he knew he could never place his life in another’s hands like that—not since the Mirror had shattered. Not ever again.

“Good choice,” Nil told him sagely. “We woulda killed you if you’d said no.”

Saki laughed, bell-clear and childish, and Link realized he was well on his way to liking these people. Trying to smother that inclination before it drew breath, he followed them down into the woods.

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Sunlight streamed across the rows of stark white beds that lined either side of the castle infirmary. The surviving assassin, much smaller in this clear-cut room than he’d looked in the gardens, was the only occupant.

Before she passed through the doorway, someone called out from down the hallway—Lord Hartwell, her Minister of Finance, sporting an ensemble of fashionable traveling clothes that he’d tactfully arranged to look like he’d thrown them on in a hurry. He wore a dismayed expression that Zelda thought was really quite good, so she greeted him with the appropriate concern.

“Lady Queen,” Hartwell said breathlessly. “Thank Nayru I ran into you—I am so sorry, but I must take a leave of absence. I’ve received word that my wife is ill.”

He was lying through his teeth. Perhaps he was sneaking off to conduct some shady business deal or meet an illicit lover—or perhaps it was more serious. Zelda hadn’t forgotten the way he’d mentioned her father in their conversation a few weeks ago.

“You must go, of course,” she told him sweetly. “Your wife will be in my prayers. The Council and I will worry about matters here.”

Lord Hartwell shot a look inside the infirmary and executed an elegant bow, sweeping away with all the urgency of a genuinely frantic husband.

Strange and stranger, Zelda thought, but all she could do was remain vigilant. She persuaded her guard to wait outside the infirmary and stepped inside.

A helmet had obscured the assassin’s face yesterday. Now she could see he was middle-aged, portly and brown-haired and unremarkable, except for the belligerent way he watched her. Manacles secured him to the headboard, the chains long enough to allow movement but not escape.

She recognized him now, as had the guards—for he’d been one of them, once. That was how he’d infiltrated the castle so easily: he knew how to fool a real guard into trading shifts, get a falsified message to Zelda, and lead her to her death.

“The doctor tells me you are well enough to talk,” she said, settling down in a chair at his bedside.

“I got nothin’ to say to you,” the assassin sneered.

“Then let us make this brief. Did you honestly think we would not find your records, Cormac of Lanayru? You are lucky no one recognized you…of course, many of the guards you served alongside are dead now. Or, like you, they ran.”

“I did not—”

“You were assigned to the eastern parapets the day Zant invaded,” Zelda interrupted. “When I summoned all units to the throne room, you did not come. That leaves us one option.”

He gave a sullen shrug and said nothing.

“You hail from a small village west of here, correct?” she continued mildly. “That is where you fled while your comrades perished and Hyrule fell. In the time since, someone sought you there and offered you a sack of Rupees in exchange for my head. Am I on the right track?”

Cormac snarled, “It wasn’t for the money. You think running saved me? Nowhere was safe after you threw us to the invaders. Those f*cking green monsters on their boars still came; they tore my son out of my arms and rode away. My wife still can’t get out of bed. You let them do that to us!”

Watching closely, Zelda could see that this man had no fear for his own life. He knew there was no happy ending to standing trial for attempted regicide; she couldn’t threaten him that way. But he still had one weak flank.

“In fact,” she began coolly, “you were the one who let them do it, Cormac. You abandoned the kingdom you swore to protect. Because of you and the other deserters, we could not stop the invasion here—so it followed you home.”

“No,” he snapped, “that’s not true, you—”

“Oh, but it is. What did you tell your wife—that you were off duty? That you’d come to protect her? I wonder how she would handle the real story.”

Cormac’s face went slack.

“I can find her quite easily,” Zelda promised. “I can have the news delivered by someone she trusts. Perhaps one of your former friends in the guard. Of course, given her condition, could she bear learning that her husband fled his duty like a coward? That he let the very same monsters who kidnapped her son run rampant? Could she—”

“Shut up!” Cormac burst out. “Just shut up.”

Zelda sat back and waited. He was covering his face, trying to think his way out, but she hadn’t left him one. What would Auru and her family think, watching her do this? What about Link? She’d been furious at his lies, but she was the greatest manipulator of them all.

“I don’t know any names,” Cormac said at last. “They found me at the tavern in my village. They’d heard I used to be a guard. They wouldn’t say who they worked for…someone rich, I’m sure.”

“How many were there?”

“Just the two I came here with. Like I said—no names. My job was only getting you to the garden. I didn’t expect you to kill them.”

Zelda remembered her magic crackling through the air, the thuds of the bodies hitting the grass. Swallowing, she said, “So you took matters into your own hands. Was this the first time your employers tried to kill me?”

“No. Twice before, they said.”

“What do you know of a group of bandits harassing the countryside?”

“The ones people call the Bear’s Fangs? Only gossip.”

That was good news; at least the bandits weren’t in bed with whoever was trying to assassinate Zelda, though they had their own grudge against her. Concealing the exhaustion that coursed through her, she rose from the chair.

“An investigator will return with further questions,” she told Cormac. “You are to provide every single detail regarding your fellow assassins. Do you understand?”

“I understand, you bitch,” he ground out.

Letting that one go, she walked out stiffly. The route back to her quarters led past a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the gardens’ bare flowerbeds. She could almost see her mother down there in trousers and a sunhat, scandalizing everyone who believed that a queen had no place working in the dirt.

But Zelda was the one covered in filth. She had just threatened a man with his wife’s undoing. In every way that mattered, she had become her father’s daughter, not her mother’s.

She thought suddenly of Link’s scarred fingers on her skin, his blue wolf-eyes as gentle as the rain failing around them. You have strength for anything, he had told her.

Knowing he was right did not help sleep come any easier that night.

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Chapter 13: Theft

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Under a blanket of cold stars, Link drew his cloak tighter around his shoulders. The bandits had tucked their camp into a ravine that sheltered it from the elements on three sides, leaving one entrance defended by a trench and a wall of sharpened stakes. Besides hunting, the only job he’d been given in the past four days was patrolling the top of the ravine in a spiraling pattern.

Combined with the guard always posted at the entrance and wider patrols in the forest, Link thought it an excessive amount of security for a dozen unwashed thieves in this remote corner of Hyrule. Particularly since they had very little to defend; all the money they stole from travelers went to food and clothes and medicine.

And it wasn’t enough. Several of the older bandits had limps or hacking coughs, and everyone was hungry. How would they survive out here when game got scarce and snow buried them?

Link kicked a fallen branch crossly. He wasn’t supposed to care, but he never seemed able to stop.

He turned back when the ghostly crescent moon reached its apex. The torches at the entrance cast flickering shadows across the guard’s face as he nodded to Link. Tents jutted up like vague black hills around the firepit at the camp’s center, which was only embers now. Only Link’s sharp eyes allowed him to pick out the dark form hunched over it.

He had yet to learn a name for the bandits’ leader. Everyone just called him Captain—which was puzzling, because no one else had a rank. Gossip mongers referred to him as the Bear, and the other bandits his Fangs, but the bandits themselves only treated those titles as a joke.

In her report, Ashei had speculated that the man who carried the shadow crystal might hail from her own northern mountains, for they shared the same thick black hair, round human ears, and hooded brown eyes. Those eyes had contemplated Link impassively the day he arrived at camp.

Neither of them had been impressed by the other. No matter who he was, the Captain was just a man, laughably mundane after underwater leviathans and twilit fossils and the age-old hatred in Ganondorf’s deadened gaze. And Link was a smallish seventeen-year-old with a scarred face and faded clothes who tried to pass as unremarkable.

Even when Saki said he’d beat her in a fight, the Captain’s only comment was, “Stop looking so smug, then.”

“Can we keep him or not?” Saki had demanded, like a child with a flea-bitten puppy.

“Two weeks, like the others,” the Captain had decided in his gravelly voice. “Then we’ll see.”

This was the second night Link had seen him out here when only those on duty were still awake, swigging from a tankard of stolen ale and watching the stars listlessly. As Link made for his tent, he swore the captain saw him—not just noticed his anonymous silhouette, but recognized him through the dark.

He’s a beast, Link remembered. Maybe he can sense what others can’t, like me.

Shivering at the thought, he climbed into the tent he shared with Rai. The arrangement displeased them both: Link because he hated leaving his sleeping body at someone else’s mercy, Rai because he resented being ordered to keep an eye on the newcomer. Plus, Rai had previously shared with Nil, and those two were always exchanging soft, aching glances that implied they were more than friends.

Still, Rai hadn’t been unfriendly, and he tossed and turned with terrible nightmares that stirred Link’s unwilling sympathy. Squeezing himself into a corner away from the careless sprawl of the other man’s limbs, Link set his sword within reach and closed his eyes.

He woke to early sunlight filtering through canvas and Rai blowing heat into his cupped hands, looking sidelong at Link. Strange, faint lines several shades darker than his skin—like seams in a rock fissure—climbed up his neck. Link had plenty of his own strange scars and still couldn’t guess what had left those marks.

“You talk in your sleep,” Rai observed.

Link froze. So far the camp’s potential danger and unfamiliar noises woke him frequently enough to prevent the truly bad nightmares that came only in deep sleep, but he’d been afraid of this. Night was the one time he couldn’t trust himself.

“You were saying a name—Midna,” Rai went on with a crooked smile. “She some farm girl who broke your heart?”

“Something like that,” Link replied dully. Running his fingers through the haystack of his hair, he went out into the cold morning. A handful of raiders clustered at the camp’s entrance, including Saki and the Captain, all of them fastening weapons to their belts and adjusting their ragged armor.

“They’re scouting a place where we might get some horses,” Rai explained, emerging from the tent. “I’m not going, because apparently I’m too impulsive and might get us caught.”

“Not that there would be any precedent for that,” Nil quipped as he passed by.

Rai made a face, grabbed him by the collar for a quick kiss, and ordered, “Stay alive.”

It wasn’t the first time Link had heard the bandits say those words to each other. It seemed a grim sort of farewell, like each sunrise was something to fight for instead of count on. These people clung to each other like drowning men hanging onto a lifeline, the same way Link had clung to Midna.

He spent the day hunting with Rai and the five young men the bandits had recruited, all of whom had similar stories to the one Link had concocted and had joined the camp out of poverty or boredom. Link and Rai did nearly all the work—the rest were poor hunters, untrained in archery, stomping loudly through the underbrush. No wonder the Lizalfos took them by surprise.

Two recruits were smart enough to scatter as the monster shot out of the trees. The third froze in terror. Rai dragged him out of the way and reached for his spear, but it was over in three moves: the enemy lunged, Link dodged, and his sword entered its body with a wet sigh.

He straightened, pulling out the blade as he went. The Lizalfos thudded to the forest floor. The four men stared, eyes wide as full moons. Blood ran down the length of Link’s sword, drip drip drip onto the leaves in time with his hammering pulse.

“That was sloppy,” Rai told the youth who had frozen. “He just saved your ass.”

“R-right. Thanks, Colin.”

“That wasn’t like anything they teach in the guard,” Rai said. “Where the hell did you learn to fight?”

“My father taught me,” Link answered. That was a lie—Rusl had tried, but Link had barely been interested enough to learn the basics. When he’d chased Talo into Faron Woods and faced his first Bokoblin, who looked less like a monster and more like an ugly, slobbering, blue-skinned person, he knew what to do, how to move, where to aim. Even in the sickening aftermath, he remembered thinking: I was born for this.

What he couldn’t understand was why the cooling corpse at his feet made these boys look at him with admiration. Link’s mind wheeled, desperate to think of anything else, and latched onto what Rai had just said.

“You were in the guard?” he asked.

“Yeah. All of us were, except this lot.” Rai cast a dark look at the recruits. “Clearly we need to train.”

He turned away, forestalling further questions, not knowing he’d already given Link a gift. This explained so much: why the bandits called their leader Captain, why his inner circle was so tight-knit. Yet these people were vastly different from the guards Link had encountered in Castle Town. None of those bumbling cowards could fight worth a damn; nor would they sacrifice a steady income for a life of thievery in the forest. Whatever the bandits’ goal, they wanted it very badly.

Zelda would probably untangle this knot in a matter of seconds. Link needed to know more.

Opportunity arrived later that day. Back at camp, Link sat by the firepit plucking the geese he’d caught for the stewpot. He pretended not to notice when the Captain joined him on a nearby log. Out of the corner of his eye, Link watched those hands—big and calloused and covered in a warrior’s scars—grab a feathered goose and defeather it with surprising precision.

“You hit this bird square in the eye,” the Captain noted after a while. “Rai tells me you do so every time. He also said you killed a Lizalfos faster than lightning today. That true?”

Link met his bloodshot eyes and shrugged. “He’s exaggerating.”

“Not Rai,” the other man rasped, scratching at his unkempt beard. “He’s hard to impress, but he likes you. So does Saki.”

“Saki likes everyone.”

The Captain snorted. “It does seem that way. Did you keep animals on that farm of yours?”

Link nodded.

“Good. You’re green, but you’ve made yourself useful, and half these city slickers can’t handle a horse. We’re going in three days.”

Link yanked out a feather with more force than necessary. At least he wouldn’t be hurting anyone. “All right,” he agreed.

The Captain nodded. As he stood and leaned over to add the plucked goose to Link’s pile, the evening sun caught on a strange array of linear scars reaching towards his jaw—unmistakably similar to those on Rai’s skin.

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What am I doing? Link asked himself as he unlatched the last stall. How did I get here?

The same bewilderment had often struck him during the Twilight. Goatherds should not travel to sky-cities or parallel realms any more than they should steal animals, the same way the Bulblins had stolen Epona and Peppermint. What a ludicrous mess his life had become.

The horses were well-trained enough to come quietly as strangers led them away into the night. Certainly the noble who owned this estate had the resources for proper care—the stables alone rivaled those at the castle, and the residence could easily lodge every resident of Ordon with room to grow. Before the mansion lay a quaint pond, quiet with all the toads burrowing away from the cold, and a lovely garden still blooming with morning glories that climbed up the stone walls.

Their breath exhaling in puffy clouds, Link and the horse made it across the estate’s lawn and into the cover of the woods. He passed the lead rope to someone else and tried not to flinch when Saki clapped him on the shoulder.

“Knew you’d come in handy!” she said brightly. “That’s the last one, Captain.”

“Right,” the leader rasped. “Varn, you’ll watch the door. Me’n Saki will cover the second floor. Rai, Nil, you take Colin to the first.”

A glance around told Link that only he was confused. The others were leading their new mounts away, while the four who remained rolled their shoulders and loosened the weapons in their scabbards, watching the Captain as he watched Link.

So this was a test of how far he was willing to go. He felt an abrupt longing for the simple safety of his room above the bar, for Telma’s brisk kindness, for the friendly bickering between Ashei and Shad—and, as always, for Ordon. Neither of those places had ever asked Link to prove anything.

He met the Captain’s flinty gaze and nodded.

A servants’ entrance and a picked lock later, they were inside the estate’s shadowed kitchen. Varn—the Captain’s right hand man—stayed to pilfer the larder and guard their exit. From there, the others split off for the stairs while Link followed Rai and Nil down a hallway.

They peeked into each dark room, skipping over empty bedchambers and stealing some fine porcelain off a breakfast table. The third door yielded what they really wanted: a cozy little study with books on every surface and embers still cooling in the fireplace.

It reminded Link painfully of Zelda’s quarters. The memory of what had happened there remained a cage of thorns, impossible to escape. If information about the bandits and their shadow crystal was the only thing he could give her, he would do what it took to succeed, even if it meant stooping to robbery.

So he kept watch through the crack in the door while Rai and Nil rifled through drawers and cabinets. They were whisper-cheering over a lockbox that rattled with Rupees when he signaled to them. Something was happening in the hall: two shuffling pairs of footsteps, a child’s sleepy babbling, and orange candlelight painting the walls. They all scrambled to hide behind the desk.

“Oh, that door should be closed,” said a woman’s voice. “Did your father fall asleep reading again? Let’s go check.”

“Outhouse, Mama!” the child demanded.

“Yes, just one moment.”

Light spilled into the study; bare feet padded across the rug. Rai and Nil were reaching for their weapons. Link dug his fingernails into his palms and swallowed his hammering heart and realized that he was praying; he didn’t know why he still tried.

The woman must have spotted something awry, for she gasped, and then Rai shot up. He grabbed a fistful of her nightgown and dragged her across the desk, clapping a hand over her mouth and pinning her with his body. Nil shut the door behind the child, who looked up at him, sleepy and unimpressed.

“Stay quiet and no one gets hurt,” Rai hissed.

“Don’t be afraid, Melanie,” the woman said on a choked breath.

The child was somewhere between two and three, and if the strangers didn’t alarm her, that tone did. She wavered, looking anxiously at her mother—a bony thing with cropped blond hair, searching the room with the eyes of a trapped rabbit.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen,” Nil said calmly. “We’ll take our Rupees and go. Colin here will stay a few minutes longer, and as long as you keep quiet all that time, he’ll walk out nice and peaceful.”

And if they don’t keep quiet? Link wondered, knowing the answer. What am I doing? How did I get here?

The woman nodded jerkily. Rai’s grip relaxed—and then her hand scuttled across the desktop.

She swung, her only weapon a letter opener that was too dull for more than superficial damage. Anyone thinking rationally would have seen that, but not Rai; he was operating on the primal instincts of someone for whom every hint of danger might mean death, someone forced to weigh survival over humanity. The same beast lived inside Link, and in seeing Rai’s face, he saw himself with frightening clarity.

But Link had never let the hurt inside him spread to anyone else.

Rai caught the woman’s wrist, wrenched it down, and smashed his fist into her face. She made no sound as she fell against the desk. Everything that came next seemed to happen underwater—Link tackling Rai to the floor, Rai struggling frantically, the child shrieking.

“Let him up!” Nil ordered, pulling on Link’s shoulder.

“He just—”

“You’re making it worse!”

Warily, Link retreated. Rai scrambled away, shaking, glassy-eyed; Nil held out his hands as though calming a frightened animal. “Rai,” he said. “We’re not in the desert.”

Rai’s gaze roved around the room. Sickness roiling in his stomach, Link stayed between them and the two innocents. The woman had somehow gotten to her feet and was gathering up her wailing daughter—she flinched at Link’s attention, skittering back against the wall. Blood dripped from her nose down her mouth and chin.

“I won’t hurt you,” Link said softly.

She stared back defiantly, reminding him that Rai had made the same promise. Link dropped his gaze, fishing out one of the cloths he used to clean his sword and handing it over for her bloody face.

Rai was watching them blankly. “I didn’t—” his voice cracked.

“You’re okay,” Nil told him firmly. “Let’s get out of here.”

But it was too late—they’d caused a racket, and Link could already hear the estate stirring in response. He opened the door to two armed men of considerable stature charging from the direction of the kitchen. Rai and Nil went the opposite way, into the estate’s wide foyer, but that only brought them to three more houseguards, who were facing off with Saki and the Captain.

Five against five. The bandits would fight to kill and notice if Link did anything less, but right now, he didn’t care about blowing his cover. He only cared about that woman, holding her child like she was the world, and about these sleep-mussed mercenaries who didn’t deserve to die for doing their jobs.

“I don’t believe I was expecting company,” declared a voice from above. Link spared a glance for the man descending the marble staircase in well-cut robes of sage green, ridiculously ornate for the middle of the night.

“Actually, we were just leaving,” Saki said cheerfully, trying to pull the Captain towards the door as the houseguards bristled.

“I don’t think you were,” the nobleman replied. Even his coiled hair was neatly arranged, as if he really had been expecting guests. “I think you planned to rob me for all I was worth, in addition to making my stepdaughter cry. Sparrow?”

That must have been the blond woman’s name, for she appeared in the hallway with the child on her hip a moment later, both of them glaring at the bandits. “Oh, dear,” the nobleman said, tilting up her narrow face for closer inspection. “Is it terrible?”

“Not like you married me for looks,” she replied inscrutably.

“At least our little princess is unharmed,” he said, stroking the child’s chestnut curls.

Sparrow cringed at the nickname, or maybe just at her broken nose. This family would have been unusual anywhere—a nobleman, a wife half his age, and a toddler who obviously had a different father. Among the nobles with their prudish ideals, it was downright scandalous.

Turning back to the raiders as if he’d just remembered their presence, the nobleman said, “Well, would you like to negotiate, or would you like to repay us for every drop of blood my wife sheds?”

“We’ve got backup,” the Captain rasped. “Best not to make threats when you’re outnumbered.”

“We caught a sixth thief, my lord,” one of the houseguards said. “He’s tied up in the cellar.”

Rai outright flinched. Even the Captain’s olive skin went pale. The silence taught Link something: whatever else could be said about the bandits, they took care of each other. They would not leave Varn behind.

The nobleman chuckled. “Well done. So, my unwelcome guests, we can fight—or you can drop your pillage and walk out of here like civilized people, and we’ll bring your captured man out. I’ll even let you keep the horses.”

“How do I know you won’t just kill him?” demanded the Captain.

“I’ve no use for a dead thief,” the nobleman answered with a shrug. His brown eyes skimmed the bandits, lingered on Link for a jolting moment, and shifted back to the Captain. “I once climbed my way through the world with tooth and nail. You came here for Rupees, not blood. I see no reason why anyone should die tonight.”

“Fine. But if you don’t bring him out—”

“Yes, yes, you’ll rain fire and death upon us.” The nobleman dismissed them with a wave of his hand.

The night greeted Link and the bandits with sharp cold. They crunched through the dead leaves to wait by the pond, its calm surface glittering with stars and the perfect full moon. Saki demanded to know what had gone wrong; Nil tried to laugh it off while Rai remained quiet and faraway; the Captain told them wearily to shut up.

Two figures came towards them from the estate. Varn, a whip-thin bald man, was bound, bruised, and limping. “Bastard,” Rai snarled at the houseguard escorting him. “We should kill you and your lying lord! They’re all the same, him and the queen and all those—”

“It was self-defense, jackass,” the houseguard snapped, shoving Varn towards them in disgust. Varn staggered and would have lurched into the pond if not for the Captain’s outstretched hands.

Rai lunged at the houseguard with a snarl, but Link was ready this time. He got between the two men before anyone knew what was happening, catching the houseguard’s sword on his shield and the slash of Rai’s spear on his forearm, his own blade staying in its scabbard. The nobleman had spoken truth—no one needed to die tonight.

Nil pulled Rai back. Saki was at Link’s side, ready to take on the houseguard if needed, but the man just sneered, turning back to the estate in disgust.

“Back off,” the Captain growled, supporting a bleeding, half-conscious Varn. “We’re done.”

Saki herded Link and the others after him, into the woods where the rest of the bandits waited. The Captain made sure everyone was ahorse and striking for camp before he turned to Link. “Let’s see that arm,” he ordered.

“Oh,” Link said. “It’s just a scratch. I can—”

“Don’t be a fool. Hold this.” The Captain put a torch in Link’s right hand and waited for him to raise the left.

Swallowing hard, Link peeled back his torn sleeve to show the place where Rai’s spearpoint had grazed his arm. It wasn’t the new wound that worried him. His chainmail stopped above his elbow, leaving his arms vulnerable to blades, arrows, fangs, and worse. Those scars did not belong on a farmer, and even in the torchlight, there was no hiding them.

His cheeks were burning, but after a brief pause, the Captain made no comment. He just wiped away the blood, bandaged the wound, and draped his own cloak over Link’s shoulders—apparently he knew how cold blood loss could make a person feel.

“You did well,” he said gruffly. “Back to camp.”

This unexpected, practical kindness reminded Link of Rusl, and he was suddenly catching his breath against desperate longing. He wanted Epona, not this unfamiliar horse; he wanted to ride south and south until he was back where he belonged. He had never written that letter. No one in Ordon knew where he was or what insanity he’d gotten himself into.

But he was here for Hyrule and for Zelda, so he mounted up and followed the Captain. Back at camp, everyone seemed to be staring at him. Saki and Nil, uncharacteristically solemn, came up to thank him. Rai just took the reins of Link’s horse told him quietly to go rest.

Link burrowed into the tent, his mind a crawling anthill. The thievery. The way Rai had struck that woman, the harrowed look in his eyes afterwards, Nil telling him, We’re not in the desert. The dark scars Link had now noticed on all the bandits who had deserted the Hyrulean guard. That mercenary’s scornful treatment of Varn. The Captain’s surprising compassion.

There was so much Link didn’t understand. He’d never doubted that Zant and Ganondorf were evil. But these people…they were almost like Midna, who was sometimes cruel and always complicated, but who had learned and grown. What if the bandits could change like she had?

Zelda would be able to answer these questions. Link could only shut them out.

But they followed him into the world of dreams. His shadow stood against the bright wheeling surface of the mirror, a tear rolling down her silver cheek. He didn’t care about the shadow beasts closing in; he cared only about reaching her before she shattered the one thing he still understood.

He lunged, rending the enemies’ flesh beneath his claws, tearing into their throats, tasting their blood—

Link shot up so fast that his forehead smacked the tent’s support pole. His fingers closed around the ice-cold hilt of his sword. He almost drew it at the startling sound of Rai’s voice: “Colin? You okay?”

“Sorry,” Link whispered. The tent was utterly black even to his senses. He lay back down under the too-thin blanket, holding the sword to his chest the way he’d once held Midna.

Silence stretched for so long that he thought Rai had fallen back asleep, but the other man said, “I’m the one who’s sorry. About what happened back there.”

Link wasn’t going to wave it off. He understood fear and self-defense. He didn’t understand allowing those instincts to hurt someone else. He’d never done that, had he? The remnants of the dream pushed into his mind, along with the other memories. The corrupted Goron patriarch, the Yeti woman, Zelda screaming in the throne room as the magic crackled through her.

He pressed his hand to the scar on his cheek.

“You know I get nightmares too,” Rai ventured. “So does half the camp. You could’ve told me about yours.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” Link said tiredly.

Rai didn’t reply, but Link sensed that he understood. They were both quiet after that, holding onto their secrets as the moon journeyed across a sea of stars.

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Chapter 14: History

Chapter Text

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The guards wanted to hide the body from Zelda’s delicate sensibilities, but it was far from the first one she’d seen. She watched them lower a white sheet over her would-be assassin’s face. The doctor said Cormac’s wound had festered, and Zelda believed him. She just didn’t believe the infection had occurred naturally.

She should be finding and questioning everyone who had been around him—she should be doing a thousand things. But all she could keep thinking was: His poor wife.

Auru came in after the guards left. She was rooted in place, her arms wrapped around herself, staring at nothing.

“Lady Queen,” he said gently. “I know what this might be reminding you of, and I’m sorry.”

She could have been thirteen again, watching the doctor cover her mother’s body while her father sobbed in the next bed. No one knew why the poison had claimed her and spared him—not that it was a mercy. He spent the rest of his life debilitated in every sense of the word, though he was clever enough to hide it from most.

Auru—along with Zelda’s aunt and uncle—had been among those who saw the danger. He’d led an effort in the Council to mandate the king’s abdication when Zelda came of age, rather than informally expect it. But some of his allies were ill-chosen; the king learned of the measure before it even reached a vote, and while he could not punish the royals, he could certainly exile Auru.

Zelda remembered watching his horse disappear on the horizon and feeling the first brush of winter make a home inside her. “Auru,” she said quietly. “I was abominable to you after Link returned. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right, Lady Queen. Come. Let us get some air.”

She did feel better out on the parapets under the cornflower-blue autumn sky. Auru walked alongside her for a few minutes of quiet before he said, “I can offer a distraction, if you want one.”

Zelda nodded gratefully.

“Telma wanted me to run an idea by you. She hasn’t learned anything useful about the missing children, but a friend of hers and Link’s is in town—Ilia.”

“She saved Prince Ralis’s life,” Zelda remembered.

“Indeed—she arrived here after being kidnapped by the Bulblins. Rusl’s son and the other young Ordonians ended up in Kakariko, but Ilia was with the monsters longer…and survived. She’s willing to speak with you.”

This topic was no happier than the dead body Zelda had left behind, but a distraction was a distraction. “Yes, I would like to meet her. Perhaps tomorrow?”

Auru agreed. Hunching his shoulders against the chill, he made for shelter. Zelda stayed a moment to watch Peppermint graze in the pasture, so much calmer these days than he’d been upon his return. The sight of Epona only made Zelda wonder where the mare’s rider was, and she moved away from that thought at once.

The next afternoon, Telma arrived with a girl at her side, pretty in a longsleeved dress of white wool under the traditional Ordonian sash cinched around her waist.

“You must be Ilia,” Zelda greeted. “We are well met.”

The girl dipped as if to curtsy, but Telma caught her by the elbow and said, “You don’t have to do that. Our queen isn’t much for formality.”

“You could’ve told me that before!” Ilia retorted, flushing scarlet.

Smiling, Zelda led them to the table for tea and refreshments. “I trust your journey from Ordon went smoothly? You came here to visit Telma, yes?”

“Yes.” Ilia smiled warmly at the barkeep. “She’s a good friend. Though…we also came to see Link.”

“Rusl’s here too,” Telma explained. “I keep him apprised of the Resistance’s work. I hadn’t realized that Link never wrote home about what he’s up to, so when I mentioned it in one of my letters…” she grimaced. “Well. Rusl had quite the shouting match with Auru when he arrived the other day.”

It took Zelda a moment to piece that together. Rusl was angry with Auru for drawing Link back to Hyrule, as Zelda herself had been, and perhaps for letting him infiltrate the bandits alone. That was a shame—the two men had been friends for ten years, ever since they’d fought alongside Zelda’s mother and uncle in the southern border skirmishes.

“Link was always going to leave,” Ilia said softly. “Rusl’s just…struggling to understand that.” Looking down at her folded hands, she added, “So much has happened, Lady Queen. I don’t know where to start, but I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“Perhaps with Kakariko,” Zelda suggested. “The Bulblins left the children there, but not you?”

“Not exactly.” Ilia touched the small of her back. “They hit me here with an arrow in Ordon. I was in bad shape, but when the Bulblins stopped outside Kakariko for the night, I saw the sign in the distance and thought it was our best chance…my father has a friend there. I had a little pocketknife that Link gave me.” She smiled briefly. “The Bulblins didn’t even search us. While they slept, I cut the kids free and made them run. I was too hurt to follow…and for a while I wasn’t sure I had saved them, because when King Bulblin woke to find them gone…” She shivered. “He told me—in Hylian—that the shadows would find them anyway. And then we moved on.”

Zant had gloated to Zelda about massacring Kakariko and stealing Eldin’s light. The Bulblins must have assumed that the province was safely under their control. They hadn’t guessed that the three surviving villagers would shelter those poor children, or that a wolf and an imp would restore the light.

“The next thing I remember is waking up at Impaz’s house in the Hidden Village,” Ilia said. “The Bulblins made her treat my wound.”

“Have you any idea why they brought you there, of all places?” Zelda wondered. The village was one of her family’s many secrets, but she hadn’t known it was still inhabited.

“It was a sort of base, I think. Impaz stayed inside for fear of the Bulblins, but she heard them moving around all the time. The king came and went…I think I was there for three weeks, until one day he made me come out to see him. He was angry and bleeding and missing a chunk of his horn. He said he was leaving for good the next day, along with most of his people—and me.”

“Link was wreaking havoc on the Bulblins by that point,” Zelda said. “Their king had to react. Did they say where they were going?”

“Yes. To the desert.”

Zelda’s blood ran cold. The only thing in Gerudo Desert was the Mirror of Twilight and the long-abandoned prison that housed it. Why would Zant and Ganondorf bring their captives there? She felt like she was walking blind through the tunnels below the citadel, knowing that the truth waiting at the end would be even worse than the darkness.

“That’s really all I know,” Ilia said quietly. “Impaz helped me escape that night. She stayed behind and I…I don’t remember the rest of it well, until I ended up here.”

“Thank you for telling me, Ilia,” Zelda said. “I am sorry for all you endured. Yet you ensured that some good came out of it by saving the children and Prince Ralis.”

“Oh,” Ilia stammered, her cheeks reddening. “That was mostly Link.”

“Take the credit where it’s due, honey,” Telma told her sternly. “It’s true that our swordsman fought like a beast, but don’t discount your own role.”

“And try not to worry,” Zelda added. “He will return.”

“It’s been two weeks,” Ilia pointed out, her voice wavering for the first time. “How do you know?”

Zelda remembered Link rising from the mud of Hyrule Field on shaking legs—bleeding more than anyone should be able to survive—to fulfill his terrible fate. He would not fail, ever, no matter the cost. His will mirrored her own, just as he’d recognized in the gardens. It was why people called her the Iceheart Queen.

“Because he has strength for anything,” Zelda answered, almost to herself.

After a moment of thought, Ilia started to smile. “I don’t know why they say all those things about you, Lady Queen. You seem very kind. No wonder Link likes you.”

Those words stuck with Zelda long after Ilia and Telma departed. She carried them through her many meetings, through dinner with a would-be suitor she loathed, to her chambers as she sat before the mirror preparing for bed.

She wasn’t kind. She’d supped on necessary sacrifice her whole life, and while she wasn’t proud of it, she couldn’t regret it either. Her own actions were all she could control in a perilous, volatile world. That was why Ganondorf had taken that one solid certainty away from her. It wouldn’t have been enough to seize her kingdom and freedom; he’d seized her very self, the only thing that had never failed her.

And he’d known exactly how to hurt Link, who had barely held a sword before the first time he’d killed with one, who had a gentle heart and abhorred his own capacity for violence, who hated himself for being able to fight Zelda’s possessed body. She could build a mountain as high as Snowpeak with all the lies she’d told. Link had withheld the one painful truth. And still she’d wanted to see him as an enemy, like her father would have done, because that was easier than seeing him as her own reflection.

If she cracked open the walls she’d built around herself and showed him the filth inside, would he understand? No. That couldn’t happen. Some secrets would be buried with Zelda.

Still, peering through her window at the sleeping capital, she sent the starry heavens a prayer for Link’s safe return. She owed him an apology.

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“At the heart of Death Mountain, the Hero met his foe,” Saki went on, her face aglow with firelight, her hands sweeping up like soaring gulls. “Four, five, six times of a man: a colossus of flames and rage. But the Hero was unafraid.”

Cold wind rustled the forest; otherwise, the camp was silent. No one interrupted Saki’s stories.

“Those mines already burn hotter than anywhere else in Din’s creation, to say nothing of the monster’s own fire. Even in the face of that, the Hero was quicksilver fast. He rained down arrow after arrow until the enemy was weak enough that he could break the curse with his sacred blade. In one fell swoop he saved the Gorons, their patriarch, and the whole province—but asked nothing in return.”

Link stared at his boots. He still dreamed of Fyrus sometimes—or of Darbus himself, screaming as Link drove the blade into him again and again.

“Saki was the best storyteller in our orphanage,” said Nil, looking up at her affectionately from where he sat at her feet. Rai nodded sleepy agreement beside him. “Hey, tell the one about Hero knocking King Bulblin off a bridge.”

That drew a round of appreciative chuckles from the other bandits, but the Captain rolled his eyes. “Stories and gossip is all it is,” he said dismissively. “We can’t trust the queen’s missive. Who’s to say there even was a Hero?”

There wasn’t, Link agreed silently, turning his empty stew bowl around and around in his hands.

“But the stories come from everywhere, not just the queen,” Saki persisted. “The Gorons, the Zoras, Castle Town…they all talk about someone who stopped Zant and his master. The person capable of that would be capable of anything.”

“True,” Varn agreed, massaging his bad leg, which was still paining him nearly a week after the heist on the nobleman’s estate. The lack of real medical care certainly didn’t help. “In a way, we understand the Hero better than anyone. Not many folks faced Zant.”

“You met Zant?” Link blurted out.

Every smile around the campfire died. Rai pressed his face against Nil’s shoulder. The recruits merely seemed confused, but the former guards looked at the flames, the stars, each other; anywhere but Link. He had never felt so much an outsider.

“Come with me, boy,” growled the Captain, grabbing a lantern and a pint of ale.

Warily, Link left the campfire’s warmth and followed him to the rudimentary fence that separated the stolen horses’ paddock from the rest of camp. The Captain drank deep from his tankard, watching the animals shift and sigh in their sleep.

“We did meet Zant,” he admitted. “But do not speak his name in this camp. My people suffer enough from his memory as is. Do you know why the gossip mongers call us the Bear’s Fangs?”

“No,” Link lied.

The Captain snorted and took another swig of ale. “You have no idea what you’re doing here, do you? What we’re after?”

“No. But—I’d like to.”

“Hm. Tell you what. In a few days, we’ll have fenced the spare horses and goods. That’ll give us enough to pay for the arms and armor I commissioned in a town west of here.”

“Pay? I thought we were thieves.”

The Captain chuckled bitterly. “It’s near impossible to get quality stuff that way. You’ll come with us to pick it up. Should be nice and peaceful, but I’ve heard the guard is growing. Might be that we receive a welcome from the Iceheart Queen.”

Link tried not to bristle. If these people had deserted the guard when Zant invaded, as he was beginning to suspect, what right did they have to hate Zelda? Any way you looked at it, she had made the right and only choice.

But maybe the bandits hadn’t been at the castle that day. We’re not in the desert, Nil had told a panicking Rai. Gerudo: the place of Link’s nightmares, the place where Zant first stepped through the Mirror of Twilight.

“You think the queen knows what you’re planning?” Link asked carefully.

“Our doings haven’t been as quiet as I’d like. I want good fighters like you along in case things go south. If you do well, maybe I’ll let you in on some things.” The Captain drained the rest of his tankard and tossed it aside. “Look, Colin—you saved Rai’s idiot ass. The least I owe you is a warning: our path is not for the faint of heart.”

I have no heart, Link thought as the Captain left him alone under the cold stars. I killed it, just like I killed everything else.

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Chapter 15: River's Edge

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Welcome to River’s Edge, proclaimed the letters across the rusted, frowning gate. This was a fishing town on the rushing banks of the Zora, but somehow it reminded Link of Kakariko during the Twilight: silent under the weight of fear.

The afternoon was unseasonably warm and spectacularly clear, yet the few people in sight were ducking into buildings and alleyways as the bandits rode down the dusty lane, dismounting in a deserted marketplace to form a semicircle around the smithy.

When the door swung open to reveal a weathered, muscular man in a leather apron, Link was surprised to see the usually dour Captain smile and embrace him like an old friend. A heavyset woman, likely the smith’s wife, came out to join them. Their conversation was all smiles and reminiscing, but sweat trickled down Link’s back as he waited. The Zora River flowed on, a glittering mirror of sunlight. Movement flickered in a shop window. Everything was quiet—everything was wrong.

“Your commission is all in the warehouse,” the smith was saying. “Follow me.”

“Stay here,” the Captain told Varn, who had command in his absence. “Colin, with me.”

So he sensed danger in these silent streets too. Link followed, his palm itching for his sword. If someone attacked the bandits, whose side was he supposed to take?

The smith led them into a squat, one-story building crouched over the waterside, open on one side so the fishers could guide their boats to the docks. Everything stank powerfully of fish. Behind a maze of barrels and stacked crates, the smith opened a door and stepped aside for Link and the Captain.

The room was dim and sparse—just fishing supplies and a few crates stacked in the corner. The Captain shoved the lid off one and pulled out a bolt of silk, frowning.

The door slammed shut behind them. The wind, Link thought, or an accident—until he heard the bolt slide home.

“I took this job back when I thought you still led the only guard unit anyone respected,” the smith called through the door, quite calmly. “Word reaches River’s Edge slowly, but it does get here.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” the Captain growled, straightening to his feet.

“Tell me the gossip is wrong. Tell me you’re not the reason the roads are dangerous again, Elias.”

So Link finally had a name for the Captain. He watched the man pace to the door, then to the opposite wall. Shadows doused the room, but he and Link could both tell that they were trapped.

“We had a deal,” Elias snapped. “Your weapons will help me accomplish—”

“I never made them,” the smith retorted. “You think I’d arm a killer and take his blood money? What the hell happened to you?”

“The invasion happened! You should understand—the monsters took your boys!”

“Don’t you dare use that. There’s still time, Elias. We’ll let your unit go as long as they don’t harm any of us. If you stay here—if you take the blame when the guards come for you—they’ll be free.”

The Captain backed up several steps, staring down the door like it had teeth. People were shouting outside the warehouse, and Link understood now that River’s Edge seemed so empty because its residents had been lying in wait. There were no soldiers here—just people tired of being trampled upon, people brave enough to make it stop.

“Maybe you should listen,” Link tried. “The queen will be fair.”

“The queen left us to die,” Elias said curtly. “Stay back, boy.”

He reached for his only hope, and the air bent around a power Link knew all too well. Elias stabbed the shadow crystal into his shoulder and fell to his knees. Darkness swallowed him whole, warping, twisting, drawing a strangled scream out of him. Link pressed himself into the corner, choking on memories, wishing he could look away.

With a roar like the breaking of the world, the Bear stepped out of the shadows. Blood dripped from his fangs and from the fissures of orange magic that crisscrossed his black pelt.

One moment, he was rearing up on his hind legs; the next, the door was coming down in a deafening cacophony, and the beast was charging through it. Dust rained down in his wake. Link jumped through the rubble to drag the smith out from under the remains of the heavy door.

In the marketplace, the bandits had closed rank around the Bear’s hulking form. Varn was shouting out a promise not to hurt anyone as long as they brought out their Rupees, but the villagers—clustered opposite the bandits with woodaxes and kitchen knives and hunting bows—responded with curses and jeers.

The smith’s wife cried out at the sight of Link half-carrying her injured husband out of the warehouse. The Bear snarled a warning before she could go to him. Skidding to a halt, she snarled right back, “He was your friend! You’re no better than the monsters who stole our children!”

She raised her hammer. Rai was faster than her—but Link was faster than him. He was between the two of them just in time for Rai’s fist to crack against his jaw instead of the woman’s; and then his shield was up, shoving the other man back as bandits and villagers alike exclaimed around him.

“Back off,” Link warned. “We came here for weapons. There are none. Let’s go.”

“They broke their promise,” Rai snapped, shaking out his hand. “We’ll get something in return.”
“No, you won’t,” Link replied evenly. “They’ll fight you if you try, and I will too.”

“What the hell are you doing?!” Saki demanded. The Bear lumbered forward, baring his fangs to echo her question.

Maybe Link was a wolf and a killer, but a choice between blowing his cover and forsaking people who needed him was no choice at all. The Ordon sword rang forth with a clear and beautiful note. The pain was nothing, the threat was inconsequential, and his pulse was hammering eagerly for what came next.

The woman he’d protected stepped up to his side, her face fierce, her smith’s hammer loose and ready in her hand. Rai gaped at Link in disbelief.

But Captain Elias had already accepted his second betrayal of the day. He lunged, and chaos broke like a wave. The villagers surged forward with a ragged battle cry, compensating for their lack of skill with sheer numbers, leaving the bandits with no choice but to defend themselves.

Link reared back from the flash of copper claws, then struck out, gaining ground as the Bear retreated from his blade. At the first chance Link slashed into his shoulder, but the thick hide barely gave—Farore, he missed the Master Sword. The Bear’s jaws opened to reveal two deadly rows of fangs that dripped blood.

Link whirled away, using the momentum to scythe across the enemy’s flank. This time he cut through one of the sickly orange grooves in the dark fur—the scars a shadow crystal left behind when it transformed someone who wasn’t protected by the gods, like Link.

Only these scars were still bleeding, and everything had a weakness.

He dodged a swing of the massive paw, and another and another, the Bear snarling in frustration as the battle raged around them. His feverish eyes made it clear he was in pain and tiring quickly, whereas Link—despite weeks of poor nutrition and little sleep—felt as strong as he’d ever been during the Twilight.

Then came the mistake he’d been waiting for. Elias overextended himself with a reckless lunge, and Link reacted with sudden vicious speed, following a line of orange magic with his blade. His opponent roared in agony; Link was already slicing another vulnerable spot, rolling beneath the flashing claws, surging to his feet with all his weight behind his sword as it entered the Bear’s other side.

Elias staggered. Blood ran down his sides in rivers. His form shuddered and rippled, the marks of the shadow crystal crawling wildly across his pelt, and collapsed to the ground.

Both sides of the fight had paused in a kind of mutually stunned silence. Link saw no bodies on the ground except one: a limp human corpse where the Bear had been.

His hammering pulse became the only sound in the world. He could taste the shadow beasts’ blood.

And then, an enemy rushing him from behind. Link whirled to meet the monster, putting all his force behind the turn—monster? No, it was Nil, sword in hand and pale face fixed beneath the messy ginger curls Rai loved to ruffle.

There was only time to redirect the swing, not stop it. Instead of taking Nil in the neck, Link’s sword skimmed down across his shoulder. Still, blood spattered his face. Still, two voices cried out in unison: Rai, who dove to catch Nil as he fell, and Saki, who went for Link.

He caught her dagger on his shield and kept blocking, sickness roiling in his gut as she drove him backwards. He didn’t want to hurt her. He hadn’t wanted to hurt Nil or Elias. But he didn’t know what else to do.

“I thought you were our friend!” Saki shrieked.

Behind them came a hacking cough, followed by a hoarse cry: “Stop it, both of you!”

Captain Elias was alive. Link’s knees went weak with relief. Saki listened too, her dagger sliding away from his blade.

Nil was in Rai’s arms, limp and dazed as the other man put pressure on his bleeding wound. The villagers stayed, clustering around the injured smith like a many-limbed organism with frightened eyes, defending their home with everything they had.

Elias pushed himself slowly upright. Blood ran from his nose and mouth in wheezing gasps. His gaze followed Link’s movement, but when Saki and some of the others raised their weapons, he waved them down. Link planted himself in front of the villagers, his sword and shield angled over his body, his face wet with Nil’s blood.

“You’re no farmer,” Elias said raggedly.

“Captain,” Saki said in a trembling voice, “they say the Hero of Twilight has a longsword and a Hylian shield, and only a mail shirt for armor, because he’s got no reason to fear death. They say his blue eyes are proud and wild, like a feral beast’s, and sharp enough to cut your heart out.”

Elias didn’t dismiss the gossip this time. “I saw your scars,” he rasped, looking Link up and down with dark, bloodshot eyes. “You fight like no man or beast I have ever known. What say you? Are you the Hero?”

“People call me that,” Link answered stiffly, wanting nothing more than for this to end.

The words dropped like stones into water, creating a ripple of shocked whispers. The villagers with their ramshackle weapons stood a little straighter behind Link. The bandits traded looks of disbelief.

“Golden Goddesses,” Elias said, almost sadly. “You’re just a boy.”

“The Hero?” Rai repeated. He was holding Nil’s bloody hand, his face very far away. “That…that can’t be right.”

The Captain lurched to his feet, swayed, and righted himself before Saki had to catch him. He looked at Link, at Nil, at the rest of his people and the huddle of villagers ready to fight them. “We’re leaving,” he announced, blood trickling from his nose in a steady stream.

“What?” Rai demanded. “He hurt Nil! He betrayed us!”

“Long before that,” Elias replied wearily, “he saved us.”

Link could not guess what that meant, but he wouldn’t dissuade the bandits from gathering their horses. He motioned for the villagers to go. They obeyed with murmured thanks and backwards glances of awe. He didn’t know what frightened him more: their reverence, or the hatred twisting Rai’s face as he helped Nil into the saddle.

From atop a horse as black as his eyes, Captain Elias said to Link, “You’re still serving the queen?”

“I don’t serve her,” Link said quietly. “I’m her friend.”

That was true as sunrise. Zelda was Hyrule; Hyrule was Zelda; he belonged to them both. He had known that since meeting her eyes on that day of stark fate. Even if the Goddesses sent him to the worst corner of hell for the way he had hurt her in the throne room and lied about it afterwards, he’d still belong to her.

Saki laughed incredulously. Rai might have attacked if he hadn’t been propping Nil up in the saddle.

“You’re her dog,” Elias corrected. “The Iceheart Queen has no use for friends. I hope you don’t learn that the hard way, Hero.”

My name is Link, he thought as they left him behind in a cloud of billowing dust. And hers is Zelda.

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Chapter 16: Return

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Zelda ducked through her bedroom window and eased down the shingles until she dropped lightly to the lower roof. A year had passed since she’d last taken this route, but her body remembered the motions like it was yesterday.

Dodging her keepers had been one thing when her father was king and the whole world was her enemy. The guards were under her command and on her side now, and they’d made the right call by increasing her security since the assassination attempts and Cormac’s death. Still—each time they fell into step behind Zelda, part of her only saw the mouth of a trap snapping shut. After dreaming of a cell and a rope and a square of sunlight, she had woken with a hunger for the solitude her days never allowed. That was why she was sneaking out like an ill-bred teenager.

The silver half-moon led her across the rooftops until she landed on solid ground at the castle’s northern end. Soon she was breathing in the warm hay-scent of the barn. She greeted Epona first, then entered Peppermint’s stall.

Dozing with his head drooped down and one leg propped up, he pricked an ear in her direction without opening his eyes. She smiled at this sign of trust. Though Peppermint wasn’t as proud or lively as he’d once been, safety and good food and gentle handling had won against the terror the Bulblins inflicted on him. He nosed at her hands for treats, found them empty, and promptly closed his eyes again.

Zelda leaned her forehead against his warm neck, counted his sleepy breaths, and cleared her mind.

Ten minutes later, she was half-asleep herself when a voice jolted her alertness. She hadn’t heard a single footstep. Her hand flew to the knives strapped around each forearm. The voice murmured:

“Hey, beautiful girl. I missed you.”

A tight knot unraveled inside Zelda’s chest, and she could breathe again. Her feet carried her into the aisle; she reached absently for magic to illuminate the figure awaiting her there.

He turned from Epona, hand flying to the hilt of his sword, but then his eyes—glinting like a wolf’s in the dim light—traveled from alarm to something softer, like the slowing of a thunderstorm into gentle rain.

“Link,” she greeted.

He released his sword, swallowing hard, and replied, “Zelda.”

She hadn’t heard her name since he’d left three weeks ago. Drawing closer, she saw that he looked thinner under his grey wool cloak and weathered clothes, and that dried blood smeared his cheeks, following the tracks his fingers must have left when he’d tried to scrub it off. A dark bruise flowered across one side of his jaw.

Yet somehow he was the one asking, “You okay? Did anything happen?”

The question, delivered in Link’s familiar and utterly exhausted voice, nearly undid Zelda then and there. “All is well,” she replied evenly. “But your face, Link…do you have other injuries? Do you need a doctor?”

He touched the bruise as though he’d forgotten it and shook his head.

“I am no healer, but I could bring down the swelling,” Zelda offered, lifting her glowing hand slowly.

Link regarded the golden light like a snake that could strike at any moment. She remembered her anger towards the lie he and Midna had told, towards herself for failing to detect it, towards Ganondorf and all the shadows who had stalked her life.

She also remembered Link’s shame, and though she hadn’t wanted to believe it, his fear. Even now it hovered over the peaceful quiet of this barn. Zelda’s magic was part of her, and Ganondorf had made Link afraid of it. That truth grated under her skin with unbearable malaise.

“I was selfish,” she said. “I punished you for something far beyond your control, and I am sorry.”

He blanched. “Why are you apologizing?”

“Link…I was upset at you for lying, but never for what Ganondorf forced you to do. The blame lies with him and his cruel games, always, and I never should have made you feel otherwise.”

“But I—I’m the one who—” he swallowed, staring down at the Triforce casting gentle light, at her wrist with its lightning-scars. “I hurt you. I could have killed you, Zelda.”

“You hurt Ganondorf,” Zelda clarified. “I was not there. I was with Midna. And you made the right choice. I would have given my life for Hyrule gladly, but I never had to, because she saved me—and you gave her the chance to do so.”

For a long time, the night was silent but for the occasional sigh of a sleeping horse. Zelda stood unbreathing as Link reached for her hand and lifted it, magic and all, towards his face. Her fingers met his bruised jaw. She sent cold seeping into the inflamed skin, and feared he would pull away when a shiver went up and down his body—but then he released a quiet sigh of tired relief.

“I’m sorry too,” Link murmured. “And I won’t lie to you anymore.”

Before she knew what she was doing, the woman who sat atop a throne of lies returned the promise: “Nor I to you.”

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Link woke in an unfamiliar bed—not the bandit camp, not Telma’s bar, not his treehouse. Rolling over, his eyes found a fancy gilded ceiling, and his memory returned: Zelda had insisted he sleep in a castle guest room before they talked.

Rather self-consciously, he requested a bath and received it at once—a luxury anywhere, especially after three weeks of wearing the same clothes and sleeping in a tent. Clean and dressed in a plain tunic the servant lent him, he went to find Zelda.

It was past noon—he’d slept like a log—and she was eating lunch in her study. The sight of her bent over the papers strewn across the desk, sipping her coffee absently, filled Link with unspeakable gratitude.

She had forgiven him. He could do anything.

Zelda slid her plate over to him and called for more food. He devoured the rest of her lunch and another meal on top of it, and then they both had pie, which improved everything drastically.

“This is Ordon pumpkin,” Link noticed, closing his eyes worshipfully.

“That reminds me—your friends Rusl and Ilia arrived last week,” Zelda told him. “They came for you, I believe, but Telma also brought Ilia to tell me about her experience with the Bulblins.”

Link’s heart leapt at the thought of seeing them, then plummeted at the memory of how he’d stolen away from Ordon, too cowardly to face anyone but Ilia. Perhaps she’d decided she couldn’t stay either. But Rusl—Rusl should be home with Uli and the children, not chasing Link into danger.

“Oh,” was all he could say. “Any progress with the missing kids, then?”

“Ilia said that the desert was King Bulblin’s ultimate destination for her. Zant first entered our world there, but…I cannot fathom what he wanted with the children.”

“The desert came up for me too,” Link said flatly, pushing his plate away, the food turning to ashes in his belly.

Zelda raised her eyebrows, and he told her everything. Most of the bandits had belonged to the guard. They’d encountered Zant—most likely in the desert—and carried strange scars. They seemed broken and misguided, but not cruel, except when it came to their resentment towards Zelda.

Link had failed his most important goal of learning something useful about the shadow crystal. Even so, Zelda had taken on a fiercely contemplative look that meant she was fitting the puzzle together, despite its missing pieces. “You know who they are,” he guessed.

“Early this spring, not long before the Twilight, the Zoras reported campfire smoke around Arbiter’s Grounds,” she explained. “We had a scouting unit back then—responsible for the most dangerous work in the guard, and actually capable of performing it. Some were old veterans—others were newer, handpicked from our dungeons by a Captain Elias Jargal.”

Saki, Rai, and Nil: orphans of Castle Town with hungry pasts and uncertain futures. And Elias, with his eye for talent and the unbreakable loyalty his people gave him.

“They never came back from the desert,” Link surmised. “Zant attacked them, or captured them…”

“Yes. That unit was twenty strong; you said only seven remain. Zant must have killed the rest.” Zelda stood abruptly, going to the window. “I never met them face-to-face—they only spent brief periods in Castle Town between deployments—but it was I who sent them to Gerudo. How do you think they felt when they learned I had surrendered to the man who killed their comrades?”

“That’s not fair,” Link said unhappily. Suffering demanded an explanation, a scapegoat. But how could it be this woman, standing before the glass with sunshine lighting on her gold diadem and her dark hair, gazing over her kingdom with such sadness?

“Thank you, Link,” Zelda said. “I know it was not easy, but you brought back exactly what we needed. The desert has come up twice—perhaps Arbiter’s Grounds will hold the answers we seek about both the missing children and the shadow crystal.”

Quicksand pouring down his throat. Endless whispers worming into his ears. The corpse’s scream freezing him in place, its broken teeth and baleful red eyes filling his vision as the Stalchildren clutched at him with cold, bony hands.

“I—if there were people or recent bodies inside the prison, I would have seen them,” Link said haltingly. “Although…the Bulblins had a huge camp outside. I smashed my way through without exploring.”

“And the bandits slaughtered the Bulblins for a reason,” Zelda remembered, turning back to him. “Perhaps the root of their grudge occurred in the desert. Link—you do not have to go.”

He realized he was pressing a hand to the place where the Gidbo’s blade had bitten into his shoulder. His ribs had never healed straight, either, after Stallord’s disembodied head had knocked him off the platform.

But Link hadn’t cared about that once he’d stepped out under the stars and breathed fresh air for the first time in a week. He hadn’t cared about slaughtering the shadow beasts who ambushed him there. All that had mattered was the Mirror of Twilight, the path to the end—or so he’d thought until he saw its empty frame.

And then, after all they endured to restore it, Midna had shattered it all over again.

“She arrived through the desert too,” Link found himself saying. “She followed Zant’s forces until they led her to me. She must have known he’d taken kids before Ordon—maybe about your scouts too.”

“She was after the Fused Shadows, at first,” Zelda said cautiously; they spoke of Midna so seldom. “She would not have distracted you from that goal. Later…I expect she was protecting you.”

“I wasn’t the one that needed protection,” Link said, the breath leaving him in a humorless laugh. “I do have to go. You need someone who knows Arbiter’s Grounds, and I…need the truth.”

She looked at him, hard and inscrutable, but didn’t argue. “By the way…that nobleman you encountered. Did his wife look ill?”

Recalling the fierce young woman with the bloody nose and defiant eyes, Link shook his head.

“It must have been Lord Hartwell, the Minister of Finance; he fits your description and owns the only estate that far north. He recently returned to court after taking a leave of absence to tend to his sick wife, but that seems untrue. He neglected to mention a stepdaughter, as well.”

“Why would he lie?”

“Why does anyone?” Zelda wondered, sighing with her whole body.

By then, it was past time for her to return to her duties and for Link to report to the Resistance. He collected his things from the guest room and started the trek to Telma’s bar. Castle Town bustled around him, people running from this mundane errand to the next, blissfully ignorant of the weight others carried on their behalf. Midna had always resented their irreverence, and sometimes—when he considered how much Zelda shouldered alone—Link understood why.

The bar was mercifully quiet in the slow hours between lunch and dinner. Ilia was there behind the counter, drying dishes as Telma washed them. She looked older somehow, her hair feathering out over her shoulders, her long blue skirt and woolen vest unfamiliar. For an irrational moment, all the months were gone, and Link was back to the last time they’d stood in this bar together—him carrying his battered heart in his hands, and Ilia regarding him as a stranger.

But she glanced up, smiled like the sun, and said his name like it was sweet as honey. That got the attention of the Resistance’s usual table at the back, bringing Rusl striding across the room a second later. Link’s rucksack thudded to the floor as he surrendered to the hug. Ilia ran up to throw her arms around them both, and it was a miracle; it was an ache; it was a piece of Ordon’s green earth within these stone walls.

“Someone hurt you?” Rusl demanded, pulling away far enough to see the bruise on Link’s face, significantly reduced by Zelda’s magic. “Are you—"

“I’m okay,” Link said quickly. He wanted to ask about Colin, about Uli and the baby and everyone else, but first he looked into Rusl’s familiar face and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Rusl sighed. “Just write us the next time you plan to go undercover with regicidal bandits, all right?”

Ilia chuckled, and after a moment, so did Link. Shad and Ashei greeted him cheerfully as he joined them at the table; Telma came over with pints of ale.

Link had told the full story to Zelda, who understood both him and the Twilight keenly. He gave his friends a shorter version. The bandits would surely relocate and cover their tracks, since he’d compromised their current camp, but their circ*mstances were just as desperate and their goals just as dangerous. The only hope awaited in Gerudo Desert.

They discussed it until the bar grew crowded and Link started to yawn. Rusl ruffled his hair and ordered him to bed. Link was tired enough to consider it, but uneasy enough to know that sleep wouldn’t come, so he went past his room to the pull-down ladder that led to the bar’s roof.

From up here, the chaos of Castle Town almost looked beautiful. Every light in every window was a reminder that Link had, at least, protected something valuable. It wasn’t all blood and grief and regret—it was more like the bittersweet feeling of holding Uli and Rusl’s daughter in his arms. And all of it was still at stake.

Link focused on the emerging stars. When he heard someone coming up the ladder, he didn’t have to guess who it was—Ilia settled beside him, drawing her limbs close to her body against the cold. “I missed you,” she told him quietly.

“I missed you too.” Link hesitated. “I guess…you couldn’t stay?”

“Well…at first we were just going to escort Talo and Malo to Kakariko; their parents finally allowed it. Then we got word of what you were doing. I know you can take care of yourself, even if Rusl doesn’t, but…what changed my mind was hearing the Bulblins were dead. Everyone else was relieved by that, but it made me sad, like how it’s sad to hear about a stranger dying. The Bulblins were strangers. I never understood them. But they spoke their own language; they had names; they had wants and needs.”

Link had known all that and killed scores of them anyway, and then the Bear had left the rest for the vultures.

“I stabbed their king,” Ilia said in a rush. “He grabbed me as I escaped the Hidden Village—I thought it was over, but he had my knife on his belt, the one you gave me, so I took it and…” she shook her head violently. “He looked shocked, and impressed, and so human. Why shouldn’t their suffering make me sad? Do we call them monsters just to strip their lives of value?”

“Oh, Illy,” Link said, gathering her into his arms, feeling like a tree with its bark peeled away. She had arrived in Castle Town with no memory of who she was. Sometimes the mind had to escape the unbearable, even at the cost of everything else.

“I could never say these things to anyone at home,” Ilia mumbled into his shirt. “Just thinking it made me feel so far away from who I used to be. I understood why you left, and I had to leave too. At least for now.”

“I’m glad you told me,” Link said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

He held her until she stopped trembling, and then they turned to the sky, as they’d done countless times outside his treehouse or on her father’s roof. Castle Town’s lights stained everything sallow above them, but the stars peeked stubbornly through—different from the glittering majesty that blanketed Ordon, yet no less lovely.

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Chapter 17: Gerudo Desert

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The edge of the Gerudo Desert was a strange place. Craggy rock became golden sand; slopes and trees disappeared into vast emptiness. Rusl was staring with openmouthed wonder. Zelda remembered her first time here: as a child of the castle’s grey stone walls, she had found the open space disconcerting, even frightening. Yet there was beauty in this place, as there was in every inch of her kingdom.

Zant had blocked the mountain path during the Twilight; Zelda and Midna had cleared it together their last time here, allowing them to reach the desert’s edge and hobble their horses in the cliffside shade. Arbiter’s Grounds loomed on the wavering horizon. Auru eyed it with fascination; Link with dread.

“So that’s our destination?” Rusl asked.

Zelda nodded. “We won’t need to enter the prison—Link explored it thoroughly. But we hope to find some evidence of what happened to the bandits, or to the children, in the Bulblins’ old camp outside.”

“Link, you went inside the prison?” Auru wondered, eyes gleaming with a scholar’s hunger. “What was it like?”

“Full of puppies and kittens,” Link replied sardonically. “Can we go?”

They followed him out onto the sand. Rusl, watching his back with worried eyes, tried to change the subject. “Lady Queen, you have traveled the desert as well?”

“My mother and Auru brought me here several times to learn from the Sages who dwell in Arbiter’s Grounds,” Zelda said as they walked. “They taught me much of what I know about magic, and Hyrule’s history as well. There are things the scholars and books do not—"

She wasn’t quite sure what happened next. A burst of movement, sand spraying her face, a horrid squeal—then Link stood before her with a wormlike creature dying at his feet.

“That’s a Moldorm,” he said matter-of-factly, bracing a foot on the still-writhing body to yank out his sword. “They’re usually—" He whirled, severing another creature in half as it leapt at him; the third was dead before anyone else had time to draw a weapon. “They’re usually in groups. So be careful.”

Rusl opened his mouth, staring at the three corpses and the green blood dripping down the blade. Zelda remembered something he’d told her months ago, as they searched for Link in the castle wreckage: When we went hunting, I always made the killing blow.

Link sheathed his sword, looking pointedly away from everyone else.

Thus began a wretched hourlong trek under the desert sun. Sand found its way into every place Zelda didn’t want it. The shifty, uncertain footing gave way more than once, sending them sliding down dunes and trying to maintain their dignity—except for Link, of course, who managed it all with lupine grace.

Toppled watchtowers and abandoned firepits cropped up the closer they drew to Arbiter’s Grounds, but the Bulblins who had once guarded this area were long gone. As the group reached the blessed shade, Zelda gazed up at the hulking prison, remembering the beauty and tragedy of the Mirror of Twilight glimmering into nothing. Zelda, your words are kind, and your heart is true.

They weren’t, she told Midna silently. And it’s not. I was only trying to make you stay.

“Hey,” Link murmured. “Let’s take a break. I think Rusl is limping.”

Zelda followed him up the narrow canyon pass gratefully. They rehydrated and ate their dried fruit in silence. She and Link were too busy contemplating the abyss Midna’s departure had opened inside them both to make conversation; Rusl remained angry with Auru for writing the letter that had drawn Link back into this life.

Afterwards, Link led the way to the ruined fortress at the foot of Arbiter’s Grounds. Walls of red rock became chiseled grey stone. Auru told them that in ages past, the prison guards had used these crumbled buildings as quarters, kitchens, and storage. Zelda paused at the mouth of a wide chamber. Inside were scorched walls, another doorway opening towards the prison’s entrance, and—strangely—a rudimentary seat carved into the stone.

“A throne,” she noted. “King Bulblin’s?”

Nodding, Link pointed down an adjacent passage, blackened by fire. “This was barricaded when I came here. It must have burned down in the fire he set. If there’s more to the camp, it’s down there.”

“Why would he set his own camp on fire?” Rusl said incredulously.

Link shrugged, but he knew the answer, and so did Zelda: King Bulblin had wanted him dead at any cost.

The burnt passage brought them to a long, one-story outbuilding. A once-formidable door lay collapsed and half-submerged in sand. Through the empty opening lay something that made Zelda’s heart lurch: rows upon rows of narrow bars, forming painfully cramped cells. The hot breeze carried a terrible smell from the depths.

“The guards must have held inmates here upon arrival before they received permanent assignments inside,” Auru guessed grimly.

Such was the legacy Zelda had inherited. Crossing the threshold that divided golden sand from dark flooring, she lifted a hand to drive back the shadows. Link fell into step behind her, the other two following suit.

Though muted, the scent of decay was unmistakable. Some of the cell doors had been wrenched off their hinges. The corpse waited in at the rear of the building, sagging from the manacles bolted to the wall. Even torn and faded, Zelda would have recognized the blue-and-silver uniform of the Hyrulean guard anywhere.

She stepped into the frightening press of the metal bars. The dead man’s skin had half-rotted from his bones, but she could still see dark lines cutting across it, like those on the Bear’s pelt, like those Link had noticed on the surviving deserters.

The Triforce glowed as Zelda went questing for the magic that had killed this man, which still lingered in the world around him. The truth came as no surprise. The familiar feel of it, though—all cutting bleak stone and desert wind—had her backing out of the cell until Link caught her shoulders gently.

“It was a shadow crystal,” she said, meeting his eyes, which glinted wolf-bright in the shadows. She had to watch her words around Rusl and Auru. “Yet instead of changing him, it killed him.”

“So the Bulblins captured the scouts and held them here,” Link concluded unhappily. “But what did Zant…why would he…”

“That is the part I am unsure of. Let us keep looking.”

Halfway into the next open area, Link shouted a warning, yanking Auru back from an arrow that struck the sand at their feet. He was charging forward before anyone understood what was happening—going to meet the Bulblins who were pouring forth.

Zelda found the enemy archer atop a wall, and then her arrow found his throat. She stayed put, warding off Bulblin arrows with her magic as she picked them off the heights one by one, while Rusl and Auru joined the fray.

Link already had several dead Bulblins at his feet, two live ones snarling in his face, and a third sneaking up from behind. The last creature twisted around at the sound of Rusl’s charge, club swinging out; Rusl dodged, but now he was unbalanced and retreating, and now his leg was buckling beneath him—

By the time Zelda drew her bow, Link’s sword was already plunging in and out of the Bulblin’s windpipe. He watched the creature gurgle out a last breath against the sun-bleached stone.

Wind howled through the empty ruins; the battle had ended as quickly as it had begun. Auru was unharmed and muttering about how he was too old for this sort of thing. Rusl struggled to his feet, faltering briefly before Link caught his elbow; the older man thanked him quietly.

“What’s wrong with your leg?” Link replied with a harshness that started everyone.

“It’s the old injury, from the night the children were kidnapped,” Rusl replied, taken aback. “It bothers me from time to time, but—”

“You could have died!” Link snapped. “Uli needs you! Your kids need you!”

Rusl took him by the shoulders. “Have you considered that you are my family too?” he asked very clearly, very firmly. “Have you considered that we might need you?”

Link’s shoulders sagged in defeat. He mumbled an apology. Rusl just ruffled his hair in response and went to sit on an overturned pillar, stretching out his leg.

“Perhaps us elders will rest for a moment,” Auru joked, offering an olive branch to his old friend. “You youngsters can circle back when you’re done.”

Zelda traded glances with Link, knowing he agreed that the weakest members of their party couldn’t stay here unprotected. For a moment there was a striking absurdity in the fact that the two of them, not yet twenty, couldn’t even depend on the men who had helped raise them.

“Auru, your knowledge of Arbiter’s Grounds is invaluable,” Zelda said honestly. “You two go ahead. Rusl and I will stay.”

With a wordless nod of thanks, Link led Auru away. Rusl thought better of protesting. Zelda joined him on the pillar, and they sat in comfortable silence for a time, sharing water and shade while the desert sighed around them and Arbiter’s Grounds loomed like a bad memory over their heads. A tiny lizard the same color as the sand darted by Zelda’s shoe.

“I was angry with Auru too,” she confessed after a while. “He did not send for Link on my orders.”

“Yes, he made that clear,” Rusl said, massaging his bad leg. “I suppose I’m being foolish. Auru was acting in Hyrule’s best interests. And I knew from the day I brought Link to Ordon that he was destined for more.”

“Link is not from Ordon?”

“He is of Ordon, no doubt about it, but he wasn’t born there. I found him in Faron Woods when he was little. Three years old, he said, when he finally started talking. We never learned how he came to be there alone—he doesn’t remember.”

As someone whose entire life had been dictated by her blood, Zelda struggled to imagine this entirely opposite upbringing. She wouldn’t change who she was, but of course she’d harbored the occasional dream of a gentler, simpler fate. Link could be whoever he wanted to be.

No, he can’t, whispered a voice that sounded too much like Midna. The Goddesses picked him just like they picked you and Ganondorf. His past doesn’t matter, because he can’t go back to it ever again.

A scream shattered the air so suddenly that Zelda leapt straight to her feet. No human or Bulblin could produce that sound—that piercing, despairing, all-too familiar howl.

“Stay here,” she told Rusl, and started to run.

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The chamber formed a roofless circle, open-ended on one side. The ground sloped downwards to the metal grates that surrounded the statue at the center, a bejeweled woman with a cobra draped across her shoulders and her palms turned to the sky. Link did not want to consider why a place like this would need grates.

He didn’t have time to notice anything else before the discordant scream froze every muscle of his body.

He had to be dreaming. This could not be happening. But Auru’s gasp was real, and the sword in Link’s hand was real, and the thing that shambled into the chamber was real.

Some of the shadow beast’s features were familiar: the warped mask of the face, the dark and bristled hide, the crimson Twili markings. The rest of it looked like a child’s drawing of a nightmare: six spindly legs holding its long, thick body off the ground, a pair of elongated pincers snapping at its front, a spiked reptilian tail swinging behind.

Link was grateful to be chosen by the Triforce then, because his legs carried him forward even though Auru remained frozen by the terrible scream. Even though he couldn’t think or feel anything.

One massive pincer shot towards him. Link sidestepped and swung his sword weakly; the beast deflected with its other chitinous limb. Those pincers wouldn’t let him anywhere close. Breathing harder than the exertion justified, he resigned himself to dodging until he could get into the enemy’s guard.

Heat and blinding light surged past his ear with the crackle of lightning, so sharp in the air that Link’s hair stood on end. The shadow beast staggered away; so did Link. In his stinging eyes the ruined chamber became a windswept throne room. Blood rolled down his face, magic shivered through his veins, but none of it mattered because she was screaming—

“Link, look out!”

Zelda skidded to his side and blasted the shadow beast again. He blinked to awareness: she was giving him an opening, so he charged into it, stabbing a gap in the pincer’s chitin. The creature turned, but too slowly; Link reached its midsection and slashed the thick hide.

The shadow beast released an earsplitting scream that locked the humans in place again. The sound was so mournful—like a wolf calling for a pack that would never come, like something even more familiar. Ilia’s words rose unbidden: Do we call them monsters just to strip their lives of value?

A riot of sick fear made Link’s fingers tighten around the sword. Stop thinking, he ordered himself. Zelda and Auru were depending on him. He was facing a monster, an enemy, a product of Zant and Ganondorf: nothing more, nothing less. Stop thinking, he ordered himself. Stop thinking and finish it.

Link dropped to the ground as the tail came whipping over his head. The deadly pincer plunged down, and he abandoned his shield to roll out of the way. On his back now, staring up at the brand of scarlet magic on the creature’s belly, Link took his sword in both hands and stabbed upwards with all his might.

The shadow beast warbled out a wail. When he withdrew the blade and plunged it in higher—closer to where he hoped the heart was—the cry dissolved into a piteous whine. Hot liquid leaked down Link’s arms, more of it spilling forth when he yanked the sword out a second time.

Someone dragged him away just before the shadow beast collapsed. It was heaving with desperate, horrible gasps, and so was Link. But he couldn’t look away until he heard the last wet exhale.

Then he rolled to his knees and got violently sick.

Dimly he heard Zelda and Auru exchanging some quiet words. Where was Rusl? If he saw the way Link looked right now, that night in Ordon would happen all over again—Rusl waving his sword and shouting beast, beast, give me back my son!

Link’s stomach turned over and he vomited again, helplessly, shamefully. A light weight rested between his shoulder blades: Zelda’s hand, all awkward uncertainty, bereft of the cool confidence she normally carried. She knelt in front of him.

“Link, is any of this blood yours?” she asked, and that was when he saw the red dripping from his sword, drenching his clothes, seeping beneath his fingernails—and, worst of all, smearing Zelda’s gloves from when she’d pulled him out from under the dying beast.

“I’m sorry,” he burst out senselessly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—”

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

Link had everything to apologize for. He tried to wipe his hands on his trousers, but there was so much blood and it wasn’t coming off, none of it was ever coming off, and over Zelda’s shoulder the shadow beast looked tiny and crumpled as it wisped away in clouds of foul magic.

“Link,” Zelda said, her voice sharp and bright as a blade. “Stop looking at it. Link, look at me.”

She shifted, flooding his vision with her piercingly clear blue eyes, her severe expression, her braided hair a dark riverbed shining with bits of sunlit gold. Slipping off her gloves, Zelda did something that shocked him: she tilted his chin up, tucked his hair behind his ears, and started cleaning his face with a handkerchief she’d conjured from somewhere.

Link sat very still. She was furrowing her brow as she concentrated, no more alarmed by the situation than she would be if he was a dirt-smeared child instead of a killer. Everything about her was calm and solid and very real. He didn’t resist as she peeled his white-knuckled fingers from the sword’s hilt and cleaned his hands.

“Can you stand?” Zelda asked. He nodded mutely, and she pulled him up, her hand sliding down from his elbow to his wrist.

She had touched him like this once before. Ganondorf and his ghostly horde had been plunging downhill past the crumbled pieces of Midna’s helmet, and Link had wanted to throw himself at them. Whether he killed them or died trying made no difference in that moment. What made a difference was Zelda, pressing her fingers to his pulse and bringing them somewhere safe.

She led him outside the chamber, where the sandstone walls obscured the vaporizing corpse and offered merciful shade. There she lifted the folds of his cloak to look for injuries.

“It’s not…” Link tried. “I’m not hurt.”

“Yes, you are,” Zelda replied, with something he’d never heard in her voice before.

He remembered saying that when she’d stood before him in the rain, pale and crownless, the knife slipping from her hand. She had only been defending herself—what Link had just done was so much worse. But he found himself whispering, “Thank you.”

Zelda just handed him a waterskin and waited expectantly for him to drink. When the others returned, she graciously explained what had happened without a word about Link puking up his guts and getting blood all over her pretty clothes, then went with Auru for another look at the chamber.

That left Rusl to take her place. Link stared at his stained boots as they leaned against the wall in sweltering silence, trying not to feel the widening chasm between himself and the man who had raised him, trying not to feel anything at all.

“I killed during the border skirmishes,” Rusl said suddenly. Link’s chin jerked up. He remembered Rusl leaving to defend Hyrule from the southern king, but—not this. “You were only…what, seven? I thought I might tell you someday, but nothing...takes that feeling away. Even when you got older, I worried it might make you look at me differently.”

“I don’t,” Link said instantly. “I never would.”

“Thank you,” Rusl said solemnly, looking older than his thirty-eight years. “That goes both ways. As Uli told me back then…Link, none of it makes me love you any less.”

A shudder went through Link—pain, but the good kind, like the sting of healing ointment—and after it passed, he felt a little cleaner.

Zelda and Auru returned not much later, shaking their heads. “It may have been a ritual chamber ages ago, but now it only leads to the base of the main prison,” Auru said. “There’s nothing else to find.”

Then what had the shadow beast been doing here? Zant had usually planted them in Link and Midna’s path, but he was long gone. The beast must have been lingering here alone for months. Sick fear beat its wings against Link’s ribcage, especially when he saw the pensive, withdrawn look on Zelda’s face.

But all she said was, “Shall we start the return journey?”

No one would argue with that. The wind that howled through this place smelled too much like death.

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Chapter 18: Shadow Temple

Chapter Text

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“I’m so glad you asked, Lady Gerrell,” Zelda said in a voice so sweet it made her teeth ache, tapping a knuckle against the chalkboard. “As you can see, after the high costs necessitated by the first two months of recovery, the guard has ended this month under budget.”

The Minister of Agriculture smiled back with equal artificiality. Zelda had just finished outlining the guard’s progress in the three months since her coronation; of course, everyone was a critic. Even she felt it was too good to be true sometimes, but Hyrule finally had the beginnings of a functional fighting force.

One to protect the kingdom? her father asked at the back of her mind. Or one to conspire against its queen and drag her from the throne?

Zelda was operating on even less sleep and more coffee than usual. Auru kept urging her to delegate more tasks to her extensive staff, but trusting them with anything more important than paperwork did not come easily.

“And what of the missing children?” Lord Cregan wondered, seizing eagerly on what he thought was her weakest point. “When will you deploy these new forces to search for them?”

“Actually,” Zelda replied, returning to her seat at the head of the table, “I traveled to Gerudo Desert for that purpose just last week. I have another lead, which I will be pursuing personally—hence why I postponed our next meeting.”

“Personally?” he blustered. “Is leaving the castle wise, given the assassination attempts?”

“Thank you for your concern, but as a sorceress I can learn things others cannot—and as queen, I have no higher duty.”

Zelda lingered after the meeting adjourned, pretending to review her notes as the members of her Council murmured amongst themselves and filtered out of the chamber. Auru remained, shooting her aggrieved looks. The last to leave was Lord Hartwell, who winked and murmured, “Masterfully done, as ever, Lady Queen,” before he swept out of the room.

“He flirts a lot for a married man,” Auru complained after the door closed.

“He also smiles a lot for someone who lost his prized horses, and all the Rupees they would have earned him,” Zelda mused. Lord Hartwell had remained mysteriously quiet about the Bear’s robbery; she only knew thanks to Link.

“He was right about one thing,” Auru allowed. “That was smart. Whether you return with news of the children or not, you’ll have put yourself in danger to search. They can’t claim you don’t care. But…is chasing this shadow worth the risk?”

Zelda recalled the desert ritual chamber where Link had killed the shadow beast a few days ago. The place had reeked of Zant’s and Ganondorf’s magic, combined in a miserable chain that bound the captured scouts and the missing children and the shadow crystals all together—but she had kept that to herself, because she still didn’t understand the nature of the connection. That was why she hoped the Hidden Village would contain evidence of the enemy’s work there, or that the old woman who had saved Ilia’s life would know something useful.

“It’s worth the risk,” she answered.

Auru sighed. “Well, I’ll do my best to ward off any coups while you’re gone.”

Zelda smiled grimly. He wouldn’t make that joke if he knew what had happened to her father, but that was a story she could never tell.

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Of course, leaving the castle was a risk, one she could mitigate. As she had for the desert trip, Zelda dressed in breeches and a leather jerkin under her dark Sheikah cloak, pulled her hair into a simple braid, and slipped unnoticed into the tunnels that channeled water from the Zora River to her people’s wells. She had done this many times during her father’s reign, setting off into the city to watch and listen and learn, or to attend meetings that belonged in the shadows.

Telma and Auru were staying behind; every other member of the Resistance met her outside town. Privately, Zelda wished she and Link could make the journey alone so they could speak freely—but Ilia had suffered during the Twilight, and Rusl, Ashei, and Shad had done so much for Hyrule’s recovery. They all deserved answers.

Winter was breathing down Hyrule’s neck. They rode out into a dreary grey morning, cold enough that Zelda caught Peppermint’s warmth before it escaped into the air and redirected it towards her fingers and toes. The journey took them east, then north across the Bridge of Eldin, and in less than an hour Link was leading them to their destination.

Ilia ran ahead, eager to see Impaz. While others tethered the horses, Zelda lingered under the rusty sign that named this place Old Kakariko. Her history books described this place as a bustling hub in centuries past; only a single lane of ramshackle houses remained. The village’s only inhabitants were a small army of cats: lazing in the sun, jumping from one balcony to another, playing under the remains of a Bulblin watchtower.

“What do you think we’ll find here?” Link asked her quietly.

“Nothing good,” Zelda admitted, bending down to pet a calico that brushed against her legs.

“I’d take any answers, grim or no,” Rusl sighed. “For the sake of those children’s parents.”

“Well, aren’t you three dour today?” Shad said. “For my part, I hope to hear all about the sky beings, and the rod of the heavens, and—”

“Don’t start,” Ashei groused, propelling him forward.

Ilia waited beside a tiny, wizened woman, who watched their approach in front of a squat, rundown house at the end of the lane. More cats milled around them. Link nodded a greeting. Zelda began to introduce herself, but something in the old woman’s eyes stopped her.

“I know who you are, Lady Queen,” Impaz breathed, pressing her hands to her heart. “You look just like her.”

“My mother?”

“Oh, I’m sure you resemble her too. But I meant your grandmother—my dear friend.” Impaz wiped tears from her crimson eyes and smiled. “You’re even wearing the cloak I gave her.”

“You mean—” Zelda gripped the folds of her black cloak, which was emblazoned with the Sheikah’s teardrop eye crest across the back. “You were my grandmother’s bodyguard.”

“Yes. For most of my life. But tragedy made me the last member of my clan, and your grandmother had a peaceful court, a husband, and three grown children to protect her…so I returned here, to fulfill my destiny.” She reached up to squeeze Ilia’s hand, which rested on her shoulder, and to nod at Link. “But I was very sorry to hear of your losses, Lady Queen.”

Zelda swallowed hard. People gave her their sympathy all the time, but this was someone who had known her grandmother as a human being, not as the stern, austere Half-Century Queen. Someone who had known her mother, uncle, and aunt when they were children. Long before Zelda’s birth, Impaz had vanished from court as only a Sheikah could—and now they were both the last of their kind.

“My family was grateful for your service,” she said evenly. “As I am grateful that you were here to help Ilia and share your knowledge with Link. It helped Hyrule more than you know.”

Link nodded his agreement distractedly, less interested in the conversation than in the cat he was petting. Shad’s eyes took on a hungry glow at the mention of Sky Writing, but Ashei silenced him with a glare before he could drag them off-track.

“Ilia told me why you came,” Impaz said. “I’m afraid I can’t be of much help. The only time those beasts showed interest in me was when they ordered me to heal her. I never understood what they wanted here.”

“There is more to this place than meets the eye, is there not?” Zelda asked, goosebumps prickling her skin as a frigid wind swept through the rusted, empty structures.

With a grave nod, Impaz led them behind her house, to the convergence of the two rock walls that sheltered the village. Trees ringed the top of the gully and dug their roots into the crag, weaving together with dried vines and yellowing vegetation that obscured the gap in the wall until Impaz swept aside a curtain of dying bracken.

Zelda passed under the opening and into a place of ancient quiet. Wind-bent trees stood sentinel around the small clearing, watching over the mossy graves that slouched into the old earth, their inscriptions faded by weather and time. The air hung thick with slow-drifting mist. Zelda crunched through the dead grass along the rows of her ancestors and Impaz’s, buried underneath the weight of their shared, bloody history.

“I suppose I don’t have to explain it to you, Lady Queen,” Impaz said. “This village was the hiding place for my people’s greatest shame, as much as it was their home. That drove most of them away in the end—too many ghosts, and not enough arable land. My family were among the few who remained. They are buried here.”

Only she and Link had followed Zelda to the largest headstone, which lay at the rear of the graveyard. Above their heads stretched a short cliffside, where a half-collapsed fence guarded the entrance of a cave.

“The Sheikah were following royal orders when they tortured Hyrule’s enemies,” Zelda pointed out, gazing up into that dark opening. “And then my ancestors covered it up, rather than confront it.”

“Such is the legacy we inherited,” Impaz agreed. “But the blame rests with those that sleep here, not with us. Remember that.” She patted Zelda’s arm in a maternal fashion—a liberty that no one at court would take with the queen—and shuffled away.

Link remained, gazing up at the cliffside cave with an odd look on his face. “What’s up there?”

“A place of great power,” Zelda replied. “No wonder Zant operated here…at Ganondorf’s suggestion, no doubt. The village is isolated and easily defensible—except against you—and any sorcerer would feel stronger here.”

Their friends wouldn’t be able to follow them up there. Persuading the empty air to hold her for just a moment, Zelda cast herself a staircase made of light, while Link’s Clawshots brought him up to the ruined fence.

The mouth of the cave led them down into a small room ringed with torches. Zelda kindled a few of them with a wave of her hand, shedding light on a tall black door emblazoned with the Sheikah sigil.

“Are we going inside?” Link asked anxiously, and she found herself thinking of a different wielder of the Master Sword, a boy with a fairy who had walked through time to prevent a horrible future. Forgotten by the world he’d saved, he’d entrusted bits and pieces of his story to the queen of Hyrule.

Zelda recalled an entry of the journal her family had passed down from monarch to heir for centuries, one that had always filled her with inexplicable sorrow: He told me he followed future-Impa into the Shadow Temple, buried under Kakariko’s graveyard. A fitting place for ugly secrets. He couldn’t tell me what it was like inside, but twice that night, he woke up screaming.

“We’re not going inside,” Zelda promised. “I can cast right here.”

Heart thudding in dread, she opened her senses. Though the Hero of Time had slain the great evil that once dwelled here, the Shadow Temple remained a place of ancient power, restless ghosts, and uncorrected wrongs. So many layers to sift through. So many stories these bloodstained walls could tell.

But in the end, her job was simple—she needed only to seek the familiar sun-stained sear of Ganondorf’s magic intertwined with the dark ink of Zant’s.

Zelda’s head was always ten steps ahead of her heart. She’d been expecting this truth since encountering the shadow beast in the desert, had been fleeing it ever since, but now it closed in like a pack of baying hounds. She was the one who had surrendered her kingdom to this fate. The one who would have to convey the unimaginable to the families of these lost children. The one who would have to tell Link.

He was picking something up from the dusty floor: a ragdoll, faded and much-loved, lying among bits of torn clothing and tiny little shoes. He looked at Zelda, his face bone-white, waiting as a convict waits for the axe to fall.

Zelda had promised Midna she would take care of him—but she would have done so without being asked. She had wanted to protect the blue-eyed wolf with the chained paw from the moment he loped into her prison tower, even before she received his kindness, learned his jagged edges, saw herself reflected in his gaze.

But the only way to shield Link from the truth would be to conceal it, and she’d made him a promise too: honesty, despite its cruel cost.

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Beneath the cloudy sky, Link watched as Zelda’s magic carried her down like an evening star. He associated her most with the castle that was her home, stone-strong and undefeatable, armored in silks and jewels. Out here she was just as lovely and severe, her face flushed in the cold, her pale blue eyes keen on his face.

“We should speak alone,” she said as the others wove towards them through the graveyard.

“They deserve to hear it, too,” Link replied numbly, flexing the fingers of his sword hand.

“Link—”

But Impaz was there, coaxing them back to her house with the promise of a warm fire, and Link followed without question. It was time to stop running away.

Inside the cramped quarters, Impaz and Ilia made tea while everyone else found seats amidst a plethora of cats. Zelda turned a rickety chair into a throne; Link made sure Rusl took the other chair and located crates for Shad, Ashei, and himself.

“I must ask that nothing we say here leaves this room,” Zelda said. “There will come a time to bring it all to light, but not yet.”

Everyone nodded. Zelda scratched a tabby cat behind the ear, glanced at Link, and began.

“Here is what we are nearly certain of: Zant captured the scouts I dispatched to the desert. Half of them survived, including Captain Elias, who carries a shadow crystal that turns him into a beast. Zant created it with both his and Ganondorf’s magic in pursuit of their shared goal—domination of our world. Hyrule was ripe for the taking, but expanding beyond our borders would have required a larger army.”

“They took the castle with the help of those shadow beasts,” Ashei remembered. “Couldn’t they just bring more in from the Twilight Realm?”

“That was the problem,” Zelda replied. “The beasts are not natural creatures—they were created with the shadow crystals themselves. Between what I sensed here and in the desert, I have no doubt.”

“But magic cannot create life, only influence it,” Impaz pointed out.

Link sat unmoving: a fist was squeezing the breath from his lungs. The kettle released a screeching whistle that made Ilia jump. He could feel the worry in her gaze as she brought him a cup of tea, but he didn’t look at her, or at anyone.

“I am sorry to say that you’ve guessed it,” Zelda continued. Her eyes were on Link too. “The first wave of shadow beasts that took the castle must have been Zant’s own people, forced into that shape.”

“Then the scouts,” Rusl realized. “The scars Link described…”

“Yes. Light dwellers are far less susceptible to Twili magic—turning them must have been a challenge. What did we find in the desert? A corpse and a shadow beast unlike any other I encountered. Some of the scouts died. Some transformed. Others survived, damaged but human. I believe Zant was…experimenting. Creating more effective shadow crystals, different types for different purposes. The one Captain Elias somehow stole from Zant transforms him and clouds his thinking mind—both desirable outcomes for our enemies. Except he reverts to human after a short time and suffers physically, perhaps because his crystal is a flawed prototype.”

“Whereas the final product,” Link heard himself say, “worked perfectly.”

A cat squeezed out through the flap cut into the bottom of the door, sending a brief chill into the house. Wind rattled the shutters. People sipped tea uncomfortably.

Link stared down at the white cup between his scarred hands. A chasm had opened inside him. He stood on its precipice as the shadows dragged him down, slowly and inexorably; he couldn’t fight them anymore.

“I disagree,” Zelda said, leaning forward as if they were the only two people in the room. “I think the last shadow crystal only accomplished half its goal. I think Zant and Ganondorf wanted to control you, to make you a weapon for their cause. In that they failed miserably, Link.”

But that was no better. The others had all been choiceless and blameless. The shadow beasts, Darbus the Goron patriarch, Stallord the reanimated fossil, Yeta corrupted by the Mirror of Twilight—even Zelda, her skin sallow and her eyes demonic, aiming her blade at his skull.

Link hadn’t become a puppet. He had become something worse.

“We came here looking for the missing children,” Ilia murmured, sinking down on the bed beside Impaz, who took her hand gently.

Link reached for calm, for courage, for the quiet inner stillness that had kept him grounded through the worst moments of his life. He couldn’t find anything. He was unraveling. He had never needed Midna more than he did right now.

His eyes flitted to Zelda. No one could call her the Iceheart Queen in this moment. She wasn’t cold or distant or uncaring. She was heartbroken, and she was holding Link’s gaze like keeping a drowning person above water. He pressed his palms hard against the hot sides of the teacup.

Don’t say it, he wanted to beg, but she had no choice.

“As I said, transforming light dwellers would have been difficult,” Zelda went on softly. “I compared the scouting unit’s records against the names Link provided for those who follow the Bear. All of the older veterans survived the desert. But the unit was mostly comprised of younger recruits, and only three of them still live.”

“How does this relate to the children?” Rusl demanded, his fear a cold blade to Link’s skin.

“I believe Zant’s experiments demonstrated that younger subjects were more vulnerable to the shadow crystals. That aligns with what I know of magic as well.” Zelda closed her eyes briefly and opened them, still looking at Link. “Children were easiest to capture and the most likely to successfully transform.”

Ilia put her face in her hands. Shad braced a hand on Ashei’s shoulder, as if reminding himself that she was there.

Rusl rose, cats scattering across the room as he paced to the door and back, running his hands through his blond hair. “No,” he decided. “No one would do that.”

“Zant would,” Zelda said plainly. “Ganondorf would.”

The air had vanished from Link’s lungs. Blood in his fur, between his claws, coating his fangs, rolling down his throat. Midna’s magic guiding his attacks. The screams of the enemy. The guileless faces of the Twili after they’d returned to themselves.

“How can we be sure?” Rusl asked desperately. “Isn’t this all conjecture?”

“The Bulblins left the kids in Kakariko because they didn’t want to risk me dying before we got here,” Ilia mumbled through her fingers. “There was a reason. They didn’t want to lose another soldier.”

“Bulblins were never prone to kidnapping before the invasion,” Shad reasoned grimly. “Why else would they target children? I know it’s hard to hear, Rusl—”

“Hard to hear,” Rusl repeated raggedly. “None of you are parents. Forgive me if I want better proof that dozens of children became those—those things! That my nine-year-old son almost—”

“Rusl,” Link whispered, “Stop.”

The only father he had ever known looked at him through a sheen of tears. Link had seen Rusl cry only twice—for joy, each time Uli announced she was with child. Link tried to cut that thought off, but it was already spiraling beyond his control.

Colin. Ilia. Talo, Malo, Beth. What if they hadn’t gotten away? What if they had become like all the others he’d failed, captive and afraid and twisted into something unthinkable? Had the transformation wiped them away entirely, or had some part of them remained terrified children, lashing out at the monstrous wolf who wanted to hurt them?

And Link had hurt them. There had always been human pain in those screams. He’d heard it then, and he could hear it now, and—

There was a sound that made everyone in the room look at him. He lowered his eyes to see that the teacup had shattered in his grip, sending scalding liquid and bits of porcelain and blood from cuts he didn’t feel raining down to the floor. Something rose inside Link, hot and cold all at once, something nameless and visceral and wretched.

Rusl sucked in a loud breath. Zelda produced a handkerchief, identical to the one Link had soiled in the desert after he killed…after he killed the…

“Link,” Zelda breathed—just that.

He was three steps to the door when someone seized his elbow.

“I’m sorry,” Rusl pleaded. “The queen is right. It was Zant. It was Ganondorf. But not you. It wasn't your f—”

“You wouldn’t say that if Colin had been one of them,” Link snarled. Then he wrenched his arm free and was gone.

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Chapter 19: Children

Chapter Text

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Zelda watched the pool of spilled tea spread towards her shoe. One of the cats crept forward to sniff it—otherwise, she could have been sitting in a statue garden.

“He didn’t mean that, Rusl,” Ilia said tremulously.

“I know,” came the weary reply. “But Farore above—Ilia, if you hadn’t helped the children escape—”

“Don’t say it,” she begged. Impaz put an arm around her shoulders. Ashei chewed her lower lip, her face far away, while Shad removed his spectacles to wipe at his eyes. Rusl wavered before the open door, like he wasn’t sure whether to run through it or collapse where he stood.

I dropped the sword, Zelda thought helplessly. I chose life. But all she’d saved were the meager remains of her guard. Not the scouts, who wanted her dead as payback. Not the people who had died in Zant’s raids or the children he stole. Not the softhearted boy from Ordon who had never wanted to pick up a sword.

Link must have harbored some inkling of the truth before today. Killing the shadow beast in the desert had made him physically sick. When she’d told him that Midna had withheld information about the abductees to protect him, he had replied: I wasn’t the one that needed protection. And then he’d laughed, nothing but desolation in the sound.

The pain arrived like a sudden bolt of summer lightning. How many times had Zelda stood before her bedroom mirror and seen a monster beneath the pretty veneer of her reflection? How many times must Link have felt the same way?

“Are you going after him, Lady Queen?” Rusl asked. “I—would appreciate it.”

“Me?” Zelda said dumbly. She didn’t remember standing, but she was on her feet, and everyone was looking at her. “I may not be the best—”

“Please,” Ilia said, raising her tearstained face. “You were the only person he could look in the eyes.”

Zelda wished for Auru; he always reminded her of a gentler version of herself. Or for Midna, who had loved Link ferociously even as she watched her people die beneath his sword. She only had herself. It would have to be enough.

Outside, shadows stretched from one side of the Hidden Village to the other, darkening the abandoned doorways and shading the cats who watched Zelda’s progress. The path was speckled with bright red spots, drying in the afternoon sun; she followed them straight to Link.

He was facing Epona, who stared back with her neck arched and her ears swiveling nervously. The saddle was a lopsided corpse on the ground. The bridle was clutched in Link’s bleeding hand. When he stepped forward, the mare’s nostrils flared—not from the smell of blood, which she was surely accustomed to, but from whatever else she sensed from her rider.

“Link,” Zelda said. “Can we talk?”

He took another step. Epona’s head jerked even higher, refusal written in her every muscle.

“If I talk, will you listen?” Zelda amended. “Will you stop scaring your poor horse, at least?”

He didn’t answer.

“I should have expected Zant would violate the terms of surrender,” she said to his coiled shoulders. “Perhaps I should have raised the sword instead of dropping it. But I was backed into a corner, and I made the only choice I could. Nothing can change it now. If I want a future, I cannot hold myself responsible for the enemy’s atrocities.”

Link stood unmoving. Blood dripped slowly from his fingers to soak the soft earth below.

“Zant sent the shadow beasts after you and Midna,” she went on carefully. “You had no way of knowing what they once were. He gloated to me about how each fight was a trap. You were backed into a corner; you made the only choice you could. We’re the same, Link. I would have done exactly the s—”

“You,” Link interrupted in a voice that neared calamity, “are nothing like me.”

Zelda recalled a throne room full of fire and screams, of bruising laughter, of her sword clanging to the floor. “I disagree,” she said quietly.

“You see everything exactly as it is,” he snapped. “You don’t turn your back on a problem until you’ve fixed it. You’re too smart and too good to be making excuses that I don’t f*cking deserve.”

“I am not making—”

Link turned so sharply that the words died in her throat. His wind-mussed hair would have made him look very young if not for the bloodless face beneath and the violent slash of the red scar. His eyes flashed with a wild, terrible storm.

“Zelda, I knew,” he spat. “As early as Kakariko I heard that someone got attacked by a shadow beast, that those who went looking for her found two beasts where there should’ve been one. But I kept going. And then Midna—she told me, straight to my face, what Zant did to her people—I knew what that meant about those I’d killed, I knew why he’d taken the kids, and what do you think I did?! I forgot, I made myself forget, and I kept going! You would have stopped. You would have saved them!”

“They were past saving,” Zelda said, her throat aching, her arms around her ribs to contain her rattling pulse.

Link choked out an awful, grating laugh. “That’s what I told myself every time. But the Sols, the suns of Midna’s world, they undid the curse. And underneath—they were people, Zelda, they were still people—like the scouts, like Ilia, like my little brother—”

In one sudden, furious motion, he ripped the sword from his back and hurtled it at the wall of the nearest house. The thunderous crash seemed to shock Link even more than Zelda, because he made a sound in the back of his throat, and then he crumpled onto a crate, put his face in his hands, and started to cry.

The worst parts of Zelda, the parts constructed of ice and marble and fear, screamed at her to flee. But Link was shaking with jagged, helpless sobs, and he was still trying to smother them; he was ashamed before her once again, the same way she would be ashamed if their positions were reversed.

But why? She asked herself. He was her mirror. The Twilight had ruined everything he’d considered true about himself, every shred of goodness possessed by the goatherd, the children’s role model, the gentle soul with an aversion to violence. Zelda had eroded over years, slowly replacing the person she wanted to be with the person Hyrule needed, but in the end she still understood him perfectly.

She sat beside him on the crate, and after a moment of thought, began to speak quietly. “When I was young, I asked my mother if it bothered her to kill during the border skirmishes. She said yes, of course it bothered her—but the only thing on a battlefield is striking down the person trying to do the same to you. There is no higher calling, no greater good, no right or wrong.”

Epona shifted uneasily, still standing where they’d left her. Wind tugged at her white mane and howled through the village’s empty spaces. Link was already shaking his head.

“No, Link,” Zelda said fiercely, “listen to me. You weren’t like my mother. You weren’t even a soldier. You were untrained and choiceless, and fate thrust you onto a battlefield. Stepping away from it or being killed on it would have meant the end of everything. You knew that each time you swung your sword. As for the Sols…if they could have worked in the Light Realm, if they could have saved Midna’s people here as well as there, she would have used them. If she never tried, it was because she knew it wouldn’t work. You trusted her, didn’t you?”

After a long, frightening moment, Link whispered, “Yes.”

He had stopped crying, but somehow he was shaking even more violently, a leaf rattling in the autumn wind. Zelda drew his hands cautiously away from his face. He didn’t resist, just looked at her helplessly, his pulse hammering where she touched his wrists.

“She told me it was worth it,” Link said haltingly. “But I don’t…I…how could it ever be worth it?”

“I’ll tell you how I survive,” Zelda said. “I hold my actions against the alternative. Had you kept your hands clean, Ganondorf would have given us a wasteland. You gave us a future. And you bear the Triforce of Courage, Link. Once you made your decision, you became an arrow that cannot miss, a blade that never breaks. I think you always knew you were on the right path, because you never faltered from it.”

He opened and closed his bloody hands. Stray tears still rolled down his face; he swallowed hard, twice, to keep them back—but his voice was still unsteady when he said, “You’re just being kind.”

“I’m not kind, Link,” Zelda replied tiredly. “And I promised not to lie to you.”

Stripped of his last defense, Link stared at her unblinking, like she was a mirage that would fade the moment he looked away. She released his wrists more gently than she’d thought herself capable of.

Instead of withdrawing, Link did something shocking: he put his arms around Zelda’s shoulders and drew her towards him, so slowly and carefully that she knew he was giving her the chance to pull away. The small, scared girl inside her wanted to do just that, because she had no idea what to do with this kind of touch, the kind that gave without asking for anything in return.

But when she leaned into the embrace, there was nothing to be afraid of. It was just Link—his solid warmth, his strong body, his familiar smell—and Zelda held him with a desperation she hadn’t known she possessed until this moment.

When his tears returned, hot against her collarbone, neither of them felt any shame.

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After what felt like hours, Epona broke the silence, easing forward to nuzzle at Link’s pockets for treats. To his great surprise, he breathed out a laugh.

Climbing to his feet, he found that billowing grey clouds obscured the sun, and a petrichor wind shivered through the Hidden Village. He offered a hand to Zelda and pulled her up from the crate, considering her crownless and careworn brow, her sharp morning-glory eyes, the uncertainty beginning to creep into them under his gaze.

“Of course you’re kind, Zelda,” he told her softly. “Even if they say otherwise. Thank you.”

She squeezed his hand, returning the gratitude, and let it go.

They led the horses into an abandoned building wide enough to offer shelter from the rain that had begun to fall. On the way back to Impaz’s house, wind tugging clean and cold through his hair, Link found himself oddly calm.

Zelda had gotten him to stare the truth in its wretched face, and though the grief remained, the terror had washed away. For all he’d been willing to die for her from the start, he’d never dared to hope for what she had given him today: the miracle of understanding, of solace, of solidarity. He didn’t know what came next, but he knew he had that treasure.

Ilia sprang up to throw herself into Link’s arms the second he opened the door. He clung to her, breathing in the smell of Ordon, letting go only when Rusl approached.

“Will you show me your hands?” he asked, as though Link had returned bruised from some childhood adventure in the forest. The scalding from the tea wasn’t so bad, and the cuts had already clotted, but Rusl grunted disapprovingly at the sight.

Link blurted out, “I’m sorry for what I said about Colin. I’m sorry for every—"

“I already told you,” Rusl interrupted gently, pulling him into a hug. “None of it makes me love you any less.”

It was all Link could do to avoid bursting into tears all over again. Over Rusl’s shoulder, he read nothing but sorrow and sympathy in Shad, Ashei, and Impaz. Why on earth had he feared otherwise? These people were his friends. He was safe.

He allowed Rusl to examine his wounded hands. The rain pelting down on the tin roof meant they weren’t traveling back to the castle anytime soon; everyone was settling down to wait. Zelda sat with one grey-whiskered cat curled up in her lap and a tabby playing with her bootlaces, looking very young and almost ordinary, despite all her wisdom. Ganondorf would have given us a wasteland, she had said. You gave us a future.

Link could see that future in Shad’s bright-eyed fascination as he scribbled down Impaz’s knowledge of the sky beings. In Ilia, eyes red-rimmed from her earlier tears, smiling bravely at Ashei as they prepared dinner in companionable silence. In Zelda, who was covering her mouth to smother a giggle as her feline friends swatted at each other.

Promise me you’ll remember it was worth it, Midna had said, because she’d known from the start that there was only ever one path, and that Link had needed to stay on it no matter what. She’d helped him bury the sins he couldn’t face, and it must have hurt her twice as much as it ever hurt him—but she’d loved him enough to carry the burden anyway.

“Everything heals,” Rusl told him softly, tying clean white linen around the last of Link’s cuts. “You just have to let it.”

Link leaned his shoulder against the windowpane to watch the storm pass, his bandaged hands tucked against his chest, pressing those words into his heart.

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Chapter 20: Snare

Chapter Text

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After the storm, Zelda saddled Peppermint in a washed-out world of blues and greys. It was cold enough that the ground and Castle Town’s pipes might freeze tonight; she had to get home and ensure her people were prepared.

Impaz bid a warm goodbye to the others, but her face sobered at Zelda’s approach. “Lady Queen,” she greeted, glancing around with sharp practice to ensure no one was within earshot. “May I ask an unpleasant question?”

Zelda nodded.

“I loved your grandmother,” Impaz said bluntly. “And the Goddesses rewarded her long life of service with a peaceful death, did they not?”

“Yes, she went in her sleep. We were all there with her.” She remembered her parents wrapped up in each other in the dim bedchamber, and Auru hugging her close—that was nearly ten years ago, and it was more a memory of sadness than sadness itself.

“That’s what she would have wanted,” Impaz decided. “Yet your mother was just over thirty when sudden illness took her. A common alleyway thug took down your uncle Adric, captain of the guard. Your aunt Elaine, an experienced rider, fell from her horse…all within two years of each other. Tell me—was it truly tragedy, or is a reckoning in order?”

Zelda looked into the crimson eyes of the last living Sheikah and almost wished she still had an enemy to fight. Tucking her hands into her cloak, she said very quietly, “There were no accidents, Impaz. But there is no one left to blame.”

“I see.” Impaz was sharp and all-seeing, her brows hardened into an expression that reminded Zelda of her grandmother, but her hands were leathery and soft. “What a fearsome thing you are, Queen Zelda of Hyrule. They would all be very proud.”

Zelda squeezed her hands and had to swallow several times before she could say, “Thank you.”

Turning back to her horse, she caught Link’s gaze from across the way. For some reason he gave her a small, sad smile, and it eased something inside her, even though she couldn’t quite return the sentiment.

The Bridge of Eldin carried them over the foggy ribbon of the Zora River. Everything glowed with the soft majesty of sunset, and Zelda dragged in deep breaths of the breeze as it lifted her hair away from her neck. Across the bridge waited the wide-open field, gilded with drifting mist and golden light. There inside the gloaming, a feeling traveled up from the earth and through Peppermint’s strong legs to reach Zelda’s beating heart. It wasn’t anything as straightforward as happiness or sorrow—but it was life, and it was Hyrule, and it was enough to keep her breathing for as long as she could.

Link had his fingers curled in Epona’s mane and his face turned towards the western sky, the last rays of sun catching in the pale eyelashes fanned over his cheeks. Zelda wondered if he felt the same way she did: older than time and just as weary, yet still caught up in a child’s breathless awe of the world.

But then the wind shifted, and Link’s eyes flew open. He trotted Epona past the rest of the group to crest the nearest hill, gazing south now, and not until she reached his side did Zelda understand why: a plume of black smoke marred the orange sky.

“That’s Kakariko,” Link said grimly. “I’m going.”

Ilia and Rusl started to protest on account of his bandaged hands, but Link was already holding himself differently, his body sharpened into a blade, his eyebrows raised as though asking how they proposed to stop him. Ashei volunteered to go, but Rusl said there were two Ordonian boys in Kakariko to whom he owed his protection, and Ashei retorted that he was and old man with a bad leg, and—

Zelda stepped in diplomatically. “Ashei should go with Link. The rest of us shall ride to Castle Town and send a guard unit as soon as possible—Rusl knows Kakariko and will lead them there.”

Link gave her a long look, his tired eyes matching the deepening sky around him, his hair turned to bronze by the sunset. With a nod of gratitude, he and Epona plunged down the hill towards Kakariko, Ashei’s dark mare following behind.

Zelda turned west with Rusl, Shad, and Ilia. Peppermint speared towards home, responding to her urgency with long, beautiful strides, strong and sure despite the muddy footing.

There was no time to take the safe route through the tunnels; she aimed straight for Castle Town’s eastern bridge, broken and then repaired during the Twilight. To her relief, guards were stationed there, doing their jobs for once. There seemed to be an awful lot of them, in fact—half a dozen men for one bridge seemed—

Those aren’t guards, Zelda realized.

The world exploded like a thunderstorm in miniature; her senses flooded with a crackling boom and a flood of blinding light. Peppermint reared in terror. Half-deaf and half-blind, Zelda could only control her fall as he tipped her from the saddle. Then came searing pain at her scalp as someone dragged her up by the hair and brought cold metal to her throat.

Her ears rang, and rang, and finally cleared enough to make out Rusl’s indignant demand: “Who even uses Deku nuts anymore?!”

Someone had Zelda’s arms pinned behind her. She couldn’t see very well past the black spots swarming her vision, but she knew when someone loomed directly over her.

“Hello, Iceheart Queen,” someone growled.

“Hello, Captain Elias,” Zelda greeted, because she never forgot a voice. “What a lovely homecoming. Rusl? Shad? Ilia?”

“Still alive, Lady Queen,” Shad muttered unhappily.

The point of the blade remained at Zelda’s throat. Rope pulled tight around her wrists, binding them together. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again, able to make out some blurry figures—one captor for each of her companions, plus two behind her and the Bear before her. Outnumbered six to four. The Triforce thrummed warm magic into her palms. She could try stunning the enemy, but that wouldn’t guarantee her escape or her companions’ safety in their disoriented state.

There was another option—even half-blind, she could steal breath and heat from a human body. Killing these people meant killing any chance of gaining their knowledge; it meant killing her heart—but Zelda could do it. She thought of Link touching her face in the garden and saying, You have strength for anything.

“You could fight,” Captain Elias agreed, as though she’d spoken aloud. “I could transform and we could finish it right here. But there’s something you should know first: we have the Hero.”

Ilia gasped. Rusl cursed. But Zelda had already put two and two together, and she retorted icily, “So you hope. But do you really think your friends can take down the person who single-handedly saved us all?”

“With collateral, certainly,” Elias replied calmly.

Zelda was an empty sky, a frozen lake. Link had people he cared about in Kakariko, people who could be used against him—but he would find a way to win no matter what. Her vision had finally cleared enough to let her view the scene: the Resistance facedown in the mud, and the Bear standing bricklike before her, his arms crossed irreverently.

“I shouldn’t be surprised that losing your dog has little effect on you,” he rasped. “But there’s more: we have the sparrow and the fledgling.”

This time, Zelda felt everything. She was ten, laughing with her mother in the garden. She was fourteen, coaxing the flowerbeds back to life with a yellow-haired girl at her side. She was fifteen and that same girl clutched the frame of her bedroom door, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks with each word: I’m disposable. You’re the one who matters.

That girl was supposed to be gone forever—for her own sake, for Hyrule’s, for Zelda’s…

“Would you like proof?” Elias wondered, stepping closer to pull something from his pocket.

Zelda squinted ferociously until her blurry eyes brought a gold locket studded with sapphires into focus. She had last seen it clutched in the girl’s hand as she fled the castle in the dead of night. Elias popped open the catch to reveal two intertwined locks of hair: one yellow as wheat, the other a sleek earthy color that matched Zelda’s own.

“That’s right,” he sneered. “You’d better surrender, Iceheart Queen. It’s what you do best.”

She reached for her control—blank and unknowable and safe—but could not find it. The river had broken the banks to drown the world around it, and Zelda didn’t recognize her own voice when she said, “Swear that my companions will walk free with no bloodshed.”

The Resistance erupted in vehement protest, but as her vision cleared, she looked only at the Bear and he looked only at her. He was still gaunt and pale, but steely resolve had replaced the ragged anger she recalled from their first meeting.

“You have my word,” he replied. “But you and I will get a head start before my friends let yours go.”

He was telling the truth; that was the best Zelda could hope for. While the deserters gathered their horses—at least Peppermint had escaped—she looked at her companions. Shad, terrified and trembling; Ilia, vacant and far away. Rusl looked the steadiest by far.

“Tell Auru everything,” Zelda said to him. “Tell him to find Link, and that I trust his judgement. Tell him that—"

When Bear pulled a hood over her face before she could finish, she was almost relieved—it saved her from saying goodbye.

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Kakariko stretched out below, small and windswept between the arms of the red-rock canyon. Link had last come here after the dragon Argorak left him viciously burned, though that wasn’t the first time Renado had saved his life. Along with Telma’s bar, this place had offered him sanctuary during the darkest hours of the Twilight.

The village didn’t feel safe today. It felt like the breathless moment before a snare yanked fast around its prey.

The source of the smoke was a bonfire built among the ruins of Barnes’s storage shed, which Link had inadvertently destroyed while hunting for shadow insects a lifetime ago. As he watched, a figure in dark leather tossed dead leaves and hay onto the pyre and skipped backwards as flames belched forth.

Link recognized those light-footed, flighty movements. Perfect for a hunter, and—in retrospect—for a scout. “That’s Rai,” he told Ashei. “One of the deserters who follows the Bear.”

“sh*t!” she hissed. “And they’re trying to—what, signal someone? Is this a trap?”

“Probably,” Link said grimly. “Maybe I should handle—”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Ashei interrupted calmly. When he drew breath to argue, her chin went up with a stubbornness that explained why she and Ilia had become fast friends. “I don’t care how much of a badass you are. I’m not looking the other way again.”

“You never—”

“I did. We all did. We let you keep everything from us because you seemed so unstoppable. And—” she made a face, “—maybe because we were scared.”

Link blinked at her, uncomprehending.

Ashei sighed. “The Resistance is on your side, yeah? That’s all I’m saying. So tell me the plan.”

“Okay,” Link conceded reluctantly. “Well…we need to find the villagers. Rai will see us even if we try to sneak around. Maybe we just show ourselves and find out why they’re here? They won’t be happy to see me, but they don’t kill without reason. I think.”

“How comforting,” Ashei grumbled, loosening her sword in its scabbard.

They picked their way down, past where the horses were tethered and towards the buildings. Link had never heard Kakariko so quiet. Under the Twilight it was all skittering insects and howling shadow beasts; after, it was filled with laughing children. He forced his hands to stay loose at his sides.

Rai spotted them as soon as they entered the thoroughfare. He picked up his spear but held his position, a silhouette against the darkening, smoke-filled sky, watching them approach the Elde Inn.

Saki waited under the rusted awning, hands propped on her hips, as casual as someone meeting a friend for a drink. Varn, the Captain’s second-in-command, looked far less relaxed.

“Colin,” Saki said with that knife-slash of a smile. “Or do you prefer Hero?”

“It’s Link.”

“That’s what your friends in there called you,” she said, jabbing a thumb at the inn. “Guess you were honest about one thing, at least—you really were a farmhand. Weird f*cking kids, by the way. Did you know the rude little baby sends flyers all over Hyrule, advertising his store as the Hero’s favorite place to shop?”

Ashei swore softly. Link was a bit slower on the uptake. “You mean—you came here looking for me?” he said, bewildered.

“Oh, yes,” Saki laughed. “We had it on good authority you’d be passing by. Thanks for taking the bait. You even brought a friend!” She looked Ashei up and down in, arching her eyebrows so suggestively that Ashei flushed.

“Are you actually flirting with the people we’re about to take captive?” Varn asked wearily.

“Who wouldn’t?”

“Let’s get to the point,” Varn said with a long-suffering sigh. “Hero, you’ll go with Saki. I’ll take your friend to join the kids and the two men we’ve got inside. You remember Anya? She’s already up there with them—if she hears a peep from us, she’ll start cutting throats. I suggest you come along nice and quiet.”

Link had spent enough time with these people to know they weren’t cruel or wasteful, Rai and his temper notwithstanding. Would they really kill hostages—children, even—in exchange for Link’s cooperation? Zelda would be able to see through this plan clear as day, but Link couldn’t, and he wasn’t going to jeopardize six lives on a hunch.

Trading helpless glances with Ashei, Link forced himself to comply while Varn stripped off his weapons, cloak, tunic, and chainmail, leaving him shivering in his undershirt while Saki did the same to Ashei.

“Don’t,” Link said sharply when Varn paused over the pouch he wore around his neck.

“What is it, Hero?” the man said impatiently. “Some lover’s token?”

Link swallowed with difficulty, glancing at Ashei, ashamed that he’d kept this from the Resistance. But only the truth would convince the deserters. “It’s a shadow crystal,” he told Varn. “Like your Captain’s. So don’t touch it.”

Varn recoiled as though the leather cord was a viper. “How the hell did you get that?”

“All the more reason to bind his hands,” Saki urged.

Varn obeyed. When Link’s hands were tied behind his back, Varn turned away for a split second, and Ashei jerked her chin at Link to get his attention. She mouthed out three words: Buy me time.

Did she have a way to get herself and the villagers out? If she succeeded, Link would only need to worry about himself. If she failed, she and the villagers could die. He owed Renado his life. He’d held Talo and Malo in his arms after they were born, taught them to swim, followed them into the Twilight.

But Ashei was a friend, and a skilled warrior in her own right and the closest thing the Resistance had to a leader now that Auru worked at the castle. Hours after learning that the shadow beasts had been human and Link had slaughtered them like livestock, she was still on his side.

He wouldn’t throw that faith back in her face. He gave her a tiny nod, and she returned it, her coal-black eyes blazing with a conviction that made Link feel very lucky for his friends.

Saki brought him to the second floor of Barnes’s bomb shop, tying him around the chest to the base of a wooden support column. Rai swung his narrow frame through the window while she worked.

Link had last seen him over two weeks ago, his arms around a bleeding Nil—like Saki and Varn, he’d somehow acquired fine leather armor and quality weapons: a steel-pointed spear he leaned against the wall, and a sheathed dagger he tapped restlessly against his thigh. But unlike the others, who looked healthier and better-fed, Rai remained stick-thin, and he regarded Link with unadulterated hatred. Link had expected anger, but this was different. No one had looked at him like that since Ganondorf breathed his last.

“Someone better be keeping watch,” Saki said shortly.

“Varn’s outside,” Rai shot back irritably.

This brambling tension, too, was another surprise. These two had grown up alongside Nil in a Castle Town orphanage; like all childhood friends, no amount of bickering could prevent them from fitting together at the end of each day. But Saki barely spared a glance for Rai as she settled down on a crate, her lantern beside her, and addressed Link.

“For what it’s worth, I wish this wasn’t necessary,” she confessed. “I don’t like involving civilians, and we still owe you for taking down Zant. What was that like, by the way?”

She asked the question like they were chatting over tea. As if Zant hadn’t dragged Link through the places that housed his worst memories; as if it hadn’t been one of the most grueling fights of his life; as if it hadn’t ended with Midna tearing apart the man who had taken everything from her. Shaking in Link’s arms afterwards, she had whispered, I thought it would be easier.

It’s never easy, he’d replied. It shouldn’t be.

“He’d lost it by that point,” Link answered. “He was just Ganondorf’s tool.”

“Ganondorf,” Saki repeated like a curse. “I can’t really wrap my head around the fact that Zant was serving someone worse.”

“If you get how dangerous they were, you get that Hyrule stood no chance,” Link tried. “That’s why the queen surrendered. She’s the only reason there was anything left to save. It’s not fair to hate her for—”

“She’s got you wrapped around her finger,” Rai observed acidly.

Saki sighed. “You’re not here to convert us, Hero. Just to answer questions. Here’s one: how the hell did you get that shadow crystal?”

Goddesses above, Link hadn’t even told Rusl or Uli or Ilia about this—but he needed to buy Ashei time. Swallowing hard, he said, “Zant used it on me. I transformed like your Captain. That’s…that’s why I lied to you, because it’s dangerous magic. I had to figure out where you got it.”

“And did you?” Saki wondered, her dark ponytail swinging behind her as she co*cked her head in interest.

“Zant captured your scouting unit in the desert and tested the shadow crystals on you,” Link said, shifted in feigned discomfort as he tested his ropes. “Half of you died or—or transformed. The rest survived. Captain Elias broke you out, didn’t he?”

“More or less,” Saki confirmed, touching her scarred throat. “The fortress caught fire while Zant was…at his experiments, with the Captain. That was enough of a distraction for the Captain to get us out.”

A fire—the one King Bulblin had set after losing their fight. And then Link had charged blindly onwards to Arbiter’s Grounds, desperate to reach the Mirror of Twilight, without ever knowing the scouts were there.

“Zant did what he did to you to perfect the shadow crystals,” he said in a hollow voice. “He wanted to build his army efficiently, and—to remove me as a threat, I think.”

“You’re saying that we paid the price meant for you?” Rai asked flatly.

Link dropped his gaze, trying to remember everything Zelda had told him. “I don’t think it worked out like he planned. But…yes. It was meant for me, and I’m sorry.” He risked a glance at Rai, frozen and unreadable, and then looked at Saki’s ashen face. “Zant and Ganondorf never created anything good. I think your Captain’s crystal is even worse than mine—that’s why it’s hurting him. Killing him, maybe.”

Rai flinched back into life. “That’s a lie.”

“It’s not,” Link pleaded, focusing on Saki, who was listening with frightened focus. “For his sake, if nothing else, you have to stop all this. I know you’re good people.”

Saki choked out a laugh. Her hands balled into fists, and Link braced himself for a blow, but she only snapped, “If I was ever a good person, Zant took that away from me. And your queen let him do it.”

She whirled, clattering downstairs and out the door. Canyon wind rattled the windows in their tired frames; otherwise, the shop was silent. Night was settling over the world outside.

Link wondered if he’d bought Ashei enough time. She had to contend with Anya, one of the Captain’s oldest comrades, and Varn was on guard somewhere. If Saki went to the inn now…he swallowed, straining against the ropes; the ones around his chest were beginning to loosen.

“This,” Rai announced, “is a f*cking joke. You just want the Captain to stop using the crystal. You’re full of lies, aren’t you, Hero? The person in the stories wouldn’t bow to the Iceheart Queen. He wouldn’t trick people. The others want to let you go, did you know that? You’ll get showered in glory for the rest of your life, and no one will realize that you’re nothing but a killer.”

Link took a breath; his chest felt like it was full of broken glass. He thought of walking into Impaz’s house and seeing only sympathy when he expected recrimination. He thought of the promise he’d made to Midna. He thought of Zelda, her fingers gentle against his pulse, her eyes sharp and uncompromising: Once you made your decision, you became an arrow that cannot miss, a blade that never breaks.

And for the first time, he spoke the truth aloud: “If I hadn’t become a killer, Hyrule would be gone.”

“What’s Hyrule?” Rai sneered. “More lies. Years spent fighting for scraps just to get sent to your death by a spoiled brat in an ivory tower. But at least I had my friends. I had Nil, until you took him from me.”

The words were icy as a Snowpeak gale, exceptionally clear in Rai’s hateful voice, but Link did not comprehend them. Nil had caught him by surprise at River’s Edge, and he’d defended himself—but no way in hell had he dealt a fatal blow. He distinctly remembered pulling back.

“The wound festered,” Rai spat, looming over Link, tears spilling from his molten eyes. “He died in blood and filth, taking hemlock just to end it, after everything we survived. And you get to walk away from that?!”

Link stared at him, speechless, numb. Nil chuckling at Saki’s campfire stories. Nil taking on extra chores for his older and sicker comrades. Nil holding Rai through his panic at the nobleman’s estate. He was dead because Link had defaulted to violence, like he always did; it was the reason he’d been born.

But he attacked first, whispered a voice that sounded like Midna. You just reacted. That mattered, didn’t it? And it mattered that Nil would’ve survived that wound with proper medical care, something the deserters had given up by becoming enemies of Hyrule.

Link wanted so badly to believe those truths, as much as he wanted to believe everything Zelda and Rusl had told him today. He wanted it more than anything besides a way back the Twilight Realm, and that was just a dream—lovely under the stars, impossible in the light of the day.

Forgiveness was possible. Link wasn’t entirely convinced he was worthy of it. But when he saw the knife in Rai’s hand, he knew he wanted to live long enough to find out.

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Chapter 21: Seed

Chapter Text

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Link’s captors had been foolish to leave his legs unbound. His boot bashed into Rai’s shin, sending the deserter crashing to the ground. It bought him only a second to strain against the ropes before Rai shot to his feet.

Metal flashed in the dim lanternlight. Link jerked left with all his strength; the ropes gave him just enough slack for the knife to meet the empty air between his side and his right arm. In sheer desperation he slammed his elbow inwards to trap it there, away from his vitals, and held on as Rai screamed foul things in his face, as pain came in distant, erratic bursts. The blade slipped, raking down Link’s side—

And then Saki was dragging Rai away by the back of his jerkin, hauling him down the stairs while he fought and screamed, “Let me go! You loved him too!”

“He’s not coming back!” Saki shrieked as they disappeared from Link’s sight. “No matter who you hurt, he’s not coming back, and you can’t leave me too!”

The door slammed shut and the shouting continued outside it, but Link couldn’t listen anymore. He sagged against the post, sucking in breath after frightened breath, and made himself look down.

The good news was that the knife had fallen to the floor without anyone noticing. The bad news was that it had first cut him from rib to hip. The blood was hot against his skin in the cold room.

Link used his boot to nudge the knife closer, closer, until he could squirm against the ropes and reach it. He dropped it three times before he could finally rotate it in his bound hands and start sawing awkwardly at the rope.

Outside, Rai’s shouting had subsided to broken sobs. Someone would remember Link sooner or later. He wasn’t moving fast enough. The angle was horribly awkward, and everything was slippery wet and stinking of copper, and his hands were in bandages—had it only been earlier today that he’d broken that teacup? His heart hammered out a frantic warning that he was losing too much blood.

The door opened; two pairs of boots clunked up the stairs. Link kept sawing at the rope for all he was worth, but kept his hands hidden behind his back and slumped against the post to look unconscious.

“Sweet Nayru,” Varn murmured. “Saki, that’s the Hero. How did we get here?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I really don’t.”

Link’s hands jerked free at last. He palmed the knife, slashed through the ropes that bound his chest, and came up off the floor like a hurricane.

With a bleeding wound and his friends at risk, he couldn’t afford to hold back. He tackled Saki to the floor; she cried out as the hilt of his knife smashed her knuckles so hard that she dropped her dagger. Link burst to his feet, channeling the momentum into an upwards swing that Varn barely blocked. He had no idea how to fight with a knife, so much lighter and shorter than he was used to; he just made vicious, artless swipes to drive Varn back towards the stairs.

Saki staggered to her feet. Link knew he’d lose if they put him on the defensive, so he laid on strike after relentless strike, light on his feet and flowing like water through their clumsy counters, giving neither of them the chance to properly guard.

Through the open door came Rai’s shout: “Saki! Varn! The prisoners escaped!”

Link took advantage of the distraction to make a reckless gamble: he dropped the knife, hooked his right arm around Varn’s, and trapped it in an iron grip until he could seize the deserter’s shortsword for himself. Varn’s elbow smashed Link’s nose; Link shoved him away, hard, so that he collided with Saki.

Rai arrived just in time to see his friends tumble down the stairs in a heap of cursing and tangled limbs. He looked from them to Link in disbelief.

“Where’s Anya?” Varn demanded, hauling himself upright and pulling Saki with him.

“Tied up in the damn inn,” Rai replied, his eyes trained on Link. “That swordswoman got free and jumped her somehow.”

“Sounds familiar,” Saki said wearily, clutching her remaining dagger—the only weapon the three of them had left. “Look at him. He could win, couldn’t he?”

The deserters gazed up at Link: a smallish boy who had yet to turn eighteen, guarding the top of the stairs in an undershirt, his side leaking blood. He angled the stolen blade across his body; it was no Master Sword, but he still felt worlds better for its weight.

“I’m sorry about Nil,” he said quietly. “I really am. But I can’t let you kill me. Not after everything else.”

“If we let him go, we’ve failed,” Rai snapped to his companions.

“We failed the second he got out of those ropes,” Saki muttered. “He could kill us all where we stand, and I’m not sure I’d blame him.”

“I’m with you,” Varn told her. “Hero—we’ll just get Anya and leave, all right?” Link nodded at that. Varn tugged a reluctant Rai down the stairs, the younger man sending Link a dark look that made it clear he wasn’t forgiven.

Saki lingered where she was. “The queen,” she said dubiously. “You really believe in her, don’t you?”

Link’s nod was automatic.

“Why?”

Because he felt like he’d always known Zelda. Because even when he was a monstrous wolf, she never saw him as anything but human. Because she had saved Midna’s life in the most selfless act he’d ever witnessed. Because of the way she’d entered his embrace today, so tense and cautious, as though she expected him to shatter or wisp away or hurt her somehow. She had spent so long being everything for everyone that it was frightening to be herself, but she’d opened her arms to Link anyway, wanting to be known as badly as he did.

“She sees the world for what it is,” he answered finally. “And she won’t give up on it, even though it’s broken.”

“I see,” Saki said, crestfallen.

“Why did you come here?” Link pressed a hand to his bleeding side. “Where’s the Captain? What are you planning?”

Saki turned for the stairs without another word—without even a trace of her typical smile.

He kept watch until the only thing left of the deserters was the dust their horses kicked up. The children found him in front of the bomb shop, and Link cared less about the wound than the fact of Talo and Luda in his arms, all sharp elbows and knobby knees, with Malo trailing exasperatedly behind.

“Thank you,” Link told Ashei over the children’s heads.

Her black locks spilled like ink over her shoulders. She held up the hairpiece she normally wore: slotted into the underside was a tiny knife, not much longer than Link’s finger, but clearly sharp enough to cut through rope. “My father’s paranoia finally paid off,” she grinned.

“I distracted the bandit lady,” Talo told Link proudly. “You know how annoying I can be.”

“Did Anya say anything useful?” Link asked Ashei. He got to his feet, bringing on a sudden wave of lightheaded nausea that made him squeeze his eyes shut. “Did she say why—"

Talo gasped. Luda said something about finding her father and ran off. With surprising gentleness, Ashei moved Link’s arm to look at the wound, then said firmly, “Let’s go inside.”

His head spinning, Link allowed her to lead him up to the inn’s second floor, where Renado had saved his life more than once. The shaman met them there, as level-headed as ever, and told Link to lay down in a tone that brokered no argument.

He barely paid attention to what Renado was doing. The more he questioned why the deserters had lured him here, the less it made sense. Surely not just for information—Saki had barely mentioned Zelda, even though killing her was the deserters’ goal. Maybe she’d meant to ask more before Link had upset her, but wouldn’t it have been far easier to capture some guard with knowledge of castle defenses?

We had it on good authority you’d be passing by, she had said.

Link’s stomach churned. The red potion he’d taken was barely making a dent as Renado began stitching his wound. He lay on his side and gripped the edge of the mattress and thought of the look Saki had given him, long and sad, before she’d left.

The children were causing some kind of commotion downstairs; Ashei went to investigate. Everyone was talking too quickly for Link’s blurred senses to comprehend. He recognized Rusl’s voice clearly, but it sounded like he’d come alone, not with a guard unit as planned.

That realization tipped Link’s worry into real fear. His blood was everywhere, filling the room with its reek; in the three months since Ganondorf’s death he’d forgotten what it was like to be in this much pain. Renado tried to hold him still as he cringed instinctively away from the needle.

“Golden Goddesses,” said a voice in the doorway.

“Rusl?” Link said in a child’s reedy voice.

“I’m here,” Rusl answered, crossing the room in four long strides to kneel beside the bed and take his hand.

Link gripped it harder than he meant to at the next pierce of the needle, forcing out his question through gritted teeth: “Where’s Zelda?”

“He needs potion,” Rusl said sharply.

“He had some,” Renado replied. “He should have been asleep ten minutes ago.”

Link rolled his bleary eyes up to Renado’s face. That red potion had tasted unusual. “You…”

“Yes, I gave you a sleeping draught. I am sorry, but I’ve seen you run off injured enough times to know you would do it again.”

Shaking his head impatiently, Link turned back to Rusl and insisted, “Where’s Zelda?”

“The Bear—” Rusl started.

Immediately Link was trying to lift his leaden body, ignoring their protests, fighting their hands until Renado thundered, “For Din’s sake, you’re scaring the children!” In the doorway, Luda was ushering Talo and Malo away, their expressions harrowed and too old for their faces.

Link turned his face into the mattress and went still.

Zelda in the rain, the bloody knife slipping from her hands. Zelda in the desert, cleaning the filth from his skin. Zelda in a field of light at the end of the world, smiling that tiny, heartbroken smile that made him want to keep breathing.

Rusl brushed sweaty hair from Link’s brow and continued softly. “It was all a trap. He drew you away and ambushed us at the bridge into town. Maybe the queen’s magic could have fended him off, but he said something that made her surrender…‘We have the sparrow and the fledgling.’ Auru wanted me to ask if you know what that means.”

Link shook his head miserably.

“What if Sparrow was a person? Auru says there was a castle gardener by that name before his exile. She and the queen knew one another. Early twenties, blond hair, freckles? Does that ring any bells?”

It came to Link then: a woman with a bloody nose, glaring defiantly at the thieves invading her home. “The estate in the north forest,” he mumbled. “Where we stole the h-horses. She’s there with her daughter and husband, Lord…Lord…um, I don’t—”

“Auru will know the name—this is exactly what he needs,” Rusl reassured. “Well done.”

Through the senseless fog, Link understood only one fact: “I have to find her.”

“I know, Link,” Rusl said, releasing his hand gently. “But will you stay here while I trade stories with Ashei, at least?”

Link submitted to Renado’s treatment. He couldn’t summon the energy to be angry about the sleeping draught; he could barely lift his head. After the shaman left, he stared fixedly at the wall with his eyes wide open, determined to be awake when Rusl returned.

Midna’s absence was everywhere in this room. She would understand his fear perfectly—she cared for Zelda as a person, not a title or a symbol; she would be tearing apart every inch of Hyrule to find her. Few others could say the same.

Midna was gone, but Link still had her last gift, heavy as a warning around his neck.

Before he could take that thought any further, Renado sent the children in to watch over him. Once, Talo would have peppered him with endless questions; now, he just held Link’s bandaged hand while Luda sorted his belongings in neat piles and Malo built up the fire. Not once did they make Link talk. The Twilight had given them a maturity that made him proud and sad all at once.

Closing his eyes, he could almost feel Ordon around him. Often, he couldn’t bear to think of it, but right now he felt peace as well as longing, neither emotion devouring the other. He fell asleep with his hand in Talo’s, dreaming of the warm green smell of home.

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Zelda waited on the cold floor of a dark cellar. The Triforce’s soft glow showed cobwebs and empty shelves and a trapdoor above, outlined by the dim torchlight that seeped through its edges.

She’d been blindfolded for the whole ride, so all she knew was that they were about two hours from the castle, most likely in some abandoned house the bandits had claimed after Link compromised their Eldin camp.

They’d left her alone long enough for the truth to sink its fangs in. We have the sparrow and the fledgling. She had never expected to see Sparrow again—and that curl of chestnut hair in the locket meant there was a child, one Zelda hadn’t known existed. Now her life was chained to them both. Her only choice was to put her faith in Auru and Link, no matter how much that grated against her instincts.

The trapdoor swung open and the Bear wedged himself down the narrow stairs, carrying a torch and a waterskin. He handed her the latter with extreme reluctance.

“You know,” Zelda said, “we have skilled trackers in the guard now, thanks to the training procedures you wrote. You should be worried about pursuit.”

“We can conceal a trail as well as we can follow one,” Elias retorted, but his shoulders tightened with shame. He had fallen far from the leader of the best unit the Hyrulean guard had to offer. “And you should be worried that your court might take this opportunity to rid themselves of you.”

“You can save your breath,” Zelda replied, handing him the empty waterskin. “I know who your new ally is.”

He jerked his hand back as though burned. “How?”

“Banditry did not buy your new weapons and armor. And I believe your original goal was my death—you would only take me alive if you stood to gain something. For example, if it was part of a bargain you made.”

“You’ll be dead at the end of this, all the same.”

“And you’ll be the one doing the dirty work?” Zelda mused. “He does so love to keep his hands clean. I killed two of his assassins, but he must have paid someone to finish the third rather than risk incrimination. Before that, there was a kitchen boy named Thom. He snuck a bite of my breakfast and died for it.”

“That’s a lie,” Elias growled. Twice as broad as her and a full foot taller, he loomed over the corner where she sat huddled for warmth. But Zelda didn’t fear him, or return the hatred in his coal-black eyes—she pitied him, the way she’d pitied Ganondorf at the end.

Of course you’re kind, Zelda, Link had told her today, as if he was surprised she’d think otherwise. Midna and Ilia had described her that way too. It wasn’t accurate, but she could pretend it was.

“I read your service record after I learned your name,” she said. “Squad leader at twenty. Captain of the scouts at twenty-three. You turned an underutilized operation into a precise, efficient spear that eliminated threats before they emerged. And ten years ago, you saved my mother’s life during the border skirmishes.”

Elias took a step back. “No one is supposed to know about that.”

“She kept it quiet, just as you asked. But she left a note in your file.” Zelda had traced her fingers over the familiar loopy handwriting. “You could have sought the commander’s helm, a noble title, anything you wished. Instead you only requested more resources for your unit, because you weren’t proud of killing some guileless southern boy who was fighting someone else’s war. That says something about you.”

“I saved your mother because it was battle, and she was the princess, and I was a good soldier; not because I gave a sh*t about her.” That last statement was an obvious lie—no one had been immune to the magnetism of the Lionheart Queen. “She would have sent me to die upon a stranger’s sword if it suited her purposes, just like the southern king sent that boy to die upon mine. Just like you sent us to Zant.”

“Yes,” Zelda agreed sadly. “That’s the way of things—my kind eating your kind and pretending we’re the ones putting food on the table. But I would never have sent your unit to the desert if I had known what waited there. I am sorry for that mistake, Captain, and for everything it cost you.”

“Bit late,” Elias said dully, sinking down on the cellar stairs. “It was mostly recruits we lost, you know, kids as green as summer grass. The lucky ones died. The changing—that’s worse. I sat there chained to a f*cking wall while they screamed. Words don’t make up for that. Or for your surrender to their killer.”

“You know better than anyone what state the guard was in. It was fight and lose or surrender and wait for the Hero. Believe me when I say that I—”

“Why should I believe you?” Elias interrupted. “We all heard the rumors about your father’s death, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt and followed your orders, and then you knelt before Zant to save your own skin. Don’t talk to me about the Hero. You painted over your guilt with that boy’s blood. You made him your thrall—or perhaps I should say your lover.”

Zelda turned to stone.

The first time she ever saw Link’s human face was in the wreckage of the throne room. They had been near-strangers, and their greatest enemy had been blazing back to life, and Link had been bleeding from a gouge dealt by Zelda’s own sword. Despite all that, he had smiled at her with warm familiarity, just relieved to see her safe, just completely and unassailably her friend.

Nothing since then had changed the way he looked at her. Not losing Midna, not being called back to serve a kingdom that had only ever hurt him, not Zelda becoming a murderer or punishing him for concealing the truth about what Ganondorf had done to her. Link had been the first person to hold her in years. He had called her kind.

Zelda’s enemies were about to drag all of her skeletons out of the closet. She couldn’t be sure Link would remain at her side after they got through this—but she hoped, and that hope alone represented a seismic shift inside her. She didn’t know what it meant. She only knew that what she felt for Link was a tiny seed taking root in a half-forgotten, long-barren patch of earth, and she wanted to shelter that seed with all her might.

The base nature of the Bear’s insult was nothing new. What bothered her was that he’d given voice to something that actually ached, something she couldn’t allow herself to contemplate. And Zelda was suddenly and immensely tired of dancing to everyone else’s tune.

She raised her chin and let the stone fall away, looking at Elias with the full force of her fury and watching his brows shoot up in surprise.

“You are bending us both into an image that pleases you, in order to justify your actions,” Zelda said sharply. “But Link is not your legend or your symbol, and he certainly didn’t save Hyrule by being weak-willed enough to fall prey to the duplicitous temptress you’ve made me out to be. In fact, I expect he is raising hell for your friends as we speak. You will recall that we faced the world’s oldest evil together. After Ganondorf, the lot of you look like frightened children with sticks.”

Elias drew back, his face traveling from mortification to self-reflection to hardened, angry denial. He put a hand to his pocket, where Zelda could sense the teeming darkness of the shadow crystal.

The trapdoor jerked open with sudden violence; he turned and demanded, “Saki? That you?”

“It’s me,” the woman said crossly as she shoved past him, stopping before Zelda and looking her up and down. “Sweet Farore, I forgot how young you are. Who decided to make it teenagers? The Hero escaped, by the way.”

A lifetime of self-control could not prevent Zelda from bursting into laughter at the look on Elias’s face.

“Yeah,” Saki said with a bitter smile of her own. “Here I was feeling bad about it, but you’ve bungled your end of the plan too. If the lord’s not here, he’s either been caught or he’s sold us out!” She grabbed her Captain by the collar and yanked him towards her, every word striking like a barb “We have to go. Now. Into the mountains, across the border.”

“This can still work,” Elias protested. “If we get pardons—”

“That’s a lost cause, and you know it! I won’t be a prisoner again!”

With a glare at Zelda, who wasn’t even trying to smother her giggles, Elias propelled Saki upstairs and shut the trapdoor behind him. But it didn’t matter who won their argument. Link was free, and the deserters’ ally had stranded them—that might well mean that Auru was successful.

Smiling in the darkness, she settled in to wait.

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Chapter 22: Wolf

Chapter Text

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Zelda slept fitfully, dreaming of a rope in a dungeon cell until the trapdoor slammed open abruptly. She scrambled upright into the cellar’s brutal cold, rubbing her eyes—by the dim light she glimpsed above, dawn had just broken.

A pair of fine calfskin boots appeared atop the staircase. Lord Hartwell’s velvet waistcoat was dusty and rumpled, his silk trousers splashed with mud; he smelled of sweat and horses. She had never seen him so disheveled, but he bore the calm expression of a hunter confronting his cornered prey.

Zelda had been betrayed so often during her father’s reign that she expected loyalty from no one. It wasn’t like she’d ever trusted her Minister of Finance. All she felt upon seeing him descend the stairs with Captain Elias was a kind of numb, bone-deep weariness.

“Lady Queen,” Lord Hartwell greeted amiably. “I hope you are enjoying our hospitality.”

“Your servants are quite accommodating,” she told him sweetly.

“We’re no one’s servants,” Elias blustered. Lord Hartwell patted his shoulder soothingly and received a glare in return. Desperation and avarice could create strange bedfellows, but that didn’t mean they liked each other.

“Shall I guess, my lord?” Zelda offered. “After three failed attempts on my life, you decided to turn to find someone with more skill than the typical hired sword. So you contacted the very people who robbed your estate. And you, Captain Elias, may dislike the nobility—but what are principles against food and medicine for your people? Not to mention the chance to kill me and get pardoned for it.”

Elias had the grace to look ashamed. Hartwell, still smiling that wide predator’s smile, said, “Well done, Lady Queen. You always did impress me.”

“Yet you would depose me for a three-year-old?”

“My stepdaughter, I’ll have you know. Children are so malleable—by the time she comes of age I’ll have the entire court in my pocket, including her.”

“My father had similar ideas,” Zelda pointed out grimly. “They did not end well for him.”

“Indeed not,” Hartwell agreed unexpectedly. “That’s why I asked my friends here to keep you alive until I arrived.” He stepped past the bristling Captain, went down on one knee, and said plainly, “Marry me.”

After a moment of incredulous silence, Elias snapped, “This is not part of the plan.”

“You’ll get everything you wanted,” Hartwell told him. “A strong ruler to replace the queen, and clemency for your people. The only difference is that she’ll be collared instead of dead.” He turned those warm brown eyes to Zelda. “We’ll return to the castle with some glorious story of me rescuing you from your kidnappers. You’ll keep your life and crown; the child and her parentage will remain our little secret. All I would ask for is your loyalty.”

Zelda laughed long and hard enough that even Elias, who had been glaring at his ally ferociously, turned to stare at her instead. There was something new in his gaze: pity. He thought she was a frightened girl losing her mind.

“You can’t truly believe this,” she said to him breathlessly. “Promises mean nothing to this man. There will be no pardons, Captain.”

“Would you like to be gagged, Lady Queen?” Hartwell asked conversationally, like he was offering sugar for her tea.

Zelda ignored him, holding the Bear’s dark gaze. “He will need legitimacy to put his stepdaughter on the throne. I am not so unpopular that the kingdom will accept him stepping over my corpse to become regent, or marrying me out of nowhere, for that matter. But if he pins the blame on you—if he brings those that harmed me to justice—then he is not a usurper, but a savior. And—”

She saw the blow coming in time to turn her head, but it still caught her jaw hard enough to shatter the world into a cacophony of pain. The next thing Zelda knew, she was sprawled on the floor, ears ringing and heart pounding.

She lifted herself up, the right side of her face throbbing in protest as she forced her expression into rigid defiance. Elias’s fists were white-knuckled, but he hadn’t been the one to strike her. Zelda laughed again, a bit hysterically.

“What the hell is so funny?” Lord Hartwell demanded, shaking out his hand.

“I know where Sparrow and the child are,” she answered disdainfully. “And so do my friends. Really, you didn’t think I would put two and two together?”

He flinched, and Zelda knew there was nothing keeping her here anymore.

She sprang up in one fluid motion, releasing a tide of magic that blinded and toppled her captors all at once. Darting past Elias, she took the stairs two at a time, bursting into the kitchen corner of a one-room home—everything barebones and dusty, thick with shadows that parted for Zelda’s light as she blasted the door off its hinges.

It took one second to seal the empty frame with a handful of raw magic that would delay her pursuers. Then she was off into the trees, glimpsing early sky through the foliage and trying to find the sun’s position to gain some idea of where she was or how to get home.

Frankly, her chances of getting anywhere were less than ideal, considering that her enemies were skilled trackers with horses and a shadow crystal—but she would have to succeed anyway. What else is new? Zelda wondered resignedly, plunging into the oaken arms of an unfamiliar forest.

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Link woke to the sight of Rusl dozing in a chair beside his bed, and the three children bundled together in a pile of blankets in front of the hearth. Link fed a log to the dying fire and tiptoed downstairs.

His side hurt, and the sleeping draught had left him groggy, but he’d certainly felt worse. In the low early light that filtered into the inn’s first floor, he changed his bandages and dressed in the clean clothes someone had left for him: breeches, a new undershirt, an indigo wool tunic that went over his chainmail. He was pulling on his cloak when Rusl came downstairs, took one look at him, and sighed.

“Ashei went to the castle,” the older man said. “Now that we know where Sparrow is, Auru will have sent guards to get her to safety. He’ll have deployed a search party for the queen, too. But you won’t leave it to them, will you?”

“They might not find her,” Link replied, securing his sword and shield.

“And how do you know you will?”

The part of Link that had spent half a year leaping headlong into every fire with only Midna for company wanted to stay silent. But Rusl and Uli hadn’t raised him that way. They had raised him to trust people, and to ask for help when he needed it.

He lifted the string over his head and let the shadow crystal drop from its pouch into his gloved palm. There it sat, radiating eerie magic in this mundane room, grating against Link’s instincts like sand over stone.

“This will turn me into a wolf,” he said without lifting his eyes. “I’ll be able to track Zelda. That’s how I found the kids and Ilia, back when…you know.”

He waited for the questions. Where had he gotten the crystal? How could he bear to use it, now that he knew the cost? What else was he hiding from the people who loved him?

But Rusl only asked one: “How can I help?”

Finding Zelda was only the first step; breaking her out of wherever the bandits were holding her might require opposable thumbs, which Link was about to give up. Reluctantly, he suggested, “Take Epona—she won’t be scared. Could you meet me by the gate? I don’t…”

His fingers closed tight around the crystal. I don’t want you to see this.

“Very well,” Rusl said gently. “Thank you, Link.”

Link considered waking the children to say goodbye, but if he didn’t do this now, he would lose his nerve. The rising sun burned away the night in a band of pale gold that glowed upon Kakariko’s rooftops. His breath trailed behind him in long clouds on his way to the northern gate, where he halted in the dawn light.

There was pain in his wounded side, and there was fear, but the thought of Zelda eclipsed them both. Pulling back his sleeve, Link plunged the shadow crystal into his forearm.

He was in the Lanayru Spring, face-to-face with Zant, unable to stop the cursed stone from boring into his skull. Midna was touching his face, calling his name, proving the monumental fact that his pain was her pain. He couldn’t open his eyes or tell her he felt the same way. He was senseless, helpless, paralyzed inside his own body.

It felt like dying. It always had. All of him changing, all of him falling into the sick swell of a power that had nearly destroyed the world. At least it had been Midna using the crystal each time after the first, and through the pain he’d always felt the warm inky touch of her familiar magic, and he’d never doubted she would return him to the truth.

Now it was just Link, biting back a scream as the shadows took hold. The only way back to himself this time was the Master Sword, assuming he remained worthy of it.

The transformation ended as soon as it had begun. Shaking, he stretched out his limbs and huffed out a breath, finding himself oddly calm.

It took a moment to understand why. His powerful claws churning the earth, his thick fur warding off the cold, the rich smells of the world swirling around him: Link had forgotten how much he loved being a wolf. Protecting himself from the bad memories had cost him the good ones too, even though the good ones were all he had left of Midna.

Rusl led Epona up to the gate a few minutes later. The horse flared her nostrils at Link in exasperation. The man dropped her reins, bewildered, and took a hesitant step forward. “You were in Ordon that night,” he said, disbelieving.

This was exactly what Link had feared.

“I attacked you,” Rusl choked out. “I thought you were…I called you a beast.”

I was, Link thought, lowering his head, thinking of the Twili and the children and everything he’d done. I am.

“Stop that,” Rusl said in a rush, his bad leg faltering as he knelt in the dust. “You’re not the one who should be ashamed, Link. I’m sorry I ever gave you a sword. I’m sorry I made you feel responsible for the children when you were still a child yourself. I’m sorry I wasn’t with you every day of the Twilight.”

Link’s pulse was coming in huge, hammering waves. He made a confused noise. This man had never failed him, not once in his life.

But Rusl kept going. “You did what you had to do, and you did it without hate in your heart. The queen must have told you that yesterday. But maybe she’s too young and too much like you to say this: you should never have been asked to hold up the world. You’re seventeen years old. Perhaps your fate was necessary, but it wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right. Do you understand that?”

Link wasn’t sure. He remembered holding baby Colin for the first time ever, and knowing after one glance at those huge, bleary eyes that he would do anything to protect this fragile little creature. The logic had seemed obvious in Link’s childish mind: he was strong, and the strong were meant to defend the small. The older he had grown, the further the world hammered that point home.

What he did know was that he was guzzling Rusl’s words like a man dying of thirst. Somewhere along the line he’d started thinking he no longer deserved his family, but they had proved him wrong over and over.

He couldn’t speak in this form. All he could do was pad forward to push his head against Rusl’s hand until the older man breathed out a disbelieving chuckle and petted him between the ears. That made Link’s tail wag—an involuntary reaction Midna had teased him for endlessly— and Rusl laughed again.

“That’s my son,” he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “A gift to the world, from the second I found you. Lead the way, Link. I’ll be right behind you.”

Light as wind, Link bounded into the morning light. Zelda’s scent reached him in Hyrule Field—springtime, inexplicable in the near-winter air.

He followed it north across the Bridge of Eldin, into a hilly forest of bone-white birch trees he knew well. Lake Hylia and Zora’s Doman rippled in the valley far below; up here was a patch of unsettled wilderness that stretched to the kingdom’s northern border. It was the same area as the bandits’ old camp, not far east from where Sparrow and her family lived.

He glanced back at Rusl, who waited astride Epona, blowing warmth into his hands. Link worried about his bad leg, but he worried for Zelda even more. Drinking deep of the cold air, he sifted out the distractions: damp leaf-strewn earth, the tantalizing whiff of a badger foraging nearby, Epona’s familiar horsey scent. Then he found Zelda’s trail again.

Link set off, Epona close behind him. They were half an hour into the forest when he heard it: steel clanging against steel, an alien racket in the otherwise quiet morning.

He slowed until Rusl heard the fighting and dismounted, leaving Epona behind and joining Link behind the crest of a hillock. Through the trees, half a dozen people in the silver-blue uniform of the Hyrulean guard clashed with four dark-clad opponents—there was Varn, facing a swift warrior with a dark blade and darker hair.

“That’s Ashei!” Rusl exclaimed, rising to go to her.

Before Link could follow, his breath caught in his throat: heat flared up his left foreleg, blazing from the glowing Triforce on his left paw. Then came a tug on his heart, like the way the moon drew the tides, and he could almost feel her: Zelda, suffused with light, standing straight and iron-willed against the darkness.

“Link?” Rusl said, hand on his sword. “You sense her, don’t you?” At Link’s nod, he glanced at Ashei’s group and made his decision quickly. “Go. The bandits are outnumbered; we’ll be fine. We’ll find you as soon as we can.”

Link hesitated, watching his friends and enemies, watching the trees that separated him from the person he’d been born to fight beside.

“Go, Link. That’s our queen. We need her, and she needs you.”

That was enough. Link touched his nose to the back of Rusl’s hand, the best goodbye he could offer, and turned towards the smell of spring.

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Chapter 23: Cold Forest

Chapter Text

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The bandits caught Zelda in a gully, woven through with a thin ribbon of stream that glimmered in the sunlight. Archers on the ridge above, the Bear’s towering form at one end, half a dozen riders at the other—seeing no other choice, Zelda built herself a pyramid of light, not dissimilar to the barrier Ganondorf had once formed around her castle.

The Bear came at her like an avalanche, all bristling black fur and copper claws and white fangs, but her shield held. He paced around, swiping here and there in search of weak spot, snarling in frustration. Blood dripped in steady rivulets from the crevasses of magic across his pelt.

“You won’t last forever, Lady Queen,” Lord Hartwell called, standing several choice feet away from the growling beast. “Might as well come out now.”

“You will not enjoy what happens when I do,” Zelda shot back coldly. Would the Light Spirits come if she summoned them a second time? If not, she’d have to kill her way out of here—she was too outnumbered to risk sparing anyone—and that was something she desperately wanted to avoid.

She wasn’t the first to tire. Elias shuddered, the lines of the crystal’s spell crawling over his skin like insects, and collapsed in a shrinking shadow at the foot of Zelda’s bright shield. His low, agonized whine reminded her keenly of the pitiful creature Link had killed at Arbiter’s Grounds.

The man lying on the muddy streambank looked dead too, until he gave a wet, gasping cough. Saki dropped from her horse to come to his side, her face boxed up with misery.

Someone cried out atop the ridge. Zelda’s head shot up: one of the archers had vanished. A dark shape sprang across the gully and came down on the other side to the sound of a second archer’s yell.

Lord Hartwell skittered away. Saki yanked Elias to his feet and drew her dagger, backing towards her comrades as they dismounted and hurried towards the pair.

Inexplicably, a bow and quiver splashed into the stream by Zelda’s boots. She snatched them up, craning her neck towards the ridge. The bandits clustered together, closing ranks, weapons at the ready.

A shadow eclipsed the sun, briefly, and hurtled into the crowd. Someone screamed. Steel flashed. Zelda backed away, nocking an arrow to her bowstring but unsure when to point it—and then the bandits parted to give her a glimpse of him.

The wolf turned, blood dripping from his muzzle, to meet her gaze. And she was in the tower prison with the Twilight falling slowly outside, meeting her salvation for the first time; she was in the throne room, watching a smile touch his bloody face amidst the ruin of everything. Then, as now, Zelda looked into those fierce blue eyes and thought: The waiting is over. We’re going to win. We’re going to live.

Link fell upon the bandits like they were a flock of sheep.

She dropped her shield and came to his aid. Her first arrow caught a warrior in the calf. The second took a woman above the hip as she slashed at Link. The third and fourth struck the hands of the archers recovering atop the ridge.

Elias reached for his fallen shadow crystal; Zelda blasted him with magic, stalking forward to stand over the deadly object. Blood trailing from his nose and mouth, he floundered towards her through the stream. She drew the bowstring back to her ear. Link toppled a young man with a shaved head and came towards them.

“Stop!” Saki shrieked. “You’ve won! Call off your dog!”

She and Elias were the only bandits still on their feet. Zelda relaxed her bow arm, nodding to Link, who stayed where he was.

“He’s not a dog,” Elias wheezed. “He’s like me.”

“He is nothing like you,” Zelda said, cold as the wind off Snowpeak.

“It’s him, isn’t it? The Hero?” Elias took a step towards Link. “I never meant—”

“One step closer and you die,” Zelda promised, her arrow trained on his heart before she was conscious of moving. “If you leave us be, we’ll grant you the same.”

“Bold claims as always.” Lord Hartwell—who she’d thought was long gone—slid out from behind a boulder with a sinuous smile, as though he hadn’t been cowering while his allies bled. “But you still have the numbers, Captain.”

Elias surveyed the bleak scene. His people were in bloody disarray; the shadow crystal lay at Zelda’s feet under the slow-moving stream. He didn’t look at her, or at anyone, but his answer was clear. Saki, who seemed like the only person with any sense left, started gathering her wounded comrades.

“That’s it?” Lord Hartwell demanded. “Think of those you lost. Think of everything else! Your grudge is a drop in the ocean of all she’s done—”

Link drew himself up with a vicious snarl, his bristling fur the color of a night sky edged with grey dawn, his eyes a molten promise, and that was all it took to send Hartwell stumbling back like a frightened child.

“You’re lucky we still need you,” Elias told him disgustedly, turning his back on all three of them without another word.

As their enemies departed, Link loped over to Zelda’s side. She knew he had transformed for her sake, and she knew what it meant for him to physically become everything he thought he was: a beast, a predator, a killer. She touched his shoulders in silent thanks; he pressed his flank to her calf.

She dragged Elias’s shadow crystal out of the stream with the heel of her boot, sensing an insatiable hunger that would chew into its bearer until there was nothing left. With her hand on Link, she could feel that the magic inside him was greedy too, but contained by the limits Zant’s experiments had taught him. Halfheartedly, Zelda reached for the power that bound him—

And the crystal reacted.

She sat down hard on the streambank. The wolf’s ears were pricked towards her in surprise. “I should not be able to do that,” she breathed. “Midna could only use the shadow crystal because of who she is. I am a light dweller. I should not be able to manipulate Twili magic, only counter it.”

But you just did, Link’s eyes said, wide and blue in the golden glow of her Triforce.

“I can try to help, but Link…it might hurt.”

He lowered his head in acceptance.

Zelda took a breath and let everything else fall away: the noise of the woods, the ache of her bruises, the mess of the bandits and Lord Hartwell and Sparrow. She counted the hammering beats of Link’s heart, the rise and fall of his lungs. For a moment she saw Midna’s tiny hands, lined with a green glow, reaching, tugging, coaxing out the source of the darkness.

The shadow crystal reared its head at her touch, and she could see that her theory had been right: Zant and Ganondorf had made this thing to enslave Link. But they had underestimated the formidable light of the Triforce of Courage, holding fast against the spell that wanted to devour him whole.

As Zelda reached for that ravenous force, something uncurled inside her.

This magic didn’t feel like the primeval power of her own Triforce, or the gift of her bloodline. It felt like clouds billowing across gold skies, a sharp-toothed grin, a smooth pane of glass, a small hand clasped between hers. It felt like two hearts beating as one.

Oh, Midna. You never left me.

Link inhaled sharply, recognizing this touch too. Zelda gathered the fragments of Twili magic that had dwelled inside her since she’d shared a soul with Midna—dormant until she’d thought to look—and grabbed hold of the shadow crystal.

The wolf flinched under her hands. She took fistfuls of his thick fur to hold him still as he twisted and whined. The Twilight Princess could have handled this task easily, but with only shreds of her power, Zelda had to work very slowly to draw the crystal out without inflicting irreparable harm.

Every ounce of her strength went into breaking the last tendrils of the spell. Her eyes flew open to fleeing shadows, the crystal thudding to the ground—and Link, shaking and gasping and human, wrapping his arms around Zelda.

“I felt—” His voice cracked badly. “That was her.”

Zelda hugged him back, surprised at how easy it was, how warm and wonderful it felt. “Only a piece she left behind,” she murmured. “I wish—”

“I do too,” Link said in her ear. “But thank you, Zelda. Thank you.”

That was how Rusl and Ashei found them, sharing a small spot of warmth in the cold forest.

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Link’s side was bleeding again; Ashei and the guards had barely slept the previous night. When Rusl suggested finding suggested finding shelter, no one argued.

Auru had deemed a small, agile unit most appropriate for finding the queen quickly and quietly. Ashei had joined up with them after she’d brought the news about Sparrow to the castle. She was a skilled tracker in her own right, but Elias and his people knew how to throw off pursuit and had left them a jumble of confusing trails.

The squad leader kept falling over himself to apologize for his failure to find Zelda sooner. She accepted the first two graciously; after the third time, she just told him with a soft smile that his effort had been enough. The young man flushed scarlet, and Link understood—Zelda’s true smiles were so preciously sweet and rare; they crinkled up her small nose and dazzled her blue eyes. After all their dysfunction and cowardice, she finally had a guard who would risk her lives for her, who would regret that they hadn’t done better.

When they found a cave not much later, she turned those dazzling eyes on Link and ordered him to go sit down, rendering him powerless to refuse even though everyone else was bustling around tending the horses and collecting firewood. Rusl joined him with a medical kit.

Gritting his teeth, Link shed his layers to expose the wound. Zelda, who came over to ignite one of the fires the guard had built, went as quiet as Rusl—they had noticed Link’s scars.

Who wouldn’t? He was littered with them. There was the long vicious slash Ganondorf had hewn across his chest. The deep furrow beside his navel where he’d been impaled on a Chilfos spear. Several bright stars from arrows. A crookedness to his ribs, which had broken and healed unevenly after Stallord rammed him off a platform thirty feet above the ground.

His arms were worse; he didn’t have chainmail to protect him there. Not that it always helped. Link had caught a lash of Argorak’s dragonfire as punishment for being a second too slow with his Clawshots, and by the time he’d plummeted to earth and rolled to extinguish the flames, his own chainmail had already become a scorching weapon. The result was a terrible ringlike pattern of seared across his back.

He remembered suddenly that Midna had screamed at him to flee the battlefield that day, and that he’d ignored her—because he hadn’t cared that his young life was teetering on a razor’s edge. He hadn’t cared about himself at all, only about completing the Mirror of Twilight. When Link remembered taking up his fallen weapons to continue the fight even as his burnt skin sloughed away in the rain, Rusl’s words bubbled up to the surface: Perhaps your fate was necessary, but it wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right. Do you understand that?

Link hadn’t, not at the time. But maybe he was starting to.

Zelda and Rusl hadn’t said a word about the scars. Rusl knew a bit of first aid from his soldiering days and decided grimly to replace some of the sutures torn by Link's transformation. At least there was no sign of infection.

Resigned, Link drank a red potion and lay down with his cloak under his head. At the first tug on his sutures, he squeezed his eyes shut—thin as sewing thread, yet the feeling of it dragging through his ravaged skin was like being torn asunder.

Zelda was near his head, casting light for Rusl to work by. Her free hand brushed Link’s clenched fist, a silent question. Link answered it by opening his shaking fingers gratefully. And when her grip slid through his, it did help to have something to hold onto—it made him feel stronger than the pain, as strong as he’d felt when Midna was with him. He owed his humanity to them both.

Ashei, looking warmer than anyone else in her Yeti-style coat, joined them by the fire. “Auru gave me this letter for you,” she said, placing it by Zelda’s knee. “He also said to tell you that he sent guards to the sparrow’s nest. Want to fill us in here, Lady Queen?”

“That would be Lord Hartwell’s estate,” Zelda replied. “We shall ride there after we’ve rested for a while. He is behind the three attempts on my life. After those failed, he allied with the bandits to get the job done.”

“To what end?” Rusl wondered. “He’d have no claim to the throne.”

“Not on his own,” she agreed, and then she hesitated, a thing Link had rarely seen her do. Fire crackled comfortably; a breeze rustled the bare trees; the guards talked in low voices behind them. Then Zelda continued. “I suppose all three of you know by now that Sparrow is the name of a gardener who used to work at the castle. I believe the fledgling is her child—my father’s child, as well.”

Ashei and Rusl met this news with diplomatic silence. Link remembered the night he and the bandits had stolen Lord Hartwell’s horses, how the nobleman had stroked that kid’s hair—the same color as Zelda’s—and called her little princess.

“Sparrow left court three years ago,” Zelda continued in a wooden voice. “I gave her money to end the pregnancy…that was what she wanted, or so she said back then. How she ended up having the baby and marrying Lord Hartwell, I cannot guess. But only my Council knew I was leaving the castle yesterday—that narrowed down the pool of the Bear’s potential allies, since he knew where and when to ambush us. And then I recalled that Link encountered Lord Hartwell when he was with the bandits…”

“You figured it all out in an instant,” Rusl realized. “You knew where to send Auru.” The admiration in his voice made Link swell with pride, though there was nothing about Zelda’s brilliance he could take credit for.

“Thankfully, Auru remembered Sparrow,” she said. “He does not know the child is my father’s, unless he guessed.”

“But this child is no royal either way,” Rusl pointed out. “Your mother was the one with royal blood. Your father’s regency was only meant to last until you came of age.”

“It was,” Zelda replied evenly. “But I am now the last of my bloodline. If I die without an heir, it could mean civil war, which would make Hyrule vulnerable to our opportunistic neighbors. Many members of my court would prefer Hartwell’s clear solution: a new royal bloodline, at least somewhat connected to the old one, and himself as regent. It’s quite clever.”

“Din’s flaming arms,” Ashei muttered. “Then we’ve got to get that kid out of Hartwell’s clutches, yeah?”

“Yes. Hopefully the guard has done so already, but we cannot know for certain. Hartwell will likely be headed for his estate—along with the bandits, as he remains their only chance for clemency.”

Between the pain and his political ignorance, Link was struggling to keep up. Mostly he understood that Zelda sounded tired in a way that wrenched at his heart. A bruise flowered across her cheek—somehow, he couldn’t imagine Elias striking a captive, even one he hated. Perhaps Lord Hartwell had done it. Surely someone capable of using Sparrow and her child in this way was capable of anything.

But Zelda didn’t seem appalled, the way Link was. She seemed strong, and resigned, and removed—because she had been dealing with people and problems like this for her entire life. Link hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but his wolf-ears had picked up her conversation with Impaz in the Hidden Village yesterday. There were no accidents, Zelda had said of her dead family. But there is no one left to blame.

Link couldn’t imagine it. He had loved Midna as if he was dangling from the edge of a cliff and she was the only thing holding him up. He would never know what that love might look like if given the chance to stand on solid ground, but he knew that she had carried him through the killing and the almost-dying and the desperate effort not to lose himself in the process.

There had been no one to carry Zelda. Through her own will she’d remained kind and hopeful and selfless—not an Iceheart Queen like they said, not a deadened shell like Link would surely have become if he’d fought the Twilight on his own.

Ignoring the pain, he shifted to hold her hand between both of his. Zelda looked down, her eyes soft in the beautiful golden light of her magic, and she didn’t quite smile—but she tried. And Link knew he would die before he left her alone again.

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Chapter 24: Sparrow

Chapter Text

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Zelda tried to snatch a bit of sleep along with her exhausted companions, but found herself too agitated. She leaned against the cave wall and kept the fires going while everyone else rested for an hour.

Her mind was on the castle—she hadn’t spent the night away from it in many years. Right now everyone would be breaking for lunch, which had become Zelda’s favorite part of the day since the end of the Twilight; she liked to see her people lay down their duties and come together to fill the halls with laughter.

Then again, the castle would be anything but peaceful if word of her abduction had gotten out. Hopefully Auru had been able to keep it quiet—he’d certainly succeeded in regards to Sparrow. She reread the crinkled letter in her lap for the dozenth time.

Lady Queen,

I wanted to come after you myself, but someone must keep your court in check. And the truth is that I have nothing to worry about. Your enemies have underestimated you as they always do. I know victory is yours; I know you will come home safely. I only want to tell you how proud you make me every day, and how proud your mother would be if she saw you now.

All my love,

Auru

The letter was precious and terrifying. Would there ever be a time where love didn’t terrify Zelda? What was love worth, anyway? She thought of the day her mother had returned from the border skirmishes, exhausted and heartsick even as Castle Town celebrated around her, and how her father had pushed through the pomp and ceremony to embrace his wife. She thought of her uncle and aunt holding hands as they followed their sister’s coffin through the grey streets. She thought of the Mirror of Twilight shattering into dust.

Would there ever be a love that didn’t break?

Link, who was curled up nearby, stirred restlessly. His brow furrowed over pale, fluttering eyelashes, proving that the injury hurt worse than he would admit in his waking hours. Zelda didn’t know what was stronger: her awe of his fortitude or her horror towards the circ*mstances that had made it necessary.

He looked very young in his sleep, but he was a thousand years old, just like her. And Zelda thought, What if I told him? What if he knew the truth?

The truth was that poison had killed her mother and broken her father, and nothing had gone right after that, not a single thing. Love had always counterbalanced the king’s ambition, and he’d tried to hold onto it even after losing his wife, even after the Council thrust the regency into his hands until his thirteen-year-old daughter came of age. Zelda would swear until her death that he had tried. She’d seen it. She’d also seen his damaged body and addled mind dragging him into a hideous place inside himself, and she hadn’t acted.

It’s all for your sake, he would say each time Zelda questioned him for dismissing advisors who disagreed with him or striking servants for no reason at all. So that you might inherit a safe throne someday, instead of this viper’s nest. So that I can avenge your mother.

Zelda had known he was lying, but she had still valued safety and honor over power. Even after her father exiled Auru for trying to mandate his eventual abdication, she kept playing the dutiful daughter, leaving the dissent to her Uncle Adric and Aunt Elaine.

But that hadn’t lasted. A year and a half into his reign, the king ordered the guard to start arresting debtors and petty thieves in some attempt to establish a prison labor system that would fill the royal coffers. Adric, prince and commander, threw the orders into a throne room brazier and eviscerated the king in such scorching tones that Zelda had been equal parts proud and afraid.

Days later, Adric’s body was found riddled with stab wounds in a Castle Town alleyway. A terrible tragedy, Zelda’s father had told her, his face so full of false sorrow that it was insulting.

People flocked from the castle like birds fleeing a storm. Nobles returned to their estates; guards who disliked doing the king’s dirty work became sellswords; bureaucrats sought other occupations. Elaine—a sweet, quiet scholar who preferred books and ancient ruins to politics—had been too devastated by her losses to be much help. The best Zelda could do was persuade those who departed to keep quiet about her father’s state, for the sake of national security.

And then came the day when her father summoned her with the news that he’d finally found her mother’s killers: two southern ambassadors. They hadn’t even been following orders, just trying to curry favor with their king by eliminating the woman who had defeated him in the border skirmishes years before. Zelda’s father would hear nothing of a trial or witnesses. He’d already built the pyre and paid off the guards—all he asked was that she spell the throne room keep the execution silent.

Inside, we will have our justice, he had said, green eyes glowing with a feverish light. Outside, no one will hear a thing. Can you promise that, my Zelda?

No one will hear a thing, she’d echoed obediently, because she had no choice, because those people had killed her mother, because a foolish part of her had hoped revenge would make her father better.

But he’d only gotten worse, and after weeks of waking up with those screams ringing in her ears, Zelda had begun to resist.

Three types of people still remained at the castle: those who relied on it for employment, those who saw profit in the king’s madness, and the rare breed who cared what happened to Hyrule. Zelda made herself known to them all. She kept the castle staff out of the king’s sight as much as possible, though she’d failed Sparrow in that regard. She tried to combat the corruption festering throughout his administration; she tried to negotiate with the Council for Hyrule’s stability.

Young, desperate, and still somehow naïve, Zelda hadn’t considered that some people might prefer winning a king’s favor to helping a powerless princess. But the first time someone had leaked information to her father, he just looked at her with eyes like slick oil and said, They’re lying. I’m on your side, and you’re on mine. Aren’t you, darling?

He’d stopped saying her name by then. Perhaps it reminded him too much of the wife he’d lost, and the ghost he’d become.

Zelda had reassured him, but somewhere in his pit of denial, he must have recognized the truth. For the third time a so-called ally sold her out to the king, her Aunt Elaine fell from her horse and cracked her skull in Hyrule Field.

There had been no point in confronting her father. Elaine had been no threat to anyone, but he still believed he was acting on Zelda’s behalf by smothering her defiance and eliminating the one person who rivaled her claim to the throne. She recalled leaning her forehead against her bedroom window after her aunt’s funeral, watching snow fall over Hyrule, letting the cold seep into her skin, into her marrow, until it was all she felt.

In that moment, Zelda had decided her betrayal.

She was jolted back to the present by the squad leader rousing his sleeping subordinates; their hour of rest was up. Link sat up, one hand going to his sword, the other to his injured side. He blinked away the sleep and looked at Zelda.

Something in her face made him ask, “You okay? We’ll find the kid and your friend. Don’t worry.”

She wasn’t my friend, Zelda thought wearily. Just a gardener who helped me coax the flowerbeds back to life. She supposed that was why Sparrow had caught her father’s eye, because her mother had loved those gardens, and because there was a hint of a resemblance—the blond hair, the easy smile. And Sparrow had been willing to fall for his promises, or as willing as a commoner could ever be before a king.

But she’d understood what kind of life awaited a royal bastard and its mother. All she’d asked was that Zelda look after her family in Castle Town, for she would have to disappear before the king learned she was pregnant and decided he wanted another heir. He had reacted to Sparrow’s departure like a sullen child whose plaything had been confiscated, but he’d never suspected Zelda’s involvement—despite his loathing for everything and everyone else, he had believed in his daughter, right up until the brutal end.

Zelda stood without answering Link’s question, stepping out into the sunlight and going to Peppermint, who had somehow allowed the guards to bring him along. He was dozing with one leg propped up and twitched an ear in her direction when she put a hand on his warm neck.

“I should never have promised you honesty,” she told Link, because of course he’d followed her. “I barely know what it means.”

“I trusted you the moment I saw you,” he said to her back. “You’ve never made me regret it. That’s all I need to know.”

“You have no idea what I’ve done,” she whispered.

“Zelda, sweetheart—look at me. There’s no shame between us, not after what you’ve given me.”

“What have I given you?” she demanded with a bitter laugh. “A kingdom so broken that you have to save it over and over, no matter what it costs you?”

Link stood there for a long time, saying nothing as the birds trilled around them and the dead leaves rustled in the breeze. Zelda thought for a moment that he would leave and swallowed her desire to ask him to stay.

He stayed anyway, circling around to look her in the face, and he said firmly, “I was a wolf when we first met, but you looked at me like I was human and apologized for what had happened to me. The next time I saw you, you saved Midna’s life. You saved mine too, when you summoned the Light Arrows. Do you remember how you smiled at me? It was so small and sad and sweet, and…and later, when Ganondorf was killing me, when I wanted to let him kill me—you looked at me the same way again. I knew your heart was broken just like mine, but you still had so much hope. That’s what you gave me.”

Zelda remembered that last moment too—would remember it until she died, after she died. Link had been covered in blood, shaking where he stood, and still rising to his feet with that valiant, unbreakable resolve. But he was saying that he’d gotten back up because of her. That he’d stayed standing because she had, too.

He lifted her chin until she looked at him. And there was such a gentleness in his eyes, like the misty light that seeped through Zelda’s curtains when rain washed the kingdom clean, and everything was silver and shimmering and so lovely that she wanted to take it in her arms and guard it from harm.

“Tell me what you’re thinking when you look at me like that,” she said in a trembling voice, gripping his wrist, needing confirmation that he was real.

Link’s hands, scarred and gentle, came up to cradle hers. Without breaking her gaze, he pressed his lips to her knuckles and answered softly, “I’m thinking that I don’t want to say goodbye.”

A shudder went through Zelda’s body, but she felt strong, and certain, and true. “Then let us go secure our future,” she said, and he nodded.

And it wouldn’t look like the past. Midna had sacrificed everything to give both their worlds a chance to heal and grow. Zelda wouldn’t let these petty thieves snatch it away. She wouldn’t fail Sparrow or her daughter again.

Not one more girl turned into a puppet, she promised the blue sky as she mounted her horse. Not one more crow feasting upon my kingdom. It ends today.

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The Hartwell estate could have been mistaken for part of the forest around it. Three stories of grey brick were barely visible under their curtain of morning glories: thick vines, dense emerald leaves, lovely blue flowers turning their faces up to the sun—one of the only species that could bloom into early winter, Sparrow had told Zelda once.

An old noble family had once summered on these lands, but they hadn’t survived her father; he’d granted the estate to Lord Hartwell instead. What a perfect place to hide the king’s former mistress and bastard child.

“Ashei’s back,” Link said.

Zelda exhaled a long cloud into the cold afternoon and brought her mind to task. She was crouched with Link, Rusl, and her guards along the treeline, facing the estate’s front entrance and its shimmering image in the reflecting pool. From here, they could spot the guard unit Auru had dispatched to retrieve Sparrow gathered behind a row of hedges—but no sign of Sparrow herself, or the child.

Zelda’s party couldn’t approach without getting spotted by whoever manned the estate, so Ashei had gone to see if the other guard unit had a lookout stationed somewhere in the woods. She was returning through the trees now, grim-faced.

“The guards got here at daybreak,” she said. “The estate’s full of Lord Hartwell’s mercenaries, but one of our guys caught Sparrow and the kid on their way to the outhouse. Only…Sparrow wouldn’t go with them.”

“Why not?” Zelda asked.

Ashei shrugged. “None of them worked at the castle at the same time she did. For all she knows, they could be frauds trying to steal her daughter. She didn’t seem to have any idea of what’s going on.”

Zelda had known a gardener with sunny smiles and earth under her fingernails. It seemed Sparrow’s naivete had given way to wariness in the three years since she’d left the castle.

“Lord Hartwell and the deserters came back a couple hours ago,” Ashei continued. “The Bear noticed our guards, but didn’t attack—his people are in rough shape—and Lord Hartwell threatened to harm the hostages if our people did anything. So it’s a stalemate, Lady Queen. The enemy’s got both entrances barricaded. Our numbers are about even, but no one on either side can move.”

“We could starve them out in a few weeks,” Rusl pointed out. “Or we could just send for reinforcements and overpower them. They must know this is hopeless.”

Zelda recalled Saki in the cellar last night, urging her Captain to bring their people across the border or else face captivity again. He should have listened to her. This felt less like victory and more like killing a trapped animal.

“I think they do know,” Link said quietly. “They’re just desperate.”

“And that makes them dangerous,” Zelda agreed. “I will go in and persuade Sparrow to leave.” Her guards erupted in protest; she silenced them with a hand. “She’ll listen to me.”

“I’ll go with you.” Link pointed to a third-story balcony on the side of the estate, guarded by a lone archer. “You have your magic; I have my Clawshots. We get in and out without risking the first floor.”

Knowing it would be pointless to argue on account of his injury, Zelda continued. “Once we’ve taken their leverage away, we can attack. Do you agree, Squad Leader?”

“Yes,” the young man replied. “But, Lady Queen…”

“We’ll regroup with the other unit as soon as the hostages are safe. If I do not return, take your orders from them—but I intend to return.”

She and Link had ridden against their age-old nemesis in perfect tandem; this day held no fear for either of them. Rising to her feet, she surveyed her nervous guards, finding a hint of pride in their faces as they gazed back. They came for me, she remembered, and it was a feeling warmer than magic.

Zelda followed Link’s winding path around the estate, using the foliage as cover until they had a better view of the balcony—a spot of grey among the morning glories. “That’s Anya,” Link said warily, gesturing towards the archer posted there. “One of the deserters. She’s deadeye with a bow. We can’t let her see us.”

“I can handle that part,” Zelda assured him. “She’ll think the sun has gotten in her eyes for a moment, and by the time her vision clears…”

Nodding, he equipped his Clawshots. Zelda flashed a searing light at just the right angle, watching Anya wince and rub her eyes. Link had already disappeared—no, there he was, hurtling up two stories at nauseating speed. He caught the balustrade one-handed and vaulted over it lithely. In the next heartbeat he was tackling Anya before she even registered his presence, and they both disappeared from Zelda’s view.

Her magic carried her up to the balcony, as it had brought her to the Shadow Temple yesterday. Link was kneeling beside the deserter woman, checking her pulse; her temple shone with a red welt the size of a sword pommel. “She’s alive,” he said blankly.

She offered her hand and pulled him up. The double doors of latticed glass gazed into a long stretch. Zelda kept watch while Link carried the unconscious woman into the nearest bedroom, depositing her in an empty closet that Zelda sealed and silenced with magic.

Link flowed back into the hallway so silently that she felt like a stampeding bull in comparison. Behind them, the two ends of the horseshoe-shaped hallway converged into a staircase; Zelda could hear voices coming from the ground floor, but she and Link were going the opposite way. They were hoping that the hostage would be at the center of the third floor, where they’d be easiest to defend.

That theory proved correct when Link peered around the next corner and turned back to her to whisper, “Two mercs, guarding a door.”

Gritting her teeth, Zelda rounded the corner to do her part.

The men clawed at their throats as she stole the breath from their lungs, leaving them with barely enough to stay conscious. Link pinned one of them to the door, digging around in the man’s pockets until he found a key.

They all tumbled inside, where Zelda released the spell. Wheezing and disoriented, Lord Hartwell’s mercenaries barely put up a fight, especially not with Link’s blade threatening their throats.

But the bedroom suite was otherwise empty. “Where are they?” Zelda hissed in the ear of the man she was restraining. His eyes just wheeled around in confused terror, and she grappled with a sudden urge to scream at him.

“Zelda,” Link said gently. “Let’s deal with this first.”

The first man went into the washroom, which Zelda sealed behind him, but it was too cramped for two. In search of another de facto holding cell, she reached for another door, and Link’s warning came a second too late.

Her back hit the floor, a blur of yellow and cream and flashing metal pinning her there; Zelda was halfway to casting a defensive spell when she heard a gasp. Link had crossed the room in a split second to seize the knife, but the woman holding it didn’t even look at him. Her eyes were only on Zelda.

Sparrow looked older than their years apart could account for. She’d cut her blond curls so that they ended just at her chin, framing a narrow, freckled face that was well-loved by the sun. Her coffee-colored eyes were wide with disbelief.

The knife clattered to the floor. Link released Sparrow’s wrist, allowing her to scramble up. Zelda sat up slowly, caught by the realization that she had no idea what to say to this person who had become a pawn because of her.

“You came for me?” Sparrow breathed.

“Yes,” Zelda said.

Sparrow blinked several times in rapid succession. Link shifted, drawing her attention—and suddenly she was snatching up the knife again, guarding the closet doorway the way her namesake would guard a nest.

To Zelda’s surprise, he reacted by sheathing his sword and showing his empty hands. “I’m not with the bandits,” he said. “I never was.”

“I sent Link undercover to learn about the Bear’s Fangs,” Zelda added, rising to her feet at his side. “It’s thanks to him that I knew where to find you.”

“You stopped that boy who attacked me,” Sparrow recalled, watching Link warily. “And the houseguards said you prevented a fight later that night.”

Link just shrugged. “None of it should’ve happened in the first place. I’m sorry.”

Reluctantly, Sparrow lowered the knife and shifted her dark gaze to Zelda. “Will you tell me what the hell is going on?”

Zelda summarized the situation as briefly as possible. “We must stop Lord Hartwell and his allies,” she finished. “I know he is your husband—”

“He’s a lying snake,” Sparrow said sourly. “I always knew that. But this—I didn’t even believe your guards this morning. But then my husband brought thieves into our home, and put us under guard…” she sighed, tossing up her hands. “I’m as full of mistakes as ever, Lady Queen, but I would never wish you harm.”

Only in her profound relief did Zelda realize how much she’d dreaded the possibility of this betrayal. The people who had double-crossed her in the past were acting out of self-interest, often to protect themselves or their loved ones; she’d never taken their actions personally. Losing Sparrow would be different. For all that Zelda had been unable to accept the other woman’s unspoken offer of friendship, their quiet work together in the castle gardens had been a refuge during the worst period of her life. She still took those memories out and warmed herself by them when things grew cold.

“Nor I you,” Zelda said gratefully. “Which is why we must leave before we are discovered.”

Sparrow stepped into the closet without another word. She returned with an oversized wool coat swallowing her thin frame, a scarf flung around her neck, and a child on her hip.

The girl was tiny and round-cheeked and innocent, but the sight of her struck Zelda like a physical blow. The solemn brow and stubborn chin. Eyes the color of soft moss. That glossy hair, curly like Sparrow’s but rich brown instead of yellow. Zelda had inherited the same color from her—their—father.

“Her name is Melanie,” Sparrow said.

Zelda felt Link’s fingers brush her arm and realized she’d taken an unconscious step backwards. Frightened by a toddler, she thought ruefully.

“Melanie!” Link greeted with the widest grin Zelda had ever seen on his face. “I’m Link. It’s nice to meet you. How old are you?”

The child held up three fingers.

“Excellent! This is Zelda. Would you like to play a game with us, a keep-quiet game? The loser is whoever makes noise first, so you’re already winning!”

Melanie smiled back shyly. The corners of Sparrow’s mouth were twitching as she waited for him to deposit the remaining mercenary in the closet and followed him out the door, Zelda bringing up the rear.

The estate had grown noticeably quiet. Link kept turning his head from side to side like a wolf scenting prey; Zelda felt hyperaware of each footstep, each rustle of her cloak. The balcony that was their escape was just ahead, spilling buttery sunlight across the floor. Thirty more steps, twenty more, ten—

Link whirled, one hand gesturing at them to retreat as the other reached for his sword.

“I wouldn’t bother,” called a rasping voice. “We’ve got the other end too. Send the girl and the kid over here.”

“Sparrow,” said another voice—Lord Hartwell, speaking so gently that Zelda barely recognized him. “Come on. You’re safe.”

“Go through the balcony doors when Link tells you,” Zelda whispered to Sparrow, who stared back white-faced, clutching Melanie to her chest.

The Bear waited atop the stairs, backed by a throng of his deserters and Lord Hartwell’s mercenaries. Those Link and Zelda had fought in the gully this morning sported dirty bandages and sleepless looks. Elias seemed worse than any of them, pale and unkept, his eyes circled with exhaustion.

“You should’ve known I’d hear you scuffling around up here, Hero,” he said wearily. “I have the senses of a beast, just like you.”

Link clenched his jaw and sent Zelda a silent look of apology.

Lord Hartwell peeled away from Elias’s side. Melanie squirmed in Sparrow’s arms, reaching for her stepfather. “That’s right, little princess,” he encouraged. “Sparrow—I know you’re afraid. I know y—"

“You don’t know me,” she interrupted sharply, “and I don’t know you. Wasn’t that always the way of it?”

Lord Hartwell took another step forward. That was when Zelda’s barrier blazed up from the floor, stopping him in his tracks.

Elias appraised her magic with a military eye. He’d been helpless against it twice now, but he also knew it didn’t last indefinitely, and that she couldn’t maintain it well while moving. Zelda searched the faces behind him. The mercenaries were in over their heads, but the deserters—they were dug in. They’d follow their Captain anywhere.

Zelda withdrew Elias’s shadow crystal from her cloak pocket and tossed it to the floor at her feet, still inside the barrier. “That is what brought all of us here. The cruel designs of Zant and Ganondorf. The blood of their victims. Your blood,” she emphasized, looking from Elias to Saki to the others she recognized. “Even now, I can feel this crystal waiting to tear you apart, Captain. Don’t let it. We have the estate surrounded; you cannot win. But surrender here and I swear you and your people will be treated fairly. You will face your crimes, but you will not be a scapegoat for Lord Hartwell’s.”

Elias stared at the crystal and said nothing. The lord in question chuckled, sidling up to the barrier and shading his eyes as he peered at Sparrow through the bright light. “What makes you think the Iceheart Queen is trustworthy?” Hartwell asked her. “You told me once that the king was good to you. That you loved him, after a fashion. Do you think he died naturally?”

A cavernous hole unfolded at the center of Zelda’s being. Despite the warm magic in her hands, she felt like she stood at the highest point of her castle, winter wind whipping around her. Link stepped to her side and said, “Zelda, take them and go.”

Blinking, disoriented, she opened her mouth to protest but paused at the look in Link’s eyes: clear, calm sky. They both knew he was the one who had to stay behind. Zelda was an heirless monarch; her life wasn’t hers to lose, and she couldn’t send Sparrow and Melanie off alone.

“Are you sure you want to die for her, Hero?” Lord Hartwell sneered. “You wouldn’t look at her with your heart in your eyes if you understood her rise to power. The bribery. The blackmail. The threats. She forced the whole court into her pocket, one way or another, until we had no choice but to help her depose her father.”

Sparrow drew in a sharp breath. Zelda’s pulse came in huge, throbbing waves. The line between her and the magic barrier stretched taut. Trying to hold it steady, trying not to look at Link’s face, Zelda reached to pick up the shadow crystal.

“And when that wasn’t enough,” Lord Hartwell said, “she took his very life.”

All Zelda saw was grey stone and stark shadows. Each piercing gaze watching the spectacle: her father on his knees before her, laughing and laughing. You have the sword. Use it, girl! Use it! The steel in her hand, the cell, the rope, the sunbeam—

She lost the barrier, like dead flower petals slipping through her fingers.

Lord Hartwell kicked the shadow crystal, sending it skidding across the floor until Elias trapped it under his boot. Link moved; Lord Hartwell screamed.

“One more word and your throat is next,” Link snarled. “Zelda, go! I’ll see you later!”

Those last three words woke Zelda up, but only when Sparrow grabbed her arm did she remember how to work her body. At the balcony doors she looked back, shocked to find that the scene before her shimmered behind a veil of tears.

Lord Hartwell, crumpled to his knees and clutching his bleeding hand to his chest. Link, his strong back to her, sunlight catching his tawny hair, the sword a bright promise in his hand. The enemy closing in on his lone form.

All except for Captain Elias, who stayed where he was, meeting Zelda’s eyes with stark and undeniable pity.

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Chapter 25: Mercy

Chapter Text

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The ground was solid beneath Zelda’s feet, but it felt like the tossing deck of a ship. Sparrow still clung to her—Zelda supposed her magic had brought them down from the balcony, but she didn’t quite remember it. Ashei, Rusl, and her guards were coming to meet them.

“I didn’t,” she said in a shaking whisper. “I wouldn’t. The rest was true, but I did not want him to die.”

Sparrow hugged her suddenly, one-armed and awkward with Melanie squirming between them. “I believe you,” she said fiercely.

Zelda squeezed her eyes shut, allowing herself—for a few heartbeats—to be held by the only living person who could understand her grief.

But Link needed her; there was little time for tears. She wiped them away and started issuing orders as soon as the others reached her. One of her guards ushered Sparrow and Melanie towards the safety of the woods; the rest assembled around Zelda.

“Be careful and be brave,” she said simple, “and if those things fail, remember you’ll all be promoted when we return home.”

That brought on a round of chuckles, easing some of the tension in the air. There was strength here, she realized—in the proud tilt of their chins, in the warm glow of pride that seeped from her and into her as she stood in their midst. They came for me, she thought. If they die, that will be for me, too. And it would be her burden to carry, the way she carried the men Zant had killed in the throne room.

But this time, Zelda would not drop her sword.

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Link waited for the enemy to come, but they froze in their tracks at the Captain’s order, even the mercenaries. Lord Hartwell had crawled away to huddle against the wall.

“If he is fighting alone,” Elias growled, “I will grant him the same.” He ended the subsequent storm of protests with a razor-sharp look. “I’ve got my crystal back. Join the others at the barricades; the queen’s about to break in. If this goes south—”

“No,” Rai interrupted, flashing a dark look at Link as his companions murmured agreement. “We already had this conversation.”

“Stubborn bastards,” Elias grumbled.

“Where do you think we learned it?” Saki retorted with a flick of her black ponytail.

Elias laughed. Link had never heard him do that before—it was an unpleasant sound, harsh and grating, but a laugh all the same. “Go,” he ordered, “and stay alive.”

His allies parted around him and filtered down the stairs. Link shifted from foot to foot, sword in hand, still waiting. Elias stared down at the shadow crystal with equal parts hunger and revulsion.

“Damnit, boy,” he said softly. “I never wanted to fight you. Why do you think we lured you to Kakariko? It wasn’t just because you’re a devil with a sword. We wanted you out of all this.”

“You took kids as hostages, and I was supposed to sit by?” Link asked incredulously.

“No,” Elias admitted ruefully. “You wouldn’t be the Hero if you did that. Tell me—did Hartwell speak the truth? Did the queen kill her own father?”

“I don’t know. I just know you’re wrong about her.”

“Maybe.” Elias’s eyes were dark pits, sunken into the pallor of his skin. “But it doesn’t matter now, does it? She’s still queen. I won’t let her throw my people into a cage.”

Pain flared up Link’s wounded side, followed by a tired sadness. There was nothing left to say.

Elias plunged the shadow crystal into his arm and dropped to his knees, screaming amidst the shadows. When the darkness wisped away, his hulking form seemed to fill the entire hallway. Blood dripped from his open jaws and from the lines of cruel magic that snaked through his dark fur. His small eyes were half-mad with anguish and bestial instinct.

The Bear charged: teeth bared, paws drumming against the floor, a bristling mountain of malice. Link let him hurtle forward, lowering his stance and raising his shield. Like stopping a runaway goat, he told himself. Like wrestling a Goron. Like fighting Beast Ganon with Midna.

Except Midna was gone, and this was nothing like a goat, or even a Goron. This was a thousand pounds of murderous animal crashing into Link’s shield, making his body explode with pain and his feet scrabble for purchase—but he held. He held, and then he thrust his sword up and into the Bear’s shoulder.

Elias’s thick hide prevented the blade from plunging in as deeply as it should have, though he still bellowed in response. He ripped himself away, then startled Link by lurching forward instead of back, his jaws parting to reveal two rows of deadly fangs that dripped blood: the last thing the shadow beasts must have seen before they died.

Link whirled away, using the moment to slash at one of the grooves that seeped orange magic. The Bear snarled in pain. How much more would it take to end this? One cut, two?

“I don’t want to kill you,” Link gasped, not meaning to say it aloud, unable to stop. “Elias—"

A crash sounded two floors below, followed by shouts. He caught a whiff of fire and smoke and spring: Zelda was destroying the barricades.

“Captain!” Saki yelled, and the Bear raised his head.

“Don’t!” Link said. “You said you’d fight me, just me!”

But it was plain to see that the shadow crystal had chewed away at Elias until his thinking mind was barely there—in his animal mind, all he understood was that his people needed him.

So he wheeled around and charged in the opposite direction.

Zelda. He’d go for Zelda; she posed the greatest threat. Rusl, Ashei, and the guards were nothing more than collateral damage. Link stumbled after the Bear’s wake of destruction, feeling the same cold fear as the day the Bulblins had taken Ilia and Colin, or the stormy night when he’d nearly lost Midna.

They met him on the half-wrecked stairs—two men, five men, more catching up to them. Link had no time for this. Numbers were irrelevant; they were only people, and he had defeated nightmares and behemoths and would-be gods. He didn’t want to hurt them, he’d never wanted to hurt anyone, but he knew with perfect certainty that he wouldn’t let a single person on his side die for the uncaring madness of others.

An arrow that cannot miss, Zelda had said. A blade that never breaks.

Link met his first enemy’s eyes and raised the sword.

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The first barricade surrendered easily to Zelda’s fire. Surprised and distracted by the sound of Link and Elias fighting upstairs, the enemy reeled as her guards poured through the smoking entrance. Zelda—wrapped in searing heat that would scorch anyone who came near—charged through the estate alone.

Thanks to Link’s previous visit here, she found the kitchen easily and burst inside, unleashing a blaze of blinding light at the second barricade. Someone grabbed her arm and screamed as she burned him; then Zelda was free to shoot out into the cold air, the enemy on her heels.

Her allies surged to meet them. She swelled with pride at the sight of her guards looking formidable in the royal colors, Ashei’s dark sword flashing in the sun, Rusl sinking into a stance not unlike Link’s.

The battle had barely begun when a dark shape filled the remains of the kitchen door and then exploded through it, taking half the wall down by sheer force. Zelda’s guards scrambled to form a defensive circle around her, but she saw at once the Bear would trample through them. It would be the throne room all over again: the wreckage, the bodies, the shattering of the world she’d fought so hard to save.

She was moving, shouldering past her people as they tried to pull her back. Even without time for a true plan, Zelda knew what to do; she always did. Time slid past her slowly. She broke through the circle and looked at the approaching avalanche, the Triforce uncurling like an eagle spreading its wings.

A ghostly hand touched her shoulder. If she turned, she would see no one there, but she felt them all the same: her lionhearted mother, her austere grandmother, an endless line of straight-backed women crowned in gold. They had been with Zelda when she’d overthrown her father, when she’d dropped the sword at Zant’s feet, when she’d saved Midna’s life.

She stood her ground and summoned the Light Spirits.

They came like a falling star, rocketing through the core of her, twining through the Triforce and the magic of her bloodline to magnify them tenfold. Trying to contain the Spirits’ presence was like holding back the sun. Their power filled her and flowed through her; she glowed with it, leaking stray magic into the air. The Bear must have been practically blind, but he didn’t slow.

Under Zelda’s feet was soil and dying grass, roots going deep into the earth, animals moving under and over it. Somewhere above her, Courage burned as bright as Wisdom; she stretched across the golden channel to feel Link’s heartbeat. I’m here, she told him. Be safe.

His answer was the sword in his hand, the smell of blood, and a promise that he would see her later.

The Twili magic came when she needed it, the same way Midna had slipped into the tower prison to change Zelda’s life forever. Two dying realms and a bloody history between them, yet they’d shared a heart and a purpose—of course they still carried a piece of each other.

Wrapping herself in the might of all three magics, Zelda reached for the pulsing malevolence of the shadow crystal.

The Bear skidded to a halt. For all that he’d driven her and her people to this point, she pitied him, because she was about to take all that he had left.

The crystal thrashed, a parasite refusing to unhook its claws. She could feel its creators breathing down her neck. Zant, usurping the throne she’d sacrificed everything to claim. Ganondorf, laughing as he crushed Midna’s helmet between his fingers, wrapping his magic around Zelda’s body to claim it as his own.

But he could never take her mind or her heart, for they were untouchable within the fortress she’d built to protect them. Zelda had always belonged to herself.

The shadow crystal wrenched free from Elias’s skin. Darkness rushed away from his form and into the vessel; animal screams became human ones. He fell to the ground, crumpled, gasping. Zelda’s head spun with exhaustion, but the crystal came first—it could not be allowed to cause any more pain.

As the terrible thing hovered between her hands, she focused her exhausted power. The shadow crystal shattered with an awful sound, almost like the scream of a living thing, and Zelda had cleansed her kingdom of one of the invasion’s last remnants.

“Thank you,” she whispered to the Light Spirits, feeling them accept her gratitude and drift home to their springs.

The world fell back into place—shouting, the crash of metal on metal, someone’s arm around her shoulders. Zelda was surrounded by uniforms bearing her family’s colors, and for the first time she could remember, they made her feel safe.

“Lady Queen? Can you hear me?”

Zelda looked up into Rusl’s face. He was crouched on one knee, holding her up. “There you are,” he said kindly, handing her a waterskin.

She drank deep, watching over her guards’ shoulders as their comrades tussled with what remained of the enemy forces. “What happened to Captain Elias?”

“He slipped away during the chaos, but Link went after him,” Rusl replied. “I don’t know what you did, Lady Queen, but it may well have saved all of us. Oh—what’s this?”

Zelda followed his gaze to the strange party emerging from the treeline. Lord Hartwell stumbled at the swordpoint of the Hyrulean guard who had gone to keep Sparrow and Melanie safe. Sparrow herself marched grimly behind them, Melanie toddling at her side. Zelda rose shakily to meet them.

Lord Hartwell tripped on a loose stone and went down in a flowerbed, snarling something to Sparrow about her damn garden and all the Rupees it had cost him. She rolled her eyes at the guard, who threw up his hands in aggravation.

“Lord Hartwell,” Zelda greeted pleasantly. “It seems our positions have been reversed.”

“He tried to sneak away,” Sparrow explained. “Too bad he happened to pass by us.”

“Ungrateful bitch,” he sneered, still clutching his bloody hand to his chest, though it didn’t look like Link had cut him all that deeply. “I saved you. I gave you a home.”

“You did,” Sparrow agreed quietly, kneeling down so that she could look him in the eyes, her expression complex. “I am grateful for that, no matter what you think. But don’t expect me to thank you for making my daughter a pawn in your game.”

Something like shame crossed her husband’s face. As the guard lead him through the smoking hole in the estate’s wall, Sparrow stared at the crushed flowers by her knees—but little Melanie watched until he disappeared.

“I’m sorry, love,” Sparrow sighed. “He wasn’t a good father. Nor was your true one.” She smoothed the child’s chestnut curls and glanced up at Zelda. “But we have someone better looking out for us.”

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The trail of blood led Link to the barn, where he’d once stolen Lord Hartwell’s horses for the people who would later become his co-conspirators. Everything smelled like warm animals and hay and home. Horses paced restlessly in their stalls, nervous about the commotion inside and out.

The Bear waited at the end of the long stone aisle. He was leaned against the closed rear door, and his eyes found Link immediately. Saki and Rai—frantically tacking up horses in the stalls on either side of him—took no notice.

Elias was human, but his hunched, hostile form still brought to mind a wounded animal. There was too much blood for Link to identify the source; he had to respect that Elias was even standing, albeit leaning on the waraxe he rested on the floor.

The wound in Link’s side protested every step forward. He’d fought like a wolf, but he’d spared every single person on that staircase. He had to keep reminding himself of that.

Saki saw him then and swore colorfully, bursting out of the stall with her dagger in hand. Rai followed, the point of his spear as sharp and deadly as the glare he directed at Link.

“You can have me,” Elias rasped, watching through glazed eyes. “Just let them go.”

“Nope!” Saki dismissed instantly. “Not happening!”

“There’s one of him and three of us,” Rai agreed, leveling his spear at Link. “And he killed Nil.”

“Nil would want you to stay alive,” Elias said evenly. “I was never going to make it. But he should have. Your freedom is the least of what I owe him.”

“You know I can’t let anyone go,” Link said quietly, trying not to shiver at the pain that gnawed up his battered side. “I’m sorry. But I didn’t start this. You should’ve gone to the queen after you escaped the desert. She would’ve explained. She would’ve helped you. You should have gone home.”

Elias’s eyes were black as pitch. “Have you tried to go home, Hero?”

The words went right through Link. His hand tightened around the sword; his mouth tasted of blood. He didn’t reply or break the other man’s gaze.

Zant’s torture had shattered these people, and some broken things could only get pieced together into a jagged, inharmonious shape. Perhaps Link shared that with the deserters. The difference was that Elias had let his sharp edges cut into everyone else. Even Saki and Rai were here out of a desperate love that had nowhere else to go. If their Captain surrendered, they would follow—but he wouldn’t, and they wouldn’t, and Link had no choice.

“Let it end, then,” he murmured.

“Yes,” Elias decided wearily. “Let it end.”

Tired and heartsick and in pain, Link wasn’t at his best—but it still wasn’t much of a match.

Rai got there first, closing in while Saki tried to flank; they operated in practiced tandem, retreating and renewing the attack each time he countered it. Two against one, they expected Link to stay on the defensive—only they didn’t know how fast he was.

He sidestepped Saki’s slash, pivoted to avoid Rai’s lunge, and slammed his boot down on the wooden shaft of his spear so hard that it splintered in half. Rai fell back, startled, just as Elias bulled forward. Link whirled right into the path of Saki’s descending dagger and caught the blow on his shield, his sword flashing up.

Saki cried out. Rai dove to catch her; Elias charged forward with a yell of rage. Despite the damage he’d already taken, he moved with the shocking ferocity of someone with nothing left to lose.

The axe swung right, left, center; Link dodged, but then Saki yelled, “Right side! Captain, get his right side!”

A mailed fist connected with Link’s wound. He gasped, the world tilting wildly, his vision flaring white with crippling agony. His back hit the barn door; his knees buckled—and then locked, because even cornered and hurting and alone, he wasn’t the least bit afraid. Elias wasn’t Zant, and he certainly wasn’t Ganondorf. Link had already conquered the worst thing fate had in store for him. No one could ever make him afraid again.

He pushed himself off the door. The pain was nothing. The sword felt loose and light in his hand. He stood tall and raised his head to glare up into Elias’s bloodshot gaze.

“Golden Goddesses,” Saki said faintly, “he’s not human.”

It was over in three moves. Strike, parry, counter—then everything was clear and cold and simple, and Link was driving his sword into Elias’s gut.

The axe thudded to the floor; the man followed suit. Saki sobbed. Link stood still for a moment, drawing in breath after shuddering breath through the agony in his side, feeling sunlight on the back of his neck.

Boots scraped on stone. “Die, Hero,” Rai snarled, his face a mask of hate, Saki’s dagger glinting in his hand.

He crashed into a golden wall. Zelda glided forward, glowing with magic. “Enough,” she told Rai as her guards flooded into the barn. “Enough.”

Link couldn’t meet her eyes; he would fall apart if he did. It took two guards to drag Rai down the hall, kicking and screaming; two others stayed to tend Saki’s wound before they moved her.

Slumped against the wall, Elias released a wet, gasping cough. Link opened his mouth to call for the guards’ help, but the Captain looked up at him through half-lidded eyes and said, “Never mind. Knew you’d win. I just had to try.”

Link shook his head, but Elias grabbed his wrist and yanked him down with what was probably the last of his strength. Zelda knelt at Link’s side, graceful but hesitant, and said, “I’m sorry it came to this. I swear your people will survive.”

Elias’s chest rose and fell weakly. He watched her through half-lidded eyes. “The king was a bastard,” he murmured after a long time. “The things he permitted inside the guard…his death was a gift to Hyrule.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Zelda replied very quietly. “But I might as well have. And I would do it again.” She sighed, a sound so tired that Link longed to reach for her, only he was covered in blood. “I wish we had met in peacetime, Captain Elias.”

“Too late for that, Lady Queen,” he replied, but there was no malice in it, and he’d used her true title for the first time. He looked past them at Saki, whose wound was as shallow as Link had been able to manage; Elias's was a different story. His voice dropped to a husk. “Just keep them alive. As for me…”

He trailed off, his dark eyes fixed upon the bloody sword that lay between them.

Link understood at once and reared back, shaking his head.

“You would honor me, Hero,” Elias whispered.

“It’s not an honor,” Link choked out senselessly. “And I’m not—don’t you know what I did? To Nil? To the people Zant changed? I—I—”

“You ended them,” Elias finished, and there was nothing worse than hearing it spoken aloud by someone who had cared for those people. Someone who had known their names and stories; someone who had mourned when Zant turned them into slaves and Link turned them into corpses.

Suddenly, the fragile peace Link had been trying to construct was gone. In his mind’s eye he saw Ganondorf in the field with the Master Sword speared through him; he saw his own claws rending the shadow beasts apart; he saw the guileless faces of the Twili he’d saved. He clutched at his middle, trying to keep all of it contained even as it screamed for escape.

Zelda’s hand was on his shoulder. But if Link met those crystal-clear blue eyes, they would pierce through all his layers and go straight to the place where the wolf snapped and snarled. It was the last thing he’d ever wanted her to see.

“Boy,” Elias said harshly enough that he had to cough violently before grating out, “There was nothing human left in them. They died as soon as the shadow crystal touched them, just like I did.”

He tried to reach out, but his fingers only slid bloody trails across Link’s already-filthy sleeve. For some reason, this small, shocking effort at kindness from his dying enemy brought Link back to himself.

“What are you saying?” he whispered.

“I’m saying you gave them mercy,” Elias answered firmly. “And I ask for the same.”

Mercy.

The word struck like roots cracking through dry soil. Link felt something new and uncertain take form, drawing life from all the darkness inside. He uncurled his arms and looked at the Captain. He’d dealt enough wounds to know when one was fatal.

Then he looked at Zelda. She turned her sharp-boned face towards him. To his shock, silent tears were rolling down her face. Her fingers slid down his left arm, finding his pulse between the straps of his gauntlet.

“He’s right,” she told him softly. “We can’t save everyone. The choice is yours.”

Link squeezed her hand and let it go, rising to his feet.

“Stay alive,” Elias said to Saki, who looked on wordlessly, her eyes hollow and dry. To Link he said, “Thank you, Hero.”

My name is Link, murmured a voice: small, quiet, wisp-thin, but still there. Still clinging to the earth.

He raised his sword.

The strike was true and unfaltering, just like the Hero’s Shade had taught him. After it was done, Link turned away, stumbling for the door.

He didn’t stop until the trees closed around him. The setting sun flushed the sky with deep, pure gold, turning the clouds into billowing mountains of light, cascading down to the brutal earth. Even the bare winter forest gleamed beneath all that splendor, and the air was cold and fresh in his lungs.

Do you ever feel a strange sadness as dusk falls? Rusl had asked a lifetime ago, when everything had been too simple for Link to understand the question. He looked at the blood that dripped down his blade into the soft brown leaves underfoot. He looked at the twilit sky. And he had his answer.

There was a sadness that would never leave. There was also beauty, and a promise as old as time: the rise would always come after the fall.

Zelda’s presence was a radiant flame at his back. She said nothing. Link knew that, once again, she was letting him choose. He knew his choice.

He turned to meet her pale blue gaze, and just like the first time, found his own familiar humanity reflected back. There was something else blazing quietly beneath—the fierce fire Zelda had sustained through all the cold seasons of her life. The gift she had opened to him after years of guarding it from the world.

“Zelda,” he breathed—just that.

“Link,” she replied, her eyes shining with tears.

He dropped the sword to take her into his arms.

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Chapter 26: Forgiveness

Chapter Text

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Zelda watched her guards drape a sheet over Captain Elias. His eyes were closed, his expression more peaceful than she’d ever seen—but still, she wished he hadn’t given up. She had thought the same thing upon seeing her father’s corpse.

“Saki,” Link said quietly. “I’m…so sorry.”

“He was going, one way or another,” the deserter replied gruffly, offering no resistance to the guard who was bandaging her arm. “Rai might blame you, but I don’t.”

Link nodded gratefully. His eyes were tear-worn and weary, but clear, like the first hint of blue sky after a storm.

When Rusl found them, he reluctantly allowed the older man to see to his own wounds. Zelda wanted to sleep for a year, but there were a thousand things to do. She moved through the estate, pausing to help where she could, until she got a full report from the squad leader who had command.

Thanks to their superior numbers and the element of surprise, her allies had captured most of the enemy alive and scraped through with only minor injuries of their own. It was by far the best outcome Zelda could have asked for, and she stood speechless for a moment afterwards, awash in a sea of hope—not just for these people or this moment, but for the future of Hyrule.

There was no way to safely transport the wounded captives without wagons or reinforcements, so the squad leader had sent his swiftest rider to Castle Town. Since everyone else would be spending the night here, Zelda went to see about provisions.

Sparrow was already in the kitchen, whirling from one task to the next while Melanie perched on the counter, engrossed in a wedge of honeycomb. “Those pigs really cleaned the larder out, but we’ll do all right with what’s left,” Sparrow told Zelda; she was the eldest of many siblings back in Castle Town and knew how to feed a crowd.

“Thank Nayru you’re here,” Zelda replied. “Please ask the guards if you need help. I must see Lord Hartwell now—would you like to join me?”

Sparrow’s hands paused in trimming some herbs. “Not now,” she decided. “But I do owe you an explanation, Lady Queen.”

“You don’t.”

“It’s a short story,” Sparrow said matter-of-factly. “The abortion doctor stole the money you gave me and ran off. I couldn’t go back to you or my family without word reaching the king. Hartwell found me outside his store and recognized me from the castle…it might surprise you, but he was very kind. He coaxed the truth out of me. I know you must think I’m stupid for telling him anything.”

Zelda started to protest.

“Well, I was,” Sparrow shrugged. “He told me he’d marry me and take me out of the city, and that he’d never touch me…if I just kept the baby. He wanted to blackmail the king, and I…I guess I was angry enough to want that too. But I never thought he would go after you. I can’t regret Melanie, of course, but it’s just as you warned me—she’ll be in danger all her life.”

Melanie was licking the honeycomb happily, swinging her little feet back and forth atop the counter. She had more in common with Zelda than a father and a hair color: she, too, would grow up into a world that wanted to use her, that would force her to compromise the better parts of herself for survival.

“No,” Zelda decided. “I will keep you both safe, Sparrow. I swear it.”

“Then—” Sparrow tucked her short hair behind her ears nervously. “Can I come to Castle Town with you? To see my family, at least?”

“Of course,” Zelda said, and Sparrow’s answering grin was so bright that she went to face Lord Hartwell without fear.

She’d asked the guards to hold him separately so that he couldn’t drip poison in the other captives’ ears. They had obeyed by putting him in what looked like a servants’ supply room.

“Someone saw to his injuries,” the guard at the door told her. “He tried to kick the door down for twenty minutes. Then he offered me a Silver Rupee to let him go. Since then, it’s been quiet.”

“Quite the sum,” Zelda observed. “Thank you for turning him down.”

“He tried to kill you, Lady Queen. He’s not worth the scum on my boots.”

She smiled. Flushing, he let her into the room.

Night had finally blanketed this endless day, and the room had only one small window crammed near the ceiling. Zelda asked her exhausted magic for just enough light to show her Lord Hartwell, lounging on a crate with his legs crossed at the ankle.

“Bit early to come gloating,” he remarked. “I have friends at court, and I know that’s where you’re taking me.”

“If you had friends, you wouldn’t have hired assassins,” Zelda reasoned. “Or allied with these deserters. You’ll understand if I have a few questions.” He snorted. Settling down on a crate opposite him, she reminded him coolly, “You are not the only one who can use hostages.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Hartwell snapped, proving that in some strange way, he did care for Sparrow and Melanie.

“Wouldn’t I? As you pointed out today, I have gone to great lengths for my throne. You helped me get there, remember? Your support against my father for a seat on the Council after I took power. If only I had known how high your sights were set. When did you choose to turn on me?”

“You turned on us the day you surrendered to that invader,” he said derisively. “Or that’s what people complain about when they call you the Iceheart Queen. Frankly, I couldn’t care less. You’d lost your popularity, and I had Melanie, so I took a shot.”

“That’s all?” Zelda said, baffled.

“Yes, that’s all,” Hartwell mocked. “You were born into power; you have no idea what it’s like to claw your way to it. I got everything I could from your father until it was clear his court was a sinking ship—and so did you. You overthrew him because you wanted to live to see eighteen; you knelt to the invader for the same reason.” He barked a laugh. “I don’t blame you. But I also don’t want to hear about your moral high ground.”

“There is an irony to being called cowardly by a man who uses others for his dirty work,” she countered acidly. “But I am not here to trade insults with you. Was anyone else involved in your plot? If I am as self-serving as you claim, you had best answer honestly, or Sparrow and Melanie will suffer.”

“It was me.” Hartwell threw up his hands in irritation. “Is that what you want to hear, girl? It was all me. My men hired the assassins, and later they communicated with the Bear’s people. Everyone who was involved is here in this damn estate, and if you hadn’t somehow sniffed out Sparrow’s whereabouts, we would have succeeded.”

“No one at court?”

“Oh, I tested the waters. I made pointed remarks about your unsuitability…had they wanted to help, the fools would have taken the bait…”

Zelda let him talk for a moment, surprised to find that he was telling the truth. The Council was loyal to her. Well—perhaps loyal was a stretch, but they hadn’t indulged Hartwell. The far-reaching conspiracy she’d been fearing was nowhere to be found.

Her father had never recovered from his poisoning, not from the actual effects or from the cruelty of the act. The same mind that once crafted Zelda’s bedtime stories had imagined threats in every corner, and countless people paid the price for it, whether they were guilty or not. Looking into the eyes of this man who had tried to destroy everything that mattered to her, she understood—just a little—how her father’s sickness had taken root.

“I believe you,” Zelda told Lord Hartwell. “And I was lying through my teeth before. I would never use hostages.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t buy that. Melanie is a threat to your reign.”

“And you are a species that has plagued Hyrule for far too long,” Zelda said sharply. “Yet still I intend to let you live, for I am not who you think I am. If I was, I would have fled this kingdom at thirteen and left you all in my father’s hands.”

She waited, watching him through the specks of dust that drifted under the single fading sunbeam that reached through the window. It reminded her of another room, a real prison cell instead of a broom closet, where the rope of twisted bedsheets had glowed white against the dark damp stone. Lord Hartwell and many others thought Zelda was lying about what she’d found there a year ago, and she wished she was. She wished she didn’t have to carry that memory inside her forever.

She let herself out of the room and allowed her feet to choose the destination. To surprise, they brought her back to the kitchen. She paused outside the doorway at the sound of conversation.

“I only went to her for my family’s sake, not for money,” Sparrow was saying. “She gave me a Gold Rupee anyway, hidden inside an old locket. I tried to give it back—if the king caught me leaving, he would know she’d helped me, and he was so unstable… I told her that I was disposable, that she was the one who mattered. Because she was the only one who could stop him. You know what she said? ‘No one is disposable. No one matters more than anyone else. And I am a fortress; he can’t touch me.’”

“That sounds like her,” Link replied sadly.

Swallowing, Zelda turned the corner. The kitchen was bathed in warm firelight; a kettle had begun to whistle above the crackling hearth. Link was peeling potatoes, having replaced his bloody tunic with a white linen shirt several sizes too big for him. He smiled at Zelda when she crossed the threshold—the same smile she remembered from a crumbling throne room at the end of the world.

She took the stool beside him and thanked Sparrow when the other woman brought her tea. Link stuck his tongue out at Melanie, who had been watching him warily, drawing a delighted giggle out of the child. Zelda took slow slips of tea, clinging to the cup like a lifeline as she prepared herself.

“You must both be wondering about what Lord Hartwell said earlier,” she said at last, proud of how steady her voice sounded.

They both froze. “You don’t have to explain,” Link said.

“I want to,” Zelda said, looking at Sparrow. “You loved him. So—so did I, beyond all reason. You deserve an explanation.”

“He wasn’t planning to abdicate when you turned eighteen, was he?” Sparrow guessed, her face far away.

“No, he wasn’t,” Zelda confirmed quietly. “But only the worst crimes would give the Council the authority they needed to remove him by emergency decree, and my father was good at covering his up. Without proof of those, my only choice was to frame him for treason. So it’s true that I bribed and bullied and blackmailed to gain the court’s support. It’s true that my throne is built on lies.”

It had taken two years to weave the tapestry. Forged documents. False witnesses. Buying off the guards was easy. The Council was more complex—some members helped of their own volition; others, like Lord Hartwell, required a quid pro quo. More still had refused outright, but Zelda hadn’t given them a choice. The castle staff had acted as her spies, bringing her enough leverage to win the holdouts to her side.

The danger to her personally had multiplied with each person she brought into the fold. Her father was the one person whose actions she could never predict, but she knew that if he found out, her fate would be worse than death.

No one had talked, though. Looking back now, Zelda could see that her court deserved more trust than she’d ever bestowed upon them. For on that cold day last winter, they had stood behind her as the steward read the list of fabricated charges and the guards dragged the king from his throne.

He’d laughed as they threw him at her feet, the same way he’d laughed when she beat him at chess as a child—like she’d taken the game too far. He’d looked around the throne room to share the joke with his court.

But they had watched Zelda, not him. That moment was her first test as queen. Would she renege? Would she leave her allies to the king’s brutality? No; she would stand tall and proud with her mother’s sword firmly in hand, and she would look into the king’s mad eyes and tell him his reign was over.

He had started to laugh again, long and hard, a laugh that filled every inch of the throne room and still resounded in Zelda’s nightmares. His face was wet with tears by the time he stopped. Kill me, then, he had declared, or I will be a threat as long as I live.

Looking at his tortured face, which had once been so dear to Zelda, was a knife twisting in her gut—but looking away was a weakness she couldn’t afford. Her father had been entirely correct. She had deposed him on a lie. Her complicit allies would remain silent to protect themselves, but if her father lived, he would be under no such obligation.

You have the sword! he’d screeched. Use it, girl! Use it! Stop staring at me with her eyes!

He had been begging for an end to the ruin the poison had made of him, an end to the memory of his wife condemning him through his daughter’s face. And Zelda had stood there while the entire court watched, cold wind brushing her cold skin, remembering that he’d taken Auru from her, that he’d killed her uncle and aunt, that he’d led Sparrow to his bed with false promises.

“I could have killed him,” Zelda told her friends, here in the warm kitchen. “I knew I had it in me. I also knew it would be safer, politically. But that was the part Lord Hartwell lied about.”

“You spared him,” Link said softly.

“Yes,” she said slowly, understanding for perhaps the first time. “Because I wanted to spare my own heart. I wanted a better world than the one he’d taught me to expect. I wanted more than a cycle of cruelty repaid by cruelty.”

“Then—" Sparrow started, then swallowed and tried again. “How did he die, Lady Queen?”

“He took his own life in his dungeon cell,” Zelda answered, staring into her teacup. “I’m sorry.”

Sparrow swept Melanie into her arms, hiding her face in her daughter’s curls.

Zelda had pushed past her guards into the depths of the dungeon. For a long time afterwards, it had seemed like she would be standing outside that cell forever, frozen before the noose of bedsheets and the body swaying in the sunbeam.

Yet time had marched forward. Her heart had kept beating. She could bear tragedy and regret; she couldn’t bear watching her father devour the land she’d been born to protect. She had saved Hyrule. She had saved herself. And Impaz and Auru were right—she had done right by her family.

Link slid off his stool to put his arms around her. Sparrow shuffled closer to lean her forehead against Zelda’s shoulder while the child tugged curiously at her long braid. The shadows grew long and the fire burned low, and inside that circle of warmth, Zelda forgave herself.

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Chapter 27: Snow

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Link opened his eyes and breathed in the smell of Ordon.

The distant sound of the village Cucco heralding the dawn had brought him out of a deep dream. In another life, he would have dozed off until the sun was a little higher and the morning a little warmer before meandering out to the ranch.

But in his sleep he’d been running through a dark forest on four legs, not two. A golden wolf had led him to a sunlit field, glanced back with one crimson eye, and shimmered away from time. Link still had plenty of nightmares—this hadn’t been one of them. Yet he had woken up knowing it was time to leave.

Nearly a month ago, Zelda had ridden through the gates of Castle Town with a trail of captured enemies behind her and a joyous welcome before her. Thanks to Auru and Telma spreading the word, Hyrule had been abuzz with stories of the queen outsmarting her would-be usurpers, breaking out of captivity, blazing like a golden sun before the charging Bear. Link kept that memory close: Zelda glowing as her people cheered and tossed flowers at her horse’s hooves, smiling back at them from ear to ear.

To Link’s absolute relief, no one spoke of the Hero. If the guards at the Hartwell estate had guessed his identity, they’d kept it mercifully quiet. Castle Town still saw him as he was: a young swordsman who worked with the Resistance and, sometimes, the queen.

When Rusl decided that things were stable enough for him to go home—for good this time—Link had agreed to join him, because the longing for Ordon never went away, and because he owed the rest of his family better than he’d given them. Everyone had accepted his apologies with the easy, generous warmth that was stitched into the fabric of this place, making him wonder why he’d ever expected otherwise.

His weeks here had been full of blessings: teaching Colin and Beth to ride, cooking his favorite meals with Uli, sitting by the fire with Rusl. But it could never last. And as the sun rose into a sky the color of Midna’s hair, Link caught a faint whiff of snow—another reason to go before Faron became impassable.

He packed, fed Epona her breakfast, and went down into the village. Soft light brushed across the purple roofs and freshly-tilled pumpkin patches. This time, he knocked on every door instead of leaving without a goodbye. Beth, hugging Link’s waist with her skinny arms, ordered him to marry the queen and make her royalty. Fado swore to look after the goats. Mayor Bo and Talo and Malo’s parents all asked after their children, and Link promised he would return soon with Ilia and the boys in tow.

Finally, he reached the house where he’d been raised. It smelled of the coffee Uli went through great lengths to get imported. Colin looked up from setting the table, where Rusl sat spoon-feeding baby Eva. They all took in Link’s traveling garb in the silence that followed.

“Breakfast first?” Uli proposed.

Link nodded gratefully. As they ate, Colin watched him with a jarring wariness that spelled out all the damage Link had done by fleeing Ordon so suddenly and callously three months ago. The damage he was about to inflict all over again.

Rusl fixed his steady green eyes on Link across a slice of buttered toast. “Tell me you’re doing this because you want to,” he said. “Not because you think you have to.”

“I want to,” Link answered firmly. In truth, he made this decision the day he followed Talo into a forest of monsters. He was only now starting to grasp its gravity, but he no longer doubted its rightness.

Colin’s fork clattered against his plate. Eva started to fuss at the sound; her parents reached for her in unison, but Colin carried her outside without another word. Uli waved Link and Rusl back down and went after them.

In the silence that followed, Link looked down at his hands, scarred and calloused. It took him a while to mumble out, “Rusl. What you told me in Kakariko…I didn’t get the chance to say that you’ve never failed me. You—found me when I was a kid. You gave me…” He gestured to the comfortable firelit house, the view of the village outside the window, Uli hugging her children on the porch—everything he loved too much for words.

“I’m not sure, Link,” Rusl said quietly. “There’s so much I didn’t protect you from.”

“I—I don’t think you could have. It was meant for me.”

“You two,” Uli announced as she stepped back inside, “are branches of the same tree, blood or no. And I love you for it, but I wish you’d understand something.” She raised her chin in a stubborn look that Colin had inherited from her. “You’re just people. You don’t have to carry the world; you only have to be alive in it. You don’t owe anything to anyone.”

“I don’t know,” Link said slowly. “I think…maybe we all owe each other what we’re able to give. And I can give a lot.”

“You’re both right,” Rusl put in. “It’s just about balance.”

Uli sighed in aggravated affection. “Fine. But, Link: please don’t try to protect us from the truth again. I’m not blaming you. But we want you to come to us.”

I wanted that too, Link thought. I just couldn’t. Because surviving the Twilight had been like walking across a bed of hot coals—it hurt too much to stop until he reached the other side.

Thanks to Midna, he had made it through. He lacked the words now to describe her sharp-toothed grin, her indomitable will, how they’d changed and saved each other, how he would miss her for the rest of his life. But someday, he did want Uli and Rusl to know that he was standing here today because he hadn’t been alone.

For now, he had this: Rusl ruffling his hair, and Uli stepping in to hold them both. It was like Link’s earliest memory, of Rusl carrying him through the doorway and into her arms, of a feeling of safety so complete that it had seemed impossible for a long time. He’d never been sorry that he couldn’t remember life before Ordon. This house, this village, these people—they had given him everything he needed.

Uli said, “I thought of you every day during the Twilight, sweetheart. Every hour. I know it wasn’t enough, but—you’re our boy, and we were with you. I hope you knew that.”

“I did,” Link said around the tightness in his throat. “And it was enough.”

Leaving them behind to step into the cold morning hurt like hell, but at least this parting would never be permanent. Colin sat on the porch, bouncing Eva on his knee. Link knelt so they were eye-to-eye, realizing that someday the boy would grow tall enough to render this unnecessary, and he wouldn’t be here to watch it happen.

“I have to say goodbye,” he murmured apologetically.

“Why?” Colin asked, watching Eva grab fistfuls of his shirt. Before Link could speak, he said solemnly, “Please don’t lie. You always lied to us in Kakariko, and we always knew.”

“Oh.” Link winced at the revelation—he’d wanted so badly for the children to feel safe, even as the world crumbled around them. “I’m sorry, Colin. You’re old enough to know life’s not like the stories. Like when you saved Beth…what were you thinking?”

Colin swallowed, finally raising his head. “I wasn’t really thinking. I was terrified. But…someone had to do something.”

“Yeah,” Link murmured. “That’s how it was for me. Someone had to save Hyrule. So I did, but I was as scared as you were, and now…I’m not who I was before that. I’m not the Hero, either. But I’m still someone, and I can do something.”

“I understand,” Colin replied, blinking hard against tears. “When will you come back?”

“I don’t know,” Link answered honestly. It was all he could give. He wrapped his arms around both children and added, “But I promise I will. And until then, I’ll miss you, little brother.”

He kissed Eva’s forehead, ruffled Colin’s hair, and was gone.

Epona waited in the clearing, watching him with dark, gentle eyes. As they started down the path, he could feel her brimming with excitement. Unlike the last time they’d left Ordon, they were running towards something instead of just away.

Her strides grew long and joyful as they broke through the trees into the wide expanse of Hyrule Field. Thick clouds splayed across the boundless sky; everything smelled crisply of snow. The road carved a glowing ribbon through the crisp winter sunlight, winding to the center of the kingdom—to Zelda.

Often in these past weeks, Link had remembered her words about sparing her father in order to spare her own heart. The courage of that choice struck him over and over. In a world that tried so hard to shape her to its whims—to make her a pawn, a symbol, a villain—Zelda had drawn her boundaries and defended them with all her might.

He’d never made that kind of decision himself. He’d torn his heart to shreds. But something had changed since the day Elias asked for mercy and Link granted it, since the day Zelda had seen the blood on his hands and looked at him with only love in her eyes.

He was beginning to understand that all of it—killing the shadow beasts, killing Ganondorf and his servants, killing Elias—had been wrong, but it had also been right. Though Link would go to his grave wishing he could have saved those children, he had not caused their suffering, only ended it. And he was beginning to understand how little control he’d had all along, how callously he’d been used by forces so much bigger than him.

But Link didn’t resent that. One look at the land breathing around him, one thought of its people, was all he needed to remember that ending those lives had saved so many more.

Of course, clear-eyed Midna had seen all this from the start. Link just hadn’t been ready to listen. He had been cruel to himself instead, to his own body and his own heart, because in some ways that was easier—but not anymore. Link didn’t want a different fate. He wanted to change the way he carried this one.

I understand now, he thought, watching his shadow pelt across the ground as Epona galloped along, wishing that Midna could hear him on the other side of the veil that separated them. Thank you. I love you. I’ll see you later.

The open road spilled out before him. For all the darkness of Link’s journey, there had been moments of brightness too, ones where he’d known his purpose so clearly. That first glimpse of Zelda’s blue eyes. The kids laughing in his arms after he found them in Kakariko. Midna’s small hands pressed against his shaking shoulders. The perfect weight of the Master Sword in his grip.

This, here and now, was such a moment. Link would be what he had always been: a protector of those who couldn’t protect themselves. None of it would be painless. All of it would be worth it.

The sun shook free of a billowing cloud and touched upon Hyrule Castle as it came into view, turning the spires as gold as Zelda’s crown. Link bent low over Epona’s neck and let the wind carry them forward, like an arrow striking for home.

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Fire crackled in the hearth. Snowflakes drifted slowly towards the grey roofs of Castle Town. The laughter of children rang out across the ramparts below Zelda’s window.

Her quill paused at the last sound. Writing to the families of the children who had gone missing during the Twilight was not easy, but the words were coming more naturally than she’d expected. Perhaps because she knew something of grief and injustice herself, even if she’d spent so long masking it. And she was grateful for the majesty of Hyrule’s first snowfall of the season—it reminded her why she was here.

Auru came in quietly, his face wrinkled and familiar, to place a steaming cup on her desk. Zelda thought it was coffee until she smelled the sweetness. “Whenever it snowed during your lessons, I had to bribe you with hot cocoa to make you sit still,” he said. “Remember?”

She did. But as she wrapped her hands around the warm porcelain, a different memory unfolded: her family in the castle library the night after the Half-Century Queen’s funeral, finally free of the well-wishers and hangers-on. Zelda’s parents had been leaning against each other, her mother cradling her new crown between her hands, her father fidgeting absently with his. Uncle Adric had lifted their spirits with a story while Aunt Elaine distributed hot cocoa with quiet, efficient kindness. Auru had sat with Zelda, showing her a book of her grandmother’s favorite poetry.

It wasn’t just a memory, but a feeling: the sadness of knowing that nothing would ever be the same again, coupled with the certainty that it would still be all right somehow, someday.

“Thank you,” Zelda said, taking a sip and savoring the rich flavor, the warmth spreading through her.

Auru smiled. He did that a lot these days. She had trusted him to find Sparrow and keep the court calm, and he’d done just that. He’d also enlisted Telma’s help in spreading word of Zelda’s victory, encouraging the homecoming that still felt like a golden dream come to life.

“Oh, I ran into Sparrow,” Auru said. “She and Ashei have an idea they’d like to run by you before the Resistance meets today. She’s bouncing off the walls about it. Shall I send for them? I believe they took Melanie up top.”

“Let’s join them,” Zelda decided. “I could use a break.”

They walked through the castle together, familiar stone hallways winding out before them. Through the windows and glass doors they could see the children catching snowflakes on their tongues. Guards murmured to each other as Zelda passed. Weeks after her return, Castle Town still couldn’t stop gossiping about what had happened at the Hartwell estate.

She took no joy in the victory itself, nor in the deaths of Captain Elias and some of his allies. She didn’t much care what sentence Lord Hartwell received, but she would encourage leniency for the surviving deserters—like Saki, who kept requesting new storybooks to read to her fellow prisoners, and perhaps even Rai, who paced restlessly in his cell and barely spoke.

But Zelda had come home to a court that felt different. Hyrule was alive, electric; a kingdom ready to seize its second chance, just like its queen.

Four months ago, the castle had been so wrecked that she’d needed magic to reach the upper levels. Her people had swept away that damage like a bad dream, and Auru huffed and puffed his way up the new stairs until they reached the highest point in the castle.

Cold flakes brushed Zelda’s face. Below, the town was a tiny world of smoking chimneys; beyond, white hills stretched out under a grey sky. Up here, nearly every trace of the old throne room was gone. Snow covered the clean slate of it, unbroken except for the trail of footprints leading towards the only remnant: three stone Goddesses embracing the shining Triforce.

Ganondorf had imprisoned Zelda’s soulless body in the empty space between those golden triangles. He’d also decapitated the Goddesses in some childish fit of rage. If he’d been standing here today, he would only see the cracks and the ruin—and his hatred wouldn’t be entirely misplaced. But in the end, Zelda owed the world she loved to the Goddesses, and her place in it to the Triforce.

So instead of carting them away like so much rubble, she’d had them repaired. And now the three stone sisters stood watch as Melanie flung snow at her mother and Ashei poured the stuff down Ilia’s collar, getting a face full of it in return. Zelda stood at Auru’s side, watching them: the little girl, unvarnished by the world, and the three women who had all fought their private wars and come out laughing.

“Lady Queen!” Sparrow exclaimed, throwing up her hands to stop Melanie’s onslaught. Ilia dragged Ashei up beside her and started a sheepish apology.

“No need,” Zelda said. “You’re using this place exactly the way I’d like. Auru tells me you have an idea?”

“Yes,” Sparrow said breathlessly, brushing snow from her hair. “Well…with my husband in prison, everything belongs to me now. The estate, the business, the horses…” she shrugged. “I grew up in a house with a dirt floor. Past looking after my family, I’ve got no use for it. But the Resistance does.”

“You’ve restored the Hyrulean guard, Lady Queen,” Auru added. “You don’t need the Resistance to pick up their slack anymore. What you do need are eyes and ears beyond Castle Town.”

“We want to be out there in the countryside,” Ashei continued. “Helping the outlying villages that your guards can’t reach, keeping the road safe, researching Shad’s mysteries. We need space for our new volunteers—that’s what Sparrow is offering us. We’d have a base. We’d have horses.”

“That’s where I come in,” Ilia chimed in. “I’m no fighter, but I can manage horses. Supplies too, and communication with Telma and whoever else decides to stay in Castle Town.”

“That is,” Sparrow said nervously, “if you think it’s a good idea, Lady Queen.”

Zelda watched snow blanket her kingdom: the town’s bustling streets, the Zora River weaving towards the glittering lake, Death Mountain and its red canyons, the deep southern forest where Link was. She did need eyes and ears out there. Captain Elias and his scouting unit had been the best of Hyrule, before Zant turned them into something else. Zelda realized now that she hadn’t replaced them because she feared sending anyone else to a similar fate.

She looked at each face in turn. Auru, her lifelong guide. Sparrow, who had perhaps been her friend all along, despite the distance Zelda’s caution had created between them. Ilia, bright-eyed with the chance to make a difference; the usually cynical Ashei looking just as excited.

“It’s a wonderful idea,” Zelda declared. “You shall have my full support.”

Ilia squealed and threw herself into Ashei’s arms. Sparrow smiled, put a hand on Melanie’s curly head, and said quietly, “We’re staying here.”

Zelda was surprised by her relief, cool and gentle as snow. “Are you sure?”

“I do love that estate,” Sparrow admitted. “We’ll spend some time there, I’m sure, but Castle Town was always home. I want Melanie to know her family. I want her to know you.”

At her side, the child gazed up at them, her curious green eyes folded under dark brows. Sister, Zelda thought for the first time; only the Goddesses knew how long it would take her to say it aloud. “I would like that,” she managed.

“And,” Sparrow added with a grin, “I can’t wait to get my hands on this garden!”

“I’ll fetch you seeds from Ordon!” Ilia offered. “There’s nothing better than our pumpkins.”

The bell tower sounded the hour, reminding everyone that Telma and Shad would be arriving for the Resistance’s planning session. Sparrow hoisted Melanie up and followed Ashei and Ilia to the stairs. Melanie waved over her shoulder; Zelda waved back.

“The child,” Auru said quietly. “Is she…”

“My father’s.”

“I see.” He rubbed a weary hand over his whiskers and sighed. “Little bird…I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

Zelda saw her fourteen-year-old self alone atop the ramparts, watching his silhouette fade into the horizon. To that girl, and to him, she spoke the truth: “Exile was not your choice, or your fault. You tried to help, and that…is more than most did.”

Auru sighed as though setting down a great weight. “Thank you. I’m here now, for as long as you’ll have me. Ah—have you heard your new title?” Zelda shook her head, bracing herself as he went on. “Telma says it’s spreading all over Hyrule. It comes from the story of how you put yourself between the Bear and your guards, how bright your magic shone. They’re calling you the Sunheart Queen.”

Zelda’s breath left her in a long, wordless cloud.

“You look just like your mother when you smile,” Auru observed, his eyes sparkling. “I’ll see you at the meeting.”

She lingered for a while, cradling his words like a fragile flower between her hands, letting the soft snowflakes kiss her skin. Standing here at the top of the world without the throne room boxing her in still felt impossibly strange. She’d seen so much here—her family’s funerals, her father’s idea of justice, his laughter at the end. And then the Twilight.

But it was time to let those memories rest. Zelda lived for the future now.

When she turned for the stairs, there he was: his cheeks flushed with cold, his tawny hair dusted with white, his boots moving soundlessly across the snow. He wore that grin of his, sweet and real and wide enough to tug at the scar tissue on his cheek.

“Link,” she greeted, smiling back; she couldn’t help herself.

“Zelda,” he said, and it was the miracle again: her name in his voice, her body in his arms, his hand cradling the back of her head. “How are you?”

“I’m well.” She pulled back to see his face. “Are you?”

He nodded, surveying the empty space around them. “It looks so clean. I haven’t been up here since…”

They shared the memory. Link, harrowed and grieving, pointing an arrow at her heart because he thought the whole world was his enemy. Zelda, hiding behind stone walls that were already crumbling exhaustedly to dust. How far they’d come since then.

She saw that he still wore the leather cord around his neck. After returning from the Hartwell estate, Link had asked if she wanted to destroy his shadow crystal as she had the Bear’s, given the risk of it falling into the wrong hands. But Zelda had left the choice with Link—she wasn’t worried about his ability to protect Midna’s last gift.

“Did you decide?” she wondered.

“I think…I want to keep it?” Link said self-consciously. “In case we need it. And…I kind of liked being a wolf sometimes. Plus…you can bring me back to myself, right?”

“Yes,” Zelda promised. “You know where to find me.”

He smiled at that, squeezing her hands. “I heard you’re planting a garden up here.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling heat warm her cheeks for some reason. “The Council has been after me to rebuild the throne room for months, but…the Twilight changed everything and everyone. We cannot go backwards. I want my people to treasure the gift you gave us. I want them to have a place of peace, where children can play, where rank and status are irrelevant. I want travelers to look at Hyrule Castle from afar and see it crowned with green growing things, not just pillars of stone.”

He was listening intently, his face glowing with pride. Knowing she was someone who could make Link proud gave Zelda the strength of mountains—enough strength for what was coming next.

“Ilia said we could grow pumpkins.” Her voice was steady, but she had to look down at her boots, dark against the pure snow. “I thought you might like that. That is…if you’ll be here, come spring.”

“Spring,” Link repeated wistfully. He tilted her chin up gently, waiting for her to look at him before he continued, “Yes, Zelda. I want to be here, whenever I can be. I don’t want to say goodbye.”

“No,” she agreed, smiling. “I prefer ‘see you later.’”

Link chuckled, leaning his forehead against hers. When the rough gentleness of his scarred hand came up to cradle her cheek, Zelda closed her eyes, tipping her face up to welcome the kiss.

The world fell away, soft as snow, and they held the moment between them for a long time.

She opened her eyes into his fierce blue gaze, a reflection of the sky around them—and she knew that some things were eternal, even if she couldn’t see the shape of the future. Link was a thing of wide-open wilderness. He would come and he would go, but the coming was a promise greater than the going could ever diminish, and the lessons they had taught one another would last forever.

And Zelda would stay. Not just out of duty, but because she wanted to be here tomorrow morning, when the sun rose over the perfect pale land and the guards changed shifts in snowy silence and the kitchen grew warm with the smell of baking bread. She wanted to be here come spring, to plant her garden and watch it fill the world with splendor. She wanted to see her kingdom grow just the same, to bind its wounds and defend it from the inevitable threats to come.

She and Link descended the ramparts in easy silence, hand in hand. One story below, her mother’s favorite solar glowed with gentle firelight. On the other side of the glass door, Shad, Ashei, and Telma had their heads bent over a table, tracing the Resistance’s future across a map. Sparrow and Ilia handed out hot tea, laughing about something. Auru entertained Melanie with a game of peekaboo, and when the child scrunched up her nose and giggled, she looked like her mother—and, perhaps, like the better parts of her father.

Zelda, murmured the memory of a beloved voice, your words are kind, and your heart is true. If all in Hyrule are like you…maybe you’ll do all right.

We will, she thought. I promise we will.

“You ready?” Link asked. A hint of golden sunset pierced through the snowy clouds to illuminate his face, scars and all, as he held the door open and looked back at her.

Zelda followed him into the warm room.

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