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Chapter Text

The sun barely peeks from behind the mountain ranges when Link awakes in the barracks of Hyrule Castle—strands of blonde hair plastered across his forehead from sweat. His muscles ache, somehow, despite the ample amount of rest he got, and he suspects that it has something to do with sleeping alone.

For two years, almost every night had been spent with limbs tangled, warmth pressed all over him, plush peach-hued lips ghosting across his lips, neck, and wherever else they may desire. In his narrow bed in Hateno, it had always been a constant in his mornings. Today, however, in the dawn of possibly one of the most important days in Hyrulean history, he wakes up by himself on an uncomfortable brand-new mattress.

Link’s room in the barracks is bare and minimalist: only furnished by a wooden desk and chair for a study, a small bookshelf with barely any books standing next to it, a metal railing screwed tight into the wall where his clothes hung. Much of his belongings still reside in his other (and much preferred) residences. He only brought a few tunics, pants, and underwear—enough garments to cycle through before his next planned journey back to Hateno. The only personal effect apparent in his room is a framed portrait of his queen hanging on the wall above his bed—a regal smile on her lips, golden hair adorned with a Gerudo-made tiara, royal green gown wrapped around her slender, delicate figure. The woman in the picture embodies the Goddess that she is—untouchable, otherworldly, transcendental. Though the framed portrait belongs to him, the picture itself is a formal photograph meant to be plastered on the walls of the castles; a far cry from the true nature of his relationship with the monarch.

His woman smiles with all teeth, snorts when she laughs, likes her hair short, hyperventilates when she finds intriguing ancient technology during their expeditions. She gets sunburnt easily. She sighs sweetly when he runs his fingers through her golden locks. She has a mole just under her left breast. She enjoys showering together with him, even though she knows it would take her longer to get ready. She loves fruitcake, and sometimes jokes that she loves it more than she loves him, especially when she’s hungry.

That woman currently sleeps on the other side of the castle, in her newly renovated chambers. He wishes he was lying in her bed, her body by his side.

After a slow stretch, he swings his leg to the side of the bed, and heads to the door leading to the washroom. Thankfully, since becoming a Commander of the Royal Guard (knightly vow renewal pending later today), the most private bedroom in the dormitory is his to use—complete with a bathroom only accessible to him. He could faintly remember passing by this very room when he was first accepted into the Royal Guard—sixteen, shorter, and juvenile—envying his Commander for residing in a much larger room than his soldiers. Yet, as a twenty-six-year-old, he can’t help but secretly enjoy the amenities and privileges granted to a high-level knight such as him. 

As he strips off his sleeping shorts and steps into the shower, he silently re-thanks the countless men and women that had rebuilt and repaired the castle; a seemingly insurmountable task that surprisingly had only taken two years instead of… forever. Despite the fact that the castle grounds hovered above ground two years ago and lowered itself back down, destroying almost all of the foundations of the building, Hudson’s collaboration with both Link and Zelda became the catalyst for a smooth-sailing, efficient rebuilding process. 

Yet, even with a brand new grand castle, a new shiny title, and a literal queen as his lover, a small part of him still longs for the simplicity they had become quite accustomed to. He misses the days spent doing nothing except lazing in each other’s company, where time seemed to not matter. 

Most of all, he longs to love Zelda with no worry, no secrecy. To love her out in the open, to have her wholly, completely. 

He quickly shakes his train of thoughts off before it derails him any further, and leaves the shower. There’s no use to lament for too long; he has to shave and put on his garb and tie his hair neatly and prepare his men and make sure that he appears as best as he can be. After all, it is coronation day.

It had been quite literally more than a century since he last donned his Royal Guard uniform, which is probably why he had forgotten just how stiff the outfit is. The design has not changed much; the red, blue, and black garb is still accompanied by matching ivory gloves and boots, complete with the beret. However, the burgundy cord (or aiguillette, Zelda had corrected him one time) that is slung across his chest is now complemented with a second, golden cord to distinguish his status as a Commander. A calf-length cape is also to be worn—made from a heavy, dark blue fabric complete with gold stitchings that certainly don’t give his whole attire a more dramatic flair. He wishes he had worn the costume during the final rehearsal run yesterday, maybe just to get a gauge of how ridiculous he looks before he wears it to the official ceremony. 

Regardless, he could still appreciate the golden stitches adorning the edges of the cape; if one were to look closely, the stitches’ pattern depicts small silent princesses, neatly sewn, one after another. Though the cape itself had been cut and sewn together by a skilled seamstress, Zelda took it into her own hands to stitch the silent princess pattern onto the fabric. She told him that it was a secret code that she had painstakingly carved, each flower representing I love you, I love you, I love you—only to be deciphered by the intended wearer of the garment.

With his entire outfit tidily put and the Sword slung over his left shoulder with a leather strap, Link walks out of his room, and greets the rest of the Royal Guard unit, who amazingly had gotten dressed up and ready to go even earlier than he did. With two hours to spare before the event starts, he runs through the schedule with the knights once more, ensuring that every minute detail in the ceremony runs smoothly. 

Afterwards, he dismisses them, encouraging them to have a hearty breakfast at the canteen to endure the busy day ahead. On his way to join his men, he hears someone call his name.

“Sir Link!” He turns around and finds one of Zelda’s handmaidens, running on the cobblestone to reach him.

“Malena. Is there a problem?”

She pants a little, exhausted from her little jog. “N-nothing is wrong, Sir. It’s just Her Majesty, she, ah— she wishes to see you in her chambers.”

Beneath the many layers of clothing, his stomach grumbles. But he’d sooner starve rather than skip an opportunity to see Zelda.

“Understood. Thank you for relaying her message.”

Malena smiles shyly before bidding him goodbye, jogging back into the castle.

On his walk to Zelda’s chambers, he passes by various staff who are currently putting on the finishing touches for the ceremony. A red carpet is already laid out, ready to lead the queen from the tower where she resides all the way through the vast gardens of the grounds, into the Sanctum where the High Priestess and the crown will await. 

His body remembers the way to her room—the creeping feeling of I’ve been here before ever present in his brain as he ascends the spiral staircase leading to her quarters. Even though he hasn’t had the chance to visit her in her bedchamber since they moved here five weeks ago, when he raises his fist to knock on her door, there is a phantom magnet in his knuckles that pulls them to the smooth mahogany surface. 

“Come in.”

He swings one of the double doors open to reveal Zelda sitting at her vanity table, her green eyes fixed on him. The view of her punches him breathless. 

She looks so, so beautiful, and he cognizes that no photograph nor painting can truly capture the reality of her being. Her hair is longer now—the ends resting on her mid-bust, the middle part branching into braids that frame the outline of her forehead. A pearl necklace with a large sapphire stone hangs around her neck—her wrists adorned with golden cuffs with intricate designs. Her figure is wrapped in a white gown with gold accents, reminiscent of the prayer dress she used to don all those years ago. This one, however, is long-sleeved and floor-length, the train of the dress billowing behind her. 

He shuts the door behind him and immediately bows his head. He could already feel her rolling her eyes at him.

“Your Majesty,” he says, despite her earlier protests of addressing her by her formal title. “You look beautiful.” 

She laughs. “You flatter me, Commander.”

He steps forward to where she sits–his eyes darting around the room to make sure that there aren’t any lurking handmaidens to catch them. When he finds nothing, he bends down to kiss her forehead and both cheeks, before brushing his lips on hers–proper and sweet. It still feels a tinge scandalous, almost, to do such a thing to the lady that now sits in her coronation dress and is about to undergo the holiest ceremony known to man. But judging from her soft hum in reply and her content expression, he thinks that she doesn’t mind in the slightest.

Her bare hand reaches for his gloved one, feeling her warmth seeping through the fabric.

“Have you eaten breakfast?” She asks.

“No, ma’am.”

“Link! You must. We have a long day ahead of us,” she protests. “Grab some scones over there on the table. There’s coffee, too, but it’s already cold, I’m afraid.”

He smiles at her, heart buzzing from her concern over his hunger. He walks away from her to the far end of the room, where two armchairs and a table rest against a floor-to-ceiling window. Taking a scone in his hand and a knife in the other, he cuts the pastry in half before spreading what seems like wildberry jam onto it. As he takes a bite, he hears fabric shuffling behind him and turns around to find Zelda walking towards the foot of her bed to sit there. The sight could easily be mistaken for a bride—dressed all in white, waiting for her husband to join her in their wedding bed. It stings him a little, knowing that such a moment cannot happen, at least not soon. 

When he quickly finishes three scones and takes a swig from Zelda’s leftover coffee, he takes the Sword from his shoulder and leans it against her bedframe. He approaches her and joins her on the bed’s edge, knees pressed together yet not quite–layers and layers of fabric separating his skin from hers. He aches to touch her, so he takes off the white glove covering his left arm to lace his fingers with hers, feeling the raw silk of her skin. His thumb rests on the pulse on her wrist, a little comforting totem of his ever since she came back home to him after defeating the Demon King. She’s real. She’s here with me.

“I’ve missed you, Zelda,” he says, melancholy laced in his voice. Maybe it sounds stupid to say that he misses her, knowing full well that they had spent every single day in each other’s presence, and yet, it wasn’t the same. They both have drowned themselves in their duties, in the coronation and the grand reopening of Hyrule Castle, that their personal lives have receded into the back of their minds. 

It has been five weeks since they slept in the same bed. Five weeks since they last made love. Of course he misses her.

“I’ve missed you too, Link,” she replies, gaze trained on their intertwined fingers in her lap. “I’m sorry we haven’t been able to spend much time together like we used to.” 

He turns to kiss her temple, softly, careful not to mess up the tight, neat braids. “It’s alright. We both know what we signed up for when you decided to become sovereign.”

With a sigh, she fully leans onto him, her head resting on his shoulder. “I know. Yet a part of me wants to run away today. We can just live out our days in the middle of nowhere, just the two of us,” the sharp angle of her nose digs into his shoulder, now—a welcome sensation. “We can just… make love all day. Bake fruitcakes every day. Do whatever we want, whenever.”

The idea sounds very appealing to Link. If there is a heaven, he thinks it sounds a lot like what she just said. But when all is said and done, he is a realist; and he knows that such a lifestyle will not suffice for either of them. She loves her kingdom and her people, and has been looking forward to truly rebuilding Hyrule for the past two years. And this time around, she will lead with hope and peace, with the right people by her side to help her. 

As for Link, he is content wherever, really. All he wants to do is to spend the rest of his days—long or short it may be—remaining at her side and helping the people of their beloved land. 

“Hey,” he shifts to fully face her. “You’ll be a great queen, I know that. All of us are here today because we believe in you, Zelda. The things that you did for your people—it's colossal. We went from a broken kingdom going through two world-ending wars to a fully functional country with laws and trade deals and an economy and everything in between… It’s all because of you.” He brings up a hand to caress her cheek. “Besides, we can always go to the middle of nowhere to bake fruitcakes and make love all day whenever we’re not busy.”

The nervous pensiveness that marred her face turns into a wide smile with teary eyes, and it takes the world for him to not kiss her and worship her right then and there, the way his body desires. When her smooth hands come up to cup his cheeks, thumbs idly brushing against his freshly-shaven face, something within him breaks a little. 

“You talk as if you weren’t there by my side, every step of the way.” She reminds him. “I’m able to be where I am today because of you, because we fought for this place together.”

He catches her palms in his own, bringing them to his lips and kissing every knuckle, each graze an unspoken I love you, I love you, never leave me, marry me, marry me. 

When his eyes flutter open to look into her forest greens, he sees the apology, the sorrow that rests behind those eyes. The ongoing war between their duties and desire hangs heavily in the air around them. The pang in his chest is ever present, longing to be relieved by being able to love her completely, to not have to sneak around just for a few minutes of hushed intimacy. 

But Link is a patient man. His queen was once a dragon, traversing the skies quietly for thousands and thousands of years before he brought her home. To wait a few more years to marry her pales in comparison to what she had done. It should be all right, or at least that’s what he tells himself when he sleeps alone at night.

The pregnant silence is broken by the ringing of the bell tower. One hour left until the ceremony. 

Before Link can get up, Zelda leans in and lands a kiss on his lips, slow and languid. Her delicate hands in his hold tremble. Teeth ever so slightly catch his bottom lip that he couldn’t help but lightly gasp—a river of yearning precariously dammed by a sense of duty.

She pulls away to rest her forehead on his. “I’ll see you at the Sanctum?”

A wistful smile graces his lips. “I’ll see you at the Sanctum.”

***

“All rise for Her Majesty, Queen Zelda.”

Every attendant, with the exception of the already-standing Royal Guards, heeds the command by the High Priestess—rising from their seats in anticipation of the Queen’s arrival. They fill in the rows and rows of benches, separated in the middle to make way for the aisle leading to the dais at the front centre of the hall. The first row is occupied by Zelda’s closest friends; Impa, Purah, Robbie, and Paya, followed by the Sages: Chief Riju, King Sidon (and his wife Queen Yona), Tulin, and Yunobo. The rows behind, meanwhile, are taken by various village chiefs, royal advisors, and other notable figures of Hyrule. While the rest of the nation can’t fit in the Sanctum, Zelda had requested the coronation committee to prepare the half-finished Castle Town to house as many spectators as possible for a meet-and-greet after the ceremony.

Link stands alone in front of his men—back straight, chin up, and fists still at his sides—to the left of the dais. Across from where he and the guards are stationed, the kids in the choir stand begin singing ancient hymns and songs, heavenly voices echoing and reverbing throughout the Sanctum.

All murmurs and whispers from the spectators immediately hush upon Zelda’s entry into the Sanctum, her steps slow and deliberate as she nears the dais—leaving only the divine melodies of the choir to fill up the room. Page boys of every race follow behind her, holding the long train of her coronation gown. Her eyes are firmly trained on the throne atop the raised platform. Not once does she turn her head or even avert her unflinching gaze to meet any pair of the hundreds of eyes that behold her. Yet, when she steps up onto the stage, her face turns just enough for her emeralds to meet his ocean blues—a fleeting second of acknowledgement, of encouragement:

You can do this. I’m here with you.

He could stay looking into her eyes forever, but then she turns to face the throne once again and the High Priestess standing beside it.

When her feet are still and firm on the dais, the page boys leave her to retreat to the back of the hall, the choir turns silent, and the High Priestess, at last, begins the ceremony.

“We are gathered here today, in the middle of this holy land, to welcome a new age; a new age that shall be filled with prosperity and peace. In this very Sanctum, we come to crown a queen who shall guide our kingdom toward a bright, bright future. 

“Hyrule has seen many evils since its beginnings eons ago. Calamity once ravaged this land, and as a people, we were mired in despair. Yet through all those tragedies, we must remember: this land was first built from love, love from the Mother Goddess herself. And today, we stand as living testaments to the power of love, of strong faith, in the face of adversity. And so what an honor it is to oversee this momentous occasion in anointing our new sovereign.”

As her opening speech draws to a close, three other Priestesses approach her, each holding a red velvet pillow on which a sacred object rests. One of them possesses the Hyrulean Royal Diadem (which once belonged to the late Queen and had been salvaged from the castle a few years ago), the other a golden flask filled with what Link suspects to be the holy oil, and the last one a ceremonial scepter with the Triforce symbol on its head. 

The High Priestess retrieves the golden flask and stands in front of Zelda. The countless rehearsals have so effectively drilled the ceremony’s procedures into Link’s mind that he knows that what will come next is arguably the most solemn, most sacred part of the ritual. 

“Is Your Majesty willing to take the oath?” the High Priestess asks.

Zelda nods. “I do.”

“Very well, repeat after me,” the High Priestess says. “I, Zelda Celestina Bosphoramus Hyrule,”

His queen’s voice wavers at first. “…I, Zelda Celestina Bosphoramus Hyrule,”

“...Vow to protect this land and all the beings that dwell within,”

“Vow to protect this land and all the beings that dwell within…” the monarch repeats. She has done that many times over, Link thinks.

“Be guided by the Mother Goddess in my holy mission to lead this kingdom,”

Her green eyes are almost fiery, now—her voice determined. “Be guided by the Mother Goddess in my holy mission to lead this kingdom,”

“For as long as I shall live.”

A resolute smile graces her face. “For as long as I shall live.”

The High Priestess’ lips turned upwards, too—pride blossoming on her expression—before unscrewing the flask and wetting her thumb with the holy oil. She then raises the finger to hover in between Zelda’s brows.

“Your head, anointed by holy oil,” the thumb finally brushes against her skin, and roams down to her palms—another brush of the oil. “Your hands, anointed by holy oil,” then travels just above her bosom. Final brush. “Your heart, anointed by holy oil,” the High Priestess’ hand retracts back, marking an ending to the sacred ritual. “As the Queens that have come before you; anointed and sanctified to be sovereign of the Kingdom of Hyrule.”

The golden flask is screwed close, and laid back onto the red pillow held up by one of the Priestesses. The others carrying the crown and the scepter come to stand on either side of the throne, beckoning for the newly-anointed queen to sit on her birthright.

Once she is seated, the High Priestess lifts the crown and puts it snug on her head. Link wonders if the diadem sits heavily around her skull. If she could sense the magnitude of the symbol that now she possesses.

Next, the ceremonial scepter is given to Zelda, and she takes it in her right hand, her fingers wrapping tightly around the embellished gold metal, holding it in front of her torso.

There she is, in her divine splendor, with a crown on her heavenly head and a scepter in her celestial hand and holy oil slathered on her holy skin—a Goddess who has so gracefully descended upon this realm to bless mere mortals like him with her presence. Such godlike sight should be forbidden for ordinary men to behold, but by Hylia, he cannot bring himself to look away.

The High Priestess stands aside and turns to face the audience, baring the monarch for all to see.

“All hail sage lady, Hylia’s daughter, our glorious Zelda Celestina Bosphoramus Hyrule,” the High Priestess proclaims. “Long live the Queen!”

“Long live the Queen!” The crowd roars in unison, erupting in a chorus of applause and cheers, echoing all around them. It’s almost deafening, really—that Link thinks this might be the loudest the Sanctum has ever been. He could even hear the roars from outside; the spectators in Castle Town must have also joined the rallying cry to honor their new queen.

After what seems like a whole hour, the High Priestess raises her right hand up in the air, motioning for the crowd to quiet. The other Priestess retrieves the royal scepter from Zelda’s grip, replacing it with a navy blue box with the royal insignia impressed on the surface.

Here we go. 

While Link is no stranger to knightly vows and uttering oaths in public, this one feels more monumental than the last one that he made a hundred odd years ago. Even after multiple rehearsals, he feels his heart rate rise from anticipation, from the imminence of his part of the procession.

“As with any newly-anointed monarch, a Head Knight is chosen to safeguard, shield, and defend the sovereign in upholding her holy mission. To protect the Queen is to protect the Crown, and to protect the Crown is to protect the land. Thus, it is the second most sacred duty in the kingdom, just below the monarch’s.” She turns to Zelda. “Will Her Majesty make known of her chosen Head Knight?”

His queen stands up. “As sovereign, I have chosen my protector, my swordsman, Commander of the Royal Guard, the Hero of Hyrule, Sir Link.”

All eyes dart to him as he leaves his station to make way to the dais, heart in his throat, palms perspiring. The significance of the moment that now unravels before him finally dawns upon him; his undying loyalty will be witnessed by the whole nation, his utmost wish to always be by her side will be consecrated until his soul leaves his body for good. 

With resolve, he stands before the raised platform, gaze fixed on his Queen— his Zelda. Her expression is a tapestry of pride and adoration, and he wants nothing more than to kneel before her, to openly profess his love for her the only way that a knight to a queen could. So he does; his body lowers onto the floor, Sword unslung from the crook of his shoulder to lay flat in front of him, his knees digging into the slight softness of the carpet. His eyes are trained onto the ornate scabbard in front of him, afraid that he might implode if he looks at her for a second too long. 

“Sir Link, are you willing to accept the sacred duty of protecting your Queen?” The High Priestess asks.

“I do,” he answers. It’s probably the easiest question he has ever had to answer.

“Very well, then. You may voice your oath.”

He clears his throat, inhales—then the practiced words pour from his lips.

“I vow to become your liege man of life and limb; truth and faith I will bear unto you. My soul and my sword are yours…” he pauses, finally tilting his head up to meet Zelda’s eyes, “in this life and the next, until the end of time.”

Her lips quiver but her voice is steady when she replies: “Thank you, Sir Link. Please rise.”

His gaze doesn’t leave hers as he rises, the hilt of the Sword in his hand. Her feet step forward to the edge of the dais where he awaits. When she is finally within arm’s reach, she opens the blue box, revealing a golden medallion with the Triforce embossed on its surface. He has seen it before, on the lapel of his former Commander before the Calamity—one of its kind and only awarded to the Head Knight of the monarch. She takes the medallion out and passes on the box to one of the Priestesses before facing him once more.

“I hereby bestow the Royal Hyrulean Order of Sacred Gallantry upon you, my Head Knight, as a recognition for your outstanding service to your kingdom, and your oath to your monarch.”

Her hands rise to his chest, the red ribbon of the medallion trapped between her thumbs and forefingers, and finally, finally he could feel her digits pressed just below his collarbone—his skin sizzling even through his coat. Her eyes dart down to work on pinning the needle against the thick fabric, teeth biting her lower lip in concentration, fingers barely trembling as the medallion is secured onto him. Her eyes flit back up, meeting his, and for a moment he can’t sense the audience in the room, nor their attention on him—it is just the two of them in the heart of the Sanctum: knight and princess, hero and goddess, boy and girl, Link and Zelda.

She leans down, then, before he even realizes it, and lands a chaste kiss on the cheek. His eyes flutter shut for a second, the embossed surface of the Sword’s scabbard imprinting onto his palm as he holds on tight to it, willing every fiber of his being to not give in and pull her into his arms. When she withdraws, a soft, tender smile unfurls across her lips.

“May the Goddesses shine upon you forevermore, Sir Link.”

For him, it’s not difficult to think that they may have already blessed him for life. 

***

The ballroom is as packed as it can be after the ceremony came to its conclusion. All that’s left to do is to celebrate, to dance, and to feast. Zelda had specifically designed the celebration part of the day to not be too formal, unlike her predecessors. The throne is not present in the room; instead, she has opted to put multiple round dining tables where her guests could sit wherever they please, and strike up a conversation with her whenever they wish. After all, she has spent the years after the Calamity just being a scholar and a teacher above all else, refusing to let her princesshood keep her away from being directly involved in various Hyrulean communities. 

Link has seen it firsthand; how she taught the children at the school in Hateno and insisted that they call her Miss Zelda instead of Princess Zelda. How she mingled with cooks all over the country and shared with them her favorite recipes that he’d taught her. How she helped any random passerby that might be in need, no matter how big or small the problem.

Slowly but surely the kingdom rises from its ashes, naturally rebuilt after their queen’s very own image—kind, compassionate, and loving.

Link spies her from across the room; she no longer wears her coronation dress; instead, she is wrapped in a corseted royal gown, dark blue with a neckline that shows off the taut skin of her collarbone. The circlet still rests around her head, golden and glimmering under the fluorescent lighting of the ballroom. Her elbows rest on the clothed roundtable, listening intently to a woman (a royal advisor, he notes,) while sandwiched between Riju and Impa. He wonders what they might be talking about. While he is almost always involved in these so-called 'royal huddles' (he is the commander of the military, after all,) he notices that there are still topics to which he is not privy. 

He shifts his attention to the middle of the ballroom instead, watching the guests dance and mingle. His friend Sidon (King Sidon, sometimes he has to remind himself,) is swaying gently to the band’s music, with his beloved Yona in his arms. They seem to pay no mind to the people around them—existing only in each other’s presence. Yet everyone could see them for what they are anyway: two simple beings in love. Link’s grip on his glass of mead tightens a little.

When the clock strikes ten, many begin to filter out of the room, bidding everyone else goodbye and going to Zelda to congratulate her once again and thank her for the invitation. She’s all smiles and waves, but from the faint shadows underneath her eyes, he knows that she is feigning tirelessness. 

Some guests stay behind, enjoying one more round (or two) of free wine and beer before finally leaving. In the end, perhaps after another hour, the only ones left in the ballroom are him and Zelda, and the castle staff that begin to clean up after the party. He makes his way to her table from the bar, and she watches him, eyes tired but smiling nonetheless. 

He sets the now empty glass on the table and offers his hand to her.

“Perhaps it is time to rest, Your Majesty.”

She takes his hand; her gloved fingers lying gently on his as she rises from her seat. “Perhaps it is. Would you mind escorting me to my chambers?”

“Not at all.”

She lets go of his hand, then, and his clothed palm almost aches from it. They exit the ballroom and walk through the numerous hallways that eventually lead to her tower. 

“What a day,” she muses as they ascend the final spiral staircase to her chambers. “We spent so much time preparing for this. It feels so strange that it’s finally over.”

“Are you glad?” he asks. 

“I am,” she replies. “I can’t wait to begin the real work, now. The pageantry and grandeur will always stay, I’m afraid. They come with the package when you’re the head of the state. But next week, we will have our first council meeting regarding establishing the first university in Hyrule. That is what I really look forward to, more than my coronation or what have you.”

Always the scholar, his girl. His chest aches a little from pride.

They finally meet the doors to her bedroom, and their feet pause in their tracks. 

“Well, this is me,” she says.

He knows what that means; he plants a kiss on her cheek, bidding her goodnight. But when he turns around, her hand catches his wrist, stopping him.

“Link, I’m not telling you to leave.”

He meets her eyes. What? 

“I want you to…” she gulps. “I want you to stay.”

His fingers tremble in her near-deathly grip. “Are you sure?”

Her reply is a nod; her back leans onto the door and it swings open with her weight. She stares at him the entire time, fingers still wrapped around his hand as she leads them both inside. He follows her (he would follow her no matter what anyway, anywhere she wants him to,) and without a word, his free hand grabs the door handle, closing it behind him. A few inches to the left and he finds the lock, sliding it into place, shielding them from the cruel world outside. That free hand frees the Sword from his side to lean it carefully on the wall next to the door.

She leads him to the middle of the room, slowly, until they stand in front of the already-stoked fireplace, their skin warm from her fireside and something else entirely.

Her grip finally loosens on his wrist, and her hand wanders upwards until they reach his beret, taking it off his head, then throwing it onto the chaise next to the fireplace. Her fingers are buried in his hair before they find the well-worn hair tie, pulling it out and letting his blonde strands fall around him. Her eyes are indecipherable, at first, but then she opens her mouth and holds the teal-blue band between her teeth as she frees her arms from her gloves, tossing them to the floor. His jaw clenches, his arms heavily limp at his sides, simply clueless about what to do with this divine woman that holds such a spell on him.

With her arms bare, she takes his tie from her mouth to slide it onto her left forearm, and something about the simple sight of his hair tie on the pale of her wrist sends a thousand electric keese low in his stomach. 

She presses her palms flat on his chest, smoothing out the fabric there until they drift to his collarbone, undoing the tie that holds his cape together. It slides off his shoulder with ease, his body already feeling lighter from the lack of it. If she strips more of his clothes, he’ll feel so weightless he’s certain he could fly. 

Her fingers rest on the crook of his shoulders, thumbs drawing nonsense patterns on the delicate skin of his neck. The feeling of her digits on his bare throat jolts him enough out of his trance, and he finally indulges in his body’s wishes, his arms slithering around her waist, pulling her flush against him.

“Link,” she breathes out. “I’ve missed you. I have missed you so much.” Her right hand travels north to his jawline, caressing him there so softly. A tongue wets her lower lip, and something untamed within him threatens to break free. “Every cell in my body misses you. I can’t bear another night without you.” Her bosoms swell and fall in the confines of her corseted gown, and he prays to the Three to grant him the strength to not immediately tear the dress off of her. “I can’t bear another night without you,” she repeats, her utterance a whisper. 

Behind her back, he makes quick work to take off his gloves—skin itching from its basic need to touch her, feel her. All the layers suddenly become too thick and too constricting and he has to get out of them or else he might combust. At last with naked hands he cups her face, thumbs ghosting over the red of her cheeks, the bow of her bottom lip. When her breath hitches upon his digit resting on the corner of her mouth, he fears that they may have ventured onto the precipice of something dangerous.

Yes, Link is a patient man, but at times, he can be quite selfish. And right now, what with her explicit admission of needing him close, her inability to sleep another night without him—he wants nothing more than to have her completely. Right now, he is no hero. Just a man starved, dying of thirst. 

“Zelda,” his voice is a low and rough thing. “I feel the same way.” Somehow, logic dawns on his brain. Bad timing, he knows. “But we agreed two years ago to keep this private until you’re settled enough as queen.”

“I asked my advisors today,” she replies. “One subject led to another until we discussed the matter of suitors. I asked them, what if the queen already has the perfect candidate for such a position? And they said…” she clears her throat. “…Perhaps it is the natural next step to finally make the hero a prince.”

His stomach flips, chasing hope. “They know?”

“I think they do,” she smiles. “Maybe not to the full extent, but how could they not? There’s no one else in this realm for me but you.” His heart is doing somersaults now, battering against his ribcage, wanting to escape to be with its other half. “I’ve been a fool, really. All this time I thought the people would talk, would find something wrong with it. But it is the most sensible thing.”

He exhales. “Does this mean we—“

“Yes.” She whispers. 

That dam he built a month ago finally fractures—a violent torrent that flows out of his mouth as his lips crash on hers, like waves on a shore under a full moon. A small moan reverberates from her throat and it sends him reeling, reeling for more. He claws at the velvet fabric on her back, and feels the tugging of her deft fingers as she works to detach the aiguillettes and undo his belt—all the while her lips start to slightly part, welcoming his tongue and hot breath. 

With more and more of his garments stripped, an avalanche of clothing onto the floor, all that’s left is his tunic, pants, and boots. To take them off is the greatest challenge, because it requires him to pull away from her, breaking their kiss, breaking the tending of the embers in their mouths. But if he made that small sacrifice, he’d finally be able to feel her, skin to skin, fire to fire, truly and completely. His brain likes that reasoning, so he withdraws.

“We have to…” he starts, willing his mouth to speak instead of zeroing in on hers again. “We have to take it all off.”

She pulls away from him. Smiles at him. “Good thinking.”

His brain short-circuits a little, but musters up a nod. He plops down on the chaise to unlace his boots as she steps out of her shoes, pulling off her circlet and settling it on her vanity desk. It’s really, really difficult to focus on his task when she’s peeling off her earrings, her eyes fixed in the mirror—on her fingers’ work in loosening the metal pin. He wonders if she knows how devastatingly beautiful she is. If she knows what she does to him.

With the right boot off he shifts to the left one, come on, do it quick—but whatever morsels of sanity left in him perish when she appears in his periphery, kneels before him and begins helping him unlace his left boot.

It’s not right; it’s downright blasphemous. There is a goddess in this room and she is on her knees, her hands on his boot that has been dirtied by the ground, when it should have been him kneeling before her, taking off her shoes, kissing her holy feet.

“Zelda, you don’t have to do that,” he breathes.

“I just want you out of your clothes quickly, Link,” she grabs his calf with firm hands, and tugs it off of him. “Forgive a woman for taking initiative, will you?”

She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know what she does to him. 

He takes her face in his palms, leans down and kisses her, desperate. She sighs against him and melts and melts, protests—“Link, come on, I want to get in bed with you,” she laughs, but his throat is dry and she is water and he needs her. He doesn’t know what to do with himself.

She retreats, taking his hands in hers and kissing them, before letting them go. With one swift move he takes his tunic off, tossing it aside, and finds Zelda staring at his bare torso, her gaze sharp behind those long eyelashes. She rises to her feet, then, and before he realizes what she was about to do she hikes up the hem of her gown, revealing her sheer white stockings, and his fingers immediately fly to the garters, loosening them and shimmying them down her legs. 

Miles and miles of skin in front of him, and it truly takes the world for him to not consume her right there, but he can’t deny his queen further. She was kind enough to take the boots off her knight, and so he has to return the favor, make quick work of undressing her. 

He stands and maneuvers her around until her back faces him, and finally his fingers find the knot that cages her body from him, and tug it loose. With one trembling hand he brushes her golden locks aside to bare the crook of her neck, and brushes his lips there, feeling her tense and hearing her gasp. All that’s left to undo is the gown itself, and even though the urgency rattles inside his chest, he takes his time to slowly push the fabric off her shoulders, her waist, her hips. He may be a starving man but that is no excuse to treat the godly being between his mortal hands hastily.

When he realizes that she has no bodice on inside her dress, his mind keels over. When she steps away from him to step out of the bundle of fabric piled on the floor, his heart shatters. There is a goddess in this room and she has nothing on except her cotton briefs, and he wonders if he deserves this, deserves her—but he has fought and lost and won, bore the scars to prove his devotion, and he allows himself to think that maybe, this is his reward.

Zelda spins in his arms, gracing her gaze on him once more. Her breasts are pressed onto his chest, and he pulls her closer, leaving no room between them.

He kisses her hot on her neck, her fingers weaved in his hair—whispers, “I’m the luckiest bastard alive,” he lands another one below her left ear, feeling her shudder against him and fingers tighten in his hair, “I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you.”

“Link, please,” she breathes, her lips chasing his. “I need you. I need you—”

That’s it, he thinks. He grabs her hands and slings them around his neck, telling her “hold on tight,” as he leans down, grips firm her backside, and hauls her upwards. She gasps but hangs on, tight as he told her to, and kisses him rough and true. A few steps forward and his knees finally meet the foot of her bed, cradling her in his arms and laying her onto the mattress. It’s only when she is fully settled that he lets her go, covering her body with his—their mouths still partaking in a passionate war.

His lips descend to her jawline, to her neck and clavicle, nipping and grazing lightly with teeth each time, and finally his mouth closes around a pert nipple and his tongue does the rest. She mewls, her hand leading his face to her other breast and of course he indulges her—giving it equal treatment.

Link journeys lower and lower until his lips meet the waistband of her underwear, and in anticipation, Zelda lifts her hips to aid him in pulling the wretched fabric off.

All the blood in his body rushes south. Her legs are parted open, beckoning him to devour her. With one last look into her eyes—her pupils blown and emeralds almost gone—he sinks his face into her soft, wet folds. It feels like coming home.

The sound that she lets out is loud and obscene and reminiscent of his name, and he presses his tongue flat onto her center, licking a wet stripe up before stopping, his lips still touching her. 

“The court may find me a fitting suitor, but I think they’d still talk if they heard us,” he says breathlessly, her hips wriggling under his grip. 

“Oh, Gods, Link—” she arches underneath him, and he knows he shouldn’t tease her too much (five weeks, five weeks they’ve waited for this,) but he couldn’t help himself, not when her pleas are so sweet-sounding. “Please.”

“Just keep it quiet, alright? I don’t want anyone questioning you,” he reminds her, and when she nods, he descends and continues his oral ministrations. To his surprise, Zelda does quiet; her noises have reduced to sighs and breathless moans—much to his chagrin, really. He loves her loud and vocal, but the castle has thin walls and a hundred other people reside within it, and his duty to uphold her honor prevails. 

He slips a finger in, curling it upwards, the way he knows would take her to the edge of the cliff. She whimpers quietly, and when he looks up to watch her he can’t help but to let out a whimper against her, too—a sight so catastrophically beautiful it makes him hurt all over. Her hand is on her mouth, barring the noise from coming out of her, the braids on her glistening forehead a little loose and undone. Her eyes meet his, half-opened and dazed, and he thinks yes, this is his reward. 

Her free hand rakes through his hair, pulling him away.

“Stop,” she half-sobs. “I want— I want you.”

While Link can happily feast on her all night, who is he to deny his queen of her wishes?

He brushes his lips against her swollen pearl one more time for good measure, earning him a loud gasp from her, and stands on his feet to unbutton his trousers. Zelda shoots up from where she lied, scooting forward to help him pull down the pants. Her fingers hook around the waistband and tugs downwards, springing him free, aching and hard. 

The fabric falls with a soft thud on the floor, and as he steps out her soft hands wrap around him. He growls, knees threatening to buckle underneath him from the shockwave that emits from her fingers. Her lips find a gnarled, raised scar on his sternum, ghosting all over. It’s the scar that felled him a century or so ago—the scar that made her cradle his body into her arms, raindrops and tears rolling down her face, her head resting on his weak, dying heart.

“What have I done to deserve you?” She asks quietly, and he wants to laugh. Because surely, surely she must know the answer to that. But then she looks up, her eyes shining, and suddenly Link wants to cry.

He grabs her hands, leading them away from him to the mattress as he moves to cover her body with his own. He attempts to hold his weight with his arms to not crush her, but her fingers dig into his back, stingingly sweet, pulling him down, chest to chest, body to body, leaving no space in between. 

They kiss and kiss and kiss and moan into each other’s open mouths when his length presses just right against her center. Their cheeks are damp with tears.

He pulls away, resting his forehead against hers. “You… You’re Zelda. The moment you were born, you have already deserved me.” 

Her features wilt with something akin to love and adoration and sadness all combined. He aches, wants to smooth the furrow between her brows, the crinkle of her eyes. He plants a kiss on the corner of her mouth, whispers her name again and again like it’s the first word he’d learned as an infant (it probably was.) 

Her nails imprint more crescent moons onto his shoulder blades as he aligns himself against her, and finally, finally he eases his way in, slowly claiming every millimeter of her. She is warm and wet around him, soft and unyielding, perfect in every way. They cry quietly.

They stay unmoving for a moment, save for the rise and fall of their lungs, the exhales that gust over their faces. Zelda’s hand reaches up to brush his blonde wisps away from his forehead and he almost chokes—all that love and devotion he’s harbored for her rising in his throat.

“I don’t think I’m going to last very long,” he murmurs, half-laughing. Five weeks. Five weeks since they last made love, since his hunger took hold of him. 

Her smile is tearful and wide. “You won’t be the only one.”

She begins shifting and pushing against him, and he knows what that means. He eases out just enough before pushing into her again, finding the rhythm that makes her desperately hold back a loud moan by kissing him instead. With each push and pull he feels her spine arch, muscles pulled taut like a bowstring, and his body does the thing it knows very well—follow her. The tension continues to coil tighter within him and he chases it, again and again, sinking into her, feeling her hips cant up each time to meet him halfway. His fingers travel down once more, caressing the swollen bud above where they’re joined, coaxing more quiet whimpers and loud exhales out of her. He inhales and inhales and inhales. 

They’ve stopped kissing, but their mouths are open and on each other, merely breathing in each other, quieting each other. He knows they’re not far, now—each movement is more frantic and messy than the last, and Gods, he longs to take her with him, fall through that white-hot chasm together. 

“Zelda,” he breathes, retreating just enough so he can commit her to memory, no matter how many times they have done this before—imprinting each freckle, each lash, each wrinkle onto the planes of his mind. He wants to say I love you you’re so beautiful my life is yours my life is yours but his tongue fails him. He hopes that her name on his lips is enough for her to understand.

“Link,” she pants against him, warm and hot, whispers “Don’t go,” and he knows what she means.

Her knees draw higher and her ankles lock tighter behind him, and with a silenced cry she comes apart underneath him, her insides convulsing around the length of him, and he follows suit in the next second—spilling into her and feeling the rage of his heartbeat where he’s still sheathed in her, breaths slowing.

Link goes pliant atop her, and Zelda welcomes the weight in her arms—his head nuzzled in the sweaty crook of her neck, moving his lips ever so slightly to kiss her skin. Her hand rests on his nape, fingers twining with the frizzy blonde locks. 

This is where he belongs, where he wants to live out his days. Her body is the law of gravity embedded deep within him. He’ll gladly follow and fall to her each time.

A kiss to her forehead, and he finally withdraws, earning him a slight whine from his queen. He rolls over and swings his legs to the edge of the bed, standing up and offering a hand to her. She smiles, taking it, joining him to clean up in her washroom. 

When they return to lie in bed, their bodies are quick to assume the position that they often find themselves in at their little house in Hateno—his ear above her ribcage that curves around her beating heart, her arms cradling his head, tucking him under her chin. They converse about nothing and everything, perhaps just for the sake of talking, of listening to each other’s voices, lulling themselves to sleep. He wonders how he has survived the past weeks, drifting off in the barracks without her. He wonders how once upon a time he lived without her at all.

A whole nation awaits him, now—that, he knows. Though that heavy weight that once sat on his chest is mostly gone, much work is to be done. His queen has to raise the subject of her suitor officially in court, setting forth the beginning of their courtship (well, in public.) And, of course, the most exciting part of it all—to drop down on one knee and ask her to marry him, to finally be bound together in every imaginable way possible. They must think about a wedding celebration, too—one that would be celebrated across all corners and valleys and mountaintops of Hyrule. 

For now, he wills his breath to slow and listens to the soft crackling of her fireplace. He will have to wake up early—earlier than he usually does—to evade the maids’ morning errands, but he does not mind that at all. 

Right before he slips into slumber, his mind conjures up a plan to travel to Gerudo Town, to that jewelry store that he had eyed six years ago, before his courage was sufficient enough to unearth the true nature of his feelings towards her.

He dreams of sapphires and emeralds encrusting a gold band.

Chapter Text

Link awakes to warmth, to limbs that are not his, to a faint smell of roses and safflina. The mattress beneath him feels like what he assumes clouds should feel like; soft, cotton-like, yielding to his weight. When his eyelids flutter open, he sees gilded cathedral ceilings and not wooden panels. To his right, heavy, blood-red curtains bar the light of dawn from coming through, faintly washing the chambers in soft early morning light. To his left, the Queen of Hyrule is still fast asleep, her features slack and vulnerable, lips slightly parted.

He realizes that this is the first time he’s ever spent the night in Zelda’s palatial bedchamber. While his memories from before the Calamity are at times scant and fragmented, there is a lingering thread that weaves itself through all those broken pieces: the waiting. He has fallen asleep on the other side of those double doors, slouched against the wall of the hallway, waiting for his then-princess to wake up and scowl at him. His fist has knocked against that smooth wooden surface many, many times—waiting for the echo of her voice, waiting to be let in. A threshold made of treewood that once upon a time separated him from her—the inner machinery of her brain, the silence between her thoughts and her spoken words, the girl behind her godhood. 

Somewhere in the middle, when she finally revealed the little cracks in the walls around her heart, he found himself right underneath that threshold—not quite outside, but not fully inside either. Towards the end, he was a hair’s breadth away from completely crossing it; they became closer, personal demons mingling with each other, hope and dreams and fears whispered into the night in the wilderness of the country. But one day, the Calamity decided to fulfill its plans, and the roof of her bedroom came tumbling down with all the work they had done to let each other in. 

Or so he thought.

When he woke up on that glowing slab, a hundred years after drawing his supposed last breath in the cradle of her arms, he felt a cavity within him, in the shape of something he did not recognize. Slowly but surely, the outline of it began to make sense, and later, when he stood five feet away from her in the field—her dress dirtied by a century's worth of dirt, her golden hair caked with grime—he finally understood whose shape that was.

The doorway to her bedroom in the castle was gone. It didn’t stop them from picking up where they left off. 

Beside him, Zelda stirs and shifts, but doesn’t awake. He quietly slips out of bed, skin cold from where her arms have been before. He makes a beeline to the pile of garments near the chaise—re-donning everything save for the heavy cape. The Sword, a silent witness to what unraveled in this very room last night, still leans against the wall. He takes it, carries it by the leather strap fastened around the scabbard. 

He glances over his shoulder one more time, watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest, her hands lying on the space where he previously slept—perhaps searching for his phantom body.

His blue hair tie is still around her wrist, cerulean stark against the satin white sheet and her pale wrist. He doesn’t dare to take it off her, afraid of waking her up, so he leaves it be. His things are hers, anyway. 

Softly, he unlocks and pushes open the door, and leaves the privacy of their hidden paradise.

***

They don’t talk much about the night following the coronation. They fall back into their rigorous routines—Zelda as Queen, Link as her Head Knight, and Commander of the Military. But it does not instill uncertainty or anxiety within him. 

During the first council meeting after the coronation, Link stations himself beside Zelda, who sits at the head of the long table. As she becomes more animated—discussing the pool of people that might fit to become researchers and professors at Hyrule’s first university—her arm knocks over a stack of papers, scrawled with her cursive writing. He bends down to gather the sheets and pick them up at the same time as she does. She mutters apologies, and he replies it’s fine, don’t worry, until he hands over the nearly-neat stack into her palms and his fingers brush her wrist, touch featherlight. Her gloved hand squeezes his.

Zelda lays the papers back onto the table and feigns innocence, continuing her discussions as normal.

His skin burns.

A few days later, Link asks to borrow the Purad Pad from Zelda. She doesn’t question him; just leads him to her study and retrieves it from a locked drawer. She knows that he only ever asks for it if he needs to quickly travel somewhere far away from her, and yet, she doesn’t pry about the destination. Instead, she just gives it to him—a knowing smile on her lips.

With his travel pouch filled with vials of heat-resistance elixir, a vai outfit, and flushed with rupees, he opens the Pad, clicks a shrine on the map—and rematerializes in Kara Kara Bazaar. 

He uncorks a vial and downs it with one swig. With his body primed for the heat of the desert, he treks the stretch between the Bazaar and Gerudo Town. He finds some ruins about halfway to the city, enough to shield him from any passerby as he changes into the baby blue silk attire—his face half-obscured by the Gerudo veil. 

Although Riju made it explicitly clear that he is welcome in Gerudo Town anytime as a voe, he still feels the scrutinizing eyes on him whenever he visits as himself. He wishes for this trip to remain a low-key affair, so appearing anonymous and vai works best in his favor. 

When he finally arrives at the town, he’s quick to find the corner of the city which features various shops—modists, herbalists, cooks, and other merchants vying for his attention (and money). He ignores them and approaches a stand that boasts a glass enclosure, showcasing all kinds of gems and precious metals.

He recalls being here before—not long after the Calamity came to an end—with Zelda. While she’d browsed for bracelets, he had pointed at a silver ring with a lone sapphire in its middle. 

‘That might look good on you’, he had said.

She had tried it on, then, and at first, the circumference was too big on her ring finger. The merchant came to her aid, measuring the base of her finger, and told her that unfortunately, they didn’t carry that particular ring in Zelda’s size. She had waved the merchant off, then, and bought a bracelet with an opal charm instead. 

Link remembers. Size four. 

When he’d found out then, his brain had done the unthinkable. It dreamt. 

He walks out of Gerudo Town three thousand and five hundred rupees short, with a custom-made ring—a rectangle-cut emerald stone sandwiched in between two smaller square-cut sapphires, set onto a golden band. The jeweler warned him that emeralds are outsourced from distant lands outside of Hyrule, and therefore would cost significantly more than any gemstones that exist within the country. Link shrugged and told her that it was no problem.

He carefully packs the velvet box into his traveling pouch and ditches his Gerudo attire at the same spot where he changed earlier, just behind the ruins of some tall pillars.

With his everyday tunic, trousers, and leathers on, he pulls out the Purah Pad and travels back to Hyrule Castle. 

***

The schedule of a monarch can be a demanding one.

During the two weeks following the coronation, Zelda seldom takes a break. Her day starts very early in the morning—handmaidens swarming her chambers, some carrying trays of breakfast food, some tasked to draw the curtains back, and some immediately preparing her washroom for a thorough shower. When she is finally prim and proper, Sanna, a soft-spoken young woman from Hateno who has taken the mantle of Chief Royal Advisor and is exceptionally knowledgeable in pre-Calamity history (despite being born eight decades after the fact), greets her at the door to walk her through the day’s planned affairs.

Link is beside her almost all the time. 

When he isn’t mentoring his knights-in-training or holding meetings with the rest of the Royal Guards to receive reports from the various outposts all over Hyrule, he finds himself accompanying her through her activities—be it her audiences with her advisors or various village chiefs, to her quiet gardening routine, to eating dinner inside her study when she’s too preoccupied with her research to leave the room. Besides, his role as a Commander of the Military warrants him having frequent one-on-one with his queen, which usually takes place in her study. He finds those meetings to be the ones he looks forward to the most. Often, they find themselves veering off from discussions about castle security to I’d never let anything happen to you to mingling hot breaths and nails scratching countertops behind locked doors.

In hindsight, it might look like they are falling back to their usual set-up—sneaking around, lingering touches, not quite in the light. But there’s an underlying expectation beneath the surface; a mutual understanding that this less-than-desirable circumstance will soon meet its end. He does not mind; he stays patient. A velvet box awaits him, awaits her, in his drawer in the barracks. 

Two days after their most recent study room rendezvous, during a castle-wide meeting, Zelda reveals a plan that seems to surprise everyone, even Link.

“I shall make my way to the Spring of Courage in two days to commune with the Goddess,” she declares. “With you all, I trust that the castle and everything else will be in good hands. It will only be a few days—three days, at most.” She tilts her head sideways and up, meeting his eyes as he stands next to her seat. “Would your schedule permit you to accompany me, Sir Link?”

He clears his throat, and nods. “Of course, Your Majesty.”

Her forest green gaze softens before she faces the staff once more. “Very well. Meeting adjourned, then. Thank you, everyone,” she says, and the staff reply by bowing in unison before leaving the audience room. He helps tidy up the papers scattered across the desk in hopes to give the impression that he is staying behind to aid his queen. When the last staff member leaves, he approaches the door, closing it shut.

Zelda chuckles from behind him. 

“You needn’t do that, you know. Everyone knows we are quite close.” He turns around to find her lips turned upward, smiling in part amusement, part adoration. “You’re allowed to stay behind in this room with me.”

He can’t help but smile back at her. She is right; they did live under the same roof for almost a decade before finally moving back to the castle, and the whole village knew it. Goddess, the whole country knew it. Whatever the others think never really mattered—Zelda and Link always come in one package, joined at the hip. Yet, something about being back in this grand palace awakens the knightly etiquette that lies dormant in his bones, harkening back to the days when he would stay ten paces behind her, hands at his sides, lips sealed shut.

“Old habits die hard, I guess,” he shrugs as she stands up to meet him in the middle of the room. Her hands find his, raising them to her lips, kissing his knuckles. He gasps softly. “Zelda, the room is not locked.”

She hums as she lands the last peck on his right pinky, sending sparks through his skin. 

“I’m just thanking my Head Knight properly. No one should object to that, I am the Queen,” she smirks, but when she sees his face—clearly etched with the worry of being caught—she laughs, dropping his hands from her grip and shaking her head in mirth. “Sorry. I just have this immense need to touch you all the time.”

At that, his heart breaks a little. He stops her from retreating and takes her hands in his, putting one palm over his heart, and the other to rest on his cheek. She draws closer until their fronts press against one another, trapping their hands between the fabric of her dress and his thin tunic. His heartbeat hammers inside his ribcage. 

“Never, ever, apologize for that,” he whispers against her lips. “I ache to touch you, hold you, always. I’m just worried about prying eyes, that’s all.”

“Link…” she exhales.

He kisses her, restrained and close-mouthed, eyes pinched shut to prevent all the want from spilling out of him right there and then. Her hand fists at his tunic, and her lips are firm against his—trembling from suppressed desire. Neither dares to open their mouths, to go further, because he knows her and she knows him. If they go beyond this, any leftover caution within them will immediately evaporate—unlocked doors and thin walls and nosy castle staff be damned. 

He’s the first one to pull away, and he couldn’t help but be a little proud of himself. If there should’ve been a reason for him to receive an honor medallion as he did three weeks ago, it shouldn’t have been for defeating evil twice; it should’ve been for having the Goddess-given strength to pull away from her when his whole body is screaming not to. 

His forehead rests against hers—their breaths warm on each other. He opens his eyes to find hers staring back at him, pupils dilated, teeth biting down her flushed lip. 

“I can’t wait to go to the spring with you,” she says. 

Right. Amidst the bloodrush within his veins, he has forgotten to ask her about their upcoming trip. 

“Why do you want to go to the spring?”

She leans away from him, pausing for a moment before replying, “I just haven’t properly prayed in a while. I think… I think after everything, I ought to thank Her.” 

Link recalls the month after they had defeated Calamity Ganon, when they journeyed to Mount Lanayru, braving the extreme cold, to pray at the Spring of Wisdom. That was… eight years ago. Time flies, he finds. 

“Any reason why Spring of Courage in particular?” He asks. Come to think of it, the most convenient spring for her to pray at would be the Spring of Power; while being in the proximity of the Rist Peninsula sends a dull ache in his chest, they could stay for a night at their home in Tarrey Town before traveling further to North Akkala Valley. They wouldn’t need to set up camp near the spring; the pilgrimage would be short and convenient. 

Zelda withdraws completely from his embrace. “It just seems right,” she answers, her eyes flitting about the room, not quite meeting his gaze. While he does wonder why she is set on that particular spring, he trusts her plan and doesn’t press on further.

“It’ll be nice, you and I on the road again,” he breaks the silence after a beat. Her lips turn upwards at his words. She leans in once more to land a kiss on his lips—too quick to his liking, frankly, but he’ll take what he can get. 

They exit the audience room side by side, and split at the grand stairway—Zelda going upstairs to her study, and Link heading downstairs to head for the gatehouse. Before the marble banisters separate them, he catches her hand with his, thumb pad drawing circles on the inside of her wrist. He’s getting a bit bold, he knows, but he’s only a mortal after all. No one is immune to her intoxicating presence, not even the so-called Hero of Hyrule.  

“Dinner in your study tonight?” He asks, cheeks warming up.

“Of course,” the Queen flashes him a grin. “I expect nothing less, Commander.”

***

Before sunrise, Link has already tacked up Zelda’s beloved golden mare Atena and his own steed Coffee. As he scans the saddles to make sure they are fastened right, he hears footsteps approaching the stable and turns around to find Zelda in her brown riding jacket and beige breeches, followed by her handmaid Malena, who carries her queen’s traveling pack in one hand and an oil lantern in the other. She hands the bag to Link, and he thanks her before securing it onto Atena. 

He offers his hand to Zelda to help her mount, and she takes it—gloved hand warm on his bare fingers. When she is settled on the saddle, he finally mounts Coffee.

“Take care, Your Majesty, Sir Link!” Malena says. Zelda waves at her before Atena starts its trot, hooves clacking noisily against the cobblestone. Link rides behind her as they pass by the first gatehouse and through the grand archway of the main entrance. They skip passing through Castle Town by taking a detour around the construction site, and once they gain ample distance from the castle, he catches up to her and rides by her side.

The morning air is brisk on their faces despite the summer season, but he welcomes the chill—a sign that the wilderness will soon envelop them, leaving behind the extravagance and comfort of castle life. They ride and ride as the sunlight graces the kingdom, keeping a steady pace on their steeds until they reach Whistling Hill. They halt near a small forest of trees not far from the hill—a perfect place to rest and have an early lunch. They dismount their respective steeds, guiding the gentle creatures by the reins and tying them to a trunk. Happy neighs emit from them as they find a shallow swath of water to drink from and patches of grass to graze on. 

Link takes out a waterskein and their packed lunch from his pouch—meat pies that he cooked early in the morning to bring on their journey. Zelda lays a wide sheet on the ground before lowering herself down and leaning against a tree. He settles right beside her, legs crossed and knees touching. 

As they enjoy their meals, they speak about nothing in particular, merely enjoying the warm summer breeze and bathing in the pleasure of each other’s company. He finds it so incredibly natural, something embedded deep within his being, to be out in nature with her, bodies close, accompanied by no one except the birds that chirp overhead and the foxes that creep around. No curious, prying eyes, no pomp nor excess grandeur—simply a boy and a girl sitting on the earth of the land they have devoted themselves to.

The sun hangs high in the sky when they are finished with their lunch. With quick ease, he tidies their things and puts them back into their packs before leading Atena and Coffee into the field, prepared to continue their journey. 

They ride further south, meeting the bank of Hylia River before turning to cross Proxim Bridge. The air noticeably thickens as they make their way around the flooded ruins of Deya Village—the back of his neck starting to sweat from the heat and humidity. As they ride up Farosh Hills, the sun has hidden behind fat, gray clouds, casting a dark shadow over the swampy lands that sprawl in front of them. They slow down into a trot as they pass through Damel Forest, continuing until they come upon Dracozu River, riding along the riverbank to the head of it, where the Spring of Courage awaits them.

Once they near the dragon’s maw they stop, dismounting their horses once more to let them freely roam and rest near the lakefront. Link retrieves their camp gear, setting up their tent right at the center of the land that bleeds into Dracozu Lake. 

As he finishes stringing up jars of luminous stones inside the roof of their tent for lighting, thunder roars from above them, reverberating throughout the ground. 

“Hah, a storm is coming,” Zelda remarks from behind him. “How fitting.”

He casts a glance at her, wondering what she meant by it, but she doesn’t clarify; she simply looks up to the gray sky above, her green eyes bright and steely. 

As if welcoming them into its domain, rain starts to pour over Faron Grasslands, violent and torrential. They duck into the tent, taking shelter underneath the waterproofed fabric. He fastens the flaps of the tent, keeping out any moisture. 

“Are you going to wait until the rain lets up?” He asks as he settles onto the bedroll, right next to her.

“Link,” she says, and the serious tone of her voice causes him to look her way. “I plan for us to go together.”

He raises his brows. “To pray?”

“Yes,” a shy smile unfurls across her lips. “I want to pray with you.” She shifts to the side to reach for her traveling pack, retrieving a neatly folded pearl white prayer gown from the bag and laying it on the free space of her bedroll. She fumbles for something else inside the pack—and pulls out an ivory tunic, fingers trembling slightly as she hands the silky fabric to him. “I made this prayer tunic for you last week. We can change now and then go.”

He takes the garment from her, inspecting the craftsmanship of the stitches, a million thoughts running through his brain. She has brought him to the Spring of Courage to pray with her, and the reason why still remains a mystery to him. While he believes in the Three and their divine powers, he rarely partakes in religious practices. He had always stood back as Zelda waded through various springs, watching her as she slouched and bowed, pleading for the Goddesses to awaken a power that is supposed to be her birthright. If he were to be honest, perhaps he resented them for instilling doubt and self-loathing in the woman he worships. Yet, with Zelda’s eyes now blazing with hope and earnestness, he does not have it in him to question her or deny her request. Not that he has ever had it in him to deny her in any capacity, anyway.

While his queen carefully changes into her prayer gown, Link starts unfastening his leather bracers, tossing them aside in the tent, to be joined by his belt, harness, and brown tunic. He slips into the white fabric and is amazed at how well the prayer tunic fits over his torso. Perhaps it shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise—Zelda has sewn him countless garments and has probably imprinted the exact measurement of his body onto her brain.

He keeps on the trousers he currently has on, and puts his protective leathers back on over the prayer tunic. While he made sure earlier to scan their surroundings as they approached the riverbank, there could still be some lurking monsters lingering in the forest. So he sheaths the Sword into the scabbard that is faithfully strapped onto his back.

With their prayer outfits on, Zelda is first to exit the tent, letting the rain begin to permeate her dress and her hair. Halfway into getting up and following her, Link grabs a particular small navy velvet box from his pouch, hiding it from view and sliding it into the left pocket of his trousers. Something within him tells him that he might need it. 

Barefooted, they approach the gaping maw of the dragon in front of them, taking tentative steps until they stand underneath the ribbed roof of its mouth, sheltered from the rain. Zelda looks up, green eyes inspecting the giant sculpture, her expression pensive and somber. The next breath that he takes sends a little ache in his lungs—an old grief finding its way through his windpipes and vining around his throat. The weight of her thousands of years that he only felt within four months sits on his worn shoulders, reminding him of a time when he traversed through this kingdom alone while the love of his life, fanged and scaled, circumnavigated the skies.

Instead of continuing towards the spring, Zelda turns to him, her fingers laced together at her front.

“The reason why I’ve brought you here today is…” she trails off, as if clueless on how to continue. After a few seconds, she shakes her head, dismissing her initial statement. “Link, are you familiar with the story of the Goddess Hylia and Her chosen Hero?”

Sure, he knows the story. It has been told to him time and time again, at ceremonies, by various bards, court poets, and history books. Hylia had chosen a mortal man to fight Demise with, and through the curse unleashed upon them, they were destined to be born and find each other in every lifetime for the sole purpose of defeating evil. It’s a dark fairytale—one that he knows too well, for he is a part of it.

Link nods in reply.

“My mother recited it to me many times, but the last time she did was before she passed away.” When he sees her lips quiver, he takes her hands in his, thumbs caressing over her wet skin. “She told me that Hylia had fallen in love with the Hero, and in turn, he had fallen in love with her. Their love was what eventually built this very land we’re standing on, the air that we breathe, the grass that we lie on, the food that we eat… Life in Hyrule as we know it is here because they loved each other. And while they were fated with the great burden of fighting evil and losing each other repeatedly, they did not mind paying that price. Because that meant that they get to be put back into this life and conceive love that others cannot even begin to fathom; again and again, until the end of time.” 

He does not realize that he’s been holding his breath, listening to her storytelling. He exhales slowly.

“I’ve brought you here because She gave me you—my hero, my protector, my courage.” She stares at her hands, trembling in his firm grip. “I want to thank Her for falling in love with your soul. I want to ask for Her blessing.”

The storm continues to rage around them. Thunder rumbles and soars up above in the sky, in his ears, in his bones. The weight of it all—their past, present, and future, their love, their destiny, and all that death and anguish—come crashing onto his back, heavy and rough. Others might beg to be freed of such a hefty weight in exchange for quiet sunsets for life, but Link vehemently disagrees. He relishes that mighty burden on him, despite the heartbreak that inevitably comes with it, because his soul’s predecessors were right: a love like this can only be felt by those who have lost and lost and lost. 

A love like this hurts and burns, but they are built for it, made for it—only to be had by two people intertwined by the threads of fate sewn by God herself.

That hefty weight, however welcome, finally brings Link to his knees. One knee, to be exact. He fumbles for that little box in the pocket of his pants; his heartbeat a wild, loud drum as he opens the lid with shaking hands, displaying the ring which sits between the cushions. Zelda gasps, trembling fingers covering her lips in disbelief. Her face crumples and tears begin to roll down her cheeks.

“Zelda,” his voice breaks. 

Before he could finally ask the question he has longed to utter for almost a decade, she drops to her knees, too—her prayer gown no longer pristine white, the hem dirtied by the mossy concrete underneath them. Her hands scramble for his arms, steadying herself, forcing him to fully settle on his ankles. 

Thunder continues to roll above them. 

“Oh Gods,” she sobs, clutching at his forearms. “Link, Link–”

“Zelda,” he tries again, eyes hot with the promise of tears, willing his mouth to form words. “I love you, have loved you even before I had known you, have loved you the moment I first laid my eyes on you.” She cups his hands now, drawing them onto her lap, ring still awaiting its recipient. “My soul is already tied to yours by design, but Goddess, I– I want more. I want to be bound to you in every way possible. Maybe that’s selfish of me—”

She laughs and cries all at once, shaking her head.

“Maybe that’s selfish of me…” he repeats, “but I don’t care.” 

She continues to mutter his name in broken whispers.

He draws a deep breath. “Will you marry me, Zelda?”

“Oh, yes,” the reply is immediate. She nods, desperate. “Yes, Link— Yes.”

She pulls him into her, arms slung around his neck as he returns the gesture with equal fervor, gripping tight the jewelry box in his hand behind her head, careful to not let it drop. She sobs in his embrace, a thousand I love yous whispered into his ears, the skin of his neck, his jawline—the last I love you uttered against his cheek before her lips seal over his. 

He whimpers at the contact, their kisses harsh and ardent and euphoric, wet from tears and rainfall. Her arms cage him with such force that should have hurt, but he doesn’t feel it at all—only wanting to be pulled closer to her, to lose himself underneath the touch she gifts him. While it might seem sacrilegious to engage in such an act at a sacred spring, they pay no mind to it. He likes to think that Hylia is smiling down upon them right at this moment, witnessing Her blood descendant and the bearer of Her beloved’s spirit binding themselves together; soul to soul, body to body, heart to heart.

They break apart before it gets too heated—panting and smiling so widely it hurts his cheeks. She pulls away, withdrawing her arms and encouraging him to do the same. He reveals the ring to her once more, earning him another gasp from her as she scans the jewelry presented to her.

“Link, you’re a crazy man.” She laughs, voice hoarse from crying. It’s the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard. “This is so, so beautiful.”

He pulls out the golden band from the box, taking her left hand in his, before sliding the band onto her ring finger until it sits perfectly snug at the base. He silently congratulates himself for remembering her size.

Zelda draws her hand closer to her face, closely inspecting the gemstones that sit atop of the ring. The emerald and sapphires glimmer ever so slightly despite the lack of sunlight, the rich colors deep and dark against her pale skin. He knows that he could buy all the gemstones and gold the world has to offer, and they all still wouldn’t be worthy enough to be on the finger of a divine woman like her. Yet, he lets himself think that the ring looks perfect on her; it is fitting for a monarch.

“You know, I suppose I knew that this would happen soon.” Her thumb and forefinger pinch the stones, idly playing with the band. “I have been anticipating it. And I have dreamt about it for so long. But still,” her eyes flit back up to gaze into his, still glassy from shed tears and perhaps forming new ones, “nothing compares to this, to finally hearing you say it to me.”

“Marry me.” Now that he can say it, has said it, he couldn’t stop himself from uttering it. He wonders how so few syllables can carry so much meaning. Marry me, he says, but it’s more than just that, isn’t it? Marry me to him is I am your chosen one your champion your loyal swordsman your sworn knight your most devout follower so is it okay if I also become your husband? But words have never been his strongest suit and he thinks that that’s all rather excessive, so he repeats it like a child addicted to rock candy. “Marry me. Marry me.”

At that, Zelda just laughs again, tearful but laden with joy—so much joy. Her laughter resonates throughout the hollowed structure, the damp archways leading to the spring, music to his ears. 

When his legs start to turn numb from the uncomfortable position, he rises, stumbling a little as his knees reacquaint themselves with the rush of blood. He helps her to her feet, then, arms snaking around her waist once she stands, cradling her body onto his, kissing her temple—feeling the silk of her rain-soaked hair. Hand in hand, they walk towards and into the spring, water lapping against their waists, lily pads and fallen leaves swirling from man-made ripples. 

At the foot of the Goddess statue, Zelda bows her head and begins their service.

Not that they ever needed to ask the Goddesses for their blessings, Link thinks as his queen continues to utter her prayers. Legends as old as time say that their love is already consecrated, and has been holy since the very beginning.

***

With all prayers and gratitude finally voiced well and loud, they retreat to the comfort of their tent. Once their sodden garments were peeled off, one look is all it takes.

They fall onto their bedrolls gracelessly, legs and arms so tangled it’s difficult to tell where he ends and she begins. Zelda is on his lap, her golden-yolk hair cascading around him like a veil that shields them from the outside world. Their kisses are all tongue and teeth with words of worship murmured in between exhales, and he swears he could taste the sun in her mouth. The rush of his blood is violent in his ears, louder than the harsh downpour outside and the rolls of thunder that periodically vibrate the very ground beneath them, but no louder than the hurricane of his heartbeat.

Link may not be the most religious man, but with this particular goddess that is now atop him, he is as devout as any mortal can be. He finds divinity on the expanse of her chest as his tongue roams around her breasts, feeling her fingers card through his hair and pull him closer. He only defies his goddess when he grips hard at her backside to roll them over, emerald eyes blazing with fire as she looks up at him, her bosoms heaving with each inhale and exhale underneath him. Whereas his queen communes with the Gods by praying at sacred springs, he does so by traveling south until his lips find the soft flesh between her thighs—a holy activity that he wholeheartedly partakes in for as long as the recipient lets him.

That communion continues as he cradles her body into his arms and hauls them both upright, so she is straddling him once again, her hands finding purchase on his shoulders as she cries and sinks down onto him. She moves him and he moves her, and all that’s left on their lips are sighs and moans and intangible whispers of love, my love, my love—

He repeats his service over and over until they are fully spent and breathless on the bedroll. He finds that maybe he is quite religious after all.

Afternoon bleeds into night, night bleeds into dawn, and finally, the thunderstorm passes, leaving the sun to shine upon them once more. They exit the tent, feeling the humid morning breeze on their skin, the earthly scent of vegetation greeting them. With flints and a bundle of wood Link starts a fire, then carefully sets a cooking pot atop it. He makes them mushroom and rice porridge, idly stirring with a wooden ladle as he watches Zelda place their still-soaked prayer outfits on a boulder nearby to dry. 

With no royal regalia, she could very well pass as an ordinary Hylian woman. Her hair is a little tousled from sleep. She wears a worn yellow tunic and yesterday’s pants with a pair of leather sandals. For a moment, the weight of their history simply vanishes, and they are maybe a couple who have journeyed to Faron to escape their mundane day-to-day lives and see the grasslands. But then she turns and a pair of forest greens meet his stormy blues, the faint scar on her right hand in the shape of three triangles catches the glint of sunlight, and the heaviness of their circumstance hits him all at once.

Link revels in the dichotomy of it all.

She settles next to him on the mossy log, and he ladles out the fresh porridge into a wooden bowl before handing it to her, careful not to let the scalding content spill onto her. She thanks him and blows at the bowl, staving off the heat. 

“I’d like to stay another night, if that’s alright with you,” Zelda says in between sips. “I wish to enjoy this… privacy with you just a little while longer.” She casts him a shy smile, and a small part of him wants to laugh. He asked for her hand in marriage, has proven time and time again that he would do anything she wanted him to with pleasure, and still at times she is hesitant to explicitly voice her wishes. 

He finishes his meal in one big gulp, settling the bowl on the ground before his hand reaches for her face, caressing her reddened cheek with his calloused knuckles.

“That sounds perfect to me,” he replies, and doesn’t miss the way her eyes beam at him.

With their breakfast eaten, they return to their tent, and do not leave until the sun nearly hides behind mountain peaks and their stomachs grumble from hunger.

Come to think of it, out in the wild is perhaps the most fitting place for them to make love. He recalls her story of how Hyrule came to be from the love shared between the Goddess and the Spirit of the Hero. He has paid tribute to this beloved land of theirs in a myriad of ways, but he finds that this—lying next to each other, the canvas flooring of their tent the only barrier between their bodies and the ground—may be the most precise tribute he has ever done for Hyrule.

When the next morning comes, they leave their tent for the last time to begin disassembling the makeshift structure and pack them neatly. Link clucks his tongue to summon Coffee and Atena, and once the steeds obediently come forth to them, he tacks them with practiced ease, preparing them for the journey back to the castle. With all their belongings properly stowed away, he notices his queen staring at the ground where their tent used to be.

He steps towards her, taking her hands to raise them to his lips, kissing her knuckles, understanding the weight of their imminent departure. While they have longed to be able to love each other out in the open, this thing that they share has always been their own—unknown and untouched by the expectations of others. When they return, their union, too, will eventually become a symbol—just like their very existence, like her inherited power, like his Sword. They will not only be paragons of wisdom and courage, but also of love. 

“Promise me we’ll come back here,” Zelda murmurs. He leaves her hands to cup her face, leaning in to kiss her lips, soft and slow. He sears into his memory the lingering scent of woodsmoke, the moist and heavy air, the slight sweat on her skin, the way her engagement ring digs into his neck as her hand presses on to him. 

They will always have this. A small heaven tucked away somewhere in the wilderness of Hyrule, only to be consumed by them. 

When Link pulls away, he answers: “I promise.”

***

“Motion to begin our monthly Royal Council meeting at Hyrule Castle by first taking attendance,” Chief Advisor Sanna declares. 

In the council room, various chiefs, elders, and advisors are seated behind the grand circle-shaped table, rising from their velvet chairs when their names are called. First, Chief Paya, the main representative of the Sheikah, answers with “Present,” when her title is called. Lady Impa, though retired, is seated next to her, and acts as an advisor in council meetings. Then, it’s King Sidon as the representative of the Zora, followed by Chief Teba (accompanied by the sage Tulin, his son) as the representative of the Rito, and Chief Riju, on behalf of the Gerudo. Afterward, it’s Purah as the Chief of Science and Development, Symin as the Chief of Education, and other Chiefs that lead all sorts of ministries within the kingdom.

“Next in attendance, the Commander of the Military and Head Knight to the Queen, Sir Link,” Sanna calls. 

He rises from his seat, feeling all the eyes on him. “Present.”

Sanna writes on the ledger, marking Link in attendance as he sits back down.

“Last but not least, Her Majesty the Queen of Hyrule,”

To Link’s right, Zelda rises from her throne. “Present.” 

Another scrawl on the ledger, and finally, Sanna states that the meeting has begun.

“Thank you for your attendance, everyone. We have a few topics to cover on our agenda today—first, regarding building a device or mode of transportation for a safe passage to the depths; second, the plot of land that will be chosen to build the university upon, as discussed during last month’s council meeting; and third, regarding the rebuilding of Akkala Citadel,” she straightens her glasses as she carries on. “Before we proceed with these discussions, is there anything else that shall be included within the agenda?”

“There is.” His queen announces. Link feels his palms perspiring, his pulse going a little wild.

“Very well, Your Majesty, shall the court discuss the matter now or shall we first go through the proposed points within the agenda?” Sanna asks.

“We can do it now,” Zelda replies. After a brief pause, she continues, her voice steady. “Though we are all here under a formal engagement, I consider all of you my friends. With that said, to bring forth this news to you instills such great pleasure and joy within me, and I hope that you will feel the same way.”

The court stays silent in anticipation.

“Last week, a man finally asked for my hand in marriage, and I gladly accepted.” Zelda declares, earning some gasps from the court members. As he scans their faces to observe their reactions, he finds that half of them are gaping in surprise, and half of them just smile—giving his queen (and Link himself) a knowing look. Impa is among the latter. “I am delighted to announce that Sir Link and I are betrothed, and we are looking forward to having all of you at our wedding.”

All formality drops upon Zelda’s announcement, and everyone rises from their seat to applaud and congratulate them. Link can’t quite believe the sight; he sees no disagreement, no doubt nor disapproval, only well wishes and words of felicitations. In the midst of the handshakes and pats on his back, he meets her eyes, crinkled from a wide smile that seems to echo an earlier sentiment that she has expressed to him, in the warmth of her bedchamber—

How could they not? There’s no one else in this realm for me but you.

Once everyone returns to the matter at hand and proceeds with the council meeting, the subject of the royal wedding is added to the agenda. They officially set a date: four months from today, to be held at the grand chapel of the castle. The reception will take place at the Sanctum, with thousands of Hyruleans in attendance. 

It will be a celebration for the kingdom, for the people. That much is clear.

Beneath the dark wooden surface of the council desk, Zelda brushes her palm against his, her fingertips sending a spark all the way to his spine. He catches her hand before she could withdraw it, lightly pressing his thumb against her wrist where he could feel her pulse.

They stay touching until the meeting ends, clasped hands obscured from the others’ eyes—a universe existing where skin meets skin. A universe only they know.

Chapter Text

At the beginning of each week, a newspaper is delivered to Link’s doorstep during the early hours of the morning—before the birds start their serenade, before the knights arouse from the first peal of the bell tower, before the kingdom gently pulls away the blanket of nighttime and urges its dwellers to get on their feet and start the day. 

Usually, he makes time to read it; Lucky Clover Gazette covers a wide variety of news—from the most popular vacation destinations to exclusive interviews with notable Hyruleans to different events happening across the nation. His favorite section, unsurprisingly, is Recipe of the Week. 

One can never simply run out of stories to write about Hyrule, even during peacetime. But for the past three months, all the news echoes the same matter. Headlines such as ‘How the Queen and her Hero met!’ and ‘The most important wedding of the millennia!’ are plastered across the front page. After a few weeks of coming across similar articles, he decides to forgo reading his weekly news altogether, and he knows that his queen does the same, too. They do not need the constant reminder; their days have blurred into the other ever since the date of the wedding was set. 

They drown in a sea of rehearsals, guest list revisions, invitation card samples. Seamstresses have been swarming her chambers with the finest silk and taffeta and velvet, each in a hundred different shades of white, to be wrapped and cut and sewn to her measurements. With each day that blurs into the next, he sees the exhaustion on her visage, even if she attempts to conceal it with a smile. 

So, he does what he is supposed to do, as Head Knight to the Queen and a man who finds the greatest joy in seeing the love of his life content:

He rescues her.

Today’s newspaper did not make it in time to his doorstep. Link does not mind. 

Presently, he is on horseback, crossing Helmhead Bridge, heading east and further east. Zelda rides alongside him—her hair blowing in the wind, hands steady on the reins, cheeks flushed from the morning chill of early autumn. When their eyes meet they laugh—at the absurdity of needing to escape their own castle, at the feeling of youthfulness that bubbles in their chest. He recalls the days from an age long gone, when she was sixteen and he was seventeen, fleeing the castle under the dark cloak of the early morning, leaving the titles and the weight of their fate behind, even if only until the afternoon. He had protested at first, but then she had pouted her lips and batted her eyelashes—come on, Link, I just need to get out of here—and whatever disagreement he had wanted to voice immediately died in his throat.

He finds that nothing has changed much.

They ride and ride and ride, racing against the sunrise, feeling lighter with each trot that takes them further and further away from the castle.

***

That lightness in him wanes as the blackness of the night blankets the land once again and they near the outskirts of Tarrey Town.

They have not been here in a long, long while. Between Zelda’s homecoming and their moving into the castle, they much preferred Hateno Village and the house they had made into their sanctuary for six years before that fateful trip beneath Hyrule Castle. When she had returned to him, mortal and fleshed at long last, Link was quick to take her there—the stone walls of their home gaping and aching to be filled with her presence again. 

When he had bought this particular plot of land from Hudson and Rhondson and painstakingly assembled the house himself, he did not know of the Light Dragon’s true identity, did not realize that north-east from here lies a strip of land that spirals into sea, had not found out yet that she would eventually shed her last tear and leave him a small pond surrounded by silent princesses—an altar of her grand sacrifice, of her final battle cry.

It has made it nearly impossible for him to come back to Akkala, upon the discovery of that pool of tears, to wake up every day with a view of the Rist Peninsula from his bedroom window. Even with Zelda back by his side, that grief and guilt still seize his chest from time to time, sitting heavily between his ribs. So he steers clear of this house when he can, only visiting it with her whenever her subjects call for her presence.

But now, in their mission to escape the public’s eye and rest in privacy for a few days, Hateno wasn’t an option—not with the various inhabitants that have grown familiar with them that will definitely ask questions. Now, they find themselves on the front porch, overlooking Lake Akkala and the raised ground that makes Tarrey Town.

Alone in the gentle silence of nature that surrounds them. Alone within the wooden walls of the house that he had built for her, even when she was still missing.

Dust has settled over furniture, over wooden countertops. Over an open wound over two years old that he’s so certain he has healed from. 

He feels silly, all of a sudden. She’s here, with him—humming absent-mindedly as she hangs her traveling pouch onto a hook screwed into the wall. There is no reason to feel this way, he tells himself. They will be wedded in two weeks, because it has been two years since he drove the Sword into the Demon King, two years since he carried her out of that pond in Mabe Prairie and brought her home. She’s the Queen, now, and she breathes and eats and laughs and speaks—

“Link?” Her voice knifes through his thoughts. “Is everything alright?”

He turns to meet her eyes, feeling them boring holes into him. She’s worried now. Look what you’ve done.

“Yes.” He feigns obliviousness. “Just need to do some dusting, that's all.”

His queen stills for a second, but then she shakes her head, tearing down that façade that he has precariously attempted to hide behind. “No.”

“No?”

She strides towards him. He silently curses himself for replacing the carefreeness she’s had all day with melancholy, his melancholy—but then she takes his hands in hers and cups them against her cheeks, the warmth of her breath on his thumbs a welcome reprieve. 

“Link.” Her voice is stern but sweet. “You don’t ever have to hide anything from me.”

Of course, he’s been found out; she is the smartest person there is in this kingdom, and she can decipher him so easily. He recalls the time when he used to be the master of stoicism, at keeping all that threatens to rip out of him properly stowed away in some dark corner in his mind, never to be addressed, never to be touched, especially not by her. We keep our hearts and minds to ourselves, his father had said, once upon a time. We do not concern our charge with what lies beneath.

But dying and waking up a hundred years later had irrevocably changed him, or perhaps, had stripped him to his basics. The seams that used to hold him together, that hid his true self—they loosened, or maybe disappeared altogether, threatening to let everything inside him brim and spill and spill. 

And now she watches with loving eyes at the mess that is about to burst out of him. She wants to help him clean it all up.

Wordlessly, he peels his hands off her face to lace his fingers with hers, leading her to the stairs, to the upper floor. The question mark is still etched into her features, but she relents, allowing him to lead the way. 

They ascend the staircase, his feet weighing heavier with each climb. In the darkness of the room, they walk past the bed and towards the thick sheet of glass that separates the bedroom from the balcony. He releases her hand and slides the glass panel to the side, letting the chilly evening wind gust into the warmth of the indoors. They step out into the night, towards the wooden balustrade.

Past their front yard and the cliffside, beyond the small glimmering lights from the modest homes in Tarrey Town, a lone green light glows in the dark of the night—emanating from the shrine in the epicenter of the peninsula. The spiral of sand that surrounds the shrine is not visible to the eye, not at this hour, but that does little to erase the pang in his chest, the sting behind his eyes. 

Link inhales, raises his hand, and points his finger at the origin of his grief. 

“Rist Peninsula,” he says quietly.

In his periphery, he sees her frown. “I’m not sure I follow, Link.”

He swallows the rising bile in his throat, confesses—

“It’s where I thought I had lost you for good.”

Silence falls over them. 

That day at the Lookout Landing, a few weeks after the Upheaval’s end, watching Zelda being poked and prodded by Purah—the scientist keen on knowing possibly everything regarding draconification. Afterward, the whole ensemble visited each of the geoglyphs, corroborating Link’s statement that eleven pools of tears had formed all over the kingdom. 

The twelfth, final tear—the one that he now points at, has remained unknown to everyone else, even to the woman that had shed it. He did not have it in him to explain the discovery to them, to relive that moment that felt—and still feels—like a thousand mountains stacked atop his chest. 

Zelda reaches for his outstretched hand, retracting it and placing it on the small of her back, forcing him to draw closer to her and face her. Her hands find their way onto his shoulders, a thumb resting in the groove above his collarbone. He sees the bead of moisture forming in the corners of her eyes, watches as the realization dawns on her. Like a hidden memory from her long, dark slumber has come to the fore, baited by his confession.

“You didn’t tell Purah.” She nods to herself, assembling the pieces together in her mind. “Impa never found out about that one. I must have shed it when you were alone, and quite recently since there was no geoglyph like the others.” A breath drawn—a conclusion. “I’ve always wondered why we never stayed in this house more often, why you kept avoiding going here unless we truly needed to.”

There are a thousand different things he aches to say to her, and they all crowd on the tip of his tongue, itching to be spoken, but never make it past his lips. 

“I’m sorry,” is all he manages to rasp out.

“Link— no, I’m sorry.” Her brows furrow, and the sadness that has marred her features stings his heart. Today should have been their chance to get their much-needed rest, to unwind in private before they busy themselves with the wedding’s final preparations. 

And I’ve ruined it.

“You’ve been carrying this for so long, and I had no idea. If I had known, I wouldn’t have asked to spend our days away here,” she continues. 

“It’s not your fault,” he replies, bringing his thumb to her face, wiping the single tear that has streaked her lovely cheek. “It’s my burden to bear. And besides… you’re here with me. You’ve been here for two years. So I have no reason to feel this way.”

“That doesn’t make your pain any less real,” she says. “And your burden is mine, too. I hurt when you hurt, Link.”

The utterance of that singular, universal truth finally sends him unraveling. I hurt when you hurt. 

They are joined at the wound, he finds. And if his grief is her grief, then he must find a way to heal from it—to let this wound turn into a scab and scab into a scar. Oh how he desperately wishes for it to be a scar. One that no longer brings pain but serves as a remembrance of sorts, so they may never forget the arduous path they had to traverse through in order to be where they are now. 

He finally gives in and pulls her as close as he can, for once daring the world to take her away from him, from the strong clutch of his arms. He feels her ribcage expand with each deep breath, feels her life force in the beating of her glorious heart, feels his cells rushing to that phantom open wound—gathering and merging and closing.

“Tell me how I could help,” Zelda murmurs against his neck, shoulders still shaking from her quiet sobs. “Please.”

She doesn’t realize it, he thinks. She is already helping him by letting him come undone, by touching his detriment. Each exhale that she blows at his neck is one suture sewing shut that gaping grief within him. He can’t possibly ask more of her, because he has inflicted this old pain upon her after all, and it is on him to seek his own remedy so that he could relieve her, too. But she has asked so kindly, and he would do whatever she asked of him, so he’ll tell her.

“I don’t know,” he answers truthfully, because if he did know, he would not have carried all of this on his battleworn shoulders for two years. “But now, I feel… some relief. Now that you know.”

She withdraws from the crook of his shoulder, verdant gaze sharp and warm all the same, reading into his eyes. Her fingers slide to his arms, digging, pleading. 

“You needn’t ever bear your burdens alone, Link. Before I am your princess or queen, I am first and foremost your Zelda. And you, before you are my knight and whatever title the world or our past lives have bestowed upon you—you are simply my Link. Half of my soul, love of my life.” The thickness of her voice, pure sincerity mottled with sadness, is a welcome paper cut in his heart. “So I beg of you… don’t think for one second that you should keep your pain away from me, especially when I can somehow ease it.”

Who is he to deny her of her wish, really?

So he lets himself brim and spill and spill. 

“Every time I come near it, I feel like I’m losing you all over again. Like—” like I have failed you again, just as I did a century ago in Blatchery Plain, just as I did in that cursed chamber underneath the castle, just as I did when you roared in the very sky above us, “—like I’m incapable of holding you without letting you fall.”

Even more painful than whatever grief that has long plagued him is seeing her wilt in sorrow upon his admission. But, he contemplates hopefully, this might be what they have been needing this whole time—to come apart together and reassemble the fragments together. So that they may commence with the rest of this lifetime without this residual darkness shrouding them. 

Her palms find the sides of his neck, her trembling lips nearing his, her long lashes damp.

“But you brought me home,” she whispers brokenly. “Link, you’re the only one that could ever bring me home.” 

And home is the last thing he inhales before their lips meet.

All that pain from every time he has lost her converges and recedes into the distant horizon at the opening of her mouth, the caress of her tongue against his. She sighs, her hand carding through his tresses as she keens into him; the most potent balm to any ache that has afflicted him. And while he knows that her power has dwindled down from thousands of years of use, he swears he could feel that warm golden light pouring into him, straight from the source, a sacred fountain that overflows into his throat. 

Link drinks and doesn’t stop drinking.

With closed eyes and lips still pressed against one another they find their way back inside, into the warmth of their bedroom. Zelda’s foot catches on a carpet and she stumbles a little in his embrace, but he keeps her there and holds her tight, never letting her fall, not until the back of her knees meet the bedframe and they both land onto the mattress.

When they break apart and her eyes flutter open, the emeralds of her eyes gleaming from the moonlight that leaks into the room, a heartstring within him snaps. 

“Look at you,” she murmurs as her fingers bury into his ponytail, pulling the hair tie away, freeing his wild blonde locks to pour all around her. Her other hand cups his cheek, thumb pad ghosting over his bottom lip. “I’ve always loved your strength, have always found it so beautiful, but not if it’s to your detriment.”

Though their love has been ordained by all the Gods even before they were born, his brain still scrambles at the sight of her, at those devastatingly sweet words her tongue has weaved. Spirit of the Hero or not, this is a divine woman that has somehow fallen in love with him, who has allowed him to make a bed inside her warm heart, who has asked and begged to share his burden with her. And he wonders how he has ended up here—under the roof of their home, his body on top of hers, two weeks away from being able to call himself her husband—and what he has done to earn her love and her devotion.

How does one distill all of that into a simple sentence? 

“Thank you for loving me,” he says quietly. Hopes it’s enough for her. 

Her hand tugs him closer, so that they’re now nose to nose, and she gazes at him with such reverence that sends thundersparks through every nerve-ending.

“No, Link,” she whispers, her breath warm on his parted lips. "Thank you for loving me.” 

Oh does he love her.

With a whimper he crashes his lips onto hers, desperate and rough, sending them into that familiar ether only they know. Whatever they have not uttered out loud, they speak with each garment that falls to the floor, each caress of intimate skin, each utterance of name exhaled into mouth, each roll of the hips.

Throughout the course of the night, Link feels scabs starting to form. And even if the relief is temporary, even if the mended surface might rupture from remembrance from time to time, he does not care much.

Zelda is there to run her divine fingertips over the cracks, and put him back together over and over again with each brush of her soul.

***

The sunlight that bleeds through the glass panes fills the room with such brightness that it sends Link jolting awake, ripping him away from a particularly blissful slumber. 

He reaches to his left, searching for her limbs to hold onto, to ground him, but finds an empty, cold space instead. His body immediately jerks, that primal thing within him sending all sorts of alarms to his brain before his eyes finally land on a piece of paper on the nightstand. The way it’s neatly folded in half and tucked between a candle holder and a vase of dried blue nightshade provides some semblance of comfort to him, knowing that she has put it there for him to find.

He retrieves the letter and finds her distinct handwriting scrawled on the surface.

My dearest Link,

I’ve gone to Tarrey Town to shop and run some errands. I’m not going anywhere else, so don’t you worry.

Meet me by the ruins east of Malin Bay at 2 PM. Wear something nice.

I’ll see you soon.
Zelda

His lips break into a small smile at his queen’s knowing of his worry. A thumb traces over black ink, ‘dearest’ right underneath his digit, picturing her silently slipping out of bed before going for her quill. 

Though anxiety has somehow nested itself in his throat due to her temporary absence, and her request to reconvene at the ruins at the mouth of Rist Peninsula, Link wills himself to swallow it. 

With a few hours to spare, he cooks himself a big breakfast of scrambled eggs and steak, puts the time to wet a rag and wipe the dust off surfaces, and even tends to the flowers in their backyard that have started to wilt from neglect. He refills the hollowed logs at the stable with more water and hay, watching Coffee neigh cheerily as its muzzle goes straight for the meal. Link couldn’t help but be amused at how his steed always makes room for Zelda's Atena while feeding, even when it is all alone. 

Once all chores are finished, Link returns inside to the shower and scrubs himself clean from any dirt or soil or sweat that has stuck to his skin from a few hours’ worth of yard work. He makes a beeline towards his dresser that’s placed against the wall beside Zelda’s own, and rummages through the few garments and protective leathers that he has left in this house.

Wear something nice, her message echoes in his mind, and his eyes catch a glimpse of vibrant blue with distinct white embroidery. He pulls the material out from the pile, revealing his century-old champion tunic, complete with the cream-colored shirt he used to wear under the blue fabric. A few more seconds of search, and he’s found the patterned bracers and the leather harness that he usually wore, completing the whole outfit. 

He puts them on, careful not to pull at any loose stitches. It is a relic of a bygone era, he realizes—an object that his then-princess sewed just for him, an item that has survived violence and countless catastrophes, that once upon a time did outlive him before he was brought back to life. 

He looks at his reflection in the mirror, fingertips skimming over ivory threads that form the cross-guard outline over his chest, perhaps transmitting his love from the present to that terribly young girl in the past—who had stitched it with her holy hands, who had carried the weight of the world on her weary shoulders. 

As he ties his wild mane into a ponytail, he hopes that his queen will find the outfit fitting for whatever she has planned.

***

The distance between the house and the ruins is quite short, so Link decides to forgo taking Coffee along. With the Sword in its scabbard strapped to his back as his only company, he treks the terrain, feeling the ground become steeper and steeper as he nears the mouth of the peninsula. The feeling of unease, unsurprisingly, has come back as Gemimik Shrine turns more visible with each step.

His breath hitches upon the sight of a woman on horseback among the ruins just downhill from where he is. He picks up his pace, hearing the grass beneath his boots crunch, the view of her putting him in a saintly trance. He can see her clearly, now—her figure is wrapped in a sky blue gown he has never seen her in before (she must’ve bought it earlier in Tarrey Town, he thinks), skirts billowing out over the sides of her mount. Her hair, all loose and bare on the expanse of her bust, waves from the wind and blinds like gold molasses from the rage of the high sun.

With just a few paces between them, Zelda turns away from the horizon to greet Link with that smile—all teeth and wide, eyes crinkled, reserved only for him, making him feel like he had just downed a pint full of mead, but much sweeter and more intoxicating. 

She chuckles from atop Atena, taking notice of his outfit.

“This is what you thought of when I said ‘wear something nice’?”

“You made it for me,” he shrugs, finally standing in front of her. “Everything you’ve made for me is nice.”

Zelda rolls her eyes affectionately. “You and your flattery, Sir, will be the death of me.” She muses before extending her hand to him. “Ride with me?”

Link takes her outstretched hand in his, brushes his lips against the knuckles, but lets her go as he hooks his right foot in the stirrup and hoists himself upward, settling just behind her in the saddle. His arms snake around her, one hand covering hers on the reins. She cranes her neck to the side to look at him and he meets her halfway, kissing those rosy lips he has missed all morning.

He feels her weight leaning against his front, relaxing as his feet tap against Atena’s flanks, urging the steed into a trot. 

Though his hand joins her on the reins, she is completely in control of their course, and he knows that they’re heading toward the center of the sandbar. 

“What have you got planned, Your Majesty?” he asks, voice low in her ear, hoping she can hear the tinge of humor and not at all the disquietude within him.

It is not humor she catches. “I think you know.”

He does know. 

The soles of his shoes remember the squelch of wet sand underneath him. His tear ducts know the briny air of this shoal like no place else. His palms remember fisting through the earth, soil stuck in between his fingernails as he sobbed and sobbed until he was nothing but a hoarse voice.

This is where he had died, and now she’s taking him to her altar, wants to put an end to the source of his pain.

Instead of riding along the curve of the peninsula, they cross the shallow swath of salt water, straight into the eye of the storm, steadily trotting towards it, closer and closer and closer—

There it is.

For the first time in two years, Link finally lays his eyes on the small hollow in the middle of the grass, empty and howling. More silent princesses have grown all around it; they have tripled in amount, have apparently been thriving in the wild solitude.

In his brain he hears a roar, deep and guttural— her cry. The tendrils of a brewing thunderstorm start to coil around his lungs, imploring him to do something—pray or fight or both—and bring her home. 

But she’s home. 

His arm around her waist and his grip on her hand tighten. She’s here. His nose nuzzles into her hair, breathing in the rose and safflina of her, inhaling and exhaling her warmth. She’s here with me. 

They halt right next to the field of silent princesses and dismount.

Link is surprised that his knees did not give out underneath him.

Wordlessly, Zelda retrieves something from the pack attached to Atena’s saddle, revealing two small shovels. When she glances at him, catches the question mark in his raised brows, she thrusts one into his hand.

“I bought them in Tarrey Town. It’s to shovel sand,” she says, matter-of-factly. The metal of the socket glints with the sunlight, refracting weak beams into his vision. He listens to the rustling of grass, to the soft whistle of wind, waiting for her answer, some sort of explanation. But then a gear turns in him and he realizes the purpose of it all.

Her eyes, honest and bright green (not purple not purple not purple), speaking the unspoken: 

Let’s put it to rights.

Link purses his lips, then nods. 

He walks towards the water and digs the tapered blade into wet sand as Zelda does the same, scooping up as much sand as he can without letting it fall. He strides back towards the empty pool, careful not to trample on the silent princesses, and feeling the muscles in his forearms start to tire as he waits for her to return with another shovel full of sand.

When she does, standing right across from him, the hole in the ground between them, a sad smile unfurls across her lips.

“Ready?”

He draws a breath— “Yes.”

With his eyes pinched shut, Link lowers the shovel right above the hollow and feels the weight of the sand—and the grief and pain and loss and sorrow and that deafening echo of her draconic bellow—slide off, leaving him lighter.

Closing his eyelids did nothing to prevent his tears from spilling. And when he opens them again, he sees her cry, too.

Two shovels, he thinks, realizes. Two shovels to end two pains. 

They quietly pat the uneven surface with the tool, packing the sand until it is flat and solid, the small crater that once was there filled by condensed grain. It looks like a miniature island from above—a small beach within a patch of grass, the cyan field of silent princesses the ocean surrounding it. It isn’t as if time itself has rewound and restored this patch of land to how it was; he knows that sand isn’t soil, and scar tissue isn’t unblemished flesh.

Somehow, it is enough. 

Zelda stabs the compact sand beneath them with her shovel—burying the blade all the way until it reaches the wooden shaft, the muscles in her arms flexing as she puts her entire body weight onto the grip handle, ensuring that the shovel stays upright. Following her, Link does the same; driving his shovel into the ground until it stands erect, adjacent to hers.

With their iron blade hidden, the tools simply look like poles, a humble monument of sorts. Perhaps a cenotaph—except the figure memorialized is right there in front of him and has raised the landmark herself. 

“A milestone,” she declares as if reading his mind, “for us. Our kingdom. Our faith in each other.”

Milestone is certainly a more fitting word.

He steps closer to her, reaching for her hand, and flashes of lives he did not live brush the edge of his consciousness, a little itch in his brain—various women, their hair different shades of gold, their eyes blue and green and somewhere in between, but when he tries to catch even just a sliver of that vision, it eludes him. And the strangest of them all; when he looks down, the cerulean blue of his tunic turns muted green. 

They all flood him, for three milliseconds at most, but then his skin touches hers and everything falls back into place and all he sees is her her her. His Zelda, her dress the color of the early morning sky, the verdant blaze of her eyes, the freckles on her flushed cheeks like constellations.

The past is a heavy thing, especially when your soul has lived different lifetimes. But they have fought tooth and nail for this life, and now the reward is ripe for the plucking.

“Zelda,” he says, just for the sake of having her name on his tongue.

She tilts her head, her expression almost unreadable, but he’s certain it says just one more thing. 

“Link,” she replies, moving closer to him, her left hand resting on his waist. “Today is a beautiful day, don’t you think?”

He thinks of the shovels beside them. He thinks of her handwriting on a piece of paper, a message left by her that ended up with him finding her in just a few hours. He thinks of her brand new blue dress, thinks of the view of Tarrey Town from his balcony. He thinks of them on Atena’s back, riding together and putting their past to rest. 

He takes the time to breathe the salt in the air, the warmth of the sun above them. Brand this feeling of lightness into memory.

“It is.”

A beat.

“I wish to be married to you today,” she smiles, and his insides immediately go wild, but it makes so much sense. “I think… I think we owe it to ourselves to have this moment belong to us. I know we belong to the world—I, especially. But this, what we have—it’s ours first.”

If it were up to him, they would have gotten married the moment he had brought her home from the Calamity. They could have run to the district office in Necluda and signed the papers right then and there. Or two years ago, when she returned to him after the Demon King’s defeat, at Lookout Landing with Impa as an officiant, accompanied by their friends. 

But this is perfect, too—at this monument they have made for themselves, because more than it is a milestone for the kingdom or a memorial of her sacrifice, it is a testament to their love.

“Zel—Gods. I’d really love that,” Link says, his heart leaping from him. “But don’t we need an officiant? And rings?”

Zelda laughs, shaking her head, amused by his statement. “We’re the officiant, Link. I am Hylia’s blood and you are Her beloved. This will just be as valid as our wedding would be at the castle, if not more,” she answers. “As for our rings, they’re in a vault in the castle somewhere, but—” 

The hand that rests on his waist travels up to his nape, gently tugging at his hair tie until his honey blonde locks flow loose on his shoulders. 

“—your hair tie will do for now.” The tie slides onto her wrist, and with her free hand, she stretches the well-worn band around his wrist, too—his fingers wrapped tightly around her forearm.

Oh, he feels so full—arteries and veins threatening to burst because how could one possibly contain all of this in a body?

Link realizes that he has no vows prepared, nor any sort of grand gesture though he is about to marry the Queen. But then it dawns on him immediately—that he will marry the Queen in two weeks. There will be prepared vows prompted by the High Priestess, a choir of Hyrulean children singing hymns, an altar at the Grand Chapel adorned with flower arrangements from the most talented florists in the kingdom, catering that will feed thousands of guests. He will have to sit on that throne, no matter if it’s the strangest thing his body will ever have to do, and henceforth be formally addressed as Prince Link of Hyrule, Consort to Her Majesty the Queen Zelda of Hyrule. 

Today, however, he is simply Link, and he’s marrying Zelda. Atop a sand-filled crater that holds the weight of their past. Enveloped by the bountiful nature of their land. The sun and their bound souls as their only witnesses. 

And, he thinks silently, isn’t my life already a vow to her?

With his rudimentary knowledge of wedding processions, he lets the words pour freely from his tongue.

“Zelda—you know I’m not a man who’s great with words,” but for you, Goddesses, for you I’ll try, “but the happiest days of my life have always been the ones that I got to spend with you, and the darkest ones were those when we were apart. As long as there’s a heartbeat in me left, I’ll spend it with you, always.”

There is sunshine in her eyes and in her lips as they brush against his so softly. 

“You’re always so humble,” she murmurs, half-laughing, “but you don’t know. You don’t know how great you are.”

He watches as some tears fall down her cheek to the ground beneath them, and he almost sobs from the magnitude of it all.

“Link, you’ve made so many oaths to this kingdom and to me, and sometimes—sometimes it saddens me that you seldom hear any from me. So let me make one for you today, although it’s something that I have followed my whole life, even before I knew it—that my life is yours, too, and you are my god, too, and I would do anything for you.”

Oh I don’t deserve her, he thinks madly.

But now, that reward is ripe and he’s plucking it, even if he still believes that he doesn’t deserve it, because he is a mere mortal and mortals can be selfish, and Link— well.

Link can be quite selfish, too.

He itches to have her as close as possible so he lets go of her forearm and escapes from the bind of the hair tie before he cups her face and kisses her beautiful mouth. That law of gravity within him takes effect, letting himself be naturally pulled into her arms like an apple falling from a bough to the ground. Somehow, her tongue tastes even sweeter, and the graze of her teeth against the bow of his lip is more potent than any royal-grade whiskey. He drinks her in, breathes her in, until he has a stomach and a lung full of her.

When they finally pull away, panting from the heat of the sun and the euphoria of the moment, he finally utters those words that he’s been aching to say, and it surprises him how something so novel can feel so very normal, like he has said it every day, every time he greets her—

“My wife.” Link says.

In his arms, Zelda smiles with the warmth of centuries of light.

“My husband.”

***

The kingdom rouses especially early this morning; an exodus of citizens of all races heading from the most bustling villages to the most remote mountaintop settlements towards the beating heart of the country, just to have the chance to behold something as historical and sacred as the wedding of their beloved goddess incarnate and hero. No one has seen an occasion this grand and monumental before—not even the defeat of evil twice over—but this is the celebration of the love shared by the two beings that have saved their land time and time again, and they would not miss it for the world.

Hyrule Castle has never been quiet even on ordinary days, but today it sounds especially busy—hurried footsteps of staff echo through hallways, metal hinges of double doors creak every ten minutes, chains clank audibly as the main gates to the castle are opened. 

Link can hear it all even from the guest quarters, where he has dwelled for the past week. The Court has advised that he be provided a temporary room within the main wing of the castle to aid in the wedding preparations since rehearsals were held almost daily, and he should have as quick access as possible to the Queen. He wanted to laugh, at first—it’s not as if he and Zelda have been keeping things very discreet since the announcement of their engagement months ago. Their escape to Akkala two weeks before became the talk of the castle so that Chief Advisor Sanna had to bring Zelda and Link to a so-called ‘royal huddle’ to warn them about it. But his queen, Goddess bless her, just chuckled and said ‘Sanna, we lived together for almost ten years before we moved back into the castle. If they don’t already suspect that we’ve been intimate before our wedding, then the intelligence of our people is truly at an all-time low.’

Plus, the guest chamber is only a few hallways away from the spiral staircase leading to the Queen’s bedchamber, so he’s made sneaking around a nightly activity, unable to spend another evening without her limbs tangled with his. Hopefully, after today, he’ll no longer have to.

The Royal Guard outfit hangs readily on a hook on the wall, having been laundered and pressed to perfection by the barracks’ helper Edio. The poor boy had come to Link’s temporary room last night, out of breath after hauling an ungodly amount of fabric across castle grounds, and Link thanked him for his troubles by tipping quite a generous amount of rupees. 

While a ridiculously and unnecessarily ornate outfit, Link is grateful that it is at least a set of clothes that he already owns, unlike Zelda who had to go through at least five fittings per week. 

After showering and keeping his hair neat and proper (as proper as it could be anyway with his wild hair being precariously tied by his well-worn hair band that isn’t so royal,) he dons the garment, already feeling a few pounds heavier from the excess amount of cloth on his body. And the Sword is not even slung over his shoulder yet. 

He takes a look at himself in the mirror, making sure that everything is correctly in place. He’s a little satisfied, for he has a couple of hours to kill before he will be called to make his way to the Grand Chapel to await his bride.

He picks up the newspaper on the study desk and sits in the leather armchair, skipping the headlining article to read Recipe of the Week.

‘Meat roulade with Hyrule herb paste’ it says, and the illustration kindly printed by the Gazette on the paper makes his mouth water a little. That indeed looks delicious. 

But before he can read through the list of ingredients, someone knocks at the door.

Link sighs, folding back the newspaper and tossing it on the desk as he walks towards the door, and when he swings it open, he’s surprised to find the handmaid Malena.

“Sir Link, I truly apologize—”

She has always been so nervous and fidgety around him, and he doesn’t really know why, so he tries his best to calm her down. “Malena, it’s alright. Is there something wrong?”

“No, sir. Her Majesty, she—ah. She requests your presence in her bedchamber.”

Oh that woman. No wonder the staff has been busy gossiping.

“Understood. Thank you, Malena.”

The young woman bends her knees with one foot in front of the other (wait, did she just curtsy?) and mutters something that sounds an awful lot like oh what the hell am I doing before bidding him a shy goodbye and skittering away. 

After a beat, he finally steps out of his room and closes the door behind him before he makes his way through the hallways, his legs acting out of reflex memory as they take him up and up the staircase, towards those familiar double doors that he has come to love knocking on. Though, he thinks warmly, he can forgo knocking altogether starting from tonight.

The reply after the knock is quick: “Come in.”

His fingers hook through the circular brass handle, and when he pushes it open, he’s immediately blessed by a view of Zelda (his wife his wife his wife) in her sartorial glory, her golden locks curled loosely, adorned by a tiara encrusted with rows of diamonds that fan atop her head like half a halo, figure wrapped in a fitted bodice with a high neckline featuring thousands of hand-sewn pearls, ornate lace covering her torso and the long sleeves, the silk taffeta of her skirt almost blown like a bubble in her seat, its long train resting on the floor beneath her. The tulle veil obscures that lovely visage of hers and its laced hem falls to her waist, but he can still make out the outline behind it, her face bare and flushed even without powder and rouge. 

She does not need it, he thinks. She’s already devastatingly beautiful, making his heart skip a beat. Or two. Or ten.

“No wonder all my maids are acting insane today,” she speaks from behind her veil. “Not when the Hero of Hyrule looks like that.”

“Oh Zelda,” Link breathes out, dumbfounded. How could she say such a thing when she herself looks like that?

“Come here,” her hand stretches out to him, beckoning him to hold it. “I’m afraid we don’t have much time. Grooms and brides aren’t supposed to see each other before the altar, but I just can’t help it.”

The law of gravity, her body. He follows and falls, feet moving out of their own volition, stepping closer towards her. 

He takes her hand in his gloved ones as he kneels before her, brushing his lips against that raised scar in the shape of three triangles. Her fingers flex in his grip.

“Don’t kneel for me,” she murmurs. “Not when I can’t kneel, too. Not in this damn corset.” She laughs.

Oh but he must. He has given his life and limb to be able to do so. 

He wishes he could kiss her now, pull back the veil and take her lips between his, but he’s quite the patient man now so he can wait. He could wait until she makes her way down the aisle in between pews, until the High Priestess pronounces them wife and husband in front of the nation. Now, he’s happy to just bask in her presence, alone without the thousands of eyes that await them.

“I can’t help it,” he replies, breathless. “Zelda, you’re so beautiful.”

She shakes her head, the veil following in her motion. “I wish I could put you into my eyes, Link. See what I see.”

Her left hand joins him, drawing them into her lap, squeezing tightly. His world begins and ends where her fingers wrap around his wrist.

“I’ll see you at the altar?” she says. A question but not really.

His world begins and ends with her, and always will. 

“I’ll see you at the altar.”

Chapter Text

Their first engagement ever since Link became the Prince Consort of Hyrule, to their endless displeasure, is to stand and pose for hours for the official royal portrait. Zelda sits on her throne, bedecked in a blue royal dress that isn’t so dissimilar from the one she used to wear as a princess. 

As for Link—he stands next to and just slightly behind the throne, his hands on the indigo pommel of the Sword of Legend, leaning against it to relieve his sore muscles from constantly standing still. 

The painter, who is a dear friend of the traveling Sheikah painter Pikango, stands behind his easel and canvas, sketching the outline of the Queen and her Prince. 

Once every few minutes, he’d chime in from behind his work in progress.

“Could the Prince kindly look this way?” His fingers motion towards himself.

A soft oh escapes Link’s lips as he shifts in his stance, realizing that he has been staring at his wife this whole time. 

It does not take long before his eyes wander back to gaze at her again.

After about fourteen warnings, the painter gives up.

When another hour has passed, they are given the opportunity to stretch or excuse themselves to the washroom if need be before the painter continues drawing their likeness. Before Link can leave the room, the painter calls out—

“Perhaps the Prince would also like to neaten his hair?” 

Zelda, with a glass of water almost to her lips, shakes her head.

“No, he does not,” she replies.

“Oh—understood, Your Majesty.” The painter nods.

Link can’t help but smile.

***

What they do not yet know, as copies of the royal portrait are reproduced across the kingdom to be framed in schools, in district offices and city halls—is that eventually, some Hylian teenagers would send their girlfriends or boyfriends a greeting card with the royal portrait printed on the front as a declaration of love.

***

Breakfast is usually served this way:

Seven o’clock, Zelda’s handmaids would knock on the door for the sake of letting her know that they were coming in before they swing the door open and place metal trays containing an assortment of breakfast foods—coffee, scones, boiled eggs, different flavors of jam—onto the marble table near the floor-to-ceiling window of her bedchamber.

However, after Link had moved in and they were nearly interrupted by the handmaids in their… morning in-bed activities, Zelda decides to move breakfast to the small dining room within their private quarters instead. 

While it requires them to at least be modestly dressed before exiting the bedchamber and heading to the dining room, they have come to enjoy it anyway. 

Link reads his morning newspaper, which, thankfully, no longer boasts headlines about them. Zelda, right beside him, peers through scientific journals sent by the Royal Lab, humming from time to time as she digests the information scrawled on the papers.

Her hand lies limp on the countertop. He takes it and twines their fingers above the table.

They do not let go even as a servant approaches them to refill their cups of coffee.

***

When the subject of the possibility of heirs is raised during a council meeting, Zelda puts her foot down.

“We are aware of our duty,” she says, her voice stern. “But this decision is ours and ours alone. We will do so when we are ready.”

It’s not like they haven’t talked about it—they have, lengthily, on multiple occasions. But, no matter what the slightly older members of the Court think, twenty-five and twenty-six are still pretty young of an age. And they want to stretch out this newfound bliss of finally being together in public for just a few more years. Of finally being given the privacy to be in their own little world.

Whenever that would happen, Link knows that she would be a great mother, and he could only hope that he would be a great father, too. 

The Court hushed. The Queen has spoken, after all.

***

On the first snowy day of the year, Link decides that he is ready to put the Sword back into its pedestal, to let it rest after accompanying him for more than two years, even when it has sealed the darkness that was the Demon King away. He has kept it for so long because how could he let it go, really? It has become a part of his body, and in the core of its blade runs the sacred light that the love of his life had imbued for tens of thousands of years.

But it’s time. They have done their job, and now they will rest.

When he tells Zelda this, she gives him a knowing smile.

They journey to the Lost Woods together, wrapped in snowquill jackets and pants lined with shearling, their pouches full of low-grade warming elixirs. 

The Great Deku Tree greets them warmly and congratulates them for everything that they have done. 

The metal of the Sword sings as Link unsheaths it, handing the scabbard to a group of giggly koroks as they say ‘Thank you, Mister Hero!’ before retreating to the belly of the great tree.

As he lowers the tip of the blade into the slot, he casts a glance at Zelda, nodding at the Sword as if to say— 

Come here. This is yours as much as it is mine.

She walks around the dais and stands across from him, and wraps her gloved hands around his own, around the iris-green hilt. 

For the first time in a long, long time, the Sword speaks.

Thank you both, it transmits, voice disembodied but familiar nonetheless. It sounds melancholic, almost. I shall see you again in your next lifetime.

His wife’s eyes widen, and he knows that she heard it, too.

A draw of breath, then they finally drive the Sword into the pedestal, blinding light emitting from the sacred blade as it finally falls into, hopefully, a long slumber.

This is their reward.

-fin-

Chapter Text

“Could the Prince kindly look this way?” His fingers motion towards himself.

A soft oh escapes Link’s lips as he shifts in his stance, realizing that he has been staring at his wife the whole time. 

It does not take long before his eyes wander back to gaze at her again.

After about fourteen warnings, the painter gives up.