Work Text:
All young men between the ages of 12 and 18 must report on the first of August to Castletown for training and potential placement in the official ranks of His Royal Highness, the King of Hyrule.
.
Link is twelve. His father’s hand is resting heavy and easy on his shoulders, fingers tightening and loosening as they stand together and read the announcement. Early this morning a disgruntled herald in purple and gold nailed it to the trunk of the oak and left as soon as he could. Ilia was asleep and didn’t see; Link told her and they giggled about it.
Link is twelve and has been working in the fields with his father since he was eight. He is not strong by any stretch, but he’s brimming with potential, with organized loyalty and fiery stamina. The sun adores him. It paints him shining and proud, brightens the mop of dark blond hair hanging down into his eyes.
He will go, and not unhappily, to Castletown on the first of August.
.
He and countless other boys are trained and drilled and ordered and trained and drilled and ordered and trained and drilled and ordered and so on and so on. It should be monotonous, and sometimes it is, but late summers in Ordon have always been muggy, wet and suffocating; Link finds himself impressing his superiors. They put wooden sticks in his hand, teach him how to swing. They give him a sword, teach him how to stand on his feet, how to flex his fingers, how to balance his weight. It’s beautiful and exhausting, this excellently focused energy; there’s so much to master here, so much to learn; he gulps down water and stretches his body and waits for the next set.
.
He’s a footsoldier by October. He’s red with pride he doesn’t know how to express. He’s given a day to go home and organize his life. He clasps his father’s hand in hello and goodbye.
.
In December is Her Royal Highness, Princess Zelda’s birthday. She will be thirteen. Link hasn’t seen her ever. The other boys like to whisper about her. The older boys say lewd things; the younger boys say that she’s more beautiful than all the shining treasures in the world.
Because he is twelve, Link nods solemnly. His only encounters with princesses have been in fairytales, and in fairytales, princesses are always more beautiful than all the shining treasures in the world.
.
When he is fifteen he’s promoted as a sentry. His posts are long and still with inactivity. His positions are rotated daily around the castle. Sometimes he’s placed at the end of the princess’s hallway; because he’s been drilled rigorously on it, he knows without thinking that the door to her main chambers is to the left of the main arch. He hears laughter, from time to time, from behind that door. And because he is fifteen, he blushes; he blushes for many reasons: the irony, the surreality, the sobering proximity.
.
Autumn is red and cold and gusty with bitter winds. By now Link has seen the likeness of Her Royal Highness, Princess Zelda, more times than he can count. And far more times than he would like. He’s half sick of her face. Thirteen iterations of it gleam in the candlelit hallways of the castle, testaments to brazen riches, bright indulgent oil paint. Somehow she always manages to look gloomy. The painters put her in shining gold, white, ivory. They put sapphires in her dark hair, diamonds and emeralds. They make her pale, make her cheeks red with health and blood.
Link’s boots are wearing through from drills, drills, drills, and he’s tired of her eyes, her sad face looming like a cloud, boring down on him no matter where he is.
Castletown is cold and gray. The rain is more like sleet. He’s moving to his next post, the end of the princess’s dark hallway, when he hears a small noise from behind her door.
Then it’s pulled open, swift as an arrow, by a lady’s maid. He’s walking past. He doesn’t mean to look. He’s sixteen with attention pulled taut and easy in any direction; he looks into the room and in the span of three seconds he sees a girl, sitting in a chair. She’s in a nightgown. Her hair is dark and hangs over her shoulders.
It’s only after the door has been closed and his eyes averted that he understands that the girl, in the nightgown with the heavy hanging hair, must also be the princess. Zelda with the gloomy face.
He’s settled at his post, mind whirling, when the door opens again. The same lady’s maid steps out and looks both ways down the hallway. Then she looks at Link. She beckons to him.
He squints, wondering if it’s him she wants.
“Yes, you, soldier,” she says, her voice hushed. “Come here. Her Royal Highness Princess Zelda requires you.”
So he goes, hand on the hilt of his unused sword, curious and cautious. The lady’s maid’s name is Poppy. She has the elegant grace of a woman in her fifties, braided hair a firm gray. She tells him to go down to the kitchen and fetch three towels, a bowl of warmed water. Lattice roots for pain relief. He has some idea of what this is about. Princess Zelda is sixteen. A marriage will be brewing by her eighteenth birthday. Time is ticking, he knows enough about court politics to know this one thing.
He doesn’t see her again that day. He thinks about her more often, though.
.
Link and his friends are seventeen. The best of them have been promoted to cavalrymen. They go out drinking to celebrate, get roaring drunk, lug each other back to the barracks. They’re scolded terribly in the morning. They take turns covering each other to throw up in the meager bushes while they do their drills. It’s miserable. It’s exhilarating; it’s new, it’s the beginning of a life.
A foreign ambassador arrives at the end of the week. He’s thirty-two and wealthy. Not wealthy enough for a princess but there are whispers that diplomatic affairs are not entirely his focus.
.
The second time Link sees Her Royal Highness, Princess Zelda, is also the second time the foreign ambassador comes to Hyrule. Link is with his commanding officer in the courtyard, discussing plans for the month. From the small gardens emerge the two of them: the princess, the ambassador, arm in arm.
Before he sees her he’s convinced he had her face memorized from all the paintings on all the walls. She walks beside the ambassador and his first thought is that she looks cold, the second thought that she looks miserable. She’s unprettily flushed. She’s tall. Her hair is pinned tightly away from her face. Her cloak drips like water off her broad shoulders. It’s so thin, it can’t possibly be doing anything to keep her warm. The ambassador, meanwhile, is in a finely cut fur coat, boots, thick trousers.
The ambassador talks in a smooth, knowledgeable voice. The princess is quiet. Link lowers his head in deference as they pass.
.
The ambassador leaves in the February of the new year.
Link sits in the courtyard below her bedroom window with his friends. They’re talking quietly, discussing the month’s duties. Above them the window creaks open. There’s a faint sound of weeping; a bloody handkerchief is tossed down onto the winter yellow grass; a sharp cry. The window is slammed shut.
.
His squadron will be gone from March to May on a scouting mission to the east. Her Royal Highness, Princess Zelda, will be blessing their journey the morning of their departure.
They stand in perfect formation.
The princess, on the arm of her father and king, stands in front of them. Link takes the moment to look at her steadily. To study her truly.
She is certainly her father’s daughter. They have the same hard chins, the hair glinting dully under the gray morning sky. Her nose is straight and proud. Her eyes large and shining. She is pale, pale as though she’s sick, and there’s no color whatsoever in her cheeks.
Objectively she’s more beautiful than all the shining treasures in the world. Link decides this in his own time. But it feels uncomfortable to admit, even to himself. Thin cloaks, bloody rags; the princess is unnerving to him, gloomy as her portrait, how she breathes and raises her hand, closes her eyes, prays over the troops in a cool, low voice.
.
Link is a good soldier, a decorated soldier. He’s honored by being placed in the squadron specifically designated for Her Royal Highness, Princess Zelda’s eighteenth birthday celebration. He is expected to keep watch. To stay clear-headed. To remain, in all ways, undiverted.
Link is a good soldier, a good man. He’s nearly eighteen himself. He’s never had so much as a dalliance with a village girl or a lady’s maid no matter how he’s been teased, flirted with.
Link is grown, now. Not so easily diverted.
“Her Royal Highness, the Crown Princess Zelda of Hyrule,” announces the herald.
The room goes still.
The princess enters the ballroom.
Heavenly, is all he can think.
.
They are both nineteen when Link is given his first test, his first task, the first of many to determine the caliber of his talent, loyalty, staying power. He is ordered to escort the princess home from her studies in the north. It’s only the two of them, together, side by side in the windy mountains. At first he was nervous. Then he was stubborn. Now he’s content, something like relaxed. She’s a beautiful rider and gentle with her mare. Epona likes the princess a good amount.
In the highlands the princess is different from what she seems to be in the castle. She wears simple wool riding habits. Her hair is long and thick and braided down her back. She smiles rarely, but she smiles sometimes, and the sight never fails to send a shock down his body like cold water.
It’s an odd arrangement, to say the least. Their horses carry hefty bags of food and water and clothes. They make a meager camp every night. The proper thing would be to call for a carriage or at least a more decent escort, made of more men than one nineteen year old kid.
The two of them hardly talk, but when they do her voice is even and low; she is kind, brittle with manners on the ground, impossibly lovely when they ride beside each other, letting the horses walk on a loose rein, her head bent, mouth soft, eyes unguarded. They share a skin of water. They pass it between their mouths throughout the week long journey.
.
The princess is courted officially by a duke’s son from the south when they are twenty. Link is a loyal soldier, decorated now, impatient with court. His commanding officer assigns three men to Her Highness’s detail for her outing to the springs and he, loyal, decorated, is no longer debased with such an order.
He stands in the pale warmth of the sun. The spring wind blows briskly through his cloak.
.
The princess is hopeless.
That’s what the court ladies are saying.
The princess is courageous, intelligent, and dedicated. Her mind is as sharp as a jewel and as beautiful, too. The princess has a voice that might shred self-assurance dead, should she wish it, and a will to prevail that is cold to the touch; the princess has only grown lovelier since she came of age. That’s what the court ladies are saying.
But the princess, the court ladies are saying, is hopeless, and foolish. The princess is refusing to marry.
.
In a fairytale, Link thinks—thinks, in the private corners of his mind, when the barracks are quiet and dark and the air is cold—a princess and a knight might love each other. The moon might illuminate their faces, tipped close; they might find gentleness and warmth when the castle of stone is dark with formality.
.
He is twenty-two when he returns to Hyrule, promoted to captain, shining with pride and faded with exhaustion, etched like disease into his bones. He is tired of the military. He is tired of the tents, the reports, the issued blankets they must use for rain, for tents, for the inside of a torn boot or when the wind tears through a coat.
He’s been given two days of leave before he must sink back into the routines of the palace. Epona’s broad hooves step quietly through the tall grasses and he pats her neck. It’s early morning, the sky pale and weak, fog swirling like magic in the fields.
They walk, and walk, and walk. They reach the edge of the woods. They stop and look into those trees for a while, cool and rustling.
“Is that you?”
He jolts, turning around to see who spoke.
Princess Zelda sits atop her palfrey, hair unfettered, the damp morning air making it frizzy and thick. Her shrewd eyes dart over him. Then she smiles.
“It is you, isn’t it? The young man who escorted me those years ago.”
He lowers his head in deference. With a fair bit of coaxing he urges Epona around so his neck isn’t craned. “Yes, Your Highness. I’m honored to see you again.”
She doesn’t say anything so he chances a glance up at her face. She’s looking at him—peering, almost—her mouth in a line. Her face is much narrower than he remembers it being, the circles beneath her eyes darker.
He lowers his head again. “Allow me to escort you back to the palace, Your Highness.”
“What is your name?”
“Link, Your Highness.”
“My name is Zelda.”
He looks back up at her quickly. Her long hair blows back in the wind. Her body is clenched, he can see, and her eyes are watering.
“Forgive me, Your Highness, but please allow me to—”
“Where does your loyalty lie?” she asks, in a low voice.
“To Hyrule, Your Highness. And to His Majesty, Hyrule’s king.”
“Are you loyal to me?”
He swallows. “Yes, Your Highness.”
“If I asked you to steal me away and hide me in some remote town, would you?”
He turns his eyes down. “I would not.”
A long silence. He does not dare look at her now.
“And if I ordered you to?”
She’s intelligent, that’s what the court ladies say. She spends her hours studying, bent over the yellowed pages of manuscripts, until sleep takes her in a forceful kiss. She should know how court authority works. She does know.
He looks up at her and she is watching him, a solemn expression on her face. Her palfrey blinks sleepily.
“I can only ask, Your Highness,” he says carefully, “that you do not give such an order.”
She nods. “Fine. Please escort me back to the palace.”
He lets out a long breath. “If you would, Your Highness, please wear my cloak.”
She obliges him. They guide their horses to stand next to each other, the rough wool sliding from his shoulders to hers. Her long hair, dark, is tucked in. She shivers and pulls the cloak close around herself.
“Thank you,” she says.
.
In summer the king falls ill. Flowers are laid at the palace gates. Castletown laments.
Link does not see the princess, except for the briefest moment: early morning, a lonely moon hanging, a girl on the parapets with loose hair and a narrow face, too blurry to be more beautiful than all the shining treasures in the world.
.
In autumn the king is dead. Long live the queen. Flowers are laid at the palace gates. Castletown laments. Castletown sings and dances.
Link does not see the princess. No one sees the princess. She will be coronated in a month, the trees blazing red with death and beauty.
.
In autumn Link is training the new recruits, the baby-faced boys brazen with youth and lust. They hold spears and wooden swords like they can carve wealth into their futures.
The queen is a stoic presence, less personable than the late king. She does not make herself known. According to the court ladies who talk, she shuts herself up in her study day and night, with painstaking acuity studying the records the magistrates and court officials have compiled over the years.
They say she is stubborn, that she refuses to lift her eyes and see the future rising gold as the sun. That she puts her royal hands in the soil and pretends to understand how the crops will fare.
.
The queen finds him in the courtyard with two boys who stare at her like owls.
“Captain,” she says stiffly.
He gives a deep bow. “Your Majesty.”
“Your Majesty,” the boys echo, bowing out of time.
The queen’s gaze flickers over them briefly and a smile, thin as it is, appears on her mouth. She inclines her head in acknowledgement then looks back at him. She looks different. She is attended by three women and a small man. An advisor. Her hair is brushed and twisted back into coils with glittering pins and jewels. Her gown is lush and long. Her eyes are large and solemn.
He looks down.
“If you will, Captain, I must speak with you when you’re finished here.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Her skirts rustle over the stone of the courtyard as she turns and leaves. Link finishes with the boys and pats their shoulders. On his way to the throne room he fixes his hair in the reflection of an overturned silver bowl, adjusts his uniform. His heart is hammering.
He is announced by a herald.
The doors open. The room is broad and tall and gleaming and at the end of it is the queen, sitting on the throne. She was made to be royalty, he thinks, despite himself. The broad sloping shoulders, the long neck, the dark hair lifted away from her face—she is made of lines and angles of law, of words, the jut of her chin an unfurled decree.
He approaches, her eyes alight on him, and she smiles. He drops to one knee.
“Your Majesty.”
“Captain,” she says evenly. “I have need of you.”
“I will do whatever you ask of me, Your Majesty.”
He remembers that pale morning, her frizzy hair.
If I asked you to steal me away—
“Be at my side, as my general. Your commanding officers have nothing but praise for you and I need someone I can trust.”
His mouth works. With difficulty he finds the words. “I am honored, Your Majesty.”
“Will you, then?”
He nods. “I will.”
.
He is twenty-five and she is twenty-six and there are rumors, as there are wont to be—vile rumors, and harmless ones too. They do not spend their days together but in the evenings, for convenience’s sake, they’ve begun to share dinner, sitting side-by-side in her office, poring over pages and pages of battle reports. She has a studious, sharp mind. She forgets to eat and he taps the plate and she casts him a dark look, but picks up the fork. He smiles, looking down.
It’s his duty to advise her for the good of the kingdom and what would be good, what would be best, is upright Prince Adaman, whose scribes send letters and letters, declaring love, offering gold. His chest tightens. The queen rests her head in her hands.
His duty is to convince her to marry, to ally Hyrule with Adaman, to join forces and present a unified front.
“Your Majesty,” he starts.
“It would be best, wouldn’t it?” she hums. They’re suspended together somewhere in the elusive hours of night or morning. Her study is lit with candles and they flicker golden over her tired face. “I should marry him, shouldn’t I?”
He studies her, then, emboldened by the closed door and her sleep-heavy eyes, he puts his hand over hers on the desk. Her gaze snaps to his.
“You asked me years ago where my loyalty lies.”
Her chest swells with a deep breath.
“I tell you now, Your Majesty, my loyalty is yours. I am your general, your servant.” He tightens his fingers around hers. “Marry, if you wish to marry. Reject Adaman gently, if you wish to reject him. Or reject him cruelly. Either way I will be at your side. I will protect you. As long as I am here, beside you, I will do so.”
Her eyes are red and glassy.
“Fine,” she says quietly. “Stay by my side.”
He nods.
.
The queen does not marry.
.
They are twenty-eight when there’s a rather skillful attempt made on the queen’s life.
Her left shoulder is dark red with blood. The arrow could not embed itself. She is perfectly fine, dressed in a neat white nightgown and sitting with a solemn calmness in her foreroom. Her long hair hangs over her shoulders.
Link, however, cannot stop his fingers from shaking.
He kneels beside her chair and examines the wound where the arrow has split the fabric.
“How is it?” she asks.
He sighs, wiping the blood away with cloth. “It looks fine. The blood makes it look worse than it is.”
She laughs quietly. “Wrap it quickly, then. Are you hungry? Poppy brought a tray of sandwiches to soothe my nerves.”
He grunts. “Your Majesty’s nerves take priority, I believe.”
“You’re shaking, general.” Her voice is light with mirth. “Have a sandwich.”
He fastens the bandage with more coarseness than necessary, irritated at her levity. She laughs again and looks at him, eyes dancing—she’s so beautiful, in a way that never expires itself, and he finds himself enchanted no matter how many times he looks upon her.
His throat closes up and he closes his eyes, letting go, letting his head rest against her shoulder. His hand finds her leg. Her skin is warm beneath the nightgown.
She goes very still.
“General,” she says.
Eyes still closed, he leans closer, gives more of his weight. “Link,” he says.
“What?”
“You nearly died,” he murmurs. His fingers tighten. “I can’t bear it.”
“I didn’t nearly die,” she admonishes, voice hushed. “The arrow barely scraped me.”
“But there was an arrow,” he insists, agitated. Her closeness intoxicates him. He moves his arm around her, pulling her nearer to him.
She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Then she puts her hand in his hair. Her long cool fingers run over the length of his face. She touches the edge of his eyebrow. Runs a finger over his hairline. He keeps his eyes closed in the hope that she won’t stop.
“You’re worried,” she says finally. Her hand stills. Her thumb brushes hair back from his face.
He huffs a laugh. “An astute observation.”
“Link.”
“Zelda.”
He opens his eyes and looks up at her. She is looking ahead. There's a blush high on her cheeks.
.
On the eve of his thirtieth birthday he goes out drinking with his friends. They come back stumbling and drunk, laughing, slurring goodnights as they go their separate ways. Feet dragging, he supports himself on the wall as he makes for his quarters in the palace.
One flight of stairs. A left at the end of the hallway. Past the turrets, he’s nearly there, and—
The queen is standing outside his door, leaning against the stone wall. Her eyes are closed.
He stops cold. She can’t see him like this. He’s about to turn around when she opens her eyes, lifting her head to see him. She inspects him with excruciating clarity.
“You’re drunk,” she says.
Chastened, he nods once, grimacing.
“Happy birthday.”
“Thank you.” He lurches forward and she rushes to grab him. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”
She laughs, a breathy sound, and puts her arm around his middle. “Come on, I’ll help you.”
“Really, Your Majesty—”
“Hush.”
He shuts his mouth and concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other. The queen’s hand is resting on his chest. Her fingers press into his heart.
“Zelda.”
“Hm?” She opens the door, easing him inside.
“I’m sorry I didn’t have dinner with you,” he says, looking at her. She’s so close. Their arms are around each other. How can he stand it, being so close to her, all the time? He marvels at himself for a moment.
Her mouth curves into a smile. “That’s alright. I got a lot of work done without you there to distract me. Bed or couch?”
He drinks her in, flushed in the darkness of the room. Her hair is braided. He wants to unbraid it. He wants to touch her in the way that he is not touching her now. He lifts a hand, brushing a stray strand of hair away from her face. “Bed,” he says.
Her cheeks bloom red. Without a word she brings him over to his glorified cot, extricating herself, helping him to lay back. He lets her go. She turns away and he grabs her hand.
“Wait a minute.”
Her braid, thick and long, shifts over her shoulder. “I won’t be had half way,” she says, in an even voice. She turns her eyes away and waits for him to let go.
The proper thing would be to let go. But the ale has made him tired and indulgent and he’s been so close to her in so many ways and for so long she was a princess in a fairytale. More beautiful than all the shining treasures in the world. And now—
Her hand is clammy and tremulous. He lifts it and presses a long kiss to her cool fingers.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, against her skin.
He looks up at her; she’s closed her eyes.
“Zelda.”
She snatches her hand away and stalks out of the room.
.
The queen does not ever marry.