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The castle tower is cold. It always is, being on the north side and several stories taller than any other part of what had been her childhood home. It had scared her once, being up here, staring out of a window so large that even her father’s biggest soldier could fit through it with ease. She’d never dared get close out of some youthful imagining that she would trip and plummet over the edge, down to the unforgiving stone below.
Now, she sits, reclining against the hard press of the archway, one gloved hand dangling over the open air. Such a fall would not be the end of her, she thinks, closing her eyes to the breeze. Her end came long ago. She is a ghost now, and gravity does not apply to spirits.
More accurately, it does not apply to one who spent an entire year under the tutelage of the Sheikah people and their sternest warrior, a woman who was determined to see her rise again. She thinks of Impa, of those dark red eyes and wonders if she’ll ever be able to make amends for the choices she knows the shadow woman did not approve of. So much time and energy had been spent on a broken corpse of a girl, body scarred by blue flames, teaching her not just how to walk again, but how to fly, how to defy the world and all its laws to become something more than she was ever meant to be.
All so that she could take her training and march back to a castle that was no longer hers. So that she could turn herself into a spy, stalking dangerously close to the man who, by all accounts, she should hate.
But Ganondorf Dragmire was not a usurper. He would have been, given the chance. Yet in the wake of her death, of her father’s death, he’d merely strolled into Hyrule and declared himself the new king, using his blessing from the Triforce of Power and lack of other viable contenders as a justification that few could refute. Some tried. All failed.
She was not amongst the dissenters. This was something Impa could not understand, why the ghost of Princess Zelda could not find fault against the warlord who had threatened conquest, who had, in all likelihood, gone to that final meeting with every intention of being the only one to walk away alive. Impa did not understand what it was like to wake up one morning, when the medication had finally allowed her some semblance of thought, to find that her body was little more than a ruined temple left in shambles, that her father was dead and her own husband had already mourned her before fleeing himself.
Impa did not know the desperation that drove her to latch onto the one solid piece of goodness she could find in all the devastation. Ganondorf had taken her kingdom, yes, but he’d taken it well. No further blood was spilled, no war was fought. Some of her court had been imprisoned, yes, which she supposed was inevitable. Still, there was solace in knowing that once he’d claimed Hyrule, he’d protected it, keeping it within his narrow lines, ensuring that there was no violent bid for power following the collapse of the royal family.
Her people were fed. Trade carried on. Alliances were forged or reshaped, and harvests were had.
She appreciates his efforts, even if she does not always appreciate his methodology.
It has been one month since she returned here, since the one-year anniversary of her death. Castle Town had been covered in black, every face drenched in tears, and no one had noticed the shadow wrapped in form-fitting blue armor haunting them, struggling to come to terms with a remembrance for the person she can never be again. Still, the memorial had given her an opportunity to slip back into her home, setting foot upon her own stone floors and velvet carpets in a body that was not truly hers any longer.
In the weeks that followed, she’d learned the workings of the castle in a way she could have never dreamed of as a child — hidden passages lost to even the servants, which rafters were too noisy for climbing upon, footholds in chandeliers. She had a favorite column in the main hall now, because the design etched into the solid marble gave her a better grip, enabling her to climb it faster than the others.
And all the while, she has been watching him.
The new king.
Ganondorf has noticed her, too. It has become almost a kind of fun, seeing how close she can get to him, whether she can make him lash out at the curtains she has long vacated. His frustration brings her joy, though that is not why she plays with him so. She wants to be noticed. Wants him to understand that she is capable of staying one step ahead of him so that he will see the merit in keeping her around.
The dead cannot rule a kingdom. And since the man who had vowed to become her king one day has run off, disappearing across the eastern border a scant three weeks after her death, she must try to corral this new ruler, for she believes he is too harsh in too many ways. A good spy will be beneficial for him, and it will enable her to steer him from the darkness, a voice of reason against the insanity that seems to plague him.
When she hears the footsteps on the stairs, she knows that it is time to put that to the test. There are almost no outs from this position. One entry and exit into the tower, a single wooden door that the behemoth who will be passing through it any moment will easily block with his massive frame. There is only the flight down and a very precarious climb up, if one were brave enough to antagonize the nest of Guay who had made their home up there.
The footsteps pause. She takes in a deep breath, trying not to lose herself in the past, in the moment that should have been. The last time he’d approached her, that damn flower between them, their Triforces lighting up a breath before the explosion. His eyes, growing wide with shock and maybe, just maybe, a flicker of fear. Her world, blown apart as the fiery embrace of death coveted her.
It is what will keep her safe now. Her body is too scarred for the light of her Wisdom to be seen, and every inch of her save for her eyes is concealed underneath her armor. He will not know who he is speaking to.
But she knows exactly who he is, the man who opens the door and stares at her from the darkness beyond. She knows those glowing golden eyes, like the flames of hell wrapped in intelligence and a slowly unraveling brilliance that shamed lesser men. She has learned the shape of him, broad shoulders, waist a little too thin for his frame, arms too lithe but somehow still capable of breaking mountains in two. He speaks calmly in public when he knows he is being watched, but snarls to himself when alone — at least until he suspects that he is not so alone after all.
That is when the monster comes out.
I know you’re there, he would growl into the nothingness. You cannot hide from me forever in my own castle.
She’d taken the liberty of stealing his favorite dagger after that, snatching it from his office and relocating it to his pillow, watching from the window in delight as he fumed at the discovery. He’d lobbed his entire bed through that window, though she hadn’t yet decided if he had been aiming at her or if it were merely a coincidence.
If you are going to linger, he’d finally snapped after a week of such treatment, at least make yourself useful. Or are you just a child who enjoys petty pranks?
The report on the lower market rebellion she’d left tucked into his locked desk drawer had stunned him into silence for quite some time.
Today, he seems contained, though she can almost hear his teeth grinding as he realizes that he has not caught her unaware. Instead, he finds her waiting for him, making no attempt to hide. Proving to him that she is real, for all that she is still outpacing him.
She is not sure he appreciates that nearly as much as she does.
“Took you long enough,” she says, somehow comforted by the foreign sound of the male voice leaving her throat. It is part of her own magic, this slight alteration of herself, but she does not have the capability to maintain a manual disguise. It is easier to let her magic change her eyes and her voice, though she could not part with her golden hair.
To him, she should appear as a frustratingly calm Sheikah male — if he even knows what that is.
He steps inside the suddenly too small chamber, tall enough to have to duck through the doorframe on his way in. The clothes he wears are elaborate enough to make her want to roll her eyes, black silks lined in gold and enough jewelry to rival the coffers Princess Zelda once took for granted.
She wishes, for one small moment, that she could feel something, anything in his presence. Fear. Anger. Rage. Anything other than the blanket of nothingness that has been her companion since the day her life ended.
“It seems I had to wait until you were ready to grace me with your presence,” he all but growls. “Who are you, boy?”
Well, at least she can be certain that her disguise has held up. Perhaps in another life, she might have smiled at that.
“A friend.” Her reply is devoid of any inflection, a thing that makes his thick eyebrow twitch.
He steps forward another pace. “You are a trespasser.”
“I am an informant,” she corrects, turning her gaze to the sky. The sun is setting, the last traces of light stretching across the horizon in a desperate, feeble attempt not to vanish completely. “In a just world, I’d even be your spymaster.”
That makes him laugh — too hard, too forced. “A spymaster? Was sneaking around my castle some sort of job interview for you?”
She shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “You did mention to Krema’na that you needed to hire better talent.”
The temperature in the tower drops, and it has nothing to do with the darkening sky. He had spoken to the Moblin Queen in confidence, deep within her den on the other side of Hyrule Field. That the boy before him could have followed him there and infiltrated a monster haven, to have overheard a conversation not meant for the ears of any other — to do so with without him having realized it…
Before she can fully process the thought, he encloses the distance between them. Because she was anticipating his volitile reaction, she is able to keep calm while he wraps a massive fist around the front of her shirt, thrusting her out the window until her legs hover over the drop that had once felt so dizzingly terrifying. All that keeps her from plummeting now is the hand of a man who had once penned a letter to her father promising to kill her quickly if surrender was given.
Sometimes, she dreams about how this life could have gone differently. If her father had given up the kingdom. If they’d gone to war. If they’d won. Sometimes she imagines that Ganondorf stole her throne by force, but it never fits like it should. A thousand possibilities living in the mind of a girl who had once had an imagination that made her tutors laugh in delight, yet none of them could be made real. Her body is numb, and her mind is too grounded in what is that it refuses to entertain anything that could have been. She cannot exist in any world except the one that has brought her to dangling over her kingdom like a ragdoll simply waiting to be dropped.
She cannot even make herself regret wishing, even a little, that he would let go.
“Who are you?” he snarles, shaking her in a way she supposes should be intimidating.
“I am a Sheikah.” Her calm reply makes the flames of his eyes burn hotter. She decides, in that moment, that she very much likes that look, and gently wraps her hands around his forearms just for the sake of balance. Even without her gloves, she wouldn’t be able to feel the elaborate fabric coating his skin. “A servant of the royal family.”
He hisses, fist tightening enough to tip her off. No doubt he has traced the source of the rebellion, has realized the depths to which it had taken root, the whispers sowing fields of hope in the name of a girl that wants to be forgotten. “What a miserable servant you are then. They are all dead.”
“Are you not the King of Hyrule?” she asks, with all the gusto of someone conversing about the weather.
For a moment, he almost snaps at her again, but the realization takes hold before any sound escapes him. She can see it in his widening gaze the moment before it narrows, before he drags her back towards him just enough for her to smell the scent of incense that always seems to cling to him.
“My patience with your cryptic games hangs by the same thread keeping you alive,” he warns, dark enough to make shivers want to crawl up her spine. It takes considerable effort to remain still, to not let the reaction show, to keep herself unaffected enough not to marvel that he has finally elicited a physical response from a body that refuses to acknowledge the world around it any longer. “Tell me exactly who you are and what you are doing here, or else whatever nonsense you spew will be your last.”
“Tempting,” she remarks dryly, surprising him. While she would welcome a second death, she cannot let herself vanish entirely, not while all that remains of her can still do something for her people. “As I said, I am a Sheikah. The last one of my kind. And I have come here to do what we swore to always do: aid the one who rules Hyrule as a loyal servant of the crown.”
Up above, a Guay has noticed her. It crows at her indigently, as if her presence is inherently offensive. She studies it in the darkness, noting the speckles of starlight beginning to blanket the sky around it.
“And why did you not so proudly serve the previous royalty?” he asks, glaring at the same Guay before turning that murderous stare towards her.
She shrugs again. “That was before my time.”
His grip slackens enough to make her drop an inch. Others might have faltered here, realizing that they’d pushed an irate king to his limit. Maybe they would have simpered or begged — she’d witnessed as much, when one of the gentry was dragged before the court. A Chancellor, one who’d been loyal to her father but had accepted the transition of power without any fuss. At least, not in public.
King Ganondorf had his soldiers throw him to the floor before the throne while he brought forth a witness who testified that the Chancellor had been going to the taverns late at night, drinking himself to the point of honesty, revealing an opinion of the new Crown that was rather unfavorable to say the least. The poor man had been in tears, a blubbering mess on his knees, groveling for forgiveness that she had been certain would not be granted. She’d considered interfering then, for inebriated talk was hardly cause for the public floggings Ganondorf seemed so fond of.
But he’d surprised her. He’d let the Chancellor live, unmarred, albeit unforgiven, letting the shame of public opinion and the fear of association drive him from the castle all on its own. It was not the ideal solution by any means. She would never have permitted such treatment, nor met such a minor offense with such misery. Yet she supposed it could have been worse.
He could have dropped the Chancellor off of the top of the castle.
“Do you want to die?” Ganondorf asks, borderline feral.
“If I say yes, will you refuse to kill me out of spite? Or will you assume it is some attempt to deceive you into keeping me alive?”
It happens without ceremony. One second she is in his grip, and then the world is rushing past her, his furious face almost too distant to make out as she falls.
There is a moment where she considers not stopping it. Letting this be the end of her, the true end, the kind that even a team of Sheikah healers working themselves to the bone could not cure. There will be a true nothingness, not this masquerade of absence that smothers her where there should be sensation. No more weight of her kingdom upon her shoulders, no more pushing her mind to its limits to figure out how to influence from the shadows what she should have been commanding from the light.
She closes her eyes, allowing herself, for that one breath, to savor the descent.
Then she calls upon her magic and the technique Impa taught her, teleporting herself safely atop the roof, next to the startled Guay who flies away in a flurry of feathers.
One day, she will give herself to death’s embrace. That day cannot be today, for there is still too much to do, and the madman who now stands somewhere beneath her is a problem she cannot leave unattended. For as long as he holds the reins to her kingdom, she must stand between him and the utter devastation he is liable to bring.
“Cute trick,” he mutters, loud enough that his voice carries up to her ears.
“Thank you, sire,” she says dryly, just for the satisfaction of hearing something crack.
“Do you plan on being a complete pain in my ass the entire time you are here?”
She contemplates how best to answer that, then settles on, “If that is what you wish.”
His heavy sigh is the only thing to pass between them for a while, so she sits there, looking at the sea of stars above her. Once, she had laid in the fields around the castle, staring up at this sky, naming every constallation she could. It did not matter what they were supposed to be, only what she wanted them to be, and she’d spent hours upon hours coming up with her own stories for them. When she was formally betrothed to Carlisle as a teenager, she thought it would have to stop, but he’d snuck out to the fields with her. He hadn’t cared much for the stars, but he hadn’t intruded upon her peace.
That was how it was between them. That understanding, that friendship. Two people who understood what they were and what their future held, neither of them wanting to make it any kind of difficult for the other. So they’d accepted what they could, making space for the other, cultivating something that she had never confused for some grand, romantic love. Yet she had always imagined it to be a form of love anyway, a deep, caring kind.
Not the kind that would have him running the moment the world turned dark.
She finds a constellation in the sky, the one she had crafted on their wedding night, after they’d awkwardly changed a lifelong friendship into a proper marriage. She’d stood on the balcony, finding a new pattern to trace, a new paths to follow that she had planned to hold onto through her many years as queen, once her father had passed the throne down to her and her new husband. Those stars seem dimmer now, almost misshapen, as if she cannot quite remember how they were supposed to fit together.
It is fitting, she supposes. She is angry at a man who had no choice but to flee, for what else was he supposed to do when a warlord — the sole survivor of a tragedy that eradicated so many lives — came marching into his home and declared himself in charge? When he had the divine favor and enough dark magic to ensure that his will was uncontested? Carlisle had no doubt been coerced into pledging his support of the new king, and then had taken the wisest course of action, abandoning Hyrule altogether before some rebel group or another tried to turn the Prince Consort into a symbol of hope who would pose a threat to the volatile new ruler.
Her husband is just another casualty of that damned flower, of blue flames that have consumed all she had. All except the kingdom itself, though that could still come to pass if she is not careful.
“Get down here, boy.” The order is sharp and expectant, though she suspects that Ganondorf is feeling slightly less murderous than he had been, which is why she obeys.
She does not take the easy way in. She teleports herself again, through the wall this time, though that is inherently risky. But it is worth materializing behind him while he looks up, waiting for her descent, watching him whip around in fury when she calls, “I’m here, Your Majesty.”
“You—” He stops, breathing heavily, glaring at her as if he has never seen anything like her. Composing himself, he straightens, shoulders relaxing. “What is your name?”
She has a feeling that if she shrugs at him again, he might tear her arms off. Instead, she shakes her head. “A Sheikah has only their secrets to keep. What I am called is of no consequence.”
His jaw clenches. “If you are the last of your kind, then surely a damn name is not a secret.”
Grateful that he has swallowed the lie — that he won’t hunt for a mysterious people that were banished into obscurity ages ago, that he won’t connect the dots and begin to suspect that such a devoted clan might have found the still breathing remains of a Princess and gave her just enough life back to get her mobile — she tilts her head. “There is power in a name, King Ganondorf.”
He growls, pacing the small space like a caged beast, leaving her to stand by the window and share a look with the concerned Guay who has decided to return after all.
“Shall I just call you Sheik then, since you insist upon having no identity for yourself?”
Though he is not sincere, she latches onto the moniker eagerly, understanding that he will hate it beyond measure. She treasures it dearly.
“As you wish, sire.”
“Enough,” he snaps, ceasing his pacing to pin her with a stare. “I accept your bid for servitude, under the expectation that you will do everything I command without question. A shadow can be an excellent tool indeed. Betraying me would be most unwise.”
“Of course,” she replies evenly, bowing at the waist. “My life is yours.”
“Then make yourself useful. Tell me more about this rebellion you discovered. And do not play games with me, Sheik.”
Sheik, she thinks, taking one last glance at the stars. She can almost make out the shape of a new constellation in the sky, a hundred little broken dots of light that have formed together into something resembling a soul. It feels, for just that moment, like a new life lingering out there in the darkness.
Though it is not much, it is something she can claim for herself, an identity to make her own. Like the mask concealing her face — and her scars — it will not be permanent. But it will do for now.
“Very well, Your Majesty,” she says, turning away from the night sky to stare into those hellfire eyes. “Would you prefer to talk in your office? You may want to take notes. There is much to tell you.”