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On the day the Calamity swept itself back under the castle, Link once again became Zelda’s shadow. One day it was all torrential rain and boiling blood, mud running down lifeless wrists. There were no more days after that, only ideas and agendas.
“She is only eighteen,” Impa pleaded behind curtains. “Please reconsider?”
Zelda touched her cheek in the mirror, shocked that a year had passed already. Her father was still obsessed with blood and what her body could contain. The men all looked the same with gold on their breasts. Link watched from places filled with decay and mold. The boy who had been shot by a guardian and lived—it was a medical miracle, the doctors said. They didn’t say much else. A kingdom with no problems should have no need of a hero.
It was impossible for the Calamity to have just disappeared; it had to have gone somewhere, Zelda thought. It was a small comfort that Link was allowed to stay in the palace and seek out shadows; a cushy position as compensation for being willing to sacrifice his life for a false alarm. The return of the sword left dark bags beneath his eyes. His hair tangled far past his sunken shoulders.
Before it left, the Calamity had taken Revali, and Urbosa, and Mipha. Daruk’s face was hollowing by the day.
“Sorry, Kiddo,” he said to Zelda, with a hand clapped on her back. “This is a toughie.”
They all had eyes like gemstones, and fingers like the handles of knives. If the Calamity were to come back they would need a princess whose powers weren’t dormant, her father said. He never said what he meant outright. Neither did they.
She was “of age.” She was “healthy.” These were gifts. Cold fingers worked on the back of her neck, making delicate work of a chain.
“It’s enchanted, so it won’t snap even if you’re rough with it. It’ll stay on, always.” This man was all teeth. He was the court’s favorite, no surprise. The jewels were quickly absorbing the warmth of her skin.
In the same garden, Link’s eyes were laid bare on her neck. She rubbed the chain. “You hate it,” she said.
After the palace had been filled back up with chattering soldiers and courtiers, his silence had returned to a weapon. She, too, had taken to comfortable blades.
“You think I’m pathetic.”
Trees bowed towards him. Flowers grew over his feet. She couldn’t stop seeing him as dead. She still felt the rain on his skin, clammy and sickening. She drew herself up by the shoulders.
“Well, I’ll tell you this much. It won’t be you.”
He blinked. There was too much sunlight here. Her shoulders burned.
“You can judge them all you want but it will never be you.”
The garden grew around them.
“I hope you know that.”
Her breath measured the space between them, shorter and shorter. He hadn’t touched her since the Calamity. She hadn’t touched him since he was a near-corpse in her arms. In that field, he had heaved and split blood into her hands.
“I hope you know that, Princess.”
He left her mouth open and sunburnt, neck straining against what had begun this whole mess. Did he really think she looked so ugly in it?
She couldn’t believe it.
━━ ✦ - ✦ - ✦ ━━
Link’s eyes were always leveled at her neck, now. It turned her hot and fragile. It made her snap at everyone, even Daruk.
“You Hylians roll a little less blunt,” he said one day, in private. “So forgive me.”
Zelda dipped her head, long sleeves trailing on the table.
“But I reckon someone told you your mom and dad were an arranged marriage?”
She swallowed. “No, but…I believe it.”
“This is delicate business,” Zelda had no idea he was capable of speaking this softly, “and none of mine. But you know how Urbosa always treated you as if you’re her own daughter?”
“In mother’s absence,” Zelda said. “And what of it?”
“Think on it, kid,” he clapped her on the shoulder and nearly sent her over the balcony railing. She whipped around, but he was already half-gone.
Everyone was always walking away from her, like the woman in her dream.
Who are you? Zelda yelled. She knew the hair; she knew the dress. The Calamity is vanished! You can come back. She kept walking.
You can come back.
The light took her eyes first.
━━ ✦ - ✦ - ✦ ━━
She shouldn’t have called out. It was her fault.
“It’s a mess, I took it off and it immediately tangled…”
Link plucked the chain from her hand like it was a rodent’s tail. It hung limp between his fingers. The candlelight cast waves between them.
“Can you…you’re so good with your hands.” She had no idea what she was saying. His mouth was slightly open.
Zelda tucked her knees to her chest, and lay her cheek on them. He swallowed.
“I’m just so worried about what he’ll say.” Her white gown flowed down the side of her chair.
Jewels in his hand, he tied the knot tighter with his eyes. The snap was crisp, and her lungs were empty.
“Link!”
The candles bobbed on the back of his head as he walked out the door, gems lolling off a broken gold chain tossed on the floor. The firelight lapped at them like waves on the shore. The lace of Zelda’s nightgown rippled off her shoulders.
“Link, what is the meaning of this? Link! Come back here.”
The other guards and courtiers in the palace could hear her. She didn’t care. Her anger peaked and carried her over stone and through dirt; only when she found Link by the moat, built of strapped shoulders and leather boots, did she realize she was barefoot. She dug her toes into the dirt. The wind whipped her hair about her shoulders; her neck was pink and stinging.
“Princess,” he said.
The moon was in the castle moat; the moat was in his eyes. Her fingers met the rough braiding of his uniform.
“You—”
“Forgive me,” he murmured. His hand on the back of her neck was gentle. Like hers when she had cradled his bleeding head to her stomach. Her tears were the same, her vow was the same. I’ll do anything, anything.
He was still dying, anyone could see that. His freckles from the sun were fading one by one. His lips were worried and fingernails dull where he chewed them.
Hylia, please.
Hylia, please.
“Forgive me,” he whispered again, fingers at her bare throat, one breath away from choking. His heart beat in her mouth. A medical miracle.