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Chapter Text

Part Three: Link. 

He’d been dreaming of the sword again. 

It started when he was little, and never stopped. The same dream. A winged blue crossguard. A blue blade. Sunlight, filtering down on leaves, on the curling white and blue petals of silent princesses. The sensation of tugging, of beckoning. It was a call he’d been ignoring his whole life. 

He knew, as all heroes did, that the sword was not some petty artifact. Countless men had tried to venture to the Korok forest to find it and had been lost, spirited away by gray mist and the giggles of the forest denizens. Those who did make their way to the heart of the forest reported a stone pedestal ringed by silent princess flowers. That’s how he knew that his dreams were not fabulations, but instead, some real calling. 

It terrified him. He never breathed word of it to his father, knowing that he would’ve been urged to go forth, to find the sword. His father would’ve loved to have the youngest wielder of the Master Sword in the family, despite what he viewed as his son’s deficiencies, but Link—

Well. Link was twelve when he met the princess. 

His princess.

She didn’t remember. Of course she didn’t. Before then, he’d seen her from afar, from within a crowd of squires, bowing their heads as she and her father walked by. He had dared to look up at her face. How pale it was drawn, how regally sad she looked. He—well, he did not love her yet, not then. But he looked at her and understood fealty. 

As a squire, his tasks were multitudinous. Running around, polishing armor, caring for the horses, carrying love letters from nobles to knights and so forth. It gave him plenty of time to scamper around the castle and, like all other lower-ranked nobles, it made him invisible. People didn’t look at you when you were but a lowly squire, especially when you were a mute squire to boot. The knight he served treated him like garbage, thinking his muteness a sign of stupidity. He dared to mention it once to his father, who looked at him, a long look, and said, “Son, sometimes that is just how the world works.”

He should’ve known better than to tell his father. That was a lesson he never learned well. 

So he suffered silently and learned to avoid the knight on the nights when he went drinking and was particularly prone to throwing heavy objects at small boys. One one such night, when Link had just turned fifteen, he went hiding in the gardens, wriggling in the quiet space between two hedges, and was there when the princess came running through. She was fleet-footed, her step so soft that for a moment he thought she was a rabbit, until he heard the pounding footsteps of the guards chasing after her, shouting at her to stop. 

Through the leaves, he could see when they caught up to her, held her still as she kicked and shouted obscenities at them. But they remained steadfast, and eventually she quieted. New crunching footsteps: the footsteps of the king. The king was in his night robe, and it would’ve looked ridiculous if he hadn’t looked so mad. 

“Running away again, Zelda?” he asked, his voice deathly calm. 

“I’m sick of this!” she shouted. “I don’t want to be in cold water anymore—or read any more useless religious texts, or pray for twelve hours straight! I don’t care about this stupid Sealing power, and it’s clear that Hylia doesn’t care about me either, so I’m done! It’s not working! I can help elsewhere, I know I can, but not if I’m locked in a library for the rest of my life!” 

After her outburst she stood there, heaving for breath, glaring up at her father, the ruler of Hyrule, the patriarch of the blessed lineage, the King to whom Link had pledged his soul, his sword, his life. 

The king said: “Fine.”

It took Zelda completely by surprise. Her eyes went huge.  

“Fine,” she repeated, disbelievingly. “What—after fifteen years, that’s it? Fine?”

“Your mother,” he said, and she bit her lip, eyebrows slanting down and together in anger, “controlled her power by the age of twelve. That’s three years overdue for you. If you have not the strength and fortitude to continue, then I shall not force you.”

Her shoulders slumped in relief. But he was not done. 

“However,” he continued, and she looked at him, confused. “One day, your knight will come. He will draw the Master Sword from where it has been slumbering. And by that time, you must be ready, for in that moment, you will be his.”

The blood drained from her face as she realized the meaning of his words. 

“I won’t,” she said, but there was an edge of desperation in her voice. “I will be Hylia’s. I will be Hyrule’s. I will be queen.” Perhaps it was meant to be a statement, but now it was underlined with uncertainty. 

Her father shook his head. His face was shadowed by moonlight and Link struggled to see his expression. Was it pity for his daughter? Was it contempt? “Hyrule has always needed a strong ruler,” he said. “If you cannot be a strong ruler, if you cannot control your power, then I am forced to marry you to someone who will be. And it is understood, by everyone across the lands and beyond, that he who wields the Master Sword is the strongest of them all. Who better to make my heir?”

She looked as if he had stabbed her. “I—I am your daughter,” she said, her voice shaking. “I am your heir. You cannot marry me to some—boorish man whose strength lies in swinging a blade. You—“

“You will not tell me what I can or cannot do, when you cannot do anything to begin with,” he said, his voice deadly calm. She shrunk at the cutting words. “You will gain your power, or you will ready yourself to marry the knight who draws the blade. You may choose which role you wish to play.”

“It’s not a choice,” she cried, like her heart was breaking. “I am trying, I really am—“

“Running away in the middle of the night?” His voice was raising. “Fighting me at every step? I am too old to wrestle a kingdom and my own daughter—if you wish for obsolescence, then go ahead!” With an impatient wave of his hands, he bade the guards to release the princess. Bereft of their support, she dropped to her knees, dirtying her shift. “Go, run to Akkala, play with your little toys, forsake your kingdom. What care I for someone who cares not for my Hyrule? Such a person is not a daughter of mine.”

“Father!” The words were a bitter cry. In the cold moonlight, Link could see the pale lines of tears streaking down of face. 

But he was turning away. Before he walked off he said,“Forgive me,” in a voice that acknowledge how he understood such an action was an impossibility. “What I do, I do for Hyrule.”

He walked off, his knights leaving with him, and the princess was alone, on her knees, sobbing in the moonlight, a heartbreaking sound. She dropped to all fours, punched at the mud she knelt in, and said to herself through gritted teeth, “Get up, Zelda,” and then wept when she couldn’t. 

Eventually, she staggered to her feet. She pressed dirtied hands to her chest, as if trying to contain the well of emotion there. And then slowly, exhausted, she walked out of the garden and out of Link’s sight. 

Link uncurled. His legs and knees were pins and needles by then, but he had been too afraid to move, to disturb the princess in her grief. He lay there, flexing his toes to regain mobility, and thought of the sword, of the pull in his gut, of the dreams he had.

He swore, then, and there, that he would not retrieve the sword. Not when Zelda looked so fearful at the thought of being married off to whoever drew it. He could not be the reason her face dropped, the reason her eyes went blank and unfeeling. He would not. 

So, the years went on. The Master Sword continued to refuse to be drawn, no matter the number of knights that went. King Rhoam’s face grew grimmer and sterner. And Link kept dreaming. 

He trained, as long and as hard as he could. He tried to beat the dream out of him with sheer exhaustion, hoping that if he was tired enough to black out the moment his head hit the pillow, it would drown out those softly rustling leaves, that shining blade. But he continued dreaming of it, until training stopped being punishment and started just being routine, a routine that carried him through his father’s death and his ascendancy to knighthood, until he slayed his first Hinox single-handedly and was brought to the king’s attention—Princess Zelda a pale spectre next to him—and the king looked at him with a considering eye and said, “I have heard of your dedication to your service, knight.”

He kept his eyes low, not breathing. 

“I have been looking for a guard for my daughter,” he continued, and Link looked up, just in time to see the brief, stricken look on Zelda’s face. 

They had a great many conversations over subsequent years, but Zelda never talked to him of how her father had wanted her to marry he who wielded the Master Sword. Perhaps it was too painful for her to discuss. Perhaps she was so relieved that her father had died before acting upon his promise that she never saw reason to bring it up again. But when, after he drew steel on that foppish foreign prince, she had cupped his face, looked at him with love in her eyes, all he could think was, She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know that I dream of the sword. 

It was easy as breathing, at that point, to ignore the pull in his gut. It was easier, somehow, when Ganon arrived, and it felt like fate that the three of them had fallen together so easily. Except only he knew the truth: that he was the one destined to pull the Master Sword. Oh sure, Zelda and Ganon speculated about it. They knew their history. They knew that there was a vassal for Hylia, there was a Calamity-bringer, and there was the hero who bore the sword. He saw the speculative looks they darted his way. He ignored them and, perhaps respecting his wishes (Ganon) or afraid of the answer (Zelda), they never asked him. 

But he dreamed of the sword, if not every night, then most nights. Ghostly images, like half-remembered memories, as if the sword was boring of him or tiring. He was grateful at the prospect of them fading away. He had never wanted to be that knight, anyway. 

That night, though, the day before Ganon was taken away, he had his clearest dream yet. He could feel the cool gray mist on his skin as he followed the sparks to emerge into the green heart of Korok Forest, could almost smell the verdant undergrowth around him, could feel the crunch of the dirt under his boots as he walked up to the pedestal, reached out, and pulled. He could feel the energy draining from him, the master sword testing him, as if it had not been calling to him this entire time, until suddenly, it gave—it swung free, soundlessly, the heavy weight familiar in his hand like it was always meant to be there. 

He woke up, then, shuddering awake. He lay there for a moment, heart pounding, the soft sounds of Zelda and Ganon breathing to his left. And he found that while his right hand was curled around emptiness, he could still feel the heft of the sword. 

Zelda ordered him to get his injuries treated and washed. He half-feared that she would leave him in the hospital wing, but instead she sat there with him on the cot and instead ordered all of her advisors to be brought there instead. She ordered out everyone except for the nurse who was Ganon’s friend, who silently cleaned Link’s burns and scrapes from the lynel as the advisors came in, one by one. Her personal secretary. The captain of the guard. The minister of foreign services. The steward of the supplies. The head mapmaker of the libraries. The head sorcerer of the schools. They exclaimed over the state of the hospital wing, stared at Link’s injuries, and then pulled up a seat on whatever they found closest by: chairs, beds, crates of medical supplies, all while Zelda waited. 

Once they had formed a tidy semicircle around her, she launched in with no preamble. “Ganon has been taken.” She held up a hand to forestall their exclamations. “He has been taken by the Yiga Clan. I aim to create a task force, effective immediately, to retrieve him. Among the members in the party will be myself and Sir Link: myself because of my powers, and Link because of his established battle prowess. I aim for us to leave in ten hours or less; however fast we can organize. Let me make myself clear: there is no point in trying to convince me to stay, so all efforts must be bent towards safely infiltrating the Yiga hideout in the Gerudo Highlands.”

She put down her hand, as if to say, You may speak now. The ministers looked at each other and then the captain said, hesitantly, “I suggest a squadron of fifteen of our best soldiers. Any more would be far too obvious in the Yiga Hideout.”

“By fastest route, it would be three days to the Gerudo Highlands,” piped up the mapmaker, screwing his eyes up in thought. 

Link waved his hand to get their attention. His other arm was being stitched up by the nurse, so he signed, as best as he could, Add on another day. We must go to the Korok Forest.

Zelda stared at him, her face impassive. She was the only one in the room who could read his signing fluently—the captain of the guard could clearly pick up on some of what Link was saying, but not all of it. For a moment, he feared that she would refuse, that he would have to argue with her, but she flicked an ear irritably and said, “Add on another day for a visit to the Korok Forest.”

“That’s in the complete opposite direction,” protested the mapmaker. 

“If we must go, we must,” said Zelda. “If it will help Ganon, we must.”

“Are there any other alternatives?” mused the captain, mustache twitching thoughtfully. “The Korok Forest is only a two hour ride. If you are going there for the reason I suspect you’re going there—“

Link cringed, a little bit. He couldn’t help it. The captain gave him a long look and said, “Then it should not take too long, if my guess is correct. In which case, if you leave in the next few hours, you should be back long before the rest of the party needs to set off. There are horses to ready, supplies to pack—“

“And I think we should send word via passenger pigeon to Gerudo’s steward,” piped in the minister of foreign services. 

“Yes, Urbosa,” said Zelda, with a little relieved note to her voice. “Yes, I think you’re right. She will not hesitate, I think—I hope—to  help. And she loved Ganon, from what I know. I will write the letter to her.” She held out a hand and her secretary deposited paper into it and his own pen. Without his constant scribbling, he looked a little bereft. 

The steward of supplies and the head of the mapmakers were bending their heads together already, discussing what would be needed for the journey. The captain and the minister of foreign services were also discussing, trying to figure out what soldiers would be needed, as the lead scholar occasionally chimed in with what defense the Yiga would probably have, the magic they’d demonstrated mastery of in past encounters. 

Link let out a slow breath as the nurse knotted off the stitches, hearing her chant low words as light blossomed beneath her fingers. The enchanted thread glowed momentarily and then knitted his skin together, until there was only just the faintest pale knot. He flexed his arm, experimentally, and felt no pain. 

He reached for the stylus and writing-board that Zelda had fashioned for him, all those years ago, and wrote, Thank you.

“It is my duty,” replied the nurse, and turned away.  She hesitated before walking and said, “But bring him back, please.”

She was bustling away before he could respond to her. Link watched her go as he tugged back on his shirt and wished he could tell Ganon how much this nurse cared for him.

Zelda finished writing her letter and handed it off to her secretary, who left to find a courier. She turned to Link, eyes scanning him up and down, and then said, “I’ll come with you to the forest, then.”

All other conversation in the room halted. The captain of the guard looked like he might choke.  

“We’ll have to leave Epona and Storm, of course,” she said. “No use running them ragged. I think perhaps Blaze, or Mysander would do, they’re both fast and probably fresh. We’ll leave in the next hour, come back well before sundown, and set off to Gerudo. We should have about two hours before we have to break camp—maybe we can make it to the Garrison?—and we’ll move from there.”

“Just you and Link?” said the captain weakly. 

Zelda smiled. “After seeing him defeat a white lynel single-handedly, do you think I am in any danger?”

He shook his head, but still looked like he wanted to complain. Zelda leaned forward and Link saw the glow of Hylia ignite within the depths of her pupils and she said, calmly, “Nothing in the Korok Forest would dare harm me, I assure you.” 

They were quiet, after that small display, cowed by that reminder of their ruler’s strength. Zelda turned to Link and said, “Shall we?” 

The only person Link had told about his dreams was his nanny, before he was old enough to know better. She was the one who taught him how to sign, and together, they were their own little bubble, sealed off from the rest of the world. She wrapped him up tight in her arms, stroking her fingers over the sword-calluses that were already beginning to form on his seven-year-old hands, and she said, “Oh, my dear child. This is not the future I would wish for you. I wish you could keep your childhood, just a little longer.”

She left when he was nine. She was dismissed, actually—he could hear her and his father arguing, her hotly contesting the way he trained Link, and Link’s father shouting at her to know her place. She did not say goodbye to Link, but he saw her walking down the path that led away from her house and he grieved so powerfully that he was listless the next day, had to do twice the amount of drills as his father tried to train the lethargy out of him.

(Later, he would find out that she had left a letter. He only knew that because, as he cleaned out the fireplace, he saw the tiniest corner of a paper, the rest of it  burnt away, and written in her hand was, My dear Link… And he never breathed a word of the dream to his father. Not ever.) 

The horses were saddled by the time they made their way down there, Zelda having changed out of her hindering skirts into a more practical set of riding gear, both her and Link wrapped in warm cloaks and with their saddlebags ready and prepped to transfer onto Storm and Epona the moment they got back from the Korok Forest. Much of the castle hadn’t realized yet that their ruler was about to be on an extended leave and the two of them did not receive many confused stares as they galloped out of the castle gates. 

The road to the Korok Forest was a relatively short and simple one, which explained why so many of Hyrule’s knights found it so alluring to venture for the Master Sword. But Link and Zelda had never been there and as the path grew more twisted, their horses grew more uneasy. The road started to become overgrown in patches, grass covering clear dirt until the path was more grass than dirt. 

Finally, mist began to curl around their feet. 

“We should get off here,” said Zelda, halting their horses. “It’s likely not safe for us or the horses to bring them on with us.” They looped the reins around a nearby tree and continued moving onward. 

Link started so shiver. He clamped his teeth shut and hoped that Zelda could not hear the clattering of his teeth. As the mist thickened, he was suddenly, irrepressibly overcome with the belief that this was not real. That he was dreaming the dream he’d had all his life, and he would awaken soon in the bed they all shared and Ganon would not be gone. He wanted, powerfully, to wake up. And at the same time, he feared that he would, that it would all be a dream, and he was, he remained, a coward. 

A warm hand clutched at his. He looked down, startled, and saw Zelda’s hand interlocked with his. 

“I’m with you, every step,” she said, his queen, his Zelda, her tight grip an anchor that he gratefully clung to. He nodded and they walked on. 

He knew that knights had gotten lost in the swirling mists, but he knew what to do. He saw the little white specks in the air, and felt them telling him where to go; he walked confidently and with Zelda by his side. She did not raise any doubts, not even when sometimes it felt like they were walking backwards; she trusted him, he knew, and that trust lodged like a warm ember in his chest. They walked for what felt like forever, until all of a sudden, the mist was melting away and the golden sunlight was hitting their faces, dappled from foliage, and the air smelled of earth and dirt and was so familiar that he almost staggered from the strange reminiscence of experiencing something for the first time. 

Zelda let go of his hand, staggered forward with her eyes wide. “Oh, wow,” she breathed. “Oh wow.” 

Not to mention, there were little tree people everywhere. 

Oh, they did a good job of hiding when you turned to look at them. But they were certainly there, little bark beings that darted from underleaf to branch. He wanted to take a closer look at them, but he was being pulled forward already, tugged by the familiar hook in his gut. Zelda trailed after him as he walked through the undergrowth, to where he knew the stone pedestal would be. 

There she was. The Master Sword, ringed by silent princesses, softly glowing in the ambient light.

Behind her, the great tree stirred to light and said, “Hero…”

Zelda jumped and Link did too. None of his dreams had a talking tree. They watched, wide-eyed, as the tree stirred and stretched, chasing irritated birds out of its branches and sending down a scattering of leaves to flutter over Link and Zelda’s shoulders. 

Zelda said, her eyes alight with wonder, “I hadn’t—none of the books said you spoke.”

The tree seemed to find amusement in that. “Hello, Princess. Or it is Queen now, I suppose?” It rustled its branches once more. “Our meeting has been a long time foreseen.” 

“Just Zelda,” said his Queen, bowing her head. “Who am I to ask the Great Deku Tree to call me a queen?” 

The Great Deku Tree seemed amused by that. “You have come because there is a time of great trouble.”

“Yes. Our friend—“

“Friend?” The tree’s gnarled eyebrows shot up. “I sense the calamity, brewing. What fine new path you three have wrought for yourselves, that you have befriended the calamity.”

Zelda bristled. “He is our friend, oh Great Deku Tree. And he is in danger, and we have to save him. Which is why we are here, coming for a weapon to help him.”

“A funny problem, it is, when the only solution is violence,” mused the Great Deku Tree. From the crinkle in Zelda’s brow, Link could tell that she too was confused by the tree. But before she could press on, the tree’s attention refocused on Link. “She has been waiting a long time for you, you know.” 

I know, thought Link, wondering if the Tree could hear his thoughts. He stepped forward, caressed the pommel of the sword. I’m here now, though.

The tree stopped him before he pulled. “There is a cost, as there always is when taking such magical boons. Are you prepared to pay the toll?”

He looked at Zelda, found her face unreadable. He looked up at the tree, gave a quick nod. Adjusted his grip on the sword to be more firm. And pulled. 

He knew what to expect: the insistent tugging of the sword, the sucking of his energy, and above all, the playfulness. The sword, testing him, as if to say, Are you strong enough? Are you sure? He told it: Yes, I am. And I am here now, having come for you, and I will not leave without you. 

The sword, pleased by this answer, slid free.  

Ah, he thought to himself, as he held it aloft, Ah, this feels right. Like the remembrance of a lullaby he’d once heard. Like the kiss of a forgotten lover. 

His vision was a little fuzzy around the edges. He staggered, fell to his knees, and felt Zelda rushing up to him to help him up, mindful of the naked blade in his grip. “Link,” she was saying, “Link, are you all right? Link, talk to me.”

He couldn’t muster up the energy to do much, but he gave her a thumbs up. Felt her exhale in relief into his hair.

She stayed close to him as he recovered, the Master Sword a happy hum in his grip. When at last he could get to his feet and breathe easily, they took their leave, knowing that every moment spent tarrying was a moment spent wasted. They bowed to the Great Deku Tree, little shadows of forest creatures skittering out of their sight everywhere they turned, and turned to leave. 

“Zelda and Link,” called the tree after them. 

They turned and it paused a long moment, as if contemplating, before finally saying, “Know that what you set out to do is often not the same as accomplishing it.” 

He didn’t understand, but he felt, often, like he didn’t understand a great many things. So instead he nodded and walked on, keeping that in the back of his head. After a  second, Zelda followed. 

She remained quiet as they exited the Korok Forest and returned to their horses. But before they mounted, she said, “How long have you known that you were the knight?”

Is now really the time? Link asked, although he knew such a question was mere deflection.

“It’s either this or I spend the next six hours wondering. It’s not like you can exactly sign and ride at the same time, Link.” She crossed her arms. “Come on. It’s a simple question. How long?”

She was relentless. He signed, My whole life I’ve been dreaming of it, give or take.

Slowly, her arms uncrossed in shock. “Your—your whole life? But why wouldn’t you have gotten the sword, earlier?”

He shrugged. I didn’t want to be the knight. I would’ve gotten the sword, if Hyrule had been in danger, but it was a mere status symbol. And so, if I didn’t have to, I chose not to. He had to pause to explain what status symbol was, as she’d never seen that sign before. Last night, I had my clearest vision of the sword yet. Between that and Ganon’s disappearance, I figured it was time. 

“I understand,” she said quietly, as he’d known she would, though she did not look happy about it. 

In response, he asked, How long have you known? 

For there was no question that she’d known. The look on her face when he’d asked to go to the Korok forest, that instant, perfect clarity, had confirmed everything he’d suspected. 

“A part of me always knew, I think,” said Zelda after a moment. “I wanted to convince myself that you were just my knight, you were someone I chose to love. And…I had my own reasons for not wanting a knight to pull the sword, so it worked out for me that the knight that I fell in love with had yet to wield the Master Sword. But after Ganon arrived, it felt so…crystal clear to me that I was meant to be with you two, and from there on, I figured out pretty easily that you were destined to be my hero. Our hero. I just had no idea if you knew about it.” She swatted him lightly. “Sneak. But in all reality—not one person could see you, know you, and not think you worthy of the blade. And it seems that the sword has known the same for a very long time.” She smiled up at him. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad it’s you. I’m proud it’s you. But at the same time, it could never have been anyone else.”

Link took advantage of the fact that they were near a legendary haunted wood, with only two bored horses as an audience, and surged to kiss her. She kissed him back immediately, wrapping both arms around him tightly, the feel of her in his arms so familiar and dear. He kissed her again, small kisses, stroking over her cheekbone with his thumb, as they breathed and revelled in being so close to one another.

“We’re going to find him,” she said, in the space between their mouths, and he nodded. He kissed her once more, and then they mounted their horses. Side by side, they rode off. 

Link was used to loneliness long before he became a knight. Though he had a few friends, the rigor of his training schedule and the formidable scowl of his father tended to scare others off. 

There was one palace cook, though. She, Helda, was a wizened old thing, looking more like someone who would eat small children than like them, and she was magical in the kitchen. Her fingers flew as she chopped, peeled, sautéed, kneaded. Everything she cooked smelled divine. According to palace gossip, when the princess was five, she refused to eat anything but Helda’s cooking.

Helda was an observant hag and caught sight of Link lingering a bit too long in the kitchen. She whipped around to frown at him, one day, and said, “What are you loitering for?” When he didn’t respond, caught in her beastly gaze, she continued, saying, “Cat got your tongue, boy?”

“The lad’s a mute, Helda, lay off of him,” called one of the busboys.

“Mute, eh?” She squinted at him and then, lightning fast, tossed him one of the pastries out of the oven. It was hot in his hands, but not unpleasantly so. “Give that a go, boy.”

It was delicious. Light, with a little bit of fruit, the pastry flaky and airy. He closed his eyes in pure enjoyment. When he opened his eyes, he saw that Helda was smiling. 

They were both too busy to spend much time together, but sometimes Link would drag himself, body battered from sword practice and from whatever tasks his idiotic knight had appointed him, to find Helda in the kitchen waiting for him. She taught him the basics—how to properly measure liquid, how to hold a knife, how to sift flour, before they moved on to cooking and baking. His first efforts she called, “Inedible, even as slop for the pigs.” His later efforts, she called, “Barely adequate.” In that densely-heated kitchen, her soft, wrinkled fingers showing him the correct way to make food, he felt his shoulders relax. 

Helda died when he was fourteen, in her sleep. One of the last things she told him, when he overwhipped the sugary mess of cream, was, “Proper whipped cream should be like a memory of sugar and as soft as the pillow you wish to dream on.” At her funeral, he was one of the few squires attending. He was dry-eyed during the burial itself, but came back late at night and wept profusely at her gravestone. 

Someone from the kitchen, someone kind, wrapped up Helda’s favorite knife and sent it to Link. But it went to his attending knight, who had been drunk, and who brandished this cooking knife at Link, saying mockingly, “So this is where you’ve been running off to, huh?” and Link ran, for fear of being cut. When he came back, the knife was gone, trashed somewhere he’d never find it again, and he had nothing to remember of the brash kindness of that old woman but his quickly-fading memories. 

The horses and soldiers were ready for them by the time they came back to the castle, an hour before sundown. They were spotted from far off, and by the time they arrived, Zelda’s secretary had organized it perfectly: as Link slid off the saddle, the bags were already being unstrapped, the horses being led away, and Epona was suddenly blinking at him. She looked like she was equally as confused as to what just happened. 

Zelda was already atop Storm, talking quietly with her secretary. As Link swung up onto Epona, he caught snatches of the conversation. “Just hold down the fort for a week,” she said. “I trust you to establish blanket measures. Don’t look so worried, Rufus. It’ll all be okay.”

“Is that the Master Sword?” whispered someone in the crowd, and then everyone was craning their head to get a look at the sword strapped to Link’s back. He kept his face implacable, even as the voices surged, saying, “It is, that’s it.” “Of course that’s it, why else would they go to the Korok Forest?” “Boy, that must be a fake, there’s no way…”

Zelda quieted all of the conversations as her horse cantered forward to the front of the pack. “By now I’m sure all of you have been debriefed on the situation,” she said, her voice cutting clearly through the crowd. “I thank you for your service. I also would be remiss if I did not acknowledge how many of you have lost arms-brothers and family members to the dreaded Yiga Clan. I see it in your eyes, the loss that I fear. To that, I remind you that this is a rescue mission, not a revenge mission. We aim to secure Ganon out of enemy hands, and we cannot afford to get distracted on petty vengeance. Anyone who disagrees may quit the party here.”

She paused, arching an eyebrow. Not a single sound emerged from the assembled fifteen knights and their assorted livery. 

“Then let Hylia bless us on our journey,” she said. “Onward!”

The first leg of their trip was not too long, just a few hours until it became too dark for comfortable travel. Then, they pitched their tent, lighting torches in order to see by, and dinner was a hasty affair of bread and dried meat. Watches were assigned, Link sharing first watch, staring out to where the castle was a dark spike against a blue sky, just the faintest speck of gold here and there betraying settlement on the Hyrule plains. 

When he was relieved by second watch, he crossed to where he was sharing a tent with one of the other guards. But as he walked by Zelda’s tent, he saw a candle on in there, despite the late hour. 

He scratched at the tent door and, upon no answer, twitched it aside. There was Zelda, asleep atop a pile of papers, a candle flickering beside her. A complete hazard. He crawled in and began organizing the papers, gently unsticking one from her face, trying to create some order of the mess she’d made.

She stirred awake under his ministrations. “Link? What time is it?”

Late, he signed. I was passing by and saw you had a candle still flickering. Among her sleepy murmurs, he coaxed her into her bedrolls, which were large and plus as was befitting a queen. 

As he moved to leave her tent and let her rest, he heard her say, “Don’t be stupid, Link.” He turned to stare at her, thinking of how he had packed a tent for himself, had thought to keep up appearance. But she was looking up at him tiredly, looking like all she wanted was comfort and—

He wanted comfort, too. This was the first night in a long time that either of them had slept without Ganon and the thought of going to his cold bedroll in a tent pitched away from hers was thoroughly unappealing. So he kicked off his shoes and his dirty outer gear, until he was in nothing but his soft underclothes, and curled up beside her. Her cold toes touched his leg and he yelped; she let out a little, sleepy chuckle. And he blew out the light. 

He was curious to know what his dreams would be like, now that the sword was retrieved. That night, it turned out he dreamed vividly still, but this time of a memory. Summer solstice of that year, after the festival. Zelda had worn a pale pink dress with a particularly plunging neckline and both he and Ganon had not been able to stop staring. 

She was aware of it, too. She whispered in Link’s ear, as she passed by him, “I’ve got a gift for you.” As queen, she could leave whenever, and stole Link upstairs after an appropriate time had passed for her. Ganon, however, who had promised to see a colleague’s presentation on the movement of the sun, looked pained at the sight of them escaping.

Link signed at him, Hurry up, old man, and was rewarded by Ganon’s eyes darkening. 

The summer solstice was only a few days after Link’s birthday, so he was perplexed on what she could’ve given him that wouldn’t been used for his birthday. She explained as they scampered upstairs: “It wasn’t ready, so I told them take their time, because I figured we’d gotten you enough gifts that you wouldn’t notice a difference.”

Too many gifts, in Link’s opinion, but he liked that Zelda loved spoiling him rotten. She kept her fingers loosely linked with his as they walked into her bedchambers, shoving him lightly onto the bed. From her dresser, she pulled a long, rectangular box tied with a blue bow, which she dropped into his lap. 

When Link opened it, he came to face with an impressively large phallus.

His eyebrows shot up. When he picked it up, he noticed that it was not made of wood, as he had assumed, but instead some smooth, slightly springy material; inflexible while also unyielding. It was a girthy cock as well, the fingers on his right hand barely overlapping on the base. And there were strange straps attached to it. For a moment he held it, not understanding, and then realization dawned on him. 

He looked at Zelda, then at the penis that she apparently was going to don, and went hard as a brick. 

Zelda laughed at whatever expression was on his face and crawled onto his lap to kiss him, knocking the box to the ground. They made out like that for a moment, his hands greedily running up and down that damn pink dress that had teased him for so long with its reveal of the curve of Zelda’s breasts, before he decided that it would look better on the floor and set off to tearing her out of it. 

“Oil,” she said breathlessly, pulling at his pants. He passed the vial to her, watched as she doused her hands liberally in the substance, before pushing him flat on his back. 

It was a magnificent sight, watching a naked Zelda finger him. Her breasts swayed as she carefully opened him up, her fingers scissoring and crooking and making his eyes roll back in his head. She added two fingers, then three, twisting her fingers just so in the way that made Link’s cock jump and tap against his stomach, where a slick patch of precum was already forming. Then she was holding his hand, slicking up his fingers, saying, “Keep yourself full,” as she reached for the strap on. 

He did his best, and that was how Ganon found them. The door to her private bedchambers opened, and he stood there, taking in the sight of Zelda, fixing the straps on her cock, as Link moaned and fucked down on three of his own fingers. Ganon, understandably, looked like a starving man at a buffet who wasn’t sure where to start. 

“You absolute beasts,” he said faintly, tugging off his outer robes as he began to walk, so that he was clad in his nice shirt and loose-fitting pants. “You absolute nightmares, leaving me after all those saucy winks, and that dress—“

He tugged off his shirt and then immediately reached to kiss Zelda, groping at her breasts, stroking at her cock. She moaned, as if she felt the sensation. “And what is this clever device, hmm? Does it rub against your clit just like so?” She cried out again, her knees buckling, and Ganon caught her, ruthlessly working her cock. “Are you going to fuck our beautiful boy, Zelda?”

“Yes,” she gasped out, clutching at his forearm, spreading her legs, pushing up even as she protested. “O-oh, but you have to stop, Ganon—”

“Very well then,” he said, and pushed her lightly away from him, so that she stumbled forward into Link, who was feeling a bit faint from how much blood had rushed to his cock at the sight of them. Ganon stripped off his pants, shameless, and the bed creaked as he climbed onto it. He spread his legs, his cock already rising, and began to stroke himself lazily. 

Zelda and Link were watching him, perhaps a tad desperately, for a feral grin split his face and he said, “Well go ahead, then,” thumbing the top of his massive cock.

“Come here,” murmured Zelda, and then kissed Link, a sloppy kiss that ended up more close to his chin than his mouth, as she tugged his fingers out of himself and immediately began pressing her cock in. It felt—well, not unlike a real penis, except perhaps lacking a certain warmth, which his body heat was more than ready to provide. They both moaned as she bottomed out, Zelda grinding into him in a way that must’ve been pleasurable for her clit. 

He couldn’t stop watching her. The way she was focusing on him, swiveling her hips and trying to get the angle that he liked, and the triumphant smile on her face when she succeeded and he moaned and clutched at her. The fine sheen of sweat that sprung up on her temples, and the golden hairs that curled because of the moisture there. Her lovely, perfect mouth, front teeth snagging on her bottom lip in concentration. He looked to his left and saw Ganon, who was watching them with a lazy, pleased look in his eye. 

Ganon caught him watching and smiled. “Is there something you want, Link?” he asked, his voice patronizing, and Link felt himself drop a little, into that hazy, gorgeous space that he always got in when he was being fucked particularly well. Both Zelda and Ganon drove him into that stage, but nobody could do it quite as easily, or quickly, as Ganon, who sometimes made him drop with something as minor as the brush of his thumb over the back of Link’s neck. 

Not trusting himself to sign, Link locked eyes with Ganon and nodded. He startled when Zelda stroked a line down his neck, kissed his cheek and said, “One isn’t enough for you, Link?” He flushed at the condescending tone of her voice. 

She pulled out of him him and he half sat up in protest at the horrible feeling of being empty. But then she was pulling at his hip, trying to get him to turn over onto hands and knees, where she walked him forward. He ended up between Ganon’s legs, so close that he could smell Ganon’s cock, could almost taste it if he opened his mouth, which he did so immediately, his tongue flicking out. 

Ganon grabbed his chin, prevented him from tasting more. Link arched his back, feeling Zelda rub over his hole with the cock. Then she pressed back into him and began fucking him properly, bullying moans out of his mouth. 

“He’s so noisy, isn’t he,” mused Ganon, his fingers locked under Link’s chin. He had his cock gripped in one hand, was using it to trace the head over Link’s lips, but used his hold on Link’s face to prevent him from lurching forward and swallowing his cock down. “You’re both doing so well, though. Look how lovely his face looks right now, Zelda. He’s practically cross-eyed.”

Zelda gasped out a little noise at his words, her thrusts stammering in their rhythm. “Don’t be such a tease, Ganon,” she said once she recovered. “He’s desperate for it.”

“Is he, now?” Ganon tugged Link’s mouth open, stroked the pad of his thumb down Link’s tongue. “All right, my love. Have at it.”

Link wrapped his lips around the tip and reveled at the low, luxurious sound Ganon made at the feeling. He loved sucking Ganon off, loved the way the other man went half-lidded and loose, loved the involuntary twitches Ganon made whenever Link traced his tongue just right. He closed his eyes and swallowed down as much as he could, the salt taste of Ganon’s precum hitting the back of his throat. He moaned around Ganon’s cock whenever Zelda’s cock hit him particularly right, his eyes rolling up in his head. He was so full, full everywhere, rocking back and forth between the two people he loved most and almost delirious with the need to come. 

He could hear Zelda’s breath speeding up, every other moan with this particular high lilt that meant she was close to coming. Ganon must have heard it too because he pulled Link off his cock and said, “Now come up here, the both of you,” until Link was practically straddling his chest and Zelda was pressed up close behind him. Then Ganon reached underneath them, his hand brushing Link’s balls and going past them, until suddenly Zelda made a startled sound. She moaned, her forehead pressing against Link’s shoulder, her rhythm stuttering, and he heard the slick sounds of Ganon fingering her. 

Zelda continued thrusting, slow grinding thrusts that had her gasping against Link, as Ganon kept finger-fucking her her. Her cries were right next to Link’s ear, and he wrapped a hand around the base of his cock tightly as he heard them pitching higher, determined not to come yet. Then Zelda was coming, jerking against him and biting into his shoulder. 

She lay there for a second, catching her breath. “Oh, my Goddess,” she kept saying, toppling over to lay on the bed next to them. She scrabbled for the straps, managed to loosen them enough to kick the phallus off, and then tucked her way underneath Ganon’s arm, looking half-asleep already. 

Link watched, squirming and needy, as Ganon pet her golden hair, kissed the crown of her head, attended to Zelda’s needs while Link was kept wanting. Then, finally, he had Ganon’s heavy gaze on him, amused as Link tried to find some sort of relief against Ganon’s belly, the tip of his cock pushing against the hard ridges of Ganon’s abdomen. He felt so empty. 

“Come here,” said Ganon. His eyes said, Poor thing. I know what you need. He guided Link to where he wanted him, cock tapping against Link’s thighs, and started working Link down onto him, spearing him open. Zelda’s toy had been a sizable one, but it was nothing compared to Ganon, and Link felt the stretch enough for his toes to curl.

Ganon once asked him, You would do anything for my cock, wouldn’t you? And Link had nodded, signed Yes, yes, anything, and spread himself open. 

Ganon was biting his lip, watching Link squirm on his cock. His patience ran thin, though, and he started moving Link for him, fucking up into him, with little care for his pleasure. Just banging into his prostrate on every thrust until Link was sobbing and clutching at the sheets. His arms gave out and he fell into Ganon, his face a breath’s away from Zelda, who leaned forward and gave him the sweetest, gentlest kiss.  

In this position, his head on Ganon’s chest, he could hear the soothing, steady, thump, thump, thump of Ganon’s heartbeat. 

That was when he gasped awake, the bedroll tangled around him, hard and rocking against where Zelda’s thigh was pressed between his, little white-hot flashes of pleasure zinging through him, his entire body a protest against an orgasm denied. Early morning light was shining through the thin tent fabric, Zelda was dead asleep in his arms, and he missed Ganon so much it hurt.

Carefully he extricated himself from her, shivering in the night air. He pressed his face in his hands and breathed. 

Night two, he dreamed of Ganon. 

It had been a hard riding day, with only brief breaks for food and water. They camped in the Coliseum, that battle-hardened arena, whose ticketmasters allowed them cover for the night, after the games were long over. The horses’ sides were heaving by the time they stopped to break camp Zelda had seemed heartened by the progress, saying, “This is further than I expected us to make,” to anyone who would listen to her. As she was queen, that constituted the entire party. 

Link was dead exhausted. After the restless sleep of the night before, as well as the task of extricating the Master Sword from its pedestal, he thought he could sleep for eighteen hours, easily, and still have bags under his eyes. He pinched himself to stay awake through his shift, a habit he thought he’d rid himself of when he was a novice guard. Weaving with fatigue as he approached Zelda’s tent, he barely managed to divest himself of his armor and his clothing before falling into Zelda’s bedroll. 

She murmured a little sleepily, turned and wrapped her arms into him, tucked her face into his chest. He held her tight and wondered what it would be like if she was this cuddly, all the time, instead of just post-coital or when she was too sleepy to be guarded. But then, that wouldn’t be Zelda, he reasoned. The charm with Zelda was that when you received her affection, you knew you’d earned it. He was so busy pondering this that he forgot to be surprised by how easily he fell asleep. 

He did not dream at first, or at least did not dream lucidly. Instead, he dreamt of a voice in his head, a gentle voice, murmuring some incomprehensible, yet soothing, nonsense to him. The more he tried to answer, however, the more the words cleared up, until he became aware all at once that he was talking to the Master Sword, that this was the same calling, beckoning voice he’d struggled with his whole life. He was confused, but calm, as he was in most dreams, and above all, he wondered where Ganon was. 

Do you wish to see? murmured the sword. Before Link could respond, he was suddenly transported, skimming over the arid desert lands, passing through stone as if it were nothing, moving so fast that he was dizzied by the speed. Then they were in a circular room made of the yellow adobe the desert favored, the darkness of the room alleviated by torches, and he was face to face with Ganon. 

Ganon, who was clad in chains. Ganon, whose mouth was gagged. Ganon, who had his eyes closed. 

Link mouthed the word, Ganon, and reached out to touch that exhausted face. His fingers passed right through and Ganon did not stir at his touch. 

Link became aware of someone behind him when they spoke. He whirled around, seeing a portly Yiga clan member as they said, “There is no use to you fighting, He-Who-Holds-The-Calamity. This is fate, is destiny. Calamity, now that you are free of the chains  placed on you by that Hylian princess and her knight, you must take your place in the world.”

Ganon spoke, his voice ragged, his eyes the barest open slits. “I have…told you…that I will not.”

The Yiga member tutted, shaking his finger. “Now, I know better than to listen to that flesh vessel of yours. Hush, whoever you may be. You will not remember this, later.”

At that, Ganon’s eyes opened wider, his gaze more lucid. He looked up and gave a savage grin, blood smearing the right side of his teeth. “I’ve told you,” he said. “There is no other person. There is just me.”

He seized, suddenly, his brown eyes opening wide. He bared his teeth in sudden rictus. He tried to speak, choked on a sudden plume of smoke. 

“So you say, He-Who-Holds-The-Calamity,” said the Yiga member, as Ganon convulsed in agony, his voice sympathetic. “But we shall see.” 

Link bolted upright in upon waking, sitting in darkness trying to figure out what was going on. The move was violent enough that it woke up Zelda, who gasped herself awake. 

“Whatisit,” she slurred, already pulling her legs out from the bedroll. “Are we under attack?”

Ganon, signed Link, before realizing she could not make out his movements in the dark. He reached out, found her hands, and formed the word for her. Light?

He heard her groping around in the darkness, before a match was struck, almost blinding to his eyes after such perfect darkness. Her hair was tousled from sleep, and around her mouth were traces of drool, but her eyes were perfectly serious.

He told her the whole thing, all the way to Ganon fighting the Calamity. She nodded, grave-eyed, and then said six words that terrified him: “We are running out of time.” 

They went back to sleep, best that they could, and the next morning a rather-haggard Zelda told the party, “Everyone prepare for a long trip. We’re accelerating our timeline and riding fourteen hours today instead of eight, so that we can make it to the Gerudo Canyon Station by early evening. There, we’ll board our horses, which shouldn’t go into the desert anyway, and make our way on foot to the Kara Kara Bazaar or the Gerudo stronghold, whichever one we can make it to.” 

“But the horses!” cried one of the knights. 

She forestalled their complaint. “I’ve asked the stable to send word via pigeon to the Gerudo Canyon Station. They’ll meet us at the mouth of the canyon to swap out horses, so we can continue at a fast pace for the three hours it takes to traverse the canyon. This works out optimally for us, as this way we don’t have to worry about braving the desert in the heat, but instead in the cool.”

It was a logical plan, the way she laid it out, if one forgot that it was also a completely insane plan. But Link cracked his neck and signed, Fine by me, and, following his lead, the other knights murmured assent. 

They rode hard, that day. They pushed each other hard enough that Link started to worry about mutiny, especially as he trotted a little too close to one of the knights and heard, “Is he even worth all of this, that bastard Gerudo king?”

“Hush, now,” admonished the other knight. “Haven’t you heard? If we lose him, we’ll be overrun with Calamity. This is not a mission just for the queen’s lover—it’s a mission for Hyrule. You’d do best to remember that.”

“Oh, a mission for Hyrule, I see,” said the first knight, whom Link privately promised to thrash on the training ground one of these days. “Makes sense why they keep the guy around.”

He was grateful that Zelda had not overheard, or else she would be apoplectic. As was, his grip tightened on the reins very briefly, before he relaxed them with effort. 

The first knight continued. “Though I will say, a happy Link makes for fewer drills. D’you think they’d keep him forever?” 

The second knight laughed, now that conversations had turned to safer territories. “Happy, eh? I suppose the state of my arms is one way to tell Ol’ Stone-face’s emotions.” 

It made him think of when his old friend Mipha had come to visit, just a year ago. His father thought the Zora to be some of the best warriors in Hyrule and had brought Link often to train with them. There, he’d accidentally ended up befriending the young princess, who healed his scrapes from training and laughed with him in the blue-lit lights of the Zora paths as he tried to teach her sign language. 

They saw each other less and less as they grew up, but their interactions remained warm and they kept in touch via letter. He knew her handwriting, with that left-handed slant, better than he knew his own. 

But he didn’t realize she loved him until she came to visit him last year, her first since he’d taken up with Ganon and Zelda. 

She knew about it—them—from the letters he sent, had expressed her congratulations through writing. He was eager for her to meet them, however, and when she arrived at the castle, he extended an invitation for her to dine with them in person.

“Oh Link,” she said, her eyes too happy. “How wonderful. Yes, I would love to meet them. I’ve heard so much about them already.”

But dinner was stilted, awkward. Link spent the entire time being increasingly puzzled. Both Ganon and Zelda were their regular, charming selves, and it was indeed gentle Mipha who was aloof. She was friendly enough, not rude, but lacked the warmth that Link had come to assume was just an inherent part of her nature. Zelda, after her friendly overtures fizzled out, spent the rest of the dinner making small conversation and looking at Mipha occasionally with a certain, narrow-eyed look, the same expression that she made when trying to solve a complex problem. Ganon, on the other hand, kept trying, long after it became obvious that dinner had been a mistake to begin with. And Link, who was not the best conversationalist to begin with, sputtered out completely. Dessert was not had by anyone. 

He walked Mipha back after dinner and bade her farewell, puzzling on the failed dinner the whole way home. Was it because of him? Signing was clumsier when he was eating, sure, but he thought Zelda and Ganon had easily picked up the conversation whenever he needed to pause to grab a bite.

When he came back, Zelda and Ganon were conversing quietly. They looked up when he entered and Zelda said, “Link, sit down, I just—I wanted to ask you—did you know that Mipha was in love with you?”

No she’s not, he signed automatically. That’s not possible. I’m not around enough for her to love me. 

At that, Ganon laughed and said, “Oh, to be a young and unavailable man once more. Tis the height of desirability, truly.” To which Zelda retorted, her voice pert, “Good to know that we are whom you settle for,” which made him laugh his big, shoulder-shaking laugh, his real laugh, before he reached over to kiss that frown off her face, while Link sat there, completely, eye-bogglingly, shocked. 

Mipha’s stay, as the part of the official Zora delegation to visit the palace, was meant to be a week. At first, they had thought a week to be too short, but as their meetings continued being awkward and stilted, Link began to wonder if a week was, instead, too long. 

The last day she was there, he caught her and Zelda coming back from a walk. Their faces were so different, in structure and in emotion, but in this rare case they were both looking thoughtful. When they saw him, Zelda’s face betrayed no emotion, but Mipha smiled at him, perhaps the first real smile she’d given him the whole week. 

She’d apologized to him, before she left. Said, “It didn’t hit me, truly, that you were in love until I came here and saw it in person. I suppose I thought too highly of my ability to…get over it.”

He shook his head, but she shook her head right back at them, until they were both laughing at the ridiculous sight. Then she said, “I am truly so glad that you have found them, Link. I am, really. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so…happy. I think, maybe, that I had not seen you properly happy until this week.” She smiled. “It’s a good look on you.”

He held her hand for a long moment, before letting go and signing, Is that what you spoke with to Zelda? About me?

“Yes and no,” said Mipha, with a smile. “I suggest you ask her about it.” 

Later, long after the Zora delegation had left, with much fanfare and embracing and goodbyes, Mipha shedding tears on Link and promising that next time, their reunion would be better, and Link clutching at her so tightly that he feared he might hurt her—long after all of that, Link asked Zelda, What did you two talk about? Mipha told me to ask you.

Zelda, instead of answering, nuzzled at his cheek, kissed the lobe of his ear. She said, her face hidden from him, “I just thought she and I could find common ground, you know. We were both desperately in love with the same foolish man, after all.”

Now, listening to those guards speculate what he looked like when happy, Link thought to himself: It didn’t matter what those guards thought or what anyone thought, really. Those who mattered already knew. 

They arrived at Gerudo Town late at night, where Urbosa was waiting, cutting an imposing figure even among her group of imposing warriors. “No time to waste,” she said, but still stopped to pick up Zelda and deliver the most bone-cracking hug that Link had ever seen. 

They had sleighs pulled by sand seals, who yawned fatly and flopped over onto their bellies as they waited for the humans to get their act together. Once everything had been transferred over to the sleighs, they set off, the seals making a peculiar ork, ork! sound as they raced through the sand, skimming across it and raising up hot gusts of grit that stung Link’s eyes. 

It was Link’s second time being in the desert, his first being when he was very small and everything in life was  novel enough that a desert did not impress him much. But now, he looked around with new eyes. This was where Ganon was raised; the sun baked him as he grew, the sand shaped the strong lines of his face. So much of Ganon made sense, looking at the landscape, at the gentle, cheerful way the Gerudo warriors interacted, so different from the stiff formality of the Hylian soldiers. 

They arrived at the West Gerudo settlement, slept, and awoke early, when the desert was still cool and the sky gray. Slowly, heat bloomed over the landscape, torching the Hylians despite the heat-resisting potions they drank and the lotion they smoothed over their vulnerable skin. Link was grateful when they arrived at Karusa Valley, where at least the shadows of the canyons provided some relief. 

Urbosa called for a slowing down when they started approaching Yiga territory, her hand held up in a fist. They dismounted the sleds, began walking on foot, and soon the red banners of the Yiga Clan began spilling down the sides of the canyon, bloodying the pale brown walls. 

“Not exactly a subtle hideout, is it?” said Zelda dryly. 

“I doubt we’ll be subtle either,” said Urbosa. “Look out!”

They had been spotted. They battled their way past the archers, past the big swordmen that appeared with puffs and malicious laughter, the sound of sword crashing against sword echoing through the valley. Link stayed close to Zelda, the both of them moving on and forward. 

They moved through storehouses, past what looked like jail cells but were empty and lacking Ganon and, memorably, passed a room full of bananas. They fought the occasional warrior, but most of them had been drawn to the outside, where the battle was still raging on and Link could hear the electric sizzle of Urbosa’s Fury. Finally, they found themselves in a round, open arena with a pit in the center. 

There, his hands folded across his chest, was the portly Yiga man Link dreamed of. He laughed and spread his fingers and said, “I, Master Kohga, have been waiting for you, hero.”

Link drew his sword. This was going to be a difficult fight. 

About fifteen seconds later, he was trussing up Master Kohga, who was spluttering and letting out cries of, “You cheated!” and “I want a re-do,” and was thinking he needed to be better at threat assessment. 

Zelda grabbed Master Kohga by the collar and said, her voice ice-cold, “Where’s Ganon?”

When they successfully extricated an answer from him—the door behind him—they left him wriggling around in his bonds and ran for the door. But as they reached for the handle, Zelda gasped and convulsed, her hand to her chest. She said, “No—it can’t be—“

Link tried to help her, but she shrugged him off and pointed at the door. “Link, he’s, you have to—“

Confused and alarmed by the look in his eyes, he opened the door, his sword at the ready. He didn’t know what to expect: Ganon, dead, Ganon, wounded, Ganon, chained up. 

The smell of burning flesh hit him first, acrid and eye-watering. He couldn’t immediately connect the smell of the black scorch marks on the ground, before realizing the shadows were three-dimensional: corpses twisted in agony and burned brittle. He looked from them and up to where Ganon was standing.

Ganon, standing shirtless, with raw marks from his bindings decorating his wrists, the shackles in pieces at his feet. Ganon, whose hair was a tangled red mess around his face, who stood there heaving for breath, looking at what he’d done. 

Ganon, whose hands were swirling with the ink black and magenta curls of Calamity. 

They were too late, and now, Link had the sword meant to seal the darkness, and the darkness was the man he loved.

But he knew his duty. He had been taught well.

His father died when he was seventeen. He’d sought out death, unwilling to wait around for a great battle in the calmness of Hyrule, but unwilling to die without one. That was how Link ended up defeating his first lynel, with the rush of grief coursing through his veins as he saw the lynel standing over the crumpled body of his arrow-struck, elderly father. 

He wished his father had said goodbye, but he knew why not. Link would’ve known immediately what was going on and would’ve stopped him. His father had pretended a hunting trip, left early in the morning with his hunting gear, and Link had not thought any different of it. 

Perhaps his father thought it would be easier this way, and it surprised Link. If there was anything his father taught him, it was that the easy way was the coward’s way. And after his death, a new lesson solidified in Link’s mind: those who left tended not to return.

What had halted his sword, the first time all those years ago, when he came face to face with the Calamity, was Ganon begging for help. Link felt the presence before Ganon had even made himself known, had felt it as strongly as he felt the sword calling to him at night. He’d turned around to see a tall Gerudo man, hands wrapped in bandages, face twisted in agony. And that man had said, “Please, please, help me,” and lifted his hands so Link could see the way the material had blighted. 

Link had sworn an oath to protect the kingdom. He ought to have struck down Ganon at once, recognizing the Calamity for what it was. But the desperation in Ganon’s eyes had stayed his sword; one eye had been lost to the calamity, was a malicious ink black with a purple iris, but the other had been human and full of fear. And that feeling—that draw, that compulsion he felt with Ganon, told him, You have to protect this man. So he’d brought him to Zelda instead, who took one look at him, and glowed bright-white and full of Hylia. In the presence of her radiance, the Calamity shrunk off of Ganon. It disappeared. 

And Link thought: I made the correct choice. 

They had dinner with this strange man, who was obviously the Desert King who had been so cloistered. Link didn’t know what to expect, but found the other man surprisingly gentle and funny, attentive as he listened to Zelda and Link and thanked Zelda for translating for Link. Later in the night, he added on, Tender in bed to the list, his heart still pounding and his brain racing from the unexpected way things had gone. There, Zelda hadn’t needed to translate at all. 

But now, the tip of his sword unwavering as he pointed it at a Calamity-struck Ganon, he wondered if it would’ve been better to have struck Ganon down before. Back when Ganon meant nothing to him except as a potential threat. Back before he knew the softness of Ganon’s hair, the strength of his arms, the charming, stupid glasses he wore, the slight hunch he affected when around people whom he thought might be scared of him. Because then, he wouldn’t be standing here, feeling like someone had clawed his heart out of his chest. 

“Link,” said Ganon, his voice unsteady. His hands flexed, as if testing the strength of the chaos he now possessed. 

Link kept his sword up. 

Zelda staggered her way into the room, retched at the smell. She saw Link holding the sword and her eyes widened. Then she was tugging at Link’s arm, dragging him with the strength of her whole body, saying, “Link, no, don’t do this, Link—put that down!“

She succeeded in getting him to lower his sword and he looked at her, wondering if the desperation he was feeling bled into his expression. Zelda pushed her hair out of her face and took a deep breath, looking like she regretted it instantly, and said, “Let me try first, okay? Let me try to save him.”

Link nodded, but there was no hope burning in his chest, only the knot of anxiety. 

Zelda walked to him. With every step, she increased in glow, until she was fully fledged as she stood before Ganon, the goddess pouring out from her fingertips as she prepared to burn the Calamity out of Ganon. 

And Ganon knelt before her. The calamity had receded, by now, to only a slight ripple of black and magenta moving from his fingers. He bowed his head and said, “I am yours to do with what you will, Zelda. But please.” Desperation bled into his voice. “Please, don’t take it away. You don’t understand—it is me, now. All you will achieve is killing me.” 

Hyrule had always asked impossible things of its rulers. But in that moment, looking at the pale, stricken look on Zelda’s face, Link thought: this was the one that tipped the scales. She was trembling, aglow with light, and she looked at Ganon and looked at Link, and he read the indecision in her expression. 

The light disappeared. She became easier to look at; more mortal. And she was crying. 

“I can’t kill you, Ganon,” she said thickly. “But you will kill us if I do not. Oh, the tangled web we have woven for ourselves.” She dropped to her knees and, uncaring of corruption, reached out to touch Ganon’s face. 

He pressed his cheek into her hand, closed his eyes, and Link’s grip shifted on the hilt of his sword from the knowledge of what it felt like to touch Ganon like that. 

Ganon said, “If I am to die, this is how I would choose to go, at the hand of the one I love. My dear Zelda. You have always known your duty to Hyrule.”

Link saw Zelda’s back straighten. Saw the conviction in the line of her spine. And he became perfectly aware, in that moment, that he was about to lose Ganon and Zelda at once. Because Zelda would never forgive herself for what she was about to do. 

He could feel it: they were all, the three of them, in a moment that would define the rest of their lives, the rest of Hyrule, and he could not bear to let it reach completion. 

He dropped his sword. 

The clatter startled Zelda and Ganon, who looked at the impossible legend, the artifact of the ages, the Master Sword, discarded on the floor, and then looked back up at him with comically matching looks of utter confusion on their faces.

He signed, Why is Ganon still Ganon?

“What are you getting at, Link?” asked Zelda, still holding herself rigid. “He’s just a vassal. Like me. I didn’t change when Hylia channeled Her power through me.”

But that’s not what we saw last time. Remember, three years ago, when Ganon first came. He was being transformed. Look at his eyes now.

Zelda whipped around to inspect Ganon’s eyes, their clear white sclera, their iris so dark brown that it was almost black. Not a trace of calamity in sight. She turned his face from side to side and he succumbed willingly, cheeks squished slightly by the force of her grip. 

“Okay,” she said, releasing Ganon from her grip. “Okay. So, what does that mean then? That the calamity is receding? Or maybe it’s not as much of a part of you as you think, and I can use Hylia to get it out.”

Ganon shook his head. “I felt it take. But—it’s true that I don’t feel as overwhelmed as I did the first time it tried to take over me. Initially, it was too much, it was overpowering. This time, however, it feels…like cohabiting, almost. I am aware of its presence in every part of my body. But there is no fighting each other, this time. It is just equilibrium. I have no explanation for this, though. It just is.”

He stood there, watching Zelda, who looked at Link, who squinted at Ganon. 

“Can you use it?” 

“Yes—that’s how I initially got free of the bonds. Tried to singe the rope with fire but ended up um, cauterizing the whole room. But it felt…less like something was controlling me, and more like how it did when I first started learning magic as a child.”

“Except deadlier.” Zelda’s voice was unreadable.

Ganon stared at his hands. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Deadlier.” 

We should bring him to the Great Deku Tree, signed Link. Zelda and Ganon stared at him again, Zelda with surprise, and Ganon with confusion. Link could almost see the question in Ganon’s eye—a tree? What tree?

“Yes,” said Zelda slowly. “Yes, the Great Deku Tree seemed to know what would happen, didn’t it? And tried to warn us, in its own way.”

There was the sound of movement outside the door, the patter of many feet, and all three of them were alert—Link picked his sword back up, Zelda raised her hands, and Ganon staggered to his feet. He knew he shouldn’t turn his back to Ganon, he shouldn’t be so incautious, but they faced the door as a team. Then the door was sliding open and Urbosa and her warriors were coming in, where they stopped upon the sight of Ganon, whom they had not seen in many years, and in his last sighting, was mid-transformation into a monster. 

The Steward of Gerudo stepped forward. In one fluid motion, Urbosa knelt and said, in a voice choked with emotion, “My king.”

It was decided that they would go to the Korok Forest. This was not well-received by the guard, who clearly wanted to be rid of a Calamity-riddled Ganon, and also not well-received by the Gerudo people, who wanted their king back, and eventually it was settled by Urbosa, who had been examining Ganon’s hands and face for signs of corruption and said simply, “If that is what will help, then that is what must happen.”

“I thank you, Urbosa,” said Ganon, his voice quiet. “I must beg you to continue your work with Gerudo.” 

The ride there was awkward. Ganon was placed in a tent all by himself and with a constant guard posted. In his confinement, the tent was surely too small for him; Link looked at its size and thought that Ganon must be curled into a tight ball in order for all of his limbs to fit. But Ganon did not complain. 

Zelda, privately, went mad. Bereft of her books, on the trail, she had nothing but what papers she had to frantically sketch out reasons for why Ganon might be walking around, looking all Ganon-y, save the slight purple luster to the air he moved through at times. “It doesn’t make any sense,” she kept saying. “How could he not be consumed? Is it biding its time? Is it clever?” 

He said he could control it, right? asked Link. Maybe it’s like a tool.

“An evil tool.”

But one that could be used for differing purpose. You can use a sword to kill, but you can also use a sword to chop firewood, to carve meat, to cut cloth. Though it’s not what it’s meant for, and though it’s more difficult to use, you can change the function. If anyone could do the same with the Calamity, it’s Ganon. 

Zelda said, ruefully, “Everything goes back to swords, with you.” When Link started frantically signing in indignation, she laughed and waved her hands at him to cut him off. “But you’re not wrong! I won’t say you’re right, though. Not until I can be sure that Hyrule can be safe.”  

And the Great Deku Tree will confirm? 

“If it can’t, then I’m not sure who can.” 

One night, Link awoke to hear a commotion. He fell out of the tent in his attempt to see what was going on, the Master Sword’s scabbard clutched in his hand and, in sleep-blurred vision, saw that Ganon was half-out of his tent and the other soldiers were arguing with him. At first, his alarm sensors went off, saying, It’s happened, the calamity has taken over, and you must prepare to kill your lover while practically in your skivvies. But then he rubbed at his eyes and saw that Ganon was wearily rubbing at the bridge of his nose, the same way he did whenever a student of his got an answer so incomprehensibly wrong that it reflected more poorly on Ganon than it did the student, and knew that whatever it was, it was inconsequential. 

He jogged over, signing to the nearest soldier with the Master Sword jammed under his armpit, What’s going on?

“He wants to go roaming!” said the soldier.

“I want to go for a walk,” said Ganon, with that same pinch of exasperation in his voice. “I cannot stand another hour cooped up in that tent, unable to sleep.”

Link shoved the Master Sword’s scabbard into the hands of the soldier next to him, frustrated with his signing being hindered. The soldier stared at the item now in his care, looking both horrified and worshipful at once. For crying out loud, I’ll walk with him and you all can watch to see if I die a horrible death. If we don’t come back in an hour, wake up the Queen.

“No, Link, you ought to sleep,” protested Ganon.

Link waved a hand. Too late for that. 

They walked along Aquame Lake, their path lit by the fire Ganon created in his hand. Crickets chirped restlessly around them, the occasional firefly bobbing and weaving in front of them. 

The scabbard of the sword did not properly have a loop. Link shifted it from hand to hand and Ganon looked at him, before ducking his head and laughing. 

Link nudged him with his foot. What?

“You ought to see yourself with it,” said Ganon. “Just passing it around, with that inconvenienced look on your face. Throwing it on the ground. Never has an artifact of history been treated as such. But I think you look good with it. I think it looks fitting.” 

Link shrugged. I respect her greatly. But also, she’s robbed me of a good night’s sleep for nigh fifteen years.

“Her?” Ganon looked at him, startled. “So she speaks to you?”

Link looked at the Master Sword and considered. Only a few times, so far. And most  lucidly when I dream. But I can feel her. 

“Huh.” Ganon stared forward, the little light in his hand illuminating the sharp profile of his face, the thoughtful slant of his eyebrows. “Then we are all vessels, then, for some greater purpose. Carriers, of the things that make destinies.”

Do you feel a presence, with the Calamity? 

“I do,” said Ganon. “I have felt it before. It is…an anger, a hatred, older than time itself. It speaks to me, trying to convince me of its righteousness. And yet, now that it has consumed me, its malevolent speech has vanished. Does that make sense?”

It did, in a way. Now that the Master Sword had found her bearer, she was quiet to Link now. She was just a part of him. 

They walked in the starlight quietly once more, lost in thought. When they arrived at particularly beautiful viewing spot of Lake Aquame, where the sky and the water flowed seamless into each other, Ganon turned to Link and slowly, giving Link plenty of time to turn away, brushed a kiss over his lips. 

“Whatever happens,” he said, his voice almost eclipsed by the crickets, “know that I am always grateful for the time we spent together. Know that I do not regret loving you.” 

Link dragged him down into another kiss. By the time they made their way back to camp, their hour had almost elapsed and the knights’ faces relaxed palpably at the sight of them. And he and Ganon parted ways, Ganon to his small tent, Link to the bedroll where Zelda still slept, her arm stretched out as if reaching for a third. 

The guards wanted to come with them into the Korok Forest, which Link and Zelda both strongly opposed. Something about their knights clashing around in the mist in full plate, tromping over the delicate grasses of the heart, felt sacrilegious. 

“I do feel hypocritical,” mused Ganon as they parted ways with the knights, who looked desperately unhappy at the sight of their queen trotting away with the Calamity incarnate. “After all, if it’s sacrilegious to bring them, how  much more so is it to bring me?”

“It’s different,” said Zelda primly. “You’re the evil third of the triforce, after all. How sacral is that?”

Ganon, after a startled, silent moment, burst into laughter. Zelda, Link saw, had a small upward tick to her mouth. 

But the atmosphere of the forest felt considerably different once they spilled out into the verdant, lush heart of it. It took Link a moment to figure out what it was: the little people, those leaf-and-bark beings, had vanished. The forest felt unnaturally still in their absence, with even the sunlight feeling colder. 

The Great Deku Tree said, “So you have brought him here.”

Zelda stepped forward, prostrated herself. A noise of protestation rose up in Link’s throat and he stifled it. “I apologize for bringing the Calamity to the heart of the Korok Forest. But frankly…”

She paused and then said, “Frankly, we’re confused. We were under the assumption that once the Calamity arrived in the world, then it would consume him. We have worked for so many years to prevent this occurrence from happening, we have burned back the Calamity only for it to regrow. And yet, now that it has, Ganon is…changed, certainly. But he is still Ganon.”

“That he is,” said the tree, as agreeably as trees can be. “Calamity has reached its zenith. I felt it emerge, in the world, in all its ghastly beauty.”

Zelda looked at Ganon, who was many things, but not ghastly, and then back at the tree. “I don’t understand.”

The tree said, “A seed, blown out of its path, may start a forest.”

“The aphorism is very apt,” said Zelda, her voice tart, “but I beg of you. Lend me the straight answer. Is Hyrule in danger from the calamity? You’ve lived through hundreds, thousands of these cycles. You know better than anyone else if this has happened before, if the Calamity has emerged and…and nothing happened. Can the calamity be controlled?”

The tree regarded them for a long moment. It said, in its ancient voice, “Once, when Hyrule went under a different name, when Hylia had barely emerged from infancy, the Calamity was controlled. He was a bright young man. A strong young man. He struggled with it for years, decades, before eventually using its power to destroy and destruct what beauty he’d built around him.”

Link and Zelda exchanged glances. “What can we do to help Ganon control the Calamity?” asked Zelda. 

“Nothing can be done.”

Link saw the crumple in Zelda’s expression, the dimming of hope. He knew, distantly, that he ought to be feeling that same dismay. And yet, he felt nothing but anger. Rage. He stepped forward and signed, Is that it, then? We must stand by and watch him be consumed by evil?

When Zelda translated, the Deku Tree said, “It is interesting, the words you use for the Calamity. Evil. Corruption. Consumption. You view it so clearly as destruction, that all you wish to do is eradicate it.”

“This is what history has told us,” said Zelda, frowning. “Our archives, our paintings, our stories all warn us of the Calamity and of the evil it spreads. Every cycle, every resurrection.” 

“Great hurricanes and quakes, fires and droughts. Calamities of their own. They bring death, destruction, end eras and begin new ones. But without fires, without scorched earth, new forest cannot come. Without calamity, we cannot have growth. That is why it is part of the Triforce; that is why it can never be vanquished. The Triforce of Power has, in the past, been so consuming because of its great strength, which requires a great mind to withstand the allure of having  everything one could have. In the past, it has proven destructive. But that does not mean it is evil.”

Zelda looked up at the tree, and her eyes were full of hope. Link’s heart, too. 

“In all my years,” continued this ancient tree, “I have not once seen the three of you come together without the clash of battle. And I had wondered, I had suspected, the outcome which I see how: that the three of you together have achieved balance in a way I’ve not once seen before. I have seen the triforce of wisdom wielding a cruel hand over the country. I have see the triforce of courage driving the spear of conquering through the hearts and spirits of the conquered. And I have seen the triforce of power self-immolating itself and those it ruled. Though, of course, only one of those things might be called evil. I suspect that you three provide a stability to one another, a check and a balance to one another that has served to produce the Ganon you see today.”

Link snuck a look at Ganon, who looked just as thunderstruck as Link felt. 

“So,” Zelda said slowly, “So we could’ve prevented all of this…if we had not helped in the first place? If we had let the Calamity consume him, in the beginning, but remained there to help him, he wouldn’t have had to suffer me burning it out of him for the past three years?” 

“No,” rumbled the Deku Tree. “I felt it, the first time it tried to consume him, felt the malevolent forces growing. If you had let it survive, the cycle would have continued and he would not be standing here with you today. But three years is a long while for a man to grow. To learn.”

To love, Link thought. 

The Deku Tree continued. “I leave you with this, young Queen. I said there was nothing you could do for him. That is because I believe it has already been done. A weak man, one with nothing and nobody to ground him, who is led by the neck with fear that if he is not powerful, he has nothing, that is a man who could be consumed. But someone that has roots, has meaning and purpose beyond glory—that sort of person can weather the storm. I have nothing more to say that will help you.”

Slowly, Zelda bowed once more, her head touching her hands. “Thank you,” she said softly. 

One last concern remained on Link’s mind. Reluctantly, he held the Master Sword in his hand and held it up to the tree. He gestured to the pedestal, questioning. 

“Keep it, Hero,” said the Great Deku Tree. “So long as the Calamity remains, so should the sword at your side. Such is the way balance works. Besides, I think she is lonely.” 

Link looked at the sword and then nodded.

Their business there was done. Zelda looked at Link, who looked at Ganon, who was staring at the two of them, staring with an almost pained expression on his face, like he had not dared to hope until this moment, and all of the feelings were hitting him at once. 

Zelda said, “Ganon,” in a choked voice and then they were all embracing, holding each other tight, Link’s hand fisted in Ganon’s robe, Zelda’s head tucked against Ganon’s chest, and Ganon’s arms around them, his whole body trembling. They had done it. It was over. There was only, oh, the rest of their lives to go. 

They came back to the castle triumphant, Link and Zelda both holding Ganon’s hands to declare their support and lack of fear of him. For, though the changes were small, it was still easy to stand in Ganon’s presence and realize that something had changed. It was like his aura now reeked of power. 

It was slow navigating to the queen’s bedchambers. They were waylaid at every opportunity, especially by Zelda’s secretary, who nigh wept at the sight of his queen returning. He tried to show her a massive pile of paperwork, but she waved him off. 

“Give me twenty four hours,” she said, her voice so stern that he caved. 

When they finally made their way to Zelda’s chambers, Ganon did a slow turn of the room, a thin slant of astonishment to his face, like he had not contemplated the possibility that he would once be in its softly-padded expanses, the massive bed smoothed and tucked in. 

Zelda caught Ganon’s hand, twined his fingers with hers. “What’s with the look on your face?” she murmured, her brow starting to furrow, and then let out a startled sound as he kissed her. His broad hands stroked up and down her back, he was gentle at first, then urgent, and Link watched as Zelda opened like a flower under his touch. 

Zelda tore her mouth away and said, voice too low to be properly stern, “A bath first, I must insist.”

She was right to insist; the bath was very much welcome. They washed the immediate grime off of themselves first in the little showering stall nearby, then soaked, languid and luxuriously, in the near-boiling water. For Zelda and Link, whose skin was tender from the sunscreen, it was almost too much, but Ganon tipped his head back and pronounced it perfect. 

Zelda insisted on washing Link, Ganon insisting on washing Zelda, with the soft slippery soap that smelled greenly floral, and that somehow turned into playful stroking, Zelda’s fingers clever around the base of Link’s cock, her eyes fluttering from sensation as Ganon’s hands slid over her soapy breasts, his nose pressed into her damp, tangled hair. They had not touched each other for too long; they escalated rapidly, touch turning desperate, craving for the reminder of what each other felt like. The soft sounds of their pleasure echoed in the bathroom, their individual sounds distinct but the overall noise a crescendo of three indistinguishable voices. 

They slept, clean and warm, in the bed together. The next morning, Zelda went to unbury her desk from the mountain of paperwork that had built up over the course of a ten-day-journey, while Link and Ganon went riding. They were afraid that Ganon’s changes would scare off the horses, but while some of the more nervous ones shied away, Phantom only pressed her nose eagerly into Ganon’s, happy to see him after such a long time away. 

It had been two months since Ganon’s birthday, though it felt like shorter, and Ganon’s gait had much improved. They rode around the fields surrounding the castle, and Link saw the way Ganon’s eyes strayed noticeably to the west, where his beloved Gerudo lay. 

Link let the horse slow to a walk next to Ganon and signed, You’re leaving, then. 

Ganon looked startled. “Is it that obvious?”

No. Likely, she doesn’t know. But I know what I’d do if I had been trapped for many years. 

Ganon looked at him for a long moment. Eventually, he said, “Trapped is not the word I would use for it, yes. But it is true that—it has been many years since I have been able to go to Gerudo. And even then, I was a king, and those who saw me kissed my feet. I do not know my beloved Gerudo as I am now: a scholar.”

You’re still a king.

“That I am,” said Ganon with a sigh. “Which is even more reason I feel the urge to return. They are still my people, after all.”

His eyebrows were knit together, his face set in that unique, Ganon brooding. He was thinking of something more, Link knew, but was not done turning it over in his head. Ganon was not one to form half-thoughts. 

He signed, You need to tell her, and soon. Winter will soon set in and I know she will want to see you safely ensconced in Gerudo by then. 

Ganon gave him a startled look and Link knew why. Ganon had not mentioned anything of a prolonged journey—but what else could it be? Just a brief jaunt to Gerudo and back? Not only would it be dangerous on the winter roads by then for a rider as novice as Ganon was—but he would then still be operating in the guidelines of what he knew Link and Zelda would want. Of course they would want him home with them for the winter. Of course they would not want him out of their sight. 

But is that what would be best for Ganon? Link bowed his head and said, Now that you no longer need us for control of the Calamity I want you to be certain, by the time you come back, that this is what you want. For we can be content with knowing Gerudo has its Desert King back, so long as it means you are happy. But we would be guilty evermore if we knew it was your regard for us that kept us from happiness. 

Nobody said anything for a moment, then another. Phantom tossed her head lightly, snorted. Epona lowered her head to graze. 

Then Ganon said, his voice almost desperate, “You must know that I have every intention of coming back.”

There was a saying soldiers had on the battlefield. It was a mantra, a prayer of sorts that one said before a skirmish, muttered in the breath before a war began. It went: “Foolish are those who expect to live, but more so are those surprised to be left behind.” Soldiers steeled themselves against death, but more so, grief. 

So, he was used to being left behind. He was unsurprised that Ganon was leaving; more irritated with himself that he had not expected it earlier. And he found it painful, shockingly so, to be given hope that Ganon would return. 

Outwardly, he smiled and nodded. But he dismissed the hope, disregarded it. Foolish, he thought. 

Ganon left not a week later. Behind private doors, Zelda had been upset when she found out, then icy, then bargaining, then quietly accepting. Now, she stood in full regalia to tell Ganon goodbye, and her eyes were red-rimmed but dry. 

Link, on the other hand, could not bear to look. Zelda’s bodyguard had traded shifts with him and he almost wished that kindness hadn’t been extended. Then, at least, he would be on duty, would have a reason to not look at Ganon, to be blank. Here, standing in front of Ganon, his fingers were biting marks into his hands from the force of trying to remain calm. It was blustering and cold outside and he hoped any shifting of his gait from side to side could be attributed to the weather. 

Zelda was reciting the formal words. “As a friend of Hyrule, take with us our blessing. As my dear friend, take my love with you.” It was the traditional phrase that royalty was meant to bless questers with; Ganon was not quite a quester, but it was the closest thing to a blessing that Zelda could bestow.

Ganon stood there, nobly, clad in warm gear and with his hands thickly encased in gloves. They had also given him a more experienced horse rider to accompany him on the journey to Gerudo, who would then leave him there and come back. Zelda had come up with the idea and asked Link his thoughts; Link had stared out the window, over the browning fields, and nodded distantly. 

“May your journey be swift,” said Zelda, her voice quiet. “May your quest be fulfilled.” She kissed Ganon on his brow and he accepted it, mouth set. 

They had said their goodbyes earlier, the three of them. They had embraced one another, Ganon whispering promises, but Link had felt distant from the farewells. As if he did not believe they were truly happening, and such disbelief was now suddenly being released, as Zelda helped Ganon stand. Ganon was leaving. After three years, Ganon was leaving. 

Ganon looked at Link, his eyes pleading, his brow quizzical, and Link looked away. 

He heard the sound of metal against leather as Ganon hefted himself into Phantom’s saddle. Heard Ganon saying, Sav’orq, as if the Hylian word for goodbye was not enough. And then, lastly, heard the thudding of hooves against dirt road, muffled from Link’s back being turned as he decided that he could not stand to bear the sight of Ganon, growing smaller in the distance. He would rather remember the sight of Ganon and Zelda, holding hands as she helped him stand.

If Zelda turned to look at him, Link didn’t know, for he was gone. Foolish are those, after all, surprised by being left behind. 

The thing about having separate quarters from the queen meant that he could avoid her. He showed up for his shifts, stood silently behind her, and then vanished immediately after the change.

Of course, his attempts to avoid her were somewhat negated by the fact that she could easily order him to stay. She was his queen. If she wanted him to talk, she could’ve demanded an answer from him. But she was Zelda, and instead she just carried on, her face grim. 

She had never demanded of him what he would not give, after all. She let him leave and he pretended like he knew he wasn’t breaking her heart. Both times. 

It was just that—without Ganon, it was as if she had become the untouchable queen she had once been, and he the knight who could only admire from afar. And Link figured Ganon ultimately wouldn’t come back—why would he, when he could be king, when he could live in luxury once more and in control of his powers—this was how things would always be. Zelda would have to marry one of those foppish princes. She could never marry Link, after all. That soporific bubble of happiness they’d lived in for three years had popped, finally, and Link was almost grateful for it. 

There was nothing for him to do, though. He practiced his drills and fighting, but found himself stymied; there was growth for him, certainly, but not when his mind was cluttered like this. Every trick he tried to learn, he failed magnificently, and soon he left the training field as an acknowledgment of the damage he would do to the morale of his troops if they saw their commander falling all over himself. 

So he sat in his quarters, his dusty little quarters that he used just as a little refuge of his own. There was not much, there. A living room with a kitchenette in the corner. A bedroom connected by a door to the living room, which had a small lavatory attached to it. That was it, and it was barren because he spent so little time there. It was lonely. 

He lasted about two weeks of sadly stewing and training and rolling around in the dust in his room before he went out to a tavern and got spectacularly drunk. He downed mug after mug of beer, wiping the foam from his mouth, and then got maudlin in his lonely corner. 

Link thought to himself: I miss Ganon. 

Ganon wouldn’t let him get this drunk. Ganon would tuck him into bed. Ganon would hold him and say, Of course you are still worthy of loving and being loved by Zelda, even without me in the picture. There’s no use in feeling guilty, love. Ganon would listen to him agonizing over the lines drawn between knight and queen, the rules of courtly and chivalric love that had been beat into him ever since he was a squire and his maudlin knight pined after a noblewoman who could never publicly love him back, and he would say something like, Oh, the Gerudos don’t have that problem. Their nobility are their soldiers. And when Link hit him because of that unhelpful saying, Ganon would smile down at him, his eyes crinkling at the sides, and say, There is just the fact that you two love each other, and isn’t that enough?

The door opened and a group of men came in, laughing and talking with one another. Link didn’t know who they were—from their gear, he surmised that they were perhaps hunters. They were a diverse group of men, but he focused on only one: the largest one, who had long hair that was brown, but perhaps almost auburn in the tavern light, with bulging muscles, with tan skin and a sharp nose. He was mid-laugh when Link spotted him, and, combined with his whole appearance, the way he tossed back his head reminded Link of—

He was too drunk to be covert with his staring, The hunter saw him staring and gave Link a quizzical look which quickly morphed into something else. A lidding of eyes, an assessment, and an acknowledgement of what he saw there. Desire, likely. 

Link imagined it: him, kissing this hunter he did not know. Pulling him down into a chair, straddling him, opening his mouth to his, grinding down on his lap. Would the hunter pull his hair like Ganon did? Would the hunter splay a possessive, guiding hand on his neck, bite at his collarbone, thumb at his nipples, kiss his stomach, suck his cock, fret two, three, four fingers into him until he was weak from want and begging? He would have to fuck Link then, surely, and maybe his cock would feel like Ganon’s, maybe he would be too hasty with the prep and Link would feel it for days every time he stood up. Maybe he’d whisper in Link’s ear, I’m taking you home with me, or, even more revealingly, I won’t leave you, and it was that last, sodden thought that had Link shuddering and standing up, flinging money on the table and leaving as quickly as he could. He could feel the hunter’s eyes on him as he left. 

It had been a hot flash of arousal, but it left him feeling dirty. Because he did not want the hunter, he wanted Ganon and Zelda, Zelda-and-Ganon, Ganon, Zelda, and nobody else. He wove his way through the streets, knowing that if anyone pickpocketed him just then, he would not have the control to tame his response, and he both hoped and feared that someone would do it. Thankfully, nobody dared to try to rob him and he made his way up to the castle in one piece.

The guards, straight-faced, let him up as he bobbed and dipped his way to the queen’s bedchamber, though he caught one of them looking at him disapprovingly. It was late, at night, to be disturbing the queen. He ought to feel guilty about it. 

But instead, he came into the bedroom and saw her sleeping on the very edge of the massive bed, curled up with all this empty space behind her, and felt nothing but guilt for having left her, for having not come earlier. He pulled off his dirty boots, his tunic, his pants, leaving himself only in his smallclothes, and crawled in behind her. After a moment’s hesitation, he looped an arm over her waist and tugged her close, the parenthetical curves of their bodies a comfort to him, and she sighed in her sleep, a dreamy noise. 

He nosed at the back of her neck, breathed in the clean, sweet smell of her soap, and thought blearily, I’m sorry, and passed out. 

When he woke up, it was to fingers carding through his hair, soft and gentle and there was a delicious smell in the air. Usually he was a light sleeper but, sodden with alcohol, he had crashed hard. He lay there for a moment, slowly making his way to consciousness, and then the headache hit. 

He rolled over and groaned, pressing his hands into his eyes. 

“Well, you deserve that,” said Zelda. He peeked out from underneath one of his hands and saw her frowning royally down at him. “Creeping in here in the dead of night, smelling of alcohol. What were you thinking?”

He started explaining, but she pointedly turned away. “I am not having a conversation with you until you have bathed and had something to eat.”

Someone had brought her breakfast tray in already. It was at her bedside table, with enough food for two—sausages, some fresh bread, fresh berries, a large cup of oatmeal. Tea, with two saucers stacked on top of each other. It was still gently steaming. He saw it and felt his eyes grow wide, his stomach rumbling.

Zelda nudged him with her foot. “Better wash quick before it gets cold.”

The washing helped. Zelda had called for the bath before he woke up and the water was tepid, but it woke him up. He washed what felt like the entire dusty innards of his apartment off of his body, as well as the stench of alcohol. He ducked his head underwater, scrubbed at his face, and emerged pinked from the heat. 

He kept a change of clothes still, grabbing a soft red-and-teal set from the closet and tugging it over his head. When he came out, half the food was eaten, the rest covered to preserve as much of the heat. And Zelda was sitting on the wide, cushioned windowsill, gently lit by the sun. She was fully dressed in blue, but her hair had not been done yet, and it fell long and light around her face. 

“Eat,” she said. “Not the tea, though.” 

Link did. He was used to silence, but the silence as he ate felt distantly uncomfortable, and he ate faster than he would’ve liked. When the last bite was scraped out from the bowl, he placed the tray on the nightstand and rose from the bed. He walked over to Zelda and stood at her, falling into parade rest without really trying to. Over her shoulder, he could see the palace gardeners at work, pruning the dead heads of the palace’s rose garden. It wasn’t snowing, yet, so there was no blanket of white to hide away the hibernating plants, and so the garden just bore a curiously barren, desolate look to it. 

She said, her voice cold, “I’m curious to hear what you have to say about your behavior these past two weeks.” 

Zelda turned to Link, away from the window, and her face was a mask. She had that blank-faced expression that she had perfected, by the necessity of being a ruler. He felt himself responding in kind, his face calm as well. 

I reacted poorly, he signed. I should not have done so, and I apologize for it. It was childish of me. 

Brisk, brutal, efficient. But though she made no perceptible move, something about her changed. Chilled, but at the same time, swelled with emotion. 

“I see. I’m glad to see that you recognize that you, in your own words, reacted poorly.” She looked at him, impassive. “Is that all you have to say?”

What do you want me to say? he signed. 

Her lips thinned. “There is nothing I desire you to tell me, if it is not something you do not wish to share,” she said after a long second. 

This was the problem between the two of them, Link thought. They were so used to scrutiny and the necessity of hiding their feelings from those around them who would wish them harm. They had gotten too accustomed to hiding in the shadows, believing that they didn’t deserve the joy of companionship; they had forgotten that it was all right for them to to fight for love even when it wasn’t entangled in some greater, higher struggle (say, like a kidnapping). When Ganon came, Link thought that he had changed the two of them—Link, certainly, had discovered his own devil-may-care attitude toward showcasing affection in front of other people. Ganon and his openness, his generosity, his kindness, had bled such warmth into their relationship that Link had thought everything had been fixed.

Now that Ganon was gone, however, all the little cracks that his presence had filled in for Link and Zelda were suddenly back, and with a vengeance. And Link realized: it could not be this way, because his heart could not bear it. It had been easy, from afar, to be caught up in his own selfish hurts, to let himself go dull and quiet, like his life was before they met. But standing here, watching her face tremble from the force of hiding her emotions, he loved her too much to let them remain being withdrawn, their pride and their personal anguishes a tortuous loop. 

He dropped to his knees. He reached for her hands, which were cold to the touch, and kissed them gently. She watched him, her lips parted slightly. He signed, I love you so much that I could not stand the idea of you leaving me too, so I left first. And I am sorry, and I will regret it for the rest of my days. I thought it would be easier, but instead, it is killing me, being away from you. And so I beg you to give me another chance, though I know I don’t deserve it. 

And there it was, the crack in her mask, the blossoming of emotion in her face. She flushed, like the red of dawn, her eyebrows snapping together in fury. She tore her hands away, stood up in a flurry of blue fabric. 

“You’re right you don’t deserve it!” She made the sign for deserve as she said the word, though he was unsure if she had done it on purpose, and her voice was rising. “I trusted you. I thought, we are in this together, that we could comfort each other as we waited for Ganon. Instead, you just—withdrew! You left me and I…” Her voice cracked and she swallowed, compulsively, her arms wrapping around herself. “I couldn’t even understand why. I kept thinking: what did I do wrong?”

Nothing, he said, his heart wrenching. He stepped forward to her, her arms outstretched, and she backed away. 

“Then explain to me! If I truly did nothing wrong—if I truly never indicated that I was going to leave you, then why are you so convinced that I am going to leave you?”

Because you’re queen. He gave a tiny, pathetic shrug. Because if Ganon left, then your ministers were going to start—have already started—pressuring you to marry. 

Zelda looked at him, stunned. She wet her lips with her tongue and then said, voice quiet, “Why did you think I couldn’t marry you?”

The words had a curious effect on Link. His stomach swooped at the realization that she was not averse to the notion. It promptly plummeted once he remembered the answer to that question.

I never told you this, he signed, careful and slow, but I was there that night when your father told you that if you didn’t master your powers, you would have to marry the knight who drew the sword from the Master Sword. 

“What?” 

I was hiding in the bushes and I couldn’t leave. But I was there, and I knew, even back then, that I was meant to draw the sword. But I couldn’t, after hearing that. He couldn’t understand the look on her face, so he pressed onward. I couldn’t do that to you. I would never do that to you.

He sunk to his knees once more, looked up at her startled, beautiful, regal face. You are my queen. I would not dare to be anything more, nor do I want to be. As long as I live, I will follow you to the ends of the earth. 

He bent his head, stared at the gold embroidery stitched into the hem of her watered blue silk. As such, he was wholly unprepared for when she reached for the collar of his shirt and hauled him up a standing position and close to her. They were close enough in height that their faces were abreast, and he could see the tears that had sprung up in her eyes. 

“How dare you. How dare you give up on everything so easily—the sword, the kingship, me. You damn, self-sacrificial idiot. You—you absolute fool.”

Link signed, I will not again, Zelda.

“You better believe it,” she snarled. 

And then she kissed him and he thought that perhaps he had been forgiven, after all, or some version of it, as she pushed him back against the bed and clambered on top of him. 

He had missed it, missed her terribly, but the motions came back easily to him. The way she impatiently jerked at his clothes until he unbuttoned them for her; the way she took him in her soft, hot mouth, her movements quick and fast, until he was all the way hard and gasping for breath. 

He insisted on returning the favor, divesting her of her clothes, kissing every inch of exposed skin, burying himself facedeep in her cunt, tongue fluttering against her clit as she moaned and ground his face harder against her. He sucked at her clit, thrust two fingers deep into her, and she gasped and reached for his hand, tugged his wet fingers back until he was rubbing over the rim of her ass. He nearly came at the sound she made when he sunk his middle finger into her. 

“In me,” she gasped, “come on, fuck, come—“

He wasn’t moving fast enough for her, it seemed. She pushed him over, sank down onto him in a glorious, tight rush, and began riding him, thighs flexing and breasts bouncing. He groped at them, rubbing over her nipples, running a hand across her soft stomach, thumbing the divots of her hips. She came like that, making agonized noises, and he rocked her through it until her little, oversensitive sounds turned lush once more. 

And then he rolled her over, fucked her slow and sweet, rubbing over her clit in leisurely movements, guiding her hand to hold her legs open, her face flushed and her hair a tangled mess.

“Link,” she was moaning, holding onto the headboard behind herself, back arching. “Link, Link, mmh!”

She tightened up around him and came once more; he groaned and let himself go, thrusting through her orgasm, enjoying the sweet, surprised gasp she made as he slammed into her and held her tight to him, coming and coming, thrusting until he became so sensitive that he slipped out. 

They lay there, breathing heavily. He kept kissing Zelda, brushing kisses all over her face until she laughed and said, “That tickles, come on, stop it,” and then he kissed her once more, open-mouthed with a hand to the back of her head, and she moaned and quivered and said, with a gasp, “I have a meeting at noon, you silly, wanton beast.” 

He acknowledged this by letting go of her and just watching her, admiring the red marks he’d left, which trailed all the way from her neck to her breasts—easily concealed by her winter dress, but he would know that they were there, for the entire duration of his shift. After a moment, she sat up and poured herself a cup from the teapot, which was still steaming softly. It was just water and, from the dresser, she took out a satchel of her tea, made with a blend of herbs that stopped conception. He could smell the minty, herbal aroma from over there. 

As she sipped it, grimacing at the taste, she eyed him over the rim of her cup and said, “He’s coming back, you know.”

Link looked away. 

“Link. He said he was. Don’t you believe him?” 

I have never been good at losing people, he said, and told her of the nanny, of the chef, of his father. Of all the people who had left him, never to come back. And I worry that he will go out there and realize that he has so much more to offer this world that he can’t do if he’s stuck in a castle. What if he realizes that, now that he’s not linked to two stupid kids, he can fall in love with someone else? 

She listened attentively, and once he had finished, she placed her empty cup on the side table and said, “Of course you don’t have control on how people say goodbye, or how they are forced to leave, or how they choose not to come back. I know that too.” Her face was sad and drawn and Link knew that she was thinking of her own parents; they had both been old enough when they were orphaned that they could take care of themselves, but young enough to feel the loss acutely. 

Zelda shook her head and continued. “But you do have choice on how you let that shape your own actions. It’s not out of the question that Ganon might fall in love with someone else. But he told us that he loved us. And I believe in trust, and in love. Don’t you?”

He threw an arm around her waist, nuzzled his face into her hip. He nodded. He would try. He would do it. He would be better. 

Just then, Link realized something. He gave an annoyed sigh, before he could help himself, and then started laughing at himself, his face still tucked into Zelda’s hip.

“What?” she asked, poking his cheek. “What’s so funny?”

He signed, I have to go take another bath, now.  

He was better, after that. He went back to his training, but now that winter was incoming, the castle was quieter. There was more time for relaxation. For much of the castle, it meant games—darts, specifically, held in the servants’ quarters, called the Annual (Unofficial) Castle Hyrule Darts Tournament, which lasted for a fortnight. Everyone—except for the queen, who was well aware of what went on in her castle and decided to turn a blind eye to it so long as it remained tame—placed a bid, whether it was real money, or a service. This year, the cooks had pledged to cook a feast for whichever division won. For a bunch of people who claimed warfare was not their profession, the librarians had won the winter darts tournament for the past three years and the guards were all puffed up with vengeful attitudes. 

For Link, the time accorded to him meant something entirely different. He deliberated over it for some time, then told himself to get over it, and returned to the kitchens. 

The head chef—Martya, if he remembered correctly—folded her arms and said, “Now, what do you want in my kitchen?” When he pulled out his writing slate and explained, her arms slowly uncrossed and she looked at him, baffled. 

“Well,” she said, “so long as you stay in the corner over there, and keep out of everyone’s ways, I s’pose it’s a small thing to ask for.” 

He brought dusty cooking books into the kitchen, along with shiny new recipes that he had copied down from previous readings. He worked through them, one by one, scarfing down those that were inedible or otherwise unsavory, and dropping off the ones that were palatable in the servant’s food quarters, where the plates were always wiped clean by morning. 

He started simple. Skewers of meat, marinated in yogurt overnight and seasoned liberally. Grilled until they were tender and juicy. Moving on, then, to more complicated skewers, with vegetables cut to be in twisting, almost floral shapes. Then, once he was satisfied with that, onto rice bowls. The same meat, spooned over tender, fragrant rice. Mixing in seafood. When he picked up the licked-clean plates from the servant’s quarters, he saw that someone had left a large, flat blank book open and had scribbled in it, WONDERFUL RICE BOWLS, MYSTERY CHEF. ESPECIALLY THE CRAB VERSION, WHICH MADE ME THANKFUL TO BE ALIVE. 

It was such a nice note that he felt regretful when he dropped off the Goron curry rice the next day, which was spicy enough for him to cough and chug milk and avoid touching his eyes for the rest of the day. The book that next day said, ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL US?

He took pity on them and eased up on the spice. The notebook started having different handwritings, with some compliments, some complaints. He looked through them, indifferent, but took note of the ones that mattered.

It was around this mark, a few weeks into his daily practice, that one of the cooks pulled him aside. He was a tall, gangly fellow, with a nose that took up half his face and droopy brown eyes, and Link did not recognize him whatsoever. He was prepared for the chef to chastise him, but instead the man reached into his pocket and pulled out a long flat package wrapped in butcher paper and twine. 

He handed it to Link, who stared at it. 

“Well go on then.” He had a sort of garbly quality to his voice, like he was chewing on something, though a surreptitious glance up at his mouth showed that there was no food in sight. “Open it.”

Link opened it and then almost dropped it. There, shining at him as if new, was Helga’s favorite knife. 

For a moment, he thought perhaps he was mistaken. But when he lifted it out of the packaging with shaky fingers, he could see the sheen of the veneer of the brown wood, the three silver rivets holding the handle together, the ripple of steel that was so familiar to him. He looked at it and then up at the chef in astonishment.

The gangly chef said, “It was me whom Helda asked to send you her knife when she died. I addressed it to your knight, but found it in the gardens just a few weeks later, rusted almost beyond repair. I admit, I kept it out of anger, believing you to be the reason for the knife’s disrepair, but I learned quickly of your knight’s foul temper and cruel attitude to you. Forgive me—I meant to return it years ago, but you never returned to the kitchen, and I ended up unsure if you would want it anymore, after so much time had passed.”

He paused to look at Link’s face closely. Link could not stop staring at the knife, feeling a peculiar, clenching emotion in his chest. “She was very dear to me, that old bat of a woman, and I told myself that her knife shouldn’t go to anyone who wouldn’t appreciate it properly. I see now that I was wrong to assume.” 

The man gave a short, stiff bow and turned to leave. Link grabbed for his sleeve, not knowing how else to get his attention and get him to stay. He pulled out the slate and wrote, Thank you. I’m Link.

“I know,” said the man, with a quirk in his mouth, but then answered Link’s unspoken question. “Call me Mel. I look forward to see what you drop off in the quarters next.” 

The answer was baked goods. He hadn’t forgotten how to cream butter and sugar, or how to measure liquid, but he had forgotten the cues of a properly-heated oven and it took him some time for his baking and his oven to fall in lockstep. His souffles fell at first, but his nutcake was so aromatic and lovely that when Zelda turned over and snuggled into him that night, she said sleepily, “Why do you smell so good?” 

He made pumpkin pie, switched over to menuire and risotto, got distracted during one dish and turned it into something inedible that he grimly crunched his way through. He made rice balls, endless rice balls, and went through four dozen eggs perfecting a softly yellow, glossy omelette. He broke down the pink blocks of salt imported from Gerudo and grilled meat and mushrooms on them and thought of Ganon the whole time. 

The reviews in his notebook grew more positive. 

“I know what you’re doing,” Zelda told him as they lay in bed together one morning and continued, with a delighted sound to her voice, “My maids have been gushing about some mystery chef who keeps dropping off food in the servants’ quarters. And you stink of food constantly.”

Is it really that bad? Link tried to subtly sniff himself. 

From the roll of her eyes, he could tell he was not subtle enough. “It’s actually kind of nice. But how come I don’t get to try any of these wonderful dishes?”

They’re not good enough.

She kissed his shoulder, mouthed languidly at the crook of his neck, the sensitive space underneath his ear. “Now that,” she said delightedly, “is the biggest lie I’ve ever heard.”

It was like she sparked a memory. After they made an even bigger mess of the sheets, Link lay thinking of the last time he saw Helda. It was painful enough of a memory that Link usually tried not to go back to it, but he did now—they had been learning cake, at that time, a chiffon cake, sliced in thirds, filled with cream and fruit, then topped with sugar-glossed fruit. 

He remembered her saying, “I make this for the princess, all the time.” He didn’t take much note of it—most of her sentences were scattered with, “And if I don’t do it this way, the king and the princess won’t eat it,” or something else of that variant. 

The next day, he went to the library and leafed his way through dusty books until he found a recipe for a chiffon cake. He gathered the ingredients, knotted his apron, and went to work.

It was a disaster. No matter what he did, the chiffon cake flattened and sunk into a sad dense cake. He found a different recipe the next day, tried it again, and yielded the same result. He ate that cake angrily. 

The third day, Mel stopped him as he began to spoon it into the pan, handing him a different pan instead. “Use this one so you can invert it, this time,” he said, making the upside-down gesture with his hands as Link stared at him uncomprehendingly. “That’s what the metal prongs on the side are for. It’s gonna flatten out, otherwise. One of our bakers put this pan together and we haven’t had a bad chiffon cake since.”

It worked like a charm. Link sliced it carefully, glazed the fruit, and spent the better part of an hour painstakingly arranging the fruit on the cake. He carried over a slice for Mel, who bit into it and, without his face changing, gave Link a thumbs up. 

He left the majority of it next to the notebook for the other servants, but carried the prettiest slice up to where Zelda was working in her office. He tapped on the door, heard her say, “Come in!” and entered to see her rubbing at her forehead as she scribbled in her notebook. 

She smiled at him. “What’s this?” 

He handed her the cake and her mouth dropped. She rotated the plate in her hands, the gloss on the fruit catching the light, and then she said, “I didn’t…how did you know that this was my favorite cake?”

He shrugged and she scowled at his mysterious ways. Link watched as she took a spoonful and ate it, her face lighting up in surprise and pleasure. “Goddess, this is good,” she said. “Like, really good. It reminds me of my childhood.” There was nostalgia in her eyes, something wistful, a little hurt, but mostly soft. 

Zelda devoured the rest of the cake in four or five massive bites and then gave Link a kiss that tasted of sugar and fruit. He took her plate and left, pleased to no end that she enjoyed it and thinking to himself: yes, this was it, the feeling he’d been chasing the whole time. It suffused him, all the way down to his toes. 

Winter started to ease up in February, the soft whiteness blanketing the kingdom growing a more murky color from a lack of new snowfall. By the end of February, the darts tournament was officially held, and the librarians successfully defended their titles, the guards in second place, and the maids, to everyone’s surprise, landing in third. For a solid week, relationships in the castle grew very cold: the guards were angry at the librarians for winning and were heard loudly saying around the castle, “Do they have nothing else better to do all year round than practice their dart throwing skills?”; the librarians were treating the guards with snide superiority; and the maids were offended by everyone’s surprise at their placing. 

It took Zelda, remarking out loud at dinner, “I do hope that any sore feelings over something as a childish game as darts would not be so drastic as to result in the banning of such tournaments,” for everyone to hastily start treating each other well once more. 

By March, the roads were clear and safe once more. Rain began to fall, melting the leftover snow and turning it into clumps of ice, and the sound of birdsong could be heard once more in the morning. Link caught him and Zelda both looking out of the window more and more often, and each time they caught the other staring, they would look at each other a little guiltily. 

On the last week of March, Ganon came back. 

Zelda and Link watched him, a black speck in the distance that was obviously a solid ten hands higher than every other rider on the path, accompanied by another horse and its rider. They had been walking to Zelda’s next meeting when Zelda had caught sight of him, and they were about to be late to it, if her secretary’s pointed coughing could be any indicator.

They’d known that Ganon was on his way. He and Zelda had been exchanging letters, and she had known for two or three days now to keep an eye out of the window. He had not written Link any letters, though, and when Zelda offered to read hers out loud to Link, he refused. Just knowing Ganon was okay was enough for him. And yet, knowing that he was actually set to arrive to the castle in a scant few hours sent all complicated feelings writhing away in Link’s stomach. 

Zelda was the one to turn away first. She said to her secretary, “See to it that Ganon knows when the next opening in my schedule is. Please ready the Blue Room to receive him and his guest.” 

“The next schedule in your meeting is in four days,” protested her secretary.

“Please make an opening in the next three hours.” 

Link stole one last look at Ganon, still a galloping cloud in the distance, and followed her. Winter was over, and finally Ganon was here. 

Three hours later, they were kept waiting in the Tortoiseshell Room for only about a minute before Ganon and his companion arrived, both with damp hair and a freshly-scrubbed look to their faces. Ganon looked good—more than good. His hair was soft and glossy and falling around his face in an untamed mane, and his robes were made in the Gerudo style, which bared one shoulder and part of his chest. Thoroughly unpractical for riding, but very imposing to look at. Similarly imposing were the golden circles around his wrists, the heavily jeweled necklaces around his neck, the brightly-patterned fabric of his waistband. All of it screamed Desert King, and even as Link’s heart soared at the sight of Ganon once more, his stomach sank at the thought that Ganon, in all the months since they had seen each other, had remembered the joy of a king’s indulgences, of which he had been so sorely deprived upon his arrival at Hyrule. But he looked good in them. He looked right, like this, and Link could not begrudge him. 

Ganon was very upright and professional when he came in. He dropped to one knee, graceful, and said, “Queen Zelda,” in that familiar rumble. His companion, a tall thin Gerudo woman with spectacles and donned similarly in formal wear, also dropped to her knees. 

“Rise,” said Zelda, and only Link caught the brief furrow in her brow, and only because he could see it reflected in the mirror across from her. Otherwise, all he saw was the back of her golden head. “It is good to see you once more.”

“And I you,” said Ganon. While his voice was formal, his eyes were tender, and Link’s fists tightened at the sight of it. At the sight of him. He could not stop looking at the dear, familiar angles of Ganon’s face. Until Ganon spoke, he had forgotten how easy it was to forget someone’s voice, how imperfect one’s memory was. He had thought he’d known the exact timbre, but hearing it anew, it almost hurt to realize how much better the real version was. 

Zelda said: “What brings you here to our kingdom, Ganon of Gerudo?”

Her words were very formal and very right. Clearly, she was uncertain of whether or not to say just Ganon, or if it would’ve been rude to not say King Ganon, if he had returned to his birthright position as King of Gerudo.

Link steeled himself for the worst. For Ganon to declare his reestablishment. For Ganon to announce that he was, in fact, engaged to someone else, an alliance to strengthen Gerudo. Hell, he was even contemplating how he would respond to Ganon suddenly standing up and crying out, “I declare war on the kingdom of Hyrule!” even though those were the sorts of daydreams that were ludicrous at worst. 

He was not, however, prepared for Ganon to look up, smile that devastatingly beautiful grin at Zelda, the one that always made Link breathe in sharply, and say, “Why, an ambassadorship, of course.”

It was like everything went soft and a little fuzzy in Link’s ears, incredulity deafening him for a second. An ambassadorship. But that meant—

“But I’m getting ahead of myself,” said Ganon. “Royal Scribe Fifela, please, go forth.”

The spectacled woman who had accompanied him cleared her throat and stepped forth. “On behalf of Chief Urbosa—“

“Chief?” said Zelda, her voice astonished. “Since when has Gerudo had a chiefdom? And why was I not invited to the coronation or celebration?”

Fifela said dryly, “Because Urbosa said, and I quote, ‘Blast the coronation, I’m a chief, not a queen, and they’ve been working with me for three years and are unlikely to celebrate having to deal with me for even longer.’ Is that clarification enough?” 

Zelda pressed a hand to her mouth and Link could see a smidgen of a smile peeking out behind her index finger. “Yes, it is. Do continue.”

Fifela cleared her throat and continued. “Due to the dedication, service, and sacrifice former king Ganon has displayed on behalf of the Gerudo nation, Chief Urbosa has seen fit to grant him and his particular skillset ambassadorship between the great nations of Hyrule and Gerudo. This position, if approved by Queen Zelda, would consist of liaisons between Gerudo and Hyrule, though the position would largely be seated in Hyrule.”

Link realized that, the longer she spoke, the more he had begun to lean forward until he was almost going to fall over from the imbalance in his center of gravity. He fell  back on his heels with an almost imperceptible clank—well, imperceptible, except for the fact that both Ganon and Zelda caught it, with Zelda’s right ear twitching slightly at the sound, and Ganon’s eyes flicking, just for a second, to him. He felt his entire body flush, all the way down to his toes, but remained straight and grim-faced by sheer force of will, staring blankly at the wall, trying to suppress what felt like hope. 

“If she so accepts—“

“I accept,” said Zelda, and the answer was so quick and unseemly that Fifela and Zelda’s secretary both fell into scandalized silence. Zelda dipped her head slightly in the regal approximation of an apology; Ganon turned his head away by just a few degrees, as if smothering a smile, and Link felt something in his soul ease, like a ship righting its keel. “But do continue.”

“If she so accepts,” continued Fifela doggedly, leafing through her papers, “Chief Urbosa is willing to see this as the beginning of a great alliance between Hyrule and Gerudo that she is hopeful will last for generations to come. And she also asked me to clarify a certain addendum that she had me add to the traditional ambassadorship position—that if relations between Gerudo and Hyrule were to dissolve, for any reason, Ganon would find himself relieved of his ambassadorial duties to the crown and find himself just a regular citizen of Gerudo, and welcome to seek asylum in whichever country he chooses to.”

It would be a cruel contract, for any other ambassador. It was a great kindness, here. As it was, Link saw Zelda’s chest rise and fall as she took a deep, measured breath, before she said in a voice still choked with emotion: “Would you do me the favor of conveying the depth of my gratitude to Ur—Chief Urbosa?”

Fifela, smiling, said, “I would be more than happy to, Your Majesty. Shall we sign the contracts?” 

Zelda, trained well by her father, still insisted on reading over every line of the contract herself. But she did not hesitate in signing it, her signature quick and smooth. They had two sets, one for Hyrule and one for Gerudo, and after everything was done and explained, Zelda said, “Rise, Ambassador Ganon.”

And Ganon—Ganon who was now in control of the Calamity, who had been free to leave, free to travel the whole of Hyrule and beyond, but instead chose to renounce his kingship and stay here, with them—did. 

Link knew he should’ve gone straight to Ganon after his shift change, but instead he found himself going to the kitchens instead. He told himself that it was just because his marinated meat was going on twenty-four hours and would start just dissolving, but it was just plain avoidance, he knew, and felt guilty the whole time that he grilled meat. Thankfully, Ganon found him before long. 

It was hard for a man as large as Ganon to sneak up on someone and Link knew where he was long before Ganon actually announced his arrival. He continued piping the meringue onto the lemon tarts that had finally cooled and his hand remained steady when Ganon finally said, “Three years, and I didn’t know you had such a talent for cooking.”

Link finished the last swirl and put down the bag, turning to Ganon. Gone were the elaborate and official Gerudo robes, but Ganon wasn’t wearing the drab, dull scholar robes that Link had gotten accustomed to seeing him don. Instead, he wore robes that looked at once familiar and thoroughly foreign—it took Link a second to realize that it combined the sweeping Gerudo layers and billowing Gerudo sleeves and brightly patterned clothes with the modestly cut Hylian styles. It looked good on Ganon. Most things did, but this one seemed to fit especially well, or perhaps it was the way he seemed wearing it: thoroughly comfortable and settled in his skin. 

Link said nothing. Ganon looked at him and sighed. 

“My travels were good,” he said, pulling up a chair and propping his chin on his hand. “I spent most of my time helping Urbosa go through all the paperwork necessary to make her Chief and to abdicate my throne. See, that usually only happens when a coup comes into play, which neither she nor I wanted to be the official stance on my abdication. It was a lot of paperwork. But in between, I got to play with the seal sands, go exploring in parts of Gerudo that I hadn’t before…Did you know that there’s a Great Fairy Fountain in Gerudo? She was quite displeased to be disturbed, until I gave her all the gold I had, and then she wanted to whisk me away.” Ganon chuckled and it warmed Link all the way down to his toes. “I told her no, of course. And, of course, I spent a lot of time training with the masters of magic in Gerudo, who were able to help me better control the Calamity. They recommended that I go study with the Sheikah sometime, who are apparently excellent at the whole self-control bit.”

He paused for a moment, as if waiting for Link to say something. When it became apparent that Link was still at a loss for words, Ganon sighed a little and continued. “But throughout all of that, I was mostly wasting away, missing two very small, very silly Hylians. Especially one stubborn ass who saved my life and now refuses to look at me.” 

I’m looking you in the eye now, said Link, obstinate. And you didn’t even send a letter. 

Ganon was too busy looking relieved that he had worked a response out of Link. He looked at Link with this softness to his eyes that did wonders for Link’s grudge against him. 

“I did, to Zelda. I didn’t know if you would want to hear from me,” said Ganon, almost a little guiltily. “You left before I could say goodbye, and I wanted to give you the space. But I never once stopped thinking about you. Here.” From within his robes, he drew out a thick stack of letters. “These are for you. I hope that once you read them,  you will forgive me. I’ll be waiting then.”

Link eyed the stack of letters, remembered that he had spent too much time worry about whether or not Ganon would come back to be properly miffed at the fact that Ganon was now here, and made a decision. He grabbed Ganon by the hand, tugged his startled face down, and kissed him. 

Ganon just about threw him down on the kitchen counter in his haste to kiss Link thoroughly enough to edge on obscenity. It took Mel hollering and swatting at them with a broom and saying, “THIS IS A KITCHEN, YOU HEALTH HAZARDS,” for them to detangle and escape from the kitchen with the plates of food in tow. 

They were halfway to the queen’s bedchambers before Ganon apparently realized what he was carrying. He looked down at the plates they held, counted the number of servings, and went, “You little brute, you weren’t at all that mad at me, were you? There’s three meals here to begin with. Did you just want to see me sweat?”

Link could not sign because his hands were full with plates and the letters, so he mouthed, Serves you right. 

“I suppose it does,” said Ganon, laughing, and it was like the corridors were filled with light. 

Later, over dinner—the chicken pilaf that Link had made, along with the lemon tarts for dessert—Link filled in Ganon on what he’d missed. Ganon listened raptly, and only interrupted to say, upon learning the results of the darts tournament, “The librarians won? Again?” upon which Zelda slammed her fork down and said, “If I have to hear about this stupid tournament again,” and Link laughed and laughed and laughed. 

Later, a little shyly, they went into the bedroom, where they stood and stared at each other for a little while. It was awkward, initiating, when the comfort of routine had been broken, and all of them seemed a little foreign to each other once more after such a long recess. That is, until Zelda growled, “This is ridiculous,” and pulled Ganon down into a kiss, and it was like tension dissipated in the air, turned into something entirely different. 

“Goddess,” gasped out Ganon between kisses, “I missed this,” and pulled off Zelda’s dress. 

Once, Ganon’s body was as known to Link as his own. Now, he was mapping territory that, while familiar, still rung different in certain areas. Here was a new scar on his arm that Link ran his tongue over. He had gotten softer in the belly over the winter, and Link pressed his face against this new, unfamiliar curve. There was a new earring in his left ear, a sparkling little silver thing with a blue stone that Link didn’t initially recognize until  he kissed it and saw it was a small version of the ring that the three of them wore, once. They would have to get new rings, now. There would be time. 

“We missed you too,” whispered Zelda, whose corset had been loosened to free her breasts, which Ganon had his mouth immediately on. She was still wearing a scrap of a lacy underthing, which Ganon kept running his fingers under teasingly. She sighed, rocked against the bulge of his cock underneath his new robes, reached out and freed it with clever hands. His cock sprung free, already half-hard.

Ganon’s fingers dipped underneath the edge of her undergarments once more, and both he and Link were riveted by the way she bit her lip as he slipped a finger into her. He tugged aside the scrap of cloth so they could see it better, how wet she was, how she stretched around Ganon’s finger. Zelda moaned, stroked him harder in revenge, and rubbed the head of his cock against her clit and the sound Ganon made rumbled through Link’s whole body. 

Link bit at Ganon’s shoulder in jealousy, feeling empty and wanting, and Ganon gave him a slice of a smile. 

“Your turn will come,” said Ganon, tilting Link’s face up to kiss him. 

“Oh, that’s not what’s going to happen here,” said Zelda. Her gaze, suddenly, was laser-sharp. 

Ganon let out a surprised sound as suddenly he was yanked backwards and against the headboard. His arms spread out on either side and he was paralyzed for a moment, long enough for Zelda and Link to both take out the ties and bind him thoroughly to the headboard. 

Ganon watched them, a carefully blank look on his face. When they were done, he flexed against the binds, once, and then let out a slow breath through his nose. Something dangerous flickered in his eyes. 

“Is this my punishment, then?” he asked. “That I am not allowed to touch either of you?” He laughed, a low sound that made Link shiver. “This is cruel indeed, my loves.”

One of your punishments, signed Link. 

Zelda reached into the drawer. “This one’s the other.”

Ganon’s eyes widened at the sight of it. It was a black ring, one that they had used before, and from the look on his face, he remembered it clearly, remembered how afterwards, he had almost not been able to walk. 

“My loves,” he said, voice unsteady. 

“You know the word,” said Zelda, watching him with intent eyes. 

Ganon did know the word, which, once said, would stop both of them in their tracks. But he did not say anything and—noticeably, his cock jumped from where it had been resting, half-hard, against his thigh. Answer enough. 

Zelda tossed Link the ring and the lube. “Honor’s all yours.” 

He oiled it up and slid the cock ring over Ganon’s cock, pushing it down until it was snug around the base, wrapping his mouth over the head of the cock as he did so and tasting the salty precum gathering there as Ganon moaned at the feeling. Zelda and Ganon lazily made out as Link mouthed at the base of Ganon’s cock, over the ring that would keep him hard and prevent him from orgasm. 

Link allowed himself to indulge a little longer, tonguing over Ganon’s heavy balls, dipping his tongue into the soap-smelling hole behind them, heard the creak of wood as Ganon pulled against the headboard and gasped out, “Link, Link,” like it was a prayer. 

“Careful, Link,” said Zelda, her voice amused and a little bit strained from the way that Ganon was pressing his tongue against her nipples. She pulled Link up and they made out like that, in front of Ganon, and with a certain theatricality of it; Zelda moaned showily as Link kissed at her neck and palmed her breasts, and he was perhaps louder than he would’ve been normally when she stroked at his cock. 

When they broke apart to look at Ganon, he was watching them with a part in his mouth, which clicked shut. 

“Don’t you want to see what we were up to while you were gone?” asked Zelda.

Ganon’s arms flexed against the ropes. “More than anything,” he said after a moment, like it cost him effort to say so. 

Well we did a lot of this, signed Link, and slid down to mouth at Zelda, tearing off her underwear completely. She groaned and dropped to rest against Ganon, her cheek to his, both of them watching Link eat her out. Like this, Ganon’s cock rested heavily against Link’s belly as he ate Zelda out on top of Ganon. 

Ganon, to his credit, did not just sit by and watched. He turned and kissed whatever part of Zelda he could reach, and murmured in her ear, “How does it feel, sweetheart? I miss the taste of your cunt, miss the sounds you made when you came on my tongue. If you untie me, I could finger you as well, we could fuck you at the same time, my fingers in your ass, Link in your sweet cunt. Do you want that? Just one hand free.”

Zelda gasped at the idea and came like that, easy when Link, inspired by Ganon, speared two fingers into her. And then he pushed her upright until her cunt was in Ganon’s face and fucked her like that, carefully rocking into her as she soaked Ganon with her wetness, his tongue easy and soft on her clit. 

After Zelda came a second time, she fell back on her heels, gasping for air, her face red from exertion. “We did that,” she said, answering a question belatedly, and then pushed Link over; he went, easy. “And we also did this.”

They forced Ganon to watch as they opened up Link slowly for him, Link moaning and writhing down on Zelda’s clever fingers. She worked him open on two, three fingers, and then forced him to get on all fours so he could suck Ganon’s cock as she fucked him with toys. He went gratefully, sobbing and choking on Ganon’s cock as Zelda drove a brutally thick dildo in and out of him. And Ganon swore and twisted at the ties and begged them to let him go—and noticeably, very noticeably, never said the word. 

I’m going to come, he signed at Zelda, tearing his mouth off Ganon’s cock because he couldn’t breath from the blaze of pleasure threatening to overtake him. She pushed him over and sank down on him, all hot, wet heat, and Link grabbed at her hips wildly when she started riding him. He could not last like this, and she knew that, letting him pump up hard and quick into her, kissing his face when he came jerkily into her, still feeling the dildo in his body press up against his prostrate and twitching from the pleasure that almost verged on too much. 

She withdrew from him carefully as he breathed hard and lay there on the sheets. He rolled over to the side, just enough to see her yank down Ganon’s chin and sit on his already-outstretched tongue. He moaned into her cunt and Link’s cock did a hard, unsuccessful leap of its own when Link realized: she was making Ganon eat Link’s cum out of her. 

It was like his brain had fried. He sat there, listening to her moans as she rocked against Ganon’s face, and the almost-animalistic sounds Ganon was making, and when his cock was less painful to the touch, he rolled over and got back up. 

Like this, Ganon’s face was obscured. He was buried in Zelda’s cunt, seemed blissful about it, his fingers relaxed—but they fisted once more when Link took his cock in hand and rubbed it against his loose hole. It was muffled, but Link could hear the shocked sound that Ganon made when Link sank down on his cock in one, fluid motion. Over her shoulder, Zelda turned to watch and grinned. 

“Goddess, he’s beautiful,” she told Ganon, one hand still knotted in his hair to keep his mouth where she wanted it to be. The sounds Ganon made were garbled, but from the tight knots of his hands, Link could tell that he was desperate. “How does he feel, Link?”

Incredible, signed Link, rising to the top and allowing himself to slam back down. Ganon’s knees jerked at the feeling. He did it again and was rewarded by yet another muffled, agonized sound. 

Ganon planted his feet, tried to fuck up into Link, and Link forced him back down by clenching around him so tightly that Ganon’s knees went all wobbly. He went at a teasing pace, withdrawing up to the head, tightening around Ganon until he heard one of those wonderful sounds, and then slamming all the way back down. He alternated them with twisting, shorter movements, fucking himself on Ganon like he was using the other man as a toy, merciless and careless of the other man’s pleasure. He felt his second orgasm building in the pit of his stomach. 

Suddenly, Zelda made a shocked sound then; clearly Ganon had started doing something that felt very, very right. She groped at her breasts, and Link could see her thighs trembling from where he was sitting, fucked open on Ganon’s cock. 

“Like that,” she said, her voice pitching higher and higher. “Fuck, fuck, just—“

She came then, noisily, and practically smothering Ganon in between her thighs, though Link suspected Ganon didn’t care. Then she toppled off to the side, looking dazed and like she had lost the sharpness to her formidable brainpower, and Ganon had a clear sightline to where Link was still fucking himself down on Ganon’s cock, though his thighs were beginning to burn. 

“Link,” growled Ganon, and Link seated himself fully on Ganon’s cock, his thighs giving out, and he trembled and tried not to come immediately. 

He could see the strain of Ganon pulling against his restraints, had the foreboding sense of something about to happen. Then—with a sizzle of something ozone-smelling and with the pinprick purple of the calamity glowing in his eyes—SNAP! went the bindings and Link’s heart leapt with adrenaline.

Before he knew it, Ganon was on top of him, and he was snarling and pushing Link down so that his face was in the pillows next to where Zelda looked practically comatose, his back arched high and obscenely. But instead of the cock driving back into him like Link expected, he instead almost shouted at the feeling of a tongue coring into him. Ganon moaned into his hole, ate it noisily—

—until Link was begging to come, twisting with the need, making incoherent sounds from it. Ganon had a hand tight around Link’s cock and refused to let him, until Link’s cock was almost purpling at the head and he was frantically rubbing it against Zelda’s thigh, his face buried in her soft breasts as she wrapped an arm around him and pet his ears. 

Then, and only then, when Link was gasping, choking and sobbing, did Ganon release his cock. He flipped Link over and bent him in half, pushing and pushing his legs and knees closer to his ears until Link’s cock was dripping onto his own face, salt on his lips, and sunk his massive cock back into Link. He didn’t even give Link time to gasp out a breath before he started fucking into him immediately, banging his prostrate silly, the pleasure mounting so rapidly that Link couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe—he went completely silent as his second orgasm hit, brutally ripping through his body as Zelda soothed him and whispered something unintelligible into his ears. He came all over his own face and mouth, his ears ringing, feeling filthy and disgusting and completely out of his head.

And when he came to, Ganon was still—fucking. 

Link shook his head, pressed it into Zelda’s shoulders. She was wiping off his face for him with a corner of the bedspread. Ganon said, his voice laced with something smoky, something calamitous, “You’re not done until I say so,” and Link’s head shaking turned into nodding, his brain going soft and obedient. He went where Ganon wanted him to, spread his legs and moaned, hazy with pleasure, when Ganon withdrew his cock and spanked two thick, heavy fingers against Link’s wrecked hole. 

“Give Zelda some attention,” ordered Ganon, spanking his hole once more and turning him back around so he was on his front, back arched. Link slid down to mouth at Zelda’s red-ripe cunt; she whimpered but did not stop him, and she was sopping when he licked over her flushed clit. Her fists were wrinkling the bed sheets, her hair sticking to her temple with sweat, and she did not protest when Link slid fingers into her and crooked them. 

He moaned sharply when Ganon shoved his cock back into Link. “I know what you need,” said Ganon, and Link shook his head, he couldn’t do one more, couldn’t possibly, and Ganon laughed, the sound almost evil, and Link found that maybe he could get aroused after all. Zelda certainly felt it as well; she got slicker, her fingers twining into Link’s hair and pulling, and she began to rock, almost imperceptibly against Link. 

Link tore his mouth away from Zelda for a moment, to breathe, and looked over his shoulder to find that Ganon had torn the cockring off of himself and was watching the with a dark look in his eyes. With his red hair loose around his shoulders, he looked like the Desert King, the evil incarnate of Ganon that Link had always feared he would become, and Link tightened up at the thought of Ganon just forcing him down, taking what he wanted, without care for Link’s wellbeing—

As if reading his thoughts—or perhaps just feeling Link tighten up around him—Ganon grinned and smacked Link’s ass once more, this time on the sensitive spot where ass met thigh. The crack sent Link gasping and right back into Zelda’s cunt, smothering himself in the briny taste, as she cursed and pressed against his fingers. 

“You’re going to come again,” said Ganon. “Aren’t you?” 

Link moaned and Zelda’s fingers tightened in his hair. They were about to come, Link knew; they were teetering on the precipice, they just needed something to push them over—

“So am I,” said Ganon, his voice strained, his cock driving into Link mercilessly,  “Come, come for me my loves, I want to see,” and there was nothing evil about the tenderness in his voice, nothing at all, and that was it, that was all that was needed. Then Ganon was groaning and grinding into Link and Zelda was letting out a hoarse cry as she squirted all over Link’s face and Link couldn’t be expected to withstand all of that, he was only a man, and he also lost himself to the feeling, the utter joy, of oblivion. 

It took them a long time to recover, and they did so in stages, kissing each others’ faces, stroking over tangled hair, hissing at the sudden aches and pains they all discovered after such enthusiastic sex. They called for a bath and remembered the joy of rubbing shampoo and soap on one another, and Zelda nearly fell asleep when Link and Ganon both helped comb out her hair, gusting hot air over their bodies until they were dry and exhausted and so very ready for bed. 

They came back to a freshly made bed and collapsed into it, both Link and Zelda bullying Ganon into the middle, where they could tuck themselves underneath his arms. Link listened to the steady bump bump bump of Ganon’s heartbeat and was almost drifting off to sleep when Zelda said, into the gentle darkness, “I’m planning on dissolving the monarchy.”

She said it so quietly, so delicately, that Link thought for a minute that he had hallucinated it. But Ganon’s fingers stopped carding through his hair and he knew that the both of them had heard it, and it was not hallucination at all. 

“What do you mean?” asked Ganon. 

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” confessed Zelda. “Did a lot of reading this winter. And I think…it’s time. If we can break this cycle, why can’t we break other things? Why does the rulership of Hyrule have to be placed in the hands of such select few? Why do my people have to journey for days, to wait in a line for more days, and then be held subject to my whims and schedule just so that their grievances can be heard? Why does this burden, then, fall on one, fallible person?” She sighed, and Link wished he could see her face. “Surely, there are better ways. No—I have read of better ways, and I want nothing but the best for my people. And so, I have decided.” 

When she spoke again, there was a certain level of nervousness to her voice. “I’m not saying I’ll do it today, or even in the next year. But I just—I wanted both of you to know. It was important to me that both of you knew. And that both of you…approved.”

The possibility blossomed in Link’s mind, that one day, they could all be laying in bed, and they would not be a former king, a knight, and a queen. They would just be people, insignificant to the turning of the world, perhaps unmarried, perhaps in conjugal relations that would make a priest faint, perhaps with children, perhaps childless—it did not matter what form this future would take, because it would be theirs and theirs alone.

And he found that he wanted it, despite never considering it as a possibility. He wanted it so badly that it hurt. He groped across, found her hand and held it tight. A warm weight settled over their grip—Ganon’s hand. 

“You won’t do it alone,” said Ganon, a promise. 

And Zelda said, voice half-laughing and half-relieved, “I know.” 

It was going to happen. One day. That, Link knew. But he was not rushed; he was not worried when that day would come, because there would be all the days in between, after all, and they would be wonderful. And so, with that comforting thought in mind, he slept easy, and dreamed—finally—not of the sword, and not of the past, but of a brightness that he rather thought was the future. 

Epilogue. 

They gathered early in the morning, before the summer heat grew too unbearable—well, unbearable for everyone except Ganon, who never broke a sweat unless it was hot enough to cook eggs on shields—and rode to meet Purah and Nanna, the girl whom Zelda had tasked with dismantling the guardians. They had received a missive marked URGENT that asked for Zelda specifically, though the other two tagged along out of interest.

Purah was sweating and covered in grime by the time they found her next to a giant pile of rocks, and she was triumphantly waving a weird metal tablet at them. “Look at this!” she shouted, as Zelda dismounted and fairly ran toward her. 

“What is it?” asked Zelda, puzzling over it. It was letting out a staccato beeping that made Link want to cover his ears. 

“I don’t know! But it’s some sort of artifact that Nanna found buried with the guardians—it was barely powered when we found it, and it was beeping, so Nanna and I followed it whenever it beeped most urgently, and well, it led us here. So we were hoping that you would, you know.” Purah wriggled her fingers.

Zelda drew herself upright and said, “You want me, vassal of Hylia, to use my sanctified powers to blast some rocks for you?”

“Absolutely,” said Purah. 

“Well, all right,” said Zelda, and proceeded to do just that. 

Once they had stopped coughing from the dust that was kicked up, they all stepped forward to marvel at the structure that Zelda had unearthed. It looked like a gazebo, almost, with a fine metal railing around it and a pedestal in the middle. A tall, thin spire speared the air. 

Link inspected it for danger and nodded at Zelda. The five of them all ventured onto the platform, and the slate’s beeping grew even more urgent as they neared the pedestal, which they could now see had a rectangular slot in it. 

Zelda, who was still holding it, stepped closer. “It’s almost like…” 

She pressed the slate into the center of the pedestal. It fit perfectly into the rectangular hole. Orange light ran in lines outward, and the slate lit up in the center, illuminated from within. 

Sheikah Tower Activated, they read. Please watch for falling rocks.

“Everyone take cover!” Purah shouted as the structure began to shake. 

Link ran for Zelda, reaching her at the same time as Ganon, and they held each other tight as, with an unpleasant lurch, the structure began to rise. Faintly, over the crash of rocks dislodging and falling to the ground, he could hear the screams of horses fleeing and the shouting of the guards they left behind, but he just focused on the sound of Zelda and Ganon breathing as the tower—for it was a tower, surely—rose and rose and rose. 

When at last it stopped, with a juddering sound, they all uncurled, dazed and dirtied, to see a view of Hyrule that Link had only seen before from atop mountains and cliffs. Link helped Zelda up and they held hands with Ganon as they watched, astonished, as more of these tall orange towers rose from the ground, glowing faintly in the distance. 

Purah, predictably, was freaking out. “I knew it! I knew it! They look like the shrines, the ones that we’ve never figured out how to activate—this slate must be the reason, the source, the solution—“ She staggered, rapturously, and maybe would’ve fainted if Nanna hadn’t caught her. 

“It’s amazing,” breathed Zelda, gazing around with wide eyes. “They’re everywhere. If only I could…”

She trailed off, a dark look clouding her face. Link stared at her, unsure what to say, but then Ganon cleared his throat pompously. 

“Well, my dear, I hate to intrude, but I must point out that it’s been almost four years since you took the throne,” he said. “And I, in my tenure as head of Gerudo, recall the former king of Hyrule doing a tour of the kingdom once every four to five years. So it’s about time, isn’t it? Your subjects must be missing their queen.”

Zelda stared at him, and then back out at the towers. Her grip tightened on Link’s hand, and she smiled. “I suppose I need to check on Revali. And I did want to see if there was that heart-shaped lake that a petitioner talked about. And if we happen to do some research on these shrines and towers along the way, well, that’s just part of the royal tour.”

“We can see everything,” promised Ganon. “We’ll find Farosh’s pool in Faron. And we’ll surf the sand in Gerudo.”

“And the snow in Hebra!” said Zelda, clapping her hands in delight. 

I can’t wait for Mipha to show you how to ride waterfalls, signed Link. And we’ll have to eat at the seared meat tables of Goron with Daruk, though I’m leery of this rock-hard roast he keeps talking about. 

“I’m invited, right?” asked Purah. “Because I should let you know that I’m banned from Lurelin. Stupid gambling rules.”

Zelda looked at her and then laughed, throwing her head back, so impossibly beautiful and golden. And then she was flinging her arms around all of them, Purah and Nonna included, so that they were all caught up in her infectious joy. There, on top of the world that they planned to roam, Link felt like there was nothing but possibility, stretching in all directions, infinite.