Fealty

Political relations with the Gerudo were nothing if not delicate, and revolved obsessively around an individual's honor and worth. Fortunately, the Princess was wise and an unsurpassed marksman, and her bodyguard was equally well-equipped. Or so the story went, as related by the spokesperson for the visiting delegation hailing from the far west, as she commanded the attention of the dining hall. The nobles sharing the meal were all entertained by her flamboyant storytelling, though some felt unease over the habitual frown worn by her compatriots, all of whom were revolted by the cold that accompanied a Hylian winter outside of the desert and put no extraordinary effort into concealing it. Equally exotic to the aristocrats was the way the desert women ate with their hands and how much they drank. Zelda diplomatically put down her utensils to demonstrate how well she had learned to eat their way when they had hosted her.

Link stalked the edge of the massive hall like a storm on the horizon, looming portentously and yet remaining too distant to cause worry. When dinner was finished the guests mingled. Link overheard, as he passed within earshot of the Princess and her company, a young lord console her in hushed tones,

"You must be all but exhausted, your Highness, entertaining such boisterous visitors."

"On the contrary," she smiled dazzlingly, "I find their liberal posture refreshing."

Link smirked privately as he continued on his way. He knew what she meant to say: that she preferred the Gerudo to the imprisonment of her own court. Aristocracy was a labyrinth of pretenses and facades, unpleasant at its most harmless and entrammeling at its worst. Once, when they were young, he had led her away from the crowds when she had told him her heart wouldn't stop racing, and when they reached the hall she cried from the weight of the pervasive, overwhelming pedanticism. Her slightest error was basis for her country's shame, and her guests' scrutiny was vicious. He held her hand while she wept, and then, relinquishing to her lot like a brittle autumn leaf relenting to the wind, she collected herself and reentered the assembly with grace that belied her age.

His thoughts were ensnarled by his own name, as streak of light might be inescapably knotted on a polished blade, and he turned to identify the source of it. It came from a desperate nobleman who was being cornered by a determined woman from the emissary's delegation, and Link acknowledged the address out of pity despite his initial inclination to do otherwise. The young Count smiled gratefully as he excused himself and approached, using the opportunity to liberate himself from the ropes of the Gerudo's conquest.

"Sir Link," he breathed, bowing his head when he had closed the distance between them. "Forgive me. I am in your debt again."

"You may walk with me, Count," he invited him after he returned the gesture, "if you think it would deter your admirer."

"I think so," he smiled wider. "Thank you."

Link was not usually accompanied as he made his rounds, much less noticed, but these itinerant conversations with the Count were becoming frequent. Link's readiness to partake in his company thoroughly disguised the feelings toward him that he daily worked to suppress, much to his own pain. They skirted the edge of the gathering, walking unhurriedly, the Princess always just in their line of vision.

"She's well, I take it?"

"She is." Link took his eyes off her for a moment uncharacteristically to examine the young nobleman. His hazel eyes, fixed on a radiant sliver of the moon through a crowd he did not see, were ensorcelled. Link smothered the fire that swelled inside him as if to devour when he saw it, attempting to appraise him objectively. He studied the Count's gaze, the unguarded devotion in it, attempting to weigh his worthiness without bias. It was like trying to hold his breath, beneath a veil of froth and waves, forever.

Finally his eyes slid away from her, still misted over as though he lacked his own free will, and came up to meet Link's, which were inveterately unreadable and colorless as ice. He said, "I have another favor to ask of you."

Link mustered a gentle smile that didn't touch his eyes. "Anything."

The Count removed a small box from his vest, not the first in a long line of tokens Link had delivered for him to the Princess, and handed it to him. "I appreciate this," he sighed, his shoulders easing as though by relieving himself of that box he had relieved himself of a great weight. It felt, in Link's own hand, heavy enough to cripple him. "We could never hope to be so discreet without your help."

Link only nodded, wary of what might come out of his mouth should he open it, and concealed the gift in his tunic.

Zelda, swathed in mist-colored cloth and opaque white jewels, watched the exchange out of her peripheral vision while an aristocrat prattled on to her about his brother's brood mares and their excellent lines. The rest of the evening seemed to drag on longer than it had before following that, an impatient, quiet curiosity eating at her as the hours dwindled. She retired as soon as it was allowable, snaking a route through the cool halls to her bedroom with Link's faithful step echoing hers. He came to her door, rather than continue on his way, when she crossed the threshold, and she turned.

He held the token out to her steadily, watching an expression rise in her eyes that he had seen too often before on occasions like these: the look of a woman who was almost in love. She let her eyes rest on it a moment before she moved, the soft, unmistakable glint of contentment coloring them with diffused sea-tones, as though it were meant for looking at and not for taking.

She asked, "From the Count?"

"Yes."

She took it demurely, flicking her gaze to him once to tell him his presence was still required. He stifled his dread as she peeled back the lid and lightly traced the intricate comb, ornamented with inlaid beads and gems and tasseled with strings of semiprecious stones the color of her eyes. She closed the lid again and stroked the case subconsciously, leaning minutely against the doorframe and turning her gaze on Link more intently. She turned the box in her lithe fingers, her mind working in the silence that waited patiently to be broken.

She softly gnawed her lip in reluctance, and then asked, "Do you like him?"

It was the question he loathed above all others, because neither the truth nor a lie would satisfy it acceptably. He shifted on his side of the threshold, carefully wearing a mask of dispassion, and folded his arms while his mind raced for an adequate answer. The hesitant, undecided spangle of hope in her calculating gaze always prevented him from blurting the truth, because he knew that it might someday ripen to be happiness and he was incapable of taking that away from her. An oath and his undying respect prevented him from lying. Ultimately, the only thing he was not prevented from doing was hurting himself. And he would do that to himself, for her, always.

He turned the corner of his mouth up a little for her benefit and said, "I think he likes you very much."

Her eyes slid down the hall, seeing through the nothingness into some private vision, and Link watched powerlessly as an unguarded smile crept over her features.

It dwindled with her errant thoughts and was replaced by a less glorious expression, and she turned her gaze to him again. She asked, "Have you eaten?"

"Not yet."

"I wish you would eat. There are a dozen men you trained yourself that can encircle me while you do."

"You always say that."

"And you never listen."

He watched her for a moment. His last meal had been well before the dinner and it was on the lee side of midnight, but he wasn't unaccustomed to an empty stomach. More to the point, recent events had left him without an appetite. He promised her, "I'll eat now."

"Shall I eat with you?" she offered, pulling pins with milky jewels free from her hair.

"No." He watched her pretenses fall away with her loosed hair, and the slow, subtle transformation as the impervious, stately exterior evaporated and left behind the elegant, stubborn woman that few people were privileged enough to ever meet. He said again, softly, "No. Go to sleep."

He turned before she could insist and left her at the threshold, moving, suddenly drained and exhausted, towards the kitchen to force food into his stomach. After he'd eaten cold goose, bread, and cheese, and warmed himself with wine, he went to his room, stripped for bed, and slowly fell into a restless, unwilling sleep. He woke before daybreak with a start, panting, his hairline beaded with sweat, and heard the end of Zelda's name fall from his mouth unbidden. The silhouette of the horizon, gently outlined in shades of blush and sea foam, stretched silently towards the midnight above it outside his frosted window like an ancient beast stirring after an eon of slumber. He waited deliberately for his heart to calm before mustering the will to move. He rose, dressed, and stalked down the freezing corridors, while bleary, shivering servants scurried everywhere noiselessly setting fires. His morning routine – reassessing every inch of security before the princess awoke after a quick breakfast that he was under orders to eat on pain of death – had become a fixture of Hyrule Castle, and the servants were visibly concerned if he ever arrived more than a few moments late to any given checkpoint.

The kitchen was tentatively waking; pots were placed with enough care so that they hardly made a sound, fires were gently stoked, and few enough cooks were milling through the cookhouse and scullery that no arguments had erupted yet. Link sat on the corner of a worn wooden bench in the kitchen and picked numbly at the simple breakfast that was already waiting for him. Nightmares had been stealing his sleep often enough recently that he couldn't recall the last time he'd had a decent night's rest, and it was gradually bleeding into his work. Fortunately, the sleeplessness hadn't impeded him noticeably yet, but his body felt heavier and his routine took more than the usual effort.

It bothered him that nightmares, typically a child's ailment, were giving him so much trouble, but the possibility that they might be the variety of nightmare that Zelda's had been bothered him much more.

The portly kitchen maid paused at his table to fill his mug with fresh milk. She muttered, her voice soft as she addressed him but harboring enough power to produce impressive bellows, "Couldn't sleep again?"

He shook his head, watching the froth settle, and murmured, "No."

She eyed him with an unspoken, rough-edged concern and said, as she went to move on, "No rest for the weary, eh?"

He chose to ignore the remark. The soldiers assigned the early morning shift trickled in as he was finishing his meal; he poured over the schedule for the guard rotation and Zelda's agenda for the day while they ate, and then oversaw the relief of the night sentries. By now the castle was in its usual uproar; cooks were screaming at each other and at the scullery maids as everything that could potentially go wrong began to, perhaps inevitably, go wrong, while footmen collected platters that miraculously arrived for pickup just when they should have and delivered them to the dining hall, where the royal family invariably found their meal, against all odds, perfectly executed. It was the sort of comforting chaos that indicated everything was as it should be.

No sooner had Link begun the final approach to Zelda's bedchamber than the princess emerged from it, dressed elegantly for the day's affairs, and headed for the dining room. He trailed her, staring with a voracious envy beyond his control at the comb folded neatly into her flawless hair arrangement as the bejeweled spangles of it weaved with her gait. She stopped so suddenly and turned to look over her shoulder at him that he was forced to stop much less gracefully to maintain their distance.

"Could you not walk so far behind me, please, Link?" she asked quietly. As he met her eyes he found them even more tired looking than his and he felt a familiar, instinctual concern.

Normally he would've marshaled wry smile for her, but he found himself unable. The hall was very still and grey in the morning light, and colder than it should have been. He blamed the nightmares, the weather, and the comb for the dark mood gnawing at him, but suspected there was something much more creating the sudden tension he felt as she waited for him. He slowly resigned and began walking abreast of her, but as they walked, she didn't speak.

Her silence, vacant and unreadable, wore on him. While she stared ahead, he stared at her, scanning her unsuccessfully for sign of injury. Finally he asked, "What is it?"

"I dreamt of you last night."

He watched her eyes, the way they were fixated on some private, dark vision as they both walked. At length, he took his gaze off her and said, "Tell me."

"I saw a beast. It towered over a pile of rubble, on an isle hovering over a molten sea, wielding two broadswords with golden blades. There was a ring of fire surrounding it."

"That's not the future you're seeing," he assured her quietly, remembering the scene she described from his own memories with vivid clarity. "It's the past."

"It killed you," she murmured, forced to watch it again and again in her mind. Link had no answer for that glaring difference from his reality. At his silence, she went on, "A new ending for an old conflict, I suppose, if that's happened before."

"You were there, too."

She managed, her voice suddenly, unexpectedly, full of bitterness, "I could not have borne it if it were real."

She turned away to hide that she was close to tears, but he noticed. He whispered, "Zelda."

"I'm sorry," she answered, sounding composed except for a tiny sniffle. "I know it's childish. It was just too gruesome."

He gave her a moment to herself, and then offered, "I had a nightmare too."

The princess laughed a little at herself and was wearing a small, grateful smile when she turned to him again. "What was yours?"

Link caught sight of overnight guests entering the dining room, down the hall, and promised, "I'll tell you after your breakfast."

He escorted her to the end of the hall and was about to see her in when he caught sight of the Count, garbed in a deep blue that brought out the green flecks in his irises. He was visibly stunned, as they all stood before the doorway, and only gawked a moment before remember himself and bowing appropriately.

"Your Highness," he managed, remembering to smile, "you look lovely this morning."

Her responding smile was modest but dazzling. As they were alone for the moment, she spoke a little more freely. "Thank you so much for your kind gift. It's quite beautiful."

The Count dithered for fear extending another compliment might appear overeager, if Link was any judge, and said instead, after taking a breath and marshaling his courage, "I would be very grateful if I might… be near you at breakfast."

"I would enjoy that," Zelda answered politely, but the Count saw a sparkle in her eyes that made his heart flutter. Her countenance was replaced by a quieter, perhaps less genuine smile, and she added, "I fear it may be over too soon."

Link watched her profile and pondered. He knew the thing that was in his head would lead to his own pain. It was almost too much to bear. But he also knew he could never attain that which he truly desired, and he couldn't selfishly hinder her happiness for the sake of his own.

He said quietly, ever able to read her voiceless desires, "I'll arrange it."

Zelda was surprised, as she turned to him, but the happiness in her eyes was more than he had hoped for.