Author's Note: I'm so sorry for the lateness of this update, guys! I've been quite sick with a head cold that turned into a just as nasty chest cold. I still have it, but I wanted to get a chapter to you anyways. As always, thank you so much for the kind reviews on the last. Love you all and your awesome encouragement!


Beauty and the Beast


Chapter 4: Stolen Power

Night fell over Hyrule and with it Zelda's sense of dread only increased. The voice seemed stronger at night. She had ignored it as long as she could after leaving the dungeons and her unsettling conversation with the red headed prisoner- closing herself into her room and begging the staff to leave her be, citing a sickness she was confident would pass by the next morning. Pass... right. She knew that was a lie.

They asked, concerned, if she wished to postpone her coronation. Zelda declined their kind but unwarranted offers. She was strong and she could handle herself for the sake of her people. Hyrule needed a solid ruler; someone sat properly on the throne. They needed a queen and not a princess. The term princess, as she was the sole heir, implied 'still in training'. Zelda was no such thing. She'd long been ready for her place. Ascension to her was only natural. Even if the cause of it still left her mourning.

Her father... she wanted him now more than ever. Questions had solidified in her mind and she desperately needed answers to them before the voice drove her mad. The voice her father had somehow knowingly carried the burden of. The voice her father had stolen from someone else. The voice. No, the curse. It was some sort of curse. It had to be. It was too evil otherwise. Too sentient. It mocked and whispered words of dark encouragement that even a soul as pure as she found difficult to ignore.

The man in her dungeons had shown no inclination to want the 'curse' back and she couldn't blame him. His eyes had been so alive and yet so dead. Whatever the curse was, it had broken that man long ago and now it was working to break her.

"But not before I broke your father. He was weak. You don't have to be."

Damn the voice! "Shut up." Zelda hissed in vehemence- her perfect, pink lips curling back to bare white teeth where she laid upon her bed, haunted. Ever haunted. She only wanted it to go away.

Blissfully, it seemed to take mercy upon her. Or perhaps it was pity. She was exhausted- the mental strain was too much. As she let her eyelids droop, her calm facade broke and a single tear trailed down her cheek. Then a second, a third...

The princess cried herself to sleep.

Outside, the wind howled ominously. Clouds knotted together, covering over the stars and the bright, friendly moon. It started to rain.


She didn't go to the prisoner in the morning despite knowing he must have been hungry. It was the day of her coronation and she, though selfish as it was, didn't need his dark words marring her heart on that already dreary day. Zelda was strong, but even she could only take so much. Between that man and the voices, they were sure to drive her to the brink, and perhaps beyond. Damn them both. She would rise beyond it. A princess of Hyrule did not lay down and take what was dished out to her without giving back an equal and as Hellish fight. Damn them. Damn them straight to the Twilight Realm.

"You're beautiful, my queen." Her maid, Ella, gushed.

Zelda turned an amused smile on her. "Not your queen yet, Ella dear."

"But soon. And you'll take the crown looking just as radiant as your grandmother. Your father, goddesses rest his soul, he was a handsome man the day of his coronation. But your grandmother... her portrait is a beautiful one. There's nothing as can match a queen. Gorgeous- each and every one of you." The old woman gave her cheeks a pat.

For as used to compliments as a princess needed to be, those words made even Zelda blush. She turned to observe her reflection in the full body mirror; an intricate piece of furniture edged in mahogany. Zelda reached forward to smooth her golden dress. It was embroidered in thin strands of white gold. Her earrings were golden feathers carved so thin they very nearly resembled real ones. She truly did look like an angel. "And shall I have glass slippers like the princesses of fairy tales?" She went on to quip.

Ella giggled. "Only if you wish. Though I think you'd look a sight trying to walk in them."

Both women grinned at the thought.


This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. She chanted it over and over in her mind as creatures snatched her. Creatures with bodies as black as tar- oozing darkness. Beyond them stood a vision from a nightmare; tall and armoured. His helm better resembled a monster; stone, bulging eyes and tongue lolling out. Then he stepped forward.

"Princess Zelda of Hyrule." Even his voice sounded ill- evil. Zelda turned her face from him. A sickly, clawed hand reached out to grasp her chin. She gasped in pain as her head was roughly turned to face the man; forced to look at the visage of his nasty armour. She sneered. The Twili's shoulders bounced in silent mirth. His fingers left her face to trail down her neck, her collar bone... then between her breasts, heaving with anger.

All around her soldiers lay dead or dying. The world had been plunged into a strangely chaotic realm where bits of the dimension broke away in the form of black specks and drifted upward to the sky; absorbed by the ever present cloud cover. "What have you done to my Hyrule?" The princess spat. Beside her, the priest who had been given the honour of crowning her lay dead- blood pouring from a gaping, gruesome chest wound. Her crown lay covered in his blood upon the stone floor of the castle chapel. His hand was upon it and eyes stared unseeing- open wide in surprise and fear. Zelda couldn't look at him. Father Alexander had been a good man.

"I haven't done anything it doesn't deserve." Quick as a flash his hand was off her chest and he'd grasped the fingers of her right hand. Wrenching it up, for a moment he took pleasure in touching her white glove, though was soon to rip it off. Turning her hand over, he looked at the glowing mark of the triforce. "Well, well. Greedy, aren't you? Two pieces!" He cackled with glee. "I'll take one now... the other later." He hadn't the power to remove both at the same time.

Zelda's eyes widened. "Two?!" How had she missed it? Suddenly the pieces fell together in her mind and the holder of Wisdom knew. Power. The one that talked evil to her... it was Power. But how had her father gotten it? How had she gotten it? Before she could contemplate it further, a searing pain ripped through her body. The tangy taste of blood assaulted her. She'd bit her tongue. Then, she screamed.