IV.
Interlude
Like the dutiful ambassador she was, Zelda smoothed out her dirty gown, pushed down every quavering wave of excitement that threatened to make her grin like an idiot, and followed her escort with a stiff pace and a straight back. Never mind the fact that her head seemed to be trying its damndest to race circles around the rest of her; it had been doing that for long enough that it would be nothing short of pathetic for her not to have gotten used to it.
Far be this from her first venture out of the castle, away for more than a night from her parents. She was no innocent seedling. She'd been on her own a lot during the war – been completely alone more often than not, actually – but she was beginning to realize that this was the first time she was going to be spending a night in an unfamiliar bed of her own accord, with no impending disaster hanging over her head. This was also arguably the first time that her mind raced with happiness, not brain-numbing dread.
Her expressionless face did not stay expressionless long after she was introduced into her new suite, formerly that of Marth's absent sister. All Zelda could do when she saw the far wall of Ellis Lowell's bedroom was stare at it. Open-mouthed.
Apparently, in this country, the role of 'battle priestess' focused more on the 'battle' part. 'Priestess' was more of an afterthought, more of a 'maybe patch up some bruises, maybe cast a little magic if it's called for,' more of a 'holy Nayru, why am I wearing this ridiculously badass Crusader armor if all I have to do is sit back, wave a staff and keep out of trouble? Also is that a sword?'
Upon realizing that the tense atmosphere was not just in her imagination, Zelda turned around to find Kain ramrod-stiff in the doorway, looking just the way the room felt. Whatever he'd been waiting for standing there like a suit of armor, he apparently got, as he promptly dropped into a rigid bow, turned around and disappeared down the hallway.
She knew it was protocol, but she felt slightly hurt by his quick exit. Alarmed as well, which she knew was not the way of things – but it was as if the weird fear-suppressing presence in her head had vanished along with her redheaded escort, without leaving a clue about how to get it back. Alone in this strange enormous room that did not belong to her, she felt very small and unsure – cowed not by the room itself, as it wasn't any more extravagant than what she was used to, but by the fact that her body was welcoming this feeling of uneasy excitement rather than forcing it away. Not that that made it any less frightening.
At least sleeping would feel like falling into pudding. Trying out the bed was definitely the best way to divert her mind towards other things. She normally preferred hard mattresses, the kind that didn't give her backaches, but when something was this comfortable, one couldn't afford to be picky.
Now all she had to do was prepare for the culture shock. The public eye. She shuddered. What to wear, what to do, how to deal with those evil, distrustful citizens that had stared at her back in town. What to say to Marth, how to break the ice, how to go about getting to know him in a proper way…
Now that the pudding-mattress feeling was settling in, it struck her that sleeping was much easier. She'd do that now.
In his mind, Marth Lowell was, and had been for the last hour, cross-referencing the faces of every woman he could remember, from the early attendants and foreign princesses of his childhood to the Daein advisors of the present. He felt that his recall was quite thorough, which was why it perplexed him to find that no matter how he tried, none of those perfectly-remembered faces, all fine-boned and elegant, some the very definition of classical beauty, could even hope to compare to the one image he had of Zelda Harkinnian's smiling face.
The king of Daein was saying something about net exports.
The tiny white-haired Daein Army General sitting across from Marth seemed intent on contributing to his problem. God knew he wasn't reviewing her many physical appeals to bat an eye over how she'd gotten her position, but it was the truth – her nose was tiny, her eyes were huge and glistening, her hair was smooth, her body was like a nymph's. She was like a statue of a Roman goddess; if he were asked to describe a pretty face, he would picture hers and list her features one-by-one.
Zelda's nose, on the other hand… was beautiful. Her eyes were beautiful, her hair was beautiful. Her body he could imagine no other way, lean-muscled and athletic and goddamn beautiful, and if he didn't know better he'd say her skin absorbed sunlight, only to radiate it back out with enough force to blind him. If he were asked to describe beauty, something he could stare at forever and never feel he needed to change one bit, he would picture Zelda Harkinnian, and not say anything at all for fear of not doing her justice.
The king of Daein was saying something about inflation.
How was it that, searching through his entire life – one that had been quite frankly filled with women, whether he knew them personally or not – he could not find a single instance of a person that made him feel anywhere near as giddy as did this girl he had only just met a week ago? Marth had spent his life being the one man people were lucky to have met, the hero everyone aspired to know, the celebrity whose imperial hand people cut each other's throats to kiss. Now, he felt that he had grossly misjudged their feelings, and made light of an emotion that was actually very real. He felt lucky to have met Zelda Harkinnian.
The king of Daein was saying something about price ceilings and tax controls.
… even luckier to have her actually come all the way from Hyrule – without a protective duty, no less, meaning she had defied her parents' wishes and left on her own – to stay in his home, in a suite not five doors away from his own.
Perfect. The woman who had awoken in him emotions he didn't even know he had, for whom he had just ignored an entire hour's worth of business agreements, was an armslength away, most likely bored out of her mind and possibly regretting making the trip at all, and here he was in a stuffy council room, not even paying attention to the thing that was taking away time better spent getting to know her.
The king of Daein was standing up. Why was the king of Daein standing up?
"I believe that's all." The other young ruler's voice rose slightly in volume as he ran a hand in thinly-veiled exasperation through curly ultramarine hair, and Marth took the cue as gracefully as he could, standing up to mirror his colleague as the senile fools around him nodded emphatically.
"Yes, thank you," he offered, inclining his head. "Thank you for making the trip, Pelleas. Our agreements should proceed much as we have outlined, should financial support from Pherae not meet with any issues."
Marth watched a devious smirk flit across Pelleas's mouth, an expression most unfit for the kind face. The jibe was clear as day. You didn't hear a damn thing I just said.
Extracting himself from the conference room was easier than expected (mostly thanks to Pelleas's uncanny ability to sense that Marth was in a hurry and subsequent distracting of the others, using a method very similar to "look! A distraction!"). Evading Kain was even easier. Altea's premiere horseman was better at chasing game than people.
It seemed that his mind wasn't working with his feet. It was like rising to a challenge he had no idea how to deal with – the adrenaline was there, and his insides were squirming like he was on the hunt, but his mind was utterly blank. Frighteningly blank. It was only getting worse as he got closer, and his legs were most definitely showing no signs of stopping.
He watched helplessly as the stairwell flashed by, then the double-doors, the high torches, then the kanji scrolls that his family liked to keep near the fourth-floor royal suites. Alongside him passed the familiar swords hung over his door, the black-and-gold-laquered treasures perched along the royal corridor, and below him stretched smooth bamboo, hiding the rough stonework of Castle Altea from noble feet…
Then all of a sudden, what was flashing by was neither ancient nor gold-wrought nor rich with precious Altean history.
At first he was mortified for not having made his presence known before entering a foreign princess's bedroom, and was prepared to knock his head on the floor apologizing, but as soon as he got a good view of Zelda's peacefully sleeping face buried amongst the feathery white sheets, breathing softly with nary a knit in her perfect brow, he couldn't find enough lucky stars to thank that he hadn't woken her up.
As he crouched by the bedside and shook her shoulder gently, it struck him faintly how it would look should someone enter suddenly and find him staring at a sleeping woman. "Princess," he said, and smiled as he watched her wake up.
"Can I meet your sister?" was the first thing she said, butchering the words with a wide, unprincesslike yawn as she blinked sleepily at him.
"I'm sorry I woke you, you must be tired… but the bath is down the hall, and my sister's toiletries should still be there, if you want to – "
He couldn't even figure out what had happened, but when he had, he just told himself he shouldn't have been surprised when the dainty Princess Hyrule jumped up with the force of a hurricane, grabbed his wrist and shot out the door with him in tow.
"You should know better," she grinned back at him as she pulled him into the hall. "You've got some nerve, telling a girl who's just sat two hours on horseback to visit you to turn in early."
She'd said 'visit you', he noted, and not 'visit Altea', but that was all he had time for before he had to run to keep up with her down the long corridor.
...
A/N: I used to feel bad cause this story wasn't going anywhere by chapter 4, but I totally don't anymore. Character development is important!
