Thanks for the reviews everyone! I really appreciate it :)

I tried to give Zelda's character a little bit more depth later in the story (I'm talking like after chapter 20...) but to be honest, I have way too much fun writing her as the shallow jealous b****, lol.

Chapter 7

Pictures of you, pictures of me,

Hung up on your wall for the world to see,

Pictures of you, pictures of me,

Remind us all of what we used to be

Zelda gave me a room just down the hallway from hers. It was luxurious, to say the least. I was a little bit uneasy at first, but after she left I relaxed and decided to try and enjoy myself. I got one of the maids to help me take off that stupid dress, since it was so tight I couldn't get it off by myself. It felt like it had been sewn on, and it would surprise me if it really had been.

I asked the maid if she could find me something simpler, and she gave me a very plain dress, with no decorations at all, a straight skirt which didn't quite reach the floor, and best of all, it didn't have a corset. I thanked her and let her go back to her normal duties.

After she had been gone a few minutes, I peeked out the door, and made sure that no one was around. When I didn't see anyone, I left my room and started to wander around to castle. It was pretty late, so I didn't run into very many people, and if I did see someone they were servants, so they didn't say anything about my exploring the castle without permission. Actually, Zelda had 'requested' that I stay in my room, which may have been why I didn't, but like I've said before, I can't leave anything unsolved, and I was sure that this castle had some mysteries hidden in it somewhere.

I had been wandering around for about half an hour, when I came to a portrait gallery. I stayed there for a while, looking at all of the paintings. The paintings were of all of the generations of the royal family. When I came to the last portrait in the room, I saw Zelda when she was about 5 years old, standing next to her father, King Daltus, and her mother.

At this point I was using all of my knowledge of the video game series to help me understand things here, and I had never seen Zelda's mother mentioned in any of the games that I could remember. I tried to find something around the painting that might tell me her name, and I found a plague beneath the painting. The queen's name had been scratched out.

I don't know why it bothered me so much, but I wanted to know what the queen's name had been. Maybe it was because she had a much more pleasant expression than her daughter. I sighed and looked back up at the painting again.

"What are you doing here?" a deep voice boomed behind me. I spun around and saw the king standing in the doorway.

I curtsied awkwardly and said, "I'm sorry, sir, I was just exploring –"

He seemed to relax as he looked at me again, "You're the girl that Link brought here, aren't you? No need to answer, I can see that you're not from around here. My daughter was telling me about you." I looked at him nervously. What had Zelda told him? "But, she does have a tendency to over react a little." He smiled slightly and noticed which portrait I was standing in front of. "Ah, I see you found the only remaining picture of my wife."

I nodded respectfully, then turned to look back at the painting. "If you don't mind me asking, sir, what was her name?"

"Zaria. Her name was Zaria."

"Did something happen to her?"

He hesitated before answering, "Er, yes, you could say that." I looked over my shoulder at him, and decided not to ask anymore. The memory was clearly painful for him. "You said you were exploring the castle?" I smiled and nodded. "Would you like a tour, or do you want to continue on your own?"

"A tour would be great!" I said as I followed him out of the portrait room.

Over the next hour and a half or so, he showed me all over the castle. There were so many rooms and hallways, I'm glad I didn't try to explore it all by myself; I would have been lost in an instant. There were more portraits, but none of them were of the queen. I gave up on finding out anything else about her at that time.

After King Daltus finished showing me around, he gave me directions back to my room. When I passed Zelda's room, the door was open. I peeked in without her seeing me, and saw that she was looking at a small portrait. She put it in a box on her desk and turned towards the door. I turned and ran to my room, and glanced out into the hallway. She left her room and headed downstairs.

I knew that I shouldn't, but I had to see who that portrait was of. I snuck into her room and opened the box. Sitting among some little knick-knacks that Zelda must have saved from her childhood, was a black and white photograph of her mother. I closed the box and left the room quietly, and decided that I would try to be a little bit nicer to her from now on.

Pictures of you, pictures of me,

Remind us all of what we could have been

Could have been, we could have been

Song Lyrics: "Pictures of You" by The Last Goodnight