They warp to the Tabantha Bridge Stable, with the plan to make their way to the Rito stable on horseback, clearing the monsters as they go, just as they did with the Zora's Domain and Goron city. They'll most likely arrive too late to visit the Rito Chief, so they'll spend the night at the stable and head into town in the morning. Zelda secretly hopes that their progress will be swift, and they'll be able to sleep in Rito Village tonight, but she knows it's a long shot and not worth mentioning or hurrying.
While Link gets the horses ready, Zelda shades her eyes and looks out at the canyon, like a great gash that stretches as far as the eye can see. It has probably changed in the last hundred years, but not in ways she can perceive. The Great Tabantha Bridge, however, is shockingly alien. It's a disaster. The wood has faded and rotted away to create holes in the floorboard. The guardrails—once crafted so precisely that you couldn't find the nails or see the edges between slats—are now bound haphazardly together where they exist at all. The bridge was once so solid that they Hylian cavalry could march two abreast without slowing or breaking ranks, and the bridge wouldn't even creak. Now she's not sure it will hold her weight, even if she eases her way across, one wary step at a time.
She's standing slack jawed, gaping at the bridge, when Link appears.
"What happened?!" she demands.
"What do you mean?"
She gestures at the bridge with her whole arm. "The bridge! It was a marvel of engineering, and now...the are holes!"
"Yeah. Watch your step."
She rips her attention from the bridge to stare at him. "You're not suggesting that we cross here."
He looks confused. "I thought that was the plan?"
"Is it even safe?"
He considers her a moment, then braces his hands on her shoulders and bends down to look in her eyes. "There wouldn't be a stable here, or all the travelers if the bridge wasn't usable. It might not look pretty, but it's held up through the Calamity, so it's not like it'll fall apart the second we step on it."
She doesn't care for this at all. Just because it hasn't collapsed yet, doesn't mean it won't. Has anyone tried to make repairs over the last hundred years? Yes. She can see places where someone has bound the bridge together with rope. Why didn't anyone warn her about this? Why isn't this a higher priority?
"We should adjust our schedule and fix this bridge before continuing on to Rito Village."
Link guides her around to the side of her horse—the white stallion again, but this time without the royal gear. He cups his hands, offering her a step up, then hefts her into the saddle as she continues to talk.
"I know we've been putting off getting funds for larger infrastructure projects, but perhaps this would be a good time to return to the castle and raid the treasury You could clear a path through the castle instead of clearing a path through Tabantha." And she could hold down her panic attack at setting foot back inside her prison.
Or maybe she can't.
Link's only response is to plant a kiss on her knee. It's the only place he can reach. It's so sweet that her chest tightens and her stomach twists, but then he walks away and pulls himself onto the back of a blue spotted horse. When he's ready, he glances over at her, and he must catch her frown before she tucks it away and busies herself getting accustomed to the reigns, because his face bunches in confusion, then smooths in understanding. "I didn't do that properly, did I?"
"You did not," she says.
He grins and guides his horse a few shuffling steps closer to her and leans too far out of his saddle. "Sorry. What about this? And this? And this? And this?" He sprinkles the side of her face with tiny, gnat-like kisses until she squirms away with a squeak and presses a hand over his grinning face to shove him back. As soon as she drops her hand, he leans close again. "No?" His voice lowers, softens, his eyelids growing heavier or just lowering to her lips. "What about this?"
He kisses her, tender and warm, and he lingers until she sags into it, until she forgives his ridiculousness. He pulls back enough to speak, but stays close enough that he brushes her lip, feather soft, with his own. It sends a shock down her spine.
"Better?" he asks.
"Better."
There's a flustered, light-headedness working its way from her face to her shoulders and lungs. She refuses to turn and see how many people at the stable are watching them. She feels a bit like her horse is judging her.
Link's eyes glow with pride and mischief as he pulls himself upright and sets his horse off across the bridge. Zelda follows, not fully comprehending that she's done so until her horse is fully on the bridge, which creaks and sways but does not collapse under their weight.
"This is a disgrace!" she says as they pass a rotting hole large enough for her whole horse. She pulls out the slate to take pictures. "It's hazardous. Someone could fall."
"Yeah, and then it takes all day to climb back up."
Zelda stares at the back of his head, because she's absolutely positive this means Link has fallen off this bridge.
"The Gorons could certainly help make this structurally sound once more, although they don't work with wood, so what they would build would be less repairs and more tearing this down and constructing a new bridge. I don't know. This must be fixed immediately. But it's also a cultural landmark. And a feat of engineering! Look how well it's held up over a century even without decent repairs! I can't believe we've lost the knowledge and skill sets to repair this in the Calamity. On top of the loss of life, the deterioration of our technology and the loss of cultural sites are tragedies. And to lose this too...I don't think we can in good conscience replace it, unless we made an exact replica...I wonder if that would be possible." Her heart is beating a bit too fast for her liking. She's dizzy, but then maybe that's the vertigo from looking down through the holes into the sickening drop below. "Do you think Bolson Construction could help? Their taste levels are questionable, but their constructions are at least stable."
Link looks over his shoulder, blinks at her once and says, "You know, I'm positive you were in love with me."
She startles. "What?"
"Before. You were in love with me. Hearts in your eyes. Head over heels."
She scoffs. "You're clearly mis-remembering. And I thought you found it upsetting that I supposedly loved you."
"It's still upsetting. But seeing how you're so deeply in denial about it, kind of means I'm winning."
"You're winning?"
"You can't admit you love him, but you can admit you love me, so that means you love me more than him."
"Him?"
"Me."
She shakes her head in slow confusion, but he has turned back around and can't see her. He probably knows what she's doing anyway. "It's not like you're two different people," she says.
He doesn't answer.
"It's like...have you ever had a friend who you didn't see for a long time, and when you met them again they'd changed, but they're still the same? It's not as if they became unrecognizable. It's as if they grew up, as if they've had experiences without you. But you still find yourself sinking into old rhythms and old comforts. Have you ever experienced that?"
"Not that I remember."
"Well, it's like that. You're recognizable, but you've been through a great deal, and you've grown up, and you've changed. There's nothing sinister in it."
They come to the end of the bridge and fall into step side by side. Link points up at a plateau above them. "You yelled at me there."
She yelled at him a lot of places, so she believes him even if she can't recall the particular incident. She tries to hide her embarrassment of her behavior by saying, "Clearly it was because I was in love with you."
"Hmm. Maybe, but I don't think so. I'm pretty sure it was after that."
He has no idea what he's talking about. He leads them to the tower, then dismounts, hands his horse's reins to her, and runs ahead to clear the camps of moblins. Zelda follows behind at a distance. It's almost like she and the horses are having a leisurely stroll, it just that there's metal clashing and a lot of running footsteps and grunting ahead of them.
She meets up with him at the base of the tower, where he has a streak of dirt down his side from a dodge that turned into a roll. He's wrapping ribbons and threading feathers into his hair, and when she dismounts, he abandons his work to dig through his pouches and hand her a circlet with a ruby the size of her eye. "It might be cold up there," he says. The unfinished ribbon on the right side of his face, starts to unspiral. She tucks the circlet into a pocket, and before he can protest that she needs to wear it, she takes over rebraiding his hair. He did a fine job, it's just that she can do it faster. (And maybe she wants to touch him. A little.) He holds very still, barely breathing, head lowered for her, and she tries to ignore the way his eyes never leave her face.
When she's done, she hurries through unknotting her blue kerchief and shaking out her hair and settling the circlet and putting the kerchief back on. Again, she ignores the way Link watches every move of her fingers, the way he still doesn't seem to be breathing.
He steps close to warp, pulling her flush against him, her chest to his, his arm warm and possessive around the small of her back, and they've done this so many times, and yet—
She has trouble pulling her eyes from his enough to look down at the slate and warp them to the top of the tower.
The moment they reform in the wind and the chill, as if he started the movement before they warped, his lips seal against hers. She hums into it, and wraps him close, one hand dragging into his hair, one hand dragging down his spine. He tucks the slate into place at her waist, then tugs her belt to pull her hips closer. Closer. They can't seem to get close enough.
She blames legs. They don't press together in a satisfying way.
Link solves this problem by half-toppling to the floor, his back against the guidance stone and Zelda in his lap, where she can squeeze his thighs with her own. She likes that tremendously.
She loses herself in the pliant rhythm of his mouth, and the warm trails of his hands over her skin. She loses herself in mapping the back of his neck, the hills of his arms and shoulder, the dip of his sides with her palms. She maps: here he shudders, here he sighs.
She shivers, and he pulls away, and her lips are swollen and tender, and she wants to trace her fingertips over his to see if he feels the same. It takes him a few tries to force words from his throat. "We're going to be so late."
She looks up to find the sun, and—oh goodness! She springs to her feet, or at least she tries to but she gets a tangled and one of her legs has fallen asleep, so she stumbles her way to standing, and tries to catch her breath and smooth back her hair and remember what she was doing. The slate. Right. Yes.
She sets it to search for hinoxes, then forces herself to calm while the guidance stone runs. Link makes his way to his feet with much more grace, but he also took his time. He stands behind her, hooks his chin over her shoulder, and slips an arm around her waist. She swallows and refuses to look at him. She searches for taluses. Link smacks a terrible, pecking kiss under her ear, which makes her both excited and grumpy, so she shoulders him away. He laughs and backs off so she can use her brain again.
They mark the major monsters, and then paraglide down. They circle the tower round and round in spirals that grow tighter when Link grins at her and suddenly it becomes a race. Zelda laughs, her legs swinging outward as he makes a sharp turn. Zelda makes it to the ground first, but Link lands directly on his horse's back, which startles it terribly. "Whoa! Whoa! It's just me."
Link kills a talus and some moblin camps and some lizalfos, and they arrive at Rito Stable after nightfall. Much later than they had intended. Zelda's over-enthusiast travel plans are blown to pieces. Link says nothing and doesn't even give her a pointed look, but she knows what he's thinking.
Accordion music wafts over the stable, and as she dismounts she catches sight of Kass, the wandering bard.
Link greets him with, "You're so close to home!" and the music falters to a stop as Kass turns to them.
"Oh. I didn't see you there."
"You should pay more attention to your surroundings while you play. If I was a monster, I would have bit you."
"True. True. I get lost in he music." Kass eyes Zelda over Link's shoulder, then lowers his voice to something private. "There's something I've been meaning to speak to you about. I have a song that I need you to hear."
Link's posture shifts with Kass' change of tone. He's more attentive. More serious. Zelda wonders if she should leave. Maybe she can take care of the horses while they talk.
"Thank you," Kass says. "I wanted to talk to you about my teacher. He was of the Sheikah tribe, and he was the court poet to the Hyrulian Royal family. At the time, there was a beautiful princess, who was apparently close in age to my teacher. Even though she did not return his affections, my teacher fell in love with her."
"Oh really?" Link asks. Again, he's not looking at her, but she can feel his attention like a spotlight, and she can tell that he's going to use this to tease her later.
He clearly has no idea that this isn't even remotely news to her. The court poet was embarrassingly obvious about his affections, and it annoyed absolutely everyone. He wrote a ballad once about how Zelda was trying her best, which he most likely wrote with the best of intentions to defend her, but it just ended up emphasizing her failures. In song. To everyone. And to top it off, it was catchy, so the whole court was humming it for months. Zelda avoided him at all costs. When he was around, both Link and Urbosa had a tendency to puff out their chests and make themselves look taller and then glare at him until the poet got nervous and excused himself. Urbosa would tch and then say something rude about the young man, but Zelda was never sure if Link was doing it consciously or not. The court poet's crush got so bad that Zelda's father pulled him aside at one point and told him to tone it down or find other employment.
She was hopeful that if she didn't reclaim her role as princess, this kind of attention would stop. It's irksome to learn that she was wrong.
"Yes," Kass says. "But the princess only had eyes for her escort, her knight attendant. My teacher was consumed with jealousy. The knight was neither nobility nor royalty, and—in my teacher's eyes—unworthy of her affections."
Link hums in understanding. Zelda can feel the smugness radiating off him.
It's nonsense. The poet clearly needed an excuse for why Zelda did not return his affections, and decided to blame Link. A romantic rival was more poetic than a princess who would rather not be embarrassed by epic songs about her failures.
But Kass idolizes the man, and she can't say any of this in front of him.
"And then the Calamity struck."
Link becomes more serious. Zelda finds herself doing the same. She steps closer.
"My teacher believed that the hero would reappear to beat back the Calamity. He poured his belief into a song. That song is what I need you to hear."
Link nods. Kass plays. Zelda slips her hand into Link's.
It...still doesn't mean she was in love with him.