A/N: HELLO! Pleased as punch to report that despite appearances I am in fact still alive!
Two things real quick: 1) As you may already know, I transposed the entire story into first person and made revisions throughout back in March. You may want to go back and reread the story for the changes if you haven't already, but the major plot points are all the same, so it isn't necessary. 2) I have discovered the miserable but extremely effective device that is Deadlines. I said on Tumblr that I would post this on June 1st (and at noon, but only to myself) and here we are at 11:57 AM writing an author's note! So I guess that works! The downside is that this chapter does not end where I wanted it to—I ran out of time—but it isn't a big deal.
Anyways. THANK YOU SO MUCH to all the AWESOME awesome people who have left reviews (and if you're still here, wow, can I just say you're amazing and I don't understand you at all but I love you). Here's Puzzles (aka The Chapter Where Nothing Happens)! xoxo
Puzzles
I gasped against his mouth as he pulled me close, his hand threaded behind my neck and through my hair to draw me deeper. He tasted like rain. His touch was lightning and his breath was wind. It was like being in the arms of a storm. And it was so painfully familiar it made tears bud in my eyes.
I didn't pull away, even as his hands closed too tightly where he held me, even as some half-lucid part of me whispered that I should. I was caught up in savoring that taste, the gentle electricity of it, startlingly new and overwhelmingly old at once. I wanted to remember it. I wanted the memory of it to be mine, and not borrowed. I wanted to believe that he wasn't imagining he was holding someone else.
So I let myself believe. I rolled closer, sighing, yielding to the muscle memory that bubble so easily to the surface. Yielding to the urge to let him surround me and bury myself in the safety that came with knowing nothing on earth could possibly breach a tempest as violent as he was. He felt it. He pressed closer, angled higher, deepened the kiss, and I answered him—tentatively at first, my mouth moving in hesitant tandem with his like a question, and then more boldly as he met me again and again, encouraging the friction. The world was tipping off its axis around me, caught up in the same storm that I was and capsizing faster than I could react. My hands found his arms, threaded at the nape of his neck, searching for purchase like he was the only thing keeping me from falling off the edge into a void.
I whispered his name, brokenly, breathlessly, and the lightning shifted in eager response, jolting through my lips and aching down my spine, pulling me in closer by the waist until I was melted against him, and his answering sound, low, impatient, hungry, made stars dance behind my eyes. I couldn't tell him apart from the storm anymore. He was everything and he was everywhere, cold on my skin and warm through my clothes and decadent in my mouth. And it was nowhere near enough.
Then he broke away so suddenly I felt tossed off a precipice, his hands biting into my arms, and his growl was a roll of thunder that I felt in my bones.
"Stop."
The illusion splintered in a painful ricochet of light and magic. We were back in the prairie, trembling and panting as though we had actually done what had just played out in our minds. He was staring rigidly through grass and wildflowers, shoulders heaving, and when he finally dragged his eyes up to mine they burned so hot I thought I could feel the breath of a forge. I searched numbly for words—for a way out of the stalemate, to retreat, or to advance. I opened my mouth to try.
His sleep spell crashed over me so hard that I hit the bottom of the ocean and bounced.
I dreamed in memories and suffocating dark and screams. I dreamed of the taste of rainwater, and of the taste of malice. I dreamed of eyes the color of Naydra's Scale, and then of eyes full of ember and ash. I dreamed that his lips were pressed to my neck, and then that his teeth were tearing into it.
I woke again back at camp. Warm tendrils of morning light were beating down my neck, whispering that I had missed dawn. I could feel the amber pulse of Urbosa's presence, the flickering ember of Daruk's, the cool, windswept edge of Revali's, all throbbing reassuringly in my mind's eye. Mipha was a stone's throw away, all aqueous and crimson. She was perched like a sentinel on the crest of the hill. Beyond her, the Calamity pulsed black and amethyst, surveying the path snaking towards the Plateau.
I sat up too fast, wincing as my head throbbed. That spell had been a little extra potent.
"You're awake," Urbosa said.
Suddenly I regretted making that known so quickly, but it could hardly be helped now. I went to say "good morning," but all that slipped out was an unintelligible groan. Revali was examining the fletching peeking out of his quiver, and Daruk was staring off into the distance, where the peak of Mount Hylia and the steeple of the Temple of Time were just visible through the morning haze. I squinted at her in the blurred light. She was prodding at something over the fire. I could smell it now. Endura shrooms. She slid a bowl of red-yellow caps and broth into my hands and pushed it up to my face so I could inhale the steam.
"Drink this," she ordered grimly, and my stomach gave an unpleasant twist as I eyed her frown.
Endura broth was an ancient remedy for headaches.
"How much did he tell you?"
"Not much," she breathed. "Just that we wouldn't be able to wake you, and that your head would be pounding when you came around."
I sipped the soup rather than try to conjure an answer. It was so hot it burned my tongue. But enduring that was preferable to meeting the disapproving look I could feel her leveling at the side of my head. The silence threatened to taper, and I took another drink in a paltry attempt to prolong it. She sighed in that condemning way she often did when, impelled by attachment and the knowledge that there was no one else to do it, she was thrust into the role of prying mother.
"Are you going to tell me what happened?"
"It was my fault," I insisted as a necessary prelude, and her jaw spasmed, eyes flickering skyward as though imploring the gods. I thought I caught the tail end of a Gerudo prayer slip out with her breath.
"How is it that you can have all your mother's wisdom," she sighed, dismantling the little cookery, pulling the cauldron off the makeshift tripod and knocking the legs into the remnants of the fire with undeserved focus, "and none of her good sense?"
"You don't know the whole story," I murmured. "You're so determined to blame him you don't stop to consider that I might've done something to deserve it."
The cooking pot met the firestones with a crack, making me jump and my headache flare. She snapped her head around at the others, who had started, too, their eyes wide. "Boys, make yourselves scarce."
Revali held up his wings in surrender and got to his feet. Daruk didn't bother trying to appease her with a gesture; he was just clambering out of the way of her wrath as fast as his burly shape allowed.
That I could escape her clutches so easily.
"There is nothing that would excuse him putting you under a spell," she hissed. "Do you understand?"
"It was just a sleep spell," I sighed. "It's not as though he hasn't done that before."
She tilted her head at me, her expression a strange hybrid of dismay and confusion. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"Urbosa, it's complicated—"
"I see the way you look at him," she said, barreling through my attempts to stonewall her. Her eyes glinted that ethereal foxfire that whispered of gifts bestowed by the desert, of the incredible sight that had belonged to one of the heroines, tied to the fiercest attribute of all: knowledge. It made my skin flush.
I stammered, reddening and at a loss, "I don't know what you mean."
She raised a skeptical brow, sighing again, and stuffed the cooking pot into her pack. I retreated back into my soup, hoping my apparent aversion to this conversation would deter her. It was a very flimsy, very desperate hope.
"I've seen more than my fair share of voe like him," she murmured, smothering the embers of the cookfire with a layer of dirt. "He tries to control you because he doesn't know how to control himself."
I thought back to the firestorm of his mind while she dusted off her hands, the chaos that still clung to the memory and coated my mouth when it bubbled to the surface. I whispered, "He's hardly a man at all anymore. But he is trying. He's doing the best he can."
"And we're all grateful for that." Then she stopped, put her hand on my cheek so I would look her in the eye, her touch gentle and firm at once. "But maybe his best just isn't good enough."
I swallowed. "It's not his fault."
"I'm not looking to judge him. Hylia can do that herself. But I am trying to protect you."
She frowned when I had nothing to say, her eyes probing my unsettled expression for signs she had gotten through to me, and then held her hand out for the bowl. I downed the broth, and she put away the last of the cookware and closed the ties on her satchel.
She handed me a flagon as we abandoned the campsite and moved to join the others. Revali and Daruk had met up with Mipha, still perched on the crest of the hill overlooking the slope. The Calamity was pacing the road where it weaved between the Eleven Rings and became Jeddo Bridge like an animal tracing the boundary of its confinement, his eyes fixed on the grayed silhouette of the Plateau in the distance.
He turned as I set off down the hill, sensing my approach, watching me descend with a glare that could turn a chu to stone. The accusation in that look was unchallengeable, and unmistakable; but I sensed he was as much tethered to my eyes as I was to his, both of us looking for answers where there were none to be found. Asking questions that ricocheted uselessly off our silence. Part of me wanted to brave his fury, wanted to sort out the tangle of bitter feelings slowly swelling between us before it got out of hand.
But then the wind billowed from off the river, raking over us both, and he turned to follow the road before I could say a word, the spell broken.
"He's been like that all morning," Revali scoffed, drawing up beside me, and then glanced over with an expression that was very nearly wry. "I don't suppose you know anything about that?"
He was gone before I could sputter a startled reply, trailed by Mipha and Daruk, until only Urbosa stayed behind with me. She was still frowning, watching me shrink in on myself.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm just tired," I sighed, smiling at her weakly as I set off from the slope, wishing I could believe that was all that was wrong with me. Wishing I didn't feel cornered and crushed and confused beyond reason at the way he had left without so much as a hello. "Thank you for the soup. It helped."
I stepped onto the bridge, desperate to leave the conversation behind, focusing instead on the hollow thud beneath my feet, on the feel of the vibrations emanating from the other end where Daruk's mountainous gait was rattling the planks.
I knew Urbosa meant well, but I had barely had a moment to process everything from the night before for myself.
How could I possibly begin to explain it to someone else?
We trailed down into Nima Plain and veered off the road by unspoken agreement, avoiding Sanidin Park, where we would be more likely to encounter travelers and constantly plagued by a lovely view of both the Castle and the awful scar sprawling at its feet as we traversed the hillside. Nima swept like a great, elongated bowl between Satori Mountain and the Safula Hills. It was all soft grass and wildflowers and rippling winds channeled between the slopes, and not a tree in sight for shade. The morning chill gradually burned off, leaving the sun to heat the basin in earnest. I bunched my hair in my fists and stacked it on the back of my head, trying to ease the prickle of heat and sweat on my neck. Daruk and Urbosa were both used to much hotter climates, and Link's temperature seemed entirely self-regulated, but the rest of us were grateful for the relief of the canopy when the plain emptied into Dalite Forest. The relief of the shade was such a welcome reprieve that I let my guard down, unwittingly meeting his eyes—amber and sapphire, churning with such startling focus that it lit fire to my cheeks.
I quickly averted my gaze, feeling foolish and regretting my carelessness. Gods, but I was a coward. I had faced the Calamity on the battlefield, braved phantasms, commanded a goddess, even looked willingly into the swirling heart of malice itself—and suddenly I could hardly stand the thought of speaking to him. I didn't know if it was his disdain that I feared, or another rejection, or hearing that it had all been a ploy to manipulate me—I would never have been so bold as to name what had moved him to lower his guard with me last night and more, but the notion that it had all been a tactic to spell me made as much sense as any other.
But then, I couldn't help but wonder why he had been looking.
The woods swallowed us easily, Revali muttering some derogatory remark or other about walking when he stumbled on surface roots, and Urbosa laughed so loud it sent birds scattering. We fanned out a bit amidst the trees and outcroppings, chasing shade or the most level bit of path—except Daruk, whose girth made navigating anything other than the middle of the road more effort than it was worth.
We put the Highlands at our back and went down into the gulch that met Manhala Bridge. The great Coliseum at Aquame rose up like a giant to shadow our path, all glittering stone and bulk that seemed to deliberately block a decent view of the Plateau. Clustered together again as we crossed Regencia, the sun tipping off its apex, our collective attention turned to the road ahead—less isolated, speckled with settlements, and riddled with potential disaster.
"What are we going to do about Gatepost Town?" Revali frowned, finally voicing just one of several obstacles quickly approaching.
I considered for a moment, tracing the route that hugged the cliffs and the great, ancient bulwark rising out of them, and the well-traveled road that eventually funneled through the single, narrow channel up into the tableland, where legend said Hylia herself descended from the heavens into the world.
"Can you help with that?" I asked carefully, and his frown deepened.
"There's no getting that Boulder into the air," he gestured, and Daruk flashed him two rows of perfect teeth. "I have my doubts about Urbosa, as well. She's too—"
She glared. "I'm too what?"
"I was going to say tall," he snarked, and then adjusted his quiver over his shoulder and turned his attention back to me. "I could ferry the rest of you. One at a time."
My thoughts, of course, went to Link's teleportation magic. But it was exhausting for him, and for whoever he pulled along, and I hadn't ever thought to ask if there were limitations on the distance he could travel or the trajectory, or how many people he could move at once. The thought of asking him now made my stomach twist. He was walking ahead of us beside Mipha. Her head turned, affording me a glimpse of her profile and lips moving in a silent suggestion of speech, and he inclined his ear to listen.
I briefly contemplated throwing myself off the bridge, but decided against it when I realized that people I would be trying to escape were the most likely to come to my rescue.
"Then Urbosa and Daruk should go ahead of us," I finally said. "Evacuate the Plateau if they can, or at least tell everyone to stay indoors. I doubt the monks will abandoned the Temple willingly."
Daruk rolled a massive shoulder, his mood brightening at the prospect of a mission. "Don't worry, tiny Princess, we'll handle it. Right, Chief?"
Urbosa was far less enthusiastic about parting ways, but she nodded. "We'll regroup on the Plateau," she said, touching my shoulder gently. "Promise me you'll stay safe. And as for you—" she started, her tenor leaving no room for mistaking who exactly she meant to threaten, but Daruk mercifully interrupted her before she could get going.
"Come on, Chief! We got monks to move!" He barreled towards the end of the bridge, mulling aloud all the way, so apparently thrilled to have something to do that I couldn't help the genuine smile that pulled at my mouth. "Silly, if you ask me. Gods don't live in temples. They live in volcanoes."
"They live in the sands!" Urbosa fired back, letting herself be coerced into a chase, and she passed me one last smirk before she took off after him.
Link and Mipha had already vacated the mouth of the bridge, giving Daruk room to coil, spring, and curl in on himself in midair, hitting the ground with a palpable quake and rolling towards the Plateau with speed that belied his size. Not one to be outdone, Urbosa broke into a sprint in his wake, and I was reminded exactly how few things in all Hyrule could compare to a Gerudo and a Goron moving at full tilt.
"Well, there goes our bulldozer," Revali sighed, crossing his wings, but Mipha turned to smile at him.
"You'll miss him," she said softly, and something about that smile left him scowling in a way that I found entirely suspicious.
Reduced to four and missing our two most boisterous, we snaked tortuously and without conversation behind Aquame Lake and the Coliseum, following, sometimes literally, in the footsteps and trenches left behind by our forerunners. Link kept us moving at a steady pace, and Revali, left without a strong personality to counter his negativity, kept uncharacteristically quiet, opting to scowl at the back of Link's head in lieu of hurling insults.
More than once, hesitation vibrating through her tiny frame like a ripple across a pond, Mipha seemed as though she might break our stubborn silence, her eyes darting thoughtfully to my feet or over her shoulder, but then the moment would pass and I would wonder if I had imagined the whole thing until it eventually happened again.
Finally we put the lake at our backs and reached the funnel that had been etched ages ago between the cragmasses, staring through it into the bulk that was the Plateau's imposing northwest face. The bulwark framing its rim was a glistening white crown in the harsh afternoon light, unscalable and untouchable, as though the goddess herself had carved the boundary for her temple—a symbol of protection for her children, and a warning to her enemies. I frowned, watching Link as I drew up beside him where he had stopped to scan the battlement. Whether he believed it or not, he was both.
Then he said, "Meet us as soon as you can."
And before I could so much as squeak out a warning he took me by the wrist and jumped.
We stepped through a nauseating whirl of sunlight and stone into the shelter of a forest. I stumbled into a tree as we emerged, panting, reaching down, down, into ancient reserves, desperate to counter the exhaustion creeping in the wake of the magic. I couldn't quite scrape together the energy to be furious.
"I still don't understand how teleporting can take s-so much power," I shivered, reaching and reaching and reaching.
"It bends spacetime," he murmured, watching me curiously. "That kind of magic was never meant for mortals in the first place."
"Y-you use it."
"I'm not human," he scoffed. And then, moved by pity or impatience, he stepped closer, reaching out to lend me a warm tendril of energy, his fingers fleetingly brushing my neck and sending heat cascading towards the coldest places, and I couldn't help but start at his touch, meeting his eyes. His hand dropped, leaving me to nurse the ember on my own. "You may be descended from a goddess, but I can't say the same for you."
My stomach clenched and twisted even as my teeth stopped chattering, and I swallowed, forcing myself to let go of the tree so I could face him properly as I worked up the nerve to broach the topic that had been festering between us all morning.
"Link, about last night—"
He growled at me before I could begin, approaching so quickly that I took an instinctive step back, "I'm leading you to the Shrine because I made you a promise. But if you ever touch my mind again, I'll make you wish you hadn't."
He only held my gaze for a moment before he turned to stalk off into the woods, but it had been enough. Enough for me to recognize that unmistakable flint of resolve, that ancient, unending tiredness that tormented him like thirst, and something else, something stormlike and familiar, tossing beneath.
"You're running," I breathed, a realization and an accusation at once.
He paused, bristling or considering, and glanced at me over his shoulder.
"And if you knew you wouldn't be strong enough to protect everything you were fighting to save, you would run, too," he frowned. "Now stay here and wait for the others."
He took another step, eyes lingering too long on mine, and in flicker of apparition and light he was gone.
I sighed, deflated. I didn't have the energy or the ambition to chase him. Untangling whatever this mess was that we had gotten ourselves into was going to have to wait.
I moved into a clearing, clinging to that little tendril of borrowed energy for all I was worth as I waited for the drain to bottom out. It wasn't long before I spotted Revali's shadow arcing over the woods. Mipha was perched on his back, leaning easily over the void beneath them as she scanned the forest with a one gripping his quiver and her spear dangling from the other, as graceful in the buffeting winds as she would have been navigating river currents. I waved them down, following Revali's steep descending spiral to meet them.
He looked mad as a hornet as Mipha dismounted, his feather ruffled and puffed and his beak tugged into a frown, but instead of breaking into a tirade when he caught sight of me, he just sighed.
"He leave you behind, too?"
I scrunched my lips into a tight, transparent mockery of a smile, enduring his answering eye roll without chafing. Mipha drifted closer, her expression far more serious than either of ours.
"Do you know where he's gone?"
"He isn't far," I said, subconsciously sending out a pulse to reassure myself. He was on the ridge, the responding light in my mind tasting of his own magic—muddled, like two ripples meeting and wrinkling before they bounced off each other. I gestured listlessly. "Just there."
"We can round the bend there on the way up and see how the others are fairing while we're at it," he suggested, and then flashed me a sardonic smirk as he led the way. "It's like I said. Terrible fun."
Mipha leaned into her trident, passing me a thoughtful glance as she went after him, quiet as ever. I took a steadying breath as I moved to follow. We were nearly there. This was nearly over. And the rest would sort itself out. I mentally repeated that reassurance to myself like a mantra.
Then Revali piped up, "So when are you going to tell us what was going on with you two last night?"
My eyes went wide as saucers, heart rate spiking and tongue tying in my mouth, until it registered that he wasn't addressing me. Mipha glanced up at him, her diminutive form even more pronounced against his impressive Rito stature, but her eyes glittered with such apparent challenge that it made up for their height difference, making them seem nearly proportional.
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."
"I mean the glowing hands while the rest of us were around the fire," he intoned, gesticulating with his wingtips. "Don't tell me you thought you two were being subtle. We all noticed."
"Master Revali," she smiled gently, and the throb of fear in his eyes gave away that he had already lost. "If I didn't know any better, I might think you were jealous."
He sputtered, his crest feathers standing on end. "That's ridiculous!"
Her smile grew, eyes falling back to the uneven ground beneath our feet, and he calmed a little when she didn't seem interested in pressing the assault.
"Ah, I see. You're laughing at me."
"I'm sure any young lady would be happy to have earned your jealousy."
"Tch."
"Truly. Just one smile, if she managed to pry one out of you, would leave a girl utterly—what is it the Rito say?"
"Twitterpated," I offered up helpfully.
"Yes, that's it. Twitterpated."
"All right, you can stop," he sighed. "Goddesses. It was only a question."
We weaved into the copse that overlooked the lesser oratories, watching the trickle of worshippers stream from the complexes towards the well-traveled channel that led off the Plateau. The Temple of Time gleamed like a jewel at the head of the sanctuary, all glistening gray stone and stained glass sentineled above the heartland on a soaring pedestal. Urbosa and Daruk stood at the portico beneath the great bell tower, trying to coerce the last of the faithful out of harm's way. It didn't look like they were winning the argument, if the massive gestures of the man they towered over were any indication.
We slipped away, concealed by the shade of the trees, and snaked around the bend and up the hill, still speckled with the remnants of ancient stairways from a bygone era. The ridge wasn't particularly long, but I was still dragging from our bout of teleporting, and was properly out of breath by the time the slope leveled.
Link was pacing alongside the cliff face as we crested the hill—slowly, his hands pressed to the stone, feeling for something beneath. I quickly deduced that he hadn't yet found what he was looking for and moved to rest my feet, but Revali asked anyway.
"Anything?"
I couldn't hear him sighing or see his eyes rolling, but I could feel him doing both, like a horse can feel a storm looming. His voice was a drone. "Yes. I have the Shrine right here. In my pocket."
Revali's eye roll was much more apparent. He crossed over to where I had set myself down beneath the shade of a cedar tree and Mipha had followed, eyeing the way I had inadvertently latched onto my shoulders with my hands. He pulled his tinderbox out of his pack and handed it to me.
"Everyone is just full of quips today," he murmured, and even though it sounded distinctly like a complaint, I got the impression he almost appreciated it. "I'll go check in with the others."
I nodded, and he hopped off the ledge, angling into the drop until he had enough lift to bank through the treetops and glide back towards the temple. I set the tinderbox down without opening it, not wanting to waste supplies for a fire in the middle of the day; the energy Link had lent me was doing more for the lingering cold than a fire would, anyway.
Mipha crossed her legs beside me and balanced her trident over her knees, sighing softly. In the ensuing silence, I realized we had hardly spoken all morning. She tended to be much quieter than the others, but it was difficult to ignore the nagging feeling that there was more to it than that. I mustered the energy to offer her a small smile, which she returned as gracefully as I expected.
Princesses were good at social niceties like that.
Then she floated a little closer, her head tilting gently in that thoughtful-looking tell that often preceded her soft voice. Her golden eyes lifted to mine, so quiet and observant that it dispelled any surprise that she knew as much as she did.
"I understand why you didn't tell the others about his hunger," she said, her tone breathing discretion. "I'm sure it's exhausting playing diplomat as it is."
I nodded, gripping my arms a little tighter. Trying not to feel seen through. But it was difficult.
"I have to admit I'm surprised that he told you."
"He didn't, exactly. Not of his own volition. But my powers are quite sensitive. I can sense when someone is in pain—see it, almost, like a glow. But his hunger wasn't something I could heal."
I sighed at the memory of it, letting my head drop listlessly onto my shoulder. "That's a shame. But thank you for trying, anyway. I'm surprised he allowed that either, to be honest."
"Well," she sighed. "We all knew what the consequences might have been if he reached his limit. And I… may have threatened to bring it to your attention, if he didn't at least let me try." She smiled. "But whatever you've done seems to be working."
I blinked. "I haven't done anything," I stammered, chancing a glance in his direction.
She looked, too, surprised. She narrowed her gaze slightly, as though doublechecking her assessment. "But he seems so much better…"
I frowned, wondering. "I can't explain that. But it won't matter soon, anyway. Once Link finds the shrine, his hunger won't be an issue."
She nodded, lifting an assenting brow, but clasped clawed hands together. "Assuming he can find it," she hedged softly, "and assuming it works."
Ah, there it was. The reservation I had seen in her the day before, finally coming to light. It prickled on my neck, too hot, too unpleasant, as though the sun were beating on it again.
"I know there's risk involved," I admitted, dredging up the last scraps of royal assuredness I could muster. "And in the end, this might lead to nothing. But we owe it to him to try, after everything he's done."
"He's made great sacrifices," she acknowledged carefully, thoughtfully; then her eyes, all gold and vitreous, tentatively met mine. "I just hope it wasn't for nothing."
And my throat closed, because the implication was clear. She just hoped that I hadn't endangered everything he had worked for with my ridiculous plan. She just hoped that we would be able to enact it before the Calamity broke loose and unleashed hellfire and fury that would swallow the world.
"So do I," I managed, lips numb and tingling, because there was nothing else I could possibly say.
She offered me a small, tight smile that didn't touch her eyes, as the conversation drained irretrievably. And suddenly I wouldn't have minded a little warmth from the sun.
Urbosa, Daruk, and Revali made their way up the hill not long afterwards, looking a little defeated.
"You were right about those monks," Daruk murmured as they joined us. "They're stubborn little things."
"We were able to evacuate most everyone else, and they at least agreed to stay indoors," Urbosa chimed in, crossing her arms. "How are things progressing up here?"
I shrugged, gesturing at Link, as though that was answer enough. When they waited for more, I sighed, getting to my feet. "I'll ask."
"Check his pockets," Revali suggested blithely.
I left them behind, sidling up to where Link still had his hands pressed against the rock without preamble, and waited. The stone was warm on my back. He glanced at me sidelong, and then arched a brow when I didn't bother him in silent invitation. I reached over and flattened my palm against the cliff next to his, feeling. There was stone and stone and stone, and something else, denser than stone, darker than stone, buried at the heart of it.
"It's in there," he murmured, pressing closer, leaning his temple against the rock. Then his mouth tugged into a frown, his eyes sliding hesitantly to mine. "There's something about all this I haven't told you."
My brow fell. I didn't know if I could handle another unpleasant surprise. "What?"
His lips parted to answer, but then he thought better of it, his teeth clicking shut. "It can wait."
"Oh, don't do that," I breathed, rolling to turn my face back to the sun. Basking in its heat. "I'll imagine something worse than the truth."
"You could do with some nightmares."
I breathed a lazy sigh. "Sometimes I wonder if you realize that I'm not your prisoner anymore."
He hummed grimly—or perhaps mockingly. "And sometimes I wonder if you realize that I've been yours from the beginning."
I shifted, looking for his eyes. Looking for answers. He arched an eyebrow at me like I was being obtuse.
"Can we talk about what happened?" I dared to whisper. "Please?"
He considered for half a second before he pushed off the stone and said, "No."
Then he thrust his hands toward the rock with a growl, power rushing out of him like a thrumming bass note, and the wall beside me bowed under the pressure, rippling, and then gave. The rock crumbled and blasted away, revealing a smooth-walled tunnel descending into the Plateau. He stepped into the cavern as the dust settled, turning back to offer me his hand.
I took it slowly, letting him lead me into the depths, pushing down an unwanted swell of feeling when he gave my fingers a gentle squeeze.
Maybe he was right. Maybe I could have done with some nightmares.