***ALL STANDARD DISCLAIMERS APPLY**

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In Sotto Voce

By The Wolfess

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Epilogue

Hyrule Castle hadn't looked more resplendent in Zelda's lifetime than it did the morning of the ball that signaled the beginning of Queen Zelda XV's Topaz Jubilee. Spring was in full swing in Hyrule. The sky was sunny and clear. Migratory birds returned from their winter homes and cleaned withered fall berries off the flowering trees to make room for the buds that would be in full bloom in a week or so. Elaborate floral arrangements, carefully composed of early spring flowers, hung all about the Castle and the town below alongside beautiful banners bearing royal crest set against a backdrop of Hyrule's colors mixed with a rainbow of Topaz shades. Everywhere, decorations were being hung and souvenirs were being sold alongside food and fine jewelry from all around the country. It was going to be an incredible celebration.

The last Jubilee thrown by the Royal Family was in the twilight years of Queen Zelda XIII. After the messy business with King Daphnes and Zelda XIV' s tragic death, their lives had been marred with sadness and strife. There was no desire for celebration. But Hyrule had become a land of joy and prosperity in the seventeen years since Queen Zelda XV took up her father's throne, defeated Ganondorf, and married Queen Impa the First. There was so much to celebrate and be grateful for that the queens decided a proper jubilee to celebrate the anniversary of the war's end, and the beginning of Hyrule's next golden age, was long overdue.

"Have Count and Countess Bosphoramus been notified of our arrival?" Queen Zelda asked the young attendant who jogged to keep up as the queens strode across the castle grounds toward the stables.

"Yes, my love," Queen Impa answered in the attendant's stead. "And they are looking forward to seeing you again. It's been too long since the succession ceremony."

Zelda nodded. They had arrived at their carriage and stepped inside. The attendant jumped up beside the driver and they pulled out. A couple knights who had been following at a distance mounted horses behind them and followed as the queens' carriage turned onto the east road toward the Bosphoramus family estate. Inside the plush royal carriage, Zelda twined her fingers through Impa's and smiled as the morning sunlight streamed in through the window and caught Sheikah's diamond wedding right just right, painting the walls with scattered rainbow lights.

"You don't need to feel nervous, my love," Impa said in the privacy of the carriage. "I'm told that the countess and her baby daughter are both healthy and Rhoam loves you like the sister he never had."

Zelda nodded. "I wonder if we should have waited to name the successor. We still have many years until either of us needs to worry about passing away."

"We've been over this, Zel," Impa said. "It was necessary, and you couldn't have chosen a better family. Rhoam is your biggest fan in Court."

They both laughed and Zelda shook her head. "You are right, of course."

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment before Impa spoke up. "So, let me make sure that I have the facts straight. Rhoam is your first cousin?"

"Second cousin, not first, but yes, that is right."

Impa nodded to herself. "Right. Because you share the same great grandmother?"

A nod from Zelda. "Yes. My grandmother had a younger sister who married into the Bosphoramus family. Rhoam descends from that line."

"And the Harkinian family line…"

"Will die with me."

Impa nodded. She knew this part well.

"My father took the name from my mother, as is customary for the main royal line. My mother and I were both only children, so when I die the Harkinian line will die along with me." This happened once before with the original Nohansen line. No one knows why Zelda Nohansen Hyrule VIII passed away without having any children, but their genealogy charts said that the original bloodline ended with her and passed to the Zelda Harkinian Hyrule I, Zelda's ancestor, at that time. Discovering this is what gave Zelda the idea to name her successor from a close but separate ancestral line after she and Impa were married seventeen years ago.

"Since you share an ancestor, does Rhoam have the same percentage goddess blood as you do?"

Zelda nodded. "More or less. It should be a close enough percentage to not cause any problems. I anticipate that both my political power and my goddess power will pass to his daughter someday."

Impa squeezed Zelda's hand. "Right. Okay, I think I've got it all straight. I don't want to say the wrong thing and make a fool of myself."

"You could never be foolish, my love. Just learning. Succession is confusing for anyone." Zelda kissed Impa's cheek and conversation turned toward plans for the ball that evening.

It wasn't long before the carriage pulled up to the front of the large Bosphoramus family home. This north castle was much, much smaller than Hyrule Castle, of course, but it had been in the family for many generations and was a beloved landmark. Zelda herself had spent many summers here with her cousin Rhoam and his younger brother. Despite Kishla's presence marring the memory, it made her smile nonetheless.

A footman opened the carriage door and helped Queen Zelda step out, followed closely by Queen Impa. Count Rhoam Bosphoramus and a few of his waitstaff stood at the door ready to receive the Queens of Hyrule with open arms.

"Zelda!" roared the exuberant man as he reached out and shook each of their hands in both of his. "And Impa! It is so good to see you both. Welcome, welcome! Eliza is thrilled that you've come to meet the baby."

Zelda smiled and let Rhoam lead them inside. "How could I not meet my own heir?" she said. "And born just before the jubilee. It is such a good omen."

Rhoam's smile was so proud as he led them through the castle corridors to where the new princess was napping. "We agree, although we are both sad to have to miss the ball tonight. The first jubilee ball in forty years and we must miss it! Eliza was inconsolable."

"You are missing it for a very good reason, Rhoam. Eliza and the young one must rest and recover. Have you named her yet?"

Rhoam shook his head. "No, not yet. I will wait until you meet her to discuss that with you—if I may." Zelda nodded, and Rhoam continued. "I pray you will forgive us for not bringing the baby to you in the receiving room. It was a rough birth and Eliza is quite weak still."

"Of course. We are more than happy to go to her. I hope she forgives the intrusion into her private space."

Rhoam brushed it off. It was no intrusion in his mind. They were past that formal stage in their relationship.

They turned down another few hallways before finally coming to a private suite in the rear. It had its own dining area with a small fireplace and a single room off the back where the new mother and her baby girl were resting after the birth. Rhoam announced them gently and poked his head in.

"Sweetheart, Queen Zelda and Queen Impa are here. May I show them in?" An affirming voice sounded from within the room, and the count swung the door open wide, gesturing for the queens to follow him in.

Within the room was a single large bed with a nightstand. Close to the bedside was a white wooden bassinet. Eliza rocked the bassinet with one hand from the bed and smiled as her visitors entered. Zelda was struck by how pale she looked. The birth must have been much harder than she was led to believe.

"Eliza," Zelda greeted as she moved to the bedside and took Eliza's free hand in both of hers. "So good to see you. How are you feeling?"

"Worse for wear, but alive thanks to your physician," the blond woman remarked. "Thank you for sending him."

"It was my pleasure," Zelda whispered, hoping to not wake the quiet child if she was sleeping. "Now, is that the child?"

Eliza and Rhoam both smiled. "Yes. She is awake, actually. Would you like to hold her?"

A soft smile spread on the queen's face. "I would very much like that." She rounded the bed to the bassinet and reached inside to take the baby girl in her hands. With a little coaching from the parents on how to support the baby's head and how she liked to be held the best, Zelda soon had the little girl nestled in her arms. Across from her, Queen Impa smiled gently at the sight of her wife holding a tiny blond-haired child. It may not be their child, but it felt right somehow. Her heart swelled with love for them both.

"I hope you don't mind," Impa said as she watched Zelda kiss the top of the baby's head. "I've already asked for a playroom to be prepared in the castle for when she visits. Zelda and I do hope she will visit very often. And, of course, a family suite of rooms is ready for all three of you whenever you desire to visit."

"If you ever need a break, we welcome this little one anytime. Isn't that right?"

Impa nodded.

"We are glad to hear that," Rhoam said, a nervous smile spreading on his face. "We actually wanted to talk to you about a few things, if we may."

Impa could sense Zelda's body tense. Clearly the baby did as well, as she began to whimper a little. Zelda bounced and rocked the child to sooth her. "Of course. Please go ahead."

"Well," Eliza started, seeming a little bashful as she spoke. While she was also from a noble family, they did not often interact with royalty. After all these years she was still getting used to talking to the queen. "We are so amazed that you chose our daughter to be your heir. While she is our daughter and we love her very much, we feel...Rhoam, darling, how would you put it?"

Rhoam stroked his short, brown beard in thought. "Even though we are her birth parents, we feel that she is your daughter too. It sounds so forward when I say it out loud, forgive me your Majesties, but Eliza and I both had the same dream the night before she was born. In the dream, our daughter was a young woman living in the castle like she'd been there her whole life. She called you her mothers, like we all had a hand in raising her equally. It was such a lovely vision."

Zelda was smiling again, the tension easing out of her shoulders as the couple kept talking.

"As the next queen, we know we are supposed to name her Zelda Bosphoramus Hyrule the First according to tradition. We would like to beg your permission to name her Zelda Bosphoramus Harkinian Hyrule the Sixteenth instead."

Impa and Zelda both looked at one another from either side of the bed in shock. Before they could reply to the request, Rhoam continued.

"We would not just take your name, your majesty," he said. "When she is old enough to leave her mother's side, instead of sending her off to a boarding school like the rest of the noble girls we would like to send her to live in the castle with the two of you. We want her to learn from you both and become the best princess she could ever dream of being. We want you to have a say in her upbringing. And, if you desire, we would love for you to coparent her while she is away from us."

Zelda looked down at the tiny life in her arms. She and Impa had wanted children, but there just wasn't an acceptable way to make that happen. Here Rhoam and Eliza were giving them the option to raise their child as she would see fit for most of the year, and to name her as if she were her own daughter. It was unprecedented—and, perhaps for that very reason, it also felt somehow right.

"I…well, that sounds lovely to me," Zelda started, tears gathering in her eyes as she looked down at the small bundle in her arms. "Impa, what do you think?"

Impa crossed around the bed and came up behind Zelda and the baby. She put one arm around Zelda and caressed the top of the baby's blond head with her other hand. "Are you both sure about this?" She asked. "We do not want to take your daughter from you just because we cannot have our own."

Rhoam and Eliza looked at one another and smiled. They had clearly already made up their minds. "We are certain," Rhoam said. "It would be the greatest honor of our lives to have your blessing to give our daughter your name and legacy. And to have her learn everything she needs to know about her history and heritage right from the source—I cannot imagine a better plan for her life."

Zelda looked at Impa. Impa nodded. She leaned down and kissed the top of the child's head, and the kissed her wife as well.

"Then you have our permission," Zelda said. "She shall be named Princess Zelda Bosphoramus Harkinian Hyrule the sixteenth, and you have our word that we will love her and raise her as if she were our own. Of course, she will go home to live with you in the summers just like the boarding school girls would, and you will come visit the castle very often. You must promise."

"Of course," Eliza said with a grin.

"I will have our people connect to draw up paperwork," Rhoam added, ever the businessman. He would be a great business advisor to the future queen. "And, of course, you will be named her legal guardians in case Eliza and I both perish—goddesses forbid it. If anything happened to us, we would want her to live with you."

Zelda nodded. "I would insist on no less. And Rhoam, Eliza, again—we are truly honored. She is precious."

They stayed with the Count, Countess, and young princess as long as they could get away with. Stories were shared and both Impa and Zelda traded off holding, feeding, and changing the princess. Impa thought about how fate worked in funny ways. Somehow, it felt like they were ending up with a daughter after all, and that was wonderful.

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Eventually, the day grew quite late and Eliza grew tired. They bade their reluctant goodbyes to the family and returned to their carriage. The ride home was a quiet one. They held on to one another and missed the child already. Perhaps they would see about going back tomorrow. Surely Rhoam and Eliza could use a break, and Impa and Zelda would love to take the young princess for a stroll around the estate if the weather held.

The carriage pulled up to the front of Hyrule Castle. There was a disgusting number of colorful banners and floral arrangements there to meet guests when they arrived for the ball that night. Their footman helped the queens out of the carriage. They started to go inside, when Zelda noticed a young woman leading an old, familiar horse toward the stable. It was Epona. She was very old, but there was no mistaking that horse's chestnut coat.

Zelda hurried inside and, sure enough, there was the Hero of Hyrule standing in the entryway with his green tunic on. "Link!" She exclaimed. Like a girl much younger than she actually was, the queen picked up her voluminous dress in her hands and hurried over to the knight's side. "You came!"

Link laughed and hugged the queen. "Of course I came! How could I miss Hyrule's first jubilee in fourty years?" Zelda released the hero and Impa hugged him as well.

"What have you been up to, lately?" Queen Impa asked. "I've heard from Holodrum and Labrynna that a Knight of Hyrule showed up out of nowhere and helped save their countries."

Link nodded. "Yeah, General Onox was causing problems with the Oracle of Seasons in Holodrum and Labrynna was infiltrated by a strange pixie creature named Veran who could disguise herself much like Wizzro could. I'm actually staying on there for a little longer while Queen Ambi and the Oracle of Ages get their political situation stabilized, but they could spare me for this."

"LIIIIIINK!" Impa covered her ears instinctually as a very familiar voice squealed from deeper in the castle. It wasn't long before Ruto—Queen of the Zora for the past few years after the death of her father—pushed in between Link and the Hyrulian queens to hug him as tightly as she could. "Oh, Linky, it's so good to see you!"

Link laughed. "It's good to see you too, Ruto. How is your father? Did he recover from his infection?"

Ruto drooped a little at that. "You have been away so long. I'm sorry, Link, but my father passed three years ago. I am Queen Rutella now. But if you call me anything by just 'Ruto' I'll have you hanged by your toenails!"

"Okay, you got it. And I am so sorry to hear about the King." Link said. "He was a generous man who commanded respect from everyone he met. I am honored I got to get to know him."

Ruto thanked him for his kind word, then whistled to another Zora standing nearby. This person had fishbone tattoos and jewelry made of bone. They came over and kissed Ruto once before offering their hand to Link. "Mikau," they said. "Former guitarist of the Indigo-Gos and current Prince Consort to Queen Ruto."

Ruto giggled. "Soon to be prince consort," she corrected. "The wedding isn't for another year."

They started talking, but Zelda noticed Link's eyes drift beyond them to a very tall, salmon-colored Zora just down the hallway. She was about to comment when Ruto, clearing noticing the same thing, spoke up.

"He's a beauty, isn't he?" she said. "Not as beautiful as my Mikau here, of course, but that's Sidon. General Sidon, my cousin if you want to know. Would you like me to introduce you?"

Link was actually blushing. Zelda had to stop herself from giggling. It was quite unusual to see him so smitten.

"N-no, that's not necessary," he stammered, but Ruto had already grabbed his hand and was dragging him away. Zelda and Impa giggled with each other as they watched Ruto introduce Link as the 'greatest hero who has ever lived' to Sidon. The hero turned almost as red as Sidon's scales, and the tall Zora man seemed overjoyed to finally meet the hero who won the war. They seemed to get off to a great start. Zelda made a note to ask for Sidon's seat to be conveniently rearranged. General Auru could sit somewhere else—it would be infinitely more entertaining to watch Link get more flustered as the night went on by seating Sidon next to him instead.

"It is nice to see the gang back together," she remarked to Impa. "It has been so long."

Impa nodded. "Too long," she agreed. "But it's going to have to be longer still. We need to go dress before the ball."

"Oh, of course!" They bid their farewells to their friends and hurried up to their bedroom. They helped one another change—Zelda into a lush green gown and Impa into her finest black and red tunic. Placing their crowns on their heads as a final touch and resisting the urge to immediately take all their clothes right back off so they could fall into bed again, the queens hurried out of their room and let themselves be escorted to the ballroom.

They arrived well ahead of the official start time and Zelda made sure to get the message about the seating change to the appropriate person. They waited while the nobles, generals, and other important attendees entered the ballroom and were announced. When everyone had entered and found their seats, Zelda and Impa walked in together, hand in hand.

"Zelda Harkinian Hyrule the Fifteenth, Queen Regnant of Hyrule and Heir of Hylia, and her wife, Impa Harkinian Hyrule, Queen Consort and Sheikah Tribal Matriarch." The attendees seated in the room applauded. Queen Zelda waited for them to finish before addressing the room.

"Thank you all so much for joining Impa and I tonight. We are so grateful that each of you has made the journey to enjoy my Topaz Jubilee. This celebration is being thrown both to celebrate our marriage seventeen years ago and the end of the war. As we dance and drink and celebrate, let us remember the loved ones we lost and the victory we had over the forces of evil." She paused, considering, and then continued. "I leave you with one final thought to ponder: I have often heard it said among the young in our kingdom that seventeen years ago, light defeated darkness. Tonight, I tell you something different. Darkness is not inherently evil, and light is not inherently good. Good and evil are determined by what each of us chooses to do with our power, not what kind of power we were born with. Light and dark are two sides of the same coin. My marriage—itself a union of light and shadow—is living proof that we cannot exist without each other. Please consider these words as we move through this jubilee and into the next phase of our country's history. Thank you, again, for joining us."

There was some applause around the room, but others stayed quiet while the queens took their seats at the head table. It wasn't exactly an uplifting sentiment to start the celebration with, but Impa and Zelda had talked it over extensively. There was a growing sense among magic wielders, especially in the noble class, that some forms of magic were inherently better than others. Some were even starting to claim that anyone born with dark magic had to be evil. It simply wasn't true, and they hoped that publicly decrying that belief would go a long way toward abolishing it.

Zelda and Impa sat down to eat. The orchestra started playing on the other side of the room. The queen ate her food and amused herself by watching Link and Sidon awkwardly flirting with each other a few seats down from her. She wasn't really listening to the band—at least, that was until Impa stood and offered a gloved hand to the queen.

"May I have this dance, my love?" she asked with a crooked smile that masked a nervousness underneath. Zelda only hesitated a moment, and then she decided she wasn't hungry after all and allowed her wife to sweep her out onto the dance floor.

Impa took Zelda's hand in her own and placed her other hand on the queen's waist. Drawing her close, they began dancing. That's when the blond Hylian realized what song was playing, and her heart melted. It was the slow song that played the night when they first shared a dance, the night before they left to march to the desert—the night Zelda asked to court Impa. It was their song.

"I love you, Impa," Zelda said, drawing closer to her wife and laying her head on Impa's shoulder. "Thank you for this dance."

"I promised you that we would dance the whole night at every ball for the rest of our lives," Impa responded. "I meant it. I will always dance with you, Zelda."

They were the only ones on the dance floor as the rest of the couples in the room were just starting to eat, but the queens didn't notice the eyes watching them. The noise of voices and silverware clinking against dinner plates seemed far away. Even though the songs and dances changed over the course of the evening, as they often do in life, the queens adapted and kept dancing. Eventually they drifted out onto the veranda. Impa pulled the blond into her embrace, and Zelda lay her head on her wife's shoulder. Faint whispers of the band's current song mixed with the evening chorus of frogs and crickets. Fireflies gathered about them in the darkness, more beautiful than any candlelight.

The queens never stopped dancing.

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Author's Notes: This story has been a roller coaster. What started as a little "short story" blossomed into my fourth full, novel-length story (after the three Doppelganger Trilogy books). It's gone through three full revisions, and I replotted and rewrote the ending three times. There was even a six-year hiatus while I delt with trauma from some online bullying that was sort of related to this and made it hard to work on for a while.

Despite all of that, as we stand here at the ending all I feel for this story is pride and gratitude. It was the first story featuring a lesbian love interest as the central couple that I wrote after coming out and it found its way into so many peoples' hearts. I'm glad that these characters touched so many lives.

Thank you for your patience, your feedback, and your support along this journey. I hope the ending lived up to your hopes and dreams for it. It's hard to say goodbye to characters that we love…but I think these two have a great future ahead of them, don't you?

From Zelda, Impa, and myself—thank you all and goodbye for now.

-The Wolfess