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Link's captors had been foolish to leave his legs unbound. His boot bashed into Rai's shin, sending the deserter crashing to the ground. It bought him only a second to strain against the ropes before Rai shot to his feet.

Metal flashed in the dim lanternlight. Link jerked left with all his strength; the ropes gave him just enough slack for the knife to meet the empty air between his side and his right arm. In sheer desperation he slammed his elbow inwards to trap it there, away from his vitals, and held on as Rai screamed foul things in his face, as pain came in distant, erratic bursts. The blade slipped, raking down Link's side—

And then Saki was dragging Rai away by the back of his jerkin, hauling him down the stairs while he fought and screamed, "Let me go! You loved him too!"

"He's not coming back!" Saki shrieked as they disappeared from Link's sight. "No matter who you hurt, he's not coming back, and you can't leave me too!"

The door slammed shut and the shouting continued outside it, but Link couldn't listen anymore. He sagged against the post, sucking in breath after frightened breath, and made himself look down.

The good news was that the knife had fallen to the floor without anyone noticing. The bad news was that it had first cut him from rib to hip, and the blood was hot against his skin in the cold room.

Link used his boot to nudge the knife closer, closer, until he could squirm against the ropes and reach it. He dropped three times before he got it rotated in his bound hands and started sawing awkwardly at the rope.

Outside, Rai's shouting had subsided to broken sobs. Someone would remember Link sooner or later. He wasn't moving fast enough. The angle was horribly awkward, and everything was slippery wet and stinking of copper, and his hands were in bandages—had it only been earlier today that he'd broken that teacup? His heart hammered out a frantic warning that he was losing too much blood.

The door opened for two pairs of boots. Link kept sawing at the rope for all his was worth, but kept his hands hidden behind his back and slumped against the post to look unconscious.

"Sweet Nayru," Varn murmured. "Saki, that's the Hero. How did we get here?"

"I don't know," she whispered. "I really don't."

Link's hands jerked free at last. He palmed the knife, slashed through the ropes that bound his chest, and came up off the floor like a hurricane.

With a bleeding wound and his friends at risk, he couldn't afford to hold back. He tackled Saki to the floor; she cried out as the hilt of his knife smashed her knuckles so hard that she dropped her dagger. Link burst to his feet, channeling the momentum into an upwards swing that Varn barely blocked. He had no idea how to fight with a knife, so much lighter and shorter than what he was used to; he just made vicious, artless swipes to drive Varn back towards the stairs.

Saki staggered to her feet. Link knew he'd lose if they put him on the defensive, so he laid on strike after relentless strike, light on his feet and flowing like water through their clumsy counters, giving neither of them the chance to properly guard.

Through the open door came Rai's shout: "Saki! Varn! The prisoners escaped!"

Link took advantage of the distraction to make a reckless gamble: he dropped the knife, hooked his right arm around Varn's, and trapped it in an iron grip until he could seize the deserter's shortsword for himself. Varn's elbow smashed Link's nose; Link shoved him away, hard, so that he collided with Saki.

Rai arrived just in time to see his friends tumble down the stairs in a heap of cursing and tangled limbs. He looked from them to Link in disbelief.

"Where's Anya?" Varn demanded, hauling himself upright and pulling Saki with him.

"Tied up in the damn inn," Rai replied, his eyes trained on Link. "That swordswoman got free and jumped her somehow."

"Sounds familiar," Saki said wearily, clutching her remaining dagger—the only weapon the three of them had left. "Look at him. He could win, couldn't he?"

The deserters gaze up at Link: a smallish boy who had yet to turn eighteen, guarding the top of the stairs in an undershirt, his side leaking blood. He angled the stolen blade across his body; it was no Master Sword, but he still felt worlds better for its weight.

"I'm sorry about Nil," he said quietly. "I really am. But I can't let you kill me. Not after everything else."

"If we let him go, we've failed," Rai snapped to his companions.

"We failed the second he got out of those ropes," Saki muttered. "He could kill us all where we stand, and I'm not sure I'd blame him."

"I'm with you," Varn told her. "Hero—we'll just get Anya and leave, all right?" Link nodded at that. Varn tugged a reluctant Rai down the stairs, the younger man sending Link a dark look that made it clear he wasn't forgiven.

Saki lingered where she was. "The queen," she said dubiously. "You really believe in her, don't you?"

Link's nod was automatic.

"Why?"

Because he felt like he'd always known Zelda. Because even when he was a monstrous wolf, she never saw him as anything but human. Because she had saved Midna's life in the most selfless act he'd ever witnessed. Because of the way she'd entered his embrace today, so tense and cautious, as though she expected him to shatter or wisp away or hurt her somehow. She had spent so long being everything for everyone that it was frightening to be herself, but she'd opened her arms to Link anyway, wanting to be known as badly as he did.

"She sees the world for what it is," he answered finally. "And she won't give up on it, even though it's broken."

"I see," Saki said, crestfallen.

"Why did you come here?" Link pressed a hand to his bleeding side. "Where's the Captain? What are you planning?"

Saki turned for the stairs without another word—without even a trace of her normal smile.

He kept watch until the only thing left of the deserters was the dust their horses kicked up. The children found him in front of the bomb shop, and Link cared less about the wound than the fact of Talo and Luda in his arms, all sharp elbows and knobby knees, with Malo trailing exasperatedly behind.

"Thank you," Link told Ashei over the children's heads.

Her black locks spilled like ink over her shoulders. She held up the hairpiece she normally wore: slotted into the underside was a tiny knife, not much longer than Link's finger, but clearly sharp enough to cut through rope. "My father's paranoia finally paid off," she grinned.

"I distracted the bandit lady," Talo told Link proudly. "You know how annoying I can be."

"Did Anya say anything useful?" Link asked Ashei. He got to his feet, bringing on a sudden wave of lightheaded nausea that made him squeeze his eyes shut. "Did she say why—"

Talo gasped. Luda said something about finding her father and ran off. With surprising gentleness, Ashei moved Link's arm to look at the wound, then said firmly, "Let's go inside."

His head spinning, Link allowed her to lead him up to the inn's second floor, where Renado had saved his life more than once. The shaman met them there, as level-headed as ever, and told Link to lay down in a tone that brokered no argument.

He barely paid attention to what Renado was doing. The more he questioned why the deserters had lured him here, the less it made sense. Surely not just for information—Saki had barely mentioned Zelda, even though killing her was the deserters' goal. Maybe she'd meant to ask more before Link had upset her, but wouldn't it have been far easier to capture some guard with knowledge of castle defenses?

We had it on good authority you'd be passing by, she had said.

Link's stomach churned. The red potion he'd taken was barely making a dent as Renado began stitching his wound. He lay on his side and gripped the edge of the mattress and thought of the look Saki had given him, long and sad, before she'd left.

The children were causing some kind of commotion downstairs; Ashei went to investigate. Everyone was talking too quickly for Link's blurred senses to comprehend. He recognized Rusl's voice clearly, but it sounded like he'd come alone, not with a guard unit as planned.

That realization tipped Link's worry into real fear. His blood was everywhere, filling the room with its reek; in the three months since Ganondorf's death he'd forgotten what it was like to be in this much pain. Renado tried to hold him still as he cringed instinctively away from the needle.

"Golden Goddesses," said a voice in the doorway.

"Rusl?" Link said in a child's reedy voice.

"I'm here," Rusl answered, crossing the room in four long strides to kneel beside the bed and take his hand.

Link gripped it hard than he meant to at the next pierce of the needle, forcing out his question through gritted teeth: "Where's Zelda?"

"He needs potion," Rusl said sharply.

"He had some," Renado replied. "He should have been asleep ten minutes ago."

Link rolled his bleary eyes up to Renado's face. That red potion had tasted unusual. "You…"

"Yes, I gave you a sleeping draught. I am sorry, but I've seen you run off injured enough times to know you would do it again."

Shaking his head impatiently, Link turned back to Rusl and insisted, "Where's Zelda?"

"The Bear—" Rusl started.

Immediately Link was trying to lift his leaden body, ignoring their protests, fighting their hands until Renado thundered, "For Din's sake, you're scaring the children!" In the doorway, Luda was ushering Talo and Malo away, their expressions harrowed and too old for their faces.

Link turned his face into the mattress and went still.

Zelda in the rain, the bloody knife slipping from her hands. Zelda in the desert, cleaning the filth from his skin. Zelda in a field of light at the end of the world, smiling that tiny, heartbroken smile that made him want to keep breathing.

Rusl brushed sweaty hair from Link's brow and continued softly. "It was all a trap. He drew you away and ambushed us at the bridge into town. Maybe the queen's magic could have fended him off, but he said something that made her surrender…'We have the sparrow and the fledgling.' Auru wanted me to ask if you know what that means."

Link shook his head miserably.

"What if Sparrow was a person? Auru says there was a castle gardener by that name before his exile. She and the queen knew one another. Early twenties, blond hair, freckles? Does that ring any bells?"

It came to Link then: a woman with a bloody nose, glaring defiantly at the thieves invading her home. "The estate in the north forest," he mumbled. "Where we stole the h-horses. She's there with her daughter and husband, Lord…Lord…um, I don't—"

"Auru will know the name—this is exactly what he needs," Rusl reassured. "Well done."

Through the senseless fog, Link understood only one fact: "I have to find her."

"I know, Link," Rusl said, releasing his hand gently. "But will you stay here while I trade stories with Ashei, at least?"

Link submitted to Renado's treatment. He couldn't summon the energy to be angry about the sleeping draught; he could barely lift his head. After the shaman left, he stared fixedly at the wall with his eyes wide open, determined to be awake when Rusl returned.

Midna's absence was everywhere in this room. She would understand his fear perfectly—she cared for Zelda as a person, not a title or a symbol; she would be tearing apart every inch of Hyrule to find her. Few others could say the same.

Midna was gone, but Link still had her last gift, heavy as a warning around his neck.

Before he could take that thought any further, Renado sent the children in to watch over him. Once, Talo would have peppered him with endless questions; now, he just held Link's bandaged hand while Luda sorted his belongings in neat piles and Malo built up the fire. Not once did they make Link talk. The Twilight had given them a maturity that made him proud and sad all at once.

Closing his eyes, he could almost feel Ordon around him. Often, he couldn't bear to think of it, but right now he felt peace as well as longing, neither emotion devouring the other. He fell asleep with his hand in Talo's, dreaming of the warm green smell of home.

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Zelda waited on the cold floor of a dark cellar. The Triforce's soft glow showed cobwebs and empty shelves and a trapdoor above, outlined by the dim torchlight that seeped through its edges.

She'd been blindfolded for the whole ride, so all she knew was that they were about two hours from the castle, most likely in some abandoned house the bandits had claimed after Link compromised their Eldin camp.

They'd left her alone long enough for the truth to sink its fangs in. We have the sparrow and the fledgling. She had never expected to see Sparrow again—and that curl of chestnut hair in the locket meant there was a child, one Zelda hadn't known existed. Now her life was chained to them both. Her only choice was to put her faith in Auru and Link, no matter how much that grated against her instincts.

The trapdoor swung open and the Bear wedged himself down the narrow stairs, carrying a torch and a waterskin. He handed her the latter with extreme reluctance.

"You know," Zelda said, "we have skilled trackers in the guard now, thanks to the training procedures you wrote. You should be worried about pursuit."

"We can conceal a trail as well as we can follow one," Elias retorted, but his shoulders tightened with shame. He had fallen far from the leader of the best unit the Hyrulean guard had to offer. "And you should be worried that your court might take this opportunity to rid themselves of you."

"You can save your breath," Zelda replied, handing him the empty waterskin. "I know who your new ally is."

He jerked his hand back as though burned. "How?"

"Banditry did not buy your new weapons and armor. And I believe your original goal was my death—you would only take me alive if you stood to gain something. For example, if it was part of a bargain you made."

"You'll be dead at the end of this, all the same."

"And you'll be the one doing the dirty work?" Zelda mused. "He does so love to keep his hands clean. I killed two of his assassins, but he must have paid someone to finish the third rather than risk incrimination. Before that, there was a kitchen boy named Thom. He snuck a bite of my breakfast and died for it."

"That's a lie," Elias growled. Twice as broad as her and a full foot taller, he loomed over the corner where she sat huddled for warmth. But Zelda didn't fear him, or return the hatred in his coal-black eyes—she pitied him, the way she'd pitied Ganondorf at the end.

Of course you're kind, Zelda, Link had told her today, as if he was surprised she'd think otherwise. Midna and Ilia had described her that way too. It wasn't accurate, but she could pretend it was.

"I read your service record after I learned your name," she said. "Squad leader at twenty. Captain of the scouts at twenty-three. You turned an underutilized operation into a precise, efficient spear that eliminated threats before they emerged. And ten years ago, you saved my mother's life during the border skirmishes."

Elias took a step back. "No one is supposed to know about that."

"She kept it quiet, just as you asked. But she left a note in your file." Zelda had traced her fingers over the familiar loopy handwriting. "You could have sought the commander's helm, a noble title, anything you wished. Instead you only requested more resources for your unit, because you weren't proud of killing some guileless southern boy who was fighting someone else's war. That says something about you."

"I saved your mother because it was battle, and she was the princess, and I was a good soldier; not because I gave a shit about her." That last statement was an obvious lie—no one had been immune to the magnetism of the Lionheart Queen. "She would have sent me to die upon a stranger's sword if it suited her purposes, just like the southern king sent that boy to die upon mine. Just like you sent us to Zant."

"Yes," Zelda agreed sadly. "That's the way of things—my kind eating your kind and pretending we're the ones putting food on the table. But I would never have sent your unit to the desert if I had known what waited there. I am sorry for that mistake, Captain, and for everything it cost you."

"Bit late," Elias said dully, sinking down on the cellar stairs. "It was mostly recruits we lost, you know, kids as green as summer grass. The lucky ones died. The changing—that's worse. I sat there chained to a fucking wall while they screamed. Words don't make up for that. Or for your surrender to their killer."

"You know better than anyone what state the guard was in. It was fight and lose or surrender and wait for the Hero. Believe me when I say that I—"

"Why should I believe you?" Elias interrupted. "We all heard the rumors about your father's death, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt and followed your orders, and then you knelt before Zant to save your own skin. Don't talk to me about the Hero. You painted over your guilt with that boy's blood. You made him your thrall—or perhaps I should say your lover."

Zelda turned to stone.

The first time she ever saw Link's human face was in the wreckage of the throne room. They had been near-strangers, and their greatest enemy had been blazing back to life, and Link had been bleeding from a gouge dealt by Zelda's own sword. Despite all that, he had smiled at her with warm familiarity, just relieved to see her safe, just completely and unassailably her friend.

Nothing since then had changed the way he looked at her. Not losing Midna, not being called back to serve a kingdom that had only ever hurt him, not Zelda becoming a murderer or punishing him for concealing the truth about what Ganondorf had done to her. Link had been the first person to hold her in years. He had called her kind.

Zelda's enemies were about to drag all of her skeletons out of the closet. She couldn't be sure Link would remain at her side after they got through this—but she hoped, and that hope alone represented a seismic shift inside her. She didn't know what it meant. She only knew that what she felt for Link was a tiny seed taking root in a half-forgotten, long-barren patch of earth, and she wanted to shelter that seed with all her might.

The base nature of the Bear's insult was nothing new. What bothered her was that he'd given voice to something that actually ached, something she couldn't allow herself to contemplate. And Zelda was suddenly and immensely tired of dancing to everyone else's tune.

She raised her chin and let the stone fall away, looking at Elias with the full force of her fury and watching his brows shoot up in surprise.

"You are bending us both into an image that pleases you, in order to justify your actions," Zelda said sharply. "But Link is not your legend or your symbol, and he certainly didn't save Hyrule by being weak-willed enough to fall prey to the duplicitous temptress you've made me out to be. In fact, I expect he is raising hell for your friends as we speak. You will recall that we faced the world's oldest evil together. After Ganondorf, the lot of you look like frightened children with sticks."

Elias drew back, his face traveling from mortification to self-reflection to hardened, angry denial. He put a hand to his pocket, where Zelda could sense the teeming darkness of the shadow crystal.

The trapdoor jerked open with sudden violence; he turned and demanded, "Saki? That you?"

"It's me," the woman said crossly as she shoved past him, stopping before Zelda and looking her up and down. "Sweet Farore, I forgot how young you are. Who decided to make it teenagers? The Hero escaped, by the way."

A lifetime of self-control could not prevent Zelda from bursting into laughter at the look on Elias's face.

"Yeah," Saki said with a bitter smile of her own. "Here I was feeling bad about it, but you've bungled your end of the plan too. If the lord's not here, he's either been caught or he's sold us out!" She grabbed her Captain by the collar and yanked him towards her, every word striking like a barb "We have to go. Now. Into the mountains, across the border."

"This can still work," Elias protested. "If we get pardons—"

"That's a lost cause, and you know it! I won't be a prisoner again!"

With a glare at Zelda, who wasn't even trying to smother her giggles, Elias propelled Saki upstairs and shut the trapdoor behind him. But it didn't matter who won their argument. Link was free, and the deserters' ally had stranded them—that might well mean that Auru was successful.

Smiling in the darkness, she settled in to wait.

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