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Zelda slept fitfully, dreaming of a rope in a dungeon cell until the trapdoor slammed open abruptly. She scrambled upright into the cellar's brutal cold, rubbing her eyes—by the dim light she glimpsed above, dawn had just broken.
A pair of fine calfskin boots appeared atop the staircase. Lord Hartwell's velvet waistcoat was dusty and rumpled, his silk trousers splashed with mud; he smelled of sweat and horses. She had never seen him so disheveled, but he bore the calm expression of a hunter confronting his cornered prey.
Zelda had been betrayed so often during her father's reign that she expected loyalty from no one. It wasn't like she'd ever trusted her Minister of Finance. All she felt upon seeing him descend the stairs with Captain Elias was a kind of numb, bone-deep weariness.
"Lady Queen," Lord Hartwell greeted amiably. "I hope you are enjoying our hospitality."
"Your servants are quite accommodating," she told him sweetly.
"We're no one's servants," Elias blustered. Lord Hartwell patted his shoulder soothingly and received a glare in return. Desperation and avarice could create strange bedfellows, but that didn't mean they liked each other.
"Shall I guess, my lord?" Zelda offered. "After three failed attempts on my life, you decided to turn to find someone with more skill than the typical hired sword. So you contacted the very people who robbed your estate. And you, Captain Elias, may dislike the nobility—but what are principles against food and medicine for your people? Not to mention the chance to kill me and get pardoned for it."
Elias had the grace to look ashamed. Hartwell, still smiling that wide predator's smile, said, "Well done, Lady Queen. You always did impress me."
"Yet you would depose me for a three-year-old?"
"My stepdaughter, I'll have you know. Children are so malleable—by the time she comes of age I'll have the entire court in my pocket, including her."
"My father had similar ideas," Zelda pointed out grimly. "They did not end well for him."
"Indeed not," Hartwell agreed unexpectedly. "That's why I asked my friends here to keep you alive until I arrived." He stepped past the bristling Captain, went down on one knee, and said plainly, "Marry me."
After moment of incredulous silence, Elias snapped, "This is not part of the plan."
"You'll get everything you wanted," Hartwell told him. "A strong ruler to replace the queen, and clemency for your people. The only difference is that she'll be collared instead of dead." He turned those warm brown eyes to Zelda. "We'll return to the castle with some glorious story of me rescuing you from your kidnappers. You'll keep your life and crown; the child and her parentage will remain our little secret. All I would ask for is your loyalty."
Zelda laughed long and hard enough that even Elias, who had been glaring at his ally ferociously, turned to stare at her instead. There was something new in his gaze: pity. He thought she was a frightened girl losing her mind.
"You can't truly believe this," she said to him breathlessly. "Promises mean nothing to this man. There will be no pardons, Captain."
"Would you like to be gagged, Lady Queen?" Hartwell asked conversationally, like he was offering sugar for her tea.
Zelda ignored him, holding the Bear's dark gaze. "He will need legitimacy to put his stepdaughter on the throne. I am not so unpopular that the kingdom will accept him stepping over my corpse to become regent, or marrying me out of nowhere, for that matter. But if he pins the blame on you—if he brings those that harmed me to justice—then he is not a usurper, but a savior. And—"
She saw the blow coming in time to turn her head, but it still caught her jaw hard enough to shatter the world into a cacophony of pain. The next thing Zelda knew, she was sprawled on the floor, ears ringing and heart pounding.
She lifted herself up, the right side of her face throbbing in protest as she forced her expression into rigid defiance. Elias's fists were white-knuckled, but he hadn't been the one to strike her. Zelda laughed again, a bit hysterically.
"What the hell is so funny?" Lord Hartwell demanded, shaking out his hand.
"I know where Sparrow and the child are," she answered disdainfully. "And so do my friends. Really, you didn't think I would put two and two together?"
He flinched, and Zelda knew there was nothing keeping her here anymore.
She sprang up in one fluid motion, releasing a tide of magic that blinded and toppled her captors all at once. Darting past Elias, she took the stairs two at a time, bursting into the kitchen corner of a one-room home—everything barebones and dusty, thick with shadows that parted for Zelda's light as she blasted the door off its hinges.
It took one second to seal the empty frame with a handful of raw magic that would delay her pursuers. Then she was off into the trees, glimpsing early sky through the foliage and trying to find the sun's position to gain some idea of where she was or how to get home.
Frankly, her chances of getting anywhere were less than ideal, considering that her enemies were skilled trackers with horses and a shadow crystal—but she would have to succeed anyway. What else is new? Zelda wondered resignedly, plunging into the oaken arms of an unfamiliar forest.
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Link woke to the sight of Rusl dozing in a chair beside his bed, and the three children bundled together in a pile of blankets in front of the hearth. Link fed a log to the dying fire and tiptoed downstairs.
His side hurt, and the sleeping draught had left him groggy, but he'd certainly felt worse. In the low early light that filtered into the inn's first floor, he changed his bandages and dressed in the clean clothes someone had left for him: breeches, a new undershirt, an indigo wool tunic that went over his chainmail. He was pulling on his cloak when Rusl came downstairs, took one look at him, and sighed.
"Ashei went to the castle," the older man said. "Now that we know where Sparrow is, Auru will have sent guards to get her to safety. He'll have deployed a search party for the queen, too. But you won't leave it to them, will you?"
"They might not find her," Link replied, securing his sword and shield.
"And how do you know you will?"
The part of Link that had spent half a year leaping headlong into every fire with only Midna for company wanted to stay silent. But Rusl and Uli hadn't raised him that way. They had raised him to trust people, and to ask for help when he needed it.
He lifted the string over his head and let the shadow crystal drop from its pouch into his gloved palm. There it sat, radiating eerie magic in this mundane room, grating against Link's instincts like sand over stone.
"This will turn me into a wolf," he said without lifting his eyes. "I'll be able to track Zelda. That's how I found the kids and Ilia, back when…you know."
He waited for the questions. Where had he gotten the crystal? How could he bear to use it, now that he knew the cost? What else was he hiding from the people who loved him?
But Rusl only asked one: "How can I help?"
Finding Zelda was only the first step; breaking her out of wherever the bandits were holding her might require opposable thumbs, which Link was about to give up. Reluctantly, he suggested, "Take Epona—she won't be scared. Could you meet me by the gate? I don't…"
His fingers closed tight around the crystal. I don't want you to see this.
"Very well," Rusl said gently. "Thank you, Link."
Link considered waking the children to say goodbye, but if he didn't do this now, he would lose his nerve. The rising sun burned away the night in a band of pale gold that glowed upon Kakariko's rooftops. His breath trailed behind him in long clouds on his way to the northern gate, where he halted in the dawn light.
There was pain in his wounded side, and there was fear, but the thought of Zelda eclipsed them both. Pulling back his sleeve, Link plunged the shadow crystal into his forearm.
He was in the Lanayru Spring, face-to-face with Zant, unable to stop the cursed stone from boring into his skull. Midna was touching his face, calling his name, proving the monumental fact that his pain was her pain. He couldn't open his eyes or tell her he felt the same way. He was senseless, helpless, paralyzed inside his own body.
It felt like dying. It always had. All of him changing, all of him falling into the sick swell of a power that had nearly destroyed the world. At least it had been Midna using the crystal each time after the first, and through the pain he'd always felt the warm inky touch of her familiar magic, and he'd never doubted she would return him to the truth.
Now it was just Link, biting back a scream as the shadows took hold. The only way back to himself this time was the Master Sword, assuming he remained worthy of it.
The transformation ended as soon as it had begun. Shaking, he stretched out his limbs and huffed out a breath, finding himself oddly calm.
It took a moment to understand why. His powerful claws churning the earth, his thick fur warding off the cold, the rich smells of the world swirling around him: Link had forgotten how much he loved being a wolf. Protecting himself from the bad memories had cost him the good ones too, even though the good ones were all he had left of Midna.
Rusl led Epona up to the gate a few minutes later. The horse flared her nostrils at Link in exasperation. The man dropped her reins, bewildered, and too a hesitant step forward. "You were in Ordon that night," he said, disbelieving.
This was exactly what Link had feared.
"I attacked you," Rusl choked out. "I thought you were…I called you a beast."
I was, Link thought, lowering his head, thinking of the Twili and the children and everything he'd done. I am.
"Stop that," Rusl said in a rush, his bad leg faltering as he knelt in the dust. "You're not the one who should be ashamed, Link. I'm sorry I ever gave you a sword. I'm sorry I made you feel responsible for the children when you were still a child yourself. I'm sorry I wasn't with you every day of the Twilight."
Link's pulse was coming in huge, hammering waves. He made a confused noise. This man had never failed him, not once in his life.
But Rusl kept going. "You did what you had to do, and you did it without hate in your heart. The queen must have told you that yesterday. But maybe she's too young and too much like you to say this: you should never have been asked to hold up the world. You're seventeen years old. Perhaps your fate was necessary, but it wasn't fair and it wasn't right. Do you understand that?"
Link wasn't sure. He remembered holding baby Colin for the first time ever, and knowing after one glance at those huge, bleary eyes that he would do anything to protect this fragile little creature. The logic had seemed obvious in Link's childish mind: he was strong, and the strong were meant to defend the small. The older he had grown, the further the world hammered that point home.
What he did know was that he was guzzling Rusl's words like a man dying of thirst. Somewhere along the line he'd started thinking he no longer deserved his family, but they had proved him wrong over and over.
He couldn't speak in this form. All he could do was pad forward to push his head against Rusl's hand until the older man breathed out a disbelieving chuckle and petted him between the ears. That made Link's tail wag—an involuntary reaction Midna had teased him for endlessly— and Rusl laughed again.
"That's my son," he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "A gift to the world, from the second I found you. Lead the way, Link. I'll be right behind you."
Light as wind, Link bounded into the morning light. Zelda's scent reached him in Hyrule Field—springtime, inexplicable in the near-winter air.
He followed it north across the Bridge of Eldin, into a hilly forest of bone-white birch trees he knew well. Lake Hylia and Zora's Doman rippled in the valley far below; up here was a patch of unsettled wilderness that stretched to the kingdom's northern border. It was the same area as the bandits' old camp, not far east from where Sparrow and her family lived.
He glanced back at Rusl, who waited astride Epona, blowing warmth into his hands. Link worried about his bad leg, but he worried for Zelda even more. Drinking deep of the cold air, he sifted out the distractions: damp leaf-strewn earth, the tantalizing whiff of a badger foraging nearby, Epona's familiar horsey scent. Then he found Zelda's trail again.
Link set off, Epona close behind him. They were half an hour into the forest when he heard it: steel clanging against steel, an alien racket in the otherwise quiet morning.
He slowed until Rusl heard the fighting and dismounted, leaving Epona behind and joining Link behind the crest of a hillock. Through the trees, half a dozen people in the silver-blue uniform of the Hyrulean guard clashed with four dark-clad opponents—there was Varn, facing a swift warrior with a dark blade and darker hair.
"That's Ashei!" Rusl exclaimed, rising to go to her.
Before Link could follow, his breath caught in his throat: heat flared up his left foreleg, blazing from the glowing Triforce on his left paw. Then came a tug on his heart, like the way the moon drew the tides, and he could almost feel her: Zelda, suffused with light, standing straight and iron-willed against the darkness.
"Link?" Rusl said, hand on his sword. "You sense her, don't you?" At Link's nod, he glanced at Ashei's group and made his decision quickly. "Go. The bandits are outnumbered; we'll be fine. We'll find you as soon as we can."
Link hesitated, watching his friends and enemies, watching the trees that separated him from the person he'd been born to fight beside.
"Go, Link. That's our queen. We need her, and she needs you."
That was enough. Link touched his nose to the back of Rusl's hand, the best goodbye he could offer, and turned towards the smell of spring.
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