Sheik did something that night she had never truly done before: she slept with a man.
Sex was simple enough. She'd long been deflowered and had experimented with a small handful of romantic trysts, but none had ever slept in her bed all night or had her sleep in theirs through the morning.
But it was different with Link. She wanted to stay in bed with him. She wanted to feel the way he loved her, not just chased a cheap release and tossed her off to the side.
But she was on borrowed time, and had thoughts in her mind and feelings in her heart she wouldn't allow herself to admit. So she stayed in his bed and held him close and adored the feel of his warm skin against hers. When she stirred in the early morning of sunrise with the comfortable weight of Link's arm draped over her waist and warm nose pressed into her spine, she wanted to bury herself further into the blankets and pull him closer for just a little longer.
Link stirred but didn't make any movement to rise or shake the sleep off his bones. Sheik only knew he was beginning to wake when he kissed her back and breathed in her feminine scent.
She smelled good.
Well, maybe not great exactly, but she smelled like her mixed with him, a touch of earthiness from their grassy romp the previous night and lightly of sweat after their several rounds of lovemaking.
"Keep your eyes closed while I dress," she asked him softly. Link grumbled something incoherent and nuzzled his nose further into her skin but then stilled, slumber still heavy on his skin.
She rose from the makeshift bed feeling the low ache between her thighs as courtesy of her previous night's adventures still lingering in her body. She dressed quickly, taking care to wrap her more identifiable features before clothing the rest of her body. Link kept his eyes closed the entire time listening to the quiet sounds of her dressing and imagining smooth, creamy skin being wrapped and tightened and clothed in gauze and leather and armor tied together with tantalizing red ribbons.
Once anything visible was covered and her hair wrapped again, she turned back to Link. He had his eyes still closed but she could tell by the pattern of his breathing he was well aware of her movements.
She wanted so badly to crawl back into bed and press her skin against his and fall asleep in his arms that it almost hurt her to think it would probably be the last time she'd get to do this.
Goddess please grant me one more chance to love this man.
No, no, no, no. Not that horrible word again...
She leaned over the bed and the cranky stand that held up the bedroll complained harshly under her weight. Pulling the thin fabric over her face down just a moment, she kissed his sleepy lips. Link accepted the kiss happily, reaching a hand up to cup the side of her face and deepen the smooch a moment before she finally pulled away and recovered herself before he could see. Link opened his eyes to say goodbye — for now anyways — and paused at the site of deep blue eyes. He starred for a moment and didn't even know if she noticed his question but then Sheik blinked and blue immediately turned red without her even realizing the slip.
They were quiet a moment as neither of the pair knew exactly what words they should say in that situation. So instead they kissed one more time with lips lingering after the touch and then she slipped out of the tent with her customary silence.
The morning was slow at first.
Speech from Impa served as a pep-talk.
Hero stood tall and proud and Sheik was grateful for the secrecy her mask and armor provided because just watching him stand beside the formidable Lady Impa made her chest ache and heart hunger for him.
Then they'd reviewed their plan to split search groups to find and retrieve 'the Princess' and bring her back to their company.
It was as simple a plan as any. It progressed just as well as anyone had hoped.
Then everything seemed to go wrong all at once.
They'd approached the water temple heavy in arms and ready for a search and rescue of their Hylian Princess. They expected a battle, but they had prepared to see their Goddess-descended Princess perched high above the Water Temple columns commanding an ambush of monsters against them.
Then she'd vanished and the battle erupted all at once.
Impa and Link led the Hyrulean forces and allies. They pushed with brute force into the temple and once enough enemies had been pushed aside the party split with Link running off in one direction with a group in his shadow and Impa in another direction with the same size party following her.
Sheik followed the latter path with her Sheikah captain and fought her way through the hordes that countered their forces. Never once did an enemy touch or match her speed or agility. She cut through the armed monsters like silk through fingers and they fell in her wake before they even registered her movements.
But she was sharp as a blade in her focus. The goal was to find the imposter princess, eliminate the foe, and take her place before anyone noticed.
But then everything went wrong.
Impa saw it first. Her lightning reflexes caught eye of the princess and despite her impeccable training...she froze. She wanted to scream, she wanted to run, she wanted to grab the princess and pull her to safety much like she had when the princess was little and she was her caretaker. Instead, she watched her Zelda standing there with a sinister look in her eye she didn't recognize at all. It didn't look like her Zelda.
Not an instant later Sheik stormed in like a spirit in the wind, fast, precise, cat-like with an unmatched elegance that if Impa didn't know any better she would have sworn was a product of her own training. And then the mysterious woman did the unthinkable and attacked the princess.
Impa watched with horrid shock as Hyrule's princess fell back. The Sheikah lunged towards her...but before the Hylian Royal landed on her back, the air cracked with deep black magic, swirled with energy and swallowed the princess in a black cloud.
Someone yelled in horror, and the Sheikah leader didn't know if it was her voice or someone else's, but before she could even deficipher that puzzle or turn of the young woman who had just brutally attacked her royal charge, a dark mass of evil rose from the hole in which the princess fell.
"How did you know I wasn't the real princess?"
The world could have gone still and Sheik would not have noticed the difference. She knew with utmost certainty that her time of disguise was well over.
"You couldn't be the princess," Her voice didn't quiver or falter, strong and forward as she spoke. "Because I'm Zelda." She felt the magic coursing through her all at once. The spell which she had used to change her voice and eyes and more identifiable features stripped away completely. The tight cotton on her body stretched and fluttered, replaced with heavy silks and expensive textiles of gold threading and decor. Soft, lightweight protection grew heavy and thick.
She stood before everyone then no longer as the mysterious sheikah warrior, Sheik, but now the long-lost Hylian Princess of the Royal Family of Hyrule, Princess Zelda.
Realizing the plan had been successfully foiled with the Princess's reveal, the shadowy figure screamed an ear shattering scream that crumbled everyone in the vicinity to the floor and then vanished in a swirl of black smoke.
Sheik's heart thundered dangerously in her chest. Her ears rang violently, deafening the sounds around her and her vision blurred and doubled as she stood shakily on her two feet. Someone called out, but she wasn't sure what the voice said or who they were shouting to as she wobbled on her feet and tried to regain her bearings.
"Princess!"
She turned nearly falling in her spin and then things came into focus.
Eyes.
Eyes all stared at her and suddenly she heard less of the high pitched ringing and more of her own heartbeat. Impa starred at her as if she'd just seen a ghost rise from the ashes and it took Sheik a moment to remember why.
She wasn't Sheik.
"Princess?" It sounded like her Sheikah captain but her mouth didn't move.
"Zelda!"
Sheik did not exist.
Impa took a tentative step forward and Zelda felt the air around her starting to compress and tighten like hands around her throat. Her blue eyes skimmed over the room and she almost breathed finding it empty as if not seeing him there seemed to relieve the pressure and lighten her spirits because at least...
And then she spotted green.
Her breath froze in her throat and chest fell with an unmatched heft. She felt as if the world stopped spinning on its access and time itself seemed to slow.
Bright blue eyes stared at her with a mix of wonder, shock, and betrayal. He stared at her as if watching a stranger.
She wanted to call out to him. She wanted to call him to her, wrap her arms around him, plead him to remember it was her. Link just stared. Sword drawn but lowered to the ground, shield held defensively to his side, he seemed uncharacteristically petrified in his stance.
Link…
She wasn't sure if the voice came from her lips or only her mind but then the sound of rushing footsteps filled the room and bodies all appeared at once in a blur of metal and leather and a large group of soldiers invaded the space. An echo of gasps resounded in the stoney room then every single one of the men fell to their knees in the presence of the future princess.
But Sheik….
No.
Zelda.
There was no Sheik anymore. There never was a Sheik. Sheik did not exist, she was merely a disguise the princess had encompassed to do the things she did without notice or fuss.
Zelda couldn't take her eyes off the blue pair boring into hers. She was blind to the slow progression of her Sheikah caretaker approaching her, or the voices of questions all whispered around her.
Link blinked and then finally glanced to his side. All his fellow knight knelt to the princess as was obligated of the knights in the presence of a royal.
Zelda held her breath not out of suffocation but out of the painful squeeze her heart gave in her chest. Link kept her stare only a moment longer then dropped his eyes to the floor in defeat and knelt to the ground like what was obligated.
She wasn't sure if anyone else could hear the shatter that echoed through the room, but she felt her heart as it fell to the stones with his kneel and crumbled into a million shards like crystal.