Author's note: I spent all of my summer (and almost 400 hours) in Tears of the Kingdom's Hyrule, and it was such an incredible and inspiring world, I couldn't let the experience end once I leapt in for the boss fight. It was the game that got me to come out of fanfic-hiding after almost 20 years. I've spent years writing, publishing, and teaching pop culture-related personal essays and leaving my fiction-writing life in the past. My old high school-era Ocarina of Time fics were my gateways into serious writing, and it feels strange and correct to return here again after so much time away. The Summoned Queen is my complicated love letter to those Triforce heroes and villains, their fraught relationships, and how we exist in perpetual power imbalances. I'll be uploading a new chapter every Thursday. I appreciate your willingness to read and any feedback you'd like to give! This has been a wildly re-energizing writing project, and I'm so thankful to this fandom and art for inspiring me.
Open your eyes.
The breeze on Zelda's exposed skin was cold, almost numbing as she stirred from sleep. She endured it as long as she could, tugging at the pillowy ostrich-down blanket with her eyelids squeezed shut, the half-dream logic insisting that as long as she kept them from parting, she could drift straight back into warm, wonderful sleep. She nudged her back closer to the left side of the bed, trying to steal a bit of Link's radiating snugness for her own nefarious comfort.
Open your eyes.
With a groan she squinted into the loft, the shapes and textured shadows arranging themselves into a home that was so effortlessly familiar in the light. The moonless darkness hinted at the space between much too late and much too early. She rarely glimpsed this hour; maybe a handful of times in her adult life. During her childhood, the less charitable maids and governesses that flittered in and out of castle employment had weaponized the dead of night with stories of what lurked underneath the foundation of her home, what could only find her when the moon was this high in the sky. "You don't know why this castle is here, do you?" They taunted, an eyebrow raised at her wide eyes staring back, still so many years away from understanding.
Even here in this most familiar of places, on an evening otherwise indistinguishable from all others, something in the furthest depths of her mind twitched relentlessly, a primal command that would not be quieted. She scanned the small loft, with its desk still cluttered with her growing collection of notebooks, and pictures tracing an emerging lifetime hanging neatly from the wall. Everything was as it had been, as it should be–except, that breeze.
Straight across from the bed, the gauzy white curtains gently fluttered, like the flags standing sentinel atop each of Hyrule Castle's spires. The loft window was wide open, letting the night spill in and over and around. The sight of the absent glass pane, swung wide from its hinge, felt like a hummingbird let loose in her heart.
"Link," she whispered, her hand sliding over to wrest the Hero awake. In her periphery she caught his profile already raised, the Master Sword's hilt within his grip. His bare shoulders were raised sharply, appearing as an elk startled in a glen. His chest was still as he held his breath, vibrating with power to strike.
It was then that she noticed the silence. Not the familiar hum of night, punctuated with the distant stirs of busy wild creatures and the muted sound of the occasional wagon creaking down Hateno Village's road. This soundlessness was absolute, not a rest from the day, but the absence of life itself.
She shifted slightly forward to catch a glimpse from over the rail of the loft, but Link's left arm raised at her waist, compelling her to stillness.
The worn polish of his leather gauntlets was markedly out of place here in the stripped respite of bed; a familiar presence wandered into the wrong room, scaling up the night's unease. In the minimal space between the home's stir and Zelda's waking Link had yanked on his tunic and boots, the ones folded at the ready each night beside him, a hardwired habit from his earliest training. For all these years she'd found the pattern amusing, an endearing callback to a past that now felt unimaginably distant–the time before they knew each other.
In all that subsequent time, she'd yet to see him put it in practice.
In that moment, a tittering laughter cracked the emptiness. Her mind scrambled to excuse it at first; it seemed far and removed, enough to be a trick of the imagination. Maybe something down in the well–last winter she'd forgotten to seal her study up properly, and a swarm of Keese took up residence. Squirrels had a bad habit of chasing each other up and out the chimney. But in between each of her shallow breaths she could feel the throaty laughter growing closer and louder, until it rattled her eardrum. Link's fingers ferociously gripped her wrist, until his nails scraped half-moons into her skin.
A burst of the chilling air sent the curtains sailing up toward the ceiling, drifting down again to cloak a mountainous figure radiating with a relentless red glow. His demon cat-eye slits cut through the dreamlike darkness, boring intently into the awakened Princess and her Knight.