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Absence wound cold between the rustle of gowns on the 17th winter solstice since Zelda’s birth. Hyrule’s influential—and their sons—had receded, some in presence, some with dwindling attentions: vacant and stuttering, their eyes darting, restless, their object rarely the crown princess except in cruelty. She’d come to expect that: no sons eager to win the favor of Princess Zelda—only unpleasant young men and their mixed innuendo of insults and unsavory suggestions, the ballroom’s chill deepening with every occasion, the Calamity’s imminent breath heating on Hyrule’s neck.
Then came Link.
In her bitterness, he was the worst of them all—that silent vigil of his, his eyes following everywhere. They planted wordless recriminations within her, shadowing her first morning steps, haunting her in the cathedral, ghosting stale conversations with visiting nobles over cold tea. His stare rooted in her core, passing judgement from the deep, until the day he killed for her; something unfamiliar became entangled in her pulse, the small of her back, the swell of her abdomen. It moved her like the bend of a leaf toward sunlight: a surge of her blood; an arching back; an invisible heartbeat low in her floor. He touched her, somehow, though even their fingertips rarely met. Wrinkles appeared beneath his eyes when he smiled at her, a shyness in the press of his lips to each other, his voice the quiet rustle of woodland creatures in the brush.
His was the one kind voice at her 18th birthday. Prince Carsdile of Holodrum strove for a new level of vile as they danced, increasing his pressure on Zelda’s hand, a gradual intrusion, a gleam in his eye, his hand at her waist perfectly at ease and not a hair out of place: the image of a perfect prince.
An image, only.
“Prince Carsdile, cease at once,” she hissed, her face immobile as Hylia’s likeness.
“Cease, Princess? Should I stop our dance? What a sight that would be. How they’d talk.” He laughed as though they’d shared a joke.
Her eyes narrowed a fraction. “Do you truly believe you can treat me so without consequence? If I tell my father-”
“He’ll do absolutely nothing,” he said with an unpleasant chuckle. “Difficult, isn’t it? To prepare for the Calamity and war with Holodrum?”
Her head reared.
“Ah, you see it now.” He gripped harder.
Zelda refused to wince. Her pitch plummeted. “Your parents would not declare war over this.”
He smirked. “Of course not. Nor would your father. Which means… you just have to take it.”
A twist in the pit of her stomach knew his words for a looming threat.
“Excuse me,” Link said.
Zelda hardly recognized his voice with its rustling gentleness absent. She found his face with a silent gasp, the barest parting of her lips. She’d only seen his eyes so hard once: flashing blue topaz, their intensity as he slew a Yiga on heated sands.
“May I cut in?” Link asked, a sharp slice through the music.
The Prince scoffed.
“Wrong answer. Let go now or it’s you they’ll be talking about.”
The grimace on the Prince’s face agreed. He dropped Zelda’s hand with a droll half-bow and backed into the crowd.
She found her hand in Link’s, his other on her waist, the roots within her coiling, beckoning her toward him. She swallowed, attempting to keep her hold on propriety along with his shoulder.
“Sorry it took me so long,” Link said. “Are you alright?”
Her thumping heart threatened to leap from her mouth in answer. “Y- yes. I am well. Thank you, Link.”
He gave his curt, formal nod, at odds with his now softened expression. “If he’d stalled any longer, I’d’ve stuck my fingers between the tendons in his wrist.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. At best, it would cause a scene.” At worst, her knight would be in lockup.
Link shrugged. “He’s the one who wanted to avoid it. It’s rude to say no to a cut-in.”
“I believe it is also considered rude to crush a Prince’s wrist.”
“What about a Princess’ hand?” he asked.
She flushed. “He’d- pointed out-“
“I’m sure he did… to make you hesitate. If it happens again, just find me. Look me in the eye and I’ll come.”
She gave an all-too-obvious shiver under that hand at her waist, her ear tips hot, wondering if he felt it through those white leather gloves. Her eyes flicked about, trying to rest somewhere she didn’t find quite so handsome and failing in the extreme. His base layer’s high collar drew her eyes to the sliver of neck peeking above it; the straight lines, the regalia, the intricate interplay of each ornamental garment upon his body rendered him known, displayed for his sturdiness, his courage, marked as hers. It merely revealed the truth of him.
Link’s shadow practically eclipsed her in the days and nights while the Prince’s party remained in the castle. Zelda’d said nothing of the Prince’s words—perhaps her hesitant footsteps or quick glances over her shoulder gave her away.
--
She thought of Link in a moment quiet as the Moonlight flooding her windows—solitary as his presence at her door: the eidolon of his leathered hand at her waist, his thumb running along her at an invisible pace. How he’d escort her, as always, to her chamber, eyes sharp for the Prince’s silhouette, how he’d turn his back to her door to keep watch—how surprised he’d be when she tugged his hand. He’d turn to see her eyes earnest, her lips parted, her breath the swell of an unbroken wave.
He’d follow her in, the door’s bolt finality.
He’d undress her, standing, his eyes a constant question with each lace and button, each slide of cloth over her skin, her answer always yes. She would reach for the buttons at his collar and he’d take her hands in his, smiling, a kiss for each, as he returned them to her sides.
He’d kiss her, kneading her hips, backing her into the mattress and lying her flat; and only then would he reveal himself, to take her deep and full, her knees pressed back as she came apart to his firm thrusts inside her, drinking the sight of him just as he’d been when they danced.
She lay breathing afterward, her face half-concealed beneath her comforter lest Link hear her outside.
Perhaps he thought of her, too.
She tried to catch those thoughts in the black between his irises. He gave that same shy smile, his cheekbones dusting with an uncertain heat. She didn’t dare ask.
--
Winter solstice arrived once more. Flowers withered with the dip of the Sun; frost gathered, insistent, at the edges of windowpanes, seeking entry.
Zelda stood before the tall mirror in her chamber, her feet giving against the cold stone as her gown did before the lines of her body, deep red and spun gold in an elegant brocade for the winter season. Her request had surprised the seamstress, for tonight, there would be Link. He would watch her every move, as always. Perhaps he would enjoy the sight of her as much as she did his—and she hadn’t left her usual modesty entirely behind. A gentle graze of her breasts would go unremarked for every woman except her—she’d not cater to hypocrisy.
A knock sounded, plunging her heartbeat below her navel. “One moment!”
She closed her eyes, breathing, smoothing her hands down her ribcage, her hips, her thighs, though the dress flowed pristine over every curve. It did not calm her. Nor did her long exhale as she stepped into her dancing slippers and strode to the door, opening it to the sight of Link glorious in his formal blue, red, gold, and white, draped with that single thick, deep-red cord. She sensed how it would chafe her palms, her clinging desperately to it with Link buried inside her.
It translated into a swallow and a stillness of her form.
The master sword’s ornamental scabbard peeked from his back, the handguard and pommel a statement in blue nearly identical to the intricate capelet adorning his neck and shoulders. Anyone would know him, even had they never seen his face. Perhaps that’s why he’d foregone it last time.
Her voiceless appraisal ceased upon the realization his eyes hadn’t left hers. The knight in her imaginings would have found her bare collarbone, followed its line to her shoulder, the golden border of her shimmering neckline, then down, centering on the rise of her breath.
The real Link’s throat bobbed with a swallow. “Are you ready?” he asked, unaccountably soft.
She attempted a smile, though it flickered, wondering what her eyes had reflected back at him. “Yes, Link. Thank you.”
The axis of the world slipped as he offered her his arm. Everything spun but the strip of black cloth at the crook of his elbow—then it lowered, leaving her reeling. “I- sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Princess, I don’t know what I-“
She hooked her hand into that crook with a hushed smile, her skin buzzing everywhere they met despite the fabrics between them, Link’s breath a bird caught. It took a moment for his forearm to rise.
“You- look lovely,” he said, his rustle changed—spring leaves.
“I’m glad you think so,” she said, captivated by the altered space between his lips. “And you, my knight, appear stunning as always.”
One corner of his mouth began to lift. “Always?” he asked, lingering on that final sound.
Zelda blinked, her fingers twitching tight. “The- the formalwear suits you,“ she stammered, her voice up an octave, her skin brightening pink in its wake.
Link became still as the calm waters she’d so often seen in his eyes.
She wished to wither beneath that stare. Her knees would weaken. She would drape upon the wall. He would follow, the turn of a compass. She would pull him closer, the message clear. He would receive it, and she would receive him in return. They would not attend the ball.
Link’s other hand rose as though to reach for her, her own vice-grip on his arm suddenly in focus. She loosened it at once. “Apologies, Link-“
“Don’t apologize,” he said, a glint of mischief appearing on his face. “Unless you’re doing it sadistically.”
She rolled her eyes, a laugh diffusing some of the tension coiled in her hidden cavity. A tremor traveled her spine, shivering her hands on him.
His smile faded a little. “I won’t let him,” he said.
“Neither shall I,” said Zelda. “I’ll refuse his hand at each turn.”
“He’ll cut in,” Link said with a grim glare down the hallway, “but I’ll be ready for him.”
“He’s always been loathsome,” she said. “You’d think he’d behave more cordially, considering his brother shall inherit Holodrum’s crown. He is more in need of people’s good graces.”
“It’s not what he needs, it’s how he is. And he’s a shitbag.”
Zelda snorted. She felt quite undignified as Link began leading her toward the night’s torture. At least, this time, she’d have him to mitigate it—though her face fell a little as her thoughts returned to her gown, and how Link’s eyes had never strayed below her face.
--
The ballroom, as always, glittered with reflective baubles on evergreen after evergreen flanking the windows, the largest of them practically gilded in splendor—mirrored glass in red, silver, and gold, translucent icicles spun by expert glassworkers, thin strips of shining metal fluttering light as down-feathers, and lights, lights everywhere, thousands of candles in lieu of the twinkling of stars. Warm strings swelled amidst regal horns, enveloping them as they reached the threshold. Her knight's next step defied expectations, his white-booted feet leading hers, stride for stride, arm-in-arm, and not retreating behind her. She turned her face to see his.
He wore a close-kept smile, resting mild as though ensconcing some precious secret. His gaze swept the room as a good bodyguard’s should; then it alighted on her. Something in him shone. She sought his features, trying to find the source of her impression. His eyes had wrinkled that way before; that curve of his lips remained his: nothing extreme—nothing unprecedented—yet unmistakable in the radiance of emotion lying behind them.
“To your seat, Your Highness?” he asked.
Her mouth twitched in a smile. “You never call me that.”
“It’s a special occasion.”
She laughed, recognizing it as a giggle after it sprung from her. She ought to have behaved with more propriety, but in that moment, she couldn’t bring herself to care.
Link appeared to take her answer for a yes, as he led her to the seat beside her father’s. He stood already before it as the crowd mingled beside the floor, his attention a sudden twist in Zelda’s stomach-
-yet he merely nodded to Link as he deposited Zelda on the dais.
Zelda lifted her skirt to turn on the stair, an excellent excuse to avoid her father’s eyes. She met them only once stilled.
Was he smiling at her?
“Happy Solstice, daughter.”
She nodded, blinking. “And- to you, father.”
The smile coalesced. He glanced toward Link behind her—then with a swirl and raised hands, the orchestra’s tune changed, and Zelda knew her place. She took her father’s hand to open the ball.
--
It began with the relief of peace. Once opened, the dance floor filled with couples and Zelda took her seat on the dais. Mercifully, no one followed her. She sat straight-backed, regal, her fingers curled around the chair’s gilded arms, watching candlelight play off the lustre of gowns, the glinting embroidery of fine coats, polished jewelry and buckles. The sight itself was beautiful from afar, and the music imbued with the hope of longer days. Link’s presence fell upon her like the warmth of a hearth.
She breathed a grateful sigh when no one approached her to dance the next, either. She caught a glimpse of the loathsome Prince dancing with a spectacularly rich merchant’s daughter. Her eyes slid from them, water on river-stone, continuing on to Link behind her, the natural flow of the current. Her mouth quirked at the now-forbidding look on his face: chiseled and stony, a glare stern enough for each courtier in this room and then some.
“Goodness, Sir Link. You shall frighten them all away,” Zelda said.
His cheek twitched, but his countenance remained otherwise unmoved. “If they’re frightened that easily, they’re not worthy of you.”
She chuckled. “Perhaps you and I should dance,” she said. “The entire floor might clear out.”
He softened a little, then. “I’d like to try it, but we shouldn’t.”
Her head cocked. “And why might that be?”
He hesitated a breath. “Someone might cut in.”
The small smile touching Zelda’s face faded. “Indeed. And one oughtn’t cut back in on the same turn.”
“No,” he said, a dip in his voice.
“I do appreciate your dedication to saving me should the need arise,” she said, soft.
A change in the cadence of his eyes’ protective vigil spoke for him; he knew she was disappointed.
At the passage of two more turns, Zelda grew restless.
She kept her breathing easy, her figure untouched by displeasure. Only a small wrinkle on her brow revealed her as at all unsettled, a sign upon her identical to deep thought. It would be of little consequence.
Dance after dance passed, Zelda alone on the dais. Her right thumb and index finger twitched toward each other on the armrest. Her stomach gave a small rumble, her bones protesting her stillness, yet she waited until halfway through the current song to rise, careful to retain her serene smile.
Impa approached Link, discretion her shadow at Zelda’s periphery.
“What’s going on?” Impa asked him, her voice a low octave.
Link had no need of clarification. A glance said everything. “I don’t know,” he said.
“It’s been almost an hour,” she murmured, an afterthought. A shroud of unspoken expectations followed her, an unturned stone.
Impa inclined her head toward Zelda as she left, the barest of nods, then smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes.
Appearances only.
Zelda sighed, slow and quiet, face schooled to neutrality.
She’d little choice.
She refused to grip the chair.
She refused to appear anything less than unphased.
She would certainly not appeal to anyone for a dance. She’d no wish to dance with anyone but Link, in truth—yet she felt eyes on her, necks craning over dancing shoulders at the Princess, alone on the dais, laughter bent distinctly unkind, fluctuating between spinning figures. She dared not look at Link. She stood, hands clasped before her, as sovereign of the ball below, as though it spun upon the axis of her good graces. She did not attend; she presided.
She would not allow them to diminish her.
A great expanse of minutes trickled past, her breath a watched clock, ticking faster, each more acute in her awareness—conspicuous as each glint of her father’s crown—sharp as each flash of light on the Prince’s silvered capelet.
Only Link felt soft. She could yearn to step back, yielding into the welcome she’d find in him, but to act would be defeat. She knew he understood, for even he had refused her hand.
At length, her father approached, his cheeks bowed toward his eyes ever so slightly. She knew his disapproval, his thoughtfulness, his increasingly uncommon contentedness, and his occasional fatherliness. This was none of those. His smile, like Impa’s, did not reach his eyes.
“I believe it is time for a respite,” he said. “But- ah. Not before a word with your knight.” He passed her and began a lengthy conversation with Link, a thread of confusion woven into her knight’s phrasing. Her father spoke of guard rotations—of potential promotions—of the early encroachment of intense cold this year—and he chuckled at the slightly mismatched colors of Link’s uniform, earrings and handguard, of all things. Zelda listened, nonplussed.
“Well. I believe I will get off my feet,” her father said. “I’ve been on them nigh on three hours.” She heard his voice issue once more, too quiet to hear despite her proximity. As he returned to her side, she knew her silent vigil at an end. It would be improper in the extreme for her to stand above him here. She took her own seat with a deferential dip of her head.
Her father returned the gesture, taking his seat beside her. “Well. Well,” he said.
She waited. His loss for words said more than words would.
“It’s a mercy Robbie did not attend,” he eventually said.
Zelda faced him, understanding a slow dawn. “He’d have asked for a dance,” she said.
Her father nodded.
Dancing with no one but Robbie would indeed be worse than no one at all in the court’s eyes. A shame, that. “I quite enjoy Robbie’s company,” she ventured.
“He rarely fails to surprise,” her father agreed.
“In some respects,” she said. “In others, he is constant as the northern star. I believe he’d have worn his goggles this evening.”
That drew a hearty laugh from him: a rarity of late. Zelda allowed herself that small victory.
The next dance began, Zelda now certain. No one would come forth. The completeness of it ought to have chilled her, yet she found herself tired instead. She would retire early if the social ramifications wouldn’t be even worse if she did; indeed, they’d forced her not to, for it would be an unveiled defeat. She attempted to lose herself in the room’s many brilliant reflections.
Cloth shifted behind her. Soft bootfalls pulled her gaze from the room’s baubles with ease. She’d clung to them with difficulty; she’d prefer to cling to Link instead, and there he was—beside her, circling her seat, ending with a bow and gloved hand outstretched.
“Princess,” he said. “Would you honor me with your next dance?”
Her eyes flicked between his, asking for his surety.
He smiled—with the tiniest nod.
“…Yes, Sir Link,” she said. “The honor would be mine.”
When she stood, the court’s ostracism lay prickling over her every nerve; the sensation of her hand slipping into Link’s drove it from her skin, its electric shiver a sudden truth and a rightness.
They could all be damned; in a sense, they’d given her exactly what she wanted.
She smiled at Link.
She did so openly.
When he took her waist, she allowed her breath to catch, the soft sound lost to the music; its movement brimming, open, there only for Link.
She swore he drank it deep into his eyes’ blackest entryways—swore it emerged in the rest of him, a glow of his skin, a rise of his chest, a certainty in his hands on her, a circle of emergence and entry, far, far warmer than the strings guiding the dance.
The thought resurged that one might cut in.
Link saw it. A small smile and a flicker of his eyes toward her father told her everything.
She had another savior waiting in the wings.
She was safe.
She eased.
And she danced.
She danced, contemplating that curve of Link's lips, that wrinkle beneath his eyes, that subtle rise of his cheeks. They weren’t new. She’d seen them all before. Yet it occurred to her suddenly, in this one warm place in the room, what had struck her as extraordinary about them: he turned them upon no one but her.
They danced the remaining three turns uninterrupted and unimpeded. When the final notes of the final piece of music faded to her father’s raised hands and applause, a pang throbbed Zelda’s chest over time wasted earlier in the evening—yet she knew a change had passed between them, and Link would be here long after their guests departed.
She returned to the dais with a smile. Her father returned it, though surprise lay just beneath. She, too, had expected to need his assistance. As she turned, a thorn entered her vision in the form of the Prince’s gleaming cape, rippling on one shoulder as he passed beneath one of the massive archways, unhurried, making his exit without a single glance her way. She barely heard her father's closing remarks, her mind prickling with the oddity of it.
Zelda had never found the outward procession so tedious. Her father waited until only Link and his own guardsmen remained anywhere near to turn to her.
“Bloody gossip-mongers,” he said under his breath.
Zelda nearly laughed.
“Have you any sense what brought it on?” he asked.
The bodily memory of a cruel hand wrapped around hers.
She had to take it, he’d said.
Her father’s eyes pierced her. “You do,” he said.
“I- can make a supposition only, father.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Would this have something to do with Sir Link’s concern over cut-ins?”
Zelda gave the barest of nods. “It may.”
Her father humphed. “Then you suspect Holodrum’s notably unpleasant Prince.”
Zelda winced, the royal guards’ boots scuffed, and Link cleared his throat.
The king sighed. “He’s a boor of a man, to be sure. Well- he made his exit swiftly. Perhaps your poise deprived him of what he wished to see. And-“ he raised his arms, giving Zelda’s biceps a light squeeze- “you ought to be proud of that, daughter. Anything they take from tonight will be talk of their own inappropriate behavior, for you displayed none.”
Zelda gave a weak smile, relieved, at least, he thought nothing improper of her arrival on Link’s arm.
--
Only the crackle of ensconced flames accompanied them in the castle’s midnight halls. Link followed, gravity behind her, though she hadn’t turned yet. She would once she found the right words.
A turn which would take them much of the way to the other side of the castle, toward her chambers, arrived. Zelda took it and gasped, her heart a sudden grip at the top of her throat, and Link reacted instantly, lurching before her, though he hadn’t seen what she had: the Prince of Holodrum, waiting, centered in the hall mere feet from them.
“Princess Zelda,” he said, gravid.
Link stood, one hand outstretched, half-behind him, barring Zelda, the rest of him obscuring much of the Prince from her sight as he made a deep, formal bow, one hand sequestered in his half-cape. Link sharpened, the hidden hand a fulcrum.
“I have a gift for you,” the Prince said.
Thoughts flickered through Zelda’s head as imagined responses.
There is no gift I wish for from you.
How uncouth of you to lie in wait here.
This is an inappropriate time and place for a gift.
If you wished to dance, you should have asked sooner.
What is behind your back, Prince Carsdile?
You, Prince Carsdile, are an unprecedented ass.
She teetered upon them, as Link did upon pushing her back. She could tell.
The Prince gave Link a slow smile oozing with unpleasant enjoyment. “Ah. Your loyal knight, the hero of Hyrule. How fortunate he was with you this evening.”
“…All of Hyrule is fortunate in Sir Link,” Zelda said.
“Agreed heartily, Princess,” the Prince said with a smirk, his gift still concealed.
Harming her would be madness, even for a royal guest. Madness.
Yes, this was Holodrum. There were relations to consider, as the Prince had pointed out months ago—but that applied in reverse. Surely the Prince could see that.
Unless, of course, he was mad.
Zelda’s feet shifted ever so slightly.
It had been him, somehow. He'd arranged it to compel her to remain late to save face. He'd made his own exit early, yet here he was.
He’d said Zelda had to take it.
The undercurrent in those words sent a shiver up her spine. Her body shrunk toward Link.
Perhaps he felt it, for his arm curled nearer to her, protective, his voice diving low in his chest. “Reveal your hand, Prince Carsdile.”
“Why, Sir Link,” the Prince said, his voice rancid. “Do you believe I conceal something dangerous?”
“I believe you have no excuse to hide anything that isn’t,” Link growled.
Zelda gasped. “Link-“
“I may hide anything I wish. In fact, you have no right to intrude upon us. Leave us immediately.” Something foreign to Zelda flashed in the Prince’s eyes.
“Like hell-“
“This is highly inappropriate, Prince Carsdile,” Zelda said, her voice hardened in an anger new to her, though tremulous. “My knight shall not leave my side, and I fervently hope to never, under any circumstances, find myself alone with you. Now go. At once!”
The Prince stared at her a long moment, his lip curled. With one dour glare at Link, he stepped aside and into another deep, formal bow, his arm outstretched, granting them passage.
Link’s nostrils flared, his unblinking eyes trained on the Prince.
The stillness became a strain of wills, every breath a lynel’s roar.
The Prince raised his eyes, his expression droll. He straightened with an obvious roll of his eyes, his hand landing on his hip.
Zelda placed her palm between Link’s shoulder-blades: a slight pressure. Let’s go.
Link’s back resisted.
The Prince rolled his eyes again. “Very well. I take my leave, Princess,” he said, beginning to walk past them. Link corralled Zelda, herding her behind his back, his body between her and the Prince at all times.
Once in front of Link, she began to hurry—and a sudden twist of boots on stone spun her to see the Prince’s arm revealed, something long in its grip, and Link having grasped it, ripping it up and away from Zelda, his fingers dug between the Prince’s tendons just as he said he’d do.
“Link!” Zelda cried, even as she registered the leer on the Prince’s face—as she recognized the object Link had forced him to drop. It fell slow to the stone with a swish: a single, black rose at the end of a long, thorned stem, of a green so deep it neared black itself. Zelda stared, at a loss, a cold creeping in from her toes and fingertips.
The Prince barked a laugh. Link released him with a bewildered glare.
“What do you mean by this?” Zelda asked, staring at the fallen flower. “I am not in mourning.”
The Prince’s shoulders shook with laughter. “You will be. Soon.” He sneered at Link.
Zelda’s eyes shot wide.
She gripped Link’s bicep and pulled even as the Prince began to yell.
“GUARDS! GUARDS!” he cried, his voice imbued with a facsimile of righteous anger.
Zelda yanked Link but dared not speak lest anyone hear her. Fortunately, he understood.
They ran.
--
Zelda had not allowed Link to lead her.
She could hear the Prince and a commotion not far enough away.
They would never make it to her chambers unseen.
She’d steered them elsewhere, toward the only place nearby she thought safe. Her breath thundered like the base of a waterfall, her footfalls like the blades of the Yiga had found her once more, and when they crossed the threshold of the dark library floor, both echoed in the voluminous space.
How would they not hear it?
They would hear it-
“Z-“
Zelda hushed Link with a hiss and a wave of her hand, sprinting the shortest path to the massive bookshelves along the eastern wall. She spared a painful clip of her thigh on the corner of a table no more than a grunt, flying to a particular case and fumbling deep at the back of a shelf almost too high for her.
“Z-?”
She waved Link quiet once more.
She found the lever and pulled. Link’s soft ‘oh’ occurred just after this section of the bookcase swung outward—and just before another did along the southern wall.
Zelda’s gasp shot sharp through the library as she yanked Link into the recess, pulling hard on the case to close it, close it quickly-
Link helped. It shut, cutting off the already meager light of stars and exterior braziers. They stood in vantablack.
Link’s breathing evened, but hers continued to rattle, her limbs trembling violently as the sound of heavy boots scuffed toward them, muffled.
Zelda jumped at the feel of Link’s hand at her shoulder, but she leaned into it, and into his arm as it braced her shaking back; yet the sudden arrival of leather at her lips jolted her in an entirely different way, her back arching, her mind reeling with whiplash.
His leathered glove pressed, though gently, flush to her mouth and chin—then to her chest, where her heart echoed the beat of a hunted fox.
The boots had come level with their bookcase.
Link repeated his motion: a press to her mouth and chin, then to her chest, the message clear.
Shhh. Calm.
She nodded. She nodded again, frantic. She begged her heart to slow, her breaths to even. When the next didn’t, Link snaked the hand at her shoulder around her front, pulling her against his chest. She gripped his forearm, and he returned the hand to her mouth. She nodded, pressing it there harder herself, hoping it muffled the sound, trying to ignore the familiar heartbeat it stirred in her depths as voices drifted through the rush of her body’s sounds.
“…sire…”
“…seen…”
“What? Explain yourselves,” the king’s voice rang strong and clear through the wall directly in front of them.
“…looking… Princess… Link…”
Her father guffawed. “It is inappropriate for you to seek my daughter at this late hour.”
Link’s cheek twitched against Zelda’s ear. She couldn’t help her shiver.
“Her knight laid hands on me,” the Prince said. “I demand he be detained. By rights, he should be delivered into the custody of my soldiers for trial in Holodrum’s high court.”
Silence pressed in on Zelda’s lungs.
“Guardsmen,” her father said, “did either of you witness this?”
“No, sire.”
“Have you seen Princess Zelda or her appointed night?”
“No, sire.”
The king’s boots scuffed twice. “No one has come through here but you.”
Zelda twitched back against Link, a concession to shock. He jolted in response, his nose suddenly in her hair behind her ear, his breath unignorably hot.
“You are mistaken, sire,” the Prince said, his sneer audible even through all that wood.
So was her father’s anger. “I am not mistaken. I have been in this room, alone, for at least half an hour.”
“We could hear them,” the Prince seethed. “Guardsmen! Tell your king you heard-“
“It is not for you to dictate what my people tell me,” her father said, his voice distinctly raised. “No one came through here. It sounds as though no one witnessed this incident, either.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“I’m calling an accusation without evidence baseless.”
“The evidence is here, on my wrist.”
“Perhaps when there’s more light, I will look. But your wrist, Prince Carsdile, would only show what, and not who.”
“I am telling you who.”
“And I am telling you it’s not enough.”
Zelda’s knees had weakened, Link’s forearm now holding her tight enough to support a portion of her weight. Her fingers dug into him, harder with each tiny brush of his skin and breath on her, the fact of Link pressed so tight overtaking the adrenaline.
“Your business here is concluded, Prince Carsdile,” the king said. “The guardsmen and I shall see you to your quarters.”
“I do not need-“
“Just to be safe,” her father clarified. Zelda twitched again and it pushed her against Link’s hip. She swore she felt him shudder.
Four sets of bootfalls moved toward the north end of the library. Voices buffeted the walls, indistinct.
At length, it all faded to silence.
All but their breath and the blood in Zelda’s ears.
The texture of his glove on her lips tingled, its presence secondary only to the press of him on her rear. At some point, her back must have arched. She couldn’t straighten it.
When he spoke in her ear, she jumped.
“Are you okay?” he said.
She nodded and nodded, registering a small sound like a pant when she moved so suddenly against him. Then he gasped and uncovered her mouth.
“Sorry- I’m sorry, Zelda! I should have-“
She threaded her fingers through his and guided that arm to lay across her waist instead.
He curled around her; his nose moved in the echo of a nuzzle, a beat of extra pressure in each of his arms saying everything she wished to hear.
“I’m glad you did,” she said.
He swallowed. “It helped?”
She hesitated a moment, licking her lips, a trace of the gloves still upon them. “Yes. And…” she breathed.
She breathed faster.
Link squeezed her again. “Zelda?”
“…I liked it,” she whispered.
That caught his breath for certain, his thigh shifting against her, and for the first time, Zelda felt him trembling, a tiny deviation in the set of his arms across her, in the muscles of his chest. His breath became slivers of air tickling the shell of her ear, fluttering their way into her, his lips brushing her peach fuzz. “So did I.”
Zelda arched even more, his voice her puppeteer, it seemed—pressing hard to him, his response to open his mouth wide, pant in her ear, and stroke her stomach with that gloved thumb of his. She whined, though she tried not to, tried to keep it quiet.
He stopped. She heard and felt his convulsive swallow. “Gods,” he whispered.
She struggled not to rock against him, to give him the courtesy of stopping when he did, but her hips would not obey, pressing her softness to him in tiny increments. She shook her head. “F- forgive me-“
He buried his face in her hair, heating it with a long, shuddering breath. “For what?”
“I- can’t- seem to stop-“
His abdomen clenched, his soft moan electrifying the top of her spine. “Do- you want to stop?”
“No,” she blurted.
He crushed her tighter to him. She wondered if he could feel her mouth fall open, how much air she needed to fuel the fire building between her spine and her navel. His stance shifted, and she felt him, his contour of desire molded to the padding at her hip, his voice a low scintillation echoed in vibrations of her spine. Then he pulled back.
She nearly launched into a protest, but that arm across her chest eased her over, the other lowering to cross her hips, and she understood with breath heating in anticipation. He pulled her back, centered on the rock of his length, punching all the air from her lungs and urging her legs open to feel more of him. He met her grinds with his own, his arm amplifying the rhythm she’d set, resonating with her heartbeat and the pulse of muscles where she felt herself slickening.
His name floated from her mouth on three rapid breaths—then all words failed at the touch of his lips beneath her ear. A voiceless ‘oh’ shaped her face, and he kissed his way up her jawline, her nerves buzzing signals down. He reached her chin, brushed the corner of her mouth with the tip of his nose—she gasped and kissed it without thinking, sensing his smile by the lift of his cheek. He traced the bow of her lip, the curve of her lower, and she shivered against him, shocked as it shot electric commands to her deepest floor, to press—to push—to open.
She opened her eyes only to be met with the impenetrable black of their hiding place.
He must have felt her pout. He laughed a little, cradling her head in the crook of his elbow, and pressed his lips to hers for the first time.
She could have melted into the floor.
Her entire body gave before the sensation. Her instincts knew what to do in the arms of this man’s attention. All she needed was to let him pry her open. Those shocks from his lips on hers shot directly to their meeting place below, and had they been in her chambers, in her bed, she would simply have spread, to welcome him within her for the first time.
Instead, she fought back a whine and tried not to wonder how they would make love in a tiny, abandoned excavation into the mountain, cut short by the sloping wall of the mysterious Sheikah structure below the castle.
Link seemed to sense her confusion. He ran the hand at her waist over her belly, soft and soothing, delving to the small swell beneath her navel, touching her lips sweet with his tongue, a question, and all of it opened her.
When the tip of his tongue slipped inside her, her moan slipped with it. His voice joined hers in her throat. His hand played her like the strings of a harp, plucking vibrations from her body, wracking her frame with jolts and wriggles, changing the timbre of her trembling with each nerve he passed by. His voice, his hand, his lips, his tongue, all coaxed her open, her knees taking so little weight, her thighs spread, her center swelling, aching to accept the evidence of his love for her—for she knew it for love.
Link broke their first kiss with a distinct shiver of his breath. “We’re- being a little loud.”
Zelda swallowed, shaking her head. No one to hear. The words would not emerge.
Link pressed his forehead to hers. “Do you think you can keep quiet?”
She bit her lip.
He slid his cheek against hers. He slipped back and around her head, a journey to the ear he hadn’t yet spoken in. His voice lowered an octave there. “If you can’t, do you want me to help?”
She nodded with a sharp gasp.
He smiled against her neck and pressed a sweet kiss to her pulse point; she pooled into her undergarment.
The hand at her belly slid down her thigh. It quivered under him as Zelda tamped the high whine in her throat, and when he began to gather up her skirts, she gasped, gulping breaths.
He paused. “Is- this okay?”
She’d never heard his voice full of such gravel. “Yes,” she managed. “Please.”
He just breathed for a moment, then held her to him as he walked them back. His boots hit wall in little more than a pace, and he leaned back against it—and back, and back, lurching a little with surprise—then relaxing as the wall stopped him.
“I- it’s sloped,” Zelda said, gravity her sudden ally, his hardness partially beneath her, inescapable.
He huffed into her ear and slid his free hand down her side.
He hurried to gather the rest of her skirts, both hands now at work. One held the bulky material up—the other gathered more and more, cool air hitting the full height of Zelda’s legs, and with the window fully opened, he began to caress and knead her thigh.
Zelda clamped her lips shut, biting down on them hard, her head thrown back against his shoulder as every slip, every press of his gloved hand buzzed electric across her swollen seam, his harbinger.
She wanted to beg him.
She couldn’t.
All she could do, her body had already done for her: to grind hard on his length, make him bite back his own moans, too. She heard them, crushed in his throat.
His hand inched upward; Zelda angled her leg out. It made him buck against her, punching air from both of them. His glove reached the edge of her undergarment, his thumb tapping that tendon at the top of her thigh at the rhythm of her now-violent tremors.
“It’s okay,” he said, equally tremulous.
She nodded, turning her head to rub her cheek against him.
His glove brushed soft against her skin and ran light along her clothed sex. She mewled, writhing, shocked a thousandfold. It was nothing like her own hand.
“Shh, shh, sh…” Link soothed in her ear as her heart battered her ribcage.
Her skirts rustled, his hands at work on something. Something soft hit the floor a few feet in front of them. Then his hand returned low and skin—fingertips—ghosted her inner thigh, ramping her breath’s volume up, up, til his ring finger swiped, tentative, up her seam, her entire body a spasm.
Her throat fluttered around his name.
“So wet,” he said, his voice thick with awe. His hand shot to her waistband and slid beneath it, and dear Hylia he was actually going to do it-
His palm pressed to her pubic bone. The high squeak in her throat shot higher as his middle finger slipped into her folds, so slick he met no resistance and so, so, so good. She writhed against him, her breath held, her body unsure whether to grind on his cock or his finger, an indecision of instinct leaving her helpless against both.
Link was the only person in the world safe enough to be helpless with.
He pulsed his hips, his finger echoing their rhythm, hard and soft, hard and soft, her pleasure his flower to tend, coaxing it open. Her skin flushed hot; she flooded with moisture for him. She bit her lip, his ragged breathing a balm for her sudden insecurity. So wet, he’d said. He liked it.
She liked it, too, each press deeper to her, each more adamant that every millimeter between her clit and her entrance feel his intent to pleasure her, reaching closer, closer, closer to the place he could slide inside her. His fingertip edged near, edged her as she strained against his hand, struggling toward the promise of his skin stroking her inside.
“Please. Link. C- close-“
He didn’t do what she expected.
With a moan into her hair, the hand bunching her skirts dropped them—and covered her mouth instead. Zelda’s air sped through her nose, one hand gripping each of his arms as his fingerpad pressed firm and full to her opening, the entire line of her clit enveloped in his curling grip, and she snapped with a cry into his glove and a spasming of her deepest muscles, writhing against the roughness of his giving fingers and his hardness behind her. Link clamped his mouth around the nape of her neck, his full voice penetrating her there, its pitch traveling her nerves to meet the hand pressed so hard to her pussy. She came and she came and she came, the tiniest pulls of his callouses reigniting her, and the moment the pleasure grew too sharp with overwhelming sparks, Link grunted and sheathed his finger within her instead, closing his grip on her wall.
She moaned.
Her voice had abandoned her will. It sounded low and long, the crush of his glove all that kept her from awakening the castle. Her walls swept along Link’s finger, clenching around him in rhythm as her orgasm ebbed from its peak-
And then he began all over again, with pulses of sweet, ecstatic pressure against her soft pleasure point inside.
Zelda became incoherence itself. No motion of her body made sense. She wanted him inside her and yet she had him, just not what she needed most; it translated into a wild gyration of her hips, twitching with each white-hot spark from his palm on her clit, each pulse of his length entrapped against her softness, each fathomless surge emanating from his ardent strokes on her front wall. When he added a second finger, she felt as though she was gushing fluid for him; it was for him, to pave his way to her deepest, most intimate places, yet she couldn’t reach him. He kept her like that while he moaned and sucked on that place her neck and shoulder met, his teeth anchoring her to him, declaring her his.
Only when she slumped entirely against him, her head lolling back, did he release her nape, kissing a sweet, breathless line up the artery in her neck to her pulse point, suckling her there once more. She whimpered, muffled.
He broke his kiss, nibbled her earlobe, and nuzzled her hairline, removing his restraint from her mouth—a calm, though he continued his pulses below. He ran his hand down her neck, softly, her chest, worrying as though unconsciously at her neckline.
“I wish I could see you,” he said.
The haze of pleasure cloaked her thoughts. She became conscious of the heave of her breasts against his gloved fingers, as though straining to let them slip inside.
“I-“ she swallowed. “I commissioned this dress- for you.”
His puff of air fluttered the strands of her hair. “I tried so hard not to look.”
“You succeeded,” she said, “much to my disappointment.”
His laugh shook her entire torso. “How can I make up for it?”
She arched against his cock. This time his head fell back against the sloping wall, his mouth audibly open for air. “You can- take me,” she said, a strange welling of tears in her eyes. “Properly,” she added.
“Properly,” he echoed with renewed pressure to her rear. “Oh,” he said, a pleading tone in his voice. “Can we? Can we do that?”
“Can we…?” It took Zelda’s addled mind a few moments to understand. “Oh- Link… I’ve elixirs ready. You needn’t worry.”
She felt his quizzical look through the dark.
Her shoulders began curling in on herself. “I’d- hoped we’d- at some point-“
He silenced her with a sweep of his lips across hers, an opening of their mouths, enveloping each other, Link’s tongue caressing hers with unmistakable care and attention.
She loosed a high sound, and he moaned deep to her, reaching her darkest recesses inside.
He pushed off the wall, steadying Zelda on her feet, though she shook like a sapling. He stepped around her and eased her back, the steep slope hard against her head and shoulder blades. His hands slid to her thighs and rode upward, shivering her skin, ordering her knees up and out. She struggled to obey but couldn’t entirely—she kept slipping. He thumbed at her hipbones and she rocked against air, the soft brush of his hair on her collarbone the one omen in the dark of the glorious path he kissed down her neck, pausing to suck at her collar’s hollow, then peppering her chest with kiss after kiss in a slow line down to the curve of one breast, spurred by her mewls but thwarted by her neckline. He whimpered his frustration, choosing to kiss his way toward the center, his hands peeling her dress up to reach her breasts, to push them together and sweetly suckle at the swell of each at once. Zelda buried her hands in his long hair, her fingers finding their way beneath his uniform’s stubborn cap, reveling in the small, high sounds leaving his nose.
“I want to see you, I want to see you so bad, I didn’t even look,” he mumbled between nuzzles and kisses to her breast, sounding half-mad with want.
Zelda hushed and caressed him, running her fingernails over his scalp, feeling him lean into her as she did- and stopped short with a gasp.
Link’s head jerked up. “Zelda?”
“I think you can. Help me up?” she asked.
He obliged in an instant, ever her gallant knight. She stumbled on vibrating legs. Link supported her bicep as she walked to one end of the narrow space.
One of her toes found the leg of a wooden chair. She nudged it with a small scrape on the stone floor. Her hands reached the table, patting it down, finding a few scattered papers, and the edge of a round, metal object near one corner. She smiled and felt for a drawer she knew to be there, then for its ever-present matchbox.
Her sightless eyes and fumbling hands failed to strike the match five times. Once lit, its meager flicker revealed uncarved stone behind the desk and the smooth, sloping wall of Sheikah architecture opposite the library’s wooden back. She lit the candle and shook the match out, depositing it in the metal base. Pungent match-smoke struck her nostrils sharp as she turned.
As she saw Link.
She’d never seen him so disheveled.
His hair escaped every smooth contour he’d worked into it—it burst in snatches from beneath his cap, which lay even jauntier than usual, no longer flush with his scalp on one side, pins somewhere keeping it attached. Some strands had escaped his ponytail, the rest puffing from his head thanks to her treatment of his scalp. A deep flush graced his nose, ears, and cheekbones as he breathed heavily, lips parted, drinking her form in just as she’d wished before the ball. Her eyes swept downward, the now-wrinkled uniform disguising the sign of his arousal, but she lingered on his ungloved hand, her thighs quivering at the reality of his fingers inside her.
Link swallowed, his eyes lingering at her breast, then meeting her own. They glittered, little but ebony evident in the candlelight as he stepped forward, cupping her cheeks.
“I love you, Zelda,” he said.
Those tears she’d felt earlier fell without warning. Perhaps they fled the bloom of joy within her. It left little room for anything else.
Link’s face pinched as he swept their trails from her.
“I love you too, Link. I’m- sorry it took me so long.” Her ribs shuddered.
“What?” he said with a little laugh and a smile that pinched his eyes halfway shut. “It wasn’t a race,” he chuckled. He embraced her in warm, strong arms.
She snaked hers up his back, her chin on his shoulder. “But you loved me always, didn’t you?” she asked.
He squeezed her. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t, at first. But your eyes- were never any less intense on me.”
He dragged his forehead over hers til their eyes were exactly even, barely more than an inch apart, his as two depths of fire-flecked onyx fixed on hers. “I like to look at you.”
She smiled and pressed flush to him, catching his breath and restirring her heat. She kissed the back of his jaw; it was enough to make him groan, his mouth shut against the sound, a reminder he’d had no release at all, and she wanted it. She dragged her lips higher, closing wishful teeth on his earlobe, hoping he’d give it to her.
He bucked hard, bumping the table, his voice strangled.
She smiled.
Then she sucked.
It drove him wild. He grabbed her thighs, sending a hot pulse through her as he lifted her with ease, pressing her hard against his length, all that cloth all over him bunching, textures tantalizing the bare skin of her legs around his hips, the pleasure so shocking she nearly let him go; her teeth, her lips clung to him by a thread, regained ground and sucked harder, and he thrust against the place he’d soaked her already, ready, she was ready for him-
He deposited her on the table with a loud scrape of the stone. Zelda gasped- and registered Link’s arm extended, having just saved the candle from tipping.
Link huffed at her forehead like a bull. “Fire. Bad,” he managed.
She nodded, tiny, repeated bobs of her head. “L- loud. Desk.”
He tilted his head with a motion that might have been a shrug. Then he unwrapped her legs, walked the candle far from them, and left it on the floor.
He returned to her with a smolder in his eyes, his silhouette its halo. A vision flashed of her imaginings, of his form before the fire beneath her own mantle, darkened as he took her on her bed. The uniform’s collar and shoulders made him appear to loom over her as she shrunk, her hands splayed on the desk, her arms supporting her as he reached for her thighs—as he caressed them, his thumbs swiping sweet paths up their insides—as he molded his hands to her hips, her waist, her ribs, barely brushing the edges of her breasts—as they met at her back, at its long column of laces.
His gaze held her captive as he undid them.
The bodice constricted her breath less and less, the dip of the dress before her slackening. When the zip of cloth on cloth ceased, he raised his fingers to her trembling shoulders and slid the sleeves down her arms, leather and callouses tickling her skin, lower, lower, his gaze never leaving hers even as air met her breasts freely, as its chill hardened her nipples and flushed her fully self-conscious.
He lifted her arm, freeing it from the sleeve gently with a sweet kiss to the back of her hand, her knuckles, the backs of each finger. She loosed a nervous breath.
He smiled and swooped in for a loving kiss of her lips—then he treated her other arm with equal reverence. Zelda tried to ease her tightened diaphragm—tried not to wonder what he thought of seeing her so exposed. He’d wished to see her, hadn’t he?
Link raised his hands to her neck, thumbing at her jaw, a huffing in the cadence of his breath, something she’d never seen in him before. The asymmetry in textures struck her as he leaned in to kiss her mouth, his tongue warm, delving as his leathered hand caressed her neck and cheek, his bare one winding its way into her hair, bracing her head against his growing force. He slid his tongue against hers, in and out, each entry more insistent. Zelda whimpered half into him and half into the air as he broke off suddenly, trailing his mouth down her windpipe as he leaned her back. She went willingly, hyperaware of the cool at her breasts, her hair spun embers pooling in the dark. His lips slipped down to the valley between her two swells of raw nerves, peaked for him—and he kissed her there, deep and long with a low sound of relief and approval. Her hands shook as they caressed his neck, frustrated, plucking at his undershirt’s high collar. Link raised his head to take in the full sight of her breasts with a strangled moan and kissed the rounded softness just below one nipple, his eyes raised to hers, devout in worship, his lips finally closing fully upon her there, wet and suckling.
It raised her knee to his chest, her heel to his backside, both their hips rolling in air, wanting.
“Please,” her voice said without her.
His mouth quirked in a smile as he sucked her.
Fresh arousal arrived at the edge of her skin, the soaked slip of cloth becoming unbearable, the fabric pulling at her most sensitive edges. She struggled to remove it, but Link grasped her wrists, his eyes pinning her still.
It was nothing like the way he’d defended her earlier.
His hands encompassed her petite wrist bones, an even, firm pressure everywhere as he raised them above her head, leaning over her to do so. It brought his hips to hers and she whined, rocking, tortured.
“Allow me, Princess,” he said.
He released her wrists, resting his palms firm on each for a moment. Stay.
Then he lifted her skirts, the phantom of his multi-textured fingertips scaling her thighs til he hooked her waistband, pulling the offending garment down, down, and off. He placed it on the chair.
Then he looked at her.
Zelda’s modesty roared back into her cheeks, her thighs shutting, rubbing against each other, but he eased them open, gentle, his lips parted, his eyes heavy-lidded. He raised her legs, inviting more candlelight to reach her, and her hands came together, wringing over her stomach.
“Gods, Zelda, you are so beautiful.” He found her eyes. “So beautiful.” He noticed her hands and stepped close, bringing them to his mouth for an earnest, pressed kiss. “Beautiful,” he said.
Then he disappeared. Zelda blinked, propping herself on her elbows to see his cap, hair, and eyes peeking up from between her legs.
He hooked his arms around her thighs with a glint of mischief.
“L- Link-“
His tongue licked a wide, insistent stripe up her entire seam. Her hands clamped tight over her own mouth and her head fell to the table, her eyes sealed shut against the onslaught of a pleasure her imagination had utterly failed to prepare her for.
His tongue was wet.
And soft.
But firm.
And so incredibly generous, lapping at her over and over, shocking her hips up with each pass over her clit and drinking the wetness she made for him. She almost pushed him away- he didn’t seem to understand- he drank her up, but he needed it, for him, so he could enter her, and she mewled nonsense behind her hand, as senseless as the shapes her hips strained to draw against his immovable hands. When his tongue slipped inside her, some low sound erupted from her chest, her heels caressing his shoulders as he slid it in and out, in and out, in and out. A swift swipe through her folds shocked her back arched. His lips found her clit, circling it soft, sucking, sucking, igniting more and more slickened nerves.
She freed her mouth. “L- Link- you… want-“ Her head lolled side to side, her pussy so swollen, aching, soaked, and pulsing—and needing him, needing him inside her.
He released her with a soft suckling sound and a flick of his tongue-tip which twitched her hips up and back down, the wood rattling. She gasped, dimly realizing how loud it had been.
“Are you close?” he asked, the world outside this hidden space grown inconsequential.
Her answer failed against a long column of gentle kisses down her folds, his lips sweeping up her softest skin, the coil inside her clamped upon emptiness.
“Yes,“ she burst when he reached her lowest edge.
“Good,” he said, licking her all the way up to the sound of her shuddering whine. “Because I don’t think-“ he kissed (she writhed)- “I can last-“ he suckled her lips (she moaned into her palm)- “very long-“ he slid his tongue long and wide over the underside of her clit (she all but cried)- “once inside you.”
Her legs spread wider of their own volition. She would welcome the plunge of his cock deep inside her.
Link’s breath rattled against her thigh. He kissed her there, resting his forehead against her, his hands now softened, rubbing sweet circles into her skin. “I want to be inside you,” he said, his voice suddenly smaller.
Two breaths, and the sensation of his unsteady fingertips coalesced, tapping her haunches. She pulled herself, shaking, upright, to gaze down at her quivering knight.
He’d turned his face up toward her, his breath the wingbeats of a golden sparrow, his eyelashes flitting in the candlelight, his cap barely clinging to his head. The play of light on his back revealed the state of him, flutters out of sync with the flickering flame behind him.
She took his face in her hands, caressing his cheekbones. His eyes fell shut with a long, lingering exhale. She removed the pins and his cap, setting them on the table beside her. His ponytail followed. She ran her fingers through his hair. So soft… so different from her imaginings. Freed, it hung like flame turned earthward, flowing wild and shivering with each minute twinge of his body.
She loved him so much.
He was no vain courtier who would assume himself worthy of her—or give her anything less than his utmost care.
He wouldn’t even assume he could enter her with her lying spread for him, desire written in the swell, heat, and dew of her body.
She hushed him, brushing his bangs from his forehead, caressing his neck, thumbing his jawbones. She bent her neck to peer straight down at him, her long hair falling strand by strand from behind her shoulder, mingling with his. “I love you,” she said. “And I want you to fill me.”
His eyes brimmed with worship, searching hers, his mouth open in the shape of awe. He crushed his cheek to her thigh, nuzzling, kissing, smiling at her slightest gasp, that glint of mischief returning. “You want me to fill you?” He turned his head fully to suck her skin.
Her breath came up short, then shorter as his pressure grew, one of her hands still in his hair, the other bracing her against the table as she struggled to answer. “Y- es. Yes.”
He popped free, speaking between soothing kisses. “With… what?”
She whined a wordless complaint.
He smiled, still kissing her. “Is it my cock, Princess?” he asked, his wavering tone contrasting the firm trail he sucked toward her apex.
Her breath fluttered like his as she gripped the edge of the table, a thousand pinpricks of pleasure arising everywhere she’d slickened, pollen on petals, her face still downturned, her hair a shimmering stream, its current toward Link.
He reached the crease where she began to swell for him, his kiss supreme gentleness. He rested his head on her leg, gazing up with that smile, the one from the ballroom, as though he’d secreted some great, joyful truth within himself for later.
She caught her breath on that smile. She traced it with her thumbnail, her reward a breathy laugh, a relapse into shyness. She spoke so quietly. “It is your cock,” she said, caressing his cheek. His entire body seemed to slow, a deep breath and a darkening of his eyes, but she held a slender finger to his lips, leaning down as far as she could.
“It is also your come,” she whispered, the words fragile slivers of air.
His chest heaved, breathing deep, and he caught her hand, kissing the finger she’d silenced him with, then her palm, tiny tastes with the tip of his tongue.
He rose, a sudden flurry of motion. The last glove went, and his corded baldric and scabbard—then his belt. Her hands flew to his buttons, relieved he hadn’t somehow snatched her dreams from her, for he made no attempt to stop her flinging his capelet aside or pulling his heraldry over his head. This was no dream. This was Link—he was real—and she wanted to feel him.
He gripped the hem of his thick undershirt, pulling it over his head, the sight of all those lines edged in muscle instantly dragging her nails down his front. His abdomen clenched and she loved it, feeling every bit of him quiver, trailing down, down, to the buttons at his waistline above his considerable bulge. He’d taken care of the belt already.
She looked her trembling knight in the eye.
Then she undid the first button.
He trembled harder.
It took mere moments to spread the cloth and drag her nails down that bulge beneath his final garment.
His torso curled in on itself, his hand landing hard on the table beside her, a strained soundlessness in his neck’s tendons.
“My poor knight,” she found herself saying. “You’ve put me first, as always.” She folded his pants past his hips, letting them drop to the brim of his boots. Then she cupped him, far back and low, and ran her fingers up the entire length of him.
Every muscle in his body clenched tight as his lips found the crown of her head. He puffed hot breaths into her there.
“It’s your turn,” Zelda said.
She took that last garment down. He burst free of it to her quiet sound of surprise, its length, its thickness, the moisture glistening at its tip finding her salivating, an involuntary reaction to analyze later. She touched it without thinking, the soft pads of her fingers meandering down the shaft, astounded at its smoothness.
Link muffled his moan in her hair.
She repeated the motion, down and up, down and up, firmer, more sure of herself each time, his hips rocking to her rhythm, her hand soon sliding further to cup the softer aspect of his sex. She loosed a soft ‘oh’ and he groaned, his hips easing forward to rub his cock against her thigh. The trickle of his arousal startled her from her astonished exploration of his textures; she reached for it with her other hand, fingertips testing the waters of his head as she caressed his soft skin below, and the sound he made evoked the pain of torture.
“Is- is this alright?” she asked, still spreading his moisture down his head.
“G-“ he breathed out a long breath. “Gods, yes. I just- I just don’t want to- go early.”
She turned her face up to see his slackened, near delirium. “It feels that good?” she asked, enthralled.
Something dark flashed in his eyes. “It does.”
“What about this?” She slid her hand to the base of his length, wrapped it around him, firm, and gave one long, smooth, stroke, her fingers a light graze of his head’s skin at apex.
It was as though she cut his stings.
He half-fell upon her, both hands supporting his weight, his entire frame quaking, thighs braced against the table.
“Zelda,” he said, panting.
His cock had dented her belly, a deep deviation, a suggestion. She couldn’t tear her eyes from it. She pressed it harder to her, rocking. Link groaned as another burst of his fluid marked her; then he wrapped his fingers, once more, around that wrist.
She released him with a shiver. He rubbed his cheek against hers.
He passed her hand behind her back with an intense stare as he retreated, pulling her with him on her skirts so she hung cushioned just off the edge of the table, bare except for the part of her gown pooled around her hips. She shook hard, a phantom sensation of what he’d do to her raw upon the tip of every nerve. The slip of his finger inside her blazed over and through the ones he touched, flung her open, a low sound, quiet and deep, of grateful acceptance budding within her. She was ready. He didn’t have to—he could just take her-
Words rode so soft on his breath. “Still soaked.”
She was.
He began attending to that soft spot within her in earnest, building her body’s waves just because he could. She moaned and moaned, soaking his hand—and she felt him love it, his erection an inescapable fact against her inner thigh. All he had to do was give it to her.
His voice, dark thickets in her ear. “I’m going to take you, now.”
She drew a flutter of breath, her hips angling up for him, her knees pulling back. A tiny sob left her as he withdrew his hand, but the first press of his head’s silken skin to her entrance plunged her voice to its depths. She scrabbled at his shoulder, a stab of uncertainty despite the aching pleasure promising to bloom somewhere deep upon his reach. She felt his friction begin to pull her in, and he retreated a fraction, running his head along her soaked seam, gathering everything her body had prepared for him. Each pass of him over her clit arced sharp spasms through her, crushing sound from her shocked-open mouth.
“Ah- ah- ah!”
“Shh- shh shh shh…” Link hushed, a smile carried on the shape of the sound. He slowed, using himself to stroke her low, then braced her tailbone, nestled himself at her entrance once more, and pushed.
He was all she could hang on to.
She panted as she spread, his girth so much already with so little of him taken, certain he could feel her heart pulsing all around him, her nails digging into his back and shoulder, desperate for an anchor. He pushed harder and her back arched, mouth thrown open to the ceiling as his head popped past her opening, and everything inside her seized.
“L- Link,” she said, trembling on the edge of him, her diaphragm paralyzed.
He pulsed inside her, his minutia sharp against her tightened walls.
She couldn’t unclench.
“Zelda?” He cupped her cheek, slid his hands to her hair. His lips found her neck—sweet, fluttering kisses, a line of butterflies flitting up her skin. “Breathe,” he said, rocking slow inside her. “It’s okay. I have you.”
She wrapped both arms around his shoulders, a choked sound in her throat as her hips drew a small, needy circle.
He splayed his hand wide at her tailbone, caressing her soft curves there. The other kneaded the padding at her hip, the crease of her thigh, her haunch. He nosed the hair from Zelda’s ear, whispering. “I love you.”
“I love you,” she said.
He rocked. “I love you so much.”
She trickled, every nerve raw.
“I want you to feel so good.” The thumb at her thigh slid lower—to her clit—a gentle swipe. She whimpered.
She opened.
“Can you take me deep, Zelda?” Link panted. He swept his thumb again, slow, sweet, slick circles.
She mewled, something uncontrollable changing in the grip of her muscles—uncontrollable by her, but not by Link. She opened further.
He slipped deeper inside.
The stretch had her reeling.
“You can,” he said. “You’re a Goddess. You can take me.”
Each glide along her clit coaxed her insides more giving to his form. Each press of his hardness, deeper and deeper, lulled her toward boundless euphoria, the pulse in her floor now the blooming ache around the rock of him inside her. A turning point arrived with him nearly sheathed, when he’d passed some guarded threshold; when the flow of her within changed, the grip of her walls urging him inward, resistance turned siren-song. Her body would sing it only for Link, his love for her, to be taken deep and sequestered within her.
She knew he felt it. It sang in his wavering stance, in his convulsive swallows. In the flutters of his roughened breath. Upon one particularly sweet stroke of his thumb spreading slickness to her clit, she bloomed fully inside, and Link sank the last inch inside her unopposed, their moans entwining in the atmosphere, Zelda’s shape altered upon Link’s.
Her pleasure lay as open as her heart.
He began to slide within her.
She began to melt.
Small strokes at first, his throat bobbing, gasps on the end of each swallow. His forehead fell to hers, his nose puffing air past her cheek. “You- Zelda.” He struggled for words. “F- feel. F…”
He returned to just breathing.
She understood. She felt it, blossoming, blossoming, the press of bodily joy expanding out, expressed in muscle, sinew, and blood, so deep, so overfull, so near to spilling. “Good, Link?” she asked, voice thickened. “Does it feel good?”
His head bobbed against hers, in rhythm with his length.
She brushed her lips to his, arching, brimming as he rocked microcosms within her, each a conflagration of sparks. She kissed each of Link’s parted lips, so very soft. He kissed her back, lingering, unfocused.
She ran a hand up his neck, caressing his hairline. “Are you holding back?”
Another bob of his head.
“You- needn’t,” she said, gasping on the next heated bloom.
His eyes opened, so near to hers, flickering like midnight sky. A beat, a breath, and another press to her deepest apex, and he changed his motion.
He slid almost entirely from her, then all the way in, a long, slow, deep stroke—a multitude of nerves blazing on his cock, filling her again to the brim, pleasure a wave of open flame.
He did it again, his mouth falling open with hers. She squirmed, whining on the end of his sheathed length, her legs wrapping tight around him.
Next time, he didn’t stop. In and out, full and near to empty in an utterly unbroken rhythm, with no time for the pleasure to recede, her Link filling her, reaching far beyond his body, further into her where she kept opening and opening and opening.
“L-Link.”
“Oh,” he breathed with a kiss to her cheek. “Yes. Say that.”
“Link.”
His hands and mouth grew restless. He kissed her jaw—he kissed her lips. Her eyebrow. The bow of her lip. His hands wandered, touching, open, bracing, caressing, shoulders, back, the soft curves she rested on, breasts. He kept moving, and each touch a shot of newfound joy, of loving attention, stoking her soul every bit as much as her body with his love for her.
It happened almost peacefully.
One of Link’s hands caressed her side, the kiss of his callouses; the other kneaded a delirious circle into her rear, Zelda’s entire body thrown wide open on the end of him, fathoms deep, and everything within her pulsed in a unison of heart, body and spirit. She drew an astonished breath; Link’s gasp the final catalyst. That blooming warmth unfurled as Zelda came, moaning Link’s name, her voice spiraling senselessly, her hands gripping his back, her heels urging him forward as her ecstasy became the most intimate and loving caress her body could give, rooted in a place so deep no lies were possible. Link puffed ragged in her ear, quaking, still taking her slow; she recognized his gallantness, his desire to suspend her at peak, but two more strokes and he shuddered, erratic, his next entry a plunge. His fingers gripped her rear, crushing her hard to him, and his base leapt where they joined, flush, her name a ghost on his breath.
She knew, she knew what he was giving her and she threw her mouth open, astonished by the bliss of Link’s come inside her. His shivers radiated from the base of his spine, gasping and gasping, and her body suckled him sweetly, wave upon wave of aching pleasure drawing in every gift his cock gave her. She would take it all. She would take him deep and take his come deeper, and she would carry his love bodily with her into calamity itself.
They pulsed around and into each other, held tight, basking, their heartbeats mingling at the press of their chests and everywhere his cock touched her.
Link ran his hands down Zelda’s sides to her haunches, her thighs, her knees—then all the way back, wrapping her in the warmest embrace she’d ever received, boundaries blurred, melting into each other’s skin. They both trembled.
“Zelda,” he said, a kiss to her neck.
“Link,” she said, smiling, glowing. She glowed in the dark, even though they couldn’t see it.
She thought he did, too.
They stayed like that a long time. Link began to stroke her hair. She nuzzled her way into the crook of his neck.
“We should be in my bed,” she mumbled eventually.
He huffed. “Someone might notice your unguarded door.”
“… Link?”
“Yeah?”
“…You’re not guarding it now anyway.”
“…Oh. Right. Right,” he said, his pitch heightening as he pulled back a bit. “We…. have to get you out of here.” He swallowed. “How long do you think it’s been?”
She shook her head. “Perhaps… an hour or two?”
“Right. Right.”
Cleanup was rather more of a challenge than either of them had bargained for, but they persevered, dressed themselves, and returned the small space to its previous state.
They listened with great caution before pulling the lever.
The library stood chilly, dark, and silent.
Zelda blew out the candle.
--
The next morning, Zelda flew to her door before even stepping into her slippers.
There he was—refreshed, dressed in his everyday tunic, already smiling at her over his shoulder.
“Good morning, Princess,” he said with a twinkle.
“Good morning, Sir Link,” she returned with a haughty lift of her chin.
He raised a finger. “I have something for you,” he said, backing up.
Her face fell.
“No, really- it’ll only take a minute.”
He rushed the few feet to his own small chamber door, emerging a few moments later with the black rose, its stem freshly cut on an angle in a glass vase.
Zelda grimaced. “What- why? And where did you get it?”
Link chuckled. “Prince Smarmsdile must’ve tossed it in a bin in the library on his way out. I picked it up.”
Zelda shook her head. She’d been in quite a state, attempting to return to her room unseen—apparently more so than she’d even realized.
Link looked both ways before stepping into her chambers. He eyed the room as she shut the door.
“There.” He put it on her writing desk. “They’ll think you’re studying it or something.”
Zelda half-smiled at her knight. Now that his arms were otherwise empty, she slid hers beneath them and nuzzled her face into his chest. He held her tight there.
It took only a moment for his breath to quicken.
“You… Zelda, last night…” he said with a kiss to the crown of her head.
She flushed. She kissed his cheek. “Yes.”
Then she caught the rose out of the corner of her eye. “I do not intend to study it, nor do I think you thought I would. So- why is it here?” she asked again.
He smiled. He caressed her cheek. He kissed the corner of her mouth. “Because it gave us last night,” he said, soft.
Her smile spread slow, her eyes twinkling on the end of it. “Oh, I see. And… this morning,” she said.
Link blinked. “Huh?”
She giggled as she pulled him to bed, carnation pink, her blush the first bloom of summer.