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The whispers of Hyrule’s Cathedral seem to be as ancient as the kingdom itself. It’s haunted , the children say. A crossroads between worlds , the old wives’ tale claims. Understandably so—it looms on the eastern edge of Castle Town like a darkened hull, like a warship on a tumultuous black sea. Its spires stretch into the darkened sky like grotesque fingers, reaching for oblivion while its buttresses stand tenaciously where they anchor in the ground. The entire structure wails with dread as the wind picks up and slips through each crack, each aperture, each hint of vulnerability in its walls. And perhaps the ghosts of Hyrule’s past are looking on, peeking around the pilasters and rising from the mausoleum to investigate their newest guests as flesh and blood make their way down the aisle.
Perhaps they consider her to be one of them, a wraith already. An empty promise. A death sentence.
Inside the cathedral, there is little to welcome the visitors save endless panels of chilled stone, two perpetual flames that hold vigil on either side of the altar, and her: light licks up to reveal hints of bronze along the apse and gives life to the stone hewn eyes of Hylia’s visage where she dwells quietly beneath the vaulted dome. The altar beckons as it does at the end of each week, votive candles waiting patiently for the girl with the blood of the Goddess to whisper them to life. Other duties await there, too—a libation and prayers to keep her occupied until midnight. Zelda kneels upon the top step, dove gray long worn smooth by centuries of pious feet, and she turns her eyes up to the graven image and brings hands together to silently greet whoever dwells there.
Someone does linger there; her perpetual shadow swaddled in the deep colors of her family’s house. Trims of brassy gold along the stretches of navy, hints of ruby red that cling to understated muscle and his hands and feet cloaked in alabaster white; she wonders how he manages to breathe beneath it all when he’s cloistered so handsomely, shrouded in ceremony. Hazy jade turns out towards the gloom and finds him so perfectly packaged in his deep, decorative wraps, the cap on his head somehow like a flower bow she’d find above a Yuletide gift; edge binding breaks cleanly, and the dark color gives way to the warm ivory of his skin and it’s there that she meets blue eyes so unwaveringly hopeful that they could set the beeswax candles alight all on their own.
This look—this is the balm that rests upon her back when she petitions at the Sacred Spring, a look long mellowed from the steel he’d first wrapped himself up with years earlier. It moves her deeply, in ways that crumple the edges of her soul and numbs her fingers and has vespertine thoughts diverted for unmarked territories; if she’s frightened by the prospect, she doesn’t show it. And it’s this look that he retreats behind, caught entirely off guard in her line of sight. He doesn’t yield much, flinches inconspicuously and holds true to that silent promise he’d made all of those months ago.
There are many unknowns—this is not one that the Princess of Hyrule fears.
“I apologize that you lose yet another evening to my religious duties.” She doesn't sound particularly sorry, not when she’s all pursed lips and wide, blinking eyes. Her cheeks pool with the soft brushstrokes of candlelight. “You sacrifice greatly for me. Perhaps someday I’ll find a worthy way to repay you for all of your troubles.”
“Your troubles are my troubles. I’d wait here until morning, if you asked me to.”
It’s remarkable just how vile worlds like these sound when they’re spun in aristocratic mouths. Zelda knows—he must know, too—that’s all little more than smoke and mirrors: the wealthy grow with veiled threats and innuendos bunched firmly at the backs of their throats, intentions weaved slyly through even the simplest of thoughts. Sometimes, the thoughts sound like third-rate poetry, heart extracted entirely—but in Link’s mouth she hears the beauty, the concern. She hears the heart that the lords and dukes and the viscounts could spend lifetimes failing to harness. Zelda clings to her theories that Link would be better served outside of her company—he should be enjoying his youth in the taverns of Castle Town rather than wasting away in this land of shadows. He should have treasures laid at his feet with the finest of musicians playing in his honor, mead-soaked voices swirling about while he decides which low-cut dress he’ll leave crumpled at the foot of his bed later that evening.
“If the wind decides to carry a storm in, you might very well have to. Have to blame the Goddess for that, though.” Her smile cuts across her shoulder, a hand lifted to tucke loose curls behind an ear. It’s rather demure for a girl set genuflect—amusingly polite against the blackhearted squall that batters the cathedral walls. Link mirrors her look, a smile notched into his cheek before he assumes the familiar position a small distance behind her, the Master Sword’s scabbard balanced vigilantly beneath him as if he’s anchoring it into the ground and conquering this place as his own.
Zelda turns to where the altar waits impatiently, not ready to divert her attention just yet. It’s hard to believe there had ever been a time when the colors of Link’s voice had been kept a secret from her—that she’d never known just how much comfort he could manage to thread through them without hardly a thought as to how to actually do it.
“You really don’t mind?” she asks over her shoulder, eyes turned up to the Goddess’ carved smile.
“Never have, never will,” he calls back, and it feels a bit like the sun.
She considers the assertion every bit as meticulously as though were studying the convex cells of withered Silent Princess petals in her study. He’d witnessed her failure at the Spring of Power—comforted her as she sobbed in the miserably cold water and cradled her to sleep while silent tears stained his tunic. Laid still until the vocalises of Akkala birdsong roused her from sleep against his shoulder the morning after. And now he lingers here, locked away from the wine and roasts and the fluttering lashes and blushing looks. It feels a bit like lightning striking the cathedral when the realization dawns on her: he doesn’t mind her faults, doesn’t mind her shortcomings. Doesn’t mind that she carries in his life in her hands.
That sun burns a little brighter.
“Right, then.” Zelda rises from where she kneels, precise in her step to keep from stumbling across the dramatic swoop of draping sleeves. Her vision crinkles in the murky shadow as she runs her glance along the curve of the ambulatory, tricks of light teasing and taunting—but granite eyes await, and the call of insipid stone rings as clear as ever.
An obelisk, Link once learned while idling in the shadows of one of the Princess’ lessons, is meant to represent eternity, immortality—a connection between all things profane and celestial. The thought humors him, because Hateno had never thought to give much in the ways of theory and religion, of history or philosophical thought—it had given him numbers, an alphabet, basic concepts of economics and botany: it had taught him how to live and die in the village. It could have never anticipated that it would carry a son with a legendary soul, with his holy blade cradled at his side. An obelisk , he thinks—it is the word that comes to mind when he watches the Princess rise before the altar and stretch long fingers up towards the heavens while hints of gold chatter around her wrists. The girl with the blood of the Goddess stands with open arms, reaching towards the heavens as though she were sculpted of pristine marble herself.
“Goddess Hylia, draped in the golden light of the sun, crowned with the stars in the night sky—we look to you for guidance in the tumult. Goddess above, grace us with your presence, shape our hearts and make us ready to hear you. We shall lift our voices to join the heavenly chorale in your name.” Her words are illuminated when speech turns to music, proclamations suddenly threaded through the murky minor of a scale. A familiar hymn, the one that fills the nave at each week’s end. He particularly likes the part when the piece brightens up—when her voice dips low, honeyed and warm when she settles on words like mine or love. And soon, the melody yields, and the fading tones of Zelda’s prayer are washed away by the wailing of the wind outside.
She turns her attention to where the first candle waits expectantly. The old flames burn brightly, and Link feels a bit of relief at the fact that she won’t have to fumble around in the dark for a bit of flint and tinder. She lights the first candle with intercessions—words prepared by the conduit of divine power, he notes.
“We pray for the Sheikah scholars who work tirelessly to preserve all that you have allowed your people to accomplish. Blessed Goddess.”
Silence.
“We pray for the soldiers who give their lives for your people. We ask that they know kindness and comfort in the face of battle. Blessed Goddess.”
Silence.
“We pray that the children of Hyrule may grow strong and wise. That they are given the systems needed to ensure prosperous futures.”
Silence.
“We pray for…”
Heels of his boots dug anchored, Link steels himself for a long night with a quick roll of his shoulders and a breath that sits heavy in his belly. A yellow stained moon slips across the sky, its pale face soon slotting directly through one of the cathedral’s slender windows: the hour is late. Link doesn’t mind it much, really—being here after dark gives her an ease she can’t find in the daytime. He likes the cathedral best in the late morning, when lighthearted gold seeps through the rose window and soaks the aisles with blues and greens and yellows. He likes the way the Princess looks with her face burnished pink, doe-eyed and radiant while she’s bathed in the teal light. But the daytime brings too much noise, too much attention—it brings the judgment of ministers and the holy attendants, the desperation lodged in every parishioners' hope.
She insists he’s got something to mourn by being here in the quiet hours. He feels quite differently. He knows his place.
Zelda works her way down the procession of candles as one prayer after another falls from her lips, and when she reaches the last to be lit, its flame is quickly trembling to life beneath one final thought: “We pray for Link’s safety. We pray that Hyrule’s greatest gift may find victory in his endeavors. But, most of all, we pray that you will see him fit for a long, prosperous life.”
If she’s named him before like this, it’s only been whispered into the wick like a best kept secret. The monosyllable has his heart thudding squarely in the back of his throat, staccato and chirping. He has to turn the prayer over again in his mind once, twice—has to reconstruct the words in her precise voice and savor them like the last of the summer time berries back home. And Zelda’s words repeating in his mind turn into something else—other memories of her that he’s come to savor in recent weeks: the easy scent of lavender while she rests in his arms beside the Spring of Power, the smooth cream of bare arms as she pulls him in for warmth, the soft flutter of gold fanning across her cheeks when she finally comes to in the breaking dawn. The easy lull of “I don’t deserve you” murmured languidly into his tunic. Just once—only once—has he known these things. But once is enough for him to truly believe that she is poetry.
Candlelight ebbs in his name, and the lilt of Zelda’s voice descends up the altar once again. This second hymn is more contemplative than the last, a brief refrain that somehow manages to take the somber shadows around them and dip them further into ink—it’s a mournful sound, intentionally so as to give way to the pleas that the most faithful have requested. Parchment crinkles between chilled fingers as Zelda unfurls a scroll, and she cranes her neck forward and strains to read the first line of requests through the bleak light.
And then she makes a snorting sound, like the sound a stray dog might make when it yelps in sleep.
Zelda glances back at him so quickly that he doesn’t have a moment to find the embarrassment in her eyes. “I— sorry .” She looks back again, her forehead wrinkled. “It’s just—this first one is ridiculous.”
“How so?”
“'Goddess above , we pray that my wife will finally discover her culinary talents, as I will not last another week at her kitchen table. ’
Link’s eyes narrow. “Charming,” he deadpans. “Is there a name attached to that one?”
“Unfortunately, no.” Zelda sighs, exasperation all too clear. “Is this truly how I’m meant to be spending my time? I refuse to offer these sentiments on their behalf.”
There are, Zelda finds, many others in similar veins. Foolish thoughts and absurd concerns, all spelled out plainly in fine ink entirely wasted on such matters. Link hears her mumbling softly to herself as she parses through the remainder of the prayers in search of something worth offering up: she begs the Goddess to bless a child in Castle Town whose health will not sustain her until her next birthday, calls upon Her to bless a newly married couple.
Perhaps they’re not all bad , he thinks.
But it’s as if Hylia herself means to interfere when he hears the next prayer read aloud:
“We pray that the Princess of Hyrule will remember her obligations to her people. Please help this poor child before she dooms us all.”
There is something indescribable about the way a heart breaks. It starts with a quick jolt to the system, a shock arrow down the spine—and ends with the goad of a blade between her breasts, taunting the skin, twisting all that’s protected by bones long grown weary. It’s peculiar, because there’s never a memory of a heart mending once it’s torn—it breaks and breaks again, crumbling into itself: a heart made paper thin after so much grief. But she is made all the harder for it.
“I can’t blame them.” Her voice is thick with conviction, and the admission in her own ears—the acceptance — is enough to send her lip quivering. And perhaps this surrender is the only thing in all of Hylia’s creation that can ever be truly hers. Zelda rolls the scroll up and tosses it aside, the soft whisper of it tumbling across the few steps almost stormy in her ears.
“Goddess above, your daughter lays herself at your feet and implores you for your wisdom. For too long you have evaded her—evaded me . It feels impossible…when I carry your blood, when I house each of your wishes for your people…” Her body strains with an anger it hasn’t carried since her mother’s passing, throat inflamed and molars tight, “...and yet I am nothing to you. Steel and stone seem to be worth more than my flesh and blood. You would let the inhabitants of this world know the greatest suffering before opening your arms to me.” Her voice shakes incredulously, as if she’d been asleep the length of her adolescence and only just found herself waking to the circumstances. “I cannot fulfill my duties without your guidance. I am incomplete.”
Zelda tears her eyes away from that wretched slab of stone, seeking comfort out where it lingers in the dark behind her, and she finds it almost instantly—blue lacquer blooming as bright as an aurora. Even in the face of misery, it thrills her.
“Incomplete,” she echoes, like it’s the start of a conversation, no longer just a call into the void. Zelda relents, relieves her aching knees and smooths her skirts as she rises from the step. “Only half-finished.” She laughs. “Only half a girl. And you have left me this way,” she spats up. “I fight and struggle and I cry and I beg …and none of that suffices.” She glances back just long enough to catch the way distant firelight catches in his tawny hair, eyelids half-lidded in wistful thought. “She would doom you all to spite me, wouldn’t she?” And then, with one last pleading look up at apathetic stone: “What will it take for me to finally be worthy?”
There’s a small sound, only a whisper of elegant fabric rustling behind her, but it’s enough to pull her from the pity she’d been keen to wallow in. Zelda turns to find the unassailable column of Link’s frame bent inside one of the pews, clasped hands at his lips and sacred eyes cast down.
Zelda cannot determine precisely what it is that goes off inside of her—a part of her squirms beneath the vulnerability. Another part of her finds her starving for more.
“You pray?” she finally asks, her voice like a shimmering tremolo against the scrape of gnarled branches at a distant window.
“I do.”
“Often?”
“Every night.” Crystal clear, thrust through the shell of the nave in a voice that cuts cleaner than any blade.
Wind buffets the windows in its tantrum and kicks up sheets of dust when it swipes its cruel hand across the cathedral grounds, running its fingers and tugging pale ivy up from where it drapes across black limestone like a curtain. Even the smallest hint of this night should have gooseflesh plucked up from skin and arm hair standing tall at attention—but blood burns and boils and pulses so loudly in her ears that she swears he might be able to hear it from where he lingers behind her.
“What do you pray to her for?”
“I don’t pray to her.” He swaps his focus on the ridges of threaded fingers for the smoldering viridian of her gaze. “I pray to you.”
It starts slow: the blue of his eyes like a beacon in the dark, a bloom that has her body opening up in return, turning to him; a blue that drags her into the thick of his atmosphere. And it gathers a momentum that culminates at her sternum and breaks her from the altar, pushes her towards him with a step that feels thunderous—a boom of thunder, and then another, and then another still.
“You shouldn’t do that.”
All he can do is look at her, mouth hidden behind the clench of reverent hands, and he looks and looks , eyebrows arching in the middles to look up at her as she moves to close the gap between them, and the hollow chill of the cathedral begins to warm like the first tease of summer through the sweet strain of spring.
“Idolatry. You mustn’t pray to false Gods.” It’s like kneeling beside the crawling roll of lava flow at his side when he looks at her this way, wholly content in his silence while that stately blue dares her to look away. He’ll hear her words, but she knows him well enough by now to know that this is a request that will go ignored, disregarded entirely without remorse.
“I kneel to you. Not Hylia. You. ”
Her belly twists deliciously. “But it doesn’t make sense,” she whispers, eyebrows knit and desperate, her voice as a pale as the quivering light behind her, and she looks so pious this way, with the choir of flames atop the altar raising their voices behind her, their hues across her head like a diadem. “How could something so broken be worth believing in?”
“I don’t believe you’re ‘something broken’ .”
“And if your beliefs are wrong?”
Link falls silent, eyes rolling up and across the imposing architecture as though he’s seeking through in the disfigured shadows. “When I was really small, my mother had this nice vase near the front door. From Lurelin, a really pretty blue. And one day I accidentally knocked it over. And it broke right on the floor and I felt really bad about it. But then…we fixed it— put it back together like a puzzle. And she showed me how to use this gold powder to join all the parts.‘That’s the only way the gold can get in’, she said. ‘Sometimes things have to break so the light can mend them.”
Green eyes shimmer above parted lips, her breath riding so high that delivering a single word might break her.
“So…” he continues, “...even if I’m wrong about you, even if you are as broken as you say…there’s beauty in how we heal. In how we fight back. That’s what inspires me. That’s why I say your name at night, not Hylia’s.”
The thought of her name at his lips, unrestrained and pleading against his pillow, has every hint of her snapping to attention. The pulse of an ache flares up between her legs, sharpening on the edges of each word that he speaks.
“I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.”
Zelda looks at him as though he’s tugged the moon down from the sky for her.
“And if I saw myself the way you see me? How would I feel?” Her voice hums low, dangerous. She lifts a hand to run a gentle thumb along the edge of his cap
“Zelda…” Her name, as sweet as a berry in his voice; a divine sigh on the wind.
“When you pray to me, oh devout knight, what do you say?”
Link steadies himself with an exhale. “I pray that you could know the joy that I feel when I hear your laugh. When I see your smile. And I pray that you never know the misery I feel when I see you in distress.”
“And what do you wish for?” she asks softly, noting the way his eyes brighten discerningly when she lifts his cap and sets it down beside him on the pew.
He licks his lips. “I don’t consider you a wish granter.”
Zelda hums with a slight tilt of her head. “The common folk pray for rains and health and prosperity. Fortunes in their own right. What would you have granted?”
“Peace. Good health. The usual things.” In a way that’s decidedly un-Link, he makes the slightest misstep—an extra blink of his eyes, and Zelda suddenly knows, she knows.
“Your deepest desires, Link. The thing that makes you human.”
He pales. “It’s selfish, Princess.” Desire thrashes up in her chest at the return of her title—he’s nervous, she realizes.
Zelda shakes her head. “If you can find it in yourself to whisper it to me in the quiet, I would like to hear it with my own ears. Please?”
His gaze falls to where the hint of her family’s crest sits along her bodice, his murmur drawn out in a thinning voice. “And if it’s indecent?”
Ravenous winds knock hard at the windows, their urgings pulling her away from where she stands and pushing her into the pew beside him. Silent, glossy green surveys from below half-lidded eyes and his knees tip open as if under a silent command, and fabric whispers loudly beneath her when she places herself upon his knee.
“Then I suppose we are both indecent.” For the first time in her life, the Princess of Hyrule feels the open palm of a man’s gloved hand at her lower back, and it’s like that first hint of gold spilling into each chip in the armor of her. “Will you tell me your secret, Link?”
Secrets are kept close to ones’ chest, swallowed down under fleeting glances and locked away with silver keys—whatever he thinks, whatever he feels , it can’t be much of a secret when the thought blooms so bright in his eyes, as clear as the Crenel Hills across the plains after the cloaks of clouds and rain are pushed aside.
“There are things I want to know about you,” he starts, “things I’d never be able to ask the Princess of Hyrule for.” Zelda sits a little taller, her hips sliding back into the earliest phase of a broad, circular movement; in truth, there’s no intention behind the way she moves, but the way his thigh tenses beneath her has her thinking she might like to try it again with a little more enthusiasm.
“Do you imagine I’m there with you? In your room?” Curled fingers find their way up to his face, the clean white of her intricate gloves a ghostly wave against the warm ochre of his hair. “Am I in your bed when you pray?” she leans in to ask, as if knowing ears might lurk in the shadows.
“You are.” His voice is gruff, devoid of the shame he might have shouldered in the past for such thoughts; he means this, she thinks. He exhales over the easy press of his fingers into the small of her back, wanting and needy and so much closer to breaking than she expects. She shivers beneath his hand.
“You dream of touching me,” she levels with him, blonde eyebrow cocked and lips gently parted in a clever smirk.
“I do.” His voice makes a remarkable accomplice, meticulously collected while emotion flickers across his face. She wonders how much she’ll have to whittle him down—how much further she’ll need to chip away at him before his own gold comes spilling out, gilt and glittering in the inky shadows of the cathedral, flowing across stonework long dusted with age. “But I dream that you want it from me, too.”
“And when I want it, how would I go about asking for it?’ She hears the crinkle of white leather as his hand curls tighter around her, watches him swallow a thought down and finds the nervous twitch of his larynx every bit as tempting as though he were nothing but sandy skin and bared muscles beneath her. “Or does it vary?” If her heart has carried any patience, it’s freshly run out—Zelda is up from his lap, coiled heat unraveling as she spreads her legs and sinks into a straddle above him, expertly crafted skirts catching on the edge of his thighs. “And this?” whispered warmly against the corner of his mouth. She nearly tastes the confession at his lips, tongue greedy for his truths long steeped in the myrrh of her pious obligations.
Below the lupine gleam of his eyes, Link’s hands seek purchase on the flush of her hips, thumbs pressing into stringent fabric so desperately he could puncture the gown. It leaves her unsatisfied, his hands against stitching—she forges a new path, strips his fingers of their sheathes one by one, dusky eyes watching alabaster roll across his hands to leave wanting fingers twitching between her own. “ Here, ” she whispers, hot air against his knuckles before she brings them down to her legs, and she uses his hands to hoist her skirts even further and lets them settle against the black twill of her stockings. There’s a silent curse set against lips pressed thin, and he bites down on a thought that’s every bit as unholy as the way the squall pommels against the narthex doors. Everything buckles beneath the crosswinds: the wooden beams strapped across dark mahogany of the holy doors, chains shivering where the hang through their latches—Link beneath his Princess as she slides her hips closer to his, urges his hands up further and further until they’re disappeared entirely, until bare fingers are set across the hem of her stockings. Until he reaches the border where warm fabric gives way to want-drenched skin.
The pew groans beneath them apprehensively, full bodied and knowing when she makes another sweeping slide against his hips before something new makes itself known beneath her; firm and insistent, his arousal punishingly present between her legs. The little spark of an oh at her lips inches Link’s eyes up and has his fingers gripping at the flesh of her thighs to pull the grind of her hips impossibly closer. Zelda flattens gloved palms across his chest and rocks, easily as at first, but only until she finds herself aware of the way his bottom lip catches between his teeth.
“Come— here —” He breaks her rhythm, the ache of dissonance made all the more tense when he cranes up to catch her mouth with his. Zelda smiles against the sweep of his tongue, satisfied with just how close to the edge of combustion he’d been the whole time. The broken girl could be the one to break him, something unholy whispers up through her body and sends her stomach tumbling. He’s been yours to take from the beginning. Hers to take, all this time. In the quiet, sylvan hum of the Springs, under the bare-knuckled eyes of the castle, under the furor of desert sun; oh, even a fool could have known such a thing—could have seen the distance in his eyes and known it for the longing it was, could have seen the intensity and known it to be a devotion of cosmic proportions. But it had evaded her, in the same way Hylia’s approval has long done.
It’s like a rhapsody when he whimpers into her mouth, like discovering a new taste for the first time—the thrill of finally knowing, of unveiled truths. Her fingers find the skin that calls for them when she takes his face between her hands and holds him steady. It’s only when she finally breaks to breathe, a thread of saliva dangling between them and that poignant look on his face that she finally notices the way her heart pounds against her sternum.
“What are we doing?” he asks, his voice weighted down with the same starry look that’s dancing across his eyes.
“What we want to do. For once.” She can see a question forming in the twitch of facial muscles and beats him to it. “I’m confident that we share the same desires.”
Link nods, slow at first, pace quickening wide just before he’s pulling her back down into the storm. Pursed lips glide across her neck and dampen the fabric of her collar, canines catching against soft skin before he whispers low, “Do you need to finish up here first?”
Hot air luffs against the top of his head, her eyes rolling dazedly beneath the way her stomach lunges at the whisper of consonants against her skin. “Waste of time,” she nearly pants, her fingers threading through locks of hair. She feels him smile against her.
“Finish up, then” he says tersely, and the sound of him leaves her malleable in his arms. She doesn’t have to do much—Link rises from the pew with flourish, flaunts his strength and lifts her with him when he does, carries her up towards the altar with royal hips snapped flush against his own. “Go on, then.” It’s savory , this voice of his—this look, this touch. And Zelda finds herself the key to his ignition. He sets her down just before the altar, candlelight licking up against her front once he turns her around. Searing green eyes find their way up to Hylia’s watch once more, and before she can even find the beginning of a thought, Link’s hand is pushing her skirts up, skimming across her thigh—settling roughly at the damp fabric that covers the apex between her legs. His middle finger slots so neatly against her covered slit that she gasps aloud, bone and muscle jellying in her thighs so violently she has to fight to keep from swooning.
“Goddess above—” a whimper spilled across the altar, “—we pray that you reside in our minds and our wisdom, in our eyes and in our sight, in our—” another whine that sends his touch into a frenzy, “—mouths and our words, in our hearts and thoughts.” There’s a violent arch thrust into her back, and Zelda has to slam two hands down atop the altar to steady herself.
“Is that all?”
Zelda nods with eyes clamped shut. “That’s all, yes—oh!” His finger slides further, deeper, his strokes along her cloaked cunt enough to send her vision blotting with ink.
“Take these off.” His voice is rather mellow, the whisper of a springtime zephyr in her ear, but it rekindles the flame in her, sends her into action like she’s entirely animated by the magic of his sound. And when it’s skin that Link’s hand comes back to meet and his fingers are teasing golden curls and his middle finger slips across the soaked pink of her cunt, it’s almost unbearable. It’s impossible to swallow the second cry down; it blooms golden in her throat, explodes from between parting lips and sends mindless hips thrusting back onto his clothed arousal to earn a series of deep, low sounds from her knight—sounds worth acquiescing to. Zelda had long abandoned the mischief of games, had swapped the lighthearted hours of cards and songs and spinning tops for the sharpest of tongues and the indifference of sober stone—but this is a game she’d beg the clocks the stop for—the push and pull, for this collusion between touch-starved souls.
“Goddess ,” he rumbles up from behind her, hand cradling her cunt against him, and he tips his head back and groans towards the stone arches overhead.
“And you —you didn’t get to finish your prayers.” Zelda gasps against his firm hand, nipples riled painful by how tightly royal blue binds her chest. She hears a chuckle behind her, one quick huff of air through the curve of a smile. She wants to see him.
“You’re right—on my knees, then.”
She knows well from the observation deck above the courtyard that he’s as quick as lightning, but she loses him to the flurry of her skirts before she can even meet his eye. She’s twirled around as he moves, her gaze suddenly fanning out across the saturnine nave, and he is lost, camouflaged in the sea of navy that ensnares her. The focus in glossy eyes droops as she makes out the shape of his lips moving across her hosiery, climbing higher and higher before they’re setting the bare skin of her thigh alight. Her feet strain beneath her when he moves again, and the fiendishly hot breath against her cunt has the edges of her vision blurring. There’s only one more warning—a well-pleased hum before his mouth is sealing around her seam that’s slickened and greedy and bursting with want.
It is nothing quite like she’s expected, his tongue laving across her; it feels like he’s carving her out and leaving her hollow against the altar constructed for her own blood, priming her for something more. And if there is gold residing in her already, it’s siphoned out now and glittering on his tongue. He hums against her again, thin and high and needy , like he’s lifting cool oasis water to his lips after an aimless desert passage. His fingers crawl up her legs until they’re clamping around the sides of her hips to keep her in place, and swirling becomes lunges, lunges into pursed lips around that sacred pearl. She drives hips further into him with whimpers rolling past her lips, her mouth and brow both wrinkled with rose-drenched desperation. And he must feel the call of her body—it commands him, harder, and he obliges with a suction that knocks stars across her eyes. Harder he works, fingers imprinting onto the gentle slopes of her rear as his mouth feasts at the fount of her.
Zelda finds her vision closed off to anything but the shape of him beneath her skirts. White-hot light slips in the edges, blinding her, pushing her towards a plummet of a fall she’d gladly go to—and then it’s evaporated, sapped away when his mouth slows, and he withdraws from beneath her and meets her gaze with languishing eyes, light shimmering in the slick across his face.
She tastes sharp on his tongue when he sweeps up to find her mouth again, legs quivering beneath his weight when he pulls her back into his arms. There’s a pattern to the way their mouths entwine, the gentle lilt of the stir before they’re surging against one another, as though it’s possible to etch their shapes into one another’s beings. Zelda lets nervous fingers crawl across his back, around his hips—gathers enough courage to slip a hand beneath their bodies and run it across the swell against his front. He croons into her mouth and she swallows it down, claims it as her own and tucks it away for safekeeping.
“Have you finished your prayers, then?” she whispers against the bow of his top lip, eyelids parted just enough to find the way glim light licks up across azure blue. Something about it reminds her of his tongue along her cunt, the shape of his smile spreading against her needy slit—she shivers at the thought, and it circles back along her spine, a burst of saccharine at the base of her neck when she sees the way his lips tilt up, eyes ravenous and his brow arching smugly; an arrow nocked— aim, set —and she finds herself straight down the line of his bullseye.
“Not quite.”
He assumes his kneeling position again, and cool air rushes Zelda’s legs as he hikes her skirts up, higher and higher to unveil her most sacred spot to a reticent cathedral, and navy blue is hoisted so high, slung across the slight bend in her thighs that she can see everything like this: the two shades of skin crashing against each other, the fire catching in his locked eyes—the way his lips come to gently wrap around her, the way he sucks at her like she’s the sweetest plum from the morning spread. Zelda wonders if the wind howling beyond the walls of this new haven is suddenly mocking her when it lurches upwards in pitch, the aeolian song swelling like the heat cresting up through her body.
Link’s eyes droop to a close as he savors such holy nectar, lashes fluttering shut in the stupor; it has Zelda’s heart thrumming so violently she thinks she might collapse at the sight. And then it isn’t just his mouth working her, it’s his hand, too—a finger spreading her open, sliding into her, and there it is, that fullness she’s expected, that she’s wanted for so long without truly understanding. And even so, it’s only a promise for more, a covenant among two hallowed souls that this is a pleasure to be tasted, to be truly known .
There are words of praise trembling at her lips, but they’re strangled and incoherent when they finally bluster their way free. Every thought is dipped into blinding white, sweet on her tongue and fire along her spine as she trembles around his hand. His muffled sighs are drowned out by the murmur of his hand against her, the sound of fevered arousal echoing in lieu of prayers: a hymn sprung to life by his touch—played on the strings of her heart, embouchure exquisitely versed. Harder and sweeter all the same—impossibly delicious in the shadow of sacrilege. It feels like gold threading through her veins, and she wonders if he would find her aglow if he were to open his eyes—no, she wants them closed; she can admire the embers flickering up in his eyelashes this way, the brows creased with desperation as pressure increases. And that blinding light begins to creep across the edges of her vision again, hot as it spreads across the sight of him— burns her skin as he sets her neatly at the edge of incineration.
“I–I want to—”
“Pray for it,” whispered hotly against her cunt. “Let me hear you.”
Something blasphemous sprouts up at her tongue, waiting for permission. “Goddess above, thank you for this blessed mouth. I want to— ah! —” she wails, murmurs of affirmation whispered sparingly into her thighs before he dives in again, relentless and unforgiving— “I pray that he’ll show me other pleasures. I want to—I want to…”
“More ,” he growls into sopping skin.
The heat crescendos. “I want to feel that pleasure. I want you to give it to me.”
“Do you want to cum?”
Every inch of her strains, body desperate and convulsing against him before she’s short-circuiting, desperate and pink and unyielding against him. “Yes, I want to cum.”
“Say it for me, Zelda.” A firm smack of his hand against the curve of her ass. “You know exactly what you want. Say it.”
Oh Goddess , this tempo, incessant and biting, a delectable sort of pain that her body can hardly comprehend. He moves even faster, even harder, and Zelda back snaps taut against the altar while her fingers tug frantically at his hair. She knows well this is only a foretaste of the meal to come—that anything other than bursting around him will leave her craving more. For all her vulnerabilities, she’s at ease here, watching him indulge himself between her legs in this sacred space. More , she’s able to think in spite of such a distraction —she can give him more. “I want to—I want to cum on your cock, Link.”
It’s liberating, she thinks, to give life to such profane thoughts. To meet this primal side for the first time, to finally know this shadow that clings to the light, waiting to be noticed. It’s even more satisfying to see him notice it—to meet his agitated eyes while his mouth tends to her, and even beneath the surplus fabric of his uniform she catches the way his body snaps tight as though he’s already at the edge of release himself, brows knit and ears burning. And then, he stops. And the cresting wave of molten heat pulls back, abandons her shores and leaves her aching and pathetic between his hands.
Her trembling bottom lip plumps out and she sees the gleam of recognition in eyes—she’s sulking, and he knows it.
“Not yet, Princess.” There’s so much wrapped up in her title that she can hardly think past the way it reverberates in his ears. His hands feel like power when he takes her face between them and catches her mouth with his own, breaks away just quick enough to sigh “I love how you taste”, and she is lost to him.
The altar twinkles as they sink their way down to cold stone together, her fingers haphazardly reaching for the hem of his trousers tucked beneath flaps of navy and gold.
“I don’t think I can take you right here,” he says, voice soft beneath tightly shut eyes.
“No, Link, please, please,” Her lips hardly touch as she begs, and the faintest flicker of consonants are muted by his tender mouth, intercessions lost by the sweep of his tongue, and the thought of him setting her aside after all of this has her trembling, a withered daisy at the edge of autumn’s lonely call. “Here—now.”
It would be a cruelty to be like all the others, deny her—to deny both of them. And Link understands this even as he teases her. Her pleas fall from her as small hums, as tufts of his uniform gripped in her fists to keep him close. She’s still begging even while he removes his boots and his trousers, even while she reaches to undo the fasteners on her own dress. Bit by bit, piece by piece, she’s unraveled, and when she’s finally free of her royal binding, whimpers and whines and soft kisses coloring the air around them, she’s left as nothing but long stretches of pink skin and the length of black stockings, her body glistening in the citrine glow.
There’d been an abundance of hope welling up in his eyes hardly an hour prior, overflowing and wistful even in the tenebrous hall, but hope simmers low—it’s all strategy as he admires her, glances her up and down like he’s discerning just where to start. Zelda finds herself so enchanted by this look that the exposed cock in his hand goes almost entirely unnoticed until he strokes it, once, twice, and she zeros with the all the intensity of a circling hawk— mine, the brusque hiss of her exhale seems to say.
“Come.” She’s like a knowing spirit with her elegant hand stretched out to him, guiding him through the dark. Come, and he follows, kneels between her legs and slips a hand beneath her head to cushion her descent. She hardly even notices when the chilled stone meets the length of her back, and in the pooling heat he sets his hands along the concave slopes of her thighs and spreads her open.
Her body begins a slow writhe when he pivots a lazy thumb at her entrance, toned muscles flexing when she arches up off of the floor. She rolls hips up to meet his hand, her tongue stained with expletives when his speed vacillates— teasing in a way that makes her growl in desperation beneath him.
“I think you’re ready for me,” he purrs, and it’s like music rumbling up from the base of the altar, like the darkest frequencies of low strings as they groan to life. The shape of his thumb becomes a single finger, and it’s sliding, down and in, and one becomes two so easily , and she can hardly breathe beneath the smirk it triggers when it does. “Seems so.”
“Are you going to keep me waiting for much longer?” she whines with a slow grind onto his fingers.
And then the pressure is gone; fingers quickly withdrawn while studious eyes smolder in the dark—and she watches him raise them to his lips to suck the silky echoes of her from them. “Doubt you’ve been waiting longer than I have.” One final lick along the side of his index finger, and then: “I’m taking my time with you.”
There it is again, that hollowness—like the universe has collapsed into itself and swallowed her down with it. She sinks, further and further, like she’s plunging through another atmosphere, and it’s when the first hint of him presses up against her opening that a new, violent spark ignites—an undulation across her taut body. Zelda’s fingers brush against him when she reaches down, impatient fingers masquerading as assistance offered entirely in vain.
Sliding into her proves to be as effortless as pulling his holy blade from its pedestal, as natural as the sweet sunshine of summer mornings. Something innate, this connection—the thrill of the first time, and perhaps this is the thousandth first time. But thoughts of before and thoughts of what’s to follow find no space for lease between the two of them, not when the sweet sensation of his flushed hips against her nips at her breasts and bites at the small of his back. Head tilted and eyelids set to half mast, he watches her—calibrates accordingly to each breath and eases her up when he leans down to take skin between gentle teeth. “Just like that. That’s good .”
“Harder,” she gasps up, eager hands kneading the small of his back.
Link gives a cooing little shh as he takes her face between his hands, pink and breathless and straining with desire. Restraint looks good on him, and Zelda finds herself wondering about every moment she’s found him at her door, at the entrance to the Sacred Springs, in her arms at the springtime ball—has he burned there, too? Donned the starkest of masks and burned quietly all the while, considering all the ways he might want to take her? Goddess, she hopes so.
He moves like silk against her, the grind of his hips slow and wrenchingly tender, and Zelda suddenly understands ; he’s lavishing her with a tenderness that’s long eluded her, with affection that’s been withheld at every turn. He’s not just teasing, she realizes—he’s worshiping. Devoted words at his lips, an offering of his own flesh, communion taken at her mouth and at her cunt—her divinity has never pulsed so loudly in her own ears. Above her, his embrace is like a harbor, welcoming her home after an arduous journey, and it would be easy to melt into the touch—to close her eyes and let him tend to her—but passivity would seem almost sinful here.
Zelda’s body curves up into him with a needy hum and a silent prayer at her lips, her devastatingly jagged breath like a spur against his neck. Velveteen slides against her skin as smoothly as the gentle coax of pond water across siltstone; his touch burns differently, calloused fingers dug into her hips to keep her precisely where he wants her, and the juxtaposition rouses her from the rosy haze: it’s a delicious predicament—spread beneath her knight’s hypnotic swells, pliant and finally of use in the solemn light with only wood and stone to keep the rest of the world away. And just what would the tutors say if they were to stumble upon doors burst open by the battering wind storm and find their modest Princess coming undone atop her Hero’s cock?
Link notices the way she clenches at the thought. “Good?”
“S’good ” is all her brain permits, her body collapsing back. He rises sharply, and his thumb crashing against her clit has her nearly thrashing on the floor, hips instinctively rolling up to meet him. Zelda cannot decide where to let her focus linger—on that sultry fire kindling in his eyes? On his waistcoat noticeably stained with her slick? Behind closed eyelids to chase that impending wave of bliss? Goddess above .
“On your knees.” The snap of his voice feels like a barbed whip against her skin as it cuts through the fog. He leans down and slants a torrid kiss across her swollen lips before he’s withdrawing, humming in admiration to himself when she presents her rear to him. Zelda catches the shadow of his form dawning over her, casting itself across the masonry, and she closes her eyes and waits for the dark shimmer of his body twining with hers to swallow her whole again. Avid fingers glide across wet skin and land against her opening, persuasive as they spread her, and he’s burying himself in her again, dragging her down into that starry sea.
The first hint of Zelda rocking back slows his hips, and the teasing stall soon has her seeking out her own pleasure furiously, cries rebounding on the stone and sailing up past her ears—and her voice has grown so thin that a part of her cannot possibly fathom those sounds to be hers; primal and indecent. A principle of nature, perhaps, that the most inner self can only claw at the walls of its corporeal prison in the light—that by the same token, it can only truly breathe when it’s lost to the dark. This part of her, this component in the prism of her being—it’s just another shade , another color in her palette, another layer of her humanity: to embrace that aspect—to finally stumble across it with him —it feels more cosmic than anything, far more remarkable than any prayer at the altar.
Link slides his hands along the slopes of her, one skating up to the small of her back in gentle maintenance— right there, just like that his palm seems to etch into her skin. He slips the other one along the ridge of her hip bone, and damp fingers find her clit again, swollen and desperate and decidedly intolerant of waiting. She cries out when he starts his circles again, sobs aloud when they grow faster— harder —and the clap of his hips against her and the sound of his manipulating fingers against her arousal and his heavy breath unfurling across her back—his voice like the fine strains of an eveningsong—it’s unbearable . Each thrust. Each hot pant across her ear, each hot grind against his hand— has a new star exploding behind her eyelids, one supernova after another, until she’s cast into the depths; bliss soars up through her, and she comes undone, the sound of his name bounding towards the vault of the heavens.
Zelda is still lost in the glittering haze when he pulls away, sharp, and new warmth suddenly blooms on the small of her back. She closes her eyes and shivers, lips tipping up into a dazed smile. She hears him groan to himself as reality begins to set in, panic floating up to displace the last traces of ecstasy.
“It’s fine, Link.” Her voice is small, disproportionately innocent considering the way she’s still spread across the floor with his release on her back, cunt still twitching at the memory of him. “I like it.” She hums, and it’s soon a giggle, and soon after that it’s a contented sigh and smile thrown back across her shoulder to where their eyes meet. His face softens.
He puts her back together, piece by piece.
Breasts collected by her brassier, the white satin blouse slipped across her head. The tease of her stockings sequestered by the length of underskirts. The familiar swing of weighted gold hung across her front, elegant fingers wrapped up once more in her gloves. As quickly as she had become his, the monarchy claims her once again, and Hylia’s daughter stands before her Hero in armature dipped blue.
“Thank you.” It feels like a declaration of love where it sits in her mouth. Link pulls his hand away reluctantly, fingers craving the taste of her skin while Hylia watches on, impassive as ever in the shadow of sin—but Link clings to the sight of his Princess: tousled gold tumbling across her shoulders, devastatingly wrinkled fabric she’ll have to fabricate a reason for when morning comes, a blush that’s curled up so sweetly across her cheeks and seeks to persist. Soft cherry calls for him, and he lifts gentle fingers to her face and sets an easy kiss at her lips while jade eyes flutter shut in his grasp—a confession of faith at his lips.
No, there is nothing to atone for, he decides.
“You’re okay?” His voice breaks across her mouth, thumb stroking the easy line of her jaw.
Zelda nods. “Brilliant.” Her flush grows even richer. “Thank you,” she adds, eyes shining knowingly.
“You don’t need me for that. You’re brilliant all on your own.”
They move to abandon the cathedral, kisses stolen intermittently as they process down the main aisle. Beyond lofty walls of stone, the wind’s booming cries have dwindled into little more than whimpers, and midnight greets the pair with what feels like a hint of mischief, everything curiously still in the wake of such a fray. Overhead, a night sky frilled with panting stars greets them, the clouds having long rolled past the pallid moon. It is an odyssey, walking alongside each other in feigned ignorance—pretending to know nothing as they obey the castle’s call. Friction persists, desire disguised as gravity to keep them only inches apart while they move, and when the night is swallowed up by the dark passages of Hyrule Castle, inches broaden into feet, feet into yards.
“Thank you for escorting me tonight, Sir Link.” The Princess turns to him, eyes darting down the hallway, a sentinel in action. “I appreciate your assistance. I do hope you managed to enjoy your time in the cathedral.” She pulls her bottom lip in and bites down.
“I did.” He nods, and then a confession so low she has to lean in to hear it: “I wish I could fall asleep tonight with you in my arms.”
It takes every part of their beings to not fall past her door then and there.
“I want nothing more,” she whispers back, counterfeit nonchalance at her eyes when she glances down the hallway once more. “But my maids will come early tomorrow. Another night, perhaps. And, there is the Lanayru expedition next week… I imagine it will be quite cold at the mountain’s peak.” She dips her glance low before bashful eyes are peeking up at him.
“We’ll have to find a way to keep you warm.”
“I’ll hold you to it, my good Knight.”
He’s rather pleased at the thought.
They part with the briefest of kisses, a dizzying flash of a moment that leaves both of their chests aching, warm and hollow at the same time. Link slips into half empty barracks with his stomach in knots, tongue twisted around his secret when other soldiers stumble drunkenly only half of an hour later and a smile curled into his pillow when he finally does give into sleep. Zelda pretends her fingers are his own when she runs them through her hair, her heart lost in a song that leaps up in her chest like spring, counting the hours until she gets to look upon him again.
Yes, it feels quite a bit like spring.