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The shadows are growing long, and someone is following him.
Humans make so much noise, no matter how hard they try to move with careful grace. Link crouches low beneath a bush of witch-hazel, yellow as a goldfinch this time of year but slightly dull to his limited vision, and he listens to the footsteps crunch across a carpet of dead leaves.
It must be Rusl. With any luck, he’s hunting for ordinary game, not the same quarry that still eludes Link. He left home without telling anyone about the corpses—foxes torn apart outside their dens, stags slaughtered at a stream’s edge—or about the creeping wrongness he never expected to sense in Faron Woods again. Rusl has come out here a couple times since. Link evaded him once, but this is the man who taught him to hunt. A few days ago, they locked eyes across a clearing, and Link wasted a few heartbeats hoping for recognition before Rusl reached for an arrow.
He'd rather not face that again. Link straightens silently and is about to slink away when a breeze rustles through the forest, smelling of soap richer than any villager could obtain and of the ink that always smudges her fingers. He’s frozen in place as the hunter comes into view.
Fine leather boots. The hem of a dark cloak. A longsword sheathed at her hip and a bow in her left hand. She’s gloved against the chill, but Link knows the back of her other hand bears a mark identical to the one on his shackled paw.
Foliage obscures her face, and he’s grateful, because he knows he’ll break the moment he sees it. He’ll come running the same way he pounded up that hill, heart hammering in his throat as the sun set over the stranger who had replaced the imp he’d known. It only took one crooked grin for him to realize that she was no stranger; she was his shadow, she was everything, she was—
Link presses his chin to his paws. That princess is gone. Why is this one here?
It can’t have anything to do with him. Not after that moment of instinctive contact in the castle’s shadowed hallway, the taste of coffee on her lips, the heat of her breath on his neck, the way she slammed open the door of her bedroom with a fervency he never expected. They fumbled to shed layers and layers until all Link could see were the scars of lightning splintering across her body, scars he inflicted. Then came the cold crash of clarity when they met each other’s eyes and found blue instead of Twili red, and the cracks in her composure widening with every step he took towards the door.
No. It can’t have anything to do with him.
One more step brings Zelda into full view. To his muted vision, she’s all contrast: white gloves beneath her black cloak, dark eyelashes downturned against creamy skin. There’s no crown on her head, no jewelry flashing at her neck or ears, but regality isn’t so easy to shed. Mistaking her for an ordinary woman would be like mistaking a wolf for a lamb.
She’s still studying the ground. Link realizes his mistake—on the way to his hiding place, he skirted around the muddy edge of a puddle that will advertise his trail as clearly as a painted sign. Zelda lifts her gaze to search the tangled undergrowth, and though he can’t perceive the flush of cold on her cheeks or the exact hue of her tunic, only death could blind him to her remarkably blue eyes.
She drums her fingers against her bow, then says tartly, “You’ve stained enough rugs for me to recognize your pawprints, Link.”
He creeps forward with a sigh of defeat, allowing the jangling chain to announce his presence. Zelda watches coolly as he emerges, shakes the leaves from his coat, and comes to sit at her feet. Close study shows him that while her grip eases on the bow, tension still lingers in her shoulders—secrets and subtleties, as always. She never makes herself easily known.
All three of them have that in common.
Despite the way they parted, despite everything that lies between them, Zelda kneels on the forest floor. Not for the first time, Link wishes she wouldn’t lower herself for him, but when she stretches out a hand, he can’t stop himself from pressing his head into her palm, can’t stop his stupid tail from wagging.
“Before you ask,” she says, “Rusl sent me a very concerned letter about how Faron’s wildlife is being slaughtered by some unnatural predator, and the only sign of you is a note that says to take care of Epona.”
Link huffs.
“It absolutely is my business. There’s talk all over Hyrule of a swordsman hunting down monster dens and roadside terrors, and I’ve left you to it, but the Resistance aided Hyrule when I could not. That makes me indebted to all its members. I may not rule this province, but I know the Twilight, and I know you. Rusl pins the killings on a wolf he encountered, Link. One he saw the same night Ordon’s children were taken.”
There’s humor in the irony, somewhere, but his throat constricts at the memory of his first night in this form, of Uli’s terror and Rusl’s vengeful grief as he swung the torch at Link. No one could fault them. Yet from the very start, Zelda saw the truth, and the people who raised him saw only the beast.
Link dips his head to avoid her gaze. Her fingers dig deep into the thick fur at the back of his neck, and she murmurs, “I am sorry, Link.”
She said that the day they met. If the apology was unwarranted then, it’s devastating now. He plants all four paws in the dirt, feeling her hand slide away as he begins to tease out the magic he’s meticulously learned to counter since Midna left him the shadow crystal without warning or instruction. Pain blooms beneath his eyelids and floods his mouth with copper, but it’s over fast, and then he’s running a hand over his face to brush away the disorientation.
Zelda waits, her lips pressed together inscrutably. If there’s anything good about being human, it’s the full-color shine of her rich brown hair in the sunlight.
“Whatever the killer is, it moves fast,” Link says at length, voice rough from disuse. “There’s no sense to the trail, so I keep losing it. I haven’t found anything but the corpses, and…”
“I know. I sense it too.”
Fear of a nameless evil, she called it during her captivity. Strange light and stranger shadows with a thousand eyes peering out of them. Considering that the last vestiges of Twilight disappeared months ago, he’s half-wondered if this dread is all in his mind, nightmares bleeding into waking hours. Zelda’s confirmation comes as a relief.
“How long have you been out here?” she asks.
Link stretches his arms over his head. “A week or so.”
“You haven’t considered returning to Ordon for help? A search party could cover much more ground.”
“A search party could also get killed.”
She narrows her eyes, stripping him bare just as he feared, reminding him of all the things that seem distant here in the quiet woods. “And you can’t?”
He would roll his eyes if Uli hadn’t raised him better. He gets to his feet and sticks out his hand, trying not to wince when Zelda rises without taking it.
“Show me the trail. If magic is at work here, I’ll be able to help.” She sees something in his face and adds, “If you are about to send me home—”
Link points across the clearing. “It’s that way, and no, I’m not stupid enough to try.”
Zelda’s lips twitch. She turns as though to conceal the smile, and Goddesses, he’s missed this: the intricacy of her, the way she challenges and surprises him. And beneath all that lies the safety of being with someone who faced the same enemy he did, who rode into battle wielding that bow like a slice of sun in her hands.
Her aid is probably more than he deserves, but she’s here. Even if it has nothing to do with him, she’s here.
Link falls into step at her side and returns to the trail he was following before he caught wind of her approach. It’s a furrow of crushed undergrowth and snapped twigs, as though something charged through at top speed—sloppily, though, without the logic one would expect from an animal. The thick carpet of dead leaves keeps him from guessing exactly what the creature is, without any distinct prints left in the dirt. Still, there’s a clear enough lead for now.
“How’s court?” he asks after a while.
“Far better than it was a few months ago,” Zelda replies. Always the wry jokes. Always the implication that she owes him something, even though she fought for Hyrule as hard as she could.
“So…it’s terrible?”
“It’s tolerable.”
Only for someone raised to tolerate anything and everything, snarks a voice that sounds a great deal like Midna. With the castle lying half in ruins, the vultures have wasted no time in descending to pick its corpse clean—noblemen who spent the Twilight cowering in their estates, foreign princes looking to acquire a bride and a kingdom in one fell swoop. Zelda faces it all with cool austerity, guarding her scars with high collars and hardened eyes. Link can barely face his own village.
“You came alone?” he wonders, trying to keep his tone light.
“You know as well as anyone that my guards are more liability than asset. I left my horse with Epona.”
“With…oh.”
“Yes, I stopped by Ordon in case anything had changed since Rusl’s letter. He and Uli were very hospitable.” Zelda sneaks a glance at him. “And very worried about you.”
He tries to picture her sitting at that old wooden table with a bowl of Uli’s pumpkin stew, surrounded by the clutter and kindness that Link has taken for granted all his life. How callous he must seem to someone who has no family and very few people she can trust. “They know I can take care of myself,” he mumbles.
“Is that so? Rusl wanted to accompany me to Faron, in case the beast had mauled you and was going to do the same to me.”
“How’d you talk him out of it?”
“I told him,” Zelda says archly, “that wolves do not frighten me.”
Link falters mid-step. So does she, but for a very different reason: there’s a dead thing at her feet, a mangled bundle of blood and bone hardly recognizable as a hare. Zelda crouches beside it. Golden light flares beneath her right glove, sparking something familiar in the mark on Link’s own hand.
“Is that how you found me?” he asks.
“That and your pawprints. You host a great deal of magic, Link. As does our killer.”
He surveys the gouges that ripped the poor hare apart and brushes away the leaves that surround its corpse. There are a handful of vague prints in the dirt beneath.
“Deer prints, or…maybe boar.” He tries not to recall the nightmarish beast he faced in the castle throne room. “But it’s probably a coincidence. Deer aren’t predators, and a boar wouldn’t leave the corpse uneaten.”
Zelda presses her glowing hand to her chest absently, tilting her head back to watch a cluster of leaves the color of Midna’s hair flutter down to earth.
“Something wrong?”
“No,” she answers quickly. “Only…whatever this thing is, I’d rather not face it after nightfall.”
Link glances up at the orange light that’s spread across the sky, matching the autumn forest. Darkness is no challenge for him, but not everyone has the senses of a wolf. “Back to Ordon, then?”
“All that way? If we spend the night here, we can start again at dawn before the beast gets too far away.”
“You don’t mind?” It’s strange enough to see her outside the castle, alone and unadorned. He heard enough complaining from Midna to know that wilderness is not a princess’s natural habitat. “It’ll be cold tonight.”
“My magic can keep me warm.” Zelda fiddles with her gloves for a moment, then adds quietly, “My mother used to take me camping.”
Link tries to conceal his surprise. She’s never told him anything like that, never handed him a piece of her past. Though he can’t fathom what he’s done to deserve her trust, he’ll be damned if he makes a mess of this too.
The sun has nearly fled by the time they reach the creekside cave where he’s taken shelter the past few nights. It keeps out the wind and the damp as well as anyone could hope for, though it feels abruptly cramped and shabby when he leads Zelda inside. Link has been a wolf more often than not since leaving Ordon, but he never adjusted to the idea of eating like one, so the goat cheese and pumpkin rolls that Uli gave to Zelda come as a delight after days of foraged berries and game cooked over a campfire.
They sit at the cave’s mouth and watch the last traces of daylight slip away past the black branches. He doesn’t have to ask what occupies Zelda’s mind at this hour. More than once at the castle, dusk would drag both their gazes to the windows, or to each other. Some days, the sheer sight of her cut like mirror shards. The nights, though—the nights were always easier.
“You can take my bedroll,” he tells her quietly. “I’ll be warm enough as a wolf.”
“You’ve gotten rather good with the shadow crystal,” Zelda says. “Quite the feat for someone with no magical training.”
Link shrugs, fiddling with the string on his neck, where Ilia’s horseshoe whistle rests beside a far more dangerous tool. When he touched the shadow crystal to his skin on one of the unbearable nights that followed Midna’s departure, he didn’t know if there was a way back to humanity without her help, or whether he wanted a way back. It took hours alone with the watchful moon and the crickets’ songs before he realized he couldn’t spend the rest of his life as a terror to everyone he met.
A terror to everyone but Zelda, at least.
His chest aches with a sudden, fierce gratitude towards her. That night, he did manage to brace himself against the magic and shake it free, and now he can step between forms in a way that feels entirely right. But even if he hadn’t been able to help himself, he knows where he would have gone—right to her door like a dog scraping to be let in, knowing she would always answer, knowing she would treat him with the same exasperated kindness no matter what he looked like.
Link still lacks the words to fix what broke that day in the desert, but he wasn’t alone when the Mirror of Twilight shattered, nor in the deafening silence that followed. Zelda came all this way. He owes it to her to try.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly, grateful that darkness cloaks them. “It wasn’t you. It was everything except for you. Still…there’s no excuse. I’m sorry.”
Wind sighs through the forest, and Zelda sighs with it. “Think nothing of it.”
His spine stiffens with incredulity. “I walked away from you.”
“I remember.”
“I kissed you and I saw your scars and I walked away, Zelda.” Now he wishes the shadows weren’t hiding her expression, that he could understand her the way Midna did. “It—it wasn’t nothing.”
“But it was for the best, don’t you think?”
That stings more than it should. She’s entirely right. For a thousand different reasons, they never should have opened this door. Link is sickened by the idea of her marrying one of those noblemen circling the castle—it would be like chaining a golden eagle to a carrion crow—but that’s her choice to make, not his to jeopardize.
Besides, Midna took so much of him with her, and he barely knows what to do with all that remains.
With a sigh, Link pulls off his cloak to offer Zelda an extra layer of warmth. He’s met with silence and shadows too deep for his human eyes to pierce, but eventually she accepts it with a murmured, “Thank you.”
There’s a glimmer of gold as the Triforce lights her way to the bedroll. He touches the shadow crystal, gritting his teeth through the transformation—if only all pain passed so quickly—and turns a circle before settling down in front of her, making himself a shield against the wind and anything else that might risk entering his den. They lie there cradled in the quiet arms of the night, but it’s a long time before either of them falls asleep.
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Link opens his eyes to a cloudy grey dawn and Zelda’s fingers tangled up in the thick fur between his shoulders. He holds himself very still, listening as the woods come awake around them, until she wakes too and twitches away from him.
Breakfast is a pumpkin roll split between them and goat cheese spread over his last apple. Link will have to hunt if they’re out here much longer, but for now, there’s more important game. He’s a wolf again when they set off, partly because it’s easier to find and follow the killer’s trail like this and partly because he has no idea what to say to Zelda.
He didn’t expect her to accept his apology so easily. He didn’t expect to spend another night in her company at all. It was always shadows that brought them together at the castle, long after everyone else was asleep. Link would stumble upon her in his wanderings, a thin wraith haunting the ruined castle with the same restlessness that infected him. The first few nights, they passed each other by with nothing more than a murmured greeting—but later, they fell into step together, climbing the ramparts to see the stars or walking the gardens in moonlit silence.
Only once did they come together like gravity, tentative in the first kiss but starving by the second; only once did they break apart in breathless terror. And once will have to be enough. He can’t allow that hunger to swallow them both whole.
The morning remains chilly and bleak, and their quarry’s twisting trail makes Faron seem twice as large as it actually is. A growl of annoyance builds at the back of Link’s throat when he realizes they’re going in circles. It’s one thing for his time to be wasted, but how much longer can he drag Zelda around? He watches her strong shoulders, the long waterfall of her hair, all the things he missed without realizing it, and he knows she can only resist the call of the castle for so long.
She stops in her tracks suddenly, and the glow emanating from her hand makes him halt as well. Link follows her gaze downhill to a stream that trickles through the forest.
There’s a shadow at the water’s edge. Only when it shifts does he understand that he’s looking at a boar, bristling with unnatural darkness and twice the size of those native to Faron. The saddle on its back marks it as a Bulblin’s mount, but Link always knew those creatures to be natural, if brutish. There’s nothing natural about this one. He can hear the slow drip of blood from the boar’s pelt and the snuffling irregularity of its breath as it guzzles from the stream.
Zelda grasps at the fur between his shoulder blades with a trembling hand. “Twili magic. The beast is half-mad with it. I suspected as much when we found the hare yesterday, but…”
I know, Link wants to say. Sensing it from afar doesn’t prepare you for seeing it in the flesh.
Midna made sure their worlds would never intersect. The presence of her people’s magic here makes no sense, yet there’s no denying the taint that fills the air, a pulsing wrongness that forces him to remember vermin-infested waterways, towns full of guileless spirits, and a world with no sun or moon. Even the rising wind can’t sweep away the malaise.
“I can hit it from here,” Zelda whispers, nocking an arrow to her bowstring. “It’s likely to flee in the opposite direction. Perhaps we should split up to limit its chances of escape.”
Link nods, creeping downhill and downstream. The angle gives him a glimpse of the boar’s long tusks, blackened by the power that curses it and sharp enough to have killed all those poor animals. He’s glad Zelda is staying up there in the trees, kept safe by higher ground.
The wind picks up, hinting at rain—but more than that, he smells rot, and he smells the Twilight. A shiver rips through him from nose to tail, jangling the metal cuff he’s worn since the first day he woke up as a wolf.
The sound might as well be thunder. The boar raises its head and fixes him with a gaze that weeps blood.
Zelda’s first arrow strikes its shoulder. The creature wheels around with a spray of sand and an awful cry. Link takes off to give chase, but his quarry doesn’t flee as any self-preserving animal would, even when a second arrow pierces its night-black pelt. The boar’s massive head swings towards the slope, powerful muscles bunching beneath its thick hide, and Link thinks, No.
The boar charges uphill at a pace he can barely comprehend, crushing everything in its path. A third arrow flies through the trees, missing by a hair. Link’s paws devour the distance, but he knows it won’t be enough. Not her. Not this. Not again.
Gold light blossoms through the foliage, a shudder of power greater than anything he’s felt in a long time. There’s another frightened squeal, and then the trees part to reveal the boar trapped in a column of light, Zelda’s arms shaking with the effort to hold it there.
Link closes the gap with a leap, his fangs finding the beast’s shoulder and his claws raking through whatever else he can reach. Hot blood drowns out the taste of decay and everything else—he hates this, he’s always hated this, even though a part of him digs in deeper and exults while the enemy screams. The boar bucks, making his vision tilt wildly; Link jerks his head back with a snarl and parts his jaws to go for the throat.
He catches a glimpse of Zelda, a flash of wild eyes and radiant light—blue and gold, the only colors in his world of greys—and in that moment of distraction, the boar thrashes against her hold. Tusks arc through the air and collide with the border of Zelda’s spell, shattering the power that once stood against Ganondorf.
There’s a cry that breaks his heart. Link launches himself at the boar’s face, raking his front claws over its eyes. The creature buckles beneath him, hooves slipping on the leaf-littered ground, and the world somersaults as they tumble down the slope together.
Link springs free before he’s crushed. The boar struggles upright with a pitiful wheeze and staggers away from him, finally remembering its survival instincts. He pays it no mind; he’s already scrambling uphill.
Zelda is a shivering huddle on the ground. There’s blood everywhere, on her and on him, and rain has begun to fall. A memory clamors for attention, dark fields and flooded tunnels and Midna dying on his back, but Link shoves it away and wrenches himself back to humanity faster than ever.
“We have to stop that thing,” Zelda gasps. “We—”
He tips her chin up—no blood—and runs his hands down her shoulders before pausing at her elbows. The boar’s tusks tore open those lovely white gloves and the flesh beneath.
Link fumbles through the pouches at his waist until he finds gauze to press down on each of her forearms, holding it there even when Zelda gasps and clutches him with shaky fingers.
“It’s getting away,” she insists.
He spares one glance for the boar, limping away in the opposite direction. “I don’t care.”
“Link, there’s something—”
“Zelda.” Cold raindrops slide down his neck and trail clean paths through the heat of her blood. He can’t loosen his grip, so he presses his forehead to hers and says firmly, “I’m not leaving you.”
She shudders against him. Maybe it’s pain. Maybe it’s disbelief; he’s left her before. But instead of pulling away, Zelda closes her eyes and breathes him in. This close, Link can see the edge of a scar peeking out from beneath her collar.
This close, he can’t help but remember what it felt like to kiss her.
He’d linger in this moment for much longer if his throat wasn’t burning with the scent of her blood. They backtrack up the slope to a cave that caught his eye earlier, not much more than a hollow space formed by the roots of a great tree as it cracks through the rocky outcropping beneath it. They have to hunch and keep bumping into each other on their way inside, but at least they’ll be out of the rain.
He gives her a red potion, then sits across from her to peel off the ruined mess of her gloves. She’s biting her lip, shoulders bunched up as she resists the instinct to pull away from the pain. A hiss escapes through her teeth when Link rinses the wounds off with his waterskin.
“Your left arm’s not too bad,” he says, bandaging it swiftly. “But you’ll need a couple stitches on the right. Don’t worry; I’ve done this plenty of times.”
“I’m not worried.”
You should be, he wants to reply, because right under his fingers is the network of scars that climbs up her wrists to disappear beneath her sleeves, a jagged reflection of the lightning Link redirected at her in the throne room. It’s everything he’s been running from—the memory of her corrupted amber gaze, the blood of countless other creatures under his fingernails, the reason he can’t bear to stay in Ordon for more than a few days at a time.
But he can’t flee again, because she needs him. That fact keeps his hands steady enough to thread the needle and bring her arm over to rest on his thigh. “Ever had this done before?” he asks.
“No.”
“Hurts like hell, but I’ll make it fast, okay?”
“I will be fine,” Zelda replies evenly, because of course she will; she had no choice but to hold her head high through the collapse of her kingdom and everything else Ganondorf did to her. Link grits his teeth and tries to seem half so composed as he starts the stitches, tries not to listen to her shaky breathing.
“She was awful with blood,” he finds himself saying. “I learned early on not to expect her help. Towards the end, though…she wouldn’t stitch me up, but she would talk to me. Make herself a distraction.” An unwilling smile tugs at his lips. “She was a good distraction.”
Zelda gasps out a laugh that makes him suddenly aware of how close they’re sitting, his knee pressed against her calf. “What did she speak of?”
“Simple stuff, mostly. What she thought about whatever corner of Hyrule we were in. How different it was from her realm. What she wanted to eat that day. Food was the only thing she really liked about our world.”
“Not the only thing, Link.”
Her voice is tight with pain, both from the needle and, he suspects, from a hurt that runs much deeper. At the castle, they tiptoed around the broken glass Midna left behind as if silence would bring her back. Link is surprised to find that he can have this conversation without wanting to scream—surprised to find that it’s a relief to remember her with the one person who will understand. Yet another strange but immutable burden he and Zelda have in common.
“She did talk about you, sometimes,” he adds. “After what you did for her…we thought you were gone, at first. But from the second she realized you were alive, she never gave up on bringing you back.”
“She never gave up on anything,” Zelda agrees wistfully.
“Were you…what do you remember from back then?”
She tips her head back to watch water drip through the cracks in their shelter. “Only the vaguest things. Saving her. Being her. Being with you. I was not fully aware of myself until the throne room.”
He shouldn’t have asked. Grateful for the excuse to keep his head down, Link ties off the last stitch and trims the excess thread, then dampens a cloth to wipe away the remaining blood.
“Thank you,” Zelda says, searching his face. “Was there something else you wanted to ask me?”
Lightning crackling through the air, her face twisted into a sick grin, the sword wavering in her grip during the brief lapses in Ganondorf’s control—Link will remember it as long as he lives. But does Zelda? There’s something in her expression, the same weary grief she wore the day they met, that makes him think she does.
But the question burns like ashes on his tongue. He can’t confront what the enemy did to her, what he did to her, and still meet her eyes afterwards. So instead he asks, “What was that thing? A miniature Ganon?”
She chuckles dryly. “No. The boar was tainted by a piece of the Fused Shadows.”
“What?” Link shoots up so suddenly that his head smacks the nearest tree root. “Ow! I mean—how?”
“I wish I knew. Midna and I sought out the fragments in Hyrule Field and disposed of them while you were sleeping off your injuries. But if I had to guess…even the smallest shard, one easily overlooked, would be capable of corrupting most living creatures. Especially one that already served the enemy.”
He sighs, tucking his hands under his knees for warmth. That boar isn’t evil, any more than Epona is. But he remembers the beast’s rotting stench and bleeding pelt and knows that it’s been suffering since it came into contact with the Fused Shadows. That’s reason enough to finish the job.
“Okay,” Link decides wearily. “It won’t get far with those injuries. Why don’t you rest a while? I’ll wake you up when it stops raining.”
Zelda purses her lips, but the exhausting effects of blood loss negate whatever objection she wants to voice. She curls up under both their cloaks and lays her head on his legs. He doesn’t remember moving, but his fingers are carding through her long hair, a touch as instinctive as that first kiss in the hallway. Even though all the reasons he left the castle are still wedged between them, everything seems so terribly simple out here in the wild—no thrones, no broken mirrors, no scavenging noblemen.
Maybe she feels the same way, for her eyes drift shut without a word of protest.
Link leans back and listens to the rainfall. Hopefully Fado brought the goats inside before it started; being wet and cold makes them twice as ornery. Everyone else will be welcoming the excuse to take a break from the endless harvest work. This time last year, Ilia would have knocked on Link’s door with a book and a blushing smile, and they would have sat by the fire in comfortable silence, stealing a few rare hours away from prying eyes.
He looks down at Zelda—dark eyelashes fluttering against pale cheeks, hands tucked under her chin so that he can see the new stitches layered over the old scars. He wonders if she, too, yearns for things long gone. If she feels like she’s walking through the ruins of a life she no longer recognizes.
And she’s tethered to that life. Link, at least, has the luxury of freedom.
Yet the boar’s blood still burns at the back of his throat. The Twilight followed him all the way home.
It’s time to stop running from it.
Link pulls off his thick overtunic of Ordonian wool and balls it up, sliding it under Zelda’s head. In only his chainmail and undershirt, the damp air has a bite to it, but when he squeezes out through the tree root and pads away on four legs, he no longer feels the cold.
In a few minutes, he’s down the slope and back to the pebbled stream where they encountered the boar. The rain has washed away most of the blood but given him fresh mud that captures the boar’s hoofprints, to say nothing of that unmistakable stench. Worse than the castle sewers or reekfish; if anything, it brings back the parched decay of Arbiter’s Grounds.
He finds the boar lying at the base of an elm, its sides shuddering with unsteady gasps, its dark pelt soaked through with rain and worse. Death drips from the two arrows buried in the boar’s flesh and the gouges made by Link’s fangs and claws. Movement brings his eyes up to the branches overhead, where half a dozen crows are silhouetted against the grey sky, waiting for nature to provide them a feast of flesh.
The boar must smell him too, but it makes no effort to rise as he creeps to its side. If it was ever capable of speech like most animals he’s met, it’s mute now. His earlier attack may have blinded the poor thing, but even so, there’s a look in its eyes that Link has seen so many times. Not fear. Not acceptance. Just exhausted resignation. Even Ganondorf looked that way at the end.
Trying to run was foolish. He will never forget how it feels to deal out death. He can only bare his fangs and end it as quickly as he can.
As the boar breathes its last, Link knows he can’t leave it to the crows. Not just because whatever remains of the Fused Shadows could latch onto them too, but because this never should have happened in the first place. Because he knows how it feels to be twisted beyond recognition by forces so much bigger than him.
He's digging between the tree roots when the sound of Zelda’s footsteps reaches him. Even when they come to a halt in front of the grave, he doesn’t look up until she says, “Link.”
There’s an edge to her voice he’s reluctant to face, but she just stares at him and drums her fingers against the bow in her hands until he jumps out of the hole, spraying her with mud in the process.
“You said you wouldn’t leave.”
Link dips his head towards the boar’s corpse.
“Yes, I know it had to die. That does not mean—” She stops abruptly, her face bloodless beneath the hood of her cloak, and heaves out a great sigh.
He’s never seen what anger looks like on her face before today. Watching her piece together what remained of the castle and its cowardly soldiers with nothing but serene patience fascinated him, especially after months with Midna, who was so full of fury that Link practically became immune to it. Zelda’s ire feels different, though, because he’s certain he deserves it.
So he shifts, feeling mud soak into his trousers before he pushes himself up to face her. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I was coming back, I swear.”
“That is not the point. It was one thing when you were wandering all over Hyrule, helping strangers, but here…do you realize what you have in Ordon? An entire village of people who would do anything for you, because you’ve done everything for them. Yet you spent days out here in the cold instead of asking for their help.” She tightens her grip on the bow. “For mine. A wolf needs a pack, Link.”
“I told you before, I don’t want anyone else getting hurt. This…” He gestures vaguely at the dead boar. “This is my…”
“You already did what fate asked of you.”
“And now you’re telling me to just walk away?”
“I’m not telling you to do anything. But tell me this is the life you want and I’ll call you a liar.”
“I don’t—I’m not suited for herding goats anymore.” Link brushes rainwater from his brow so he has an excuse to look away and adds all in a rush, “I would keep your hands clean, Zelda.”
She laughs, knife-sharp and far more bitter than anything he’s ever heard from her. “It’s years too late for that.”
He finds himself wondering how the old queen and king died, how long Zelda has been alone, and why he’s never asked her any of these questions before. She’s always seemed so distant, so perfectly indestructible—but she kissed him as desperately as he kissed her. How did he overlook that?
“What I meant was…it’s not like you can walk away,” Link says. “You have your role. And I have mine.”
She stares at him through the rain, shaking her head slowly. “This is exactly why Midna broke the Mirror.”
He flinches back a step. “What does that mean?”
“She wanted you to be free, Link. She spent months in your shadow, watching you carry all these things that—”
“That I was meant to carry.”
“Does that make them any easier to bear?” Zelda counters, locking him in place with those relentless blue eyes. “When I said it was for the best that you left the castle, this is what I meant. Midna was right, and I owe you everything, and I will not be another thing that weighs you down.”
“What is it you think you owe me? If you mean Hyrule, that was Midna as much as me, and you’ve been taking care of it much longer.”
“Of course I mean Hyrule. But not only that.” She pulls up her sleeve, unveiling the red scars that branch out along her veins. “You saved me.”
Link’s heart sinks like a stone into bottomless depths. His gaze falls on the boar’s carcass, dripping blood and water into its bed of leaves. The crows are still waiting in the branches overhead. He digs his nails into his palms and chokes out, “I hurt you, Zelda. Don’t—don’t pretend otherwise. I heard you scream.”
For a long time, the only sound between them is the rain pattering down over the forest. She comes forward slowly, her eyes never leaving his face. “You heard Ganondorf scream. Every part of me that matters was with Midna. I felt no pain.”
“Your body did.”
“Perhaps. But it was necessary.” Zelda inclines her head towards the boar. “It’s always been necessary. It doesn’t make you what you think you are.”
Link shudders out a breath. She reaches for his hand and turns it over to inspect his palm, callused from a lifetime of ranch work and covered in plenty of his own scars. Only an hour ago, he was stitching her skin back together. They’ve ridden to war, loved and lost the same woman, tasted each other’s lips and gotten halfway to doing much more than that. But somehow, the gentleness of this touch is what unravels him.
Zelda has been nothing but honest with him since the day they met. It was one of the first things he appreciated about her—that in a world turned unrecognizable, there was at least one person willing to tell him the truth. Link has no reason to start doubting her now.
He runs his fingers over the scars that climb up the inside of her wrist, careful of her new wounds. That day in the throne room, her skin was marble and her eyes amber. He can feel the heat of her breath now, see the blue of her gaze, feel the thrum of her pulse, all of it a reminder that they made it through alive.
“Okay,” he breathes. “Okay. Thank you.”
Zelda allows herself a small smile. “Of course.”
“I want you to know something, though. You’ll never weigh me down. And I’m still not leaving you, not for good.”
“Link…”
“A wolf needs a pack, Zelda.”
She holds his gaze for a long time, as if waiting for him to change his mind. When he doesn’t, she brings a hand to his cheek, touching him the same way Midna touched them both: with a tenderness that almost defies belief. One by one, the crows fly away, and Zelda closes her eyes and kisses the rain from Link’s skin.
.
.
.
After the boar lies buried beneath the elm’s roots, they make their way home—because whatever else changes, Ordon will always be home. They’re greeted by fussing from Uli, questions from Rusl, and food piled high on their plates. Zelda sneaks that subtle smile across the table at Link while he explains that Faron is safe and apologizes for making them worry.
When they finally extricate themselves, the rain has given way to bold rays of late-afternoon sun that filter through the trees. Their horses are grazing in the clearing by his treehouse, Epona’s chestnut coat a brilliant mirror of the autumn foliage beside the quiet grey of Zelda’s gelding.
“I’d best be on my way,” Zelda says reluctantly. “They could overthrow me any day, after all.”
Link laughs. “Wait…that was a joke, right?”
“Of course it was.” She lifts the saddle onto her horse’s back. “Midna’s influence, I suppose.”
He circles to the gelding’s other side to cinch the girth. He’s half-tempted to saddle Epona up too, but he’s not quite ready for that, and maybe Zelda isn’t either. He’s spent months searching for an end that will never come, running from the inevitable truth of who he’s become since the Twilight. The forest will regrow and die and regrow again, but it won’t be the same, and neither will he. He needs to come to terms with that. And to stop looking for Midna in every shadow.
“I’ll visit you soon,” he says, coming back around the horse. “I just need a little more time.”
Zelda smiles at him. “We have all the time in the world. She made sure of that.”
“She did.” Link draws her into an embrace, smelling the rain in her damp hair. “Take care of yourself, okay? Don’t keep patching everyone else up while you bleed.”
“Only if you promise to do the same,” she murmurs against his shoulder.
“I do.” He presses his lips to her temple and pulls back, memorizing her in the sunlight, tucking the sight away until the next time they see each other.
Zelda takes her horse’s reins, and instead of mounting, leads him past the treehouse on foot. Link follows her down the dirt path and past the Light Spirit’s glittering spring until they come to a halt at the bridge.
“Link, shift into a wolf,” she says, tethering her horse to one of the bridge posts.
“Huh? Why?”
“Trust me.”
And he does. Reaching for the shadow crystal, letting the pain pass over him—briefer every time, as much a part of him as the mark on his hand—he shakes his coat out, nudging her hand with his cold nose. The horse throws his head up in alarm at the sudden appearance of a predator, but Zelda pats his neck and kneels in front of Link.
She touches the iron cuff and severed chain that have been fastened to his leg since the day this all began. “Would you like this gone?”
Yes. Goddesses, yes. Link bobs his head, his tail wagging enthusiastically of its own accord.
“All right, then. Hold still.”
He sits back on his haunches and forces his ridiculous tail to stop moving. Zelda slides her fingers along the edge of the metal, and again comes that familiar golden glow, that call reaching out to the core of him.
With a rattling clank that Link never wants to hear again, the cuff drops to the ground in two pieces, leaving behind a pale band of fur that never grew properly beneath it. He picks up his paw, marveling at the weightlessness, and puts it down so he can nuzzle Zelda’s cheek, coaxing a laugh out of her.
He wonders if he should shift so that he can tell her thank you and I’m glad you came and I’ll see you later. But when Zelda kisses the soft fur between his ears before rising to her feet, he knows there’s no need.
She understands him in any form.
.
.
.