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The ship was two days late.
Tetra swung her axe, keeping her back to the sea as she hacked the driftwood into pieces. Half her crew was passing a bottle of rum around the campfire and roasting their second helping of fish. Instinct urged her to put them to work, but she supposed they’d earned some rest after a week spent charting every island within rowing distance. Besides, they had no repairs to make or decks to swab.
They had nothing to do but wait.
And Tetra hated waiting.
She should have ordered Link to stay behind while she took the ship to resupply. But the men needed a firm leader if they were to decide whether this chain of islands could sustain a population of hundreds. Whenever Link was on land, he tended to wander off and rescue kittens from trees or go spelunking for some delightfully useless loot. Time was too short for failure to be an option.
You trust me with the ship? He’d asked, eyes wide and dark as a starless sea.
Don’t be so flattered, Tetra had mumbled; she trusted him with much more than that, but to admit that would be to admit…a lot of things. I let Gonzo take the helm all the time.
The short way only takes a week. The men assigned to accompany him had groaned at that. Rumor had it the short way was teeming with riptides, monsters, and a nastier breed of pirates than her own. Link had waved away their concerns, looking at Tetra with mischief tucked into the corners of his grin. We’ll divide and conquer.
Wait for nightfall, she’d suggested. The wind is—
With a teasing imitation of her signature wink, Link had flourished his white baton, summoning a western gust that blew his hair into his freckled face and nearly tore hers from its bun. She’d growled, and he’d answered with his stupid, rich, wonderful laugh, the one that always made her heart misbehave. He’d lingered a moment longer, shifting from foot to foot, giving her the dire sense that he was going to say something he wouldn’t be able to take back. Tetra had practically shoved him into a rowboat to keep from hearing it.
What if she’d sent him to his doom? What if he, her men, and her ship had joined the kingdom of Hyrule in a sunken grave? Link carried a power no other sailor possessed, but the sea was nothing to be trifled with. They both knew that all too well.
Tetra threw down her axe. “I’m going for a walk.”
“Want someone to watch your back?” Mako asked. “Senza and I got swarmed by Tektites on those cliffs.”
“I’ll be fine.”
He adjusted his cracked glasses carefully. “They’ll be back, Miss Tetra.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know that!”
“He’s your first mate for a reason.”
“Gonzo’s my first mate, you idiot!”
“Not since the Ghost Ship incident,” Gonzo said, draining his tankard despondently. “Link’s stolen my place. Guess he’s a real pirate now.”
“You’ve all lost your minds!” Tetra snapped, storming away. Sand turned to grass as she climbed inland. The sea still whispered all around her. Somewhere out there, she had been trapped, paralyzed, helpless in the bowels of a haunted ship while Link ran around saving her—saving everyone, as he always seemed to do.
Her crew had experienced those months as mere hours. Maybe it really had been the product of a whale-god’s dreams, but Link still had the empty hourglass tucked away at the bottom of his trunk, and Tetra still dreamed of stone swallowing her body. Ganondorf hadn’t come back from that. She hadn’t expected to, either.
It wasn’t the only memory the two of them carried alone. She would feed herself to the Gyorgs before admitting it aloud, but Gonzo had a point. In the five years since she’d brought him aboard, Link had become the person she turned to when trusting her gut wasn’t enough, the person she sought first when she came abovedeck each morning, the person she allowed in her cabin when all others were forbidden.
Tetra had kissed him there once, on the last night of a long voyage, a bottle of rum and the promise of familiar waters smoothing the world’s edges. Link had made an adorably flustered sound in the back of his throat. Then he kissed her back like he’d been waiting to do just that for ages, and for one slow stretch of time, everything seemed possible.
They had awoken the next morning to see Star Island—a low spat of land populated only by a Deku sapling—half-swallowed by the waves. At first, it seemed like nothing more than the result of a bad storm. They sailed onward without a second thought, only to find Windfall’s dockhands building a new pier, for the tide had been creeping higher and higher until the old one was practically underwater.
Over the next few months, the change became undeniable: the Great Sea was rising, inch by hungry inch, with no signs of receding.
No one could explain it. Everyone feared it. Tetra and Link felt in their bones that the King of Red Lions, however noble his intentions, had caused this. His wish upon the Triforce had condemned Hyrule to the waves. Long ago, their islands had been part of that very kingdom. The sea claimed what it would.
They had carried the news to every inhabited island, warning people to move to higher ground and get their vessels shipshape. A strange thing began to happen: when she spoke of her crew’s quest for a new land, hope sparked in every pair of eyes. Pirate or no, she had brought coveted goods to their markets and driven much worse brigands from their waters, like her mother before her. Now they looked to her to save them, though she had offered no such thing.
This search had begun as an adventure: bold, speculative, and rather aimless. Fate had transformed it into a desperate necessity with hundreds of lives at stake.
Tetra paused on a cliff’s craggy edge to inhale the sharp salt tang of the ravenous sea, studying the islands that dotted the waves like scattered leaves. If Link returned, when Link returned, they would have to continue north. This place didn’t have enough freshwater to offer her people refuge.
Her people. She laughed in disbelief—but they were. A proper pirate would leave them all to their fates, but something had begun to change inside her the day she’d watched Link chase his sister off a cliff, and it had never stopped.
There was no time for distraction. Link knew that, surely. It was why they’d never talked about that night in her cabin. It was why he’d taken the short route to resupply, heedless of the danger. He rose to every challenge without hesitation, without complaint. That was the first thing she’d admired about him.
Tetra growled, kicking a pebble over the cliff’s edge and watching it plummet to the depths below. Time to get her head on straight. This was exactly why her mother had warned her about giving your heart away. A pirate could depend on herself, her ship, and maybe—maybe—her crew. No one else.
But he’s not just anyone else, whispered a foolish voice. Spars that ended with one of them pinned to the deck and grinning breathlessly. Sleepless nights in the crow’s nest, thighs and shoulders pressed together for warmth. Soft smiles across his grandmother’s supper table and the surprising way she fit into his family.
He was Link. He was part of her. If he didn’t come back—
She couldn’t begin to imagine it. And that was exactly the problem.
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While her men snored in their bedrolls, Tetra counted constellations, definitely not listening for the splash of oars and the sinking of a rowboat’s hull into sand. When the sounds finally came, she squeezed her eyes shut, heart climbing into her throat as she turned on her side and feigned sleep.
Footsteps crept whisper-soft across the beach. She would know them anywhere; a boyhood spent fighting his way through temples and tombs had taught Link to move in near-silence. A callused hand found her shoulder. Waves crashed and surrendered to the shore.
“How dare you wake me,” she whispered unsteadily.
Link chuckled. “You weren’t asleep.”
She rolled onto her back, and by the dim glow of the dying campfire, her arms snaked around his neck and dragged him down into a fierce embrace. Link smelled of salt, sweat, and to her disquiet, the coppery tang of blood. Yet his hands were broad and steady against her spine, all tangled up in her loose hair, and though the sea had claimed a great many things, it had delivered him back to her.
“Everyone else?” Tetra asked.
“Safe. We anchored the ship off the shoal. They were all too tired to row in tonight. I just wanted to—I couldn’t make you wait.”
“You already did.”
He sighed against her neck. “I know.”
Gods, she was supposed to be angry, but she was half-drunk on his fingers in her hair and his heart thudding against hers. Link pulled back all too soon, allowing her a proper look at the bruises swelling up his face.
The giddiness drained away; the tide rushed in. Tetra bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to hurt. If whoever had done that to him still lived, she’d change that soon enough. She rose from her bedroll, leading him down the beach until the campfire became a distant smear of orange in a world of indigo and black, until she could stand the silence no longer. “What happened?”
“Not much,” Link said cheerfully. “Turns out the pirates were more than a rumor. Don’t be mad, but they kind of…boarded us. And captured us. And steered our ship in the wrong direction for a while. That’s why we’re so late.”
An awful memory bubbled up to the surface: Link, bloody and victorious and twelve years old, trembling in her arms as Ganondorf faded into stone silence. Her eyes swept him from head to toe—he seemed remarkably intact, but the swollen moon provided enough light to show the dark splashes marring his pale shirt. “That your blood?”
He snorted. “Have a little faith in me.”
I have more than a little. That’s the whole problem. He was all her softest edges, all her open wounds, all her hope for the future. And she’d almost lost him. Tetra paced away from him, letting her bare toes sink into the wet sand and reaching for sanity. Her ship floated off the island’s coast, a dark silhouette against the stars.
“Anyway, they didn’t keep us down for long.” Link joined her just as the tide rushed in around their feet, stinging with cold. “We got our supplies back. Stole theirs, too.”
That startled a laugh out of Tetra. “We’ll make a pirate of you yet!”
“Maybe. I thought we were screwed for a minute there.” He elbowed her playfully. “Then I remembered you’d bring me back from the dead just to kick my ass if I lost your ship.”
“I would,” she agreed, trying to ignore the way her throat tightened at the thought. If Link had died out there, if he’d gone somewhere she couldn’t follow, she would have felt it on the wind. And it would have broken her.
She couldn’t afford to break.
“I picked up some letters at the port,” Link said quietly.
“From your family?”
“Well, yeah—they’re fine—but that’s not what I…” He wrapped his fingers around the hilt of the sword at his hip, looking tired for the first time. “Windfall flooded.”
Tetra’s hand flew to his arm on instinct, steadying herself, steadying them both. Her first thought was of those little girls who had shared Aryll’s cage in the Forsaken Fortress, stolen from Windfall because of a vague resemblance to the princess Tetra refused to be.
“The Rito caught wind of it and got everyone out in time,” Link added quickly. “Supplies, too. Komali says they’ll be able to hold out for a while at Dragon Roost. Tell me you had some luck here.”
“Not enough freshwater,” she replied grimly. Link groaned; the same problem had driven them away from many other islands. “You worried about Outset?”
“The sea is rising fastest in the area above Hyrule Castle. Outset’s a fair distance away. And it has plenty of high ground.”
It was the same thing he’d been saying for months, but his voice sounded dull this time. Tetra tightened her grip on his arm. For her, home meant being rocked to sleep by the ship on which she’d been born. For Link, it was a dwindling shoreline and a house perilously close to the waves.
“Once again,” she said bitterly, “the gods are destroying us.”
“Never thought I’d understand Ganondorf so well.”
Her mother had told her stories of the hero who saved Hyrule from an ancient evil, never of the woman who fought alongside him. Yet Tetra knew such a woman had lived. She’d felt it in her marrow the moment she raised that shining bow against Ganondorf while the Master Sword gleamed in Link’s hand. Small and battered, stubborn and brave, they had fought for each other and for the sea they called home. And just like their predecessors, they had won nothing but a little time.
I have scattered the seeds of the future, Hyrule’s lost king had murmured, not knowing how brief that future might be.
“We’ll set sail at dawn,” she said grimly. “And we’ll just…we’ll keep trying.”
Link rested a hand on her shoulder, a brief hint of warmth against the ocean chill. “We’re going to be okay.”
“How are you so sure?” Her voice caught, thin and girlish, and instantly she wished to reel the words back into a place where no one could hear them.
“Tetra, are you…what’s got you so scared?”
She barked out a laugh. “Who says I’m scared?”
“You’re the one who taught me how to play liar’s dice. Do you think I learned none of your tells?” She could do nothing but glower at him. He sighed. “Come on. You’ve seen me scared lots of times. Remember when that giant squid ate my—”
“Fine. Answer my question, and maybe I’ll answer yours. What makes you so sure we’re going to pull through this?”
He let go of her shoulder, planting his hands on his hips and pulling in a deep breath. The pose reminded her of someone, and it took a moment to realize he’d learned it from her. She had worked her way under his skin, just as he had for her. “I know we’re going to be okay, because I have you. And I trust you. There’s no one else I’d rather follow.”
Tetra swallowed the lump in her throat. She’d been a captain since thirteen. Leading her crew came naturally. Leading hundreds of refugees to salvation, though—and leading Link anywhere—
“I don’t want that,” she burst out. “I don’t want you to follow me. When did I become the one people turn to? I should be out there conquering the sea, living by no code but my own, not…not whatever this is! What happens when we find what we’re looking for? Do I become a landlubber and sit at a desk and decide the fates of strangers? That sounds like a job for a princess, and I’m not—”
“You’re not a princess,” Link agreed quietly. “You think a princess would be suited for eating nothing but hardtack and salt beef? For trudging around uncharted islands and fighting off monsters? For knowing the sea well enough to map a wise course and stick to it? This is a job for a captain.”
“For now, maybe.” She stared toward her ship’s familiar silhouette on the dark horizon, trying to imagine a future where she didn’t wake every morning to the creaking of the hull, the smell of coffee brewing in the galley, the sleepy grumbling of her men. “Not forever.”
“So we’ll figure it out. Yeah, the gods are screwing us over again, but you’ve defied them before, remember? They put you in that dress and tried to make you into someone else, but you…” His smile flashed in the night. “You were always Tetra. You’ll make your own path. Is that really what you’re worried about?”
Tetra raked her hair out of her eyes, turning to face the waves.
“No,” Link surmised. “It’s not.”
“You’re a stubborn bastard sometimes.”
“How else am I supposed to keep up with you?”
She studied the dim outline of his face, as familiar as her own weathered palms even in darkness. Then she took his bloodstained shirt in her hands and pulled him close with a white-knuckled grip. Link responded with a flustered squeak that instantly brought back the memory of his lips parting under hers. With her heart pounding and her face burning like the smoldering heart of Fire Mountain, Tetra told him the truth.
“I hate that all of this happened when it did. I hate that we’re always getting interrupted. And I hate that I have to keep a clear head, because when it comes to you, I…” She stumbled, because he was staring at her openmouthed, the same way she’d seen him stare at sunsets and ocean gods. Tetra shook him angrily. “Fuck! I sent you to resupply because I couldn’t stand to look at your stupid face!”
“Hey!”
“Ugh, okay, that came out wrong. See? You turn me into an idiot! You were two days late, and there could’ve been any reason for that, but all I could think was that you were—”
“I was coming back, Tetra. Nothing could have stopped me.”
“I shouldn’t need you to come back!”
“Why not?” His voice was fierce and low, nearly drowned out by the wave that broke against the shore and surged around their ankles. “I mean…I need you.”
The tide raced back out to sea, leaving her staring at him beneath the moonlight, all dark eyes and bruised face and gold hair tousled by the wind he’d mastered at twelve years old. The strongest person she knew, and— “You do?”
Link chuckled then, quiet and helpless and more than a little tender. “I always have. It’s not a weakness.”
Tetra remembered his relieved smile when she came to his side while Ganondorf laughed and Hyrule died around them. His outstretched fingers as the stone slid away from her skin and air returned to her lungs. His eyes always seeking hers across the deck, over the campfire, in any crowd.
“Huh,” she said dazedly.
“I hate that we keep getting interrupted, too. So…” He shrugged. “Fuck it. That’s what I think.”
That broke Tetra right out of her stupor. She’d tried so hard to teach him to curse, but his grandmother’s influence had made him the most polite pirate to ever sail the seas. “Wait, what?”
“The timing’s shit, I know, but…it’s not the first time we’ve had people counting on us. Maybe the timing’s always going to be shit. Why should that stop us?” Link wrapped a hand around her wrist, and instead of prying his shirt from her grasp, he only pressed his fingers gently against her sun-worn skin. “If you don’t want me to follow behind, then I—I can be right here next to you. As, like…your co-captain.”
“Co-captain?” she repeated, then threw her head back and cackled. “No chance in hell!”
He laughed his wonderful laugh, and before she knew what she was doing, Tetra pulled him in by the collar and kissed him hard. The sea sighed all around them. So did Link—but a skilled conductor never missed a beat. One hand threaded through her hair while the other drew her closer, and he kissed her back with all the defiant fervor of the sea.
It wasn’t their first kiss. But it was the first one that really mattered, because she knew what it meant. The sea would swallow the island Link called home, and the gods would keep trying to turn Tetra into someone she wasn’t, and none of it would stop them from choosing each other. When they led their people into the future, they would do so as one.
Tetra pulled back, salt and starlight lingering on her lips, and said, “Fuck it.”
Link was blinking at her over and over, like he’d just surfaced from a dream.
“My ship’s only got one captain, but…maybe you could be my first mate.”
He laughed breathlessly, grinning from ear to ear. “I can live with that.”
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