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“Him?”
It’s as though the air is sapped from the room when the word tumbles from her mouth. One syllable, three letters bound together with disappointment, weighted with such lead that she sounds as though she’s on the receiving end of a death sentence. Princess Zelda drags a stormy gaze towards the figure behind her, the last traces of composure slipping as realization sets in. “You’re serious?”
From the corner of the room, her instructor hums with a slow nod, unimpressed with the tantrum that's mounting itself against the edges of the Princess’ voice. In her warpath, he feels so much more weathered than his thirty-five years. How unbecoming the Crown Princess of Hyrule truly is, Master Mikkel thinks as he catches anger flaring in primaveral eyes; how does His Majesty, with his strong resolve and devotion to the kingdom, bestow upon it a child who withers beneath the most unremarkable of requests? He finds himself mourning the distance between monarch and offspring.
“And just why is that?” The princess huffs across folded arms, irritation boiling up in her as she realizes that Mikkel is, in fact, not teasing. If she were to examine her instructor closely enough, she’d catch sight of the small twitch of a brow above his hardened expression. But she won’t—she can’t — because she’s blinded by shades of red amongst blistering humiliation.
When Zelda had first heeded her father’s recommendation, she’d expected that she’d resume her artistic studies by brushing brambles into cotton, placing them amongst olive wisps of sun-drenched grass or thrumming meadows. Perhaps by dappling the meridian with blossoms, or threading streamlets through the groundwork—by composing the crags of distant peaks laden with the first snows of winter. Whatever the case, she certainly hasn’t planned on bringing her knight attendant’s patronizing likeness to canvas.
“I thought he might be a perfect candidate for your study, considering his physique.” Mikkel offers, the thought delivered as if he isn’t completely aware of the fissure it carves into her.
“But there are other knights in the kingdom—surely we might be able to request another?” Desperation seeps its way into her voice.
“But Princess, he’s already here .” Mikkel makes no real attempt to mask his exasperation that begins to surface, something that no other in the hallowed halls of Hyrule Castle dares to offer its Princess save for the King himself. “And besides, you two already have a rather… close relationship—” he nearly chokes on amusement, “—and I’m sure the King would prefer that his daughter not find herself in such close proximity to a half undressed man whom she does not know.” A streak of scarlet explodes across the Princess’ face, and flames lick up against her tense jaw as she struggles to contain a new affront. All three linger in silence, clinging tightly to a collective breath as each prepares for some scathing slight.
To everyone’s surprise, it never comes.
“Very well, then,” Zelda relents through gritted teeth, freshly manicured nails digging into her palms to etch half moons beneath closed fists. Master Mikkel's expression floods with relief, visibly tense energy softening as knots unravel in perturbed shoulders. Link, on the other hand, remains his usual self, cloistered in a masquerade of stoicism; he only offers a polite bow to whomever chooses to see it.
“Let’s begin, then. Princess, I invite you to take a seat.” Mikkel offers with a hint of kindness, granted in appreciation for a concession he can only deem as uncharacteristic. (He admits that he hasn't been around long enough to determine whether or not that's a wholly accurate assessment, but he won't be around long enough to say that he cares very much.) “Sir, I’m sure you were not expecting to find yourself in such a situation today, correct?” He smiles, and Link gives a single polite nod. “I will ask you to remove your tunic and trousers, please.” Mikkel collects a wrap of cream fabric and tosses it towards the knight. “And you may use this to preserve a bit of modesty, if you so wish.”
“I insist that he does,” Zelda interjects smartly. The decidedly unlucky Princess grants her personal attendant a hint of privacy when she turns to face the glorious window, seeking comfort in the sight of her kingdom’s rolling terrain. Vexed eyes train upon the distant steppe of Hyrule Field, the image scored by the soft thud of the Master Sword hitting the ground—the damned, onerous thing–and then, the unfastening of buckles, the slight rustle of fabric as it slips over his head and the sound of worn leather boots being shucked and tossed aside. She hears him clamber onto the small stool provided and only scoffs: he may possess the spirit of the Hero, but it grants him no extra regality.
“You may start whenever you are ready, Princess.”
“Very well,” Zelda snipes as she wheels herself around. Lithe fingers retrieve a twig of charcoal, and she’s soon lifting acrimonious eyes to assess her subject.
And then something in the air changes.
Perhaps it's something about the way he's seated, tall at his post, with one strong leg stretched out before him and the other tucked beneath the stool. Or maybe it's in the way he's angled his body to grant her a rather heroic image: in the slight tip of his head, in the hand running through freshly washed hair that’s been tugged from its tie. It’s something about the gaze that flickers to and fro across the stone beneath him as he fights for a confidence that’s been stifled under such peculiar circumstances. There's something fascinating about the mosaic of scars that persists beneath the usual coverture of Champion blue—proof of his humanity. Cloth garlands his lap, spills over the edge and cascades onto the floor to leave a trim set of abdominals exposed and primed for observation, leaving Zelda with only one, persistent thought ricocheting between burning ears:
Has he really been this toned the whole time?
“Whenever you’re ready, Princess.” Mikkel's voice strikes like a silvery chime.
“Oh. Yes —very well, then.” Zelda flinches at how harshly her voice rings in her own ears. Collaboration between mind and mouth fails; Zelda submits to silence.
“I shall check in with you shortly.” Mikkel states as he brings a quill to paper. The boning of Zelda’s corset suddenly feels far too restrictive against her frame, and for a flash of a moment she nearly considers sending both men into the hallway for a private moment to catch her breath; it feels improper to be near them with such a heat blooming in her.
In days long gone, the sleepy hour that followed lunch was frequently colored with acrylics and smelled of linseed oil, and Zelda had showed great promise in the field until the day that other matters grew more urgent; when that fateful day first arrived with the brute force of one of Faron’s midsummer monsoons, the bloom of reds and purples and blues splintered into cold, wintry palettes of sacred stone and spring, and Zelda conceded to the grayscale. She knows very well that she won’t be spending the afternoon crafting a masterpiece, but naturally nimble fingers and a keen set of eyes and sheer muscle memory instill a bit of confidence in her; she may not yet be qualified to stop whatever Calamity approaches, but Hylia strike her down if she isn’t capable of creating a decent sketch of her knight.
Her knight.
Her nearly naked knight.
Zelda swallows hard.
It’s simply outrageous. Zelda berates herself for letting such a thought topple her so. Surely it should take more than her first, long glimpse of a man’s exposed chest to remind her—with striking severity— that she is, in fact, set snugly in the dawn of womanhood. And to be caught ogling Link, of all people? What a positively ghastly thought.
Zelda clears her throat and ghosts charcoal against canvas, marks the pale vacancy with the initial strands of his outline and introduces ovals and lines that ought to stretch and ebb to resemble him in time. It takes a long, electric beat to realize that her gaze is boring holes into the canvas while sedulous fingers work in mindless haste. Where was I, then? No, his jaw is different—more pointed than she initiates. She peeks past the canvas to assess.
Halcyon eyes wrestle against the spot of stone above her head. Her knight is bathed in the spun gold of afternoon light, his regard heavy with intent as his cheeks marble with a pink she doesn’t comprehend. Her Hero— the Hero, excuse her—suddenly darts his gaze to find that his Princess is staring him down, that her eyes have grown ferocious in a way that he’s wholly unfamiliar with. He turns his head away sharply when mercurial glances finally meet.
“Would you hold still? I’m working on your jaw,” Zelda spouts in frustration as she trains her eyes upon the canvas. She swallows a brilliant sensation down, sets it amongst the armada of unnamed emotions wound up inside of her chest. He only mumbles an apology back, but her voice grows soft in a way it hasn’t in many months when she responds with: “It’s all right.” She casts a furtive glance back and swears she ferrets out the faintest hint of a smile toying at his lips.
Zelda presses on to detail the hollows of his features— the point of his ears, the contemplation of his brow. Precision evades her when she works with the vine, but even so, hints of him leap alive when she connects his lines. He surfaces from the depths of dusty gold that bleeds through the window and rounds on her in a way his physical form chooses not to. She tones the lighting scrupulously, decides that she wants to emphasize the way sunlight kisses his cheekbone as it skims across a curtain of sandy bangs. Even through the ashen lines of the sketch, ice blue eyes work their way up through the monochrome to make her wriggle beneath their watch. It’s exhilarating. It's infuriating ; doesn’t she spend enough of her waking hours haunted by his vigilant eye? And now here she is, duplicating him as though she craves even more of his judgment. But Zelda is aware that her blood is boiling differently than normal. She negotiates the fury as it threatens against ardent veins, feels it sink further into her belly and coil up to watch her suffer.
"I don’t believe I’ve ever seen your hair down before." Her tongue betrays her, moves far more quickly than her brain as she begins to thin out the dark scuffs of charcoal. Link's shoulders only lift slightly in a small shrug. “It’s...rather nice this way,” she states reluctantly, but regret vibrates on her tongue when she hears just how small her voice has grown.
“Thank you.”
“Shh, I’m working on your mouth.”
She watches as her words trigger a quick drag of his tongue across his bottom lip. As something flurries about inside of her, she runs her own glance across his bare skin to study the taunting stretches of scars; he's earned quite a collection, a symposium of old and new. The more recent wounds that shade darker than his usual tones run parallel to the mellowed, pallid pink of long forgotten assaults. She's impressed at the way they break so cleanly, almost as if the rest of his skin, unblemished and tan and soft to the eye, declares that it can't possibly be ignored. She's halfway to wondering how the taut stretch of him might feel beneath curious fingers when her instructor is noting the time from across the room.
Minutes scurry past as Zelda fumbles with her bearing— she’s out of practice, thank you very much — but her heart is pounding beneath a throat that’s grown as dry as the great Gerudo desert. She takes to threading strands of his hair and finds herself wondering what it might feel like to run fingers through—
Stop.
Fine tuning him becomes a maelstrom of work. Zelda dips back and forth between shadows and blenders and a million other things that burst from the neglected alcoves of her mind as she dusts the cobwebs off of instincts long suppressed. No, more like this. Not quite— yes, that's much better.
And why should she care, anyway? There's no reward for her troubles. The Goddess won't suddenly poke her head in to grant sealing powers out of gratitude. Zelda ought to have scribbled a stick figure and moved on to much more meaningful art.
“How does it look, Princess?” Link dares to whisper against pressing silence, his voice dripping with an unexpected amiability that practically swipes the air out from her lungs. The soft scratch of a quill stills from the other side of the room as Mikkel's prying ears rouse with curiosity. Zelda rises to the challenge.
“You'll have to decide for yourself, but progress is being made. Now hush.” She's careful to deliver the last word gently, and Link only stifles a small smile. “I’ll need to work on your torso now. Turn yourself to face me a little bit more." He obliges politely as he shuffles in his seat, avoiding her eye as he moves.
If Zelda has ever deemed the Goddess cruel, she can only condemn her for what happens as he moves: the cloth that conceals him catches beneath his stationary foot as he turns, and the one in motion tugs it further and further along until the length of his firm leg is exposed. And somehow, as though it's even possible for such a thing to happen, the matter gets worse— he drags the sheet forward. It only takes one, sharp hint of the v shape of lower abdominals peeking across the top of fabric to tie her tongue. It's low, low enough to send her headfirst into disastrously creative thoughts about what might lie at the vertex. Zelda's face burns, hot-white and punishing, and she thinks she could throw herself from the Great Plateau when she finds herself wanting to look again. Sweet Hylia, she wants to look again.
So, she does, and it's only slightly devastating.
The snap of charcoal, fragmenting between the canvas and her iron-clad grip, echoes with the force of a Lynel crusher to the head.
“Everything alright, Princess?” Link asks, all tongue and no jaw. With an apoplectic response lodged firmly in her throat, Zelda watches as he adjusts his sheet, his eyes trained straight ahead, still fully blind to the anarchy he's caused in her. She fumbles with a new applicator as she feels her instructor's gaze fasten tightly to her.
“Nearly done.” She whispers, pulse flickering against a strained neck.
The final stretch, Zelda thinks, runs as smoothly as the cobblestone that threads through Castle Town. She swears she's scrambling to the session's end; the lines she's spent so long tending to suddenly fray into something akin to chicken scratch in the penultimate moments of the exercise. Her wrist throbs with a small crick, joints straining from disuse as she hustles to the end— please, let it end—and eventually, Hylia grants her a reprieve, and Zelda is torn from her fever dream by an approving hum from behind. Mikkel muses across her shoulder, his mouth molded down with satisfaction.
“Your attention to detail is spectacular, Princess.” He compliments her, but she silently decrees him an enemy of the state when he ambushes her with another thought: "It seems that you know your knight’s face very well.”
“May I see, Princess?” Link's voice is small when he finally dares to ask it. She musters a glance at him— though she can't help the way it first falls to his groin and sends her stomach catapulting.
“I suppose so.” Feigned nonchalance is betrayed entirely by the flush that runs the length down to her collarbone, and her gaze sets heavily upon the blemish where her twig has snapped against her piece. Zelda can hardly contend with the energy skittering through her limbs; she nearly forgets to raise the canvas from its easel, considers how easily a fist would barrel right through it. His leaden face would split, eyes punched out in opposite directions. A busted lip that shall never bleed.
Zelda swallows the panic down and asks through gnashed teeth. “What do you think, Sir Link?"
Nothing can prepare her for the way his face lights up. The muscles in his cheeks soften, and his eyes widen just enough to make him feel like a different person altogether. He adjusts his posture, sits as tall as he had done when they'd first begun while his fingers grip at the sheet. Something simmers low in Zelda’s stomach, blooming with each brighter shade that flashes across his expression. And then, Hylia strike her down, he's suddenly smiling at her. He’s smiling . Smiling and naked and downright nauseating , and Zelda thinks she might detonate at any moment.
“It’s wonderful, Princess.”
She ought to have torn it up at the first thought.
The next few days are spent in a haze of uncertainty. A particularly bright dawn sends watery morning light streaming through the stained glass of a cathedral that has become all too expansive. Zelda circumvents her knight's eye when she requests that he wait at the back of the hall, turns away to miss out on the muted glimmer of curiosity wreathed through his expression. She smoothes fabric out as she kneels before the altar, brings her hands together and begins.
The morning contemplation is anything but typical; beseeching thoughts unravel into something more akin to gossip, disbelief and confusion muting any lingering hints of invocation. She does her best to push them away—to focus on the impending apocalypse and death and inevitable doom. But all fears of destruction are distorted, and Zelda finds that she can’t focus on the images of malice and blood and bodies that normally press against her closed eyelids; instead, she sees skin. And muscles. And scars. And a tawny mop of hair and inklings of azure blue.
Her eyes pop open. She nearly whips around on the spot to check that he’s still there, but she steadies herself before her chin even reaches her shoulder. Link clears his throat in subtle inquiry, but she only exhales softly and resumes. A thin conversation, information exchanged in just a few, primitive sounds. Under normal circumstances, his soft interrogation might have sent her into a fit of groans and snapping affronts. But, like its predecessors, something about the day is different; instead, she holds her tongue and finds the smallest hint of charm in his effort.
It's upsetting, to say the least.
When she’s finished, with little more than several apathetic words offered to the Goddess, she rises and glides through the structure, gossamer skirts whispering against stone as she moves. Her verdant gaze fixes itself low and forward, anticipating each step, unable to catch his own as she brushes past him. He’s always been a little difficult to look upon, but knowing the way light catches against his obliques makes the task even more harrowing.
Zelda requests a late breakfast. Link obliges and grants her a small grunt in response that is surely dipped in delight. She squashes the threat of a smile before it has a moment to flourish. (His appetite has never amused her before, and there's no reason that it ought to start now.) Breakfast consists of a slice of rye bread and nibbles of cheese, one meager bite of an apple edging down her throat before Zelda’s knotted stomach demands that she stop. Link, on the other hand, has surely consumed three equivalent helpings by the time she sets it down.
He does well to mask his total astonishment, however, when she offers him her leftovers.
“Are you positive?”
“Food shouldn’t go to waste.”
Zelda refuses to meet his eye as she grumbles the explanation, her scowl driving hard into the spiral grain of the table as nails tap impatiently against the top. She thinks there might be an inkling of pink shading her cheeks, but she’ll place fault on the warming sunlight that slants through the nearest lancet window.
Link’s fingers curl in hesitation.
The small plate scrapes against dark wood as she cursorily pushes it in his direction. “I insist.” Link glances around, looks as though he might be attempting to steal the small gold bracelet encircling her wrist rather than collecting a few bites of unwanted fare.
“Thank you, Princess,” he mumbles politely.
Zelda hears the shuffle of food scuffling across her plate as he gathers the remnants of her feeble meal. She glances over to huff a response, but the acknowledgement collapses in the column of her throat when she finds his teeth sinking into bright red skin. She watches as his mouth displaces her own against the fruit, its sweet juice bursting from a particularly excitable bite to run down the grooves where dimples might live. Juice laced with traces of her, his insatiable tongue innocently gathering remnants of her while she watches.
She nearly smacks the fruit from his hand, her stomach dropping and her jaw so tense that her mouth is left sore long after they part.
Morning drags its skirts across Hyrule Castle far too quickly and smells of burnt sandalwood when it rouses Zelda from sleep, the last vestiges of her evening regimen persisting under the gleam of daylight. She lingers between her sheets far longer than usual, feigns a peaceful slumber and has to be pulled from her bed by a handmaid when the sun creeps too close to its zenith.
"Mara," Zelda croaks as she rubs imaginary sleep from her eyes, "Might the kitchen be willing to send up breakfast today?"
"Of course, Princess." The maid's Tabanthan accent tilts with muted curiosity.
"Oh, and one more thing, please. Would you mind fixing my hair into one of those intricate braids today?" The one that takes the longest to prepare?
"But of course, Princess." Mara bows her head politely, though chestnut eyes narrow with mischief. Her lips part slightly in contemplation before she's inquiring: "Oh, are there any messages for Sir Link? He's been waiting so very patiently at your door for some time now. It seems he's grown a little concerned that you've yet to appear." Her curled head canted slightly, Mara's round, blinking face exudes charm in spades, and it's in the fourth, demure blink that Zelda realizes she's being poked at.
The maid is lucky that the Princess is quite fond of her.
Zelda clears her throat and murmurs weakly: "I did not think you to be so bold.”
“You mistake me, my lady.” Mara smiles. “If I were, I'd have half the mind to snatch him up myself. ”
"Surely you know that you are welcome to do such a foul thing." Air crackles as it pushes through straining vocal folds.
"Nay, Princess. Can't have my sweetheart's head constantly filled with thoughts of another woman now, can I?" Zelda is suddenly smothering a blush beneath her maid's suppressed titter, but it latches tightly to warm cheeks and persists through the morning routine.
After a much calmer breakfast than the tragedy of yesterday's, Zelda declares that she'd like to spend some time in the garden, and Link follows in her wake as she descends the broad-shouldered castle’s twining staircases. (A small part of her wonders if he’s had a moment to admire the lovely plait that Mara has lined down the back of her neck.) Down in the garden, wreathed roses climb the trellis that houses Zelda's most cherished bench—a place of moments long gone, where her mother would set her upon her lap and read stories until the small Princess would yield to her afternoon nap beneath stretches of summer sun. Zelda arrives at her post holding firm to the notion that the swirling green of the familiar hedges and the musky scent of the flora might offer some relief.
She's mistaken.
She’s held rather tightly to her resolve. She's hardly managed a word towards him all morning, and she's looked upon him even less than that. But in the open air of the grounds, Zelda finds that the nagging thought that's sat so heavily against her mind since last evening's prayer has finally coerced itself free.
"Sir Link," she begins in a flat voice, her eyes pinned to a particularly dense chunk of text in the book she's been chipping away at.
"Yes, Princess?" His voice is as gentle as talcum powder and just as potentially devastating, if the tumble in her stomach has any say in the matter.
"Whatever became of that sketch from the other day?" Zelda lifts steely eyes to watch him gather a response. He lingers on the precipice of her vision, his chest tall and his back pressed up against a crosshatch of white.
“It’s in my quarters.”
A wrinkle creases her nose.
“I suppose it has been lost beneath a pile of laundry, then? Or perhaps scrunched up in your trash receptacle?”
She doesn't know why she's asking. Certainly doesn't know why her heart is thudding against her sternum while she waits for his answer.
“Not at all, Princess. It hangs on the wall.” Link declares, and it's in such sheer simplicity that Zelda feels her bones indurate.
“...you have it on display?”
“Of course, Princess.”
She can hardly breathe past the fine print of the novel as it jumbles together in her blurring vision. The birdsong swarming overhead isn't loud enough to drown out the blood pulsating in her ears or the assiduous thoughts flooding her brain. Doesn't resonate loudly enough to shake the small hint of an eruption in her belly.
“Oh, well, it was a bit rubbish…you mustn’t feel obligated to display it," she blurts out, fingers mindlessly dog-earing the page she hasn't been able to move past in the last few minutes. She thinks of the maid that comes to collect his garments; imagines her eyeing the piece, inquiring about it, clinging tightly to linens as she scampers away to giggle with her colleagues. She thinks of Mara's knowing smile and pales.
Link recoils subtly at the statement, going so far as to toss her a glance before he's straightening up once more. “If that’s what you call rubbish..." He blinks for a moment, but only shakes the unfinished thought from his head. "You’re very talented.” It's stated matter-of-factly, without any hint of the smile he'd failed to swallow down back in the studio, but she's caught off guard at just how much he allows to spill from his normally silent lips. "I shall cherish it."
Zelda lifts her book to hide cheeks burnished rose, and seethes.
Square breathing, the court physician had called it when the first of her night terrors appeared. A sequence of fours, breaths wrapped in quads to provide the young princess some comfort when the weight of her duty began to rear its ugly head. To promote relaxation, the physician says— though the odds are not in its favor tonight. Another restless night has crept along to swath Zelda in a wrap of agitation. She doesn’t know exactly how many hours whistle past as she recounts the different classes of Hylian flora around the castle, considers the various trade routes from the furthest end of the continent to the other. Lets her mind skim across the Sheikah schematics she pores over while her father's back is turned—deliciously scandalous by her own standards. And when those avenues fail, she resorts to listing the fruit one might scavenge across Central Hyrule— acorns and chickaloo tree nuts.
And wildberries.
And apples.
And then it happens, all at once. Something inside of her rumbles to life.
It's as though Zelda absconds the body that's begun to feel much more like a prison, when the spark ignites. She can feel herself morphing into something spectral, like an uninvited apparition settling into the darkest corner of her room to watch a hand drag across her navel when the call between curious limbs crescendos with impatience. She closes her eyes and focuses hard on the smoldering path that she forges as fingers make their way down her belly to settle neatly around the edge of opalescent fabric. They drag in lazy circles, luxuriating at her nightgown as though discovering the sensation of it for the first time.
Zelda is vaguely familiar with the ache. The one that comes calling when she’s edging the plane of fatigue. She’s never answered it— doesn’t know how. Doesn’t know what it’s requesting, exactly; which surprises her, the scholar, to have never once questioned such instincts. Beneath the waxing moonlight, the call feels much more insistent than she's ever known it to be. Far more alluring, and far more predatory, wringing each thought from her brain to leave her wading in incoherence. Aches. Fingers. Apples .
The fledgling cry spreads its wings.
Index and thumb vibrate with peaked curiosity as they roll satin between them, but they move away in favor of the flare of her hip and skate down to the top of her calf, inciting the slightest shiver as they move. The other hand, aching for something to settle upon, inches its way back up to her chest, dragging fabric in its wake to unveil her breasts against the cool night air. With only the ghost of her innocence to witness, Zelda closes her eyes and sighs beneath her own touch, and her exhale melts into a moan when fingers clasp together around a hardened bud. Against her thigh, an assured hand snakes its way to the hem of her undergarments, poking its way beneath to grasp at the fine, golden hairs of her sex. She combs fingers through them, twirls them, and the call swells louder as it urges her forward.
When Zelda discovers the small bundle of nerves, fingers working with surprising dexterity, she bends like a petal beneath a Lanayru deluge. The purr forces her down into her sheets as arousal builds and an insatiable hunger roots itself in her bones. She's never realized how wholly the feeling might swallow her down to leave her feeling so helpless, so unresistant as it pummels her into submission. Her back arches and glossy eyes widen as she presses against a particularly lovely spot.
She wonders: would magic run more freely if it were another person’s hands between her thighs? She considers the possibilities— gentle fingers, soft and teasing to guide her towards that promised edge. A hand of poetry to make her sing. Or, perhaps even more enticing as she begins to rock desperate hips against fingers long grown damp, a firm hand, with a confidence that makes her squirm in swells of pleasure, unrelenting and devastating as it wrenches primitive sounds from a regal throat; a blacksmith’s hands, a soldier’s. A knight’s.
Would Link know how to touch her?
Jade eyes snap open to bore hard into the canopy above her, her heart battering away as she tiptoes closer to that final threshold.
Absolutely not. There is no space for him in her mind this evening. Not while she sighs beneath the palm at her breast or while the slickened sound of want reverberates in her own ears.
Oh, but how smug he’d be to catch her in such a compromising position. Zelda's face grows hot with more than just intoxication when she thinks about each generous word he’s given her in the last few days, each syllable dangling like a lure to wheedle her into false comfort. Perhaps trying to see if she’ll fall apart so that he can mock such juvenile behavior when she turns her back— surely that must be it: poor, pathetic, Zelda, so willing to submit to her maidenhood that she lets her bodyguard cross her mind at such a time. Her warden .
But her hand only moves faster and a small, frustrated whine slips out beneath a blushing frown.
Not him, not him, not him . Not the echoes of his battles against her cheek as she drags bruised lips across his shoulder, not the scent of pine he carries with him ringing in her nostrils. Not the low lit, cobalt glance that he might rake across her hips, her breasts. Not the soft, sandy tresses that spill across her gasping face. Not the dusky whispers he'd unravel her with, and most certainly not his firm hand beckoning her higher and higher while he presses himself up against trembling legs that spread so easily for him.
And then she slows her pace, because surely it’s something that such an audacious man would do, the absolute fiend . He'd taunt her, dip a finger in alongside himself while he rocks into her, stretch out her torture just long enough to make the Crown Princess of Hyrule feel like an absolute fool—oh Goddess, he'd make her beg for him, wouldn't he? Zelda's dexterous hand slips when it dawns on her just how obscenely wet she’s become.
No. No. Please .
Even so, she hardly recognizes herself when she gasps his name out into the night; when she discovers what it tastes like splashed across her pillow while her mind draws up the low thrum of his crowning groan pulsing against her. And when Zelda bursts around her straining hand, it’s harder and sweeter than anything she’s ever known. The throb starts between her legs and drags across her limbs in explosive waves, molten pleasure drenching her right down to the core.
Zelda brings both hands up to cup her mouth in horror and stills, only the steady pulse of contracting muscles deep between her legs a sign that she's still in her own body. Cramping fingers soaked with arousal cast their spell, and before she's even had a moment to shake off the last racks of orgasm, Zelda forces them back down to that delicious spot once more and finds that it doesn’t take much to taste stars again. She vaults into the stratosphere with ease, his ever elusive smile guiding her all the while, and when she finally does land, she strangles on something halfway between a choke and a sob. Even once she’s settled back into the cold reality of her darkened room, when something that feels quite a bit like shame is gnawing at her and she's quickly covering herself up again, a part of him still seems to linger. A phantom arm across her belly, the soft point of his nose cloaked beneath golden tresses tousled by his hand. She swears she hears his wilting, sleepy sighs in her ear—it brings no comfort.
Mute with disillusion, Zelda rises from her bed and moves silently through the dark, a wraith through willows when she arrives at a washbasin. As shock melts away, she disintegrates into small grumbles, her whispers harsh and strangled and teary as she scrubs at her hands, her thumb pressing so decisively into the flesh beside her index finger that she whimpers aloud. But discomfort soon melts into freedom: she is clean, and he is gone .
When she returns to bed, her mind tempered and her breath steady, it feels as though she’s slipping into a stranger’s. She rolls across foreign sheets to face the window and trains her focus upon the cloud that sidles up against a knowing moon.
She swears to herself that it won’t ever happen again. She swears it.