Though locking her window should have been a common practice, it had never occurred to the princess considering her room was certainly not on the ground level of the castle. There were plenty of guards patrolling the castle grounds, though that didn’t seem to matter much when not one but two young boys had managed to successfully sneak past all of them without any of the guards ever guessing an intruder roamed the palace.
And it had happened more than once.
The soon to-be-wed maiden was sprawled across the chaise lounge that rest catty corner to the window, the back of her golden hair illuminated like starlight from the moon’s light pouring through the window. She’d laid there wallowing in her own sorrow since the maids departed from her bedchamber after assisting Zelda in both bathing and dressing for bed, that carefully composed mask finally shattering into thousands of porcelain pieces the moment she was alone.
The combination of her tears with his stealth meant she’d never had a chance of realizing she was far from alone. Had he chosen to remain silent, she may have crawled into bed without ever detecting his presence.
That was a voice she knew better than any other. That voice was one that still whispered to her in her dreams — even haunted her in those hours where she’d been deprived of sleep but the ability to slumber escaped her. It was a voice she thought she would never hear again, save for the exception of her memories.
Bolting to an upright position, the Hylian princess twisted to look back towards the window, watching as he stepped out from those midnight shadows that concealed the corners of her room. She would have thought his voice was another trick of her mind had he not stood in front of her; even then, she wasn’t certain this wasn’t some dream or hallucination. Shi had been gone for over two years! Zelda couldn’t even be certain he was still alive after all that time. Assuming death had not claimed him, why would he have suddenly returned to Hyrule Castle? Why now?
He made no comment on her tears, and she refused to wipe them away to further draw attention to them. Instead, the sage’s brow furrowed as she looked the male over, taking in how much he’d changed in the more than two years he’d been gone. There was little in his appearance that would tie him back to the Sheikah clan, with the exception of the prominent Sheikah features that could not be easily erased.
But she knew that voice, and she’d never forget those crimson eyes that peered at her through the dim lighting of her room. Those eyes that were present in her dreams as often as his voice.
Confused, the princess pushed to her feet, now standing beside the lounge as her cerulean gaze scanned him from head to toe. He was alone, and nothing about his appearance screamed that he was now a threat, but Nayru help her, none of this was making any sense.
“What do you mean I will no longer have much of a chance? Play along with what? Shi, what is happening? What are you doing here?”