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Several winding turns later she found him. He was sitting on the remains of a column, half-buried beneath a tree that, preserved somehow inside that curse for 10,000 years and against all odds, had begun sprouting new leaves already. His back was turned, but she knew he must have felt her coming long before she ever laid eyes on him. His voice, part wind and part stone, seemed to belong to the ruins themselves.

“Have you gotten rid of them?”

“No,” she sighed, hugging her arms as she drew closer, “I haven’t gotten rid of them.”

The sweet smell of sunkissed earth and moss wafted up from beneath her feet as she moved, whispering gently that autumn was stirring awake, ready to renew that forgotten place with a proper rot. There was an inviting stillness in that heat, tempting her to join him in it rather than disturb it. And the temptation was strong. She was tired, and unmotivated, and he still hadn’t acknowledged her even though she only stood a few feet away.

She chanced, quietly, “What are you doing?”

“Thinking.”

Zelda lowered herself onto the lip of the makeshift bench, her posture slightly collapsed, and ran a hand across her scalp. She could guess what about. He had come face to face with the last, lingering remnants of the woman he loved yesterday, and then destroyed them for her.

He asked, suddenly, softly, “Did you dream?”

She blinked at him, addled, and nodded. “More than once.”

“I’ve forgotten what it’s like,” he murmured, staring into the ruins, or perhaps through them, into another time. “But I think being trapped in your vision must have been close.”

She tried to swallow, but her throat had closed. Had that only been yesterday? Only now, having experienced the turbulence of the memories he led her through the night before, could she begin to fathom what kind of torture waking up in that illusion, charged with remembered emotion, must have been.

“Dreams feel so real in the moment,” he mused quietly, gaze unfocused, “and it isn’t until later on, looking back, that you realize how ridiculous it all was.”

She stared at her feet, voiceless, trying not to remember how tightly he had held her, how carefully, how desperately, he had drunk from her; trying not to remember the conflict scrawled across his face when he realized what she had done.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, wincing away from the image of the untouchable, dispassionate goddess, playing with her needlepoint. “When I conjured that memory I didn’t—” she faltered, closed her eyes. “I never meant to make you relive that.”

He didn’t answer for a long time, the threads of his silence binding her until she felt helpless. Then he murmured, “Yes, you did.”

She looked up at him, surprised, miserable, but his gaze wasn’t harsh.

“I was losing control, and the part of you that knew me best knew what it would take to stop me.”

His eyes locked easily with hers. The coils in them turned, lithe, undulating rings of fire, always pulling her in, holding her still, whispering things she couldn’t make out that struck fear and curiosity in her at once. They pulsed in mesmerizing tandem with her heartbeat.

She shook her head, guilty and stubborn about it, breaking free of their spell long enough to respond. “I won’t do that to you again. You have my word.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” he sighed, mouth turning down. “You have a harder time controlling your power than I do.”

She frowned, wishing she could argue. But the truth was she hardly understood what she had done. Cornered by his logic, embittered by the empty sound of her own apologies, Zelda lapsed into another silence. The heat rose from the stone, from the earth, surrounding them with the woody scent of dried sphagnum. But he spoke before that alluring stillness could form again.

“You didn’t come looking for me just to tell me that,” he breathed. “What do you want?”

She reluctantly met his eyes. The pulse in them still mirrored the pulse in her chest. “I want to bring the Champions with us.”

He tilted his head slowly, studying her, pulling at the unspoken threads encircling them both like a web until he seemed to know everything, see everything, that she hadn’t wanted him to see, and she felt utterly naked in front of him. “You’re here to invoke my oath, then?”

She bit down on nothing, holding his gaze. Only he could turn so quiet a question into such a brutal accusation. “I’d rather not have to.”

“I see.”

His eyes never left hers, boring so deep into them and for so long that she could feel the glowing filament burn into her brain and alight it from within, turning everything inside her skull to ash. She whispered, “I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you expected this of me.”

“How should I look at you?” he asked, and suddenly, feeling bare under his scrutiny, watching a quiet, insatiable hunger lurking in his eyes, she felt her face heat. But then his gaze narrowed in contempt, and as quickly as it had come the sensation was gone. “You can’t expect me to not see what’s right in front of me.”

She mirrored his scornful gaze, stung, and rose sluggishly to her feet, turning with nowhere to go. The ruins stared back at her out of empty, sun-bleached eyes, and she felt him rise behind her like a cold shadow at her back.

“I don’t know what else to do with you,” she finally admitted, whirling despairingly. “I can’t control you. I can’t reason with you. Does invoking an oath you gave me of your own volition really make me some kind of a monster?”

“The oath is yours to do with as you please,” he conceded, closing the distance between them slowly. “I am yours. But you’re a harsh mistress, Your Highness.”

She swallowed thickly. When she found her voice, it wobbled. “Then I’ll release you from it. Once this is over.”

“And using that oath like a leash until then—is that something you learned on your own, or something remembered?” he asked levelly, so close now she could breathe him in. She scoffed breathlessly, but he wasn’t dissuaded. “You’ve twice coerced me into obedience against my express wishes already, and it hasn’t even been a day.”

“I know that,” she bit loudly, cornered, too many emotions stirring in her chest at once—the frustration, the guilt, the restless, ancient need for his constancy that she still didn’t understand. “But I need them, Link, can you understand that? I can’t—I can’t do this alone.”

She trembled in the beat of silence that followed, chilled, suddenly, as though he had reached out and touched her. But he was remarkably still.

“Maybe you are a monster,” he murmured, irises pulsing a hypnotic rhythm and his proximity beginning to make her head spin. “Maybe you’re more like me than you want to admit.”

Her brow scrunched. It was the same hurt, bewildered expression she would’ve worn if she had been slapped. She tried, meagerly, “That’s not—”

“The similarities are uncanny, really,” he droned. “You manipulate others to get your way. Hurt them, if you have to. You put Hyrule in grave danger on a daily basis. And your power is completely out of control.”

“You know I’m doing the best I can—that I’m trying to save you, before there’s nothing left to save!”

“Yes, Zelda, I know exactly what you’re trying to do,” he sneered, eyes narrowing. “And let me give you a piece of advice, from one monster to another. The best intentions can come back to haunt you in the most debilitating ways.”

And then he tore himself from her without a second glance, moving west through the heat of the marsh, and she shuddered where he left her, feeling hollow and torn to shreds. She turned, staring after him, seeing the Calamity, seeing a protector, seeing a man from a memory and his contradiction at once.