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If her father had known what assigning Link as her personal knight would lead to, Zelda is a hundred percent certain that he would not have gone through with it.
At first, she'd hated being left alone with him out in the wilderness. He'd been silent and watchful, barely speaking a word unless spoken to—and even then, keeping his answers as concise and neutral as possible. He'd made her feel judged and found wanting—at least until she'd come to understand him.
Now, she's rather glad that her father trusts him. It means there's no one around to witness them push aside their boundaries and cross into forbidden territory.
The waters of the Spring of Power splash and ripple as she drags him into it, mouth hot on his. His hands immediately slide down her body to cup her rear, the heat of them scalding her through her wet prayer gown.
He turns them on the spot and backs her toward the stairs, lifting her onto the lip of the stone next to them. His lips find her throat as her fingers bury themselves in his hair, tugging his tie out and tightening against his scalp. Her head dips back at the slightest suggestion of teeth—not enough to bruise, but there will be red marks for at least a few minutes when he's done with her.
"There is nothing wrong with you." He breathes into her ear as her free arm wraps around his shoulders. "Nothing."
She tugs him to stand between her parted thighs, his hands leaving burning trails as they push sodden fabric up, up, up. Her breath hitches as he tugs her earlobe between his teeth.
Of course there's something wrong with her. She's letting her knight have his way with her in a sacred spring, for goodness' sake.
…or is she having her way with him? She's not sure. She's relatively certain that he would never put his hands on her without her reaching for him first, at the very least. And he would certainly never desecrate such a holy place of his own volition.
Maybe it's just her, after all. He certainly doesn't seem to have lost Hylia's favour for defiling Her descendant. At least, not yet.
His lips seek hers, and then his tongue is in her mouth. She sighs through her nose, pressing herself against him and feeling the warmth of his frame bleed through their drenched clothing. Her fingers are cold when she sneaks them up under his tunic, but he doesn't so much as flinch as her thumbs brush against the bones of his pelvis.
She feels bad that she uses him like this, to soothe the ache that repeated failure has settled between her ribs. But still, she exults in the feeling of warm fingers tightening into the flesh of her thighs before he curses, fumbling with her uncooperative smallclothes.
She rakes her fingernails over his abdomen when his hand slips beneath sodden fabric, tearing her lips from his to bury her face in his shoulder. His fingers burn as they slip between her folds, fumbling, seeking.
They've only done this a small handful of times, and neither are particularly experienced. Zelda has never lain with a man before, and she's fairly certain that he's never had a woman, either. He'd once confessed to her that he felt pressured to live up to an unrealistic ideal of courage and virtue, to have a pristine reputation and never set a toe out of line. That means there can be no string of jilted lovers left in his wake.
Really, what had her father expected, throwing two repressed young people into each other's company, out of view of prying eyes? They are neither of them paragons of virtue, no matter how hard they try to give that impression to the world. It had been inevitable that they'd be drawn to each other, that lines would be crossed.
Link may be as inexperienced as she, but he's a quick study. He finds her clit after a few moments of searching, cursing through gritted teeth as he sets to pressing his fingers against her. She makes a broken noise into the fabric of his tunic as her thighs clench around his hips, pelvis jolting at the sensation.
"Too much?" He asks breathily.
"A little." She admits.
His touch eases up into something far more manageable—and altogether more glorious. She sighs into the crook of his neck, lips pressed against the throb of his pulse. His skin tastes of sweat and spring water, his heartbeat strong and rapid under her lips. "How's that?"
She tightens her arms around his shoulders, panting into his ear. She makes an approving sound from deep within her throat, humming as he sets into a rhythm that makes her blood run hot.
They shouldn't be doing this—especially not here, not in a sacred spring of the old gods. But Zelda just doesn't care. The gods have ignored her all her life, despite her endless supplications. Despite all the soothsayers remaining convinced that she is the sacred princess of legend, destined to seal Calamity Ganon away. Why should she care about desecrating their holy sites?
Maybe, this way, she might finally gain their attention—even if only to strike her down for blasphemy. It will be a pity to take Link with her, but she's already going to get him killed because she can't awaken her stupid powers anyway.
It's inevitable, she thinks absently as he removes his fingers and lifts her rear from the cold stone. Knowing what he wants, she struggles with sodden, clinging fabric, letting him lower her legs back to stand in the water so he can help divest her of her prayer gown. It drops with a wet thwap into the water beside her, immediately borne away by the current and over the small waterfall that feeds the bottom half of the spring.
She's overheating, even though she's completely bare from the waist up. She scrabbles with her smallclothes, shimmying them down her hips to complete her nakedness.
He hikes her back up onto the stone and kisses her again—hot, wet, and wanton. The stone is smooth from thousands of years of weathering under her buttocks, chill to the touch. But then, Zelda is already cold, heated skin erupting into gooseflesh as she reclines. Water seeps from her hair, pooling around her as she lowers her back to the ground, lifting and parting her legs to make room for him to lean over her.
Link's lips near scald her when he begins trailing kisses down her body. He worries a red mark into the space underneath her breast, before trailing down, over her stomach to between her thighs. He kneels, as if in prayer—as if he's before an altar, though the real one is behind him. As if there's anything about Zelda worth worshipping.
She can almost feel the judgement in eyes of the statue of Hylia, gazing placidly down at them from across the water, as Her holy champion prepares to put his mouth on Her descendant.
It makes her burn all over.
He presses wet kisses from her knee up her thigh, teeth and tongue gentle on her skin. Careful, ever careful not to leave evidence behind. She wishes he could mark her properly, that he could suck bruises into her skin, to leave his mark on soft flesh—but a princess has no privacy. Someone will see.
Her father would be furious. Even if Zelda denied that it was Link who had touched her, even if anyone believed her, he would still be dismissed for taking his eyes off her long enough for her to take a lover.
It had taken her a long time to accept that Link's post had been earned. As the Chosen Hero, the only thing he'd have to do would be to help her seal the looming darkness. He doesn't have to be her protector. Any old knight can be a royal bodyguard; he had earned the job with his bravery and skill.
He doesn't have to be her friend, either; he'd wormed his way into her affections with his kindness and compassion, by making her feel listened to and cared about and seen.
She doesn't want to take his accomplishments away from him. So she bites her tongue and doesn't beg him to leave evidence behind.
Her eyes stare up, unseeing, at the night sky as his lips finally close around her clit, tongue flicking gently. Her shaking hand reaches down and cards through his hair as she sighs, eyes slipping closed to block out the moon and the stars above.
The warmth of him is solid and real, something she can reach out and physically touch. His presence has gone from a thorn stuck in her side, reminding her of her failures, to a warm comfort that soothes the ache of disappointment every time her prayers go unanswered.
One of her feet slips to dangle in the sacred waters. Link hefts it up over his shoulder without breaking away from her. His fingers dig into her hips as he pulls her closer, bare skin scraping against stone.
She whimpers when two fingers slide into her, flexing and searching for the spot he'd discovered last time—the spot that had made her squirm and shake and cry out.
It's good—he's so good. He gives and gives and gives and gives, and never asks for anything in return. He'd nearly had an aneurysm the first time she'd gotten on her knees for him, in the woods on the way home from the Spring of Courage, trying to assure her that she didn't have to, that he was okay, that he didn't need her to do that for him.
She wonders if he'll let her do it again.
Maybe, she thinks foggily as he finds what he's looking for and she cries out, she's been worshiping at the wrong altar all along. She'd certainly felt a kind of power with her lips wrapped around him, his hand gentle in her hair as he'd steadied himself against a tree with a soft groan. It had been wicked, and sinful, and not even the tiniest bit holy, but it had been something.
Her hips jump against his face as he sucks, massaging her from the inside. The hand in his hair tangles and pulls, her free one scrabbling against stone without finding purchase. He twists his fingers, and her eyes fly wide, back arching off slick stone as her mouth opens in a silent scream.
Stars spin above her as moonlight ripples on the water around him. When she collapses onto her back and lifts her head to look down at her knight, she finds him haloed in reflected light.
His eyes are on her. She shivers as their gazes lock, something dark and feral hidden behind blown out pupils drinking her in.
Her head drops back against the ground, whimpers breaking free as her thighs start to twitch and her hips begin to grind against his face. It won't be long, now. Link is incredibly skilled in all that he does—it only makes sense that that extends into bed sports, too.
For once, she doesn't envy him his proficiency. Not with her being the beneficiary of this particular skill.
She comes with a cry rending the night air.
He withdraws his hand and lips as she comes down, spent and twitching and boneless. The chill is beginning to seep in; her teeth start to chatter as she pushes herself into a sitting position. Link is bent over in the spring, using the sodden hem of his tunic to wipe off his lips and chin with sacred water.
She spies the Goddess statue over his shoulder, her eyes narrowing in contempt against imagined condemnation. As if she's wilfully sullying Link with her imperfections when he has every opportunity to say 'no'.
"I'll get your dress, Princess." Link offers into the silence, voice strained but utterly unwilling to ask anything of her.
Zelda's hand snatches out, wrapping around his wrist. Wide, dilated eyes find hers.
She loves to see him unmade, the image of Hyrule's perfect hero mussed and blurred. He looks wild; wet up to his chest, hair loose and unkempt, flush high in his cheeks and eyes dark with want. He looks perfectly mortal and human and attainable.
She doesn't know what he sees when he looks at her. She's sure she can't look like more than a pathetically naked girl with reckless fury in her eyes. Not directed at him—never at him, not anymore—but against a world and a Goddess that asks so much of her that she just cannot do.
"Come here." She tugs his wrist.
He steps back between her thighs.
Undoing his belt is easy enough; metal doesn't become harder to handle when wet. The ties on his trousers give her a little more trouble, but she gets them undone enough to draw him out and into her hands.
She seriously considers spinning him around and sinking to her knees before him in a different kind of prayer than the kinds she's spent all day fruitlessly offering. But she spots the statue again, and something wild and self-destructive takes hold in her chest.
"Come here." She says again, scooting forward until she's just hanging over the edge of the stone.
He seems to read her intent. "Princess—we can't—"
"Why not?" She challenges, breathing into his ear, trailing butterfly kisses down his jaw to the corner of his lips. "Because I'm a princess? I don't care about that."
He says nothing in response. She hears him swallow thickly.
She draws back to meet his gaze, eyebrows raised. Without saying a word, she begins to stroke him, touch feather soft. She knows the skin of her hands is silky and soft, maintained by a rigorous skincare routine imposed upon her by her maids. Logically, it must feel different from the times he's taken himself in hand, with all his calluses.
"We don't have to if you don't want to." She tells him as he screws his eyes shut and leans his palms on the ground on either side of her hips. He doesn't answer right away. She tightens her fist around him a little, delighting in the soft grunt he lets out, frame jolting against hers.
"I want to." He groans, his forehead coming to rest against her shoulder. "But I shouldn't."
"If you want to, you should." She kisses the tip of his ear. "I want to." She teases a little, taking it between her teeth and biting gently.
His answering chuckle is hot against her collarbone. "As my Princess commands."
He never calls her by name, she thinks with displeasure. She's given up trying to tell him to.
His hands are rough and callused on her hips as he drags her forward, almost completely off her purchase; she's forced to leverage herself against him, breasts crushed to his chest as he reaches down to hold himself. The fabric of his tunic rubs against her nipples, sending shocks of sensation whizzing through her.
Her arms wrap around his frame as he presses inside her. One hand fists in the sodden fabric of his tunic, the other in his wild hair as she stretches around his intrusion—a delicious burn that she feels creeping all the way along her spine and punching the breath from her lungs.
The statue watches on as they breach this final barrier—a line they've never crossed before in all their fumbling exploration. This is something so far beyond forbidden that it crosses over into taboo. Even if she'd ordered him at knifepoint to take her, Link could be executed for his.
The thought makes her nearly combust. His entire frame shudders as her legs wrap around his waist, ankles locking over his clothed buttocks.
"Are you alright?" His face is buried in her neck, nose bumping against her pulse. "It doesn't hurt?"
"You feel wonderful." She breathes, tightening her limbs around him.
For once, she feels wild and free and alive.
Zelda's mother had told her a legend of the Goddess when she'd been a little girl. It was said, her mother told her, that the Goddess had loved Her chosen hero so much that She had chosen to submit Herself to the cycle of reincarnation when he'd been cursed by a great evil, so that She would be there to support him when he was inevitably reborn. The hero was Her true love, destined to find and love Her in every life.
Zelda certainly doesn't feel like Hylia reborn—but Link is, without question, Her beloved hero. And, right now, in this moment, he isn't Hylia's. He's hers. Zelda's. She holds him inside her body and within the circle of her arms, the heat of him seeping into her from the inside out.
His movements are jerky and unpractised, and probably not helped by the tight hold she keeps on him. Water sloshes around his thighs and he grunts against her throat. His hands cradle her hips, moving her with him in an instinctive rhythm that she can't even begin to understand.
She closes her eyes against the sight of the Goddess watching on in disapproval. She embraces her rumoured, supposed impiety. If her virtue isn't good enough to gain the Goddess's favour, then it's useless to her. Better to give it to someone who already finds her worthy.
"Touch me." She breathes into his ear, panting in time with his movements.
A hand leaves her hip to slide between their bodies and fumble at slippery flesh. She forgets, briefly, who and where they are—she forgets about her failure and the disapproval of her father, about the whispers among the court and the condemnation of the Goddess, about her power and the ruin it will bring if she doesn't awaken it. All she knows is the man buried between her thighs; his grip on her hip, the feel of him in her arms, his breath skating across heated flesh.
She's still sensitive from her previous orgasm, fluttering around him as he jerks into her. That sensation, combined with his fingers, fills her to the brim and causes her skin to overheat.
He curses into her throat. "Princess—Princess I have to—" She feels him try to withdraw. She makes a noise of disapproval, pressing closer to him and tightening her legs around his hips. "Princess—I can't finish inside—"
Just the thought of it curls her toes. She comes again with a cry at his words, a distant part of her brain noting that mental stimulation seems just as effective as physical.
"Shit—shit—!" Link shudders in her arms, and she feels him grind against her, hand snatching back to her hip and pulling her roughly against him. There's a spasm and unfurling warmth spilling inside her. Her legs had locked around him in orgasm—she'd unintentionally prevented him from pulling out.
She should be worried about that, but she's strangely calm about the whole thing as they collapse against the stones in a heap of damp, panting cloth and flesh. Her fingers run absently through his hair as he presses his forehead into her breasts.
He tenses after a moment. "I'm sorry." He scrambles off of her, eyes wide and panicked. "I shouldn't have—"
"It's alright." She pushes herself to sit with shaky arms. Her nerves are still fluttering as she regains her breath.
"But—"
She shakes her head. She already feels cold without him. "There are medicines that can… flush out anything that takes root. Purah won't ask questions if I tell her I need one." She feels hollow as she says the words.
He relaxes, running his hands over his face.
The feeling grips her, sudden and unbidden, that she wishes she wouldn't need such an elixir. That, if she found herself carrying his child, they could elope like regular people and raise their baby far away from disapproving eyes.
Tears prick at her eyes as her mind follows that path—to a future where Calamity Ganon never comes, where she can keep him forever and won't get him killed with her ineptitude. She buries her face in her hands and curses the Goddess for taunting her by placing him within her reach, but surrounding them with circumstances that prevents her from holding him properly.
"Princess? Are you—did I hurt you?!" Link's voice is aghast. When she lifts her head, cheeks wet with tears, his expression is pained. It's the most expressive she's ever seen him—because he thinks he's done something to hurt her. As if he's ever truly done anything to hurt her. She can only laugh at the absurdity of it all.
"No." She shakes her head, looking down at the bare skin of her lap. She can feel his spend beginning to leak out of her, pooling on the stone and running into the sacred waters. "No, I'm fine. I just—I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm sorry."
His hands come up to her shoulders, thumbs moving soothingly against her skin. His face ducks into her line of sight, eyes soft and kind. "Is there something I can do?"
You could run away with me, she thinks wistfully.
Instead of saying that, she gives him a watery smile. "Could you get my gown, please? I… need to clean up." She fights the urge to press her thighs together against the slightly uncomfortable trickling sensation.
"Of course." He doesn't kiss her again, like she wishes he would. Instead, he gives her shoulders a slight squeeze before letting go, wading toward the small waterfall and splashing down into the lower portion of the spring.
Zelda lowers herself back into the water. They've already defiled the spring by—she winces—fucking in it. She can't imagine cleaning away the evidence in its waters will damn her any more than she already has been.
It's terribly cold now that all is said and done. Still, she doesn't regret it. Now, even if they do succeed, even if her father decides to marry her off to some foreign prince or haughty noble, she can always remember that the first man she'd had had been one that she'd loved. Not a lot of women can say the same, especially women of rank.
She's not naïve enough to believe that she can ever keep Link in any meaningful way. Even if he loves her with the same all-consuming passion that she does him, her father would never permit it. Chosen by the Goddess or not, Link is a commoner. At best, if they somehow succeed, he'll be granted some kind of noble rank and shuffled off to a country estate to marry some nobleman's daughter, and Zelda will make the marriage that best secures Hyrule's political future.
And if they die, which is far more likely? Then at least she will have this experience to hold close to her heart for the rest of her short life.
As clean as she can make herself with only water and her own fingers, she wades, naked, out to stand in front of the altar with the statue. She pauses there for a moment, staring up at the Goddess's impassive face.
She offers no prayers, no supplications. She simply stares in defiance of the Goddess' judgement, daring Her to finally break Her silence to condemn her for her impiety.
Silence. There is only the rush of the water around her.
Sneering, Zelda slaps the surface of the spring, sending a wave of droplets spraying across the stone.
"Curse you." She mutters, glaring up at the statue.
It stares back placidly. Silently. Unflinchingly.
In this moment, Zelda has never hated anything more than the Goddess who turns a deaf ear to Her own descendant.
"Princess?" Link's voice calls over the spring. When she turns to him, he's holding a towel over his arm. "We should dry off. You'll get sick."
Her heart twists in her chest as she stares at him. Gods, but she wants to keep him. She wants to be able to hold him in her arms forever and tell him that she loves him, without having to worry about kings or countries or ancient evils.
But she is the Princess of Hyrule. Such a thing will never be within her grasp.
She wades toward him, taking his hand when he offers it to help her up the slippery steps. Gingerly, he wraps the towel around her shoulders. "I'll build up the fire again." He murmurs.
She nods silently. Then, he turns his back, and she says nothing as she watches him go.
"Curse you." She mutters under her breath again. Whether she's cursing Hylia, herself, her father, Ganon, or even Link… she doesn't know.