9

King Rhoam didn't wear his royal robes. He looked just like the nameless stranger he met when he first came out of the shrine of resurrection. Link got up and walked away, watching King Rhoam follow. He moved several rooms away, needing privacy to talk to the King.

Link stopped and turned back to see the King. This time, he bowed as he once did in his presence.

"I would have spoken to you last time you had come here for your memory," King Rhoam insisted, "but you still didn't have enough memories for you to . . . to be concerned in the same way. I needed to protect my daughter, Princess Zelda." He wandered around slightly. "It's all seen better days. Her heart swells with regret and my presence doesn't help. I can't bear to show myself to her after everything that happened." He sighed. "Stand up, Link. You don't need to bow to me. I haven't been King in a very long time. I am just a spirit. A spirit trying to help his daughter before continuing on."

Link stood back up.

"I'm not here to make her feel bad. I don't blame her nor you. She and you saved Hyrule, giving it a future. She has a secret though. A secret so heinous, the kingdom itself will not accept it easily. The Champions have all left this realm. I should be seeking eternal rest yet I can't. I saw what happened. Calamity Ganon is a sneaky one, Link. He is wiser than you know, and when she formed to become herself again, he snuck malice into her heart. There is every chance it may never leave her."

Malice. The King knew. Link absorbed that information. Zelda had done nothing but protect Hyrule. She even kept back Ganon for him to come back to deal with him. There were few things the princess could do that wouldn't be accepted, but? King Rhoam was right, people would not accept this.

Not malice. Not from Ganon.

"She didn't know at first, but Ganon has left scars on her that never heal. After time they always bleed malice. She still tried to help the kingdom, but things are getting serious. She calls for me when she is here, asking what I want. She wants to know if I'm upset with her, or if she did something wrong to be cursed with malice." King Rhoam looked saddened. "Alas, our communication between worlds is about as well as in life. I couldn't reach her. I couldn't tell her what Ganon did or how much I truly had loved her. I am afraid that time has a way of revealing all secrets."

Malice. What kingdom would protect her with malice inside of her heart?

"I give you permission, to save her in any way you see possible. Whatever it takes, to know she will stay safe. Please, Link. Don't let her down like I did."

Link wouldn't again. He wouldn't die or give up. He promised the king that he would protect her.

"Princess Zelda is so special to the world. Don't let this fear consume her either. She has a place, and the chance of being discovered has left her only half fulfilling it. While I want her to be safe, she is letting her position down. She is the last of royalty. She is Queen Zelda. You are the Chosen Knight of Queen Zelda."

Link didn't let that go. Not this time. He explained she couldn't be everything while holding the malice secret inside of her. She helped the Kingdom, but running it completely would only throw more attention her way.

"Attention will come. Hyrule will one day know the secret, and sooner I fear than my dear Zelda wishes. Being established, doing good in the meantime, be who she is at heart? It will be the best chance of proof to survive when the truth comes out. You can't hide her in the Hebra mountains forever alone to escape it, Link. My daughter must walk a line, a hard line. Starting with the castle. Do you understand?"

No.

"A hundred years and it's so easy to forget. After all, the future of it is so far away. Yet, as time has showed, time moves fast. The distant future will be here years, centuries, a millennium after you perish. Yet, fate cannot be reversed. Ganon has and will come back as he has since it seems the beginning of time. With no royal blood with the goddess' blessing, there will only be a knight. We know how that ends."

Link nodded. He understood it now. Ganon would come in the distant future someday, past their life spans. If Princess Zelda didn't re-establish royalty, then there would be no goddess power. She had to continue tradition. Had to have children. Her children had to have children. Everything had to proceed.

It was a hard line to walk. She couldn't let her secret be revealed, yet she needed to truly reclaim the throne for Hyrule's future.

Link returned back to their area of sleeping. He stirred the princess, not wanting to go over it with the others. She could explain later if she wanted to. When she woke up, he explained what happened with her father.

"Not regret or betrayal." She sat up speaking softly. "He's not angry with me."

The betrayal or regret was on his side. Except for one thing.

"He wants me to be careful, and yet accept the throne. Bring royalty back to the castle and Hyrule." She tightened up. "Me, alone. No other royal survived. Not even staff, everyone was annihilated." Half anger, half depressed. "I am supposed to somehow take it all on and be a good royal and stay in the castle? Fix it up again? Restart it all over?" She scoffed. "Hyrule has done fine without me. We can fix this world, fix relations with all kingdoms through sharing and talking. Rebuild and reconstruct, but I don't need to be in charge. I don't need a castle, I don't need a title, and he isn't here anymore anyway." That last part almost made her lose it. Yet, being Princess Zelda, she didn't. She tightened up her resolve and kept herself from spilling her emotion.

Link followed up what the king said by telling her the king truly cared. He wanted her to make herself irreplaceable, if the truth came out.

Princess Zelda didn't answer right away. "I . . . I can try to maybe . . . fix the front of the castle up more. I won't take the title Queen unless I have to, and I won't require anyone to call me Princess Zelda." She waited about a minute for time to pass. "Without royalty, Ganon in our future has already won." A long, exasperated sigh. "I don't even wear a crown, and it already feels so heavy. Father is right, I can't deny it. As much as I just want to move on, to stay safe myself, you're right. I guess I wasn't thinking. Father wouldn't see it as anything new." Still berating herself as she looked around the tower. "It doesn't need to be perfect right away. The front. Year by year, we'll work on the rest. I guess, we can work on it as we are restoring Hyrule too." She casted a sideways glance. "What do you think of the countryside?"

Link smiled. She had been working with the locals in digging the decrepit remains out of the ground. Rebuilding some of the lost villages that had been resorted to ruins that monsters trounced over the last hundred years. Most were built from scratch, with some of the damaged older pieces being preserved for posterity. Proof Ganon does and will come again.

"There are small little museums for what was there before," she said. "With plaques. Warnings of what happened the first and second time, a Knight and Princess fought Ganon. When they were successful and when they . . . failed." Tough to say. Probably not easy to read those plaques. "Being overconfident in technology, in doing things the same way as the one before isn't the way to handle it next time. It takes two, and it doesn't require any extra technology Ganon can take over. Two, and the future princess . . . I wrote her a warning too. If the plaques survive and she ever comes to read any of them." She glanced at Link. "Forcing yourself to find the power isn't the key. It's being courageous. I didn't find it within myself until I had the courage to fight back, and I'm so sorry it didn't happen until you were in danger."

Link nodded, understanding that.

"We can start moving some things to this room. Royal desks and chairs that didn't get destroyed and that are still safe to use. Antiques. Royal rugs. That will make it feel more open." She tried to smile. "I'll start looking deeper for the royal funding."

Link wanted to help. He was pretty good at putting puzzles together. Princess Zelda agreed, starting tomorrow she would tell him the ancient song that should uncover the hidden fortune.

"However, I am preoccupied now. I have to visit the springs. I visit them more often, I have to, to keep the malice amount down." She curled up in her blanket. "Don't overreact."