Once Upon a Songbird
Chapter 9
Oooh I've been looking forward to this... Link and Ganondorf meet face-to-face for the first time!
(Sorry I'm running a little behind with life, work, and @zelgan-week just around the corner. In the meantime, enjoy the latest vibes collage.)
“You’re the boy,” he said, not a question.
He had seemed large when Link had peered through the wall on that first night, hunched over his desk, eclipsing Zelda in notorious shadow. He still did, framed by the hearth’s flames, as if the fire were an extension of his force. Despite the loosened shirt cuffs and absent jacket, disarmed and domestic, there was a gravitas to his presence that refused to quiet.
The room was objectively warm, with the scent of curry escaping from beneath the silver platters. The shelves brimming with leather-bound books promised civility, but it was the drain of gold from the King’s eyes that contradicted the setting. Link could almost feel the stiff set of his bottom teeth grinding as he tallied the sum of the messenger, subtracted the girl, and multiplied the waiting letter.
He could feel the weight of the Gerudo’s assessment, chewing on his presence like a wad of gristle, and it seemed clear that he was unimpressed. His gaze fell squarely on the letter, the only presence he considered relevant.
“Is she unwell?” Ganondorf asked, his voice lower now, quiet, as if he too were not in the mood for wasting precious language.
It took Link a moment to realize he was meant to answer. “No, she’s fine,” he said, withholding the paper while he tried to place this force within the history they shared. Present, but only partially. Specific, but beyond reason. The long, elegant line of a Gerudo katana ran the length of a credenza against the wall, pierced on a stand beneath a framed map of Hyrule. The same blade, it stood to reason, he had plunged through Rowan’s gut.
A man marked for death the day two armies converged from the furthest points of the kingdom. Purged from the Castle he’d claimed by the provision of law down to the very offense of his rendered face.
And the Gerudo King, ruler by birth, the conqueror who’d spilled blood royal only by a rich man’s happenstance, now waited patiently for a woman he had neither claimed nor killed, despite being able. Despite it being easier. Cleaner. Instead, indulging a sharp-tongued, poison-tipped disruption that any honest confidant would advise him to destroy.
Ganondorf craned his neck back, and the crack of bone snapped in the silence. “But she is not coming.”
