Tears of a Broken Kingdom

Chapter Sixteen ~ Ghosts from the Past

Her eyes opened, blinking in the stark sunlight.

Confusion washed over her, disoriented as she began to pick herself up into a sitting position, everything ached. Her mind was foggy with the morning grogginess that usually came to her now- even more than before. Being in blissful ignorance had seemed better than feeling the weight on everything upon her.

There was a weight on her legs, and as she glanced down Zelda wished she hadn't.

The corpse was still there, the unseeing black eyes staring upward at the ceiling, dark still in the morning light.

With shaky hands she pushed his body off her lap, a nervous sweat condensed on her palms. As she stared at him and her mind turned with thoughts of last night a realization popped out at her amidst the rest of the noise in her head.

Why hadn't any guards come? It wasn't exactly quiet last night.

Zelda stood up, feeling the stiffness in neck, it was even more swollen than before. She'd have to examine it later, assess the damage.

She padded silently to the door, trying to place her hair over her neck in case there was a guard at the door- she didn't want anyone to know what had occurred in the unholy hours of the night.

The door slid open silently, she peeked her head out to see down the hall, there were no guards at her door- living, that was.

Zelda blanched, a furious cough erupting from her mouth, her neck flared in response. Their faces were beaten up, dried blood and dark bruises stark against the paleness of their skin.

S-so that's why no one came.

It was such a horrid sight, seeing their broken bodies slumped in front of the door, a small pool of blood surrounded them.

He must've bludgeoned them to death with his fists, and judging from their bruised necks- strangled them to finish the job, just like he had tried with her.

My neck...

Her hands went up to her neck as she shut the door, ignoring the dead body within the room as she went over to the small mirror that hung on one of the walls.

She thought she looked pitiful, half-dead herself.

Her hair was a mess of limp blonde hair, slightly tousled from the scuffle, little waves that rested an inch or so below her shoulders. Her eyes were ringed with a mix of red and purple, she looked exhausted, no amount of sleep seemed to help that.

The worst thing, even more so than her tear stained cheeks and cracked lips was the angry bruise that had formed on her neck, blue and black. Red marks ran around the base of her neck too, where his hands had been. It was swollen and discolored, seeming to have a pulse of its own, warm to the touch from all the blood flow.

Zelda turned her face away from the mirror, she didn't want to look at herself anymore. It was easy to forget how horrible she looked when she never spent time to stare at her reflection. It was for the best.

With a shallow breath she went back over to his corpse, wondering how in Hylia's name she was going to hide him. The torn curtain was in a slumped pile a few feet away, she could wrap him up in that for starters... but it would look suspicious for her to have a human shaped form in a ripped curtain. That would raise some heads.

But it would be better to risk that suspicion than someone stumbling in and finding the dead monstrosity of the hero on the ground.

Zelda took up the fabric into her hands, draping it over him, obscuring him from view. She felt more grounded the moment he was out of sight, back to reality. But that had been some form of reality too, she wasn't just imagining it this time. Her neck was proof.

She proceeded to get the body properly tucked under the curtain, her work quick- touches as minimal as possible. It was just too much.

Afterwards she stayed where she was, out of breath for some nonsensical reason. Zelda didn't know what to do next. It would take much to long to try and bury him before someone found her, and she didn't even know where to begin performing a cremation.

The only real option is hiding him... but I just feel bad about shoving him somewhere...

It was the only way.

She leaned down to pick him up, worried she'd be too tired to carry him for long. He was surprisingly light, much more so than he had been when alive. It was like this corpse wasn't even human anymore, he hadn't acted like a normal person- much less like Link.

And him appearing just now had been odd too, there had to be something bigger going on. Something she had no guesses about.

Zelda shook her head, she'd think about that later. Right now, she thought it would be best to focus on the task at hand, hiding the body. And then she guessed she'd have to come up with an explanation to give her father about his now two dead guards. And who knows, there could've been more fatalities last night.

The only real spot that offered some sort of hiding place was the closet. It'd have to be a temporary place to store him, Zelda still didn't know if this body was going to rot, she'd have to wait and have a burial site ready for that.

She hefted the curtain clad body over a shoulder and made her way to the door, opening up his closet.

His clothes looked the same as they had, a few of the hooks bare. Another pair of his leather boots were slumped against the wall, the worn leather worked into creases from use. Everything had collected a small layer of dust, motes of it floated in the scraps of light coming in from the crack between the wall and the door hinges.

She almost began to cry again at the sight on his familiar cloths. More so than the corpse in her arms.

"I'm sorry."

Zelda's contrition was an ever prevalent force, and she felt the need to apologize, she deserved the guilt that now owned her heart.

With a bit of readjusting, she got a hand free to clear up a space for the body. Zelda felt awful as she moved aside a space in the middle of closet. It was like disturbing something sacred, this closet being one of the only places she'd kept mainly untouched since the incident.

She went down lower to the ground, sliding the body to the back wall.

Once she had set him down she covered the closet wall back up, moving the hangers back, the back wall dark with shadows. Before she shut the door again she grabbed one of his hoods off the wall. It'd be good for hiding her bruise, the bulky neckline would cover it up, the warm cloth wrapped over her shoulders. Almost like a hug.

She closed the door, trying to calm herself down again, separating herself from the memories and ghosts that still lingered behind the door.

The sigh that escaped her lips was so clipped and yet long and exhausted, filled with so much pent up emotion.

And yet it wasn't enough. There was too much that had all built up. A monster of her own making. She sunk to her knees, lost in her own broken consciousness.

Something had to be done.