AUTHOR’S NOTE:

You do not need to have read “A Never Known Love”, the prequel, in order to understand this story. However, if you desire to do so, it’s pathetically short, so don’t worry; you’ll get through it super-quick.

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Introducing Daughter of the Wind Sorcerer, sequel to A Never Known Love. “Shortly after the death of Vaati, Zelda gave birth to his children, with Link’s son thrown into the mix. How is this possible? As Vanessa, Vaati’s surviving child, grows older, Zelda can see him in her eyes. Disguised as peasant Anka, she finds love in the strangest of circumstances... even when she shouldn't. Is Vaati really gone for good? And more importantly, is Link?”

CHAPTER ONE: HYRULE’S NEW PRINCESS

FORKS AND KNIVES could be heard clanking in the dining hall. The pages, guards, and training masters and teachers sat at their specific tables, eating their breakfast. Some squires and knights had returned to the palace for the winter festivities. At the head table, upon the dais, sat Queen Zelda and her two seventeen-year-old children, Princess Vanessa and Prince Thomas.

Queen Zelda had silvery-blond hair that she grew out halfway down her back, dark sapphire eyes, rosy cheeks and small but full lips. She was quite beautiful for a mother pushing thirty-seven.

Prince Thomas had golden-blond hair and his mother’s eyes. He always wore a Kokiri-style green hat that his mother gave him on his fifth birthday, unless it was deemed inappropriate to be wearing a hat, in which case he hid it in his pocket until he could put it back on. He was Link’s son, all right. He was in his third and final year as a squire, on to becoming a knight at eighteen. He had a touch of his mother’s magic, but not much, and preferred not to use it anyway.

None of this applied to Princess Vanessa, the older twin. She was not Link’s daughter at all, which was rather redundant, as she was Vaati’s. She even looked like Vaati, with red eyes and pale, white skin. Her hair, which was lavender in her earlier years, had turned into a black color over time, with a few dark purple strands here and there. She had a combination of both Vaati’s and Zelda’s magic. Unlike her outgoing yet shy brother, she was very reserved but said whatever was on her mind, whether it hurt someone’s feelings or not. She was extremely intelligent, and could be caught with a book of some sort with her everywhere. She bore a crescent moon on her left palm, the birthmark of a witch. This unnerved Zelda, for witches could turn into a sorceress easily through either free will or trickery, and while witches weren’t evil, sorceresses were. She checked Vanessa’s palm every day to make sure the skull hadn’t appeared over the moon, the mark of a witch turned sorceress. The same things applied to warlocks turned sorcerers, but their mark was a sun on their right hand. Zelda remembered seeing such a mark on Vaati’s right hand… the sun and skull.

Vanessa finished her breakfast. “Might I be excused, Mother?” she asked Zelda in her soft yet dark speaking voice.

“You really should wait until your brother is finished, Vanessa,” Zelda answered quietly.

“It’s all right, Ma,” Thomas said, shaking his head. “Why should she wait for me? I am a very slow eater, you know. She’d be here all morning.”

Zelda sighed. They had this conversation nearly every morning. She nodded to Vanessa. “Yes, you may be excused.”

“Thank you.” She stood and curtsied to her mother before leaving. She was currently wearing a black dress that held tight around her waist with a long blood-red sash tied in a bow in the back, then billowing down to her feet and covering her ankle-length black boots. The headband tucked inside her stick-straight black hair and her elbow-length, fingerless gloves were the same color as her sash, her boots the color of her dress and hair. She was quite beautiful, and her outfit suited her ashen features, ruby eyes and shadowy hair perfectly. As it well should, seeing as she’d made the outfit herself, courtesy of a magical ability to weave fabrics together of hers.

Vanessa walked down the dais stairs and put a gloved hand on the doorknob so as to leave the dining hall, but not without a last glance around. Most of the people were too busy eating or chatting to notice her, but some of the pages looked at her. Female pages looked at her with wary eyes, and several of the males sighed over her. She wasn’t interested in any of those boys. Just a bunch of noble-born boys who were foolish enough to get a crush on her. She turned and left the room, eyes to the floor.

She wandered the halls to the courtyard. She passed by Sir William Norwood in the halls, who stopped and bowed to her, saying, “Good morning, Crown Princess Vanessa. How fare you this fine day?”

She stopped and examined him with her ruby eyes as he straightened. She answered, “I’m fine.” She gave him a small curtsy. “How do you do?” Her voice was always emotionless and a bit dark, but people had gotten used to it.

“I? No, I’m not so great today,” the knight said with a sigh.

“What’s wrong?” Again, no sympathetic tone, although she really did want to know what was wrong. It was as if her tone of voice couldn’t change.

He shook his head. “Ah, forget I said anything, Princess,” he replied, slapping a forced cheerful smile on his face. “It’s nothing to waste your time with.”

“Tell me,” she commanded softly. His eyes wavered, and she added a quick, “Please. I really want to know.”

He sighed. “I suppose… You know my wife, Lita?” Vanessa nodded. “Well, see, she took sick last night, and I’d return home to her, but I’m to stay here.”

She frowned, then asked, “What is she ill with, if I may ask?”

“Lunar Day Fever,” he mumbled.

She shivered. Poor Lita, she thought sadly. Lunar Day Fever was a terrible disease that made one well at day and ill in the night, but put the sick person into a deep sleep during the day so they could only wake when they felt at their worst. No one had a cure, except for Vanessa, and that was secret. She fingered the bloodred ribbon she always bore around her neck in thought, then pulled a strand of her hair from her head and entwined it around her index finger on her right hand. It turned a bright purple color and then its light faded, leaving a silver strand of hair. She pulled the hair from her finger, formed a small jar in her left hand, and placed the hair inside. She corked it tightly and handed it to Norwood. “Here,” she said. “Take this.”

He took the bottle carefully. It was small, not much bigger than Vanessa’s palm on her small hand. He asked, “Begging your pardon, Your Highness, but what’s this for?”

“Go home,” she told him. “Go to your wife. Mother will understand. By the time you return to her, the bottle should be filled with a silver substance that you must give to your wife every night at midnight for several days. Make her drink the whole bottle every night. It will refill itself during the day and will be ready for the next drinking. By the third or fourth day, the bottle should stop refilling itself, meaning your wife would sleep through the night and wake the next morning, cured.”

Norwood gaped at her, and then at the bottle. “There’s no cure for Lunar Day Fever,” he told her.

She nodded. “That’s my own cure. Now go.”

He nodded gratefully and began to leave when she said, “Don’t tell anybody about the cure or the bottle. The bottle will vanish on its own when Lita is cured, but it will vanish the moment you tell anybody about any of it. Don’t even tell Lita. The cure is time, but this is more efficient. You only get Lunar Day Fever once, but tell anybody about my cure and the side effects are that you, your wife and the people you told will fall fatally ill with it. My cure only works one time on a body, elsewise it kills you. Understand, Sir Norwood?”

He eyed the young woman, fear in his eyes. He nodded quickly, bowed, said, “I will not tell a soul, Princess,” and left in a hurry.

Vanessa stared after him blankly. When he was gone, she turned and walked back toward the courtyard.

The courtyard had always seemed like it didn’t like her. It welcomed her mother and brother, but seemed to reject her. Nevertheless, she ventured boldly into it often, defying its silent request to stay out. Vanessa often came here to read, or to simply think. Today, there was plenty on her mind.

She sat on the steps and leaned against the stone holding flowerbeds in it. This place was still beautiful despite being over a hundred years old. She tore a chunk of stone off the cracking stairs and rolled it over in her finger, being cautious of its sharp point.

She was seventeen now. Generally, she’d thought, Mother would be pressing her to start finding a husband and thinking about becoming queen. She’d often thought of maybe abdicating the throne to Thomas, but there were rumors that he had “bad blood”, so the nobles said. He was the son of a commoner. It made no sense to either of them, seeing as they were twins. Nobody thought Vanessa had bad blood, or was the daughter of a commoner. Actually, more people avoided talking about her when she was around.

She never knew her father. Often she wondered who he was. Mother never talked about him. She’d asked once, but her question had been answered with, “Nobody important.” It made her wonder if there was something seriously wrong with her father, and it frightened her to think that maybe she had been born as some sort of defective child because of that.

Obviously, she and Thomas had the same father, being twins and all, but then why did she look so odd? Why was she full of every shade of blacks and reds and purples when Thomas resembled blues and yellows and greens?

Why doesn’t she just tell me? Vanessa asked herself angrily. I’m seventeen, for Goddess’s sake! A grown woman! I should at least know who my own father is!

Irritated, she stood and walked out of the courtyard, which seemed quite pleased to let her out. She walked to the palace gates and told the guards she’d be taking a little walk and no, she did not need an escort. They didn’t question her, and let her out.

AN: Whew, end of the first chapter! That was fun. Vanessa’s interesting to write about, just like her father. ;) Hope you liked it. Chapter two will be up in a week, depending on how many reviews I get, heh heh. It’s already written, I’m just waiting for reviews. :P Haha.