“So.”

Vine startled and almost dropped the apple she was inspecting. “Stars, Dazzle,” she gasped. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

He grinned at her, unrepentant, and sidled up beside her to inspect another apple while the vendor from Damme looked on, confused. It wasn’t hard to understand his confusion. He was clearly of a noble line of Dammers, and she was equally as clearly a Rosethorn. Aside from Collar and Rosewater, such pairings were rare to the point of being mythical.

“I gave what you said some thought,” Dazzle said after a moment of perusing the apples and selecting one wrapped in a cloth-of-gold trimmed hoofkerchief near the top. “These are the best. Meant for eating straight, not for baking.”

“My sons and daughters pick a few apple trees each year,” the merchant said enthusiastically, “and pay special attention to those, ensuring that only the best of their fruit makes it to market. These are far more than the basic quality of apple, but are meant to be a treat shared between close ponies.”

“And the hoofkerchief?” Vine asked, intrigued.

“A memento of a moment,” he said. “Apples of the Heart.”

Dazzle’s ears flicked back, and he sighed. “Ah. I see. Well. I now see that I was rather blind to some of the advances I received over the years.” He set the apple back. “My apologies, dear Vine. I didn’t mean to offer—”

He broke off when Vine picked up the apple he’d set back down, hoofkerchief and all and paid the ten bits for it without trying to haggle down the price. “An apple shared between friends, perhaps? I told you my life story, Dazzle, and you didn’t turn aside.”

“Between friends,” Dazzle murmured, glancing back at the merchant, then bobbing his head and followed her towards one of the many areas set up with benches and tables. “And I didn’t turn aside, lovely mare, because you didn’t show me a cracked and barren wasteland, bereft of emotion and feeling.”

Vine’s heart skipped a beat, but forced it to calm down as she took a seat opposite him and set the apple down, her hoof resting on the edge of the kerchief. “What did you see?”

“A mare who desperately wants to find her place in the world.” His eyes shimmered briefly as he met her taut gaze and he pushed out a shell of aural magic mixed with a shimmering fuzz effect. The aural magic was sloppy, but after a moment, she saw its workings and shored it up with a weaving of magic that grew through the gaps in his, leaving only the natural sounds of the world to come through.

She never understood why her spell worked that way, despite Silk going over the theory with her and explaining how her talent interacted with her magic. She got that, but she didn’t understand why it was so hard for her to get around it.

It made her an awful sneak, since her hooves on stone were natural, but it was why she never infiltrated alone. But voices didn’t come through except as the faintest of buzzings. Here in the middle of a crowd, it felt as though she were in the middle of a swarm of bees busily pollinating her flowers.

“You love deeply, Vine,” Dazzle said as he shaped his glittering magic into a blade to cut the apple in two equal halves, then cored it. “I saw a mare who was harmed by the inaction of those who should have cared for you, who should have seen what was happening and stepped in before it went too far.”

“Silk didn’t—”

Dazzle held up a hoof, halting her protest. “I don’t blame her either, Vine. Both of you were in a bad place and time. I don’t blame you for seeking comfort and relief, a release of tension, with a pony who seemed to be the only one who cared for you.” He worked his way around the accusation of incest, her confession, her opened heart bleeding all over the bridge. “I blame your mother and your caretakers for not seeing it. It wasn’t something that was sudden, was it? It certainly didn’t sound as though it was a decision you both made to leap off a wall.”

“It… was and it wasn’t.” Vine watched as he sliced the apple halves into even wedges. “And you lied, didn’t you?”

Dazzle raised a brow, glanced down at the apple, and laughed. “In part. I’ve had three offered to me before. I didn’t know what the kerchief meant. I mean, well, I suspected, but it was the way they approached me. I knew they wanted to court me.”

“And do you want to court me?” Vine snatched a slice away from him before he could add it to the neat circle of skin-side-down slices arranged on the kerchief. “You said you didn’t know, but you knew.”

He didn’t answer her while he finished sectioning the apple, his eyes locked on his work. It was his ears that gave away the turmoil in his mind.

“You don’t have to answer,” she said at last, setting her stolen section down where it belonged, then arranged the rest of them so they were all equidistant from each other, all oriented with the same angle from one-another. “I don’t know if I can let myself be courted while I don’t even know what I want from my own sister.”

“But you do know.” Dazzle smiled at her. “You know what you want from her. You want a peaceful life, unbothered by urges, to spend your days with her. Your best friend, your confidant, and the only pony you know who understands you.” His smile turned, faltering before he offered four of the eight slices to her, carefully arranged in a box pattern on her side of the cloth. “I want… I wish I had a pony I was as close to as you are to your sister.”

“You wanted Rosewater to be the one to open up to you.”

“She did, in a way.” Dazzle sighed and popped a slice into his mouth, then moaned and closed his eyes as he chewed. “Stars.”

Vine followed his lead, watching him as he finished chewing and swallowed, then bit into the juiciest apple she’d ever tasted. Sweet and tart in equal measures exploded over her tongue, and the pulp practically melted in her mouth, but there wasn’t even a hint of the sharp taste bruised apple flesh held. There was nothing but pure, unadulterated apple.

“Stars is right,” Vine groaned, eying the remaining three of her slices, then arranging them into a triangle. A perfect equilateral. “You were saying?”

Dazzle shook his head slowly. “Vine, in Damme, these apples would be the opening of a courtship. In Merrie…”

“You barely know me, Dazzle.”

He smirked at her and took another slice, shaking his head as he chewed. “Vine, I know you better than I knew Rosewater when I first confessed my love for her. But in Merrie, I don’t know what I’d want a gift like this to mean. I’ve never given one to anypony.”

“And here, I’ve given one to you,” Vine murmured, her cheeks heating. “I—I’m sorry, Dazzle.”

He chuckled and reached out with a spell to snag one of her slices. Instead of taking it for himself, he surrounded it with magic and offered it to her. “I’m the one who offered it to you, first. I don’t know what I want, Vine. I really don’t.”

But you know you want something. And she wanted something, too. She wanted his help, but that hadn’t been the reason she’d told him everything. She wanted him to understand her and, if possible, accept her; flaws, history, and all.

“I want to take a first step,” Vine said at last, spreading her magic over the slice he offered her, stopping when it reached halfway, and twisted, snapping it in half. “I want to feel like there’s somepony who understands me, and can come to love me, even knowing what I’ve done.” She offered him the half she held. “Will you share my life’s river, Dazzle? Even if it’s only to the next bend.”

“Yes.” Dazzle reached a hoof across the table for hers, and she accepted.

They finished their apples by sharing half slices, not talking except to debate who should get the last slice since Dazzle had eaten two of his before they’d begun their game of sharing. In the end, she had gotten the slice, and he the kerchief before they vacated their spot and let the silence around them fade away.

Dazzle nudged her down one lane towards the Merrie side of the festival. “You asked for my help with more than one thing, Vine. And I’d like to make sure that you get what you need. Or, at the very least, the chance to secure it on your own.”

A way to stay in Merrie. The Garden would certainly qualify, unless Roseate tried to exile them. Vine opened her mouth to ask a question, closed it again when she realized he wouldn’t know or wasn’t the right pony to ask, and switched mental canals. “So. Um. Would you like to meet Silk, too?”

Dazzle nodded after a moment, his grin coming back. “I would. From what you said, she’s very much a fiery personality.”

“It’s not fire, really. I mean, she does have the drive of a wildfire, but… she’s, hum.” Vine twitched her ears and glanced aside at him. “If she were in one of my romance novels, she’d be a knight galloping to save her lady love. Or stallion love.”

“I think I understand. Petal has quite a trove of novels like that herself. So does Seed, for that matter. And Roselyn… well.” He puffed out his cheeks and flushed. “She has a more… uh. Carnal. Inclination,” he added haltingly, dragging out the words and trying to look comfortable. He failed.

“Roselyn? The candle maker?” She could see it, she supposed. Roselyn wasn’t that much younger than her, but Vine was past her second majority, even if only by the bare skin of her dock. “She’s pursued you?”

“More than,” he said uncomfortably, flattening his ears. “I… I like her, and she’s definitely energetic, but I suppose I have a little more Dammer in my mindset than she’d like.”

Vine stepped the conversation back from that fork in the river, saying, “So, you’re rather enamoured of the polyamorous relationships in Merrier romance novels?”

“Very much so,” he agreed brightly, his shoulders sagging for a few steps, his ears slicked back in grateful thanks. “I realize they’re idealized representations, but it’s still helped me to see the dynamics of communal love. It’s why I was so…” He waved a hoof through the air briefly and hopped ahead to catch up. “Confounded, I suppose, when Rosewater turned me down. Not that she owed me, but I could tell she wanted the same thing. Stars, she said as much. I had—” He coughed and cleared his throat.

He knew she was courting Collar before the announcement. Stars, I knew it. She pushed down the upset on his behalf and waited for him to continue.

“I had not known,” he said, recovering with all the grace of a floundering whale, “that she was courting Collar. But it does make more sense now. She’s trying to abide by his city’s courtship mores and laws.”

Cognizant of the ears all around, and aware that anything she said would be magnified and twisted into a myriad of twisting mockeries of her original words, Vine tried to think of what to say that wouldn’t sound like she was saying Rosewater was abandoning Merrie.

Even if it felt like she was.

“A part of our culture, too,” Vine said cautiously, “is to respect our partners. Collar is a Dammer, same as you are, Dazzle. But he’s also more. He’s a representation of Damme. He’s Damme’s ambassador to our culture. Throwing him into the deep end would be just as confounding to your ponies as this is to us.”

“I truly, truly wish there was a middle ground,” Dazzle muttered, casting his eyes to the late afternoon sky. “But I suppose that’s why we’re at war, isn’t it? We couldn’t agree on the middle ground.”

Old ground, trodden over so much there was a path she could see ahead of her. If she let the conversation linger on the topic.

“I want to invite you to dinner,” Dazzle said at last. “You, Vine. I want to get to know you better. Somewhere… middle ground.”

Vine’s ears flattened, then popped erect again, surprised by the sudden shift. He doesn’t know Silk yet, she reminded herself. “A-alright. This is… a Dammer style date?”

Dazzle stared at her, his ears flattened sideways. “I… suppose you could—yes. Yes, I’m asking you on a date, Vine. Tomorrow night, at Rosy Glass’s tavern. I can get us a reservation, I think, for tomorrow. Would that be okay?”

“Well…” Vine drew out the word, then leaned against him. “It’s going to be very hard dragging myself away from worrying about my projects and trying to relax by reading, but… yes. That sounds lovely, Dazzle.”

Rosewater looked at herself in the mirror, turning her head to check her makeup, only a bit of blush and iridescent powder on her eyelids, all of it enspelled to stay put and not get in her eye. Powdered sea shell was beautiful, but an awful irritant.

Tonight, she wanted to be beautiful. She wanted ponies to look her in the eyes and see her sincerity. Her dress was an understated gown she’d had tailored two years ago for a winter gala where she’d intended nothing more than to lay low while not insulting the elegance of the planned festivities in Damme. The sides clung to her shoulders and her hindquarters, assisted by a thin strap that ran from her breast and between her forelegs to join with a cross-strap that did bunch up the fabric in both of the anchor points, but that was the point of it. From her shoulders and hips the gown shaded from its rich dusky purple to the white of newfallen snow just above her hooves in waves of color.

Along the back, the purple shaded pink to match her mane and tail. She didn’t wear the blue ribbons in Damme’s colors this time, instead wearing the colors around her fore and hind legs as part of the straps holding her winter shoes in place, the only concession to the coming storm she was willing to make.

It was a statement of intent.

“Tonight,” Rosewater murmured, smiling at herself once more before turning away. “Tonight, I spend the night with my husband.”

The villa was almost empty, and the village down the road busy with festive ponies singing and dancing as the wine flowed mostly freely, and the music from the enthusiastic if rough band, no doubt hampered by an infusion of wine rather than a lack of talent.

It was lively, and hard not to dance to the distant beat with her heart singing to her and butterflies in her stomach making her want to dance all the way across the Rosewine bridge.

He was waiting for her, his smile brighter than ever, twitching his uniform into order while Cloudy stood nearby, whispering to him and twitching her wing at this or that bit of brocade or decoration for service that he dutifully adjusted.

It was formal, and nopony knew. Nopony knew the truth save for them.

“Lord Collar,” Rosewater called as she crossed the last section of bridge, the guard not even bothering to check her over. Not with Collar right there. She didn’t recognize the stallion, but she did give him a brief nod in passing before meeting her husband just beyond with a chaste kiss on the lips.

“Lady Rosewater,” Collar purred against her mouth, a light chuckle rising up to rumble low and promising in his throat. “You are absolutely gorgeous tonight. Cloudy, isn’t she gorgeous?”

Rosewater laughed and almost went to her for a kiss as well, only stopping herself with a swift reminder.

“She is! Collar, I’m jealous. Even after spending all day with her I barely recognize her, and I never got to see her at the gala!” Cloudy clucked her tongue, her eyes twinkling. “Will you let me have a dance with her tonight, my lord?”

Collar’s eyes twitched at the last, but he chuckled all the same. “We’re not having a band, Cloudy. It’s dinner with mother, father, and a few dignitaries.”

Rosewater bobbed her head along the riverwalk. “You’ll have to tell me who’ll be there, Collar, and for how long. I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep my Merrier tendencies to myself if it’s too long.” She winked.

“Oh, it won’t be long. You’ve met one or two of them already, and another few who’d been invited were disinclined to show up after hearing who would be attending.”

“Their loss,” Cloudy harrumphed. “And our gain. Or mine.”

“And my daughter?”

“Will be joining us. We could hardly hold a family dinner without her.”

Rosewater clucked her tongue and glanced aside at him, letting some of the joy fall away. “Is this a family dinner or a state dinner? It sounds like the makings of the latter, but…”

“When you are a head of state,” Collar said, his smile fading minutely, “formal family dinners are state dinners. The only dinners that are not are those informal dinners we normally hold. But, given your status, we could not… easily invite you to an informal dinner so soon after our courtship started, though I wish it were not the case.”

All things she knew already, said for the sake of ears listening across the river and the ponies that walked with and past them on business of their own. Tedium in the highest, but the play must continue.

And it did continue, Rosewater playing her part with as much enthusiasm as she could muster while Cloudy seemed to grow more and more reluctant to play. Collar laughed and tried to steer the conversation to safe topics for her to engage in without making her lie or present a false mask, and Rosewater followed his lead.

She learned more about the storm and its mechanics, how they formed and how the pegasi were instrumental in curbing the ferocity of the coastal winter storms. Controlling them was out of the question, but a pegasi could bring thermals into a winter storm to disrupt the flow of air from the north and nudge them either north or south depending on how many pegasi could be gathered to create a counter-vortex.

More, she learned about what the new settlers of Cloudsdale were trying to do, mostly tidbits passed on through the guards that they’d overheard from sailors and traders around the city. It was, in Rosewater’s opinion, a risky move to concentrate so many pegasi in one place.

The old tales of the Pegasi that had called down hubristic karma upon themselves for daring to control the weather and causing an ice age came to mind. It was, supposedly, the entire reason ponies had settled on this new continent, so far from the wide open plains that had been their ancestral home for thousands of years.

Supposedly.

Of course, Cloudy was quick to bring up the hubris of the unicorns, a fact Rosewater couldn’t rightly deny. Not when all the old tales and myths tended to agree that there was no ‘good’ tribe in the entire prehistoric morass of heroes and villains.

In the end, there were only ponies, and it had been a joint coalition that had traveled to this land to settle, away from past grievances.

But, whether myths were true or not was hardly the point. Mass control of the weather had its consequences on the natural world. That was something most natural philosophers could agree on, regardless of whether they were winged, horned, or neither.

The discussion, largely jovial and distracting, lasted until they reached the Primrose bridge, where the teardown was still ongoing. It was slowed, in part, by the enthusiastic tasting competition going on in what had been the largest of the seating areas, with Merrie and Damme vintners facing off against Dammerale brewers and Merrie meaderies.

It was loud and boisterous enough that she could hear it across the river as they approached, and while the majority of the teardown was already complete, the ponies that had stayed behind to attend the tasting competition were all mingling with the ease that drink leveraged.

Dazzle was there, she could see from his coat and mane before the rising arch of the bridge cut off the view, and sitting with a mare she hadn’t expected would stay so long.

Nor, in her wildest dreams, would she have imagined Vine of all ponies, raising what looked like a clear glass of golden ale or mead to the sky in a toast as a cry rose up from the rest of the crowd.

“Looks like mead won this time,” Collar mused with a chuckle. “I recognize Dazzle, but who’s the mare?”

“My sister, Vine,” Rosewater said softly. “Stars. They look cozy, don’t—”

The two shared an exaggerated, brief kiss and raised their glasses again before drinking down the remainder.

“Well.”

“Good for her,” Cloudy said, raising her head and pricking her ears forward. “And good for him. Dazzle always did seem to avoid getting into any entanglements, romantic or otherwise. It’s good to get absolutely knackered once in a while and expand your boundaries.”

“Be safe tonight, Vine,” Rosewater whispered to the air, “and take care of her, Dazzle. She’s fragile.”

“He will,” Collar told her gently. “He took care of you.” The unsaid, ‘when I couldn’t’ gripped Rosewater’s heart and sent a pang of regret through her thoughts when their eyes met. It was written right there, plain as the setting sun. “Come, love,” he murmured, closing his eyes and drawing in a deep breath. “Let us gather ourselves for what is certain to be a bracing dinner.”

Rosewater gave her sister, one of the most fragile of their group one last look and let herself smile. She was raising up her mug higher, laughing and leaning into Dazzle. Clearly smitten, even from so far away.

It was the happiest Rosewater had ever seen her, and she hoped Vine could reach that same height of joy without alcohol loosening her inhibitions and pushing aside her fears.

She can. She’s strong. Rosewater nodded quickly and tapped a forehoof on the cobbles. “Of course, my love,” Rosewater said more loudly, chuckling and making herself push the fears to the back of her mind. “Please, if you would, and thank you, too, Cloudy, for being here with us. You don’t know what it means to me to have your support and approval.”

Cloudy’s smile felt like it was plastered on as they made their way through the city towards the palace. Not because of the company, it eased into reality without any need to force it when she replied to Collar or Rosewater. But the accusing stares, the incredulous looks, and the whispers she saw Rosewater listening too closely to…

She had no doubt the mare was subtly enhancing her own hearing and she wanted nothing more than to tell her to stop it. But that would only make Rosewater more nervous. She liked to know what was going on and being said. That much she had gleaned from their dates out in the wilderness, their time talking, and from talking with Rosemary. It was Rosewater’s way of being in control of the world around her.

But it grated that so many ponies glared daggers at her, and at Cloudy for that matter, for ‘betraying’ Collar’s trust and love, no matter that the stallion himself was laughing at Rosewater’s tales of her childhood growing up and raising Rosemary all at once, even if she had the help of a village and her own ‘mother,’ Carnation it was more than a teenaged filly should have had to bear.

She was strong, but oh so fragile. And she didn’t know it.

Not entirely. Cloudy had seen it come out in rare moments when Rosewater let her guard down completely and let her see the scared mare behind the facade and the strength she put out for others to see. She wished, hoped, that tonight she would get to see that mare again.

She wanted to tell that mare that she was there, and she would protect her.

She was also afraid that if she couldn’t tell that side of Rosewater, then the words would fall short and it wouldn’t get through her armor to reach where it would do the most good.

And she wanted to tell these ponies that who Collar loved was none of their business.

She flicked her wings and forced herself to calm down again, keeping one ear on the story of Rosewater and the purple-coated filly who’d decided that she could absolutely smash an entire tub of grapes on her own. Without telling anypony.

“How come Rosemary never told me that story,” Cloudy asked in a lull, Collar chuckling. “That sounds like a perfect story to tease her about.”

“Well. I think you hit the nail on the head,” Collar said with a snort. “Does she like being teased?”

“Yes,” Cloudy said at the same time Rosewater said, “No.”

Collar glanced between the two mares, then barked a laugh. “Well. Perhaps she doesn’t like being teased by her mother, but her lover. Well…”

“Not that kind of teasing,” Rosewater said with a half-laugh, half-snort.

“Oh, I dunno. I think she might look rather pretty, not to mention tasty, with raw grape juice staining her coat.”

“That it took three days and eight baths to finally get her to return to her normal pink,” Rosewater said with a scoff. “And the bedsheets took even longer! I swear, we have a set of sheets that still looks faintly purple to this day.”

“Sticky, too,” Collar added.

“That, too. Before we got her into a bath, we could all hear her coming down the hall, her hooves sticking to the floorboards with every step.” Rosewater shook her head, eyes rolling. “You don’t want to deal with that, Cloudy.”

“Floorboards?” Cloudy asked, picturing the main hall of the Villa in her mind and shaking her head. “I thought the entire villa was floored with mason tiles?”

“Exactly. Mason tiles are so much easier to get grape juice stains off of. We had little purple hoofprints telling the entire story for a year.” Rosewater sniffed. “It wasn’t like we weren’t planning on changing the flooring after some… other incidents, but having guests ask why there was a trail leading from outside to one particular room was getting old for Budding and Blue.”

“Liar, they probably laughed every time they told it,” Cloudy shot back, just barely holding back a giggle.

Collar barked a laugh. “Stars, I know my parents would have done just that.”

“You’re not wrong,” Rosewater said with a sigh. “But don’t tell her I told you tonight. I would like some peace and not have her accusing me of sharing all of her embarrassing foal stories to her lover.”

I wish I’d had the chance earlier, Cloudy thought, watching Rosewater’s expression morph from serious to silly and back again. She could have at least heard these stories then, perhaps helped Rosewater come out of her shell a little more.

Cloudy ruffled her wings again and shook her head to clear those thoughts out. “So,” she said instead, leaning forward to peer around Collar’s chest and catch Rosewater’s eye. “Is there anything she’d absolutely not want me to know about?”

“Cloudy!” Rosewater barked a laugh and tossed her head, surprise and delight in her eyes and the set of her ears. “You should know better than that by now.”

“Oh. Well…”

“You’ll have to wait until it’s just Lace, Dapper, and the four of us. Lace will absolutely want to hear about all the shenanigans she got up to.” Rosewater smirked and laughed louder as Collar stared at her before he started giggling like a colt.

“Does she have any about you?” Collar asked, teasing.

“She does, unfortunately,” Rosewater said, huffing. “Carnation thought it was unfair that I, only ten years her senior, knew so much about all of her foalish shortcomings. Not that I would ever try to polish my—” Her smile faltered, her step hitched and she fell back half a pace before she stuttered to a start again and caught up. “My father’s old armor with a dish rag.”

“Was it dirty?”

“It was just used to clean up several pots and pans,” Rosewater said defensively, flattening her ears. “It had a proven track record of making things shine.”

“And, logically, it should keep doing its job forever,” Collar added, the only sign he’d given of her faltering a brief flick of his tail against her flank. “Because nothing ever loses its properties of cleanliness.”

“Obviously. What other logic can a three year old filly employ?”

“Stars,” Collar asked in a wondering tone. “Will ours be as adventurous and logical all at once?”

Cloudy could tell the moment it left his lips that he’d not meant to ask it, the panic in his eyes as brief as it was intense. Rosewater’s ears ticked to the side as a burst of chatter from a nearby crowd of ponies at a small cafe rose and was abruptly cut off with a round of shushing.

“Maybe,” Rosewater said after a long pause. “I suppose we’ll have to find out, won’t we, Collar?”

“We will,” Collar murmured, turning to her just at the edge of an intersection and kissing her cheek, then her lips when she turned to meet him. It was more chaste than most of the kisses Cloudy had hoped to see, but their continued discussion and the kiss right after made the gaggle of ponies at the corner cafe stare and whisper among themselves, not paying attention to Cloudy at all.

Which was fine. It let her memorize the faces of each one. She was almost certain none of them were of any noble house, using the festival to indulge themselves in a relatively expensive treat of a dinner. And a show.

The hottest political theater show in either city.

Cloudy chuckled to herself and nipped Collar’s neck lightly. “We shouldn’t keep your parents waiting, and I don’t want to have to start selling tickets.”

Giddy. That had to be the right word. Rosemary was giddy for what felt like the first time in… well, a week if she was being honest, but it felt so much longer now that she was actually standing in the open. It was a risk, yes, especially if Primfeather Wing and his cronies came along despite them saying they would not be.

But stars.

She breathed in deeply, flaring her sense of smell to take in the sweet smell of almost freedom.

Beside her, Primline Lace chortled and tapped a hoof against hers. “This is just a taste, dear. Don’t go clogging your nose with cold winter air. How is that dress fitting? It looks right, but we couldn’t very well bring you to be properly measured.”

It was a little tight between her forelegs where she’d put on some extra weight over her months in confinement, a condition that would last until she could get a proper galloping exercise going, but the rest of the dress fell nicely where it wasn’t trying to fit around her frame. She tapped her forehoof.

“Tight in the breast, honestly, but not too tight. It’s perfect, Lady Lace.”

“Thank your mother. She provided the measurements and paid for the piece.”

“When? You didn’t say, and all she did was grin.”

“It’s my understanding that it was sometime after her debut with Collar. Perhaps even that same night.” Lace clucked her tongue thoughtfully and glanced at her husband. “Though if she has your measurements memorized, then I am very impressed. I can barely remember my own.”

“Why’re you looking at me?” Dapper groused.

“You’re the one who always remembers my exact measurements. I barely have to remember them at all anymore.”

“And that means I know Rosemary’s?”

“I mean, you must. I never seem to recall you ever measuring me, but you always know.”

Dapper harrumphed and then laughed. “Because I know you so well! And I didn’t spend all that time exploring your body to—”

“Dapper!”

“You asked.”

Rosemary burst out laughing and stomped a hoof on the ground, then tried to stop when Lace gave her an exasperated look. It only made her giggle and sputter through her attempts to keep her mouth closed.

“I swear. My Dapper was never this rambunctious before you arrived, my dear.”

“Hey! It’s not her—”

“I must thank you for livening up our lives. Truly.” Lace’s eyes sparkled as she ignored her husband spluttering to a stop. “Think of these first few steps as my thanks, though I wish I could let you escort your mother all the way here.”

Rosemary’s mirth faded at the gravity of her words, the depth of her thanks. “First… few steps?”

“The palace grounds are yours for tonight, Rosemary. I’ve asked for volunteers to be your escort while you’re out, and while it will be an indignity—”

“I made my choice, Lady Lace. I know my crime, and I know this is likely more than you can afford to let me do.” Rosemary met her eyes and did not step down to first of ten wide stairs leading down. “Is this truly okay?”

“Your mother argued quite strenuously about giving you more freedoms, and she’s not wrong to request them. The law was never meant to enable a debtor’s prison, Rosemary, and having an effective one, even if it’s not declared as one, goes against the laws of Equestria.”

That’s shaky legal ground, Rosemary thought, frowning. The Treaty enabled certain Equestrian laws to be enforced, but not all of them. Else the war itself would be illegal. And perhaps it should be.

Which would leave Merrie and Damme forever isolated as two cities instead of the dream her mother and her hosts spoke of so fervently. One city, one people, united in cause and purpose, joining Equestria as a greater part instead of two unstable halves.

“Damme doesn’t have debtor’s prisons,” Rosemary said after a long moment.

“We do not. Nor will I allow your debt to be used to imprison you until it is paid.” Lace sniffed. “It’s not right.”

But the law is the law. And breaking it would be fuel for Lace’s domestic opponents. Rosemary shook her head and put on a bright smile. “I promise, I won’t push your hospitality or your trust, Lady Lace.”

With that, she took her first step down from the palace gate, then another, and another.

By the time she made it to the bottom and Lady Lace nor any of her retainers had come after her, she felt more at ease and joined one of the guards standing watch at the bottom of the stair. “Platinum,” she said, recognizing the mare’s scent.

“Lady Rosemary,” Platinum said in her formal voice. “Lady Lace has asked that one of us accompany you and ensure that you know the boundary of the palace grounds.”

“It’s the old bailey wall, isn’t it?” Rosemary swept a hoof out over the gravel path that contained the browning park grass and trees that lined an intricate lacework of other gravel paths. Come Spring, Lady Lace had said they would bring the planters out from the palace gardens and make it a garden again, sparser than the dense thickets of planter boxes and rows of flowers and bushes. “Would… you go running with me in the mornings?”

Platinum glanced at her and nodded once. “Of course, Lady Rosemary. I’m sure Lieutenant Cloudy would be delighted.”

“You, Platinum. I want to go running with you.”

“But Cloudy—”

“Is my lover, and I doubt that Wing or any of his faction would appreciate seeing me with her. I doubt they’d trust her to keep me here.”

Platinum swallowed the rest of her protest and nodded. “Very well, Lady Rosemary.”

“And you’re my friend, Plat. You don’t need to tack on ‘Lady.’”

“I’m on duty, Lady Rosemary,” Platinum said, her eyes twinkling under the brim of her helmet. “It would look untoward if I did not address my lady as she was meant, Lady Rosemary. Ponies might get the idea that we’ve shared more than friendship.” She paused a beat until Rosemary opened her mouth to reply, and added, “Lady Rosemary.”

She laughed. “You sly mare,” she hissed through a spate of withheld giggles. “Come, then, Sergeant Platinum. Take me to the edge of my domain and let me look upon my lady mother.”

The guard on the other side of the stairs coughed and ruffled their wings.

“Shut up,” Platinum shot at them.

Rosemary pranced ahead before Platinum’s annoyance caught up to her and towards the edge of her newly expanded prison. “You don’t mind, all teasing aside, do you?” she asked as Plat caught up to her.

“Of course not.” Platinum nudged her shoulder when she caught up. “She only told us this morning. I’ve been itching to see your reaction since.”

Rosemary chuckled. “Have you and Sunrise made any plans for tomorrow night?”

Her friend’s steps faltered briefly. “H-how do you know…” She coughed and adjusted her helm on her head with a trickle of gray magic. “Of course you knew. You’re like a scary romance dowsing rod.”

“Scary?”

“Well. Your mother is scary.”

Rosemary was about to protest that when a laugh caught her attention from across the distance between the road that made up the Crown Circle that had once been the moat, and the start of the ring of businesses that catered to the palace’s needs and the homes of nobility that was too new or poor to own an estate in the Estate Hills district to the east.

It took her a moment to spot her mother prancing ahead of a Cloudy with her feathers fluffed out and shouting after her while Collar leaned against a lamp post, laughing his ass off.

“Get back here!” Cloudy shouted. “You will not get away with that unscathed!”

Rosemary barked a laugh and pranced ahead, losing herself until Platinum’s magic tugged at her, stopping her at the edge of the gravel path.

Rosewater stopped as soon as her eyes fell on Rosemary, her ears pricking suddenly tense, her entire body seizing, even with a foreleg raised for her next step but unable to make it.

Cloudy caught up with her a second later and gave her neck a nip that looked more savage than she was sure it was. Cloudy spotted her and grinned, then whispered something in Rosewater’s ear.

“Stars, I want to go to her.”

Platinum shifted her tail to lay against Rosemary’s flank. “Someday soon. Let her come to you.”

“Rosemary?” Rosewater’s voice trembled on the edge of cracking. “Stars, how? What…” Her gaze shifted in an instant to the palace, where Lace was standing, raising a hoof in acknowledgement. “Oh, stars, she didn’t tell me anything. I wasn’t…” She crossed the threshold in a rush, Cloudy a step behind and Collar following, his smile broad enough to take in his ears.

He knew? Of course he knew. “Mother,” Rosemary whispered.

She was there in the next instant, cheek pressed to her shoulder, foreleg pressed against hers. “‘Mary, stars I had no idea I would see you here.”

“I thought we should tell her,” Cloudy said with a cough beside them. “But maybe I was wrong.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the rest of the day as much,” Rosewater murmured, snuffling and then pulling back, her eyes bright but no tears in them. “Thank you, Cloudy. And you, Collar, I know you had more than a little to do with this…” She waved a hoof at Rosemary, shaking her head.

“I did. She’s your daughter, Rosewater, and what she did would have been a week’s sentence and five hundred bits fine if she’d been a regular Dammeguard.” Collar shook his head and nuzzled her neck, stopping before he could reach Rosemary. “But you’re not, and we can’t do anything about it now aside from stretch the law. I don’t suppose you’d consider defecting?”

Rosemary snorted. “No. Not while my mother is on the other side of the river, Collar. You know that.” But… not everypony does. This is a risk, Collar.

“I’m not abandoning Merrie, Rosemary,” Rosewater added in a low voice. “But neither am I abandoning you. I will find a way to win your freedom and end this horrible war once and forever.”

Collar coughed. “We… want to discuss what it takes to have our union registered. And thought, since, well, choosing to have a child is a family affair, it would be best if we started by asking you for your blessing, Rosemary.”

Rosemary stared at him, then at her mother, then Cloudy beaming with pride and fairly quivering with anticipation. Now? In the open? “O-of…” She coughed and rubbed at her nose with an ankle. “Of course I do. Does Cloudy?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, of course. You and I talked about this. I made it clear to Collar that I want him to be happy.”

“A discussion we should, perhaps, move inside,” Rosewater said in a low, conspiratorial tone. “This is all well and good for a meeting place, but unless we want to silence an area for us to sit down and have tea and formalize everything now, I suggest we go meet your mother, Collar. She must be wondering what we’re talking about out here.”

Rosemary giggled and glanced around. There were a few ponies watching them, but none she thought that could easily overhear or cast a spell to listen in. But Rosewater was right, and they were keeping the dignitaries she’d seen arriving for the past half hour waiting.

“Of course, mother.”

Silk sat alone in her study, a cold cup of tea forgotten on the desk while she pored over the contract she and Rosary had hammered out in the span of an hour. An hour during which Vine still hadn’t returned from the festival.

The contract was simple, really. It was more of a layer of defense against Rosary going back and accusing her of stealing Moon away to Damme than anything else, a crime which would have dire consequences not only in Merrie and Damme, but in the eyes of the Treaty Court.

Foalnapping was one of the things written in iron language into the Treaty, going all the way back to the first days of its enactment.

I, Rosary Star Rosethorn, hereby give permission to Silk Dancer Rosethorn to accompany my daughter, Moon Star Rosethorn, to Damme for the purposes of furthering her apprenticeship and to further ensure her safety against any and all threats while under her care.

There followed some conditions in which Silk was expected to report immediately to a Dammeguard for protection or to a Merrieguard if she thought imminent danger was coming, and conditions in which Rosary guaranteed her protection against civil authorities and that she would not renege on her word and leave Silk flapping in the breeze, strung up on her whimsy.

That had caused a little heated debate, but Rosary had not fought hard. Indeed, she seemed more insulted than upset, but she’d agreed to the wording in the end.

‘Any and all threats’ was clearly aimed at Roseate, but it could mean anything else that tried to threaten Moon as well.

She spent more time imagining what kind of trouble the Dammeguard would try to get up to, and just how in the seven layers of Tartarus she was going to get them to let her by without arresting her and returning her to her mother. She didn’t think Rosary would do that. That was one thing she knew about Rosary for certain. She tried to protect her children against Roseate’s influence as much as was physically and magically possible. They were always ‘busy’ or not feeling well at the various gatherings and events that Roseate held.

Some exposure was unavoidable, but she couldn’t remember any specific actions she could say in hindsight had looked like Rosary was actively shuffling her children away from Roseate, but her memory wasn’t good enough to recall every instance she’d seen Rosate around Quill and Moon.

She folded up the contract and slipped it into a document case, then pulled out her quill drawer and activated the hidden switch underneath to pop open a slender slot in the edge of the desk where another few important documents rested.

When the lid slid back into place, she made sure the seams matched up perfectly again and laid her writing pad’s corner on top of it again, making sure the faded stain around the edges matched up.

Vine knew where to look in case something happened to her.

You should tell Rosewater, too.

She set that thought aside and swirled her tea around in her cup, sipped it with a grimace, and then downed it in one go.

As she was cleaning out the pot and her cup in the kitchen, she heard her sister’s voice finally coming in over the growing wind outside. It was nearly dark, she saw, and lamented that she’d never gotten to return to her book.

But she had needed to make sure Rosary hadn’t slipped in some kind of loophole somehow.

Another voice rising above the growing wind stopped her in the middle of scrubbing out the spout of the teapot. A stallion’s voice raised in laughter that sounded a little too boisterous and tempestuous to be… sober.

“It’s not like you, Vine,” Silk grumbled as she set the pot upside down on the drying towel and marched out to the mudroom, yanking open the door and letting in a gust of blizzardy cold with more than a touch of ice to it.

Vine and Dazzle made their unsteady way up the stairs to the front door, laughing softly, each of their cheeks’ burning bright with either cold or alcohol or both.

Both, she amended as Dazzle swayed to a stop in front of her, his breath smelling like he’d poured four different wines, two ales and at least three different varieties of mead down his gullet.

That he wasn’t passed out drunk somewhere was either a testament to his fortitude or his temperance.

“Lady Shilk!” he slurred, then winked at her. “It’s g-good to see you again.”

“You’re not that drunk,” Vine protested, laughing and swatting his foreleg with a hoof. Then hiccuped and laughed again. “I swear, beloved, I’m not that drunk.”

Silk sat back and raised both hooves to her forehead, massaging away the instant headache that started pounding its way through her thoughts. “Vine…” She rubbed at her forehead for several more minutes, staring through her forelegs at her new guest, then at the storm brewing beyond them. “What took you so long?”

Another blast of cold crashed into the house, howling against the eaves and even rattling the storm shutters. Another thing she’d delayed too long to protect her future. She cursed under her breath and backed away.

“Come in, already, both of you. There’s a fire going in the sitting room, but if you want any other room to be warm aside from the office, you’ll need to start a fire.” Habitually, Silk scuffed her hooves on the brushes leading to the rest of the house.

“She’s not really angry,” Vine’s voice said, slurring only a little. “If she was really angry, you’d know it. Clean your hooves before you come in.”

“Aye aye, Captain Vine!”

Sober tea it is, then. And she’d skip the headache powder. If they were foolish enough to get hangover drunk, then they needed the lesson. “I’ll put on some tea. Get warm, you two, and then I want to hear just what in the names of all the stars you were doing getting so wildly drunk.”

She’d wanted to tell Vine tonight, but her uncharacteristic impulsiveness would have to put that to later. She didn’t trust Dazzle not to rat them out and definitely not to keep the secret of her deal with Rosary under wraps.

That would all have to wait until tomorrow at least, depending on how long it took the cleaning ponies to clear the ice from the streets.

Author's Note

Next time, we jump back to Rosewater, Collar, Cloudy, and Rosemary past most of the dinner to the end, get a look at everything from Dazzle’s perspective, and then everyone sleeps well. Just kidding! Rosewater and Collar’s first sex scene where they’re actively trying for a child, and they’re both going to try to make it romantic. Cloudy and Rosemary witness and record the coupling then go off for their own night (not included). Also! I started working on an add-on to Book 2 chapter 9, Old Loves and New Part 1 - with Dazzle x Bliss x Rosewater sexytimes. I know it’s old, but I’ve got a bit of the spring fever going and really wanted to do something with the three of them.