We faced each other from across the room as my mind raced.

“You saw this coming, then,” I said.

Celestia nodded. “You may be adept at hiding your tracks from everypony else, my niece, but not from me.”

“So,” I said, warily glancing around the room, almost expecting to be ambushed by hidden guards and dragged away. “Now what?”

Celestia only looked at me with sad eyes. “You've disappointed me, Cadance. I had dared to hope it wouldn't come to this. I'd hoped you would be true to your duties as a princess of Equestria, and respect the Princess's Oath. But I suppose in my heart I knew it would end this way...” She shook her head. “How far you have fallen, my niece.”

My teeth grit together in anger. “What do you want?” I growl.

“Straight to the point then,” Celestia said. “I'm not going to let you have Twilight, Cadance. Not like this, not like the others, not as your plaything. Your special project must end. Now.”

I swallowed, heavily and painfully as I imagined letting go of Twilight. “I can't.”

“I am not offering you a choice,” she said, stepping towards me like a warrior entering a duel, watchfully and deliberately. “Not this time. I have been patient with you, Cadance. I have gone against my better judgment in permitting you to continue for this long. But it ends now. Twilight is not going to be your next conquest, and she is not going to be just a vehicle to bring forth your next generation of life-mates.”

“That's not true!” I screamed at her. “It was nothing like that! I loved them! I love them all and I love Twilight! I won't let you take her from me!”

Celestia only stared at me coldly. “Twilight does not belong to you, Cadance. She is a Princess of Equestria, with all the rights and powers due to her station. She, and through her all of her living relatives, are no longer under your control. I need Twilight like I need you and my sister: whole, sane, and fit to govern. I will not have an outside force entangling her mind. Not even you.”

“You can't do this!” I screamed. “I'm the Princess of Love! They're mine! You swore you'd never meddle with my domain! You have no right!”

“This must stop, Cadance!” She shouted back at me. “I gave you countless chances to pull back, I tried to persuade you, but you would not listen!” She sounded like a parent disciplining an unruly foal, her patience stretched to the breaking point. “From Shining Spring until Twilight Sparkle. This is how long I gave you, Cadance. This is how patient I was. I set the clock counting long ago, and now it's run down. Your time is up.”

The full meaning of her words took a second to penetrate, for me to realize and see what had happened. When I did, my breath froze in my lungs and my eyes shrank to pinpricks. “Oh no... Auntie... You didn't?” I asked her, barely able to speak the words. “You were planning this all along?”

She met my pleading stare and nodded. “Since the day you asked me to bless your marriage to Shining Spring.”

My strength failed me, and I fell to my knees, my legs weak and wobbly. I turned my head away, my breath a whimper as all my plans collapsed before me.

At long last I realized how powerless I was, and how elegantly I had been played.

“I never commanded you,” Celestia said, stepping closer to me, while I sat and stared at the wall. “I never meddled in your domain. Once you touched somepony, I let them be. I merely... decorated your path. I placed you in charge of the census and of genealogy, and I moved the ponies I needed into your purview.”

She reached out a hoof and turned my head to look at her. Her sad eyes glistened in the moonlight. “Every time I hoped you would let them be. You always had the choice to stop. But, blinded by your desires and your plan, you took them without hesitation, and I knew I had to continue. I found ponies with a strong potential for magic in their blood. You made them part of your project, a bloodline strong and true in magic, until finally it gave birth to the one pony that would force an end to it, the one pony you could not be permitted to control.”

“Twilight,” I whispered. “You asked me – you wanted her for your project. You said you would give her back to me. You looked me in the eyes and lied to me.” I stared at her through my tears. “Why? Why are you doing this to me, auntie?”

She looked back at me with sorrowful and severe eyes. “You cannot see what your precious scheme has done to you, my niece. It has changed you. Sometimes I think I can hardly even recognize you. In the end, if it continues, it will destroy you. I can't allow that to happen. I need you. Equestria needs you. I had no choice but to do whatever was necessary to stop it.”

A thunder in the distance shakes the earth. A great beast, lumbering through the mountains, smashing walls of ice with its mighty paws. A roar that could be heard on the wind a dozen miles away. Fangs and claws to rend and tear. Hungry for blood it drew near and they ran forth to meet it, ready to give their lives in defense of their home.

I stood frozen in shock as the image tore across my mind. When I spoke, my voice sounded heavy and distant, devoid of life. “Whatever was necessary? You... you made it happen? Did you make everything happen?”

Celestia watched me silently. I screamed. “Shining Armor! Was it your fault?!”

She gasped, her eyes wide. “How can you possibly suggest... I did not kill Shining Armor! How can you even think such a thing?!”

“Why should I believe you now?” I spat, stomping closer until I was screaming in her face. “You lied to me about everything! You lied to Twilight! You stood there at the funeral and sang his praises just as everything was going according to your plan!”

Her hoof rose up and struck me across the face.

I looked at her in disbelief and stunned silence, my hoof stroking my stinging cheek. Never in seven hundred years had I seen Auntie lash out in anger. Never, even in the direst of circumstances, had I known her to be anything less than untouchable and controlled.

Now before my eyes she recoiled in horror at her own action, trembling, her mouth hanging open but not speaking. Tears fell from her eyes, and I knew how deeply I had hurt her.

“It doesn't matter,” she said, her voice weak and soft, barely more than a whimper. “It's already done. By now she will have read the letter, and cast the magic inside.” I stared, not understanding, but fearing something terrible. Celestia turned away from me, her head held low. “Twilight knows everything now. You should go speak to her.”

I turned and ran.

Author's Note

Next time: Cuts.