The next morning, I was roused from sleep by my magical alarm clock ringing a bell only I could hear. Twilight lay pressed up against me, warm and peaceful, her arms holding me close in her sleep.

I lay there like that while the fog of sleep slowly lifted from my mind, enjoying the sight of her sleeping face. Her mouth slightly open, the gentle sound of her breathing.

The world is full of love. And I am the most blessed creature alive.

In the end, I pulled myself carefully out of her arms. With a kiss to her cheek I left her to her rest, and went to open the door to my chamber. Outside I found Auntie Celestia pacing back and forth, flanked awkwardly by two crystal guards. She fell still when she saw me.

We looked at each other in silence for a brief moment before her nerves got the better of her. “Well?”

I nodded at the guards to leave us, and they withdrew. “Twilight cast your spell last night.”

“And?”

“She can't actually move here, what with her duties in Ponyville. But she's going to work on setting up a magic mirror portal between the Castle of Friendship and the Crystal Palace. So really we're still going to be living together.”

Celestia let out a sigh of relief seven hundred years in the making. “So it's over at last,” she said. “All the secrets have been revealed. The special project is finished.”

“Not all the secrets,” I said, watching her every move carefully. “Last night you told her how to unlock my magic. You broke the Princess's Oath. Don't pretend you didn't.”

She closed her eyes and nodded, and when she spoke her voice was heavy and full of regret. “I broke the Oath in spirit long before that, my niece. The moment you told me about Shining Spring, I knew that if you would not end your plan yourself, I would have to force you. Even if I had to break my own teachings in order to do so.”

I listened to her finally admit her own final burden after all these years. “All that time I had to watch as you tore yourself apart, and put yourself back together, over and over again,” my Auntie said. “It hurt me to see it, Cadance. Every time you lost your love, I watched you die inside. Every time struck you harder, and when you finally came back you were always hurting. You may not have noticed, but you have changed. Sooner or later, it would kill you. This... all of this was my way of trying to help you come back.”

I closed the distance between us and hugged her close, as a sister would. She froze to my touch, locked in her regal formality, then relaxed and leant into it, holding me tight.

“Thank you for caring about me, Auntie,” I said.

“That is what aunts are for,” she replied, and her voice was warm and kind as a summer day. Inside my chambers, Twilight turned in my bed, and let out a sigh.

“I hope you'll be very happy together,” Auntie said.

“I think we will,” I said softly, and smiled. “Even though getting here was a mess.”

“We play the cards we are dealt,” Celestia said. “Perhaps this was not the ideal solution for any of us. But we must choose how to meet our fate.” She looked into my eyes. “You can be happy together, if you choose to be. But you will have to earn it, my niece. No more tricks.”

I chuckled, and smiled. “Love is never earned, Auntie. It's unconditional. Nopony can demand it, or negotiate with it. I remember that now.”

We both looked through the open door into my bedchamber, where Twilight lay peacefully sleeping with a smile on her face. Above the bed, the window looked out to the growing sunrise. “That's why the world is so very generous to give it to us.”

The End.

Author's Note

Some time after I wrote this story its prereader Naughty_Ranko created Princess Oaths for all the other Princesses, and made wallpapers out of them. Go check them out: they're really cool.