Lowly Servant moaned softly. It was dark, or perhaps it was light; the grey mare knew no difference under the blindfold. Her sense of time had passed; now she was simply saving her strength. The only constants were the darkness, the silent thrumming sensations between her hind legs, and the aches all through her body as she was held in a bipedal position by her unseen bonds.

Shining Armor didn’t have the raw magical power necessary to remove it, but he had learned to manipulate Lowly’s vibrator spell. Most days, he left it off. Today… today he had woken her up by turning it on. He left it that way through breakfast, steadily intensifying throughout the morning until her every step sagged from the weakness of her knees and every breath came as a gasp.

That was when he had blindfolded her, bound her up in her own closet—her own closet, she had a room to herself!—and left her with the vibration enchantment at its most powerful to struggle and stew while he took care of a visit from Princesses Celestia and Luna. She couldn’t remember what about. She could barely think as she moaned weakly for release.

Something brushed her right hind leg, and Lowly let out a startled cry. She hadn’t heard a door open—but she’d been ordered to oil the chamber and closet doors for just that reason, hadn’t she? Focusing was so difficult… but she was able to force her breathing back under control.

“Who—Who’s there?” the grey mare croaked. Celestia, what she wouldn’t do for something to drink. The only response was the steady undoing of the knots that held her hoof and tail cuffs in place. Lowly Servant slumped into a puddle on the floor as her bonds loosened, her weary muscles refusing to operate any longer. The blindfold came away, but she had to shut her eyes against the light to compensate. Then a strong hoof held her head up, and a glass of water touched her lips. She gulped it down.

Near-silent hoofsteps left her alone again, and she groaned. It hadn’t been Shining Armor, then—only somepony acting on his orders. He would have at least eased the intensity of the vibrator spell a little. Probably. Maybe… No, probably not. As she’d discovered, he was evil when he was nice. That wasn’t a bad thing.

It was almost an hour of whimpering, moaning, and occasionally spasming on the floor before she could summon the energy to reach back and try to coax her body over the final threshold to orgasm. She knew it was useless, she knew from years of long experience that the spell would prevent her from getting off without the help of a stallion’s dick buried to the hilt in her dripping pussy—but she couldn’t help it. It was too agonisingly good to not bring her hoof back and stroke her clitoris, sending jolts of pleasure up her spine and down her twitching hind legs.

“Well,” a voice said, startling Lowly out of her horny trance and bringing an extra degree of fire to her muzzle.

“Master!” she squawked. She turned her head to see Shining Armor standing in the doorway with a lecherous grin on his face. It wasn’t quite enough to stop her useless attempts to orgasm.

“Somepony’s being naughty,” Shining said, stepping into her room and shutting the door. The sound of the bolt being set into place made the ex-maid shiver. “What have I told you about being naughty?” In a haze of lust, the words were difficult to recall exactly.

“Naughty Servants… get rewards?” Lowly guessed, hoping for the best. That got a chuckle.

“Close enough. Over the bed, my little slut.”

With reluctance, Lowly Servant extracted her hoof from between her hind legs, then pulled herself off the floor. After hours of exhausting bondage in the closet, her legs wanted to give out and stay out, but thanks to a whole morning of torment, the rest of her wanted satisfaction, and that side was able to drag her legs to her bed, where she could relax and let her rear half hang off the edge.

Lowly took it a step further. She needed this, and she needed to show him just how badly. Her involuntarily-raised tail and the trickling rivulets along the slick, matted fur of her inner thighs weren’t enough. She looked over her shoulder, and just as she let her eyelids droop and her lashes flutter she clenched her vaginal muscles, making her clitoris stick out at her Master in a wink.

“Oh, damn,” Shining muttered. It had worked. Or maybe walking in to see her desperately touching herself had worked. It didn’t matter, as Lowly felt his weight on her back press her further into the mattress. She laid her head down to rest and give him more space on top of her, and he sandwiched his hardening cock between her rump and his loins, where it throbbed against her with his heartbeat.

The vibration enchantment died as her Prince’s magic glowed pink in the upper edge of her vision, and she sighed, equal parts relief and disappointment. Sometimes her Master liked the illusion of prowess that would occur when he thrust into her with the enchantment active, as her first orgasm would come almost instantly. She liked the immediate gratification almost as much as she enjoyed being forced to climax over and over again beyond the point where ecstasy turned to agony, while Shining took his sweet time with his own pleasure.

Instead, his nibbling her right ear sent pleasant tingles along her scalp and told her that such an experience would have to wait for another time. Lowly let her sigh out as a moan. As ready as she was and had been for hours, her Prince usually needed time to warm up after dealing with Guard or royal court business. She would just have to endure and try not to beg too pathetically; he hated that.

“I’m ready when you are, Master,” Lowly purred. She forcibly restrained her words and tone, balancing sultry suggestiveness with enough discipline to keep from crying out for him to fill her sudden emptiness and fuck her silly. He responded by grinding his cock along her folds and biting harder into her tender ear, sending shocks of pain along her mane and tearing a cry of confused pleasure from her throat.

With how much she hated being beaten, why didn’t she hate this? Maybe she was just too aroused.

“Milord, I—” She cut herself off as he shifted his weight off of her, his loins away from hers. Oh no, no no no, what had she done? How had she offended— “Ah!”

“Naughty mares get spanked,” Shining Armor said. He brought down his hoof again, giving his mare another hard swat on the arse and drawing another cry. “It was very naughty of you to try to get yourself off.” Another stinging swat, and another cry that wasn’t entirely pain. “And it was especially naughty of you to call me something other than ‘Master’ during playtime, my toy.”

“I’m sorry, Master, I—” Lowly couldn’t stop another yelp as Shining’s hoof came down… gently, on her neck. He lowered his voice as he stroked her mane, and she sighed, letting the soothing tone and touch sink into her muscles and unwind them.

“Easy. Easy. You’re forgiven. Remember, we’re going easy,” he said, shifting his hind legs comfortably atop the sheets. “Especially with how new this is to you. I want to get to ten and stop, like we talked about. Just seven more.”

Lowly looked up at her Master and nodded. Despite the distraction of her stinging rear, she did remember. Shining had said Cadance had introduced him to the use of pain in sex while they were together, and as insane as the idea sounded to the little grey mare, she had eventually agreed to find out whether she was the right mare for the sadistic streak being flogged had awakened in him. He would try to help by making sure she was overwhelmingly turned on before trying anything, a departure from how he’d treated her in the past but normal for how things had turned around in the past six months.

With his freedom, he really was a different stallion from the one who had shouted and hit her for not sucking his cock just right, from the one who had told her to keep her eyes open while she blew him so she could see just what she was doing with her life. That the latter had been meant to hurt, now that she thought of it, made her position just a little ironic.

“Good pet,” he said. “Now, let’s test your memory. There’s a word you’re going to say if something I do ever hurts too much, or scares you too much, or if you need me to stop for any other reason, and if you say it, I’ll stop everything I’m doing and help you. Recite it.”

Her safety word—another new development. Permission to give or deny sexual consent at her whim had been novel to begin with; wrapping her head around the idea that she could revoke consent given to the ruler of the land because she was hurt by what he was doing with it had taken most of a week. It was an amazing concept. It had let her look forward to today with, for once, a degree of confidence.

“Scullery.” The one place she hated most. Toil around the Servants’ Quarters had been tedious but fulfilling, but the initial daily grind in the scullery was everything wrong with the world of housekeeping, everything wrong with her life. It was somewhere she would never see again, but would always remember—its mention was the perfect signal that something had gone horribly wrong.

“Good girl,” Shining said. “I’m going to start again now. You should try to count. In the future, I might start over if you get the number wrong. That was three.”

“Three—gah! F-four!” Lowly said, as her Master’s hoof came down hard on her arse, just millimeters away from striking her wet, puffed-up folds. He swatted her again, harder, on the other cheek, and she couldn’t restrain another cry. After a moment recovering, she was able to whimper out, “Fi-hi-hive.”

No. She didn’t like this. The stinging brought tears to her eyes as another smack sounded off her rear. She was tough, she could take it, but the way it kept building up, burning, alternating sides to keep her off-guard, making each blow more and more painful—

“Gyaah! Ei-eight!” Lowly cried, as another stroke came down. She looked back to see the same hoof rising again, the leering of her Master as he seemed to revel in her pain—and sobbed. It was too much; it was over.

“Armadillo!”

Lowly Servant blinked. The word hadn’t fallen out of her mouth. She looked back up to find a very different expression on Shining Armor’s face. His ears were pulled back and his mouth was pulled down at the corners; his brows were knit with worry.

Right, Lowly thought. That was his safe word. But why?

“I’m sorry,” Shining said.

He knew she hurt, and he was sorry. That was enough. Lowly pulled herself close to her Master, buried her muzzle in the warm muscle of his chest, and let her tears go. After a moment, Shining began stroking her mane in silence, and she was able to relax in his half-embrace.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I hate seeing ponies really hurt. I thought I might be able to teach you to like some spice with the sugar, like Cady taught me, but I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

Lowly didn’t answer at first. She didn’t have an answer, so she continued to cling to him and let the stinging pain in her rear ebb away. But… he hadn’t meant to hurt her, not like before, and that made it a lot more bearable. As the stinging faded, she was able to relax. Finally, she pulled her muzzle out of his chest.

“It was too much for me. I was just about to say my own safeword,” Lowly said. She pulled back in her embrace, unwilling to wholly let go, and raised her head to look up at him from the sheets. “I’m glad you could tell. I’m glad you stopped. It just makes me more g-glad I accepted your offer.”

That seemed to brighten her crestfallen Master’s features. “I honestly wasn’t sure you would. I wouldn’t blame you for backing out, then or now,” he said.

Lowly shook her head. The speed with which His Lordship could switch between attuned and oblivious to her feelings would be comical if it didn’t serve as a reminder of how different his world was from hers.

“Of course not, Master.” She finally let him go and rolled onto her belly, lying comfortably upright atop the covers. As he did the same next to her, she leaned gently into his side and closed her eyes, relishing how soft she felt against his warmth and the firmness of his muscles. “How things were, I was already your concubine except in name. But it’s n-nice that you did make it official. It’s done a lot for me and my sister both, besides the fun.”

Shining Armor sighed and stroked her mane. “I only wish Cadance would come back,” he muttered.

Lowly sighed too. As relaxing as the petting was, she could let it and the warmth and closeness lull her to sleep, despite the part of her that remembered the rest of the day and wished her Master would put his hoof somewhere more… interesting. But some things were still more important than pleasure.

“You still haven’t found the Princess?” she asked.

“No, that’s not the problem.” Shining shook his head, then turned it sharply towards her. “Cady commands that you tell nopony of what you learn here today. She’s been here in the palace this whole time. She assumed a false identity and joined the maid staff. And I can’t do anything about it.”

“What?” Lowly blinked. “I-I mean, why? I mean, it’s not my p-place to question what she wants to do, but wouldn’t somepony recognize her?”

“No. She’s used some spell to make herself appear as nopony special.” Shining huffed. “I wouldn’t even have known, but Noblebroom mentioned the name she uses in her diary when petitioning me for additional resources for the Servants’ Quarters. Then I heard she never speaks, and found traces of my magic lingering about her when I had her assigned to tidy my study.”

Lowly opened her eyes and started down at the sheets. Her Princess had been so close all this time, but… as much as she was relieved to know Her Highness was alive and well, something deep in her chest didn’t respond. Didn’t she love Princess Cadance? Hadn’t she once pinned all her hopes on the Princess finding her and loving her again?

Again…? Lowly tilted her head, then shook it clear. Maybe the strangely sexual game she’d found herself in when she’d first arrived in the Empire had warped her expectations, but in that case she had grown out of it by the time His Lordship claimed her. That must have been the talk of the month around the table in the maids’ barracks…

Wait, a maid who never talks?

“W-was that her earlier?” Lowly squeaked. She got a smirk in response. Oh Celestia, it had been, and the Princess had found her in the closet, moaning in her bondage and dripping with sweat and the scent of unbridled lust—

Shining Armor let out a weak chuckle. “Oh yes. The only thing I don’t understand is why she won’t utter a sound. My mute spell couldn’t have lasted longer than twenty minutes or so. Unless… Maybe she wants to punish herself, but just because I can’t stop her doing whatever she wills doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun.

“Yes, I did arrange for her to ‘accidentally’ find you. I left written instructions—dictated, she knows my writing—suggesting you had done it to yourself—” Lowly squeaked again and hid her face in her hooves as her Master continued “—but that’s just a warm-up. She’ll see through the game, of course. She’ll know that I know, and then either play along or come back.”

Then he ran the tip of his muzzle along the edge of her left ear, breathing heated air across every centimeter. Lowly shivered, her ear flicking involuntarily but always returning.

“So, does your sister blush like that too?” Shining said.

“W-what?!” What was her Master—oh. Lowly sat up sharply. “I-I mean no! I mean, I don’t know! I didn’t do any of those awful things you said when I saw her last month!” She took a deep breath and forced the sickening mental images of compliance out of her head, replacing them with the best glare she could summon. It was a work in progress. “She’s my sister and I love her and—”

“Whoa, whoa.” Her Master held up a hoof, silencing her. “I’m teasing. I like the idea of watching the two of you, but I know it won’t happen.”

The grey mare settled back onto the sheets and huffed. “You’re lucky you’re so good in bed.” But he was a lot more than that, wasn’t he? After a moment, she muttered, “And responsible. And caring. And snuggly. A-and powerful. And gentle.” With each word, her glare melted and she burrowed back into his side a little more. “Besides, she’s still angry.”

“So if she wasn’t angry—”

“No!” Lowly rolled her eyes. He’d have to do a lot more than torture her with the vibrator spell all day to budge her on that. More like all—no, there would be no price, no matter how it was framed. Although… She lifted her tail slightly. His Lordship was most welcome to try.

What she got was a gentle nuzzle. “But thank you,” Shining murmured in her ear. Straightening, he continued, “You’ve told me a few times how grateful you are for… what you say I’ve given you. I’ve not told you enough times how glad I am to have your support. Without Cady… I feel like the whole world is laid across my withers, and you’re the only pony left to trust.”

Well, the tail-raise had been a good attempt. The grey mare looked up at her Master and smiled. She knew her Prince didn’t love her, not really. She was useful, a very well-paid whore one day and a confidant the next, but His Highness’s heart lay with the missing Princess. Sometimes, though, he knew just the right things to say to keep her heart warm. It was an arrangement, but a comfortable one, and she got far more out of it than bits or room and board.

“I know I can trust the other Princesses,” Shining said, “except for Celestia being on vacation again. I guess I mean you’re the only normal—well, relatively—oh, nevermind. I’m making an arse of myself.”

Lowly smirked. “E-excuse you, milord.” Then she relaxed her smile. “No, I understand. B-but you said Princess Celestia is on vacation? Didn’t she visit for a s-speech today?”

Shining shook his head. “I never told you, did I? Celestia’s years-long vacations are possible because she took on a changeling to temporarily fill her shoes a few decades ago. It’s what gave Cady the idea for…” He hesitated, looking down at her with an odd quirk of the eyebrow and turn of the mouth, then sighed and looked away. “I guess you wouldn’t understand anymore.”

“S-sorry, milord.” Sometimes it was difficult for the grey mare to remind herself that the world had once known her differently. Sometimes the world reminded her with a strange jolt like this. She was learning to brush it off.

“You… are forgiven. You couldn’t know.”

There was nothing left to say. After a moment, Lowly nuzzled up under Shining’s chin, then laid her head down on the sheets. He would understand if she felt a little lazy after her hours of torment, let alone the spanking and conversation afterwards, wouldn’t he?

His Lordship must have felt the same way; he settled down next to her without a word, laying his neck along hers and pulling her onto her side in a gentle, spooning embrace. Lowly snuggled backwards into it, pressing her back into Shining Armor’s chest and belly.

Shining tightened his hold on her, a powerful and breathtaking reminder of what his snuggles almost always meant in the end, just as she felt the broad head of his cock pushing out of its sheath and rubbing up against her thigh. Her pulse quickened, and the heat in her muzzle and nethers re-emerged from its embers. She turned her head to show him a sultry smile and fluttered her eyelashes. It was probably not very late in the afternoon, and he had promised to make his experiment worth it…

As she soaked in the royal bath, Shining Armor, as she had come to be known, restrained a sigh. Her orders had been different from Lowly Servant’s, and on the inside, she was still every bit the mare she’d been before Princess Cadance happened to her life. But she no longer held the silly fantasy of owning a castle and ruling its lands; she was living what little was real of that dream. Princess Celestia made it look easy, but it was work, work, and more work.

That was on top of having to continuously struggle to improve her focus with unicorn magic while simultaneously hiding how little of it she had; transforming from earth pony mare to unicorn stallion hadn’t changed the makeup of her predominantly earth pony magic, and neither had eight and a half years of practice. She was simply never going to be a complete replacement for the original Shining Armor. Shining lowered herself further into the too-hot water, letting it loosen what tension remained in her muscles.

At least on days like today, when she could arrange tutoring and activities for little Flurry Heart almost from dawn to evening, it was still possible to take care of herself. A professional nanny, carefully selected from candidates recommended by ponies she could trust, like Princess Twilight, wasn’t enough. And despite the facts—Flurry Heart was actually the old Shining Armor’s, not hers—convincing “Lowly Servant” that she had fathered the foal before the accident-turned-”vacation” was impossible. As far as poor Lowly was concerned, she had always been a mare. The former maid was a decent caretaker, but with Cadance out of the picture, Flurry Heart was left without a real parent.

Shining sighed. She wasn’t even that lucky; she still remembered what it was to be the struggling but hard-working maid called Lemon Fresh. It would be easier if she didn’t—easier if she only knew herself as Shining Armor, and easier for the little Princess Flurry if she had a father who thought of herself as such. Despite Cadance’s past help, the filly was starting to ask questions.

It wasn’t all so bad, though. While it had been difficult at first, mutual needs and Lowly Servant’s earnest and straightforward nature had conquered most of her lingering issues from her time as, essentially, Princess Cadance’s sex slave. It would never stop bothering her that her first time with Lowly had been an inexcusable crime, but ever since she’d been free to do so, Shining had given the grey mare every opportunity not only to not have sex, but to not have anything to do with her at all.

Lowly had refused to leave her in either sense, and for the time being Shining Armor was grateful; the grey mare was her only remaining physical and emotional comfort. In a palace full of liars, flatterers, sycophants, and blackmailers, Lowly was the only pony she could relax and be herself with. Sometimes things happened—the one time Lowly had tried playing “top,” Shining had started screaming out all the terror of Cadance’s dominance and the chamber guards had broken the door down to “save” her—but otherwise her bedroom had become comfortable.

Ruling the Crystal Empire wasn’t all bad, either. It was a lot of work—but she was used to lots of work, and it was good work. Well, the part that didn’t involve warding off the demands of undeserving yet entitled nobles was good work. Managing the real meat of the Empire’s affairs, when it was beyond the officials she and Cadance had delegated most lesser concerns to, was a satisfying challenge. So was continuing to lead the preparedness exercises of the Crystal Guard, which had finally been detached from the Equestrian Royal Guard at her insistence.

None of this was perfect. But as she was, she couldn’t risk interfering with the one thing that held her back: Cadance’s absence. As much as she wanted to simply use her power within the palace to retrieve the Princess and find a way to fix things, she didn’t have the magic to follow through by stripping her “wife’s” disguise. She’d only make a fool of herself; crossing Cadance’s will was still effectively impossible.

She didn’t stand to gain anything, either. Relief from her duties couldn’t happen; Lowly Servant had truly become Lowly Servant, and Shining would die before making anypony suffer through that kind of change again. But somepony had to be Shining Armor, Prince of the Crystal Empire, and Cadance was so… misdirected that if she returned and was truly contrite, one of her first acts would likely be to put Lowly back on the throne. Worse, Cadance’s return could instead mean Shining Armor would spend the rest of her life kissing and sexually submitting to the mare who had caused all of her nightmares.

Did she really want the Princess to come back?

It was a few more minutes before Shining would have to return to her daily work, if only to finish running little Flurry out of energy and put her to bed—the nanny’s schedule and “Celestia” and Luna’s visit were the only things that hadn’t lined up to let her take the day completely off. And once daddy duties were taken care of, she would probably be overrun by worthless nobles trying to catch her weary and with her guard down at the end of the day.

What remained of Lemon Fresh whimpered and sank into the steaming water until only her muzzle remained above the surface. What a mess things had turned out to be...

Cleaning herself up had taken the rest of Lowly Servant’s afternoon; it was so much more complicated when she was a lady of the palace. The past few months had taught her why royals and their guests always left so much work for the staff—cleaning up after themselves would simply take too long. The sheets just had to be changed, however, and she had left the dirty ones piled conveniently at the foot of her bed.

With the musk of His Highness’s sex and her own replaced by the light lavender scent of her shampoo, and covered by her favorite dress—a simple, modest black one that reminded Lowly of her old uniform—she was free to go about the business her lengthy bathing and styling had given her time to plan.

While the grey mare did come across a few of the maids and other staff, she ran into none of the palace nobles as she made her way towards the Servants’ Quarters, allowing her to relax instead of reluctantly adopting their upturned muzzle and strutting stride. Her path through the rough-hewn walls of the service wing brought her to the small office still occupied by Noblebroom and a maid. There had been shouting from the maid before the door opened, but it turned to awkward silence as Lowly squeezed herself into the cramped space. That was just lovely, she thought; the best she could do was let him dismiss the other mare. Those two could deal with each other later.

“Now, ah, Lady Servant,” Noblebroom said, once the office was clear. His voice contained no recognition of the irony in his form of address and he smiled, briefly. “What brings you to my humble desk?”

Lowly caught a hint of a stammer in his voice—she was probably not a well-known quantity to him now, was she? Or perhaps he was worried that his dinner staff wasn’t living up to expectations. She offered the nervous pink crystal stallion a reassuring smile of her own. It was a pity she didn’t know him as well as some of the maids; she would have to use the artificial speech His Highness had been teaching her until she understood how to connect with him.

“Noblebroom. I’ve just had a lovely bath and supper.” She glanced briefly at her front hooves; as she’d felt, they were still completely clean. “Now, I walked here all the way from my q-quarters, and my hooves are still clean enough to eat off of. You’ve obviously been putting your overdue promotion to good effect. I c-can’t believe you manage the entire palace staff from this dismal little hole—this place should be a closet.”

“This is what I was given, milady.” Noblebroom gulped and pulled himself up in his seat. “I make it work, but if I had more space, I could spend less time finding and sorting paperwork and more time doing my job.”

“I’ll have to speak to somepony.” Lowly nodded, glancing over the stacks of papers lying everywhere. Perhaps the steward, or His Lordship; from her contact with the working staff, she probably knew more about his efforts than either of them. He was as humorless as ever, but his work was exemplary in its efficiency, and while his argument was convincing, she simply felt he had earned a better workplace. Every servant had, but one step at a time. “In the meantime, s-see that you pass along my appreciation to everypony responsible.”

Noblebroom gave her a strange look, one that was at once perplexed, inquisitive, and calculating. It was one she was growing familiar with—the look of a high-ranking pony trying to figure out what game she was playing. That was another burden of life among the lords and ladies of the palace; everypony assumed she was performing some kind of intrigue, when in reality she was only trying to make everything work better.

“I’ll be sure to do that, milady,” the stallion finally said. He unfurrowed his brow. “You wanted something from me?”

“I do, but I hope it isn’t much. I only wish to know everypony who has joined the maid staff in the past eight months or so.”

As it turned out, only one pony who joined the service staff in the past year had stayed on. Her name was Amore Heart, and it had taken every bit of Lowly’s discipline to refrain from saying something exasperated and revealing in front of Noblebroom. It was such an obvious alias, and the least service-oriented name for a maid she’d ever heard—though perhaps, being Lowly Servant and somehow elevated to the status of royal concubine, she had no room to talk.

Instead, she had walked it off, and eventually made her way to the maids’ barracks, where Miss Martinette was screaming at a cowering mare right up until the moment Lowly cleared her throat. At that, the ogre-mare’s ears flicked away from her victim and she turned in fury on the intruder—only to awkwardly curtsey when she saw who it was.

“Lady Servant,” Martinette grunted. Then she straightened up. “I didn’t expect you here. You miss washing floors and chamber pots already?”

Lowly didn’t bother to make her smile more genuine as the larger mare’s target fled. Though Martinette had been hired a week after the reappearance of the Crystal Empire, she was a relic of everything wrong with the system King Sombra’s staff had run and nopony had bothered to fix. Her bile was intense and short-fused; it seemed the pressure Lowly had exerted through Noblebroom for the past month had only made the old bear worse.

“N-no, Miss Martinette.” The mare no longer terrified her. Being on the receiving end of her intensifying nastiness only brought pity to her heart. “When I was first hired, I was going through a lot of personal difficulties, a-and having you to ground me in the moment’s labor helped immensely.” She stepped forward and gave the shocked draft mare a quick hug before continuing. The words were so twisted away from the pity and anger she really felt that they made her insides knot unpleasantly, but they were what had to be said.

“It’s my turn to help you, now.” She took a breath and sighed it out. “Martinette… g-go home. You’re done here.”

“W-what?” For a moment, the air of fury around Miss Martinette burst. In the screaming monster’s place stood a confused, scared, little mare.

Lowly wished the monster hadn’t gone; she would feel better getting rid of that than something that more closely resembled a real pony with feelings and insecurities. She would have to comfort herself by knowing that what she was saying was genuinely the best advice she could think of.

“You’re hurting yourself here, and hurting everypony who works here.” Lowly glanced about; there was nopony else in immediate earshot, as was often the case when Martinette started ranting. She lowered her voice anyway. “I made sure you’d have the means; please, m-make time to take care of yourself. There’s enough in your severance pay for a counselor—”

“How dare you?” The monster was back. “You insolent little cunt! Who do you think you are? I’ll—”

“Martinette!” Lowly suppressed a smile as the other mare recoiled in surprise. Nopony ever expected her to raise her voice. She dropped it again as she continued, “You don’t work here, and you have no business with the court. I know you can see yourself out of the palace. Please do so before the Guard has to help you.”

The bear-mare opened her mouth. Lowly swallowed. If this escalated any further, it would be violent, and she would have to hope somepony brought the Guard quickly enough to keep her from being too badly mauled.

Miss Martinette closed her mouth, threw down her keyring, and stormed away. Lowly let out the breath she’d held. Thank goodness. Now she just had to arrange for a replacement. It didn’t take her long to find the maid who had been singled out for a tirade a minute before hiding in the service kitchen, and now that she had a look at her, the mare wasn’t one Lowly recognized. She knew all the staff by sight, if not by name.

“Amore Heart?”

The maid looked up at Lowly Servant. A flash of recognition blossomed and lingered in her eyes, and she nodded, a little too quickly and sharply. Lowly trotted her reassuring smile back out, and began lying like a cheetah.

“I was reading your papers earlier. You were a m-manager where you worked in Manehattan before coming here? You lost your voice in an accident there?” She got a hesitant nod again. Apparently, the disguised Princess hadn’t even considered her background before this point; Lowly would have to ask Noblebroom how he had been convinced to hire a pony without a history. Maybe she had sucked her way to the bottom? Noblebroom did seem a little gross, and if the Princess really was punishing herself…

Lowly shook her head clear. “So you have the experience to know a capable leader when you work with one.” Another tentative nod, but she already knew that Princess Cadance knew what a good leader looked like. “G-good. Please take me to the pony you think would best fill Miss Martinette’s shoes.”

Lowly Servant soon found herself in the scullery, restraining herself from shuddering too often. The place was every bit as dim and dismal as she remembered it, save for the smile of the maid working there, who was just finishing up with scrubbing the floor for the night.

“Milady!” The face and chirpy voice belonged to Squeaky Clean. Lowly remembered the topaz mare as being repeatedly demoted—by Miss Martinette, of course—for her attitude; the Princess’s pick made sense if that attitude and energy extended to her team efforts.

“It would be my pleasure to serve you.” The maid’s curtsey was a touch slow, and every part of her seemed to sag with weariness, but she—as always—bore the effort with the grace of a mare who truly loved her job and the radiance of a crystal pony who was, at the very least, content. “And it’s wonderful to know you haven’t forgotten the rest of us. What may I do for you?”

Lowly was out of energy for beating around the bush. “Miss Martinette has left the staff. Starting in the morning, I want you to fill in for her until Noblebroom decides you deserve the position.” There was no other reason for her to completely trust the opinion of “Amore Heart” besides the knowledge that she was secretly the missing Princess; Her Highness would quickly realize she’d been discovered. That was going to happen anyway with Shining Armor’s games, though, and whatever kept him from interfering with Princess Cadance’s self-imposed whatever-this-was held no sway over her.

“Congratulations,” she added.

Squeaky Clean’s mouth opened, and her jaw hung that way for a few seconds. She blinked her composure back into place quickly, however. “Y-yes milady!” Her earlier smile was replaced with a broader one and a delighted little squee. “I won’t let you down!”

Lowly nodded. “I’m sure you won’t.” And she was reasonably sure. The mare was Princess Cadance’s pick, after all. “A-and since you’re the one to ask now, please make sure the newest maids—” meaning Her Highness “—get more experience working in the House. It did me a lot of g-good when I was first hired here.” That would ensure the Princess was more available to His Highness, and ensure there was more opportunity for the Princess to see what effect she was having on the ponies around her, especially the Prince. Maybe, hopefully, something good could come of that.

Pretending it was an afterthought, she glanced to her side at the Princess-turned-maid. “Oh, and you are dismissed.”

With everything finally taken care of, Lowly began the trek back to her quarters. She had been tired before from all the sexual games of the day, and after that evening, she was exhausted. All she wanted to do now was collapse atop her sheets, let the vibrator spell have its way with her—it had activated again while she was explaining Martinette to Noblebroom—and sleep. But chipping away at the remaining post-Return problems of the Crystal Palace was worth it, and she bore her weariness with pride. King Sombra and Princess Cadance had left quite the lasting mess in their wakes, and few ponies were better qualified or in a better position to untangle the lot.

After all, cleaning up other ponies’ messes was Lowly Servant’s special talent.

Author's Note

This chapter edited by Damaged and pre-read by TwistedSpectrum. Thanks again!

Stay tuned for one last piece of the story. I think you can guess whose.

The idea of Cadance being inspired by Celestia's occasionally replacing herself with a changeling to go on vacation was inspired by another story that I'll link once I can find it again.