Princess Cadence was the monarch of the Crystal Empire. She was the Princess of love, and love was her domain. Nothing happened when it came to love that she didn't see, or hear. The very fabric of the world was as much built on love, as it was built on the fundamental forces of light, magic, and gravity. The love between anyone, no matter how true, or what kind, left ripples. The Empire was a veritable whirlpool of emotion; and Equestria was a close second behind. Cadence felt at peace in the Empire, and she felt content in Equestria. Even the Changeling hive—once as close to a deadzone as you could find—was beginning to add to the energy. It was a pure kind of love, too, the kind of unconditional love shared between family members. She couldn't wait to see what the newly-reformed Changelings could do, if they loved so fiercely!

But, there was something troubling her. She was twitching her legs underneath the covers of her queen-sized bed, and she was restless enough that her husband had long since given up any hope of getting to sleep. He lay still, not wanting to disturb her. He had been married, and had indeed known Cadence, long enough to know that he shouldn't interrupt her musings. He should simply wait, and she would drag him in all by herself without him having to initiate anything. To be quite honest, he was glad of it right now. It allowed him a few more blissful moments of pretend-sleep, where he could act like he was dreaming. He could even go through the motions; perhaps that would grant him some form of mercy from the oncoming storm.

"Shiny?" The voice of Shining Armour's wife dashed his last vestiges of hope, and the forces inside his head waging the war against his conscious mind for sleep finally capitulated, laying down their arms, and pumping him full of fresh resolve. For all of his dislikes about his wife's strange 'quirk', he had to do something about it, even if it was as simple as fluffing her pillow.

He sighed, groaned, and sat up. He turned his head towards his wife, showing off the bags developing under his eyes—which themselves were still closed. "Yes dear?"

"Oh." She fluttered her lashes, and placed a hand on her chest. "I'm sorry Shiny, were you asleep?"

"No." Shining waved her off with a dismissive hand, trying and failing to stifle a yawn. "Not at all."

"I was doing it again, wasn't I?" Candence reached up to play with a strand of her hair, twirling it around her finger, as she chewed on her lip in that sheepish way she did when she thought she was about to get told off. It was a childhood habit, that had progressed into adulthood, and then cemented itself in her princess-hood. Thankfully, Shining found it absolutely adorable.

Leaning forward, Shining planted a kiss on her cheeks. "A little bit," he said, with a wry grin, and shuffled so that he was sitting, propped up against her like a listing castle to a buttress. "What is it this time?"

"It's..." she trailed off, her finger stopping its motions. She shook herself off and shrugged. "It's probably nothing," she said, waging an internal debate with herself. Shining had the right to know what she was thinking, but he also desperately needed his sleep. His new guard rota had been running him ragged when added on top of his life as a father, and she so desperately wanted to kiss his forehead, and lull him off to sleep with a gentle humming tune, like she did when he really was to exhausted to stay awake, but she knew he had to know. It was about his family, after all. Sighing in defeat, she dropped her hands onto the satin duvet and turned to face him, taking his hand into hers. "Okay," she said, "have you noticed something about your sister's letters lately?"

"Cady," Shining resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "She sends us, like, one a month. They're all pretty odd; she tries to cram a month's worth of news into one parchment." Smiling fondly, he began chuckling to himself, leaning his head into the crook of Cadence's neck with a sleepy-sounding hum. "And she's started taping the parchment rolls together," he added.

Cadence couldn't resist the urge to smile as well. His fondness for Twilight was amazing, it was entirely unconditional. So much so, that he often missed the little niggling facets of Twilight that had changed over the past few weeks. Such aforementioned details had dug great gouges into Cadence's mind and left nothing but a growing bud of anxiety in the freshly tilled divots. "I mean besides that," she said. "The fact that she's got the time to write more and more every month is worrying, and she keeps on talking about what happened with Celestia and Luna," Cadence said. In her mind, that meant that Twilight was either neglecting her duties, neglecting her friends, or neglecting... something else. Like sleep, for instance. All of them were worrying.

Shining furrowed his brow and creased his forehead in concentration. Cadence thought she could strain her ears enough to hear the gears and cogs clicking inside his head. "What happened between your aunts?" he asked.

"They had a little spat," Cadence cleared her throat. Shining's brow arched. Normally, 'little spats' between the princesses leveled city blocks. The last 'little spat' ended with a castle in ruin, a forest growing wildly out of control through magic, and a thousand year time out. "And Twilight was worried it would turn out like... well, like before."

"Oh, really?" Shining propped himself up a bit straighter now.

"Yes." Cadence looked at him expectantly. "The map she has called Starlight Glimmer to help sort it out? She swapped their cutie-marks for a day? She had a dream in which Nightmare Moon did battle with Celestia's evil counterpart?" she prodded, waiting for him to remember.

He shook his head. "Must have missed that one," he said.

Cadence brushed off his obliviousness. "Well, after that, she gets really..." she stuttered, searching for the right word. "Subdued? Like she doesn't want to talk about it anymore? Look at this." She sparked some magic into her hand. A magenta horn of light appeared, sprouting out of her forehead, and thin tendrils extended from her fingers to wrap around the chest at the foot of their bed. The lid opened, and Shining could hear the sounds of ruffling papers from within. Having closed her eyes to visualise with her magic, Cadence smiled when she found the letter she was looking for "Ah ha! Here." She hovered it over, and set it out in between them, so Shining could read.

Dear Princess Cadence

Today was a wonderful day, and the whole month has been nothing short of delightful! Fluttershy opened her wildlife preserve officially, Rainbow Dash had an autograph signing at the Wonderbolts Museum in Cloudsdale, Rarity broke records in the fashion industry for opening week sales, Pinkie's still Pinkie, but I think she's happy all the same, Applejack finally found out about her parents, and got her Grandpa Pear back, the feud between the two families finally ended, and Starlight's lessons are going amazingly well! She's taken to friendship studies better than I ever did.

It's so nice to see everyone changing so much, they deserve all the happiness they get, and I couldn't be more proud. It makes me wonder what I'm going to be like in the future, and how much I'm going to change.

How's Flurry Heart?

Shining smiled. "Well, that's nice of her to ask."

"Shining, she completely changed the subject!" Cadence cried out, letting the paper fall to the bedsheets.

Shining moved back, surprised at his wife's sudden change in demeanor. "So?" he asked. "That's normal for Twilight."

Cadence exercised all of her reserves of self-control to suppress the urge to slap herself on the forehead. "Ever since the Princesses' little dispute," she said, "Twilight has been steadily avoiding any future-thinking. It's worrying me, and I think it's because of Daybreaker."

"Well, Daybreaker was just Starlight's Dream, right?" Shining shrugged. "Why should she be worried about something that doesn't exist?"

"Well, yeah," Cadence nodded in agreement. "But according to Twilight, Celestia didn't seem all that surprised at the concept." Cadence shrugged.

"Uh, really?" Shining raised an eyebrow. The thought of Celestia turning out to be like her sister was all at once harrowing, and painted her in a whole new light. The front she put on for the nobles and the aristocrats, was it all a simple mask, hiding her true feelings underneath? Well, thanks to how close he grew with the Princess, he knew for a fact it was. But could what he knew of her less-formal face also be a mask? His face fell. "Oh." Suddenly he understood what Twilight was thinking.

"Yes," Cadence replied, slinking down against the headboard. "'Oh' indeed."

"Well," Shining cleared his throat, scratching the stubble on his chin. "Is there any way she would, I don't know, get over it?" he offered.

Cadence fixed him with a shocked glare. "Shining. She's your sister!" she exclaimed. "How could you even say that without thinking of helping her?"

Shining hung his head and nodded. "You're right. You're right, I know, but," he sighed with a heavy breath out. Cadence felt it sink onto the bedsheets like a lead weight before drooping off to one side. "It's just, between being a father, a prince, and the Captain of an entire empire's worth of Guards..." he trailed off.

Cadence pulled him close, and planted a tender kiss on his lips. Rubbing his shoulders, she cradled him close. "I know you're stressed," she said. "But she's your family. She's hurting, and we need to help her."

"Hurting?" Shining sounded at once protective and sad; protective of his baby sister, and sad that he wasn't there to comfort her. "Really?"

Cadence nodded. "I think she's worried about becoming like my aunts."

"But she wants to be like Celestia. Celestia is like her role model, she's like a second mother!" Shining said. "What could she be worried about?"

"If her hunch is correct, which I think it is," she added, "and Celestia's Daybreaker is a very real entity, then that makes two out of four princesses with a dark alter-ego." Cadence let that sink in for a little while before moving on. "That means, according to Twilight's thinking, that she has a fifty-fifty chance of becoming like them. And, if I were Twilight," she thought for a second. If she were Twilight, if she had the potential to become the shepherd of friendship; to see the world in terms of the magical field that permeated the world, if Cadence had been born with such a great destiny as becoming the Princess—the embodiment— of the one thing perhaps to exceed even the omnipresent force of love... Cadence nodded. "If I were Twilight," she repeated, "I'd be worried about who was going to stop me, if I did turn."

Shining balked at that. He knew his sister was a Princess; one of the four in this world that could affect the very fabric of reality, but it never registered to him until this very moment, that his sister had the power to irrevocably damage Equestria, the way Luna had done all those centuries ago. "But, doesn't she already have Midnight?" he asked. "I remember something about that in her letters.

"No," Cadence shook her head. "That's the other Twilight, from the mirror-realm."

"Oh, right." Shining's head hurt. The thought of multiple worlds, one of which having everything this world did but no magic, and greater technology, with another Twilight, made him develop a migraine quicker than when Flurry Heart got into the sugar bowl.

"But that is a good point," Cadence said. "Our Twilight knows about Midnight, and that probably makes her feel worse!" Cadence threw up her hands, and her finger found her hair again in short order, twisting and pulling, twisting and pulling. It wasn't so adorable now, Shining found.

"You think?" he asked.

Cadence said nothing. She simply rolled over, and reached for her bedside crystal lamp. "I need to talk to Luna," she said, switching it off.

"Now?" Shining looked around at the darkened room. "Cadence, it's the middle of the night!"

She nodded in reply. "I know. My aunty is probably watching over dreams right now, so what better place to talk to her than in a dream." She settled under the duvet covers, and closed her eyes.

Shining felt a surge of hope rekindle in his chest. "So, I can go back to sleep?" he asked excitedly.

Smiling, Cadence felt herself drifting off already, so much so that she barely registered his comment. So, she fell back on the age-old saying spoken by married mares all over Equestria; "If you like."

Shining sat back, smiled as his head touched the pillow... and found his thoughts swirling with anxiety. His sister was in trouble, a member of his family was having a very tough time dealing with world-altering news that her mentor, and perfect teacher may not be so bright and shining after all. His sister had just had her worldview shattered, and was worrying herself to the bone thinking that she would end up the same way.

He felt his leg twitching under the covers, and he cursed. "Dammit!"

Author's Note

"Violetta!"
"Hmm?"
"What are you doing?"
"What?"
"You're starting a new story?"
"... Yeah?"
"You already have an unfinished story!"
"... Yeah?"
"And you're just gonna start a new one?"
"... Yeah!"