A Foreign Education

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9

Chapter 1

When Flurry Heart was not quite two years old, there was a great war between the Crystal Empire and the Northern Changeling Hive. The Crystal Empire lost, and to secure peace, Cadence was forced to agree to a humiliating list of demands.

One of those demands was that she would raise a changeling grub as her daughter, and that when that changeling came of age, they would be a full member of her household. They would be considered a part of the Equestrian royal family. They would have a claim to the throne.

So it was that Flurry Heart gained a sister. Her sister’s name was Cheval.

Queen Amaryllis hoped that Cheval would provide legitimacy to her future attempts to annex the Crystal Empire. Perhaps, ponies speculated, Cadence and Flurry Heart might suffer fatal accidents and thereby allow Amaryllis to claim the Empire outright. But even if such a thing did not come to pass, it seemed obvious to many that Cheval would be a valuable asset for the hive.

When Cheval was twelve and Flurry fourteen, that plan fell apart.

“I will die before I acknowledge you as my queen or my mother, you murderous whore,” Cheval said. She was remarkably well spoken for her age.

Cadence, caught totally unprepared, spat her water up her nose. A reporter captured the whole thing with his camera, producing crisp photos of little Cheval making a rude gesture to Queen Amaryllis, and of Cadence hacking and wheezing after. In the moment, Cadence demanded Cheval apologize, and snapped that she raised her better than that.

In private, once the children were asleep, Cadence and Shining cried because they were happy. They loved both their daughters.

When Cheval was sixteen and Flurry eighteen, the Sparkle family decided to have Thanksgiving in the Crystal Empire. It was a contentious decision. Twilight Velvet said that the Crystal Empire always felt too formal. There were servants to do the dishes, everything was neat and pretty, and it didn’t have that cozy feeling of the old family dining room. But the family had grown, and with everypony there, they simply didn’t fit in the old house anymore.

And so Cheval stood in the corner of the royal suite, soaking in the ambient love while everypony else waited for the solid food to be ready.

Her grandparents were fussing over Shining. Twilight Velvet and Night Light were both past seventy, and their age was starting to show. Their manes had more grey hairs than not, and Shining had to raise his voice to be clearly heard.

Twilight Sparkle—simply Twilight to most, as her mother went by Velvet—was zipping from place to place. She’d lost a gift, and was panicking about it like an anxious teenager. She was a teenager, in many ways. Her ascension had halted the aging process at sixteen, and she would never mature a day henceforth. She never appeared with a stallion or with children, and no matter how many times she learned the same friendship lessons, they caught her by surprise yet again.

Light Step and Double Time were there as well, celebrating their sixteenth year as friends with benefits who refused to even acknowledge they were in a relationship much less consider getting married. Light was sketching Shining on a notepad while she waited for dinner to start. Double Time was trying to rescue him, interrupting the fussing with a story about the time Cadence put her in a jar.

Cadence was attempting to have a talk with Flurry Heart, which is to say, she was talking at Flurry Heart while Flurry sulked in the corner. Eyes downcast, wings against her sides, she acknowledged her mother only with monosyllabic utterances. Yes. No. Fine. Sure. Born an alicorn, Flurry had the unique power to age, maturing like a normal pony even as Twilight and Cadence sat frozen in time. Perhaps, ponies thought, she would one day find her level.

The whole family was together, babbling and whining and talking over each other. A servant came in and whispered in Cadence’s ear, and she raised her voice to say that dinner was ready. Everypony piled in.

Cheval too. She couldn’t eat, but the servants gave her a glass of water and put rose petals in it. The petals made it special.

“Hey,” she asked Flurry when they sat down together, “are you, you know?”

“It’s fine,” Flurry said, staring at her plate.

“Right.” Cheval buzzed her wings. “Sorry.”

“Why do you keep saying sorry for something that wasn't your fault?” Flurry snapped. She didn’t lift her eyes from the table.

“Because I am sorry,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”

Cadence cleared her throat and gave the opening speech. Everypony had to talk about what they were thankful for. Twilight was thankful she found the gift she lost—it was a bundle of books for the children. Everypony hugged and smiled and ate bread that had a lot of garlic in it. There was a main course of artisanally woven buttered catgrass, which Night Light complained was much too fancy.

After dinner, Velvet insisted on doing the dishes. It was a family tradition, she said, and an inherent part of the Thanksgiving experience. Cadence wasn’t about to let a seventy-two year old mare do the heavy lifting, but Velvet physically would not let the servants get near the dirty plates.

“Grandma,” Flurry was saying, her voice strained, “come on. Sit down. You can tell us about your new book. Servants are… you know. It’s a palace. Your kids and princes and princesses. So there’s servants, right? It’s normal.”

“It’s not what the holiday is about.” Velvet stood her ground. “Thanksgiving isn’t about food, it’s about being together as a family. Through thick and thin. And doing a giant pile of dishes is perfectly enjoyable when the ponies you love are there to do it with you.”

“Mom and I can do it,” Cheval said. Her horn glowed a soft blue, and from behind Velvet’s back, she snatched up the entire table’s worth of dirty dishes. “See? Sit down. Talk about your new book. We’ll be right back.”

“The hot water will ruin your shell,” Velvet grumbled. “It’ll hide those pretty colors.”

“Ah, but that’s how you’ll know Mom and I actually did them.” Cheval’s tone was upbeat and friendly, showing none of the strain that Flurry did. “No cheating. I promise.”

After a bit more grumbling, Velvet gave in. Cheval and Cadence collected all the dishes, sent the servants away, and undertook the long walk through the palace to the kitchens. When they arrived, they found dirty dishes everywhere. Though Thanksgiving was an Equestrian holiday, crystal ponies considered it very trendy to do whatever Princess Cadence did. The whole palace was celebrating, and there were ten kitchen servants on cleaning-duty alone.

“Let’s give it fifteen minutes,” Cadence said, with no intention whatever of doing the dishes herself. “That’ll give your grandma some time to get into her story.”

“Yeah,” Cheval said.

“You want to go for a walk outside? It’s nice.”

“No,” Cheval said. Her wings buzzed, and her gaze went down to the floor. Then she added, “I mean, yes. I mean, thank you. Sure. But, no.”

“Something wrong, dear?” Cadence tilted her head. “You know you can always talk to me about whatever’s bothering you.”

“I, um… yeah.” Cheval lifted her head, and looked at her mother head on. Her eyes were solid orange, lacking any pupils or irises. “I wanted to talk to you about something. I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. I wasn’t going to bring it up. But with what happened with Flurry…”

“Of course.” Cadence stepped forward, putting a hoof on Cheval’s shoulder. “What is it?”

“I think this would be a good time for you to send me into exile.”

“Ploughing time doesn’t stop at night!” Or so the propaganda poster said. Stuck up over a fresh concrete wall, it depicted a cheerful looking griffon driving a tractor through a field, his path lit by electrical lights.

Cheval didn’t see any rich fields on the rocky mountainside. But, in fairness, she didn’t see any tractors or electrical lights either. A sign in a cafe window informed passersby that the milk ration had been halved, and so tea was available only with lemon.

“Next!” shouted the customs griffon at the head of the line. A pony stepped up and handed over their papers.

The Griffon Nation was a country in transition, trying to catch up with its far more prosperous neighbors. Whatever the new government was doing seemed to be at best a partial success. All the buildings were very modern, made of fresh concrete and fitted with sockets for electrical lamps—but the lamps had evidently never arrived. All the guards had snappy new uniforms, but they seemed to be short of hats. Everygriffon had fresh sunglasses to keep out the mountain glare, but their winter clothing was threadbare and worn.

“Next!” the customs griffon snarled, evidently in a poor mood. The line advanced a step. Cheval was next.

In the few moments she had before she was called, she inspected her passport. The form she’d chosen for her time away was a unicorn. If she wanted to fly, she could always impersonate a griffon, but finding an excuse to practice magic would have been harder. The picture made her look a bit plain—not ugly, but academic. She had a blue coat, a sandy mane, and an unfeminine tail whose hairs stuck every which way. Her cutie mark was a collection of abstract symbols. She hadn’t put a lot of thought into it.

When noone was looking, she made one small tweak to her form to make it look more like the passport picture. Then the customs griffon called. “Next!”

She stepped up. “Papers, please.” He extended a talon, and she handed over her passport and transit permit. “Reason for visit?”

“I’m a student at the Griffonstone Institute of Science.” She flashed him an awkward smile and cleared her throat. “I’m studying math.”

After asking several more questions, the customs griffon stamped her passport twice and her transit pass once. Both documents were returned to her, and she was pointed to the exit.

It took several hours wandering the streets of Griffonstone before Cheval was able to find the campus. A gate guard checked her papers again, and pointed her to her dorm. It was one of the new buildings -- a twenty-story tall monolith made entirely of concrete. Its windows were narrow horizontal slits. The hallways were painted, but they were also painted grey. It could hold over two-thousand students.

Eventually, she found her dorm room, numbered 1432-A. She had only one small set of saddlebags for luggage, and fumbled around inside them for the key she’d been given.

Before she could find it, the door opened on its own. A small, grey griffon stood on the other side, wrapped in a purple scarf. Her frame was so slight, and her scarf so long and puffy, that it seemed she might vanish entirely into the fabric. Her coat was of a far less attractive shade, and covered in patches of dust.

“Hello?” the griffon said, her tone curt. “Can I help you?”

“I’m, uh… Cross Product,” Cheval said. “I’m your new roommate. You must be Gia.”

“Yup.” Gia stepped out the doorway and pointed back into the room. “It’s a bunk bed. You’re on the bottom.”

Their dorm room was smaller than Cheval’s closet had been back home. The bunk bed was shoved into one corner, and working space was provided in the form of two “desks” against the wall. They were not true furniture, but wooden boards mounted on hinges and affixed with chains, which could be folded up or pulled down as required. The space was so narrow that, when pulled down, the desks blocked the corridor to the bed.

“Well, it’s not a palace but… we have a window!” Cheval said, keeping her tone bright. Five feet off the floor was a narrow slit in the concrete wall, through which a small sliding pane allowed fresh air to carry. “So what are you studying?”

When Gia didn’t answer, Cheval looked back. The room and the hallway outside it were empty. Gia had wandered off.

She bit her lip and tossed her bag down onto the bed—lower bunk. There was a pile of paper on the pillow. Most of it was forms from the school, but she spotted a sealed envelope under the clutter. It was addressed to her, with an Equestrian stamp.

The picked it up and tore the top off, her eyes scanning over the letter inside.

It was from Flurry Heart.

Chapter 2

When Cheval was six and Flurry was eight, there was a coup in the Crystal Empire.

Flurry had just had her birthday party, and her grandmother had given her a chest full of wooden shapes. With rectangles, cubes, cylinders and cones, Flurry built a castle in the middle of the living room. She took her wooden soldiers, and placed them on the battlements. Then she sat on Shining’s favorite chair that the children were not supposed to sit in, and declared that she was the ruler of the Crystal Empire because her mom was taking a nap.

Cheval tried to make her own castle. She wasn’t as coordinated as her older sister, and her first few block towers fell over. Instinctually, she stuck the blocks together with changeling resin. She’d just undergone metamorphosis into a nymph, and along with growing legs, she’d discovered the ability to secrete all kinds of liquids.

But her efforts were to no avail. Her block tower, while solid, was lopsided and ugly. It also smelled a little bit like pee.

“Can I play in your castle?” she asked her sister.

“Nuh-uh,” Flurry said in her best princess voice, which was meant to sound like Cadence when she scolded them—lots of tsks and sighs and exasperation. “You have your own castle. Mine is better.”

“But I wanna be princess!” Cheval pleaded. “I’d be really good at it.”

“No way. I’m the crystal princess.” She fluffed her wings and turned up her nose. “You can go be princess of the lumpy kingdom with its lumpy tower.”

“Or I can be princess of two kingdoms.” In a flash of green light, Cheval turned into a perfect copy of Flurry Heart. A grin on her face, she reared up and proclaimed, “You’ll play with blocks in the dungeon!”

“Oh nooo.” Flurry giggled. “Knights, protect me!”

Her horn glowed, and with her uncoordinated telekinesis, she tossed the wooden knights generally in her sister’s direction. A few bounced off Cheval’s shoulders, and she let out a high pitched: “Aaah, quit it!”

Then she crashed through the castle, sending blocks everywhere. The two of them chased each other around the living room, knocking over towers and crawling over the couches.

“Girls. Girls!” Cadence’s voice emerged from the hallway, already exasperated in anticipation of what was to come. She soon appeared in the doorway, and looked at what had become of her living room.

A broken castle. Fallen pony knights, scattered over the ruin. Two identical copies of her daughter struggled with each other, and one of them said: “The throne is mine!”

For half a second, Cadence had no idea if it was Flurry or Cheval who said it.

She found out a moment later, when the other one turned back into a changeling. “What’s wrong?” Cheval asked, her voice fearful in that way that children are. She rushed up to Cadence, sniffing at the air, smelling some emotion that ponies could only infer. “Mom? Mom? What’s wrong?”

Then, she said: “Why do you love me a little bit less?”

Cheval never turned into Flurry again.

The Griffonstone Institute of Science had a demanding curriculum. It was the best school in the world for studying the non-magical disciplines, and it accepted only the most gifted students.

Cheval and Gia’s alarm clock went off at 6:00 every morning. In mutual silence, they brushed, preened, and bundled into their winter clothing. Faint pre-dawn light illuminated the campus as they marched to class, snow crunching under them with every step. Thousands of other students marched with them, forming grey processions across the ice.

Cheval would have hated it. She loved sleeping in, and thought very little of the color grey. But at the Institute, Cheval didn’t exist. Instead, there was a pony named Cross Product.

Cross Product was a straw-haired, slightly buck-toothed unicorn, and she was a morning pony. She was energetic, she was friendly, she took deep breaths of the frozen morning air, and while other students were busy finishing their homework, she made fresh morning pancakes.

“You’re exceptionally peppy this morning,” Gia said as they shuffled to class, a few bits of pancake still on her beak. Cross Product wolfed down her own breakfast before any griffon was around—a touch Cheval was quite proud of, as it explained why she was never seen in the dining hall—but she was happy to share the surplus.

“It’s our first week of class! How are you not excited?” Cheval bounced through the snow and giggled. It was an absurd thought, but in the moment, she felt it. She felt it from her imaginary skin to the bones she didn’t have. Cross Product’s relentless energy melted some of the ice around Gia’s heart, and a glimmer of friendship stirred inside her.

Cheval ate it.

“Well,” Gia said, “maybe rein it in a bit. This isn’t a class where you giggle at the professor.”

“Don’t worry. I got it.” Cross Product threw a mock salute. “The Party is the shepherd of the people, Comrade.”

Cheval and Gia were studying different fields—math and civil engineering, respectively—but as first-year students, they had many classes in common. Monday, they took Introduction to Calculus together. Thursdays, they had Statistics.

Friday, they had Political Education, where young griffons and their foreign comrades could master the dialectic and, through it, understand permanent revolution.

“What,” the professor asked on their first day, “is the single most valuable trait a leader can possess?”

“The unquenchable revolutionary spirit!” shouted one griffon in the second row.

“Yes yes.” None of the students were brave enough to roll their eyes, but the professor was. “You’re very loyal. But perhaps someone who can think for themselves would like to answer?”

A talon went up in the third row. The professor pointed. “Intelligence,” said one of the students, who decorated her beak with lines of red makeup. “So they can, like, make the best decisions.”

“A very valuable trait,” the professor agreed, “but if you know your history, you’ll know that Hepatia the Lawgiver was a tremendous queen, despite being just a little bit thick. She turned the harpies into a great empire, and in doing so, disproved your hypothesis. So, maybe not. Other theories?”

In the fifth row, some griffon put up a talon. “Emotional maturity,” she said when called. Her natural fur was exceptionally fluffy, and puffed out around the sleeves of her coat. “An even temper. No griffon can be a good leader if their emotions are making their decisions for them.”

“Another good guess.” The professor lifted a single claw to the air, drawing out the word, “But another miss. Griffus Augustus was a great leader, and he was depressive, moody, erratic. Once, after a crushing military defeat, he chased General Gerar through the palace in the middle of the night, screaming ‘Where are my legions!?’”

The professor did a halfway decent impression, and the class laughed at his antics. Talons went up, and he pointed out another student. Strength, the student guessed, which was wrong. Education, wrong. Class loyalty, wrong. Popularity, wrong. Vision, wrong.

“Maybe one of the foreign students.” Like all the foreign students, Cheval sat in the front row. “What about you, Comrade Cross Product? What’s the single most valuable trait a leader can possess?”

“Oh, uh…” She furrowed her brow. “I’m not sure. This wasn’t in the pre-reading.”

“Well, let’s talk it out, shall we?” He walked up to her desk, laying a talon on the wood. “Think back. Why were all the previous answers wrong?”

“Um…” Cheval worked her jaw from side to side. “In every case, you agreed the trait was important, but cited an example of a leader who was successful without it. So I think you’re looking for a trait that every successful leader must possess. One with no exceptions.”

“Good. Go on.”

“And given how many different kinds of leader there are, I don’t think it has to do with leadership style. It has to be something…” She bit her lip, taking advantage of Cross Product’s expressive pony face and big thoughtful eyes. “Inherent. Like, ‘all good leaders were able to effectively guide their people.’ Because if they can’t do that they’re not a leader, right?”

“Very good!” The professor nodded to her, and then repeated what she said to the rest of the class. “You’re so close, but not quite there. Can you boil that sentiment down to a single word?”

“One word for, ‘able to effectively direct a nation.’” For a long moment, Cheval was silent. Then her ears shot up. “Oh! Power. The most important single trait for a leader to possess is power, because without that they cease to be a leader.”

“Precisely. And now let’s see if you can cap it off.” The professor animated, gesturing wildly so the whole class could see. “Because there are tyrants who enforce their commands with the threat of brutal violence. And they claim they have power. But they cannot, as you have so elegantly put it, guide their people. They don’t have true power, merely naked force. Comrade Cross Product, can you tell me the sign of true power? How do we know a leader is able to lead?”

“Oh, uh… if her people do as she says.” Cheval twitched her ears. “Right? The tyrant doesn’t have real power because people don’t obey him unless he’s threatening them right then.”

“Flawless.” The professor made a fist with a talon, slowly lowering it to her desk. He looked over the rest of the lecture hall, raising his voice to be clearly heard. “The most important single trait for a leader to possess is power, and the symptom of true power is obedience. When a leader can trust their decisions will be effectively executed, without dissent or disagreement, then they can focus on guiding their people.”

He turned away from Cheval, walking back to the chalkboard in preparation for the next lesson. “We can see this in practice in—”

“But that’s not true,” Cheval blurted out. Reflexively, she covered her mouth with a hoof.

Whispers ran through the classroom. The professor paused, turning back to face her. “Oh?” he asked. “Do you have a different answer?”

“Love,” she said. “The most important trait for a leader to possess is love.”

The professor glanced at her bag, which was sealed with a quartz clasp. “You’re from the Crystal Empire?”

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Cheval answered, “Yes.”

“A world where love is power. Both for you and your changeling rivals.”

Quieter, she said, “Yes.”

“You would have been raised to believe that love is the most important trait for a leader to possess. You’ve been told that love is the most valuable trait for a leader to possess. Told from a young age. And that doesn’t mean it isn’t true!” He raised a talon as though to ward off offense. “Our parents teach us many things, after all.”

After a long pause, he finished: “But you’ve never had to choose between them.”

Gia had a boyfriend named Gideon. He was a second-year student, studying management theory as part of an officer training program. One day, if he did well, he’d get to be a member of the secret police. Every time Cheval saw him he was in a cadet’s uniform, clean and starched with little blue squares on the collars.

He was also an enormous griffon, standing a head’s height over the other males, and most of it was muscle. As a couple, he and Gia made a sight that was both comic and adorable. Her petite frame barely came up to his shoulders, and she loved to snuggle in under his voluminous wings.

He loved her, and he said so. She didn’t love him back, so she lied. It wasn’t that she disliked him, but she was mostly in it for his looks. Her lust had a tart taste—like Shining’s when Queen Amaryllis visited.

One day, Cheval suggested that they all go explore the campus together. Gia was still her only friend, and she needed another food source. Or, as Cross Product put it: “I’m not going to eat this whole pie by myself. I mean, I’m a pony, so I totally could because wow, we love sugar. But it took my entire cream ration for the month to make it so I’m not going to hog it like that. You should come!”

They went up to the overlook, at the far edge of campus, where the mountain came to an end. There, beyond frozen fields of leafless trees, there was a thin metal rail.

Beyond the rail there was nothing. The cliffs went down for thousands of feet. There was only the air and the wind and the snow, and a spectacular view of the mountain range. Dozens of peaks could be seen, each beautiful and snow-covered and dotted by little griffon settlements.

When they were again among the trees, each produced a lunchbox. Cheval’s contained a pie. Gia had fruit. Gideon had a flask. Bite by bite, when no one was looking, Cheval teleported her lunch over the cliff behind them. The flask she refused. Gia drank her share.

“You’re very needy, you know that?” Gideon said. It was out of the blue. They’d been making small talk.

“I’m not…” Cheval froze, Cross Product’s giddy smile half-on and half-off her face. “I’m not needy.”

“So, what do you call it when you desperately want people to like you?”

They were all lying together in the snow. Gia was under Gideon’s wings, tucked into his side and half asleep. Gideon’s head was resting on the snow, one eye cracked open to watch his surroundings. Cheval was lying on her back, staring up into the overcast sky and watching the snow fall.

“Wow,” she finally managed to say. “You’ve got some way to say ‘thanks for dessert.’”

“It was a good pie,” Gideon shrugged. “I’m just saying. You made us pie, you’ve flattered us every which way. Gia says you’re a ridiculously considerate friend. And you seem afraid. Like we’ll hate you if you’re not happy all the time.”

“I know I’m not happy all the time. But it’s my first month in a foreign country. I want to make friends. I’m not needy, I’m…” She paused. “Lonely. And honest.”

“Lonely, maybe,” Gideon drew out the words. “Not honest.”

“No.” A snowflake landed on her nose, slowly melting into a cool drop. “Sorry. No. Have I offended you?”

“No. Most griffons lie all the time too.”

In the silence after that, Gia cracked an eye open, glancing between Gideon and Cheval. “You two going to have a problem?” she asked.

“No problem,” Cheval said. She bit her lip and added. “It runs in the family. My mother and my sisters are all huge liars too.”

“Is that why you left home?” Gia asked. “We don’t get a lot of foreign students, you know.”

“No. I um…” Cheval drew in a slow breath. “Wow. Answering this honestly is really hard. Um… I guess I uh… I left home because of one sister. One in particular.”

“Didn’t get along?”

“We got along great. But I… hurt her. By accident. She acted like it was nothing. Accidents happen. You know? But I didn’t want to be around her anymore.”

“Hurt her how?” Gideon asked.

“I wanted people to like me.”

He shifted in the snow, squeezing Gia tighter against his side. “You ever considered people might like you more if you said what you were actually thinking?”

Cheval broke character -- just long enough to roll her eyes and let out a sharp snort. “And what if what I’m actually thinking is, ‘I will be anyone and anything if it gets this person to like me’?”

Gideon paused for a moment to nuzzle the top of Gia’s head. She purred, then snuggled tighter into his side. “Then I don’t think you know who you actually are. Deep down.”

Cheval thought that over, and finally said: “I guess I don’t.”

Cheval didn’t answer Flurry’s letter. But she kept it in her bag. Several times, she took it out to read.

“Please come home. I’m really worried about you,” Flurry wrote.

“I don’t understand why you need to leave all of a sudden. Mom and Dad won’t tell me ANYTHING. Is this about that stupid interview? I’m NOT MAD. I don’t care. You’re my sister and I love you and I want you to be here, not thousands of miles away pretending to be a random pony.

“What if you get caught? How would we even know you were in trouble? How are you going to eat? And don’t tell me you’ll make friends. I talked to Double Time and she said that surviving on casual college friendships is like surviving on nothing but soup crackers. You’re a SOCIAL ANIMAL. You need ponies who deeply care about you.

“I don’t know what I did wrong. Whatever it is, I’m sorry. Did I make you feel like you weren't part of the family? You are.

“Please come back.”

At the end of the second week of school, a parcel arrived from Cadence, delivered by dragon-mail to keep it from the censors and mail-snoops. Inside was a box of a half-dozen muffins, with a note saying they were made with a mother’s love. Cheval didn’t need the note — she could smell that Cadence had enchanted them, turning them into vessels for her sustaining power.

She was the daughter of the Princess of Love. For her entire life, she had never once experienced hunger. But when she smelled the deep affection wafting off the care package, it suddenly occurred to her how long she’d been sustaining herself off of casual friendship. There was an empty feeling in her gut, and she didn’t like it.

She threw the muffins away.

“You can do this,” Cheval whispered to herself. “It’s in your blood.”

In a flash, she turned into Gia. Locked in the bathroom, she spent several minutes examining every detail of her form, from the spots on her feathers to the slightly crooked toe on her left-rear paw. Then she addressed the mirror.

“Hello!” she said, with Gia’s voice. Immediately, she scowled. “No. That’s wrong. Gia never says hello. And she’s never that enthusiastic. Uh… hi? Hey there… um…”

Clicking her beak together, Cheval gave her reflection a faintly irritated stare. She raised one eyebrow, tilted her head just so, and let her tail flick freely behind her. It was only after a half-second had passed that she asked, “Can I help you?”

It was perfect.

She left the bathroom, walked up the hall, and headed to the student lounge by the entrance. Gia’s normal study group was there—a half dozen griffons sitting around a folding table and working on their civil engineering homework.

“Hey,” said one of them, whose name was Griz. “I thought you were sick.”

“I am sick,” Cheval replied, keeping her eyes glassy and her manner sluggish. “Just had to check. I can get a copy of the homework when you’re done, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” Griz said. Of every griffon in the group, he was the one who was actually Gia’s friend. It was a shallow thing, but when he saw her weakened shuffle, he felt a slight twinge of genuine concern.

Cheval ate it. Griz, suddenly tired, yawned.

“Okay,” Cheval said. “Cya.”

She turned and walked away, and none of them suspected a thing. When she was back in the bathroom, the door thoroughly locked, she turned back into herself and laughed.

Chapter 3

Students passed newspapers around. When there were not enough, they shared, and there was never enough of anything in Griffonstone. Clusters of three to five griffons would form around a single paper, taking turns reading the front-page article and waiting to turn the paper.

“Princess Flurry Heart Unilaterally Suspends Griffon/Crystal Non-Aggression Pact!” It read. “War Looms?”

Cheval rolled her eyes. “That’s just sensationalism. Flurry Heart is the heir, not the ruling princess. She has no power to break any treaties, much less declare war.”

“Mmph.” Gia packed a remarkable amount of skepticism into a single sound. Then she read aloud from the article. “‘The so-called ‘Republic of Griffonstone’ is nothing more than an oppressive, totalitarian state, unworthy of our loyalty. Our treaty with them is just a piece of paper.’”

“Well I’m sorry she hurt your feelings.” Cheval snapped. A biting wit had come more naturally to her as of late. “But saying something mean about you is not the same as suspending a treaty.”

Gideon, still in his cadet uniform, tapped the paper with a claw. “She wouldn’t say something like that in public if she wasn’t speaking for her mother.”

“Wait, she might.” Griz, the fourth of their group, looked up from the paper. His brow furrowed. “I can’t remember. Is Flurry Heart the changeling or the dumb one?”

Later, a griffon Griz didn’t know tripped him when they were at the top of a flight of stairs. He went down hard and broke a wing. The stranger fled.

Cheval had a mild interest in math. She would read books about it, and listened when her tutors taught her, but nopony ever thought of her as a budding mathematician. She’d get bored of it after the longer lessons, and ask to go study something else.

But Cross Product never got bored of math. It enraptured her. It animated her. A fascinating theorem would set her heart to racing and paint a smile on her face. She’d hug her fellow students when they came to understand, and share in their joy.

Cheval had learned to change forms during her nymph years, as changelings should. But to her, it had never been anything but a mask. Cross Product was the first time she understood her aunt’s lessons.

She knew Cross Product’s joy, but she didn’t feel it. She felt the friendship of her fellow students, the lust of the one griffon in her class who had eyes for ponies, the irritation of those overwhelmed by her energy, and the interest of her professors. She controlled Cross Product, and Cross Product controlled them. None the wiser.

It was a powerful lesson, but casual friendships were not sustaining. Her gut threatened to devour the rest of her flesh.

“Hey, Gia?” Cross Product called, all sing-song. Green flashed behind her eyes. “Take a nap.”

A green bolt shot from Cheval’s horn and struck Gia through the ears. Her eyes rolled back into her skull, and a moment later, her limp body impacted her desk. The cheap little board rattled and the chain that connected it to the wall of their room clattered with the motion. Her textbook tumbled from the edge, and pages crumpled as it landed spine-side up.

Cheval took Gia’s form. She stripped away the few articles of clothing Gia wore and inspected her naked body, careful to get every detail correct.

The distinctive scarf was the only tricky part. Changeling magic could create clothes, but the clothes would be a part of her body. It was thus ill-advised to create any clothing that could get easily yanked, caught or torn. Jewelry was fine, but with a scarf, it would be all too easy to give herself away.

So she stole the scarf too, and left Gia crumpled on the cold concrete.

Ever since he’d called her needy, Cheval had never once been able to deceive Gideon. Every time she had Cross Product make a nice gesture, do something kind or thoughtful, Gideon would watch her closely, and she’d know he knew. One day, she was sure, he’d make a good officer of the secret police.

She sauntered out of her room and locked the door behind her. Spreading her new, luxuriously wide wings, she flew across the campus to the square. He was waiting for her there, sitting on a bench much too small for him.

“Hey,” Gia said. And yet, he watched her more closely.

He knew something was amiss, but it was not suspicion that flooded her senses. He was worried for the griffon he loved, and his love and concern washed over her like a wave. She wrapped her forelimbs around him, held him tight, and ate her fill.

A lesser griffon would have lost consciousness from so sudden a theft. But like Shining Armor before him, Gideon held on. Trying to ignore his sudden headache, he pushed her away. “What’s wrong?”

He could always tell when she lied. And so Cheval did exactly what Gia did.

“I love you,” she said.

Cross Product missed class that Wednesday. She had to care for Gia. The poor thing had come down with a terrible fever, so bad she could barely remember the last two days.

Granulated quinidine in Gia’s morning pancakes served to induce fever. Gideon accepted the ruse, and upon seeing Gia in a hot sweat, thought nothing of the fact that she couldn't remember their last date. He suspected nothing of Cross Product. He would never have left Gia in her care if he did.

All that went just as Cheval had planned. What she had not thought through was that, during the day, she would actually have to care for Gia while the poison worked its way out of her system.

“Can I ask you a question?” Gia said, tucked under four layers of blankets. Her eyes were shut, and she sounded half-asleep.

“Sure,” Cheval was at her desk, working through a homework assignment.

“You’ve traveled. Is everywhere as bad as it is here?”

The scribbling of Cheval’s pencil stopped. The light around her horn faded, and pencil fell to her desk. “Um.” She didn’t turn around to look at the bed. “No. No, it’s um… other places get a lot better than this. Yeah.”

“Good.” Gia sniffled. “It’s nice that some creature has it better. I really hate concrete.”

“Well, you know. It’s…” Cheval trailed off. “You should go to sleep.”

“I’m sick. Not dead.” She lapsed into an extended silence, and Cheval rolled her pencil back and forth with a hoof. But before she could pick it up again, Gia asked, “What’s the Crystal Empire like?”

“Beautiful. Nice.” She shrugged. “Mostly cold, but the capital is warm.”

“I could read all that in a book. I meant, what’s it like?”

A sharp snort escaped Cheval’s muzzle. Her equine tail lashed, in a moment most unlike Cross Product. It was a break of character, even if there was no griffon around to notice. “Since when do you care?” she snapped.

“Since you’re here.” Gia let out a weak laugh all her own. “I know you don’t actually like me that much. But you still, you know, do things. Bake and remember birthdays and take care of griffons when they’re sick. And I’ve been kind of an ingrate about it.”

“You’re sick, and we’re friends, so I’m taking care of you. Don’t overcomplicate it.” She rubbed her temples with a hoof. “And the Crystal Empire is fine. It’s great, and it’s fine.”

“So why did you leave? If it’s so great and fine.”

“Because it was complicated. You want to know what the Crystal Empire is really like?” Cheval finally turned around to face the bed. “It’s complicated. And I didn’t like it.”

“Yeah?” Gia’s voice was still soft, if not quite so distant as it had been. “Complicated how?”

“War is wrong. Good ponies solve their problems with friendship and magic instead of violence. But when Queen Amaryllis conquered the Yak, she rained treasure down on every single crystal pony. So that her glories would be our glories. And we increased the size of the army, so that we would be like her instead of being like the Yak. So war is wrong,” she spat the word, “except when you win.”

“You left because someone gave you treasure?”

“I left because we’re the most powerful Empire in the world, and a tribute state, and a laughingstock, and a magical kingdom, and a place where cruel reality asserts itself.” The words came hot, and with a sharp snap behind them. “Everypony knows we rule half the north and nopony knows where our border is. I left because there are more crystal ponies serving in Queen Amaryllis’s army than in Princess Cadence’s army and I'm supposed to cheer when they put on a parade. I left because good ponies obey their princess but when I see a crystal pony who says he wants to surrender the monarchy, I have to smile.”

Cheval waited for Gia to speak. When no sound emerged from under the covers, she sharply turned back to the desk. “Here, I know what I am, and it’s better that way.”

“I’m sorry,” Gia said. She was not a kind griffon. She used people, took advantage, and strung along a lover she did not love in turn. But at that moment, she felt a pang of genuine sympathy for the pony sitting across from her.

Cheval ate it.

Already weakened by the poison, Gia’s digestive system reacted violently to the loss of vital energy, and she vomited over the side of the bed.

Cheval had briefly impersonated many ponies—stealing the form of friends, lovers, and children for a few precious seconds. Such short jaunts were time enough to consume the love of those who cared for them, and if they were not pleasant, they were safe. The longer she stayed in the form of another griffon, the higher the odds she’d be detected.

Gia was the only griffon she’d impersonated for any length of time, and she only did it in front of Gideon. His love was sweet but not saccharine, thick but not stubborn. The sort of fluid that could harden into a lifelong relationship. She imagined it was a bit like what honey would taste like.

One one day in the spring, she thought to spend time with Gideon as Cross Product. It was almost like spending time with him as herself.

The campus had thawed the last day, but frozen again overnight, and everything was covered in a thin layer of fresh ice. Gideon had slipped and hit his face on the pavement, so they’d stopped by a bench while Cheval tended to him. She held a cloth to the cut on his face and used her pony magic to staunch the wound, even after he told her not to.

“What’s it like having a magic bone in your forehead?” he asked.

“What’s it like having knives instead of forehooves?” she replied, raising an eyebrow.

He paused, then chuckled. “What’s it like when griffons stop you in the street to say you’re adorable?”

She poked him with a hoof. “What’s it like when griffons stop you in the street to snitch out their neighbors for the reward?”

“It sucks.”

“Well I don’t like being cute either. Shut your eyes.” Once his eyes were closed, she removed the bloody cloth from his forehead and leaned up to inspect the wound. She eyed the cut, tested to see if it was bleeding, and then sniffed the open wound. “Looks like you’ll live. Just a scratch.”

She tucked the cloth into her saddlebags and settled back down. Gideon reopened his eyes. “Thanks,” he said.

“Anytime.” She folded one hoof over the other. “Seriously though, why?” A gesture at his cadet uniform accentuated her question.

“I hate hypocrisy.”

She feigned a wound, lifting a hoof to her forehead. “And you hang out with me?”

“You’re not a hypocrite. You’re a liar.” He turned away from her, staring off into the frozen campus.

“Oh.” Her tail tucked in between her legs, and she looked the other way -- back towards the dorms. “Sorry.”

Silence hung between them for a time. They both looked back at the other, but couldn’t think of anything to say. Cheval was the one who broke it. “So then, you really believe in all this? With the concrete and the propaganda and the International Party.”

He didn’t hesitate, and his voice was calm. “No system is perfect. But I think the Party is what’s best for Griffonstone right now. And I think that as long as there are governments, there will need to be creatures willing to use force to enact those governments' edicts.”

“‘Behind all kings and princesses, all government and law, stand army-corps and cavaliers to hold the world in awe. Sword-strong races rule the sky, and rule the earth once more, and liberty for those below comes but through deeds of war.’”

They weren’t Cheval’s words, but she said them anyway. Then her tail tightened under her, and she looked at the bench. She flinched, as though to ward off some future blow.

But all Gideon said was, “I’ve read that book. But I thought it was banned in Equestria.”

“It is. But my mother gave me a copy anyway.” Cheval said. “She was… a bad pony. My mother. I get it from her.”

“You’ve implied as much a few times. It’s fine. I’m not mad, Cross.”

She licked her lips. He clicked his beak together a few times. Then, he broke the silence, “How’s Gia doing?”

“Better. She’s been sick a lot lately. I mean, you know that. But it looks like she’s finally kicked the fever.” Cheval lifted her head. “Or were you asking about something more specific?”

“Does she ever talk about me?”

“Sure.” Cheval tilted her head. Then she smiled and laughed. “What’s not to talk about? Half the griffons on campus would kill to have you as a boyfriend. Specifically the female half.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?” she asked. When Gideon didn’t answer her, she rose from where she stood. With their extreme height disparity, she could stand on the bench itself and still look him in the eye. “Hey, she’s been sick, okay? And you know Gia. She’s not the fluffy type at the best of times. But she loves you. Next time you meet, tell her how much you care about her. And she’ll say the same right back.”

“So she talked with you about this?”

“I’m a pony. It’s innate.” She grinned. “Let me know if you two want to sing a good love song together—I can make a musical happen.”

“Maybe not.” He chuckled too though. “I’ll talk with her. You want to finish that walk?”

“Sure.” Cheval lept down off the bench. When she hit the ground, something in her left made a loud snap.

She froze to the spot. Her entire body went stock still. In a matter of seconds, her eyes dilated.

“What’s wrong?” Gideon was in front of her in less than a second, his concern washing over her. “Cross? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she stammered. “Nothing’s wrong. I cracked a hoof. I’m in a bit of pain. I’ll be fine, but I need to take the weight off it. Sorry, I need to go back to my dorm. We’ll finish the walk later.”

Before he could object further, she vanished with a soft pop.

Cheval couldn’t teleport all the way back to the dorms. She appeared behind a nearby statue and hid until Gideon left. She walked back to the dorm on three legs, badly limping the entire way.

By the time she reached her room, her front left leg was twisted all the way around. Her knee bent backwards instead of forward, and her hoof was stuck on sideways. Her sandy coat was splotched with orange, and the hoof itself was bulging outwards like it was melting. She stepped in, shut the door behind her, locked it, and checked for Gia.

Once she was sure she was alone, she reverted back to her natural form. Her carapace was covered in small cracks. Over her front-left leg, it had actually broken, and a crack ran all the way from her shoulder to her knee. Wisps of improperly processed transformation magic still hovered around that crack -- a green haze in the air that never quite cleared.

“Oh, horseapples.” Cheval hissed. “What do I do? I need to uh…” The gears in her head turned. “Find an empty dorm room. Lock myself in it for a few days. Say I went on a bender.”

She’d stolen a utility key from the janitor weeks ago, and hidden it under her bed. She lit her horn, intending to draw the key out and make good on her escape. A loud crack emerged from her horn. The light went out, and her telekinesis failed her.

She had to bite her lip to stop from screaming. Her breath came in quick, deep gasps.

Then a key turned in the lock behind her. She dove onto her bed and pulled the covers around herself, wrapping up so tight that not even the tip of her nose could be seen. Her carapace produced a symphony of cracks and pops all the while—like she was walking on broken glass.

Gia stepped into the room, slamming the door behind her. “Ugh. Cross? Are you awake? I need to borrow your homework.”

“Fine, take it,” she said. But she said it in her own voice, not Cross Product’s.

Gia frowned. In a mad panic, Cheval tried to transform her voice box, but all she managed to do was make a sound like she was gargling marbles. “Go away,” she croaked.

“It’s my room.” Gia covered the distance to the bed. “You’re not my roommate. So who the hell—” She grabbed a corner of the covers with a talon and yanked.

The rest of her sentence went unspoken as she abruptly fell into silence. Before her lay a changeling, still wearing Cross Product’s saddlebags, it’s carapace cracked in dozens of places. The changeling stared at her, and she stared at it, both of them with wide eyes.

“Um…” Gia finally said. “You’re hurt. You’re um… you’re hurt.”

“I’m not injured. I’m molting.” Cheval spoke slowly, and her sentences were full of unnatural pauses. “It’s the process where a changeling sheds their exoskeleton.”

“Okay.” Gia stood stiff, the blanket still grasped in her hands. “Because you look really hurt. Like you look like you’re going to die.”

“I’m not. My outer shell is destroying itself to make room for the new shell to come in.” When that didn’t adequately resolve the situation, Cheval asked, “Are you going to turn me in?”

“Um. No. Not right now.” Gia clicked her beak. “Do you need me to do anything?”

“No. I’m going to need a lot of rest for the next few days while the new exoskeleton hardens, but that’s it.”

“Okay,” Gia said again. “Well, I’ll um… I’ll stay. Let me know if you want water, or something.”

“That’s um…” Cheval’s eyes flicked over every part of Gia, looking for the something in her face or posture. “You might want to look away for this part. It’s pretty nasty.”

“I’ll watch, thanks.”

Cheval hardly had ground to object further. So she reached back, wrapped her teeth around the base of her left wing, and ripped the wing out of her back by its socket. The right wing followed. Then she ripped her tail out of her spine.

Once the accessories were gone, she reached up to her head, found a suitable crack around the base of her jawline, and tore her face off her skull.

Chapter 4

The first time Cheval molted, Flurry Heart wasn’t allowed to watch. Cadence thought it would be too disturbing for a small child, and so she made Flurry stand out in the hall with her father. Double Time was there to help with the first molt. She taught Cheval how to rip off her own wings and shatter her own legs.

When it was done, Flurry Heart came into the bedroom, and saw Cheval lying there. “Is she okay?” Flurry asked.

“Yes,” Cadence said, “but you can’t touch her right now. Her shell needs to harden. Until it does, it’s like her bones are made of rubber. She can’t move and it would be very easy for her to get hurt.”

“Okay,” Flurry said. For the rest of that night, she stood guard by Cheval’s bedside, and refused to be moved. When Shining tried to drag her away, she screamed, and eventually her parents gave up. They got her a pillow, and she slept there on the floor.

The second time Cheval molted, Flurry got a very soft pen and drew angry eyebrows on her face.

In Griffonstone, in a cold dorm room with a single slit for a window, Cheval lay in bed surrounded by her broken shell. She could neither move nor use her horn, and over her stood a creature with knives for hands.

For a long time, she and Gia watched each other in silence. Cheval didn’t talk because it hurt to breathe. She wasn’t sure why Gia stayed silent. The room smelled faintly of vomit. Gia had thrown up at the sight of Cheval ripping off her own flesh.

“You look different,” Gia finally said.

The shell that lay on the floor, damaged though it was, was still recognizably a changeling. Her face had become a mask, whole enough a particularly macabre pony could slip it on and look our through her eye sockets. Her orange shell and rainbow-tinted wings lay in a pile next to her legs. Her membranous “tail” had cracked at the end, and lay underneath a pile of bright yellow-and-orange chunks that had once been her hips and groin.

The layer underneath was black. There were holes in her legs.

“I can’t really turn my head right now.” Cheval’s words were quiet and slurred. Her voice box still worked, but she didn’t dare move her jaw. “Looks classic?”

“Yeah. But some other things.” Gia approached her, laying her talons on the bedside. Cheval followed them with her eyes. Then she snapped her gaze back to Gia’s face. “You’ve got the um… saddle look.”

She reached out with a talon, only for Cheval to plead: “Don’t touch me. Please.”

Gia’s talon froze. Their eyes met. “I, um…” Cheval mumbled around her frozen jaw. “My wings are very delicate at this stage. If you touch them they might not grow right. So please. Please don’t.”

“Um… okay.” Gia sat back away from the bed. “Well, um. You’ve got the saddle look. Like, your back has this purple finish under the wings, and there’s these green bands that run under you like straps. Like the old changelings.”

“I look like a warrior drone? From the old days?”

“No.” Gia pointed with a talon, but got no closer. “Your colors changed. Your eyes and shell highlights. They’re blue instead of orange. And you’ve got um… I mean. It’s still really wet and matted. But you’ve got hair.”

Cheval didn’t reply, and so Gia went on: “You’ve got an actual tail, with blue and white hairs. And a mane. It’s short, but it’s there.”

“That’s a frill.”

“Yeah. No.” Gia’s usual sarcastic bite reared its head. “It’s definitely not a frill.”

“Changelings don’t have hair.”

“I’ve seen pictures of two particular changelings with hair. So there’s at least three. Those two and you.” Gia picked up a bit of Cheval’s leg off the floor, and held it up to her. “And you… seem bigger? How did you fit in this shell?”

“The inner layer expands as it hardens. That’s why changelings grow when they molt.” Her eyes flicked over the shell chunk Gia was holding. “But you’re seeing things.”

“I’m not. You’re definitely bigger.”

“I’m already fully grown. You’re seeing things.”

“Well, you know. I see a lot of things. I’m smart.” Gia tossed the bit of shell away. “So you’re a changeling from the Crystal Empire. One who had to disguise themselves as a pony even though there’s no law against changeling students.”

Cheval said nothing. Gia went on, “And you have blue hair. Take after your father much?”

“Dad and my mother have sex a lot. I’ve got like a hundred thousand sisters at this point.”

“Do all hundred thousand of them call Prince Shining Armor ‘dad’? Because that seems a little casual.”

Cheval shut her eyes. Gia snorted. “You’re an awful liar.” She picked up Cheval’s old face off the floor. “Changelings all kind of look the same to me, but you had this notch in your horn here? I recognized it from your pictures.”

“Do you feel clever then?” Cheval’s word carried a bitter snap.

“Do you admit it then?” Gia tossed Cheval’s face away. It shattered on impact with the concrete. “Are you, in fact, Her Royal Highness, Princess Cheval of the Crystal Empire? The mysterious princess in exile?”

“I am.”

“And you decided to move to a country ruled by the International Party?” Gia chuckled. “Because you know they’re not big on hereditary royalty.” When Cheval didn’t say anything, Gia went on: “So why did you leave? Real reason?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Gia reached out with a claw and flicked Cheval’s nose. “That sucks for you.”

“Are you going to turn me in if I refuse?”

“No.” Gia considered her next words carefully. “But we’re friends, aren’t we? And friends don’t keep those sorts of secrets from each other, I think.”

“Ah.” Cheval drew a few slow breaths as she lay there. “I guess not.”

The next minute passed in silence. Cheval did not speak, and Gia didn’t rush her. Both of them could hear that Cheval’s breathing had become labored, and a concerned furrow crossed Gia’s face. But her breathing stabilized in time, and when it did, she spoke.

“We had an interview. With a newspaper. And Flurry Heart said that she fully supported the Society for Harmony with Equestria. And I leaned in behind her, and corrected the reporter, and told her that what my sister meant to say was that she fully supported the Society for Equestrian Harmony.”

Gia frowned. “And?”

“The Society for Equestrian Harmony is a movement that wants the Crystal Empire to fully integrate with Equestria and for all pony nations to become one united country. The Society for Harmony with Equestria is a movement that wants Queen Amaryllis to fully annex the Crystal Empire and replace Princess Cadence. The name is just branding so they sound nicer.”

“The names are very similar. Anypony could have made that mistake.”

“Anypony doesn’t get to be the crown princess of the Crystal Empire. When you’re the heir to a monarchy, you can’t accidentally endorse a rebel faction that wants to overthrow your mother.”

“According to the papers, you’re the smart one. Sharp as a razor.”

“Well screw the papers and screw you.” The bitterness returned to Cheval’s tone. “Flurry isn’t stupid. She’s distracted. She’s eighteen and she still doesn’t have her cutie mark and she’s an alicorn but she still seems to be getting older. And she’s looking at Aunt Twilight and mom and wondering when it’s going to stop. Is she going to be eighteen forever? Or twenty? Or forty? Or maybe born alicorns are different from ascended alicorns and she’s going to die of old age.”

“Not knowing if you’re immortal.” Gia rolled her eyes. “That must suck.”

“Yes, it does suck.” Cheval shivered in bed, but pressed on with sharp words. “It sucks not knowing if she’s immortal. It sucks not knowing if she’s sterile. Cadence can’t have more foals. Remember that? Maybe Flurry can’t have any. We don’t know. We don’t know what her special talent is going to be, or why she was born the way she is, and oh, do you know what her job is?”

When Gia didn’t reply right away, Cheval pressed on: “Her job, the job she was born into, is to take over from her mother after her mother is murdered. Alicorns can’t die except from violence. Her job is to sit and wait and attend parties and wave at crowds until the day a guard knocks on her door and says that the sweetest, kindest, most loving mare she’s ever known was just poisoned and she needs to address her people.”

“So what’s your point?”

“My point is that she doesn’t want to be the crown princess. She hates her job, and sometimes when you hate doing a thing you don’t apply your full effort. So she’s waving at crowds, but she’s only half-there, so she makes little mistakes and the newspapers think she’s an idiot.”

With a snort, Cheval finished: “But she’s not.”

“Okay, sure. That’s uh…” Gia hesitated. “Royal family drama, I guess. But you didn't answer my question. Why did you leave?”

“Because she made a mistake in public, and I corrected her. I corrected her a few times. And ponies started saying that maybe I’d make a better royal heir than her. There’s no rule in the Crystal Empire that the oldest child has to inherit. And the crystal ponies trust me. They see me as one of their princesses. Cadence could name me the crown princess and they’d be fine with it.”

“But you wouldn’t be?”

“I won’t be a weapon to destroy the ponies who love me.” Her slurred words became thicker, until they were nearly unintelligible. “I’m a monster. And I was created by another monster, to slowly poison all the good in the world that was too strong for her to crush outright. And Cadence isn’t my mother and Flurry isn’t my sister but they’ve been nothing but kind to me and I won’t hurt them. I won’t.”

“Um…” Gia pulled back from the bedside. “That’s um… I mean. You know. It’s…”

“Screw you.”

“Yeah, that’s fair.” Gia coughed into a talon. “Well, I’m not going to turn you in, so…”

“You should. If they find out you knew and didn’t say anything, you’ll go to prison. And Gideon will find out. He’s sharper than that.”

“Gideon won’t turn me in, Cheval.” Gia rolled her eyes. “He loves me. You’re a changeling. Can’t you smell it?”

For two days, Gia stood guard over Cheval while her shell hardened. On the third day, Cheval could stand and walk around on her own. She did have a mane and a tail, and when washed, they puffed out into a sporty, boyish look.

On the fourth day, Gideon arrived to see Gia. He told her how he felt about her—that he adored her, admired her, and saw chicks in their future. And she did what she always did: she lied.

So he left her.

Chapter 5

On the 19th day of spring, the thaw finally came, and the ice released its grip on the mountainside. Grass covered the quad, flowers filled the gardens, and the orchards at the edge of campus sprung into life. It took only days for the oppressive grey to replaced by a riot of color. Some of the students even started a club to add ivy to the walls, hoping to breathe a bit of life into the grounds.

The 19th day of spring was a Monday. On Friday, citing numerous diplomatic incidents, the Republic of Griffonstone formally dissolved its non-aggression pact with the Crystal Empire and signed a mutual defense treaty with the Northern Changeling Hive. On Saturday, war broke out.

The next Monday, the Ivy Club held its first meeting to discuss the best way to build trestles, and the Crystal Empire surrendered.

Cheval couldn’t cry. Her eyes didn’t have tear ducts. But Cross Product could cry.

She sobbed into Gideon’s shoulder.

“It’s…” He rested his talons on her back, wrapping his wings around her like a blanket. “It could be worse.”

“You have raked me over the coals at every opportunity for being a liar you unbelievable tool,” she snapped, barely able to form words around her tears, “don’t you dare tell me what I want to hear.”

“You’re right. You’re right.” He squeezed her against him. “I’m sorry.”

The newspaper in the student lounge had a map of the north. In the center was a little white dot, labeled “Crystal Empire proper.” Surrounding it on all sides was a large grey blob labeled, “Disputed Territory.”

Surrounding the grey blob on all sides was a black area labeled “Northern Changeling Hive.” It washed over every port, railway, and road. It flowed along rivers and coastlines and national boundaries. Cadence’s domain no longer had a border with Equestria.

Nopony died. When it became clear which way the battle was going to go, Amaryllis offered General Harmony Shield very generous surrender terms. Cadence’s army got to march home unharmed, and even kept their weapons.

Gideon held Cheval for as long as she needed, muttering soft nothings and keeping her close. A few other griffons in the student lounge stared, but when Gideon shot them a hostile glare, they decided to be elsewhere. Soon, the two of them had the lounge all to their own.

“I saw that,” Cheval croaked, when one student fled. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I hate gossipers. It’s pathetic.”

“Scaring them off will only make them gossip more.” She swallowed the lump in her throat, and leaned up to look him in the eye. “Is there any good news? You’re political, right? You have training?”

“It isn’t exactly my specialty.” He looked at the map, then down at her. “But…”

“I know.”

He gave a small nod. “Are you going to go home?”

“No. I’d only make it worse.” She sniffed, but her eyes darted down for a moment—jumping from his eyes to the cadent pins on his collar. “But the odds would be a lot better if the griffons were on our side.”

Gideon’s smile was soft—almost apologetic. “You know that’s a little above me, right?”

“I don’t understand how the Party can support a ruler who literally thinks of her people as her property. Queen Amaryllis is offensive to everything the perpetual revolution stands for.”

“I know that. But Princess Cadence is an unelected monarch too. We don’t really have an ideological horse in that race.” He brushed her shoulders with a talon. “We’re betting on the winner. That’s all.”

“You think Amaryllis is a winner, huh?” Resentment seeped into her tone. But Gideon refused to rise to the bait.

“Cross, do you want me to be honest, or do you want me to tell you what you want to hear?”

She hesitated and bit her lip. “I want you to be honest. Always. It’s what I admire about you.”

“I don’t think Amaryllis is a political genius. I don’t know what the Griffbureau thinks, but I doubt they believe she’s brilliant either. But they know that Cadence is a loser. And no matter how much I or they might personally like her, no griffon bets their life savings on a losing horse.”

“It’s not her fault,” Cheval snapped. “She doesn’t personally command the army. She’s had a lot of bad generals in a row.”

Gideon didn’t shout, but his tone hardened, losing its layer of sympathetic fluff. “In Griffonstone, a general who surrendered their entire army without a fight would be publicly executed for cowardice. Is Harmony Shield going to be hanged off the palace walls?”

“She was surrounded and outmaneuvered. The writing was on the wall.” Cheval glared. “So, what, she should have sacrificed her entire army to make a glorious last stand? Gotten all her ponies killed for nothing?”

“Yes,” Gideon said. “Because tens of thousands of casualties would have forced Celestia, Luna, and Twilight to intervene. A bloodless surrender makes it easier for Amaryllis’s agents to keep Equestria’s princesses focused on Equestrian problems.”

That made her snap. Her voice rose. “She can’t butcher thousands of her own ponies just to make a political point!”

“Then she can’t be a ruler.” Gideon released Cheval’s shoulders and folded his wings back against his sides. Cold air rushed in around her and ruffled her coat. “Back in the first war. What would have happened if Amaryllis lost?”

“Her, um… her hive would have reformed. Become good guys. And—”

“Stop pretending to be stupid,” Gideon snapped, a note of anger entering his tone.

They glared at each other for a few long seconds. Cheval’s expression softened first, and she said, “Her hive would have been destroyed. Or at least, it would have become like Thorax’s. A non-political settlement that controls no empire.”

“And now she rules the yak and the diamond dogs and quite a few crystal ponies. And if she loses a major war with the Crystal Empire or Equestria, what will happen to those territories?”

“They’ll be liberated. Become their own countries. Probably with some treaty terms limiting the size of Amaryllis’s army so she can’t conquer them again.”

“So, in summary, her empire will be destroyed.”

“Yes.”

Gideon let the silence hang for a moment. He nodded. “And what happens to Cadence if she finally loses the Crystal Empire proper?”

Cheval didn’t answer, and so Gideon answered for her: “She goes back to her palace in Equestria, takes tea with her aunt, raises her children, and says very mean things about changelings in the papers.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I thought you said you were going to stop pretending to be stupid.” Gideon’s words emerged with a hot snap. “Cadence is playing the game of empires like it’s a round of croquet behind Canterlot Palace. Amaryllis is playing to win. She does what she needs to. She does what she can. She gambles. And when she loses a gamble, and things don’t go her way, her officers don’t surrender. They fight to the death.”

He let out a breath. With a talon, he gestured down at the map. “Amaryllis is a winner because she wants to win. And Cadence is a loser because she doesn’t. That’s how I feel. And that’s how the Party feels. And I support that decision, not just because I’m wearing a uniform, but because it is the right thing for Griffonstone.”

Then he said: “And if that means we can’t be friends, I understand.”

“Heh.” Cheval sniffed. “One argument and you think that means we’re not friends?” She lowered her head to the floor for a few seconds, and when she lifted it again, she was smiling. “Or are you afraid of getting hurt again?”

Gideon froze. His expression locked into a neutral mask. Cheval didn’t mind, and kept speaking like nothing had happened: “You’re a walking lie-detector. No griffon or pony can get anything past you. Except her. You believed her for years.”

He pulled his head back, grimacing down at her. “So the reason you’re so fake all the time is your actual personality is a malevolent bitch.”

“I can be whatever you want. I can cry into your shoulder, and listen while you tell me everything is going to be okay, and be a dim, fragile little mare who needs a big strong stallion to protect her. Or I can be the intelligent, independent, strong creature who can stand up to you.” She flicked him with her tail. “But I can’t be both of those things at the same time, so you gotta decide what you want.”

“What I…” He froze, shooting her an incredulous look. “Cross, I don’t know what you think is happening here, but we’re just friends. I’m not into ponies. At all. You are not physically attractive to me. And even if you were, I just broke up with my girlfriend.”

“The griffon doth protest too much.” She put her hooves up on his shoulders, rising up on her hind legs to look him in the eye.

“What is wrong with you?” he asked, attempting to pull away from her.

He never completed the motion. Her eyes flashed green, and he paused where he stood. A befuddled expression crossed his face, soon followed by a hot flush.

“You’re not into ponies,” Cheval said, “but you are into me. Aren’t you?”

“You’re, um…” His eyes traveled over her, from her horn to her hips. “I’m not rebounding with you, Cross. It’s not happening.”

“I was flirting, not inviting you into bed.” Cheval rolled her eyes. “I’m merely observing that I noticed you noticing me. Say something you like about me. Say why I’m attractive.”

“You’ve got…” He frowned as the gears in his head turned. “I like griffons with wide tail feathers. So I guess you’ve got… nice hips?”

“See? I’ve got nice hips.” She kissed his beak. “Is that so bad?”

“I guess not.” Though his voice was still confused, he nuzzled her back. “Do you think… griffons are attractive?”

“Not in general,” Cheval giggled. “But I like you. Your blood smells nice.”

She kept the bloody rag from when he injured his forehead. Although the smell had mostly gone out of it, she still sniffed it sometimes to remind herself of him.

One day, in the spring, Gia burst into their room. “I can’t believe you!”

Cheval was working at her desk in the form of Cross Product. She didn’t look up. “If this is about my letting Girard cheat off my exam, that’s not true. I don’t know who started that stupid rumor.”

Gia stormed across the room and knocked Cheval’s textbook off her desk. “It’s about you and my ex-boyfriend necking in the common spaces.”

Cheval jumped at the attack on her desk, but when she recovered her composure, she smiled. “Gia, that’s stupid. Changelings are sterile, remember? I don’t ‘neck’ with any creature.”

“Changelings drones are sterile.”

“And I’m a drone.” Cheval spread her hooves. “Don’t imagine things.”

“You are-!” Gia reached back to lock the door to their room, then lowered her voice. “You are not a drone. You are taller than a drone. You are thinner than a drone. Well, thinner in the waist. Noticeably wider in the hips. And you have hair. The only two changelings I’ve seen with hair are Queen Amaryllis and Queen Chrysalis.”

“Don’t be…” She let out a breath. “Silly. And it’s fine, okay?”

“It’s not fine.” Gia growled. “Don’t think I didn't notice you were around when we broke up. Did you do something? If you did something I’ll—”

“You’ll what? Admit that you sheltered a foreign national with false papers?” Cheval rose to her hooves. In a flash, she reverted from her disguise to her true form. With the added height, she looked down on Gia. “I’m the daughter of a head of state. If you sell me out, I get to go back to my palace, and you get to spend the rest of your life doing hard labor.”

Gia froze. “I trusted you. I stuck my neck out for you.”

“I know you did.” Cheval’s eyes glowed a soft green, and Gia’s eyes glowed in turn. “Because you’re my friend, right?”

“Yes.” Gia said. “I mean, yes. We’re friends.”

“And friends watch out for friends. Remember? I took care of you when you were sick, and you took care of me. Which means when I ask you for a favor, you need to do it. Right?”

“That…” She furrowed her brow, confusion written all over her features. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“But is it right?”

“I guess…” The green glow behind her eyes intensified. “Yes. Yes, that’s right. We’re friends so when you ask me for a favor I need to do it.”

“Mmmhmm,” Cheval said. “And it’s okay. You didn't love Gideon anyway. You were only dating him for the physical attraction. And if you miss that, I can help.”

In a flash, she turned into Gideon. Her talons rested over Gia’s throat.

They kissed once. That was enough to cement the spell's effect on Gia’s mind, and Cheval had no interest in going further.

Gia and Gideon weren’t in a relationship anymore, and so Cheval could harvest love from neither of them. To survive, she had to look elsewhere.

Griz had a girlfriend he cared about, so Cheval beguiled her into signing up for a season serving the Party on a collectivist farm. Once she was gone, Cheval took her form so she could ‘return early.’ The real one sent letters of course, but it was so easy to persuade him to throw them away.

One of her mathematics professors had a son who hated her, and she longed for nothing more than to repair their relationship. Cheval offered her the opportunity, blaming any imperfections in the disguise on injuries suffered in the army.

She had casual friendships too. They weren’t sustaining on their own, but they could be a delicious addition to more substantive fare. There wasn’t a griffon in the dorm who didn’t like Cross Product.

One day in the summer, when the trees were in bloom and the air was pleasantly warm, Gideon surprised her. He had a gift for her—a book of poetry. He kissed her under the trees.

It was the first time he’d kissed her spontaneously, instead of her having to beguile him. A flush rose in her cheeks. She wobbled on her hooves, unsteady. “I feel weird.”

“You feel hot.”

“Oh.” She looked at him. Then down at herself. “Am I sick?”

He laughed. “I doubt it.” Then he kissed her again.

They rushed back to the dorm. On their way through the common spaces, Cheval grabbed a handful of students she knew. “I need privacy,” her eyes flashed green. “Guard the door to my room.”

And they did it, because Cheval was their friend, and friends watch out for each other. They defended her from any intrusion. One, without even being asked, went outside to guard the window.

Inside the dorm room, Gia was working on homework. “Gia,” Cheval snapped, “stand in the corner and don’t say anything.”

So Gia stood in the corner and didn’t say anything. Gideon stripped off his uniform. Cheval stared into his eyes, and dropped her disguise.

He froze for a few, long seconds. Changeling magic shimmered behind his eyes. His face twitched as he first tried to snarl, then tried to smile, and found he couldn't complete either expression.

“Love me,” Cheval told him. “Please, love me.”

His will broke. He spun her around, grabbed her by the back, and lifted her tail.

Gia stood in the corner, said nothing, and watched.

Queen Amaryllis’s personal train pulled into the station at Griffonstone.

Chapter 6

Cheval lay in bed, a blissful smile on her face. Gideon was behind her, wrapping her body in his and holding her tight against his feathers. He circled her shoulder with the tip of a talon, tracing the curves of her body. Hovering in front of them was the book of poetry he’d given her.

“Read that one,” he whispered to her. With a single talon, he indicated the one he meant. She giggled, and did as he bid her.

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken.”

Her post-coital smile flickered for a moment, but did not quite fade from her face. She shut the book and laid it on the bedside, then shut her eyes and snuggled tighter against him. “You know Gia didn’t love you,” she said.

In the corner, Gia stood silently, said nothing, and waited for Cheval to give her an order.

“She was a whore. You’re the creature I’m meant to be with,” Gideon said, his voice firm. He nuzzled into the back of her neck.

“No. No. She wasn’t a whore.” Cheval stroked his talons with a hoof. “But she wasn’t right for you. Your relationship would have ended anyway. All I did was speed things up a little bit.”

“I know you always do the right thing.”

“Wow. No. You are um…” She bit her lip. “You are really doped up right now. I might have baked your mind a little too hard there. But it’s fine. It’s temporary. You’ll regain your wits soon.”

He didn’t have anything to say to that, and after a moment, she went on: “I know you’ll be mad at me. Really mad. But I can feel that you do like me, a little. You’re not just beguiled. We did have a friendship and… you know. Sometimes friendships turn into romantic relationships.”

“I love you,” he said.

Cheval’s smile faded. “No. No. You…” She squeezed him again. “Not yet. But you will one day. Okay? You’ll get over this, and… everything will be okay. You’ll love me and you’ll be happy. I know I did some bad things. But I’m still the pony you made friends with, right? I’m not… I did some bad things. But I’m not the bad pony here. I’m not.”

“You could never be a bad pony.” His claws traced a pattern on her belly. “You’re my beautiful little griffon.”

Before she could reply, something exploded in the hallway. Concrete shattered. Shouts echoed through the building. “Revolutionary guard!” some griffon roared. “Talons up on the wall!”

Tied together by an unspoken bond, the three of them leapt into action. Cheval rolled out of bed and assumed the form of Cross Product. Gia leapt to her desk, spread out her homework, and in every way put on the appearance of normalcy. Gideon stood between Cheval and the door, blocking any attacker’s line of sight.

“Hey, you can’t come in here,” shouted one of Cheval’s student guards. They fought valiantly, though briefly. A series of meaty cracks marked the end of their struggle.

The door to their dorm room glowed. Metal groaned. Then, with a sudden rending scream, the door came away—sucked off into the hall as though by a tremendous wind. Bits of its shattered hinges flew through the air. One bounced off Girard’s chest, and he spread his wings to protect Cheval from any debris.

Out in the hall stood two changelings and a half-dozen griffons. All soldiers.

“Cadet,” one of the griffons ordered, “step out into the hall and put your talons on the wall.”

Gideon didn’t do as he was instructed. Instead, he locked eyes with the officer in the hall. His talons flexed. The illusion of normalcy dispersed, Gia picked up a letter opener she kept on her desk. She did not keep her talons sharp, and so required a weapon. A knife, while not ideal, could suffice in a pinch.

“Really now, that’s enough of that,” spoke a smooth, feminine voice. A bright green aura surrounded Gia and Gideon, freezing both of them in place. And through the door frame, Queen Amaryllis stepped into sight.

Her shell was the color of rainbows and candy. Her wings were delicate gossamer, reminiscent of butterflies. Her mane was a soft white tinged with flecks of pink. And when she smiled, the room lit up around her.

A reformed changeling could look no better. And, of course, she was tall. She had to lower her head to see Cheval beneath Gideon’s wings.

“Hello, Cheval,” she said.

In a flash of green light, Cheval reverted to her natural form. Her hole-ridden legs clicked on the concrete as she stepped out from behind Gideon.

What else could Amaryllis do? She giggled. “Oh, this is dramatic. You look like you’re rotting from the inside out.” In tones as sweet as candy floss and smooth as flowing wine she asked, “Were you really so afraid of being your mother's heir?”

For half a second, Cheval hesitated to answer. Her head lowered and her tail tucked between her legs. It was as though she was ashamed. But when she lifted her gaze to Amaryllis anew, her expression was shameless.

“I can be my mother’s heir,” she said. Her horn glowed, light flashed off the tip, and the magical aura surrounding Gideon and Gia dispersed. “Kill her.”

In the tight confines of the dorm room, complex maneuver was impossible. The concrete walls blocked the guards in the hallway from entering, and there was space for neither elaborate spellcasting nor dynamic martial arts. It was all over in seconds.

Cheval was fastest to act. Her horn flashed, and a thin haze surrounded Amaryllis.

Amaryllis was slightly slower. She attempted to teleport out, but Cheval’s spell inhibited her. Her outline momentarily blurred, but she did not move.

One of the changeling guards in the hallway was next. She fired a magical bolt over Amaryllis’s shoulder. It struck Gideon in the chest and passed through his torso. A spray of blood covered the dorm room wall. The smell of scorched flesh filled the air.

Gia wrapped her arms around Amaryllis, preventing her from backing out into the hall. And then Gideon, roaring through his injuries, lunged forward and got his talons around her neck. His muscles clenched, and he tore out her throat.

In a flash of green, Amaryllis transformed into a dead changeling drone, its throat still gone.

Without a friendly blocking their lines of sight, the guards in the hall were free to open fire.

Cheval sat on Amaryllis’s train, her legs bound with heavy iron chains. Dried droplets of griffon blood covered her shell.

“Is Amaryllis immortal?” Amaryllis asked her, a smile on her face. “Are her methods supernatural?”

No matter how hard Cheval looked, she couldn’t see any flaw in the disguise. “Is this one real?”

“All of them are real; I am the hive.” She leaned forward, and sniffed Cheval’s shoulder. “I smell two griffons’ blood. Which one is the father?”

When Cheval refused to answer, Amaryllis gestured, and a guard grabbed Cheval’s dock. By that means, she was yanked to all four hooves and her tail lifted. Amaryllis sniffed her hindquarters.

“Ah, good,” she said. “He has a strong bloodline. Principled. Vital. An excellent choice. Reminds me of your father.”

“He’s dead.”

“Oh, dear, that’s for the best.” Amaryllis brushed Cheval’s cheek with a hoof. “How do you think he’d have reacted? You poisoned his relationship with his love. Lied to him. Entrapped him. And when he refused you, you took what you wanted by force. In this new, kinder era, changelings don’t use the ‘R’ word. But it’s a subtext.”

Cheval shivered in the warm air, and her gaze sunk to the floor. “I will never be a changeling queen. Kill me or I’ll kill myself.”

She tittered. “You already are. You found an area with plenty of love to steal, moved into a defensible central location, ensorcelled the locals to serve as your initial hive guard, and found a male with a good bloodline to be the sire. The nesting instinct is very strong. If I’d left you another month, you’d have been rationalizing getting the griffons to raise your grubs for you.”

The smile didn’t leave Amaryllis’s face. How friendly it looked, against that rainbow-colored shell. “I wonder if that’s why you came all the way out here, instead of going to Equestria. Perhaps, on some level, you knew the creatures around you would become your victims. You love ponies too much.”

“Did you actually reform or was this all just a big trick? A twenty-year long con.” Cheval spat. “Maybe you never changed. I think you’re still the same toxic creature you always were. Do you have as many holes in your legs as I do?”

“I instructed Double Time to train you in the ways of your kind. But it seems she failed.” Her disappointment was faint, but impossible to miss. “A pony may be one thing or the other. But we contain many ponies, young queen. I am kind and I am cruel and I am loving and I am vicious. I feel and I calculate and I forgive and I punish. I have as many holes in my legs as I wish to have.”

“You’re a monster.”

“I am,” she said, ever so gentle. “But I do love. Just like you are a monster, but you do truly love your family. You treasure them as they would wish to be treasured. It hurts you to know they are in pain.”

Reaching a hoof under Cheval’s chin, Amaryllis tilted her head. “Hear my words and know them to be true. You are many things. You are the daughter of Princess Cadence, raised as her own. You are also my daughter, bearer of my bloodline. You are a kind, sweet, loving creature who desires nothing more than to live in a world without conflict. You are also a liar, a brute, and a greedy, power-hungry schemer, who betrayed her closest friends to their deaths.”

Cheval’s words stuck in her throat, and her voice was thick. “I don’t want to be those things.”

“You want to be Flurry Heart. The firstborn. The one who gets to rule a kingdom, who everypony treasures, and who deserves her mother’s love.” She tilted her head, considering Cheval in detail. “Confess that you’ve fantasized about murdering and replacing your sister.”

“I…” Cheval tried to lower her head, pushing against Amaryllis’s hoof.

So Amaryllis slapped her.

“Cadence raised you to be weak,” she snapped, “but I expect better of you. When you lie to me, lie with intent. Lie because you want to deceive me. Never lie to me because you’re too cowardly to face the truth.”

And so Cheval stopped trying to lower her head, and looked Amaryllis in the eye. She assumed a calm, controlled expression, one of focused intent. “Better,” her mother said.

“Why are you here?” Cheval asked.

“Because I’ve been playing this game with Cadence for eighteen years,” she said, gesturing at a map she kept on the wall, “and I’ve gotten tired of it. The conflict between my hive and the Crystal Empire ends this month. So if you really do care for your family, listen carefully.”

When she was sure Cheval was listening, Amaryllis went on: “I’m issuing an ultimatum to Princess Cadence today. The Crystal Empire is mine by right. I ruled the north long before your kingdom returned from whence Sombra cast it and she is a squatter on my land. To that end, she has three options.”

She flicked a hoof: “One, she can abdicate the title of ‘Princess,’ forswear her fealty to Princess Celestia, and swear herself anew in vassalage to me. I will grant her the title of Duchess, and she will continue to rule the Crystal Empire in my name. It will become one of many territories in my empire, and its ponies will live in peace.”

“Two,” she flicked a hoof again, “I declare war one last time, and her crumbling nation finally implodes under its own weight. In the last conflict, her army’s morale was so poor some of her soldiers dropped their weapons and ran before they even saw us. I will take her kingdom and send her and her family into exile.”

“Celestia will intervene.” Cheval drew herself up.

Amaryllis smiled down at her. She reached out with a hoof, wiped a bit of the blood off of Cheval’s shell, and pressed it to Cheval’s nose with the tip of a hoof. “Boop,” she said.

“Why…” Cheval began a question, but couldn't finish it. Amaryllis went on.

“Option three is the one that involves you.” With that bloody hoof, she pointed at Cheval once again. “I will formally cede all disputed land to Cadence, return much of the land we took during the last few conflicts, restore her border with Equestria, acknowledge by treaty that I have no rights to her domain, and significantly reduce the size of my army. And all I want in return is…”

She gestured at Cheval.

“You…” Cheval’s brow furrowed into an incredulous stare. “You gave me away.”

“I gave away a grub. Now you’re a queen. I know everypony thinks I’m a brilliant mastermind playing five-dimensional chess, but, really.” She tapped her own shell. “I didn’t see that one coming.”

“I said I’d die before I served you.”

“Yes, but we’ve already established you’re a liar.” So light was her tone, one would think she was gently playing. Teasing a friend over tea and cakes. “So I like my odds. I can teach you the ways of your people. Soothe your damaged heart. Make you what you were meant to be. You spent your whole life thinking it was your destiny to destroy your mother’s kingdom. But I have good news.”

She rested a hoof over Cheval’s chest. “It’s your destiny to save it.”

Amaryllis had her dropped off in the Crystal Empire. One train track ran directly under the palace, for the royal family’s personal use. A few drones and a train car took Cheval for the last leg of the journey.

Cadence, Shining, and Flurry Heart were all waiting when her train arrived. She didn’t want to get out, so one of the drones pushed her.

She was tall, dark-shelled, and thin as a rail. Her legs were full of holes. Her teeth came to sharp points. The shackles about her legs marked her as a dangerous prisoner. And of course, she was still speckled with dried blood. Though it had long since turned brown and flakey, she had not been offered a chance to clean herself.

The drones removed her restraints.

Shining looked at her and didn’t move. She did look a great deal like Chrysalis. He could hardly be blamed. Cadence looked at her and also didn't move. She was trying to decide if this actually was her daughter. The creature before her didn’t look anything like Cheval, and they had only Amaryllis’s word that it was so.

Flurry Heart bounded up to sister’s side and wrapped her in a tight hug. “You’re a huge idiot,” she snapped.

Cheval turned into a perfect copy of her sister. For half a second, they looked each other in the eye as mirror images. Then Cheval’s eyes filled with tears.

“I’m sorry,” she said in Flurry’s voice. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t… I…”

Flurry told her it was okay, and Cheval hugged her so hard she knocked the breath from her lungs. She buried her head into her sister’s shoulder, and uncontrollably sobbed.

Chapter 7

When the crying was done, Cheval expected the guards to take her to the dungeon. It didn’t even occur to her that they might do otherwise. Her shell was deformed by the darkness in her heart and splattered with the blood of her victims.

She held out her legs for them to put her back in irons. Instead, her family brought her to her room.

Cadence and Shining didn’t want to spoil their children, but it was a room not unfit for a princess. Instead of a metal bunk, she had a spacious bed carved from hardwood and topped with a down mattress. Bookshelves covered the walls. Her window offered a spectacular view of the Crystal Empire, and all the pristine lands within its protective dome. The whole thing smelled faintly of lilac. There was no concrete.

It hadn’t been touched since she left. The stuffed animal aunt Twilight had given her still sat on her desk, along with a blank thank-you note she’d meant to fill out.

She fell into bed and hugged a pillow like a lover. Her parents asked her questions, so she ignored them until they went away.

Flurry Heart didn’t ask any questions. She sat across from the bed with all four hooves folded under her, and pulled out a book to pass the time.

Hours passed that way. It was dark before Cheval spoke. Through the window, the lights of the Crystal Empire sparkled like the night sky.

“Hey,” Cheval said, her voice so soft Flurry heart could barely hear her. She was still in Flurry Heart’s form, though she’d offered no explanation as to why.

“Hey.” Flurry closed her book and walked over to the bedside. “How you holding up?”

“Would you love me no matter what?” Cheval asked. Her eyes searched Flurry’s face. “No matter what I did?”

“Don’t think like that.” She reached out to rub Cheval’s hoof with her own. “I know, things happened at school. But we’re your family and—”

“I’m not fishing for emotional support.” Cheval raised her voice just loud enough to cut Flurry off. “I know how you feel about me better than you do. I’m asking… I can feel that you love me. But I’m asking why you love me. And it’s not rhetorical. Please, please answer honestly. This is important.”

Flurry drew her head back and frowned. For several seconds, she considered Cheval’s question in silence. Reluctantly, she nodded. “No. There are things you could do that would make me stop loving you.”

“Good.” Cheval hugged her pillow tighter. Her eyes watered, and her voice cracked. “I don’t think mom and dad are like that. I think they actually do love me unconditionally. And I hate it. I know it’s what makes mom divine, but it feels cheap.”

“Mom’s love is not cheap.” Flurry’s tone was firm, but not angry. She reached out to hold Cheval’s shoulder. “She loves everypony because she can see the good in everypony. She finds the thing inside them that is worthy of love and loves them for that.”

“And she gets taken advantage of over and over again.” Cheval wet her lips. “She’s just like Twilight. It’s less obvious because she’s not a teenager, but she’s frozen at that one moment in time. Cadence at thirty-five knows how to beat Amaryllis, but she can’t learn that lesson because she’ll never be thirty-five. She will always be the mare who lost the first war.”

“Come on.” Flurry tried to laugh, but it came out stiff and artificial. “Let’s not have the alicorn aging talk again.”

“No. It matters.” Cheval folded back her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t think reformed changelings actually exist. It’s a lie. It always was a lie. Thorax made it up because he wanted peace with Equestria after he overthrew Chrysalis. And Amaryllis riffed on it. It’s a two-changeling con.”

“You know Thorax. He’s not smart enough to come up with something like that.”

“You think I can’t pretend to be dumb?”

Flurry snorted. “You think aunt Twilight can’t tell the difference between the real magic of friendship and ‘acting super nice’?”

“No, I…” She sniffled. “It’s not like that.”

“Then tell me what it is like.” Flurry poked Cheval with a hoof until her eyes opened. “Amaryllis didn’t tell us anything about what happened at school. Just that there was some kind of incident, the griffons caught you, and they said you had to leave.”

“She didn’t tell you because she wants to hold it over me. Blackmail.” Cheval lowered her head. “It’s bad.”

“Bad enough…” Flurry hesitated. “You think I’d stop loving you if I knew?”

“Yeah. That bad.” Cheval’s outline blurred, and she returned to her natural form. The bed that had moments ago been spacious fit her snugly. The holes in her legs tore the fine sheets. Her grimace showed her fangs.

“Heh.” Flurry looked at her sister, then at the floor, then out the window. It was a few seconds before she could look at Cheval again. “That’s just from hunger. Changelings' shells turn black when they’re hungry, right? And the holes are from malnutrition.”

Cheval said nothing, so Flurry added: “And hey. You’ve got hair now. That’s good. You should grow it out though. With your tail that short ponies will think you’re into girls. I mean, unless you are, I guess. Then it’s a good length.”

Still, Cheval said nothing. Flurry swallowed. “Mom told me why you left. Why she agreed to ‘exile’ you. You know it would have been worse if you said nothing, right? I screwed up again when you were away and there was nopony to catch it. It made the papers. I think I destroyed our alliance with Griffonstone.”

“What is mom doing about the ultimatum?”

“Oh.” Flurry cleared her throat. “She’s taking the title of duchess.”

“Celestia refused to help us again?”

“No, actually. Celestia, Twilight, and Luna all said that they absolutely will come to our aid.” She circled a hoof. “They’ll mobilize the army and everything. Have a good knock-down war. Save us and the yak and the diamond dogs. Liberate the north from the changeling menace.”

Cheval’s eyes flicked over her sister’s face. Then she frowned and sat up halfway in bed. “I don’t understand.”

“You know sometimes mom and I have family talks without you, right? Like I don’t get to tag along for your and aunt Double Time’s special lessons?” A small smile appeared on Flurry’s face, and she laughed. “It’s um… it’s good news though. It’s actually good news.”

“I’m going to need you to explain how this is good news.”

“Oh, come on.” Flurry circled a hoof on the floor. “What’s my destiny?”

Cheval’s eyes went to Flurry’s flank, which as yet did not bear a mark. “We don’t know. I thought…” Her frown deepened. “I mean, you haven’t found your destiny yet.”

“Yeah, but, let’s pretend you’re not stupid.” Flurry rolled her eyes. “I’m mom’s heir. Her super-special-magical-destiny heir that was born an alicorn. Even though mom and dad were married for months first, I wasn’t conceived until after the Crystal Empire returned. Other than her, I’m the only creature that can control the Crystal Heart. And my name is Flurry Heart.”

She gestured at the window. “Like a… heart. Surrounded by a blizzard. Remind you of anything?”

Cheval said nothing, and when it became clear she did not intend to speak, Flurry finished the thought for her. “My destiny is to rule the Crystal Empire.”

“Well… yeah.” Cheval pulled her legs in under her. “I mean, maybe. We don’t—”

“Don’t tell me we don’t know.” Flurry drew in a deep breath. “Earlier, you asked, are there things you could do that would make me stop loving you? And I knew the answer was yes. And I knew that because I’ve thought about it. I never thought you’d… I was never afraid of you. I really never was and I’m still not. But I’ve thought about what I would do if you killed mom.”

She laughed again, casting a hoof about them to take in the palace. “I mean, come on. I’m very obviously destined to have a job I can only get after mom dies. And then there’s you. A creature literally created by evil to end her reign. And I…”

Her eyes went to the floor. “I always assumed that it was your destiny to kill mom and my destiny to kill you.”

“You…” Cheval stared. “Always? Since when is always?”

“I don’t know. Since I was like, fourteen?”

Cheval’s stare hardened into something angrier, and her voice rose. “You spent the last four years thinking it was my destiny to kill mom?”

“It fits.”

Flurry’s casual tone set Cheval off, and her voice rose to a shout: “Then why didn’t you kill me first?”

Without hesitation, Flurry answered: “Because you’re my sister and I love you.”

“Well that’s!” Cheval wasn’t sure what it was, and her furious gesticulating did nothing to clarify the matter. “Stupid. It’s stupid.”

“Yeah.” Flurry’s voice was tight in her throat. “But now I don’t have to. Congratulations, you’ve ended mom’s rule. The prophecy is fulfilled. I mean, metaphorically — there wasn’t an actual prophecy. But you know what I mean. And Amaryllis is spiteful enough that I’m sure she’ll eventually force mom to abdicate entirely, whereupon I will become ruler of the Crystal Empire.”

“You’ll become the puppet ruler of the Crystal Empire. Amaryllis’s lackey. You’ll wave at crowds and whitewash her atrocities. You’re giving up everything.”

“No. I’m deciding I care about having a happy, loving family more than I care about…” Flurry waved a hoof. “Where some border gets drawn on a map.”

Cheval stared into her sister’s eyes. “Did you decide that or did mom decide it?”

Flurry hesitated for a fraction of a second. “It’s the right decision.”

“It’s not the decision you’d make.” Cheval’s gaze bored into her sister, her slitted eyes matching Flurry’s gentler gaze. “Mom is the physical embodiment of love, not rulership. Of course she’ll pick her family over a kingdom.”

“Well,” Flurry scoffed, looking off into a corner of the room. “I should try to be more like her.”

Cheval's brow furrowed. She stared at her sister with an expression of intense focus. Slowly she spoke: “You said, ‘Our treaty with Griffonstone is just a piece of paper.’ To a reporter.”

“Yup.” Flurry’s voice tightened again. “I really screwed that up.”

“Did you?” Cheval’s tone turned pointed. “I assumed you were making mistakes because you hate politics. You’re only half-there. But that’s pretty bad even if you were distracted.”

“I had an off day.”

“Did you? Or did you intentionally drop the ball?” Under Cheval’s intense stare, Flurry retreated, taking two quick steps away from the bed. “Are you… are you actively trying to be a bad leader because you don’t want to replace mom?”

Flurry let out a snort. “Given what ‘replacing mom’ means in this context, yeah. I think that’s kind of important.”

“You being destined to rule the Crystal Empire doesn’t mean mom is definitely going to die. She could abdicate or… or get turned to stone.” Cheval lashed her tail. “Or something.”

“I know you’re trying to put a good spin on this, but come on. It’s…” She sighed. “It’s what I was made for. I’m just trying not to destroy our family.”

“Your…” Cheval pointed at Flurry. Then at herself.

“Ugh. Yes.” Flurry rolled her eyes. “It’s not always about you, you know. You always make it more complicated than it needs to be. Dramabug. That’s what you are. Big stupid dramabug who need to go rebel against mom in Griffonstone for some reason and comes back with holes in her legs.”

“This isn’t funny.” Cheval sat up the rest of the way in bed, looking at her sister head-on. “Flurry, cutie mark magic is literally powered by friendship and harmony. If it really is your destiny to rule the Crystal Empire, it means that needs to happen. It means the world will be a worse place if it doesn’t happen.”

“Then the world can kiss my blank flanks,” she snapped. “You and mom and dad have been nothing but kind to me and I won’t be the reason you get hurt.”

Cheval gestured at Flurry. Her mouth opened as though to speak, and no words came out. She covered her mouth.

“What?” Flurry asked. “I don’t know what you’re trying to say here.”

“I screwed up.”

“Yeah, I knew that part.”

“No, I mean…” Cheval pointed at herself. “I’m a changeling queen.”

“I knew that too.” Flurry sighed, then softened her tone, stepping back over to her sister. “Mom and dad thought this might happen. When you were younger, you looked like you were developing like a normal drone, so we thought maybe not. But the hair is a dead giveaway. It’s okay though. It doesn’t change how we feel about you, and you have plenty of time to—”

“I’m pregnant.”

Flurry froze. Her jaw fell open half an inch. On a sudden reflex, she reached out to hold Cheval’s hoof with her own, the motion so sudden it was like she was stung. “I’m… sorry. Or, I’m happy for you? I don’t know. What emotion should I be feeling right now?” She swallowed. “Who's the father?”

“A griffon. A cadet in the secret police. His name was Gideon. He’s… dead, now.” Cheval held her sister’s hoof tight, but couldn’t meet her gaze. “He’s dead. And now I’m going to lay about a thousand little eggs and I have no idea what to do.”

Cheval struggled for words, but in the end all she could say was: “Help.”

Flurry didn’t know anything about raising changeling eggs. Cadence didn’t either. Shining hugged his daughter and told her it would all be okay, and tried to ignore how much she looked like Chrysalis. All of them promised to help her. They all said they loved her.

Double Time was not in residence in the castle, but she wasn’t far away. Cadence summoned her back, and she made the journey with all speed. When she arrived barely a day later, Cheval asked to see her alone.

Both of them were in their true forms when they met. Double Time was the color of paint splotches and wild-flowers, and her little membrane tail flicked behind her. Cheval sat up straight, wings lifted in a posture that emphasized her height. Her horn came to a point like a curving knife.

“Don’t sit like you’re on a throne,” Double snapped.

Reflexively, Cheval slouched. Then she straightened again, hesitated, and flicked her wings up and down. “It was… the way it felt most comfortable to sit. I’m taller. My legs need to go somewhere.”

“Yup,” Double agreed. “You’re a queen. It’s instinctive. It’s natural. Your body wants to sit with authority. Do it again and I will slap the stupid right out of you.”

“Heh.” Cheval couldn’t help but laugh. She slid off the edge of her bed to sit on the floor. “Thanks.”

“I don’t know anything about caring for eggs. I’m not a nursery worker,” Double went on, her tone direct and authoritative. “Thorax’s hive is in a much better position to help you care for your children. They’re also in a better position to keep you safe from Amaryllis’s agents. You should go there as soon as possible.”

“Yes. I know. I didn’t need you to tell me that.” Cheval drew in a breath. “I also didn’t ask you here because I needed help…” She hesitated a moment and moved a hoof over her belly. “With biology. This isn’t a changeling biology question. This is a… ways of my people question. You’ve been my mentor on bug-stuff for a long time. I need your advice.”

“Okay.” Double paused. “Ask.”

“You um… you told me once, ‘you contain many ponies.’ And I didn’t really question it. Because it’s like, ancient fortune cookie wisdom or something, right? You accept that it’s deep and try to make peace with yourself. But Amaryllis said the same thing.” She stared at the ground. “What does it mean? Exactly. No metaphorical fluff.”

“It means that you, the person, are made of many parts. Part of you is selfish. I have seen that side of you. But you’re not selfish all the time. And many times you’re not selfish, it isn’t because you’ve consciously restrained the urge. It’s because you don’t feel the urge in those circumstances.”

Slowly, Double unfolded a leg and pointed a hoof at Cheval. “So if somepony asked me, ‘is Cheval selfish?’ I would have to say ‘sometimes.’ And if that pony asked me, ‘is Cheval kind?’ I would have to say ‘sometimes.’ Clever? Sometimes. Cruel? Sometimes. Mature? Dramatic? Self-aware? Vain? Sometimes. So depending on where you are, you will behave like a completely different creature. Your personality will change.”

“That’s not a changeling thing. Ponies do that too.”

“Yes, they do.” Double Time frowned. “Who told you it was a changelings-only thing?”

“Amaryllis.”

“She is an ignorant tool and you should not take her advice.” Double stepped up to Cheval’s side, tapping the hardest part of her shell with a hoof. “We’re not so different from ponies, in a lot of ways. The only difference is when we put on a character, we can change our faces to match.”

“So it’s acting.”

“No,” Double Time shook her head. “Novices act. Master infiltrators make themselves feel the character. The easiest way to act angry is to be angry. The easiest way to act kind is to be kind. Find the part of you that is those things and let it take control of your flesh. The mask becomes flawless because it isn’t a mask.”

“So when Amaryllis acts all sweet and loving and ‘look how reformed I am’ she’s actually being kind to the creatures she helps.” The bitterness in Cheval’s voice bit.

“Yes. I know it sucks to hear, but there is a reason she’s got half the north thinking she’s the pretty pretty princess of candy and gumdrops. It’s because sometimes she is. The act is not skin deep.”

“And when I…” She paused. Her hoof scraped on the floor like she was digging in the dirt. “R-word. A griffon. The father of my children. That wasn’t any different.”

Double Time froze for half a second, her face pulling into a neutral mask. “R-word?”

“Yeah. Amaryllis said. I mean. Don’t use the R-word.”

“Well.” Double drew in a breath and let it out. “I was wondering what you did to earn that black shell. And no. No. That was 100% you.”

“I had nesting instincts.”

“Cool.” Double’s tone turned caustic. “Did they physically possess your body, jerk you around like a puppet, and force you to abuse the ponies around you like they were tools that existed for your pleasure? Did they? After it was over, were you suddenly liberated from their terrible grasp? Did you cry ‘oh Celestia, what have I done’? Or did you try to rationalize why it wasn’t so bad, because you enjoyed it?”

Cheval squeezed her eyes shut and looked away. “I’m sorry.”

“Stuff your apologies.” Double Time got in her face, leaning in until they were muzzle to muzzle, physically stopping her from looking away. “You decided to embrace the old ways, you get to live with what that means. It means that earning your redemption takes years, if you ever earn it. It means that the ponies around you may forgive you for what you’ve done, but they will never forget, and you will always be a predator because you decided to make yourself one.”

“I know,” Cheval’s voice cracked.

“Do you? Do you really? Because when I walked in you were fantasizing about being the Changeling Queen of the Crystal Empire.”

“Yes!” she snapped, tail lashing behind her. “Yes, I really know.”

“Then why haven’t you told your family yet?”

“I will. I will. I swear I will. But there’s something I need to do, first.” She stiffened her spine and drew herself up. “You know mom, uh… Cadence. Is planning to surrender. Swear fealty to Amaryllis.”

“Yes.” Double Time pulled her head back and buzzed her wings. “I know.”

“It’s a huge mistake.”

“Yes, I know. I tried to talk her out of it.” Double shrugged. “A lot of ponies did too. But she’s made up her mind. She’s tired of politics and tired of war and I think she wants to go back to being a matchmaker.”

“We’re not beaten yet.”

“The Crystal Empire may not be beaten yet,” Double tapped the bedpost twice, “but your mother is.”

Cheval stared up at Double Time. It took her a moment to find the courage. “Flurry Heart would resist Amaryllis. If she was on the throne.”

Double Time drew her head back. Her face twisted down into a frown. “You don’t get to make those sorts of ‘idle comments’ about a reigning monarch. That’s treasonous talk.”

“Flurry is the heir and the—”

“No.” Double hissed. “This conversation is over. You’ve got until the end of the day to tell your family about what you did or I’m telling them for you.” She turned on her heels and marched towards the door.

“Wait, no, Double. Stop. Stop!” Cheval called. Double did not heed her, and grasped the door to leave.

Then, Cheval’s eyes glowed. “Stop.”

Double Time froze in place like she was a statue. Her eyes darted around in her skull, and her leg shook like it was holding back a tremendous force. Silence held over the room, as Cheval watched and Double Time struggled. But it soon became clear that Double could not break the hold upon her.

So Cheval sat like she was sitting on a throne. “Turn around,” she said, her voice taking on an unnatural multi-tonal harmony. Double Time turned in place, still stiff, her limbs still shaking with the force inside them.

“You will assist me,” Cheval told her, but Double Time didn’t move, except her continuing shaking. “Stop it. Stop it. You’re only making this hurt.” Cheval snapped. “Why are you resisting this? I’m trying to save the kingdom.”

Speaking through clenched teeth, Double snapped: “You’re trying to overthrow the two ponies who showed me mercy when I didn’t deserve it. Go screw yourself.”

“You’re a drone; I’m a queen. You can’t win.”

“You’re not my queen.”

For a few long moments, Cheval considered that. Then, in a flash of green, she turned into Amaryllis. Not Amaryllis as she was on the train—with the candy coat and the bright smile—but Amaryllis as she was, dark queen of the North, whose rule was terror and whose whims became lightning bolts to shatter the dwellings of ponykind.

Double’s breath caught in her throat.

Then, eyes still aglow, Cheval said: “Do you remember me?” Her impression was perfect.

Chapter 8

A rush of green fire appeared out of the thin air over Flurry Heart’s desk. By dragon post, a letter arrived that bore her name.

Dear Flurry Heart,

Has Double Time arrived in the palace? She said she needed to go north to see you and Cheval, but she hasn’t been answering any of my messages. I’m starting to get worried.

-Light Step.

Princess Cadence of the Crystal Empire woke up in the morning with a yawn. She rolled over to check for Shining, and upon discovering he’d gotten up before her, decided that she could enjoy her rest a few minutes more.

Eventually, she got out of bed, refreshed herself, showered, and brushed her mane. And when she emerged into the dining room, she found her daughter seated at the table. Breakfast was there.

Which is to say, Cheval was there, and Cadence had arrived. Also there was toast and hay and orange juice and such.

“Hey, mom,” Cheval said. “Dad got up super early and took Flurry into the city.”

“Oh.” Cadence hesitated a moment, then sat. “You didn’t want to go with them?”

“I thought we should talk.” She pushed the toast her mother’s way. “You know. About life.”

Cadence eyed her daughter’s leg when she used it to push the toast. Her gaze followed one particular hole. “I guess we should.” She took a piece of toast and applied jam. “I know what those holes mean.”

“I know.” Cheval lowered her head. “I impersonated a few griffons. In public. Or at parties and things. Where they’d get hugs from their significant others.”

“I sent you muffins.”

“I know. I know. I…” She let out a long breath. “I threw them away. Not because of anything you did. Flurry thought, well. Nevermind. I was an idiot. I thought I had to learn to survive on my own. Or that it was in my blood.”

“When you left, you promised you’d eat them.” Cadence lifted a hoof to her face. She shut her eyes, and a faint squeak escaped her.

“I know. I’m…” Cheval drew her mouth into a line. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“You’re sorry you hurt me? Cheval, look what you did to yourself.” Cadence gestured at her. At the holes and the black shell and the fangs. “You’re my daughter and I let this happen.” Her voice cracked.

“No, mom, don’t cry.” Cheval reached across the table, resting her hoof over Cadence’s. “I felt you and dad crying last night. I didn’t want to—”

“The changeling ‘old ways’ have taken everything from this family. They attacked our wedding, harassed our marriage, tried to kidnap Flurry Heart, burned our kingdom. And now they’re going to take you away too.” Cadence started to tear up. “You were the only good thing to ever come out of all this suffering.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m not. Mom, I’m not.” Cheval held both of her hooves over Cadence’s. “I made some mistakes. I did some bad things. But I’m not a bad creature. I’m here and I need you.”

“You need me for what?” Cadence choked up, her voice thick. “Lunch?”

“Yes. I’m pregnant and I don’t know how I’m going to keep my children from starving.”

Cadence froze, and into the silence, Cheval went on. “At school, I didn’t know what was happening. I thought I was a drone. I did. I thought sex didn’t mean anything. And then somehow I was always starving. No matter what I got it wasn’t enough. Every griffon had to adore me and I panicked when they didn’t. And I thought it was me. I thought I was a monster.”

“You’re…” Cadence’s glanced at Cheval’s midsection. “You’re pregnant.”

“Yeah. Amaryllis said the first birth is smaller. ‘Only’ a thousand eggs. Double Time said I had to go to Thorax’s hive right away, since they would know the most about caring for them. But I don’t want to run away to the badlands and… and what?”

Cheval let out a breath and looked away. “Abandon them there? Stay in the badlands forever? I don’t know. This was an accident. He was my roommate’s boyfriend and I thought he was cute. And I know I made mistakes. I know I made a lot of mistakes and it’s going to take a long time to redeem myself, but…”

“No. No. You had… bad instincts. Nesting, or something.” Cadence shook her head. “It’s not your fault.”

“Yes, it is.” Cheval smiled. No sooner had she completed the gesture than she froze. A hoof leapt to her face to cover her hideous, monstrous fangs. “Dammit.”

“Dear, it’s not so—”

“Please don’t tell me it’s okay when it’s obviously not.” Cheval snapped. “I did things I can’t get away with. I can’t. Stealing love is not okay. But I need to know.” She tapped her shell. “I need to know how this is going to end.”

“Of course.” Cadence leaned across the table and kissed Cheval’s forehead. “Let’s sit and talk about it, okay?”

“Okay.” Cheval sipped her water.

“What’s the gestation period?” Mirroring the gesture, Cadence took a bite of her toast. “How long do we have?”

For over an hour, they talked about raising children. The eggs would have to go to Thorax’s hive, but Cadence could visit regularly. Once the Empire was no longer under her control, she might be able to move there entirely. When the eggs turned into grubs, they could be sent across Equestria to loving families.

“I’m sure,” Cadence said, stifling a yawn, “Celestia would love to adopt one. She’s been eager for a new apprentice ever since Twilight moved further from Canterlot.”

“Maybe. But I think what really matters is that you’re there. You’re their grandmother.” Cheval smiled again. She didn’t cover it. “Well, their real grandmother. Their technical, biological grandmother gets no visitation rights.”

“She can keep the kingdom. I’ll steal her grandchildren.” Cadence started a laugh, only to yawn again. “I am really tired this morning.”

“You can go back to sleep if you want. I’ll be here all morning.”

“Don’t be silly. I just got up.” Cadence tried to stand, but found that her legs weren’t responding. Lifting a forehoof into her vision, she struggled to focus on it, shaking her head twice in failed attempts to clear it. “What’s… that’s not right.”

“Mom, whatever else happens? I want you to know. I love you and I always will.” Cheval swallowed. “And I’m sorry.”

Cadence’s eyes darted from Cheval to the food on the table. She leapt to her hooves in a rush of adrenaline-fueled energy and tried to light a shield spell off her horn. But the spell flickered out, and her knees buckled.

Her body fell limp on the floor.

“Sorry, mom,” Cheval said to her unconscious body. Then she called, “Guards!”

From the servant’s entrances and side doors, crystal pony guards emerged. Some were so beguiled they shuffled like zombies. Others had required very little nudging to betray their princess, and moved with their natural wits. “Tie her up. Load her onto the train at the palace station.”

Cheval was just starting to leave, when she noticed an additional figure in the crowd of guards. Flurry Heart was there, wings and horn and all, dressed in the battle-armor Shining had made for her.

“You.” Cheval took a half-step back. “What are you doing here?”

“Overthrowing mom. Wasn’t that the plan?”

“I didn’t think…” Cheval tilted her head, her stance that of an alert predator.

“I would do it? If you think I’m weak you shouldn’t be trying to put me on the throne.” Flurry forcefully pushed one of the guards aside so she could step up to to her mother’s body. “Is she dead?”

“No!” Cheval pulled back, her tone aghast. “No, I’m not… I’m not like that. She’s just asleep. I was going to take her with me.”

“Her and the Crystal Heart, right? So your new changeling hive has the power to create and store love?” Flurry checked. “Amaryllis’s plan from the first war.”

“It’s still a good plan,” Cheval said, wary.

“It is a good plan.” Flurry looked down at her mother and sighed. “Light Step warned me that Double was acting strange. I found her, removed the enchantments from her mind, and she told me everything. And I thought about warning mom and dad.”

Cheval stared at her sister for a long few seconds. Finally she asked: “Why didn’t you?”

“I was prepared to sacrifice the kingdom so our family wouldn’t be hurt. But at this point, our family is going to be hurt either way. And if it has to happen, better our subjects are protected.”

“Oh. Good.” Cheval paused. She stomped a hoof. “Good. I didn’t think you’d see that way.”

“I didn’t, at first. But you taught me something.” Flurry ruffled her wings, taking a moment to gather her words. “When she had to choose between love and power, mom chose love. And as a result she lost both. She has a good heart, but a pony needs more than that to rule. A great pony would resist you to their last breath. But she’s weak.”

Flurry glanced at the guards behind them, and added as an afterthought: “She’ll forgive you, when she wakes up in your new hive. She’ll find something in you to love, and she’ll love you, and feed your children, and your hive will prosper.”

Silence hung between them. They both watched their mother’s shallow breaths. Then Cheval asked. “I don’t want to beguile her. You really think she’ll forgive me?”

Flurry let out a faint breath and lowered her head. “You won’t have to do anything to her mind. She’ll forgive you. She really will.”

“Good.”

Then Flurry said: “I won’t.”

From inside her armor, she produced a small glass orb. Before Cheval had time to react, Flurry hurled it at her sister. Shattering on impact, it exploded into a cloud of green mist.

When the mist cleared, Cheval had turned to stone.

Chapter 9

The magical poison in the food lulled Cadence into a deep sleep. When she woke up four weeks later, Flurry was the ruler of the Crystal Empire. She'd gotten her cutie mark: a crystal heart and a crown.

Flurry loved her mother.

But she didn’t give the kingdom back.