"I'm sorry—" Cadance began her apology instantly when she saw Sombra the next night, waiting with an impatient scowl at their hallway. At the same time, she didn't think that he wanted to see her.
"Are you really?"
"Yes, Sombry, I really am. I-I didn't mean to make you so upset or... or..." The tall Goddess-Empress of the Crystal Empire, Mi Amore Cadenza, alone and imperial, sunk to her knees and began to weep, feeling for all the world like something was cracking. "I'm the only one... I'm the only one... Did you lose somepony, Sombry? I kn-now what it's like to lose somepony, just p-please don't have it be you... Sombry, you're all that lingers..."
Sombra walked over to her with a calm that Cadance wasn't sure to trust or fear and loomed over her. "I lost part of myself."
Cadance nodded, but shakily and as an expression of sympathy. "I don't know what you mean, b-but I won't ask... it's just..."
Sombra kissed her. It was supposed to be simple, and it probably looked very simple, but he just bent his head down and kissed her, right on her cold, tear-streaked cheek before sitting down on the crystalline floor.
"M-My husband," Cadance sobbed, trying to meet his calmed gaze. The hot tears tracing down her cheeks felt like the only warmth she had. When had she become so very cold? Then, when it all happened? After? Gradually?
She collapsed and Sombra caught her in an embrace that was colder than death. Cadance would know what a dead pony felt like. She had been so very unfortunate.
Sombra was just as cold. She did not mind. She loved it.
Sombra nudged her slightly with his freezing muzzle, and Cadance nuzzled him back once, before wilting again.
"He was killed," she said, voice hoarse. "Flurry didn't take it well... she was the first natural-born goddess within modern Equestria's borders and... Sombry, she was so young when it happened. How do you tell a ten-year-old that somepony wanted her daddy dead? That they succeeded, and that he's gone. To this day, I don't know how I did it."
Wordlessly, Sombra leaned down to nuzzle her again, and Cadance reached up a forehoof to stroke his fluffy face, no matter how cold he was she felt comforted for the first time since the slow freeze of everything centuries ago.
"Everything froze, Sombry. I felt as frozen as a windigo. I held all the Balls and functions and sometimes I would smile — I smiled so much for Flurry — and that's when everything started. Everything began to freeze, including me a-and..."
She didn't need to say anymore. Sombra's hug told her that.
"I miss myself so much..."
As they sat there, moonlight spilling over them as usual, Cadance thought, in her haze of sadness, that this kind of freeze — where she was right here with a pony who only felt cold — wasn't so bad.
And, eventually, before the night was over, she heard Sombra whisper in her ear.
He wanted to know if she'd dance with him.
Cadance nodded and thawed a little bit more.