When Cheval said she was tired, it was because she wanted to leave the museum. But on the long walk back to the palace, a genuine exhaustion overtook her. Her steps grew heavy, and though it was not even noon, her head started to slump. With the exhaustion came a powerful hunger, as though she had not eaten in weeks.
Twilight and her friends fretted and tried to call her a cab, but Cheval managed to finish the walk to the palace on her own. When she arrived, she clung to Cadence, and devoured all the love her mother had to give.
After she feasted, she fell asleep on the living room couch. Cadence thanked Twilight, but suggested they should leave for now. Then she took up her own place, sitting opposite her daughter and watching her rest.
Cheval slept for the whole day. Cadence didn’t leave her side once.
She awoke shortly before sunset, her eyes fluttering open. She needed a moment to rouse herself, little popping sounds emerging from her joints as she stretched.
“Hey there, sleepy,” Cadence said. “You were tired. You slept all day.”
“I guess I did.” Cheval moved to sit up, but paused midway through the motion. She turned to look down at herself, and let out a weak chuckle. With more care, she sat up the rest of the way. “Um. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Cadence put on a soft smile. “You were up all night last night. You need some time to adjust.”
“I don’t think that’s why.” Cheval gestured down at her midsection. Her angular, rail-thin build made the slightest change to her figure noticeable. The chitinous plates around her belly were starting to bow outwards. It made her look pudgy.
“That’s from overeating. You’ve barely been pregnant two weeks. It’s too early for any physical symptoms.”
“If I was a pony, it would be. But I’m not creating a foal, am I? I’m creating eggs that are smaller than marbles.” She paused. “About a thousand of them. How much room do a thousand marbles take up? I feel like it wouldn’t be very much. Do I actually get fat when I’m pregnant, or is this little bulge all I get?”
“Don’t worry about—”
“Of course,” she looked her mother in the eye, “you must have considered what you were going to do with them before you unfroze me.”
“I’m…” Cadence paused. Her eyes went to the floor. “I think there are families in Equestria who would be happy to adopt them.”
“But we aren’t in Equestria, are we?” Cheval’s eyes flicked around the room, and a weak smile touched her face. “And the door isn’t open for me to leave.”
“I’m sure Flurry would be fine with your drones going to Equestria,” Cadence’s eyes stayed on the floor. “They can’t start a new hive. They’re no threat.”
“If you’re sure of that, then either you’re a fool or she is,” Cheval’s jaw pulled back into a sneer. “A thousand creatures who know that the survival of their species depends on my freedom. They’d become her thousand most bitter enemies and they’d never stop until I was free or she was dead.”
“I didn’t know what to do.” Cadence’s voice cracked. “I couldn’t refuse a chance to unfreeze you. Not after so many years waiting. I was so afraid you’d shatter. I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I want us to…” Her voice wavered. “I want to forgive you. And I want you to be happy again. And I want us to be family again.”
Cheval’s sneer faded. She looked at the floor herself, then back up at her mother. Eventually she rose from the couch, walked over to Cadence’s side of the room, and wrapped her mother in a hug. “I know. I…”
Cadence hugged her back, and into that hug she whispered. “I kept waiting to forget your father. I thought that’s how it was supposed to work. I’m an alicorn. I’m supposed to reset to zero, to find another husband, remarry, care for others. But I couldn’t. I keep rolling over in bed and expecting him to be there. And I keep waiting for you to bound in from your lessons, all excited to show me what you learned.”
Cadence’s eyes filled with tears, and her voice choked up. It was only with effort that she said: “Sometimes I think it’s supposed to be that way. I’m the alicorn of love. I embody love. And all I do is grieve for the husband and the children I lost. That maybe that’s what this world is. Love is pain, and losing the ponies you care about.”
But when it seemed she might cry, she pulled back and looked Cheval right in the eye. She smiled, and held her daughter’s cheek. “But then I think about what your father would say if he heard me like that. It’d be something inspiring, about bucking off your destiny and… and doing what nopony thought you could. And I’m going to be there for you. I’m going to forgive you the way he would, and I believe you will make everypony glad I did. So many things have happened, but under it all, you are still my sweet little filly.”
“I was never a filly.”
“Yes you were. And if I made you feel like you weren’t, it’s because I wasn’t always a great mother.” Despite her tears, Cadence forced her smile to brighten. “But you’re here, now. And now I can make up for past mistakes. We’ll save you and we’ll save your children, and you’ll have the happy life you deserve.”
Cheval took her mother’s hoof, smiled, looked her right in the eye, and lied.
She stayed up late working on her suicide note.
It went through many drafts. After all, she had a lot of ponies to think about. She needed to reassure Cadence that it wasn’t her fault, to reassure Flurry that she didn’t regret putting her on the throne, and to say thank you to Twilight and her friends. They really had meant well.
She considered not saying anything about Sky Guard. She’d only met him that morning, and so it felt strange to include him in her last words. But he was kind to her, and she wanted him to know she appreciated it. She didn’t know him well, but she thought he’d be a good Element of Laughter.
She was still working on the wording of the last paragraph when the little clock on her desk struck midnight.
“Please don’t do this,” Amaryllis said, her voice laced with fear. She was begging.
Cheval, unperturbed, looked at her clock. “Midnight again,” she said, forehooves folded on her desk. “So, are ghosts real after all?”
“Your family needs you. Your children need you,” Amaryllis forced her way around the desk, leaning over the paper to look at Cheval head on. “You’re the savior of our species.”
But Cheval remained undisturbed, and spoke calmly. “Or, is this some kind of changeling hive-mind magic? I understand I have some kind of psychic link to other changelings near me, but I confess, I was always unclear on how that worked. When Double described it, it always seemed vague and wishy-washy.”
Amaryllis pulled back, staring at Cheval with a confused expression. Again, Cheval spoke into the silence: “Or are you the result of a damaged mind? I believe ghosts appear at midnight, so that’s when I conjure you into existence?”
“This isn’t a joke.”
“Who’s joking? You could tell me with certainty if there’s life after death, or if I carry the psychic impressions of an entire species. Either would be big news. So why the silent treatment? What are you?” Cheval leaned forward, but Amaryllis pulled back, and said nothing. “Do you not know? Do you not know what you are? Are you as surprised you’re still around as I am?”
“You’re your mother’s last hope of a happy life.” Amaryllis’s tone again turned pleading. “If you do this, you’re condemning her to eternal misery.”
“Well, now you’re boring. You used to be better at manipulating me than that.” Cheval finished the last paragraph and put down her quill, folding the paper before her. Being a princess, she sealed it with wax.
“Are you enjoying torturing me the way I tortured you?” Amaryllis’s voice wavered up and down. “Fine. Good. I deserve it. I should have been kind to you on the train. I should have been a real mother to you. Say or do whatever you want to me. But don’t let me be the reason my species went extinct!”
“You are the reason your species went extinct. It’s too late for that now.” When the wax was finished drying, Cheval rose from her desk and pulled the sheets off the bed. Without her telekinesis, it was remarkably difficult to tie a noose. She had to use her teeth and three hooves at once, and needed to start over several times.
“No, it’s not. You can create a new hive. You can rebuild everything I destroyed.” Amaryllis kept moving around the bed, trying to stay in Cheval’s field of view as she worked. “Please! I made so many mistakes and hurt so many ponies. Don’t throw away the last chance to make everything right again.”
“Why?” Cheval asked.
“Because this is your chance. You can make the north what it was meant to be. You can create a hive that truely is good and kind and—”
“No,” Cheval said, and though she didn’t interrupt her work, her voice commanded silence—the way Amaryllis’s no longer did. “I understand why this is my chance to build a new hive. But, why should I? Why is the changeling race worth saving?”
Amaryllis was left in silence for a moment. Cheval wrapped another loop in her noose. “It can’t be to save the innocent. The innocent are already dead. You’re proposing to create something new. So, I think it’s a fair question. Why would the universe be any better if we were in it?”
“I know we made mistakes. But your children can be better, and—”
“Maybe they could be. I have my doubts.” She tugged the knot tight with her teeth. “But how would a thousand changelings be any better than a thousand ponies?”
Amaryllis again fell into silence. “A thousand ponies,” Cheval said, “are born every day. Less than that even. Every few hours, I suppose. It isn’t as big a deal as you’re making this out to be.”
“You’re special,” Amaryllis reached out, but couldn’t quite touch her. “You’re different.”
“And you’re boring again.” Her noose done, she tossed one end of the sheets up around a strong lighting fixture, and therein secured it. “Remember what you told me on the ride back from Griffonstone? Lie because you wish to deceive me. Lie with intent. Never lie because you’re afraid to face the truth. Admit you don’t know the answer.”
Cheval pushed a chair under her noose and got up on it. She slipped her long neck through the coils.
“I don’t know the answer,” Amaryllis said, “because I’ve never had a chance to learn. For thousands of years, the changeling race was a slave to hunger. Then they were slaves to me. I made them slaves. I told them what they could be, what they could think, what they could want. I told them what they were and that it was a sin to be anything else. They’ve never had a chance to decide what they are for themselves. I don’t know what the changeling race could be in time, and neither do you.”
Her wings buzzing furiously against her sides, Amaryllis shouted, “The changeling race hasn’t failed; I failed. I failed my hive as its queen, and I failed your father as his lover, and I failed you as your dam. You’re just like all the rest of them. You don’t know what you could be because I’ve defined your entire life. Your identity, your beliefs, your love of the Crystal Empire are all built around protecting your family from me. Around hating me. Hate is the only emotion I ever really understood and I used it to poison everyone around me.”
She struggled for words, finally managing to stammer: “And you’re about to punish the entire world for my mistakes. You are my daughter but you’re not me, and you don’t have to do the same things I did. You are different. You can be different.”
Cheval hesitated. She looked at the floor. Then a faint breath escaped her, and she squeezed her eyes shut. “You’d say anything to get your way.”
“It’s true. Every word of it is true.” Amaryllis fell to her knees by the base of the chair, begging like a supplicant before a throne. “I’m sorry, Cheval. I’m so sorry. Please don’t—”
“I’m tired of you, spirit,” Cheval said. “Begone.”
Amaryllis vanished, and Cheval was alone. She tightened the noose around her neck, and kicked out the chair.
The cord went taut. The knot tightened around her throat. Her legs kicked in the air and she struggled to draw breath. But then, something above her tore. The sheets ripped in half like cheap cloth, and she tumbled to the ground in a pile, gasping for breath.
So instead, she decided to throw herself off the side of the building. But her window wouldn’t open. Then she decided to drink the two bottles of ink in her desk, but they were clearly labeled as child-safe and nontoxic. Then she decided to electrocute herself with the cords from the lamps, before she remembered the royal suite used only firefly lanterns. Finally, she decided to use her letter opener as a dagger, and thereby to disembowel herself.
Without telekinesis, it was very hard to hit herself with the letter opener. She had to repeatedly slam her head against her side. The weak angle of attack combined with the dull edge of the opener left her blows too weak to penetrate her carapace.
On her fifth try, the letter opener stuck in her side and she couldn’t get it out. It jutted out of her, embedded in her dorsal plate.
She was struggling to pull it out when Cadence knocked.
She froze midway through the motion, her eyes wide. Though the door, Cadence said, “I was just thinking. When you were fifteen, I promised I’d stop coming into your room without knocking. Because you were a young mare, not a little filly. You were so indignant. Stomping your little hoof and everything.”
“I’m fine,” Cheval said. “Go away.”
“Twilight enchanted the building. It’s impossible to commit suicide on the castle grounds.” Cadence sniffled. “Can I come in?”
When Cheval didn’t answer, Cadence opened the door anyway. She stepped up to her daughter and said, “Here, let me get that.” It took quite a bit of tugging to get the letter opener out. It came free with a sudden yank and a loud pop.
“There,” Cadence said. “That’s better.”
“That spell on the building,” Cheval said, “was that your idea, or Flurry’s idea?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Because you’ve been cagey about why she unfroze me. You’ve been cagey about a lot of things. There are conversations you must have had with her before I woke up, but you’re dancing around the topic. And I don’t think Flurry kept me asleep for fifty-two years only to wake me up because she was feeling sentimental. So I think she had something in mind. Something specific she woke me up to do.”
“You always were the smart one.” Cadence managed a weak laugh. “Flurry is very talented of course. But you were—”
“And she didn’t want to see me herself,” Cheval said. “Maybe because she’s my sister, and she loves me, and she knows she doesn’t have it in her to kill me. She thought it was my destiny to kill you since she was fourteen. If she had it in her to kill me it would have happened long ago.”
“She can be… sentimental.” Cadence paused. “Flurry can be sentimental.”
“So was the spell her idea or your idea?” Cheval swallowed. “Because I think it was your idea. I think that’s you and Twilight undermining what Flurry intended. She’s asking me to do her one last favor.”
“That’s… no. That’s insane. That’s trauma talking.”
“Then tell me,” Cheval demanded. “Tell me why she woke me up.”
But Cadence said nothing.
The next afternoon, guards flooded into the royal suite. Crystal ponies checked for weapons, unicorns scanned for spells, and pegasai took up position near the ceiling, ready to swoop down at the first sign of violence. Two huge earth ponies and two shield-mage unicorns took up position near the door, ready to protect their charge from any physical or magical threat.
“Does Flurry always travel with this much security?” Cheval asked.
“Always, yes,” Cadence said.
Cheval watched another group of guards take up position. “It seems excessive.”
When every guard was in place, and the room so secure that a fly could not have entered undetected, the door to the hallway opened one last time.
The pony that walked in had a pink coat, that grew over wrinkled skin. Her mane was purple with a blue streak—though its colors were washed out, and large patches of it had turned grey. Her left eye was a bright blue, while her right was clouded and bloodshot. The crown that Cadence had once worn sat upon her head.
She was a pegasus, and well past seventy years old. A guard had to help her to her chair.
Nopony knew what to say. Cadence, Flurry, and Cheval all sat in silence. Cheval was staring—gaping. Her mouth hung open half an inch, sharp teeth and plastic caps and all.
Finally, Flurry said: “It’s been a long time.”