//------------------------------//
// Chapter 26 
// Story: Auntie Tia's Matchmaking Service 
// by Shaslan 
//------------------------------//

Cozy Glow sat in the oak-panelled room, leaning heavily upon the plush red arm of the chair in which she rested. A fire crackled just beside her, and she stared into the flames. The leaping red and yellow spires were reflected in the flat black pools of her eyes. 

A book lay open on the table before her. It was bound in rich brown leather, like many of the others on the mahogany shelves lining the walls. The open page showed a series of chess openings, but even Cozy’s favourite subject held no interest for her today. She was too nervous. Besides, she had memorised the book years ago, the first time she read it. 

The private room in the Grand Master’s Chess Club was the picture of old Canterlot money. Here was where some of the most intelligent ponies in the kingdom gathered, to talk, read, and test their wits against one another. It would have been a place sufficient to intimidate anypony. 

Anypony, perhaps, but Cozy’s date for the day. Once, she might have picked a venue specifically to discomfit a potential match. What was dating, after all, but another sort of battle? 

But that had been before Auntie Tia. Before Cozy had signed over her love life to the meddling hooves of an ex-royal. All of her prior attempts at romance had ended in disaster, leaving Cozy Glow crackling with so much rage that Rarity had guilt-tripped her into allowing someone else to manage the whole thing. 

Not that Celestia’s hoof-picked dates had gone much better. 

And today’s match, Celestia would have her believe, was the end goal of the ridiculous journey Cozy had been forced to undertake. Celestia’s magnum opus, the date she had been saving for last. 

“I believe you have learned something from this process, Cozy Glow,” muttered Cozy, attempting the sing-song rise and fall of the Princess’ old Canterlotian accent. “And I have learned something too, about you and about what you need. This pony, I think, will meet all of your needs and more.”

Cozy Glow snorted. “Buck to that. It’ll go as badly as all the others.”

That was what logic and common sense promised, at any rate. There was no way that anypony of the lofty background Celestia had described would do anything other than run from a creature with Cozy’s history. 

But then again, Celestia’s proposed match had agreed to this initial meeting. She had even agreed to travel south to Canterlot, to meet on Cozy’s turf. That would immediately give Cozy Glow the upper hoof, which spoke volumes about her match’s confidence. 

No, wait, Cozy quirked her head sharply to one side. I shouldn’t be thinking like that. 

Those were just the thought of adversarial thought patterns Mama had counselled her against yesterday. 

“Nopony is out to get you, darling,” she had whispered, looking into Cozy’s red eyes with the soft blue of her own. “Just approach ponies with an open heart, a generous soul like the one you show to me, and I know that they will learn to love you just as much as I do.”

It was an old speech, but not yet a tired one. Cozy had heard it many times over the years, but Rarity meant it no less every time she repeated it, and that gave it meaning to Cozy. Mama believed in her. No matter how many ponies she pushed away, Rarity still loved her. Unconditionally. It had taken Cozy Glow a long, long time to trust in that, but the fact of it had now become the bedrock of Cozy’s life. She wanted to live up to that love. To be the pony her mother believed she could be. 

And this was part of that. She needed to keep an…an open heart, just as Rarity wanted.

With a small sigh, she straightened in her chair and looked away from the fire. She could do this. She could.

There was a small knock at the door, and Cozy’s pensive expression at once closed back into its usual sardonic smile. 

“Come in.” Her voice was as inflectionless as ever.

The door opened slightly, and the club butler entered, his grey moustaches drooping impressively. “Your visitor has arrived, Ma’am.”

Cozy Glow’s heart thudded a little faster, but outwardly she was still as a stone. “Thank you, Silverware Shine. Please show her in.”

He dipped his head politely and retreated. Cozy Glow waited, her every muscle aching from being held so rigidly still. Then, slowly, the door creaked open again, and Silverware Shine was back. 

“In here, Your Majesty,” he murmured, bowing low and holding the door ajar for her. 

Gliding elegantly into the room in a rush of icy-pink feathers came Cozy Glow’s date. Cozy swallowed and tried too late to force her limbs into a pose of nonchalance. 

The pony before her stood only a little taller than Cozy herself, with twisting blue curls crowding to frame her beautiful blue eyes. Her horn spiralled long and graceful from within their midst, and her cutie mark showed the crystalline heart for which she was named. She looked every inch the princess, but the smile that she turned on Cozy Glow held an edge and her eyes were full of challenge. 

“Hello, Cozy Glow.” The words were lightly spoken, but they seemed sharp enough to send pinpricks of — of something racing down Cozy’s spine. 

Cozy Glow’s eyes narrowed slightly as an involunary smile spread across her face. Here was a visitor that even she could not feign indifference to. “Hello, Princess Flurry Heart.”

Aqua pupils locked with ruby, and Flurry Heart sailed effortlessly into her seat. She glanced down at the book on the table, and once the eye contact was broken Cozy Glow finally snatched a breath. She had not looked away first — but somehow she still felt that she had come off the lesser in this first, most crucial interaction. 

“Hmm,” Princess Flurry Heart said blithley. “Akhelhine’s Defence.”

If it had not been before, Cozy Glow’s attention was caught now. She leaned forward. “You know it?”

The Princess shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone?” Idly, she flicked through a few pages of the book. “It strikes me as a little passé for somepony of your abilities.”

A delicious shiver ran down Cozy Glow’s wings. “Do you think so?”

Flurry Heart cocked her head to one side. “I believe you said in your letter that you wanted to play a little. Shall we find out?”

Cozy Glow swallowed. Hard. Then she turned back to the butler, who still hovered unobtrusively in the doorway. “Silverware Shine, please will you fetch us a set? The post-Lunarian Return era stone set, I think. The marble one.” She turned back to her guest, the sight of the Princess sprawled so carelessly in the chair sending another thrill shooting down her spine. Cozy took a breath, and worked hard to sound casual. “Would you like anything to drink, Princess?”

“You can call me Flurry Heart, I think.” The Princess’ grin was delicious. It was as though everything she said was a double-edged sword, with some sort of hidden meaning that only the two of them knew. “We are on a date, after all.”

Lifting one corner of her mouth in response, Cozy spoke again. “Would you like anything to drink—” she lingered over the next words, “Flurry Heart?”

Flurry’s eyes slid away from her own, a smile playing over her lips. “Raspberry lemonade, please.” 

Nodding slightly, Cozy returned her gaze to Silverware Shine. “And the same for me.”

The butler left, the door closing almost silently behind him. That was how staff should behave, Cozy thought, distracted for just a moment. Quiet and unobtrusive. Not clanking all over the place with a squeaky tea trolley like that insufferable octagenarian Princess Celestia insisted on employing. 

She looked back to her guest. “Not traditional lemonade, then?” It was a trite question, she knew. But somehow every statement they exchanged felt like the opening salvoes of a chess match, and Cozy didn’t want to bring out her solar princess piece right away. Best to stick to pawns — just for the moment — and see what hidden meanings she could weasel out. 

The Princess shot her a look from under hooded eyelids, and the intensity of that clear blue gaze made Cozy Glow’s heart stutter for a second. “I find that I like…” she paused, and ever so slightly licked her lips, “The tingle it creates.”

Unable to help herself, Cozy Glow leaned forward, hypnotised by Flurry’s every movement. She had never met anypony so enchanting, so effortlessly beautiful — and then she saw the spark of humour in the Princess’ eyes, and she snapped back into herself. She leant quickly back again, coughing to cover her movement, and glanced back up at Flurry, to see the other mare hiding a smile. 

Cozy’s eyes narrowed. Flurry knew exactly what she was doing. It was all part of the game. Well, Flurry Heart might be a Princess, and Cozy Glow had long since given up her claims to the title of Empress, but she was still the bucking queen of games of wit. She could hold her own. 

“And what about you?” Flurry Heart challenged her. “You only play with granite chess sets usually?”

A flip of her blue ringlets. “I find that I like the weight it lends a game.” Cozy Glow looked up at the Princess from under lowered lashes. “The thud of the pieces on the board tends to make each move seem a lot more…impactful, somehow.”

Cozy Glow knew that she was objectively a beautiful mare. Her mother reassured her of it often enough, and in her younger years she had used her perceived sweetness and her natural charm to get her way more times than she cared to count. Ponies seldom looked deeper than surface level, and she had used that to her advantage many a time. 

But that had been in the past. These days, Cozy’s face was well known, from the history books, newspapers, and even that Celestia-damned statue that only the Princesses knew how many tourists had come to gawk at over the years of Cozy’s imprisonment. Cozy Glow was used to finding these days that any conventional attractiveness she retained was more than outweighed by ponies’ unfailing recognition of her and subsequent repulsion. 

Though Flurry Heart certainly didn’t seem repulsed. A slight blush spread across her face, and Cozy Glow suppressed a grin. She could still give as good as she got. 

Flurry noticed Cozy’s smile, and she hid a giggle with her hoof. The two mares sat back in their chairs, silently measuring one another up for a few heartbeats, before the door slid open once more. 

Silverware Shine entered, a tray suspended in his magic. On it were two glasses of sparkling red liquid and an ornately carved wooden box. He set all three items down on the table between them, and removed Cozy’s book to reshelve it after she gestured him away. 

As he exited once more, silence settled once again over the room. The pause stretched, and Cozy savoured the tension, until Flurry Heart broke it by lighting her horn to open the box. 

“Alright,” the Princess said, that same mischievous grin curving up one side of her muzzle. “Let’s play a little game, shall we?”

Cozy Glow placed her hooves on the arms of her chair and leant in. “Oh, yes.”