The dungeons smelled old, their ambient emotion dry and stale like desert sand – a sure sign they’d barely been used in centuries. Not even a clichéd rat scurried amongst their largely abandoned caverns. But this was as much as she deserved: a cell to herself, and nothing but an endless hollow for company.
Chrysalis sat in the corner she deemed furthest from the bars, a silver platter bearing her breakfast left untouched in the centre of the cool, perfectly smooth floor. She was hungry, close to starving, but she couldn’t bring herself to eat after what she’d done, and almost convinced herself to do.
An echo resounded throughout the chasm, and the clop of hooves followed. It wasn’t long before she caught the scent of expensive perfume, along with the sterile aroma of sombre acceptance. She didn’t need to see who it was, and even as the figure stopped by her cell, illuminating the way and casting long shadows with a golden glow, Chrysalis refused to look at her.
“Don’t.”
Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, having opened her mouth to speak, gradually closed it.
“I know what you’ve come here to say,” Chrysalis murmured and shook her head. “Don’t. I’m not worthy of absolution.”
“That’s not for you to decide.”
“Why shouldn’t it be?” she countered, deigning to briefly peer at Cadance from the corner of her eye. “You were right. From the moment I arrived, you always were. You were right to distrust me, to try and separate me from Flurry. You saw through my lies as if they were crystal clear, and I took pride in trying to deceive you.”
There was a pause. “You don’t anymore.”
“But I shouldn’t have been like that in the first place. None of this should’ve happened. And it was my pride, my… petty need for vengeance… that nearly stole your daughter away from you – the only one who believed in me.”
Another pause, longer this time. “I’d be lying if I said I’m not bitter about it,” Cadance admitted, followed by a drawn-out sigh. “I still am. I’ve had nightmares of you threatening her, pressing that crystal to her throat. But I’m not here to tell you about them. I’m here because I don’t want to be mad at you anymore.”
A speech, Chrysalis had expected. That little titbit, however, she hadn’t, and she turned her head ever so slightly toward her. “Is Flurry?”
“No.” The princess faintly, but not unnervingly, smiled. “And I envy her for that. She knew who you were before you came to us, what you could do while you were here, and even when you showed your true colours… or what you and I thought your true colours were… she still had faith in you. Because she saw something I never wanted to: a mother.”
Chrysalis felt a pang within her. She wasn’t sure how to react, but her instinct to be ashamed didn’t feel right. Every emotion brighter than melancholy would only get her in more trouble – invite suspicion, further distrust, and then exile or worse.
“I love Flurry Heart,” Cadance continued, her tone dragging its heels back into a cheerless timbre. “I’d do anything for her. What that includes, I hope I’ll never find out. But maybe, looking at us through that same lens… we aren’t as different as I first thought.”
She could monologue all she liked, but Chrysalis wouldn’t let herself be convinced. She’d lied before, and Flurry had turned away because of it. “I told her love can be a dangerous thing.”
“It certainly can,” the princess soberly agreed, much to Chrysalis’ surprise. “I don’t know what your life was like before Canterlot, but it’s clear to me now that… you relied on your children to keep you going. And their absence hurt you. So from one mother to another—”
“Don’t.” Chrysalis shook her head once more, looking to Cadance with upturned brows and straining to keep the wetness from her eyes. “Please. Just don’t.”
Cadance stared back, caught somewhat off-guard, but eventually closed her mouth again and gulped. “Then how can we make this better between us?”
It took a while for Chrysalis to come up with a response, and then another moment before she summoned the courage for it. “Let me see her again,” she said, her volume nearing a whisper’s pitch, her tone almost pleading. “Let me apologise. It… might be too soon… but if I could just see her one last time…”
The princess was silent, betraying nothing but a contemplative, pensive air. “When she’s ready.”
And then after a beat, perhaps to gather her wits, she turned and began walking back the way she had come, heading for a staircase far out of sight.
“Cadance…”
Her hoofsteps halted.
Chrysalis cautiously shimmied toward her cell’s entrance, as if approaching too fast might trigger some form of trap, even though she knew full well that both their vindictive days were over. “Have you heard anything from Thorax?” she queried, pressing her forehead against the bars, gazing into the gloom and clinging to an empty hope. “Does he know I’m here? Are my children upset with me?”
Yet another pause, before the tension eased. “I never said a word to them.”
Chrysalis let an anxious, tattered breath go and allowed the warmth of relief to fill her chitinous shell. “Thank you,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut so that a tear fell freely. “Thank you.”
The princess resumed her ascent and closed the dungeons’ entrance behind her, and all was still and quiet in their depths. But Chrysalis didn’t mind so much anymore, because she was grinning from ear to ear.