You raise an eyebrow and look over to Umbra, who stares back with her head tilted in confusion. What sort of rumors are floating around that could interest Luna of all ponies? And why does she seem to be implying it’s about you and Umbra?
Luna’s unsure smirk slowly morphs into a sly grin once she lays eyes upon yours and the major’s confusion. Oh, this must be bad...
“...What exactly are you talking about?” you ask, getting the distinct feeling that you should be dreading the answer.
“Well,” the princess begins, her grin growing just a little bit, “word on the grapevine is that you are... very close friends,” she says in an a singsong ‘I know something you don’t’ tone.
Umbra flicks an ear and frowns a little at the lackluster answer. “Of course we are, I was the first to befriend Anon when he first arrived here. It’s natural that we would be good friends.”
“Hmm... indeed, indeed,” Luna says, nodding her head slowly. “But just HOW good of friends are you?”
Wait a moment, WAIT A MOMENT! The princess can’t actually be insinuating what you think she is, is she?
Luna hides her mouth behind a hoof and lets out a decidedly un-princess like snort as she sees the emotions playing through your face. She almost loses it as Umbra’s jaw drops when she comes to the same realization as you.
“Princess, I think you got it all wrong, me-”
“-And him aren’t together,” Umbra unexpectedly finishes for you, making you both look at each other again.
“Riiiiight,” Luna responds, looking totally unconvinced. “How many times have you said that?”
You sputter indignantly at the indirect accusation, flustered with how fast she turned around and pinned the conversation back to you. Luckily, Umbra quickly comes to your rescue.
“Princess, Anon is a great guy and all,” she says, laying a hoof on your arm, “but me and him? Together? That would be pretty weird,” the vampire finishes, avoiding yours and Luna’s eyes.
The waitress from earlier trots her way up to the table, your plate of breakfast and coffee held in her magic aura. She sets both down smoothly and expertly in front of you and as she does so, you can feel her eyes boring a hole in the side of your head.
You turn your eyes to the waitress to find that she is still wearing her intense stare.
“Anything else I can do for you?” she asks sincerely enough, even if her expression doesn’t match her tone.
You shake your head quickly and immediately turn away from the unicorn, taking her severe eyes from yours.
You see the waitress frown from the corner of your eye, as if she found your answer disappointing, before nodding almost dejectedly and walking off to make another round at the table. Peculiarly, she freezes mid step, as if someone dropped an ice cube down the front of the apron she’s wearing. A second later, she shakes it off and keeps moving.
No one noticed the ugly, narrow-eyed glare Umbra leveled the waitress with as she left.
Good god, what is up with everyone? Did everyone wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something? First Luna grilling you and Umbra about potentially being in a relationship, when it should be obvious that you both are not. Then there is the waitress, who looked ready to pounce on you should you give her any sort of cue. Her whole stance was practically a work of art in terms of self-control.
You bring a fork full of eggs to your mouth while subtly looking around.
Most of the other ponies at the table are too engrossed with their own food and conversations to pay you much mind, but to your dismay, you still have more eyes than usual upon you. They vary from pony to pony, but a pattern becomes apparent before long.
Many of the vampony mares are eyeing you with skepticism visible on their faces, as if they were told something about you that they found barely believable. A minority of them alternate between inspecting you and, surprisingly enough, Umbra with scrutiny.
The few stallions at the table seem evenly split. Half of them give you foul, almost betrayed expressions, like someone dangled something delectable in front of them before violently ripping it away. The other half is a totally different story, because they look ready to burst into laughter for some reason you can’t begin to puzzle out.
What the hell is going on? There must be some big event going on that you’re not aware of. Maybe it’s all a prank? No. There’s no way that someone could orchestrate something like that with the entirety of the volatile nightguards. One of them would have warned you just because they felt like spoiling the fun.
Someone must have an answer.
After washing down another bite of your breakfast with a mouthful of coffee, you discreetly lean towards Umbra, making her do the same towards you before you ask: “Do you have any idea what is going on here? I’ve never seen everyone act so strange and it's starting to worry me...”
She scans her golden eyes over the table herself. “No. I would just chalk it up as a prank, but I don’t think anypony, even the princess, could get everypony in on it,” she says quietly. “Maybe we should just ask?”
Huh, that’s just what you were planning on doing. “Precisely what I was thinking.”
Without any further delay, you turn back to Luna who is still wearing her weasel-like smirk, which only grows once your attention lands back on her
“Okay, you got us,” you begin, gesturing to yourself and the vampony next to you. “What’s going on? Is this some kind of joke or something? Neither of us really know.”
To your immense concern, her sly face slowly melts into confusion. Luna’s inquiring blue orbs rake themselves over both you and the now worried looking Umbra, like the princess thought that you were the ones playing a joke. “You... don’t know?” she asks carefully, not a hint of deceit on her face.
You gulp. Despite her alignment for the dark and mysterious, Luna is an awful liar and probably will be forever, as you learned from a few profitable poker games. If this isn’t some trick...
Umbra looks up at you, her face anxious as she shifts uncomfortably in her chair.
Luna continues on. “Well, I,” she starts, touching a hoof to her chest, “was under the impression that you two were in a relationship after some gossip saying so. There is usually, after all, some truth in stories like this.”
Umbra picks up the conversation for you. ”Princess, who started this rumor and why?” the major asks imploringly. “If we know, then we can hopefully dispel it before it goes too far.”
The moon deity bites the inside of her cheek and looks away, obviously not wanting to rat out someone under her to an officer. After almost a minute of indecision, she sighs and begins the short tale. “I overheard several guards talking amongst themselves on the way to breakfast over how a pair of friends told them that they had seen you two together in Anon’s room through a window. There weren’t any names mentioned.”
Umbra snorts. “Your Majesty, there’s rarely a day that I’m not in Anon’s room. I think that this may have been blown out of proportion.”
You finish off your breakfast before tossing in your two cents as well.
“Sorry, Luna, but I’m going to have to side with Umbra on this. You might have been the victim of some changed details,” you say, making Umbra smile while the Night Princess knits her eyebrows together.
So it was all just some rumor mill garbage? That’s nice. No harm done.
”You two may want to wait, because I wasn’t finished.”
...Spoke too soon.
Luna looks between you and the vampony. “It would also explain why your rations of synthetic blood potion have been piling up in the officer’s barracks, Major.”
The princess can’t be saying what you think she’s saying, is she? Of all the secrets that you and Umbra have, this one has to be the most jealously guarded. It can’t be.
“If you aren’t lovers, then why do you let Major Umbra feed on you, Anon? According to the spectators, you must taste excellent. You didn’t even turn, to boot.”
The instant that the sentences leaves her mouth, almost every pair of ears in the room perk up and you hear a few gasps. Hardly a second later the din of hurried words erupts from the other tables occupants, each one wanting to get in on the juicy dirt that was just spilled.
When it finally hits and Luna realizes that she said that out loud, her eyes go wide and she quietly says, “Oh... My apologies...”
Well shit on a shingle.
You hesitantly turn to Umbra, as if expecting her to blow up over the whole debacle.
Her jaw is dropped in disbelief, revealing her sharp pearly teeth. She then sighs and covers her face with a hoof, dragging it down slowly. She looks back up to you, smiling a small, rueful smile. “Well, at least we won’t have to keep it secret anymore.”
Really, you wish you knew just who let their mouths fly without thinking, so you could throttle them in front of everyone else until they turn blue. This is not a fucking game. A tiny, pensive look over your shoulder makes you grimace, as it reveals exactly what you were afraid of.
Almost every pony in the room is staring at you like a starved dog does a succulent, choice cut of meat. All of them look ready jump up should you move a single muscle. The waitress from earlier looks like she’s beating herself up over not acting on her impulses.
A guttural, snarling growl coming from somewhere uncomfortably close makes you and all of the vamponies watching you stiffen. Even Luna seems startled by the sudden noise. It takes you a second to realize that the hair-raising sound is coming from none other than Umbra, who has her face twisted into something that would frighten a grizzly bear senseless.
With her sharp teeth bared, eyes narrow, and the fur on her back standing up, she looks like something out of the depths of Everfree. The change is sudden and immensely startling. It’s hard to think that someone as positive as Umbra could even become this angry... Why is she taking this so seriously all of a sudden? Didn’t she just try to look on the bright side not even a minute ago?
The snarl slowly drops off her face as the others in the room avert their eyes.
You tap her on the shoulder and quickly pull your hand back. Just in case she decides to turn and bite you. “Umbra? You alright?”
She looks back to you, the frightful expression absent before she looks away in embarrassment over the reaction. “Er, sorry. I’m not too sure what came over me,” she says with a short, unsure laugh.
“As long as you’re okay...” you tell her quietly.
The nightguard’s small smile grows slightly.
Luna looks between you and the mare with a raised eyebrow before opening her mouth to talk.
Neither you nor Umbra give her the chance. “Yes. We’re sure,” you both tell her at once, you being more resolute than Umbra.
The princess looks somewhat insulted as she closes her mouth, but it quickly turns into smugness, like you had proven some point that she was about to bring up.
By now, the conversation in the room returns to its normal volume, even if everyone is trying to keep quiet on their obvious subject. The background noise lets you, Umbra, and Luna speak without needing to go to lengths to keep it to yourselves.
“Wow, Umbra, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like that. What in the world brought that on?” you ask her with concern.
She winces and pans her ears around, apparently hearing something she didn’t like. “I’ll tell you later; there are still too many eavesdroppers around.”
You just lay a hand comfortingly on her cool shoulder, prompting her lean into it ever so slightly.
Luna rolls her eyes as her smug smirk comes back full force. “You two seriously aren’t convincing me on the whole ‘we aren’t together’ thing,” she mocks. Then, the expression on her face softens into light remorse. “For what it’s worth, I apologize once more for blurting everything out. It wasn’t my place to say, even if it was not on purpose.”
Really, you’re pretty upset over this. Luna’s little slip is going to have a ton of fallout for you and there’s not much you can do about it. At the same time, you can’t really voice your displeasure, seeing as how Luna is royalty and doing so would be immensely bad form. WIth no other options, you wave off her regret. Both in your speech and with a motion of your hand.
“It’s fine, Princess. It’s not exactly something that we can keep hidden forever, so better here where everyone can hear rather than just have it float around until it was traced back to us,” you tell her as you prop your elbow on the table and lean your head into your fist. Damn, you woke up not even two hours ago and you already feel exhausted. THANKS LUNA.
You take a drink of your coffee, swallowing the mouthful and grimacing as you find that it’s gone cold. Black coffee at anything other than hot is never good.
Looking over at Umbra, you nod towards the door, soundlessly asking her if she was ready to go.
She nods in return before standing out of her chair and giving her back legs a stretch.
You stand as well and address Luna while you’re at it. “Princess, it’s been nice to see you as always, but I think it’s time for us to go. Things to do, ponies to see, and all that.”
She nods in understanding and subtly mouths ‘I’ll make it up to you’ just before you turn. A favor from royalty? One from the youngest of the worshipped celestial sisters no less? Maybe this didn’t turn out so bad after all.
You and the mare leave the dining room out the door you came in. Once the large double doors come to a close behind you, Umbra lets out a relieved sigh at the lack of noise and perks her tufted ears back up.
“Better?”
She nods an affirmative as you both begin to wander down the blue-tinted hallways of the castle.
“So,” you begin as you lock your hands behind your head, “what is it that you wanted to say in the dining room? Why did you get so worked up?”
Umbra lets out an uncharacteristically melancholic sigh. “It’s sort of embarrassing really, but all the staring was getting on my nerves on top of everything else, so I sort of... lost it and got angry,” she says, stopping to look at the moon from a window.
You come to a halt next to her, looking outside at the bright orb as well. “What do you mean by ‘everything else’? Nothing else has really happened...”
Umbra is silent for a moment, probably pondering on what she wants to say. “I suppose that I feel like I could have preve—No, I definitely could have prevented this.”
She looks at the ground, her golden eyes inspecting the marble floor without really taking anything in. “As an officer, I’m supposed to be observant, yet I totally failed to notice that the curtains in your room weren’t drawn. It makes me look incompetent while it pulled you into this mess,” Umbra laments lightly. She lets out a frustrated exhalation and looks back up at the moon. “Princess Luna’s poking fun at the situation and all the staring didn’t help either.”
You can’t help but bite your lip at all the revelations. Is she really taking it this hard? That’s not like her at all. Normally you would just tell her to suck it up, that mistakes can be made and that no one is perfect. But she’s well and truly upset about this...
“Umbra, I can’t say that I see why you are so upset. Really, it’s my fault for not having the curtains fixed right even if you say otherwise. Even if it was your fault, which it’s not, I seriously doubt that anyone is going to get on your case about a small slip up like that,” you reply with certainty.
She shakes her head slowly and looks up at you, her face so apologetic that it makes your chest tighten. “It’s not that, not that at all, Anon,” she says lowly. “I’m more concerned about how this is going to attract trouble for YOU. Those blood potions are simply awful but we need them to sustain ourselves since we can’t go and feed on normal ponies without causing mass panic. Regular food helps, but it’s all nutritionless filler compared to blood.”
You roll your eyes at the part about the blood potions. “Umbra, those potions can’t be that bad. I think you’re exaggerating some.”
She snorts and looks at you with a raised eyebrow, as if amused with how you dismissed her claim. “Alright, think of it like this,” she says. “You have a vial of medicine that you must take every night. It tastes like ash, iron shavings, and dirty river water.”
You grimace at the description. Just the thought of such a horrid concoction coats your tongue in a fearsome phantom taste.
“If you choose not to take it, then you run the risk of going crazy with insatiable hunger. If you do, then that taste is going to stay in your mouth unless you like brushing your teeth for almost an hour.”
Okay... that actually sounds like a really unfair deal.
“They haven’t thought of making the potions taste better?” you inquire.
Umbra raises her wings in the equivalent of a shrug. “Apparently mixing anything else in there will dilute the potion’s effects to the point that you need to take more. So it’s back to square one.”
Damn.
“It’s still fine. I doubt that anyone is going to attack me or anything for my blood.” A shiver runs down your back. Saying that out loud probably wasn’t the best idea, because you likely just jinxed yourself.
With a skeptical expression, Umbra says “You did see that waitress, right? She looked about ready to take your face off.”
“I’m a bit more resilient than you give me credit for. I really doubt that she could have forced herself on me.”
“Anon, I’m half your size yet I’m stronger than you,” the batmare says as deadpan as can be.
“Yes, but,” you point a finger at her, “you’re getting a boost from feeding off of me, so I bet that the others aren’t on your level.”
“Even then, Anon. It’s not the ones who use brute force that you need to watch out for, it’s the diplomatic ones that you really need to keep an eye on. They could force you into a corner without ever laying a hoof on you.”
“Like you did? I think I know how vamponies operate now.”
Umbra flushes from the accusation and reminder of your first meeting.
You both go back to looking at Luna’s namesake hanging high in the sky, a companionable silence being held. You’re the first to break it.
“Say, Umbra?”
”Mmm?”
You reach down without looking and run a hand through her short mane. “Don’t beat yourself up over this. It’s not your fault and I certainly don’t blame you for it. You shouldn’t blame yourself either.”
She says nothing, then lets a gentle grin find its way to her face, making the silver moonlight gleam off of her teeth. “Thanks, Anon.” As an afterthought, she slyly adds: “I always knew you were a softy.”
She never even saw the flick to her muzzle coming.
“Ouch!” she says, holding her now smarting nose with a hoof. “What was that for!?”
“You couldn’t just savor the moment, now could you?” you ask rhetorically with a shake your head. Turning on your heel, you start off for the front of the castle. “Come on, let’s go see what everyone downtown is doing.”
Umbra smiles and bounces right up from her spot. “Right behind you!”