(The prompt: It's good to be the Princess.)
(This one is shorter than I'd like but what the heck. Also I suppose it hints towards some possibly unpleasant subject matter at the end.)
Princess Cadance walked slowly into her bedroom and slumped down onto the expertly woven sheets that covered her griffon-down bed. The unbridled luxury of it quickly sapped away the fatigue from her recent meeting with Celestia. As much as she couldn't let herself stop smiling during the exchange, Princess Celestia had a certain... way about her. Something in her eyes made Cadance feel as though she could see right through any sort of facade or misdirection without any effort. Though it plainly wasn't true, it was still exhausting.
She glanced over to the bedside table, her eyes met only by an empty platter and pitcher of lukewarm water.
"Another plate of these... chocolates, and a bottle of the Canterlot Vineyard."
The hoofmaiden, whose name Princess Cadance had already forgotten, nodded quickly and galloped off with the empty plate held in her mouth. Princess Cadance smiled as she looked around her bedroom. It looked much as she supposed it always did: various souvenirs and memorabilia from her life in Canterlot, interspersed with beauty products and very expensive-looking silks and tapestries. Fitting for a pony of her station, she thought.
She looked to the doorway, noticing one of the EUP guards there. For a moment she wondered how they all managed to have the same color scheme, and just how they all seemed so perfectly toned and trained. "You! Guardspony. Find a masseuse. A stallion; the one that Celestia prefers."
A moment of hesitation, and the guard saluted sharply. "Your highness!"
As he galloped off, Princess Cadance let a smile spread across her lips. There it was. That hesitation. That doubt in their eyes. The half-second glance to make sure the source of that commanding tone was really Princess Cadance of Canterlot. She couldn't deny that it pleased her that they felt used, or disrespected. It was to be expected, really. Though she supposed that, as fun as it was to tease and toe at the line, she should be a bit more careful. These weren't exactly her usual servants, and she couldn't treat them the same way.
A few minutes later, Princess Cadance found herself in absolute heaven. The silken sheets against her coat, the softness of the griffon down and the expertly firm pressure of the royal masseuse's hooves on her back, the lingering taste of the fine chocolates mixed with the absolutely sublime dessert wine, it all combined to give nothing short of perfect relaxation.
Princess Cadance, Mi Amore Cadenza, was finding that she understood precisely why Celestia preferred this masseuse. He seemed to know without prompting exactly where each press of his hooves should be, how to work the tension out of each and every muscle, and just the perfect way to touch her body to elicit the best of responses. It would probably be seen as somewhat improper, to be such putty in this stallion's hooves, but Cadance found that she didn't particularly care about that just at the moment.
Interestingly, that thought was not immediately followed by the wrong pony walking in. No, that only happened several long, blissful minutes later. Shining Armor's hooves gave a distinctive heavy, clopping report on the stone tile of the castle hallway as he walked toward the room. Cadance would know that sound anywhere, even after so short a time living in the same castle. Still, she only allowed her smile to change from blissful to a bit smug, and allowed the masseuse to continue his work.
The pointed clearing of a stallion's throat broke the stillness of the royal bedroom, and the royal masseuse jumped back from the princess as though the touch burned him. Princess Cadance turned her head toward the door, finding Shining Armor there in his EUP Captain's uniform, with a slight furrow in his brow that apparently had enough of an effect on her servants to send them quickly stammering and scattering away from her. She raised a hoof and spoke. "You're all dismissed. Come in, my dear."
The hoofmaidens trotted out of the room quickly, throwing nervous glances at Shining Armor, and the masseuse followed as well, mumbling an apology and something about following orders. Shining Armor's expression softened a bit as Cadance smiled at him, but he still didn't move further into the room than just the doorway. "Cadance, we're not really supposed to be seeing each other much before the wedding. I'm supposed to be greeting my sister and her friends tomorrow, and there are a lot of security measures I still need to-"
Princess Cadance's horn glowed a bright green as she pulled the door closed behind her fiance, and the telekinetic magic disguised a small spark of a spell that quickly worked to allay Shining's reservations and make up his mind to stay. Cadance rolled a bit to the side on the bed, smiling over at Shining with a strange light in her eyes. Her voice dropped the commanding tone from before, becoming syrupy smooth and inviting. "Shining Armor, surely you wouldn't deny your fiance? Don't worry about that stallion, you know that we share a love too powerful to be stopped."
Shining Armor's brows furrowed, and a slight buzzing headache suddenly made itself known, but he could... he could hardly say no to her when she asked like that.
As the soon-to-be prince walked across her bedroom floor toward her bed, Princess Cadance's smug smile returned. As a general rule, she didn't like to play with her food. But this particular morsel was just too sweet to resist, and she was finding that, as much as she knew herself to be a Queen...
It was good to be this Princess as well.