Chrysalis was about as uncomfortable, while at the same time cozy, as a changeling queen with an arch-enemy could be. She squirmed a little, her small body pressed between Cadance and Shining Armor. They were lying with their backs to her, but there was a constant resonance of love and happiness pouring from them.
It was decidedly impossible to think dire and evil thoughts about a pony when they were force-feeding you love, she knew this well. Lacking any other recourse, apart from revealing herself and getting thrown to the badlands again, she tucked her snout in against Shining's back, at least consoling herself with the scent of the stallion she lo- No, she wouldn't even think that in her own head.
Cadance had a wing wrapped around the little changeling that was now snuggled in against her chest. "Little Chitin, I may not be your mother, but trust that I won't mistreat you like that mean ol' queen." It was worse for her this time, Cadance mused. Impending motherhood must be affecting her perception of the changelings.
Little blue eyes opened and Cadance kissed the snout of the drone. There was an instant look of the most delighted satisfaction on Chitin's features before terror engulfed the changeling. "What happened? Where am I? What…" Love. Thick, sweet, delicious love. It practically drowned the drone in their favorite food. Chrysalis shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs of sleep.
"You are safe, relax." Cadance told the drone to do the one thing she really couldn't.
"My Queen!" Careful trotted in and saw the little drone snuggled against the mare. He couldn't help but smile, remembering when she had washed away his bonds to the old hive with the same method.
"Careful?" Cadance looked over at the suddenly day-dreaming drone.
"Oh, yes My Queen! I wish to report two more drones captured, both report that there were no others sent." Careful eyed the drone who looked, strangely enough, to be trying to get away from the Queen's hold.
Shining flopped sideways out of the strange bed, hitting the ground so firmly that his disguise failed. "What?" He scrambled and got his hooves under him, insectile wings spreading and buzzing a little on his back as he looked at the bed that had betrayed him.
"She seems to like you better." Cadance let go of the drone in her arms and watched with a grin as the changeling flew to her husband and grabbed on to his neck. "A lot better…"
Chrysalis had never been so happy in her life. She nuzzled against Shining Armor's thinning fur, she stuffed her snout into his mane and inhaled, smelling changeling and pony both. She was so happy that when her brain finally managed to get her attention she missed what it was complaining about. A well fed changeling could grow lax and she well knew it.
"I think you overfed her." Shining used his magic, his bright green and entirely love-fueled magic, to pluck the drone from his neck and settle her properly on his back. "Oh, my wings!"
The buzzing in the room got louder as the former unicorn worked new muscles and rose a few inches off the ground with a happy cry.
The fact that he landed sideways, slamming down onto the bed and breaking it didn't speak well for his landing technique. "My Queen!" Careful ran the short distance at a gallop to make sure Shining was okay.
Chrysalis' brain yelled at her again, but her heart was so fixated on the one thing she had loved as much in life as power, that she didn't want to listen to it. With sleep keeping her wits slow, she could admit that she did love him.
"I'm okay!" Shining got legs and wings all in order, lifting the little drone that had been riding on his back clear. "Are you okay, Chitin?" The only reply he got from the besotted drone was when all four of her legs latched on and she hugged his neck tight again. "I take that as a yes."
"Flying lessons. You have a pegasus for a wife… former pegasus, and it looks like landing is the same for those wings as for feathered ones." Cadance booped her husband on the nose. "Besides, with all those diplomatic events shifted around, we have some time."
"Yes Cady." Shining smiled up to his wife. She looked every bit both Princess and Empress, but then to the stallion she loved, she always looked so. "We are going to need to interview each of the new drones. We can do that on the train." Cadance nodded, watching the squirming drone, amused at her antics to keep a grip despite Shining trying to climb back out of bed. "Chitin, do you think you can wait here for us?"
Chrysalis let herself be detached from Shining by his own magic and she looked up at him, nodding.
"Good, we won't be long. I swear, Chrysalis sends her own drones in with so little preparation it almost breaks my heart. What does she think of the poor things?" Hearing the words from Shining's own mouth made Chrysalis reel as if struck, but the royal couple didn't notice.
When the two royals left, Chrysalis could finally breathe right again. Having that much love in the room was overwhelming to any changeling. Then she realized she had lost something, some feeling. Every changeling can sense their hive, the core of their being magically linked to the mass that was the rest of them. For Chrysalis, that had always been so much stronger because she was the central figure of the hive.
But it was gone.
She thrashed in the bed in her disguise, everything felt wrong! She cried and then she felt it, fain, an echo of what she thought she had lost. But this wasn't the link of a queen to her hive. This was the link of one lone changeling drone to a hive dominated by two queens.
It got worse for Chrysalis, as the warning her head had been screaming at her all morning finally got through to her. Shining didn't have the head or tail fins of a changeling drone, nor the single upper fangs. He had green hair in his mane and bottom fangs.
"He is a queen…" The dread queen of the changelings, reduced to a drone and bonded to a new hive, sat for long enough to realize the further implications. "She is a queen…" There were two queens in this hive, and one of them, the most amazing source of love in all Equestria, was her hated enemy.
Then why did her full belly feel so good and her heart beat faster just thinking about her?
"She knows." Cadance looked back at the doors to their room. "She knows but I don't think she knows we know she knows."
Shining smiled and leaned over, nuzzling his wife under the green glow of his magic. "She probably doesn't even know that we know, let alone know that she knows." He lifted a hole-filled black hoof and booped Cadance on the nose. "Let's go and bring them in, I doubt they will need to be drugged to sleep with love, though."