Whispered Secrets

by Starlight Shadow

Chapter II

Canterlot wasn’t unused to seeing herds—or wolf packs—of young, rich mares on the prowl at night for handsome bachelors. It was a fine enough cover for the pair. There would be less questions if they looked like friends.

The Banner Mare was trendy enough to provide a certain anonymity on the dance floor. The lights were dark. The music was loud, if not so frenetic as it would be in a lower-class club. The drinks were flowing freely.

Since there were never enough stallions to go around, seeing friends passing the time together, or showing off, was normal enough.

The problem, at least for Lux, was keeping things looking so boringly platonic. She had a foreleg around an eager and loving dark goddess. But she couldn’t press too close to the warmth of her. She was nearly cheek-to-cheek with her, but she didn’t dare to turn her head, just fractionally, to kiss or nuzzle like every instinct was screaming at her to do. Ages of separation from Night was taking its toll. All the build-up, and days of waiting. All the letters exchanged, and teasing promises made. And she still couldn’t touch. Not really.

At least she could get an eyeful. There were no better dancers than pegasi. The way they could beat their wings to move on two hooves, or none at all. Their wild energy and instinct for movement couldn’t be matched. The way Beauty could move, fly and spin on the dance floor was completely intoxicating.

The way she’d been held against the larger pegasus during an earlier dance, being held up by Beauty’s forehooves across her chest, was a memory she would hold dear in her heart forever, she figured. She’d been able to feel every lithe movement against her back, and every breath. Her nose had been filled with the perfume from her fillyfriend’s mane, kicked up by the breeze of those flittering wings. And the way Beauty had snuck those little kisses along the base of her ear...

The bright-coated mare almost laughed at her own frustrated self-pity. There was nothing like danger and fear to get the blood burning. And a few hours of dancing with a beautiful mare to keep that steady smoulder going, to the point where Lux was sure it would drive her insane.

“Patience now.” Night murmured into her ear, when the music wound down to silence. Even her self-derision didn’t do a thing to stop a shiver from travelling down her spine, at the heat of her breath. “There’s a social thing coming up in a few days. Don’t know who’s manor it’s at, but you’re bound to be going this time. We can touch and feel all we want then.”

“You’re an evil, evil little thing,” Lux complained. There wasn’t any real scorn in it. She even let her muzzle brush almost imperceptibly against her fillyfriend’s cheek. “You always say that.”

“‘Cause it’s true. My mother can’t resist the information she can gather at those parties. Right when I say that, something will happen and we can’t sneak away.” She laughed.

“Just like always,” Lux agreed, with a melodramatically martyred sigh.

“We should probably go, if we don’t get back before two, we’re going to go through the third degree, and you don’t have the tail flick on your side,” she said teasingly.

A grin threatened to creep onto Lux’s lips. “Of course not. I like it much better on your side. Well, I mean, technically your r—”

Her words were cut short by a playfully scolding shove, and a barely-tolerant glare.

“No wonder they don’t let you go to the parties!” Night scolded, barely disguising her slight amusement. “You can’t keep that adorably scruffy tail down.”

Lux oh-so-maturely stuck out her tongue in response. Then turned to start off the dance floor, flicking that tailtip against her partner’s nose. “Says the trained seductress to the proper, chaste virgin.”

“That’s different.” Night protested, heading after her. “Half the time I don’t even need to get under their tail. Of course, that would imply I do it regularly, which I don’t. Seriously.” A blush was beginning to form.

“So defensive.” Lux called back, in a singsong voice. It helped to cover that gnawing curiosity she never voiced.

“In all honesty, sex feels kinda good. You happy?”

It was Lux’s turn to have her ears redden, as several ponies at the edge of the dance floor looked over. She folded them back to hide it. She slowed to let Night catch up, and walk at her side. The silence stretched, however, as the pair left the club.

“I think I may have fucked up.” Night’s own ears grew warm in the chill air.

Lux started, as those words broke the silence. She, after a quick look around to make sure nopony was watching, flicked her head to the side to give the mare a little nuzzle. “Sorry. I was just thinking. You mean today? By not telling your family? No, that really wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t read my mind. I was just…” She rolled her shoulders in a small shrug. “...worked up, I guess? You get sort of screwy after a night like tonight.”

“I understand. Never really thought about what you do. I’m trained in wing-blades and… other things, but not the kind of stuff you can probably do. Maybe because I don’t have a horn.”

“We never do talk about it, do we? What we do for our families.” The unicorn stopped, biting her lip thoughtfully. “Maybe we should. We’ve been together for months. Sort of. Doesn’t it feel weird that there’s this huge part of our lives—hay, most of it—that is just… off limits?”

“But it’s this part” —she prodded Lux’s chest where her heart was— “that makes the rest worthwhile.”

Lux knew she had to be wearing a really stupidly dreamy smile at that moment. She didn’t care. Well… not much. She moved forward, enough to steal a quick, surreptitious kiss from Beauty’s lips. Beauty smiled.

“We really are stretching it. I should leave.”

“I could walk you part of the way home.” Lux offered, trying to sound smooth. She was pretty sure she hadn’t kept a note of desperation from entering her voice.

“Sure.”

The two headed toward the mountainside, where the Raven estate was nestled.

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Night fluttered in through a back entrance. Most of her family were pegasi, so most of the vaults and such required a feather or used cloud-locks for access. She dashed through the halls and skidded into her room, burying herself in covers as her mother walked in a moment after.

Her mother was a prideful mare, with a jade green coat and brown eyes that often blazed with whatever emotion she currently harbored inside her. Mayling Raven liked to think she was reserved, but that intensity made her easy to read.

“How are you doing, sweetheart? I saw you came upstairs early.”

Night tried her best to convincingly yawn, not hard considering the evening’s events. “Just tired, mother.”

“Well, best you go to sleep, there’s extra training for the next two days, and after that the Goldengrapes have invited everypony to show their latest ‘art’ acquisitions. We can’t let those Shines surprise us again.” Mayling swept out of the room, her black skirt flashing behind her. Night stared at the door for a few moments, then fell exhaustedly into Luna’s embrace.

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“Keep it up, Night! More dexterity, more momentum, you have to move those wings!”

Night sucked in a breath as she sparred with her father, their wing-blades clashing together. Wing-blades weren’t the best for ground combat, but they served their purpose well for the pegasi that couldn’t hover swords in their magic. It was important that she knew how to use them well, along with the garrote.

She slashed near her father’s hooves, making him stumble. She pointed one wingtip at his throat, breathing heavily. They both smiled.

“Good girl, Night. Now let’s have another go!”

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“Keep it up, Lux. More of a smile, lower your chin a little, you have to look more demure!”

Lux sucked in a breath, and struggled not to release it as a sigh. She was sitting across the table from her cousin, Heart Shine, while her aunt scrutinized her every move and expression. She had to practice flirting with him, of all things. It was supposed to make her more social. It just served to make her queasy.

She batted her eyelashes at Heart, her voice was sickly-sweet. “Sir Shine, I simply must know: do you feel like killing yourself as much as I do right now?”

“Lux!” her aunt snapped, stomping a perfectly polished white hoof down. Heart, at least, seemed to be trying not to laugh. “This is serious! Unless you learn the game, some Raven thug will have you twisted around his hoof. We were willing to be lenient about you ignoring the social niceties for years. But we don’t have the luxury any longer. Again.”

The young unicorn rolled her eyes slightly and took in another breath, as if to steady her nerves. She straightened up on her cushion, lowered her muzzle like a proper young lady and put on a coquettish smile. “Sir Shine, you seem like a fine and proper family colt. How do you think a family would react if I told them that I liked mares? And found flirting with colts simply vile? I hear it’s becoming very accep—”

She yelped as a telekinetic strike stung her ear.

“Lux!”

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Night hovered liked a bat near the stairwell, gently tugging a rope tighter and tighter. The pony model on the other end of that line was none the wiser as the rope began to constrict the throat and cut off the airway.

Mayling clapped her hooves to the ground as she watched. “Very good! I think you’ve mastered the garrote—”

No, really?

“—so why don’t we have lunch and then go back to wing-blades? Does that sound good?”

Night forced the corners of her mouth up. “That sounds delightful, mother.”

She had been practicing her wing-blade combat and garrote work non-stop with the exception of meals and short breaks ever since her mother had made her announcement, and her muscles protested with everything they had.

She kept that false smile on as she obediently, with a sore limp, followed toward the sparring field.

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“Honestly now, I’ve seen you look fresher after a ten-mile trot,” Gilded Gleam said in stern disapproval as her levitated brush attacked Lux’s mane. The young yellow-coated mare, no more than a year older than Lux herself, seemed utterly focused on her task.

Lux happened to think that single-mindedness was cute enough from her cousin now, but it was downright terrifying in more serious situations. Like her, Gleam came from a minor offshoot of the family. The sort where all the house’s protectors were recruited from. With a sigh, Lux closed her eyes, docily letting her head be tugged around by the deadly mare. “I’m exhausted!” she complained—whined, really.

“Lifting all those canapes and sipping that wine. Yes, I can see how that would take a lot out of a pony.”

If she hadn’t been increasingly relaxed by the care, Lux would have retorted, or at least glared. Instead she continued to lay on her bed in a boneless heap. Her overly heavy green gown in a messy pool around her.

“Well, I know something that might make you feel better,” Gleam continued, unsurprisingly. She was the sort of mare that was happy to fill any available silence. “I hear that we’ll be going out again soon.”

That, at least, perked Lux up, her ear swivelled in her cousin’s direction. “Another girl’s night?”

A hook jabbed against her side. “No. I don’t think Cousin Twinkleshine has gotten over you flirting with that waitress yet.” Gleam wrinkled her muzzle. “You really can’t be doing that.”

Lux waved dismissively without opening her eyes. “Twinkleshine spends half her time off in Ponyville. I’m sure she’s used to fillyfooling. I hear that they’re all that way there.”

“You aren’t from Ponyville. You can’t go acting like some hick. You’re a family unicorn. A mare of breeding.”

Lux let out a puff of air. “Mare of breeding? Yeah, I feel really classy when I’m skulking around in the dark, covered in ash, off to go burn down some poor family’s house.”

Gleam frowned. “We do what we have to do. Our family is everything to us. It’s our reason for being.” Lux felt a jab against her thigh, at her cutie mark. “You have the family’s sun mark, just like I do. And right now our family is in danger. We all continue on by the grace of Her Highness—” Gleam corrected herself, “—Their Highnesses. And the Ravens are trying to destroy us in their eyes. Better ‘some poor family’ than everyone you love.”

Not everyone I love. I can’t let it be them or Night.