Nobody told the Princess.
Twilight sat in the throne room, indulging herself in some reading, she had a meeting cancelled and it left her with much needed free time. Her ears perked up as she heard steps approaching the door. Usually that wouldn't mean much, but Twilight had a sudden feeling that some disaster was about to happen. The doors then opened, showing Gallus with an expression that increased her fears.
"Announcing the pervert mare, you know whom."
"Thank you Gallus, if there's anything I can do to make it up to you please let know!" The beige coated mare happily trotted inside as Gallus held the door open without changing his expression of utmost annoyance. Twilight had the same expression for a moment but made an effort to hide it and asked Celestia to give her strength to go through whatever this was going to be. "Princess Twilight, my favorite princess, how are you?" The mare said as she got close enough to Twilight and bowed.
"Hello, Dr. Lillypad. I am... Well, my response will depend on the reason why you're here. Gallus certainly wasn't too happy to see you, but you can't really blame him, can you?"
"No, but... I gave him my sincerest apologies, but it clearly wasn't enough. If I knew he would get so traumatized I wouldn't have-"
"Lied to him and forced him to do things he was very uncomfortable with?"
"I didn't lie to him or forced him to do anything. Peer pressured him a little? Yes, but he was always free to just leave. Besides, his help made a lot of creatures VERY happy. He should be proud even, I credited him several times in my book. It's not healthy to hold a grudge, you know."
"Yeah... The way you think the end justify the means worries me, hardly good things come out of that way of thinking."
"I don't think like that at all! Although I admit... I have gone a bit overboard sometimes. I'm trying to get a better grip at my somewhat relentless curiosity." Embarrassed, Lilly giggled a little with a forced smile.
"If you say so, doctor. What brings you here today?"
"I'm looking for Spike, is he around?" Twilight looked concerned. Spike was too helpful for his own sake, and helping Lilly in the past caused him distress for a while.
"Let me guess, the dragon lands again?" Twilight asked, unamused.
"No, not really. This time I just have some questions to ask him. You know, the type of question that you don't like to talk about. We should really discuss your fear of sexuality Princess. Whenever you're ready of course."
"Yeah, maybe in a 100 years or so, we'll see."
"Oh... Well, I hope there are other sexologists by then!" Twilight mumbled something Lilly couldn't hear.
"As long as they're not as creepy as you..."
"Did you say something, Princess?"
"No, No! Uh... Gallus! Could you go fetch Spike for us please?" Gallus simply saluted and flew away. A few moments of silence lingered after his departure.
"So... Princess Cadance told me alicorn anatomy is not that much different from a unicorn's...."
"Where are you going with this?"
"Oh, you know, I was just wondering if-"
Suddenly a big purple dragon entered the throne room, holding multiple rolled up scrolls under his right arm. "Lilly?!" The dragon dropped the documents right where he landed and flew towards the mare, hugging her on the spot.
"Hey, Spike! It's great to see you!" The dragon put the mare down safely on the floor with both of them smiling widely.
"So, Lilly, you wouldn't be here to ask for an intrusive favor would you?" Spike said with a smirk.
"Whaaat? Of course not... right away at least. How have you been, I've heard you've been avoiding going to the Crystal Empire Lately."
"Yeah... About that, if I'm being honest after the thing with Ember, doing the Hero Receptions has been bothering me a little." Twilight was confused for a moment.
"Hero Receptions?" Both Spike and Lilly didn't seem to pay any attention to her.
"You told her about it, right? The whole deal and all." Lilly asked Spike, recording herself of him telling her something about it once before.
"I did, she insisted she didn't care about it at all and even said that she loved how much I took care of "my little ponies" like that."
"Huh... What are you guys talking about?" Asked Twilight.
"The Hero Receptions, Twily."
"Did you tell Ember..." Lilly whispered loudly to spike: "HEEEER?!"
"Hero Receptions? What's that? And who's "HEEEER"?" Twilight asked with a innocent smile on her face, only to be stared back by both creatures with worried looks on their faces. "What? There's something on my muzzle?" The princess crossed her eyes trying to see if there was leftover frosting from earlier on her muzzle.
"Twily, the Hero Receptions, whenever I go to the crystal empire and all... you know." Twilight looked confused, Lilly realized a disaster had just happened and decided to stay silent and give the siblings as much space as possible.
"I don't think I know what you're talking about, Spike. How serious is it?"
"Huh..." Spike didn't want to accept the truth, he was nervous and didn't know what to say. He looked at Lilly to signal for help but the mare was far away in the room pretending to be lost in a painting adorning the wall. He turned his gaze back to Twilight, which concern was growing by the minute.
"Twilight, you know... Whenever I go to the Crystal Empire they give me a personal "Hero's Reception"."
"Spike, I have no idea what you're talking about. Just tell me what it is already."
"Oh boy..." Spiked sighted and started to prepare mentally. He wondered how to tell Twilight about it, she always got extremely flustered when the topic of sex came up.
"Thinking of it... Why does Lillypad know about this reception and I don't? Is it one her weird sex things?"
"No... I'd say it's more of a crystal pony thing. You know... how love and sex go hoof in hoof most of the time?" Twilight scowled at Lilly, who upon realizing Twilight was looking at her, quickly snapped back to looking at the painting.
"Spike, stop beating around the bush, just say it."
"Well, Twilight... Here's the thing about crystal ponies and love... They like it a lot. And a while back, they started uh... very openly offering themselves to their uh... Hero and all that."
"W-What?" Twilight asked with a tremble in her voice. "You..." Luckily for Twilight, Spike finished explaining before she could accuse him of eating crystalized ponies.
"They can it the Hero's Reception, whenever I go to the Crystal empire I have sex with a pony or two when I arrive." Twilight was nothing but thunderstruck, was this the disaster she felt coming earlier? "Sometimes... before I leave too... And when I stay overnight too, but that's it." At that moment Twilight couldn't weigh which was worse, her brother eating ponies or abusing ponies.
"Spike... What have you done?"
"I just told you, Twilight. That's it. It's kind of a big deal to them but it doesn't have to be for us, you know?"
"Big deal? Spike, you can use your title to abuse ponies like that, I can't believe you've done such a thing! Does Cadance even know about this?"
"Yeah, she's part of the planning board." The voice came from the mare who quickly went back into pretending to look at a painting after saying it.
"What? Cadance helps with it?" Twilight was dumbfounded, so much so, she wondered if this was a nightmare.
"Twilight, I know you're worried I'm taking advantage of them but it's not like that at all. Listen, the first it happened, I was caught off guard and I indulged myself, I was a virgin and I was lonely I hadn't even had sex with Rarity yet."
"YOU HAD SEX WITH RARITY!?!"
"YES! OW! Tone it down, no need to scream, she's going to hear you all the way from Yakakistan or wherever she's at."
"You suddenly tell me something like this and expect me not to freak out?! You're pulling a Shining Armor on me too, Spike? Are you about to tell me you're getting married?!"
"What?! No! Of course not. I wasn't hiding anything from you, Twilight. I thought you knew, everyone kinda does. It's far from a secret actually."
"I... I don't believe you. Cadence wouldn't let something like that happen to her subjects."
"Twilight, Listen to me, I'm trying to tell you why you're overreacting. Please just listen okay?" After a few seconds, Twilight nodded and saw a tear falling on the floor, she just realized her eyes were almost completely teared up. "Okay, so, the first time it happened, I went with it, but I felt terrible afterwards, I felt super guilty. I thought I had used my title to grossly take advantage of a poor pony just like you said.
So I went straight to Cadance and told her about it. I was such a mess I begged for her forgiveness and to punish me, but instead she tried to comfort me and told me I did nothing wrong. She noted that I didn't lead a pony to a room and threw myself at her, it was the other way around. Multiple ponies guided me to a room with the intent of having sex with me, I had not idea until the mare started to-"
"Spike! TMI. Only relevant information please."
"Ok... Anyway, in the end Cadance convinced me that if anything I was the one who was exploited, I was the one crying in her bedroom and all. But like I've told her, I enjoyed it a lot, and so did the mare, so in the end it was just two adults having consensual sex. And after that day, Cadance found out that huge group of ponies had planned the whole thing, and also had plan to do it again, they even made a waiting list to see whose turn it would be next."
"Spike... That's... So messed up. I don't even know what to think of it now."
"Well, the way Cadance, the crystal ponies and I think is that they want to show their love for me through that act and I... I love all you ponies, Twilight. You know I do, you know I'd give my life for most of you if I needed to. I can show them that I love them back. They love me as their protector and I wanna be their protector, because I love them, Twily."
"Cadance has gone overboard this time, I can't believe she convinced you that casual debauchery is love. If you all want to be perverts so much, I guess that's fine, you are all consenting adults anyway, that's fair. But don't dare say it's love, it's not."
"Twilight... You know how the crystal heart is fueled by the emotions of the crystal ponies, right? Mostly love and all that? Since this started, the crystal heart became ever more strong. As of now, it's stronger than ever before and there haven’t been any crystalling for decades... The crystal empire actually grew-"
"By 50% of its size in the last 5 years or so. The crystal heart... expanded its influence, it covered territory that was taken by snow. Is that the reason?"
"Cadance thinks so. Even Flurry mentioned she... may had felt it every time we uh..." Spike took a moment to choose his words carefully. "She felt the surges of love powering the crystal heart."
"Spike... you didn't... did you-"
"No, I didn't sleep with Flurry, I swear!"
Twilight let out a sigh of relief, she wondered if Dr. Nosey could be right, if her embarrassment of such personal topics has created some kind of bias in her. It wouldn't be the first time someone had called her out on it. Pretty much all her friends except Rainbow Dash and Spike himself. Pinkie Pie would even go at the lengths of saying "She really needed to get laid" more than a few times, which always warranted an embarrassed scream from the princess: "No, I do not! What does that have to do with anything?" And in such cases, before she could forcibly change the subject, Applejack always commented something along the lines of "She might have a point, Sugarcube. It wouldn't hurt to relieve some stress there and again.". The worst was Fluttershy's lecturing her about the birds and the bees. Twilight was starting to accept she avoided the topic for some reason more than "It just being private business".
"Spike... I-"
"I'm sorry, Twilight. I swear I thought Cadance would've told you, or you would've figured it out somehow, you always do, I really thought you knew about it."
"It's okay, Spike, I might... Have a hard time with the topic, I tend to avoid... Talking about it. So it's not a surprise no one would've told me about such a thing."
"Yeah.. It was kinda scary when I told you about Ember to be honest..."
"I'm sorry, you should feel free to talk to me about anything, and I failed, as your friend as your sister-"
"You didn't, Twilight. You handled the Ember thing really well actually, I just had to... Omit some specifics." Spike giggled nervously.
"Still, I'm sorry I judged you like that. I should've known better, I hatched you, we grew up together. You've been through so much, risked your life for us so many times, I don't have the right to tell you that you don't love us. I know you do for a fact. And I hate to admit it, but intercourse is a big way ponies express their love for each other. I mean, even after everything with Thorax and how he shared his actual love to reform the other changel- Ponymorphs, I should've known by now that love is... complex, and it takes many different forms. I think Dr. Lillypad made that very clear with her research, I really should've read the whole book." Upon hearing this, Lilly somehow teleported near the princess.
"TWILIGHT! You didn't read my book?!" Lilly screamed with teary eyes, feeling as having been disposed of by her favorite princess and idol.
"Whoa, Lilly. Calm down. I did read it... I just haven't finished it yet." Twilight averted her gaze and gave a nervous giggle.
"Why not? You didn't like it?"
"Whaaat? Of course I liked it, I just... I just didn't have the time to finish it, I've been busy with princess stuff and all."
"When I came in here you were reading something..." Lilly suddenly sprinted past twilight to the other side of her throne, and grabbed a medium sized red book on a table near it. "DareDevil Dandy and the secret of- You were reading a Daring Do knock off?"
"Fine! I didn't read your book because it was full of extremely lewd things! I didn't need to know how a griffon penis looked like, okay?!
"Twilight..." Lilly covered her mouth with her hoofs, her eyes were wide open and sparkling, Twilight assumed she was about to a river.
"I'm sorry, Lilly, your book was so thorough and full of very detailed descriptions and realistic drawings that I felt... embarrassed reading it... It felt like I shouldn't be doing it, I can't explain it exactly, but I promise I'll try my best to read it carefully, not because you wrote it, but because it's a great source of information that I could benefit a lot from knowing, If I can get past my shame, that is." Twilight looked at Lilly and the mare state hadn't changed a bit.
"Uh... Lilly? Are you okay?" Lilly nodded happily and slowly lowered her hooves, displaying a large smile on her face.
"You... You said penis." Spike looked away trying his best not to burst into laughter, Twilight rolled her eyes and let out a huge sigh.
"Of course that's what's in your mind, another thing I should've known."
"Sorry, Princess. That might have felt like a small word for you, but to me it felt like a huge jump for ponykind." Twilight turned her attention to Spike before addressing him.
"Spike, once again, I'm really sorry."
"It's okay, Twi, I'm sorry too." Spike said with a smile as he gave the alicorn a hug. Twilight was glad that no real disaster had come to pass, only a little rough talk, and she even learned something while at it. Her thought came back to the previous topic as she remembered something.
"And even Ember sees it completely differently."
"Huh?"
"I'm talking about love, you said when you told Ember about the Hero Parade thing, she not only told you she didn't mind, but actually appreciated your behavior. She saw it as your form of showing you care for something. Which probably will make her feel ever more special when you guys do it, huh?..." Twilight dared to step out of her comfort zone with that last comment, with an embarrassed smile. Lilly giggled, delighted to hear the princess daring to loosely reference something lewd without any apparent anxiety. "Baby steps, Twilight, baby steps. You'll get there.", she thought to herself.
"Yeah, I suppose that makes sense." Spike giggled and smiled back.
"What about "her"?"
"Huh?"
"Lilly said something about a "HEEEER". She asked you if told Ember about a "her". Who is this misterious female? How does she fit into the whole Hero Parade thing."
"Hero's Reception." Corrected Lillypad, with a smile on her face. Twilight looked annoying and didn't even look at the mare.
"Oh yeah... If you don't know about the Hero's Reception you obviously wouldn't know about... Oh boy..."
"Spike... is everything alright?"
"Listen, Twilight,. Cadance wanted to keep this a secret for as long as possible, even within the crystal empire. So the number one rule was to avoid bringing it up and never talk about it openly, no one was hiding it from you. I thought Cadance would've told you and now that I think about it, she obviously thought I would've." Spiked facepalmed in frustration as he felt Lilly comforting him with a hoof touching his arm.
"Okay... That makes a lot of sense actually. I guess it can't be helped... Wait, why does Lilly know about it then?"
"Twilight, I should've told you the day it happened. I wanted to talk about it but it was dangerous to do so, and I didn't know how to bring it up. No one was trying to hide it from you, I swear." Spike let out a huge sigh and gazed at the floor. "Please promise not to be mad..."
"I...Th- This sounds serious. I promise I'll at least try not to be mad but no guarantees."
"Hey, big guy. The last talk was painful to pretend I wasn't listening, you want me to just rip off the bandages on this one for ya?" Lilly offered Spike assistance in her own weird way. Spike was tired and worried, he'd gladly passed the torch to Lilly. This had been a disaster.
"Yes, Please do, Lilly."
"Okay. So, Twilight, in one of the first times Spike took part in the Hero's Reception, he impregnated a mare who gave birth to a Kirin baby a few months later. Cadance was alerted to it as rushed to the hospital, she convinced the mother and her husband, both huge fans of Spike and members of the board by the way, to keep it a secret. Otherwise pretty much every crystal pony in the empire would've wanted a Kirin baby, that would've spelled doom for the Crystal Empire in many ways. After this Cadance joined the board and made sure heavy contraceptive methods were in place so it wouldn't happen again.
As for why I know about her, Spike's daughter, it's because I helped them raise her so she would have high emotional control. And we were very successful at that, no Nirik incidents so far, and she developed and she displayed an incredible talent for magic.
It was decided that when she's older or when she first questions why she looks so different from her parents, they would tell her the truth and bring her out to meet her biological dad. Congratulations, Princess, you have a 6 year old Kirin niece, I bet she would love to meet you!"
Lilly was sitting down on the floor as she gave her explanation, right upon finishing it, she smiled and happily clapped her hooves to congratulate Twilight. After 30 or so seconds of sheer silence, the Princess suddenly fainted with a loud thud noise made when she hit the floor, even shaking the ground a little.
"Twilight! Again?! Come on!" Screamed Spiked as he tried to lift her from the floor.
"Uh... Does this happen often?"
"More than it should, I think. Well... I can't really blame her this time. Maybe ripping out the bandages all at once wasn't such a good idea."
"Now that I think about it, It usually isn't. Uh... My bad. Sorry." Spike held the large alicorn in his arms and stood up.
"It's okay, she's fine. Her heart rate sounds fine, she's breathing normally. She should wake up in a few hours as always."
"That good to hear, I'd hate to be the pony who killed a princess. Let alone my favorite one."
"Don't worry, she'll be fine. I'll take her to her room and ask for-" Gallus and several other guards suddenly burst through the door and stormed the throne room with arms in hand.
"STEP AWAY FROM THE PRINCESS OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES!"
"Gallus, by Celestia, it's fine. Twilight passed out but she's fine. Calm down."
"I Wasn't talking to you, Spike, I was talking to HER!"