> Parting Gift
>  by False Door
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> Parting Gift
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cadance sat at the end of the sofa, forearms crossed, staring vacantly into a crackling fire. Her eyes were swollen after crying for the better part of a day. Robbed and betrayed, she had never felt so destroyed. She gave no acknowledgement of Shining Armor as he crept around her back and carefully sat down at the other end of the sofa. He was as distant as the obligatory furniture piece would allow him to be.
This was the first time he'd been allowed in the bedroom today, although it was now night as Cadance had kept the door vigilantly locked throughout his campaign of pleas and cajoling.
Shining scratched the arm of the sofa with his hoof, anxiously as the silence between them began to grow, only accentuated by the snapping fire. He was finally inside; Now what would he do? He’d had all day but he still wasn’t prepared for this.
"You said that you never had sex with her," began Cadance, still gazing into the flames.
Shining gritted his teeth at her pointed opening salvo. His eyes went everywhere but her face. "Well," he offered slowly. "That was... incorrect."
"I think the word you're looking for is lie. That was a lie that you told me."
"I thought it would be best this way," he countered softly.
She turned suddenly to shoot a glare at him. "Really? You thought it would be best to just hide this from me forever?"
And clearly I was right about that, he thought to himself. Why would I ever want to have this conversation with you? What does it accomplish? Was it too late to claim he had no memory of the event, he wondered. Yes. This whole thing was a bomb he had missed his chance to defuse, or at least detonate in a time and place of his choosing. Now there was nothing to do but come clean and shamefully try to sweep up the pieces while the queen undoubtedly laughed at them from afar.
Shining rolled his eyes. "Oh, okay, Cadance, What should I have done then? What would have been an appropriate time to divulge this little detail to you? Hours before the wedding? During the wedding? The honeymoon? Years into our marriage? Those are the only options I'm seeing and none of them look that great."
He’d told himself he wouldn’t fall into the pit of angry defensiveness and yet seconds in, he had already blown it.
Annoyed with Shining’s condescending tone, Cadance swatted his argument aside and instead posed another question. "Was she better than me?"
Alarm bells went off in Shining Armor's head. That’s a trap, he thought. Stay far away. His eyes narrowed, locking with hers for the first time. "What the hell does that have to do with anything?" he retorted.
"So that's a 'yes' then," she sighed quickly in an overtly disappointed tone.
Try again, Shining, he thought, now starting to panic. Choose your words carefully but make it quick and decisive. It was an obvious question he'd already asked himself time and again but always denied answering, not wanting to know, not wanting to find out but there it sat, a lingering sense of fear and guilt, eating away at the back of his mind that he couldn't snuff out.
"No. Of course not," he stated with conviction. "You're the Princess of Love and she's just some evil bug rabble. There's no comparison. This whole thing is just a sick game of her's. This is exactly what she wants to happen." 
Cadance eyed him suspiciously as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The fact of the matter was that his meeting with Queen Chrysalis in disguise was more memorable than he wanted to admit, even to himself and he now found himself trying to excise from his brain a barrage of intrusive thoughts about the experience.
"I wish I could just believe you at face value like I used to." she exhaled, looking back into the fire. "How can I even trust you now?"
Still overflowing with indignation from what he perceived as a loaded and unconstructive question, Shining slammed his hoof down on the arm of the couch. Thankfully his physical outburst only produced a muffled thud and not something proportional to his actual frustration.
Even though the situation was intimate and embarrassing, he desperately wished that his sister were here to help mediate the conversation.
Shining took a deep breath and his face softened. "I'm sorry I never told you about this; I just didn't know how," he explained, avoiding the L-word. Lying implied indifference or malicious intent and his pride wouldn't allow him to concede that point.
"I never asked for this," he continued. "I'm a victim here too. It's not like I went out and knowingly cheated on you. I would never do that. I thought she was you. Nothing that happened between us can even be considered consensual. I was tricked. End of story."
"I guess so," she agreed insincerely. She shook her head mournfully. "What are we going to do about this now?"
Shining blinked. "About what?"
Cadance put a hoof over her face in shame. "This is going to be a huge scandal if it isn't already. I'm supposed to be the Princess of Love and then something like this happens in my own marriage... What a joke I am."
The words were almost a shock to him. He hadn't thought about that at all. He just didn't want to be at odds with his wife.
"That was uncharacteristically cynical of you," he muttered.
"It's not Cynical, Shining!" Cadance snarled with a ferocity he'd never witnessed before. "What happened to your oh so cherished sense of duty? This is about being able to govern in confidence."
Shining Armor threw up his hooves. "Oh, of course, it's all about you, Cadance. I got violated but the real issue here is how that reflects on you politically."
"Violated," she scoffed. "You clearly enjoyed it enough." She flinched in surprise at her own words, knowing she'd crossed the line.
Shining shot up from his seat without a word and stormed past her to the door.
"Where are you going?" she called in alarm.
"I'm going to take a walk before I have a chance to say something I regret," he replied coldly. "I hope you'll find it in your heart to not lock the door behind me." Though as soon as he said this, he realized his actual desire to share a bed or even a room with her tonight was non-existent and it was probably safe to assume that the feeling was mutual.
He opened the door with his magic and paused momentarily in the doorway, intending to say ‘I love you’ but the words stifled in his throat and wouldn’t come out so he simply departed and shut the door.
Cadance wanted to cry again but didn't have the tears or the emotional stamina left in her. Her eyes fell on the photo which sat upon the cushion beside her and the envelope with the broken wax seal that was addressed to the both of them. It was a parody of a formal birth announcement. ‘Presenting Pincer Armor,’ the front said over an image of a changeling spawn the likes of which neither of them had ever seen. He was a light gray false alicorn with pockmarked legs and green eyes, not compound or insectoid but like that of a pony. Scrawled on the back in the queen’s own writing were just two words: “Congratulations, Daddy!”
"Vile creature," she breathed.