To Chrysalis’s immense relief, the castle baker had cut down on the spread compared to the last meal she’d had with the Lunar Princess. Sure, the size and opulence of the feasting hall left a nasty feeling in her stomach, but at least she didn’t feel like she was starving a Zebrican village somewhere with the sheer amount of food spread before her.

This time, only a sparse few plates sat clustered at one end of the table: a couple salads coated in different dressings, one or two steaming pans, and a platter drizzled with something chocolatey and amazing-looking that Chrysalis just knew would add a couple inches to her waistline. Still somewhat extravagant considering there would only be two at the table, but nothing compared to the Haygas-style feast they’d seen previously.

“Apologies, my Queen,” a changeling in a bowtie insisted as he bowed at Chrysalis’s hooves. “The baker you appointed was…otherwise occupied, and could not repeat her performance of the other night.”

“No no, this is perfect,” she smiled down at the smaller changeling. “You have done well, my subject.”

“Thank you, your highness, if there is any more you and your guest require, do not hesitate to ask,” and with that, the changeling left with a bow, leaving the royal pair standing in the middle of the banquet hall.

Chrysalis turned to Luna once more, once again nearly taken aback by the beauty in the lunar alicorn, the sheer indomitable will in the eyes, the perfectly-angled curves of the healing face, the well-muscled contours in that body beneath her slim evening dress. Good Maker above, what had this creature been like under the influence of Nightmare Moon? All that power focused into that body…

“Art thou alright?”

Luna’s gentle voice pierced Chrysalis’s hormone-addled daydream. “Fine, fine,” Chrysalis said quickly, shaking her tattered mane from side to side as she stepped towards the table. As she approached, a silly impulse overtook her and she pulled a chair out, standing to the side. “Ladies first,” she snickered.

To her surprise, Luna bowed gratefully and seated herself as properly as any princess at a royal function. “Nice to see there are some manners under that carapace,” she remarked.

Ah, there’s the ice-bitch, Chrysalis snorted as she turned away. With a swooping motion, she took her seat, and began filling her plate with a few heaping helpings from each pan.

An awkward silence took hold over the pair, broken only by the scrape of silverware on ceramic and the crunch of something particularly tough on each of their plates. Every now and again, some topic for small-talk would pop up in Chrysalis’s mind, but then the memory of the previous night would force it back down again.

“I’m sorry,” Luna’s voice once more cut right through Chrysalis’s reverie.

Chrysalis locked eyes with her, startled. “What?”

“I…have some things to apologize for too,” Luna said, her speech stilted, as though she’d spent hours rehearsing it but had completely forgotten those hours now that the moment was here. “You may have done some monstrous things, but you didn’t deserve to be called a monster, Chrysalis. Especially not from myself.”

“That is…quite alright, princess,” Chrysalis said, not quite believing what she’d just heard. “I’ve been called worst things.”

“But never something that struck such a nerve,” Luna pointed out.

“Yes, well,” Chrysalis shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “It can get rather tiring, being called a monster, is all. You ponies seem to have a fondness for that word.”

She could not keep the venom from her voice, though she regretted it the moment the words had left her lips. Still, Luna didn’t even flinch. Shifting uncomfortably once more, Chrysalis changed gears. “So, what did you mean by ‘especially not from myself’?”

“Hmm?”

Chrysalis rolled her eyes, then allowed a quick burst of green, transformative magic in her throat. “You may have done some monstrous things, but you didn’t deserve to be called a monster, Chrysalis. Especially not from myself.” She said in a pitch-perfect imitation of Luna’s voice.

Luna blinked at her, shocked by the imitation, then quickly settled. “Ah, that. We-I was referring to my past self. In case you were unaware--”

“You were making reference to Nightmare Moon, were you not?” Chrysalis asked.

Luna bolted upright in her seat, then relaxed again. “Er…yes,” she sighed, her wings drooping as she suddenly seemed more focused on picking at a tomato rolling around on her plate than the conversation. “Yes, that’s what I was talking about.”

Sensing she was already losing her dining partner, Chrysalis went into full-on recovery mode. “Ah, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…I didn’t know it was--”

“No, no, it’s quite alright, I should be able to talk about it,” Luna sighed. “’Twas our own jealousy that nearly destroyed the world and changed us into an all-powerful monster of doom, after all.”

“No, really, I did not mean to pry!”

“But you should,” Luna sighed, poking away at her plate. Chrysalis bit her lip. She had been so close to getting through to the Equestrian princess, and now it looked like she was right back to where she’d been the night before. She moaned in the back of her throat at her own idiocy and hunched low in her chair, resigning herself to a long, awkward, and silent meal.

Her surprise grew when Luna spoke up again: “Most ponies think that the Nightmare completely repressed me, that there was no control on my end. That I was always the victim.”

Chrysalis looked up, an eyebrow raised. “Is that not true?”

“Mostly…” Luna sighed. “It’s…difficult to put into words. I was awake, but I was dreaming. Many of my mental faculties were still in place, but it was easier to stay in the dream.”

Chrysalis’s other eyebrow joined the first up by her hairline. “You were conscious that entire time?”

“Sort of,” Luna sighed and exhaled out her nose in exasperation. “It’s hard to explain, to even remember what things were like under the Nightmare, but there were times when I managed more lucidity for myself, flashes of times that I can remember actually thinking and in the real world.”

“Did you fight it?”

Luna looked up, and her ears joined her wings somewhere by her hooves. Chrysalis rocked back in her seat. Great, just when she was turning things around…

“The idea occurred to me once or twice,” Luna said, her gaze sinking back to her plate. Chrysalis leaned forward in her chair. “But the Nightmare could be surprisingly enticing. It knew how to cut me off, how to remind me of all the old jealousy and hate that made me welcome it in the first place. But most of all, it told me of all the damage I’d done, made it seem like it was too late to even try and repair any of it.

“There were times when I wanted to change back and be my sister’s little Lulu again,” Luna gave a long, forlorn sigh. “But by then it had been centuries, and I was typecast into my role by the ponies of Equestria. I was no longer one of their princesses, but a monster with which to terrify their foals using old stories of my evil. The Nightmare kept giving me this image of my little ponies fleeing and running at the mere sight of me, and the idea of being treated like a monster got so bad that…”

“…that every time you thought about doing something good, the mere idea of how you’d be treated got to be too much, and you were filled with so much hate that you just wound up right back where you started.” Chrysalis finished.

Luna bolted upright in her chair, wings flaring against their gilded restraints as her eyes met with Chrysalis’s. Again, Chrysalis was taken aback by those deep, livid pools, that little chunk of night sky which seemed to exist in Luna’s eyes, but only for a second before she nodded.

“Yes…” Luna said. “Yes, exactly.”

Chrysalis couldn’t help but offer her a little smirk. “Wow, I never would have imagined hearing that from an Equestrian princess.”

“And I never would have imagined finding common ground with an invading queen,” Luna scoffed lightheartedly.

“That fiasco on Nightmare Night must have been a nightmare made real, then,” Chrysalis said casually, sipping at her wine.

Again, Luna bolted upright in her seat, glaring across the table at her dining partner. “How didst thou know…”

“Oh please, that story is practically an Equestrian fairy tale at this point,” Chrysalis chortled. “It was bound to cross my ear eventually.”

“I…” Luna bowed low again, and a twinge of guilt weighed itself in Chrysalis’s chest, but still Luna continued. “Yes, for a while it really was.”

Silence reigned for a while yet, and then Chrysalis added quietly: “At least somepony saved you.”

Luna looked up at that, shocked. Chrysalis could see the calculations running behind those gorgeous, blue pools, the way her mind raced, but at what? Perhaps seeing her in a new light? Jeez, that’d be a nice change.

Eventually, Luna settled for sighing and leaning back in her chair, munching at her salad. For a little while yet, silence descended upon the table, until Luna looked up again. “We has't shared much with thee, fair queen, would thee reciprocate if 't be true hath asked?”

Chrysalis felt her mind drain away at Luna’s sentence. “My apologies, Princess, but I caught perhaps half of that.”

“Ah, our apologies,” Luna nodded, sitting up straighter. “I meant to say that I have shared something private about myself, and I was just hoping you might do the courtesy of reciprocating.”

“Something about me, eh?” Chrysalis leaned onto her fetlocks, her front knees pressed on the table, her chin resting on her hooves as a cocky smile spread across her muzzle. “Interesting, what would you like to know?”

For a moment, that cool calculation returned to Luna’s eyes, and finally, she spoke once more: “We would like to hear about your predecessor and father, the late King Atrax,” she finally said.

A cold knot of fear clenched in Chrysalis’s stomach. Though the only indication that she had felt anything at all was the way she set her fork back down at her plate’s side with a morsel of lettuce still dangling from it, it took all her strength and willpower to keep from bolting away from the table. “Now, why would you want to know about him?” She asked, cursing the mild quiver in her voice.

Again, the gears turned in Luna’s head. “Curiosity, is all. We heard much about the king and the passing of his lovely queen. ‘Twould be best to hear about those days from somepon - I’m sorry, someling who was there.”

Chrysalis picked up her fork again. Yes, of course, of course it was. Sure, alright, what was wrong with letting a few things loose? “My father was…a very brutal stallion,” she said, twirling the fork in her magic’s grasp. “It’s an incredibly good thing he met my mother, in fact. She tempered him, gave him a counterbalance to his constant demands for perfection and progress.”

“Demands?” Luna asked.

Chrysalis nodded. “He once tortured an entire battalion that had been sent to raid a dragon’s den for failing to kill all the dragon’s offspring,” she said. “It didn’t matter that the main body of the mission was done, to him, anything less than perfection was a deliberate act of treason.”

“And your mother?”

“Stopped him before he went too far,” Chrysalis allowed a tiny smile across her lips. “He might well have ordered those soldiers’ eyes gouged out were it not for her intervention.”

“My word,” Luna shivered. “For something that only he interpreted as a mistake…”

“Like I said, cold and brutal. In all honesty, I think mother only married him because she knew the changelings would suffer under his rule if no one reined him in,” she sighed wistfully, leaning back again as she scooped up another forkful of salad. “They did love each other eventually, and that love was enough to stay his hoof.”

“I…heard your mother fell ill, at one point,” Luna said as gently as she could.

“Yes. And my father’s grief combined with her loss was terrible,” Chrysalis gazed into her drink like an alchemist with her brew, seeing visions of things done and sins unatoned for in the blood-red liquor. “He was bad before, but once she was gone, he was out of control. He would give orders that didn’t make sense, send changelings to the torture chambers for reasons he made up on the spot: he actually ordered the officers of an entire battalion to be stretched out on the rack for wearing the wrong belt, nevermind that it was the same ceremonial belt that changeling CO’s had been wearing for centuries and that there was no other belt they might have possibly worn. I think he just decided that day he didn’t like the color.”

“My word,” Luna gasped, balanced at the edge of her seat. “How old were you when all this was going on!?”

At that, Chrysalis sighed, downed her glass in a single gulp, and stared at Luna, her gaze going numb. “Thirteen.”

Again, silence, the two gazing into one another’s eyes, Chrysalis’s thousand-yard stare against Luna’s wide and shocked gaze. They sat like that until Luna leaned forward in her chair and whispered conspiratorially: “What did you do?”

“At first? Cower in fear,” Chrysalis grumbled, looking this way and that, everywhere but the princess. “I was a child, and daddy had clearly lost his mind. His madness was such that the throne room became a place of fear and death, more akin to a torture chamber than the seat of an Empire. “After a while, I realized someling had to take my mother’s place. I tried to show him some of that old love: got him cards for birthdays, sat by his side at the dinner table. One night, I even studied the history of the Second Gryphonian Civil War because I remembered my mother having a spirited conversation about it with him at one point, when I was young.”

Luna nodded with all this, her hoof propping her chin up just so she could lean forward in her chair. “A daughter’s love,” she mused.

“And when that didn’t work, one night I pulled him in for a hug, embraced him one final time, and tore his throat out with my fangs,” Chrysalis finished, pouring herself another glass of wine from the flask on the table, again looking into the bubbling, frothing booze like it was on the verge of showing visions to the future.

Luna sat stock-still. To her credit, she didn’t recoil or gasp, she just sat there, staring.

Chrysalis managed a casual shrug. “I just couldn’t be the mare my mother was.”

“It was unfair that you were even forced to try,” Luna pointed out.

“Yeah, well, life’s not fair sometimes,” Chrysalis replied, taking a gulp from the freshly-poured wine. Once more, silence fell in the dining hall, Chrysalis gazing into her wine, and Luna watching her raptly. Finally, Chrysalis sat up with a cheeky, painfully-fake smile. “Apologies, Princess. That got a bit...dark.”

“Ah, perhaps it is I who should apologize,” Luna sat up, her hooves raised and a slightly more natural smile on her face. “I’m the one who brought it up.”

“Only because I pressed you for something more personal,” Chrysalis pointed out.

“What’s say we both admit fault and call it even,” Luna replied, raising her glass to her lips for the first time that night. Lips that, Chrysalis noted, look quite nice puffed out against the glass.

“Agreed,” Chrysalis replied, pausing before her next sip. Instead, she grinned, raised the glass in the air, and motioned to Luna with an exaggerated sweep of her hoof. “To past traumas shared!”

Luna let out a quick chortle, then raised her own glass. “May they stay forever in the past.”

“I’ll drink to that!” Chrysalis laughed as their glasses dinged together, and as she retrieved her hoof to take a sip, Chrysalis gazed over the rim of her glass and concluded firmly that the princess was, in fact, more than a pretty face and a sexy wingspan. A lot more, in fact, though seeing those gorgeous, living pools gazing at her half-lidded was still more than enough to make her heart skip a beat. Cripes, was the room getting warmer? Yes, that was it; the air in here was getting stifling. She simply had to get some fresh air…but no harm in bringing the princess along, right?

“Tonight, I thought we’d try something different,” Chrysalis announced suddenly.

Luna tilted her head and set her glass down, arching an eyebrow quizzically.

“It’s been a while since you saw your moon, hasn’t it?”

Luna paused at that. She did not react but for a long, blank look, as if something in her brain needed to shut down and reboot. “It has been a few days, yes.”

Chrysalis nodded, then fell to her hooves on the crystalline floor, trotting away from the opulent table. “Well, c’mon. We don’t have all night.”

Carefully, as if the floor might be booby-trapped, Luna lowered herself to the floor and trotted after. Chrysalis waited until they were shoulder-to-shoulder before continuing on into the hallway. There, a trio of changelings in armor were quick to match their pace, though they gave the royal pair ample breathing room. Luna allowed a tiny smile to play on her lips. As they trotted along, her eyes wandered over every nook and cranny, every corner, anywhere to avoid the Queen’s gaze, as if she were distracted by something.

Pondering that, Chrysalis stopped at a set of double doors and gently eased them open with her magic. The crystal still hummed and sparked with green sparks as Luna stepped through and drank in the sight of the Empire at night.

The pair had appeared on a massive crystal balcony, gazing into the streets far below. The cool night air flooded their lungs. Little dots flitted about beneath them, and it took a minute for Chrysalis’s eyes to adjust enough to make out the tiny legs and equine forms of each dot, identifying black dots as changelings patrolling and multicolored dots as ponies. She heard a sigh of relief from Luna and grinned maliciously.

“Worried I had all of your little ponies cocooned?” She scoffed.

Luna’s feathers bristled. “It wasn’t like you gave me any reason to think otherwise.”

“Oh come now, do you realize the expense of feeding and caring for ponies in cocoons? It’d be insane.” Chrysalis retorted.

“You haven’t given me any reason to think you aren’t that either,” Luna added. Before Chrysalis could reply, however, Luna interrupted with a breathless gasp: “My word!”

A bit of moonlight had hit one of the larger structures below at just the right angle, the resulting glow shimmering through the crystal and warping to create multicolored halos in the buildings that splayed out like fireworks at their hooves.

“Yeah,” Chrysalis chortled. “There is an official balcony up higher, but this one is a bit more reserved and at the perfect height for this view. Besides, it’s the same place Shining Armor and Cadence use for secret midnight trysts.”

Luna turned to her, eyes still darting to the view. “How would you know that?”

“The secret compartment filled with condoms, magic suppressing-collars, and fuzzy pink hoof-cuffs by your left hoof,” Chrysalis replied with a nonchalant smirk.

Luna squeaked and danced away from the spot, only to glare at the slight giggle rumbling up Chrysalis’s throat, the nonchalant smirk widening.

“Dirty trick,” Luna hissed, though she couldn’t stop a light smile from crossing her face.

“I know, but a fun one,” Chrysalis giggled, her double-toned voice giving her laugh an extra-melodic tone that made Luna’s face heat up. Thinking she’d earned a blush of embarrassment, Chrysalis continued: “Oh, it was just a trick, Princess!”

“It was still uncalled for,” Luna huffed. “The goings-on of a married couple’s lives are not something to intrude upon.”

“I mean it was a joke, there’s no compartment filled with naughty paraphernalia by your hooves!” Chrysalis guffawed.

“Oh, of course,” Luna was quick to resume her place at the balcony railing, her wings twitching with the effort of trying to expand beneath their gooey prisons as she gazed out over the city.

“And by that, I mean I had it emptied out the moment I discovered it,” Chrysalis added with a little coo.

Luna glared at the snickering changeling as she shifted further along the rail. “Celestia spare me,” she groused.

Chrysalis whipped around to continue the banter, but her voice caught in her throat: the same halos playing out like a series of magically-created sunsets beneath them also hit the balcony just at the right angle to capture the lunar princess in silhouette, shimmering off the sparkles in her mane. She turned to Chrysalis with a blink, and the multicolored hue shone in her eyes. Chrysalis’s heart slammed into her stomach and something within her trembled, something she had not felt in a long time.

And then a cocky grin spread across Luna’s face, her eyes going half-lidded. “Remember what they say in museums,” she mused, her wide, strobing eyes still drinking in the city.

Chrysalis blinked herself free of her trance. “Wh-what was that?”

“You can look at the art, but you better not touch,” Luna replied, and suddenly the wide, awestruck eyes were replaced with a knowing smirk.

Scoffing again, Chrysalis turned away, leaning over the balcony. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she hissed. “You had a bit of spinach caught in your teeth, is all.”

“Oh, really? Here?” With that, Luna ran her tongue along her lip, slowly and sensually massaging it along.

Chrysalis’s stomach did a flip as she scowled at Luna. “What are you doing!?”

“What do you think I’m doing?” Luna smiled sensually, gazing passively over at her moon, then suddenly turning on the changeling queen. She giggled, then stepped close, a little smile on her lips. “After all, isn’t this just what we both want?”

Chrysalis’s stomach did a final backflip, then paused. Something icy and cold curled around her heart and clenched tight. “I see…” she mumbled, but of course. Luna had discovered her physical attraction with her, and was now trying to leverage that to her advantage. Great. Well, she knew her acting skills were slipping when Twilight had detected her so easily back during the wedding. If she couldn’t disguise her true self from a teenaged unicorn, what chance had she honestly stood against a princess old enough to remember Discord’s first reign?

Well, at least the princess was behaving, and she had made a deal.

Chrysalis turned back towards the double doors. “You will be let out at breakfast tomorrow,” she hissed. “You will be allowed to roam the castle interior, but no further. You are also disallowed from the throne room. If you need something, one of the guards will fetch it for you. Don’t test me: this is a privilege I am allowing you.”

There was a moment of silence, and then she felt a hoof hovering near her shoulder. “Chrysalis…” Luna asked.

The queen stepped through the doors without another word, trotting away back out the halls and leaving the princess standing there, her hoof hovering in the air. Before the doors squeezed shut behind her, Chrysalis heard a muttered: “Ugh, Luna, you idiot…” and then the hallway fell into darkness as the massive doors pinched off the last shreds of moonlight from outside. Then, as it usually did, the raspy voice of a withering, broken shell of a changeling mare came to her. She could see it clearly, as if it was happening right in front of her all over again. She could see the older changeling gazing at her with tired, bleak eyes, her dull fangs regaining just a hint of their old glisten in the dimmed light. She could feel the old body quiver as the older changeling reached out a weak hoof to stroke her mane and she whispered: “Someday, my princess, you will meet someone who will make you feel like the stars were something they wove together just for you.”

Chrysalis let her breath out in a long, quivering gasp. “Sorry to disappoint you, mother,” she grumbled, trotting away down the hall.