This was one of the worst days of my life.

Yeah, I know how it can be easy to say that, but it was true. It was my last day of my dream job, and now all I had left to do was clear out my office—that of the Captain of the Royal Guard. Nothing quite rams home that you’ve lost your job like physically moving out of it. At least I hadn’t been canned from the Guard, since I didn’t know what I would do with myself if that was the case. Do ... prince-consort stuff? I’d wanted to be in the Guard since I was a colt, and on top of that I really wanted serve as Captain of the Royal Guard. That had been my real dream job, and now I’d lost it.

It wasn’t like it was my fault when Queen Chrysalis had replaced Cadey and sunk her fangs into me. But that was the problem: ponies didn’t want a captain of the Royal Guard who had been the personal plaything of the changeling queen and had ‘allowed’ the changelings to nearly conquer Canterlot. Never mind that Cadey and I had been the ones to kick the changelings right back out of Canterlot once we’d gotten the bug queen out of my head. No, that didn’t seem to matter, since I had been asked to retire from my position afterwards. Not that resisting would have done me much good. I served at Their Highnesses’ goodwill, if they didn’t want me for the job or enough ponies demanded I get the boot...

A ‘lateral promotion’, they called it. More like being shifted out of sight and out of mind. The silver lining was that I at least wouldn’t take a pay cut this way, but it still wasn’t the happiest thing to come back to after my honeymoon.

Still, that left me with the practical problem of what to do with my stuff from the office. My sudden fall from grace hadn’t allowed me to make new arrangements just yet, and I’d be surprised if that was corrected anytime soon. Out-of-sight ceremonial positions took time to make, and the new Captain of the Royal Guard, Tornado Kicker, wasn’t my biggest fan. I’d beaten him for the spot the last time it had become vacant, and while we weren’t bitter rivals or anything, we weren’t exactly friends either.

Now I was the pony out in the cold politically, and Kickers were the ones in power. I’d be surprised if they would be in any kind of hurry to get me a new job since I was part of the whole changeling debacle. It didn't help matters that there were a bunch of shakeups in the Guard after the changeling invasion, which gave Tornado the excuses he’d need to not work on placing me somewhere for a good long while—nevermind he probably had a thousand and one things to do right about now, like moving into my office, taking over my staff, doing the job I loved...

Best case scenario, they would have to give me something before too long to keep the princesses happy. I was the nephew-in-law to two of them and married to the third, and they had said that I would be given some kind of post in due course. There was only so long Tornado Kicker and his clique could keep me on the sidelines before passive-aggression started looking like active spite.

Yay for office politics.

But, one step at a time. I decided that Sparkle Manor was the best place to park my stuff since despite living in the palace, Cadance didn't have that much room, relatively speaking. Her place was still way bigger than what the average pony in Canterlot had, but it was already filled up with her stuff. We were planning on moving into a section of the palace better suited for a couple as soon as it could be arranged, but until the aftermath of the attack could be cleaned up we were in limbo.

Just like the rest of my life at the moment.

I arrived at Sparkle Manor by evening with my stuff in a trio of boxes levitating alongside me. I stepped up to the front door, took a deep breath, then opened it. I didn't really want to talk with anypony right at that moment, but my plans to sulk in my old room were dashed when I met Dad walking the other way down the hallway on the way to the stairs.

Dad smiled at the sight of me. “Welcome back. I didn't hear you come in.”

“Guess I didn't yell loud enough.” That technically wasn't a lie. It wasn’t that I didn't want to see my parents, but this wasn't the day for it.

Dad looked at the boxes I was carrying. “Back from the Royal Barracks, I take it?”

“Yup.” I couldn't help but grimace. Losing my job was going to bother me for a long time, I could already tell. “You mind if I leave some stuff here while my new office gets sorted out?”

“Of course not, you know you're always welcome here.” He took one of the boxes from me. “We can put it in your old room easily enough.”

“Thanks.” We headed to my room and placed the boxes in one of its corners. It felt kinda weird returning to the room I’d grown up in. It had hardly changed since I moved out—there was even an old Monsters & Mazes poster from one of my gaming books hanging on the wall.

I lost track of how long I had been staring when Dad placed a hoof on my shoulder. “Are you hungry? Your mom’s here too, and we could get something if you would like, or we could go out.”

My ears wilted. “I'm not really in the mood for going out right now. Or even eating, really.”

Dad gave me a concerned frown. “If you say so. How about you head down to the living room and I'll get your mother? We can just relax for a bit if you don't have to be anywhere.”

I shrugged. “I guess that'd be alright.” My choices were either to sulk here at the manor or sulk at Cadey’s, and I didn't feel like turning down Dad’s offer or dealing with the drama that'd probably cause. It wasn’t like I could fool Dad into thinking everything was really alright.

“Alright, see you in a few.” Dad patted me on the shoulder and then went off to find Mom.

Not knowing what else to do, I headed down to the living room and lay down back-first onto the couch. It felt kinda strange since it wasn't the couch I grew up with in the living room. There were half a dozen other small differences to the room as things either wore down or broke, or Mom decided to change how the room looked. Intellectually I knew that was normal, but it still felt odd. Still, I closed my eyes and tried not to think too hard about everything that had happened.

I was awoken when I heard Mom’s voice. “Hey, Shiny. It’s nice to see you.”

“Bwa-wha?!” I jerked up, blinking the sleep from my eyes. I must have nodded off for a second. Like any good guardpony, I had learned to sleep when and where I could, and those instincts must have just kicked in when I laid down.

Mom frowned down at me. “I’m sorry, did I wake you?”

Dad stepped up from behind her. “If you want to sleep we can leave you alone for a bit.”

I shook my head and sat up. “No, it’s fine. Just closing my eyes for a couple minutes.”

“If you’re sure.” Mom didn’t sound convinced, but that didn’t stop her from giving me a hug. “It’s good to see you again. You don’t come by often enough, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.” I hugged her back. “Sorry, just been busy with stuff.”

Mom broke the hug and looked me over closely. “Is something the matter?”

I groaned and flopped back down to the couch. There was no sense lying—she’d know if I lied and then she’d be all the more insistent that I tell her what was wrong. Worse yet, she might start guilting me. “Yeah, something’s the matter. My then-fiancé got replaced by the changeling queen and spent weeks playing with my head so that she could undermine Equestria’s defenses. And because I got played with I'm getting a lateral reassignment from my dream job, and now I get to spend who knows how long on the sidelines doing nothing and just being happy I didn’t get kicked out of the Guard entirely for something I had hardly any control over!”

Dad winced and sat on a cushion next to the couch. “I am so sorry I didn't see it, Shining. I really should have—I'm sorry.” His ears flattened to his head and he looked away from me.

I shook my head. “It's... Chrysalis is very good at what she does. It’s not your fault.” After all, that oversized bug managed to replace my wife without me ever suspecting it. If I could sit across the table from her and think she was the mare I loved more than anything else in the world...

Dad grunted in disapproval, but didn’t say anything else.

Mom placed her hoof on my shoulder as she sat next to me. “It'll be alright,” she assured me. “I know it's hard right now, but you'll bounce back. Just give it time and you’ll be given a new position, which I’m sure you’ll do great at. Next thing you know you’ll be moving up the ladder again. You’re still young enough that you can become Captain of the Guard again someday, and in the meantime there’s a lot of good you can do.”

Dad nodded. “What happened isn’t your fault. Ponies will see that in time.”

I grunted, bitterness welling up in my throat. “It’s still my problem, though.” I saw the hurt and worried looks on my parents faces, and softened my tone a bit. It wasn’t like I was a sulking teenager anymore. “Well, maybe Cadance will start getting her own royal guard or something. There was some talk about finally doing that before the wedding, and after the invasion there’s supposed to be some restructuring that’s going to happen. The Guard might even get expanded, which might create some positions for me.”

That bout of optimism brought a smile to Mom’s face. “See, that would be something for you to do. I’m sure Cadance would appreciate having you around as her guardian.”

Dad nodded in agreement. “Exactly. Really, it's only logical that you could become the captain of her guard. Being captain of any of the escort guards is a pretty prestigious position and places you near the center of where the decisions are happening, so it’s a good place to build up your influence to make another bid for Captain of the Royal Guard someday if you wanted. And if not, you’ll still get to have a job guarding Cadance, which has its own upsides.”

I thought the idea over, but felt some of my pessimism return. “If that happens.” I snorted. Captain of Cadey’s guard would be a really nice position, which was probably why I’d never get it. That’s the type of prestigious position you gave to an ally, not a rival.

Mom closed her eyes and sighed. “I'm sorry this all happened to you. It isn't fair, but we're just going to have to make the best of it we can.”

“I guess, yeah,” I grumbled.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Mom asked.

I shrugged. “Not really, I need time, I guess.” That’s what everypony kept telling me. Lots of time, positive thinking, and not dwelling on all the reasons for why my life sucked now.

“That’s fine, then.” Dad patted my knee. “We were kind of wanting to talk to you about something, but that can all wait until you’re feeling better.”

I raised an eyebrow. “No, it’s fine—what did you want to talk about?”

Dad shook his head. “It can wait, really. This has been a bad day for you and we don’t want to pile anything else onto you.”

Mom frowned in Dad’s direction. “He’s going to need to be told sooner or later. Sometimes you just need to rip off the bandage. This isn’t going to get easier with time.”

“Yeah, but is now really the time?” Dad pressed his lips together. “It can wait a day, at least.”

Uh-oh. If it was the type of bad news you didn’t want to combine with other bad news, it could not be good. But now I was curious about what they were talking about. “Best if you tell me now. I’m just going to worry about what you want to tell me until you actually tell me.” Because what I really needed right now was something else to worry about.

Mom and Dad exchanged a meaningful look between one another. Eventually Mom looked down as me as she bit her lip. “Only if you’re sure you’re up for it. This ... isn’t going to be easy.”

“Please don't tell me something bad happened. I've had just about all the bad news I can take for a while.” I groaned and ran my hoof down my face. “But you better tell me anyways. Let’s just get it over with.”

Mom exchanged another worried frown with Dad. “Only if you're sure.”

I rolled my eyes as I got tired of my parents dancing around whatever it was they wanted to talk about. “How much worse could it be?”

Dad took a deep breath and rolled his head before he gave me his full attention. “Well, I don’t know how else to say it without just going ahead and saying it. Shining ... you have a daughter.”

And then the whole world stopped making any sense.

“I have a—I'm sorry, I must've misheard you. I thought you said I had a daughter!” How could I have a daughter? I hadn’t been sleeping around with anypony. Hay, I was luckier than words could express to have Cadey. Yeah, I’d done great with her, but I didn’t exactly have the greatest luck with mares in general—not that I’d tried hard, really. Cadey was the only mare I’d ever really been interested in, which only made all of this make less sense!

Dad rubbed his brow. “That’s because I did say you have a daughter. We only found out about her a little bit after your wedding.”

Mom let out a long breath. “Bear with us, this is going to take some explaining. But your dad is right about her, Shining. We've confirmed it with a lineage spell.”

My mind whirled as it tried and failed to absorb this. What were my parents doing casting lineage spells? Where had they found this—pony?! I had so many questions and no answers right now. “Wha... Bu ... how?!”

“Let’s just take it one step at a time.” Mom’s horn glowed, summoning a photograph over to us. “Do you remember, um—having relations with this mare in graduate school seven years ago? Her name is Ditzy Doo, and she said that she met you at a party.”

“Um ... not really?” I scratched my head as I looked at the photo. It showed a smiling grey mare with a blond mane and a pair of eyes that didn’t quite seem to be looking in the same direction. She might have been somepony I had met before, but I’d met a lot of ponies in school and the Guard. I was pretty good at remembering faces, but there were limits when we were talking about some mare I met at some party almost a decade ago. “I mean, maybe a little I … think? I mean, she looks kinda familiar.”

I wondered if I was going to be sick. This felt like a sick joke. Were we really having this conversation? Me? A daughter? That didn’t make sense. How could I have a daughter?

Dad steepled his hooves under his chin as he watched me. “According to her, you met at a party where you were both drinking before ... things happened.” Dad hit me with one of those I'm-not-mad-I'm-just-disappointed-looks that every parent seemed to automatically get in their arsenal. It hurt, a lot. “Did you ever attend any parties?”

“Well yeah, I was almost done with school.” That sparked some fuzzy memories. I had been working on my graduate degree in advanced magical spellcraft. It had been a really stressful semester, and I’d been pretty eager to blow off some steam with some friends once all my papers had been turned in. Having to crunch in a couple dozen books, three fifteen-page papers, a fifty-page independent study essay, on top of a few practical examinations hadn’t exactly been fun. Twilight probably would have had the time of her life, but it had been a trudging grind that I had no desire to go through again if I could help it. Anything that made the words stop was a welcome relief at the time.

One of my buddies had even managed to get a hold of some magic suppression rings so we wouldn’t have to worry if we drank a bit too much as high-power unicorns. Though given the topic of this conversation, the fact that it was quickly plummeting into the ground for me said I had probably made some terrible, terrible mistakes at that party. I had thought so when I woke up in a bush the following morning with a nasty hangover.

Dad grunted. “From what she said, that's where it happened.”

I needed to hear it again, I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “So, wait, are you saying I…?”

Mom pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yes. You're a father, and you have been for six years. Ditzy conceived after your … encounter, carried your daughter and raised her after she gave birth. She didn't remember your name, or barely any details about you, but her child is definitely yours.”

I ran my hooves through my mane as I tried to make sense of all of this. I could vaguely remember the mare in the picture, but everything had happened so far into the past it felt like a lifetime ago. “I thought I left my dorm address with her or something.”

“Apparently not.” I could tell Dad tried to not sound accusatory, but yeah, he did. And if they were right about me being a dad, then he had a good reason to be.

I groaned and buried my face in my hooves. “I didn't. If I'd known she was...”

Dad nodded and rubbed my back. “You would have done the right thing if you'd known. I know you would have. That's the stallion we raised.”

“We're just going to have to deal with it as best we can.” Mom shrugged and her ears flattened. “It’s all we can do, given the circumstances.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. Okay, so I was a dad now. That in and of itself was an extremely scary thing to think about, much less the fact that I hadn't known about my ... daughter for all this time. They had said she was six. I’d missed six years of my daughter’s life. I had been an absentee father for all this time and hadn't known it. That was something I had to fix. I wasn't sure how or even if I could make up for all of this, but I had to try. Right?

Now that I had my head mostly straightened out, I turned my thoughts to practical matters. It was just like dealing with a crisis in the Guard: first quantify the problem before you, then figure out how to deal with it. “So how do I make it right?”

“I figure meeting with this mare would be a good start,” Dad said. “As well as your daughter, when you're ready.”

“Sounds good.” Not like I was going to avoid the mare who had my kid, much less my daughter. Sun and stars, this was going to be awkward. I didn't even know this mare and I had knocked her up and she'd been raising our kid all this time by herself. I could only hope and pray that she didn't hate me for all of that. Not that she wouldn't have very good reasons to. Saying ‘I'm sorry, I didn't know our one night stand got you pregnant and you've been dealing with all the problems with raising a kid all by yourself for all these years’ didn't quite make up for that.

Mom rubbed my back. “Whatever happens, I'm sure we can give Ditzy the money she needs to help raise the filly. Hopefully you'll get to spend time with your daughter, but it might take some time to sort all of that out. It depends on how things work out between you two.”

“Yeah! I would've if I'd known.” I groaned and rubbed my face. Geeze, I was already having to worry about child care payments. Hay, I would be lucky if she didn't sue me. The only thing that would save me would be the fact that I'd do a whole hay of a lot for my kid. Even if the idea of me having a kid was still felt unreal. “I'll do what I can.”

“We have the information you need to meet her.” Mom hoofed over a yellow envelope. “They live in Ponyville, and they do want to meet you. Your sister was the one that found out about all of this first, just so you know.” Her ears wilted and her gaze fell to the floor. “It would probably best if you ask her about how she found out about all of this.”

“Twily?” That must have been a story. I wondered how in the world she had found out I was a dad, or what she had been doing to find the truth to start with. She managed to find herself in a lot more trouble than I ever liked to hear about. “I suppose I better tell her I'm coming to town before I show up. From the sounds of it, she’s going to handle the introductions.”

“That's right.” Mom shook her head. “And don't worry, we’ll support you through this. It’s not like your dad and I haven't made our own mistakes over the years. We understand these things happen sometimes—what matters is how we deal with them.”

Dad cleared his throat and gave Mom a meaningful look. “Speaking of, there's something else we need to tell you.”

That didn’t sound good, though maybe I was just reading everything wrong. “This is like one of those bad news/good news things, right? And now that you've given me the bad news...” I could always hope that it wasn’t going to get worse before it got better. I mean, how much worse could this conversation go?

“Something like that.” Mom grasped Dad’s hoof and squeezed it, her voice tightening as she spoke. “The good news... The good news is that your sister's alive.”

“Well yeah, I saw Twilight on the way back to Canterlot.”

“No.” Dad groaned and pressed his hoof to his face. “Your other sister.”

I sat up in alarm. “Vinyl? Did something happen to her when I was away?!” Admittedly, I didn’t always keep up with what my half-sister was up to. We had never been super close, even though we got along just fine when we met now and again when our schedules allowed. But I would like to think I would be one of the first ponies to find out if she got hurt or something.

Mom shook her head vigorously. “No, he means ... Amethyst.”

“...what?” That was—huh?

Amethyst was dead—hay, she’d been born dead. You don’t just get better from being dead. What the hay were they going on about?

“Your younger sister is alive.” Dad rubbed the back of his neck as he neglected to meet my gaze. “We lied to you. We gave her up for adoption and then lost track of her until shortly after we found your daughter.”

“Lost tra—we had a funeral!” I stood up from the couch and glared down at my parents. “You don't just lose track of a kid! This is my sister we’re talking about! Your daughter!”

Mom grimaced and hunched her shoulders. “We lied about the miscarriage. She was born just fine.” Mom wrapped her forelegs around herself as Dad wrapped a leg around her for comfort. “Magetrix is Amethyst's sire. We made a mistake in giving her up. Your dad was trying to become Grand Vizier at the time, and it would have been a scandal that would have hurt him at the time, and...”

“I should have just claimed her as my own,” Dad said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Or—hay with it, anything other than what we did. Giving Amethyst up for adoption was a spur-of-the-moment decision, and it was the wrong one. We thought it be easier on you and Twilight if we lied about what happened to her.”

My breath came in long, ragged breaths. “That's .. that’s it? That’s why you lied to me?! Lied to Twilight?! All for—for politics?!”

Mom sniffed as she continued to hold herself. “I don't blame you for being angry with me. There isn't any excuse I can give for what we did. Not for this.”

“Well you're right about that!” I snapped, my body trembling. “I can’t believe you would do something like this!” Were these the parents that had raised me? Did I really know them if they could just give away my sister and lie about it? I didn’t care that Magetrix was the sire, this was my sister we were talking about!

“We only wanted what was best.” Dad sighed and rubbed his brow. “Celestia, that sounds like a load of horseapples, but it's the truth.”

“It was a spur-of-the-moment decision,” Mom repeated, sounding like she was half saying it to herself. “We made it in a panic and it was the wrong call, and it's a decision I've regretted ever since.”

“For good reason.” I paced about the living room at a loss. I wanted to do something. Anything. Something that would let me act instead of having to listen to this-this ... insanity. I had a daughter. Amethyst was alive. I’d lost my job after being used by Queen Chrysalis. What else was life going to throw at me at this point?

It was too much. Any one of these things would have been more than bad enough to deal with. But all together?

I tried to push all of that to the side to ask the first question that came to mind. “Where is she?”

Mom’s back quivered as she started breaking down, leaving Dad to answer as he rubbed her back. “By some twist of fate, the mother of your daughter adopted her.”

That made me stop my pacing, and I shook my head as the whole world seemed to be spinning out of control. “The Princess did say fate has a sense of humor.” At this point I couldn’t even say I was all that surprised. Why wouldn’t have the mare I met once and knocked up by accident end up adopting my long-lost sister? Something out there was playing with my life, that had to be it.

“So that's the truth of it,” Dad said. “Everything you need to know is in that envelope.”

I nodded slowly. “Okay.” At least that sounded like the end of it—for now, anyways. Now I could absorb all of this.

“I’m sorry, Shining,” Mom managed to choke out.

Dad shrugged helplessly. “Don't know what else to say.”

“I think you’ve said plenty.” Both my parents flinched, and maybe that had come out nastier than I’d intended, but ... well, I was mad, and even had very good reasons to be. I didn’t even know how to classify all of this. “I’m gonna go.” I moved towards the doorway.

Dad reached out a hoof to try and stop me. “Shining, it might be best if you have us there to explain all of this to Cadance. This is—”

“I can handle it!” I snapped, not wanting to talk to them any longer. “I can tell Cadey.”

It wasn’t until I was out of the manor when I realized I had a major problem on my hooves.

Cadey was gonna kill me.

The trip back to Cadey’s quarters in the palace filled me with trepidation, but the long walk to the palace wasn’t the worst part. No, not by a long shot; what was far worse was when I got to Cadance’s quarters and nopony was there. That’s when the worst part started: the waiting. As long as I was doing something I had at least a little bit of control of the situation. But waiting? That’s where you gave up control. When you were waiting you could only—well, wait for other ponies to act. It reminded me of the anticipation before a battle; the stress would just build and build, the tension getting to a point where it was almost a relief when something actually happened, even if we all knew that something was likely to be really bad.

And this was going to be pretty bucking bad.

Explaining to Cadey I was a dad by some other mare was going to be rough, and telling her Amethyst—Sparkler, as she was called now—was alive wasn’t going to help things. The former was going to upset her, and the latter was going to make it sound like I was trying to get her pity. I kept running through the conversation with Cadey over and over in my head as I waited on her living room couch, and no realistic scenario turned out well. Maybe I should have gotten my parents’ help to explain all of this? But the thought of asking them for help just made me mad as all Tartarus. All these years they lied to me and my sister, and for what? So Dad could become Grand Vizier. As if that mattered, in comparison. No, I didn’t want to talk to them. Not for a long time, and certainly not right now.

I had to take several long breaths and count back from a hundred to calm back down. The last thing I needed to do was be at the point of wanting to scream when I talked with Cadey. First I would start yelling, and then she would start yelling, and then... Nothing good, probably. Endless night, we were going to need a relationship counselor at this rate, and we’d just gotten married! Where had everything gone so wrong?

The door to Cadey’s quarters opened and I instinctively tensed. Here we go, once more into the breach.

“Hey Shining, is that you?” Cadey asked as she closed the door behind her.

I swallowed, my throat suddenly feeling very dry. “Yeah. I mean, who else would be in our quarters?”

“One of the servants, possibly.” She smiled when she came in sight of me and gave me a peck on the cheek.

I gave the best smile I could under the circumstance, and I hoped it actually looked like a smile instead of some sort of grimace. “Oh, right. We have those now.”

“I'm sure you'll grow used to it.” Cadey headed to the bedroom and went about removing her royal regalia.

“You seem to have managed.” So, first thing’s first before I lept into that abyss of a terrible, horrible, awkward conversation that I never wanted to have with my wife. “I love you so much.” There, that was something safe to start with, and very, very true.

“I love you too!” Cadance called from the bedroom. A couple seconds later she was back in the living room, still smiling that wonderful smile of hers. “So how was your day?”

Not wanting to actually talk about how my terrible day had gone from start to finish, I pulled up a bouquet of flowers and handed them to my wife. Flowers should make things better, right? That had been my desperate hope when I had bought them on the way to the palace. Fillies always liked flowers. “I got these for you, because I love you so much.”

Cadey beamed as she took the bouquet from me. “Awww, you're so sweet.” She kissed me and I returned the gesture, feeling better from the love of my wife... And then guilty about what I was going to have to tell her.

Seemingly oblivious to my discomfort, Cadance stepped to the little kitchen area we had. It didn’t see a lot of use, but it was there if we wanted it. “Let me put these into a vase of water so that they’ll keep for a while.”

“Sounds good.” I knew I should get started on explaining everything, but ... I didn’t want to. I really didn’t want to. So I went with something safer in the hopes it would help me get to what I needed to talk about. “Did I mention that I'm the luckiest guy in the world, because I'm married to the most beautiful pony in Equestria?”

Cadey put the vase down on the counter, then sauntered over to the couch and continued to smile at me. “Okay, what are you up to?”

“Nothing.” I found myself wringing my hooves together and forced myself to stop. “I just wanted you to know that I really, really, really love you.”

Cadey’s smile vanished. “Shining, what's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong!” I said, the words coming out of my mouth on their own accord. “Why does something have to be wrong?”

Cadey shifted over and placed her hoof on mine. “You seem stressed.”

“Stressed? Why would I be stressed?” Maybe if I insisted everything was alright hard enough it would actually be so. “I'm married to the most beautiful mare in the world. What do I have to be stressed about?”

“There's the fact today was your last day as captain of the Royal Guard.” Cadey wrapped a wing around me and gave me a supportive nuzzle. “Look, I know this has been hard on you, but we’ll be fine. Don't worry, I don't think any less of you because you aren't the Captain anymore. You only lost your position because of bad luck and politics.”

“I know, but that's not...” I grimaced as I trailed off. Cadey was being so loving and supportive, and here I was about to ruin everything because of something dumb I did years ago. Life wasn't fair. “Look, I want you to know that I love you more than anything in the whole wide world.”

“I understand that.” Cadey pecked me on the cheek. “I can feel how much you love me, and I love you right back. So stop worrying about it. As for your job...” She rubbed her chin as she thought. “How about this? Next chance I get I’ll talk with Aunt Tia and Aunt Luna about getting you transferred to a new post. I'm sure there’s something out there you can do, and anypony with half a brain can see how good you are at your job.”

The guilt was getting to the point of threatening to kill me. I needed to tell her the truth. She deserved that much, however much it hurt. “That’s not the problem. Not really. It’s ... I really love you, Cadey,” I said, chickening out again.

“I know you do.” Cadey frowned as she stared at me. “And as much as I like to hear it, you don't need to reassure me all the time. Shining, what’s the matter?”

Maybe there was a way to break the news to her gently? “I just really want you to know that I love you. So, so much. More than anything.”

Cadey’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Shining, what did you do?”

“Why does telling you l love you mean I did something?” That sounded more defensive than I’d intended.

“Because whenever a stallion says they love their wife so vehemently this many times, it usually means they did something,” She withdrew her supportive wing. “And so they try to cushion the blow of what they did by telling their partners how much they love her.”

My ears flattened to my head. She had me dead pegged. Go figure, the Alicorn of Love would know all about this type of thing. “Not necessarily,” I said, knowing how stupid that sounded as the words left my mouth.

Cadey raised one of her eyebrows. “And this time?”

I licked my suddenly very dry lips, and my eyes darted around to find some kind of inspiration to save myself, and they landed on our wedding photo. “You know how during the wedding, Celestia said that true love is unconditional?”

“Yeees, it was our wedding.” Cadance crossed her legs over her chest. “And you’re avoiding the question. What did you do?”

I could feel myself digging a deeper and deeper hole for myself as my mouth kept talking despite how much a desperate and terrified corner of my mind screamed for me to stop. “I'm just saying, it was a beautiful speech. Just like you're beautiful.”

Cadey’s eyes narrowed yet further into an increasingly suspicious glare. “What. Did. You. Do?”

I gulped as my knees shook and it felt like my heart was going to burst out of my chest. “Um ... IhaveanillegitimatedaughterIjustfoundoutabout!” There, I said it!

Uh-oh, I just said it.

Cadey blinked and jerked back from me. “Excuse me? Did ... did you say you have a daughter?”

I hunched my shoulders, unable to look at her. “Yes, and I really love you.”

Cadey’s look of confusion was replaced by a much uglier glare. “You have a daughter?!” she screamed.

If I could have disappeared into the couch, I would have. “Yes...”

Cadey’s wings snapped out as she bolted to her hooves. “How?! Why?! When?! What have you been doing?!”

I instinctively flinched down. A stupidly pointless thing to do. It wasn't like a stallion my size could make himself unnoticeable. “It was before we even ... I was at a party and ... um ... drinking ... alcohol ... didn't know...”

“Are you telling me you knocked up some mare while drunk?”

I looked away in shame. “A little bit.”

“How do you knock up somepony a little bit?!” Cadey jabbed her hoof into my chest, her face red. “What were you thinking?! You shouldn't be getting drunk to start with, and now you’re sleeping around on me?!”

“No, I—” I groaned and hurried my head in my hooves. “It was before we hooked up. Years ago, at my West Hoof Graduation party, I think. I was young and did something stupid.” That sounded lame even to my ears, true or not.

Cadey’s nostrils flared. “And that's supposed to make me feel better?”

I hung my head. “No, but I swear, I didn't even know I was a dad until earlier today when my parents told me. They—well Twily, found out somehow. I don't have all the details yet about that.”

Cadey shook her head in frustration and paced around the room. “What am I to say about this? You have a daughter by another mare!”

Not knowing what else to say, I went with, “I love you so much.”

“Shining.” The single word mixed disappointment and ... pity, maybe. Probably anger too, she had pretty good reasons to be mad right now. “This isn't the type of thing to go away just because you say you love me. This is bigger than some words. You have a kid and it isn't mine.”

I flinched and kept up my hopeless effort to disappear into the couch. “I'm sorry. I wish there was a way to make this right. I really love you, more than anything.”

Cadey sat on a cushion opposite of me and glowered. “And who is this mare?”

“Ditzy Doo,” I said. “I only met her once, during the party.”

I swear I could hear Cadey’s teeth grinding from the other side of the room. “Apparently you hit it off if you slept with her.”

I grimaced. “It was before we started dating.” Yeah, I'd had a longtime crush on Cadey before that, but it never worked out when I tried to ask her out. In fact, the one time I tried to ask her out on Hearts and Hooves Day ended with her coming to the conclusion that I was gay, thus giving the guys years’ worth of teasing material.

Cadey’s ear flicked for a few seconds. “And where’s your daughter? What's her name?”

“Her name is Dinky Doo.” The envelope my parents had given to me sat on the coffee table between us, and I pushed it towards her. “She’s, um, in Ponyville. She's staying with my sister.”

Cadey cocked an eyebrow as she took the envelope. “You daughter’s with Twilight? Did something happen to her mom?”

“Nono, she's still with her mom.” I hadn't meant to jump right into talking about Amethyst so quickly, but everything was so far off the rails by this point that I didn't know where I was going. “It's my other sister.”

“Vinyl? When did she move out to Ponyville?”

“No!” I groaned and slapped my face with a hoof. “Amethyst Star.” I took a deep breath, trying to not screw up some part of this conversation. “The one I thought was dead until about five minutes after I found out I had a kid.”

Cadey’s jaw dropped, and it took a couple of attempts for her to form a coherent sentence. “Amethyst ... but I thought she was stillborn. There was a funeral, right?”

I felt some of the anger from earlier in the day return. “So did I. Apparently my parents lied. Said they were trying to avoid a political scandal when they found out Magetrix was the sire. Twily discovered that Amethyst was alive, somehow.”

“I can't believe this.” Cadey shook her head. “This isn't making any sense.”

“Tell me about it.”

“But why? Why would they do something like that?” Her eyes narrowed again. “This better not be some attempt to shift the topic away from what you did. I will confirm all of this with your parents later.”

I threw up my hooves in surrender. “Cadey, trust me, I don't have a plan. Everything's hitting me so hard and fast right now I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I...” I suddenly felt exhausted. Like I'd just done an all day and night march through a swamp, and all I wanted to do was collapse on the first patch of dry land I could find. I slunk down to lie down on the couch, feeling helpless. “I just want it to stop. I want to go back to being Captain, where I didn't have an illegitimate daughter I didn't know about and the world made some bucking sense.”

Cadey started to rise from her cushion but then stopped herself. She lowered herself back down and took a long breath. “That's—well, I don't like saying it, but I'm pretty disappointed in your parents. I never would have imagined they could have done something like this.” She shot me another glower. “I'm not saying I'm thrilled about you having a daughter with another mare. It might have been unintentional, but you still acted incredibly irresponsibly. You should have known better.”

I buried my face in the couch and groaned. “Sorry.”

Cadey let out a long breath. “Anything else I should know about?”

I shook my head. “Not that I know of.” If that wasn’t the end of it I didn’t know what I was going to do. “So ... we good?”

“This is a lot to absorb.” Cadey rubbed her eyes as she thought. “I’m going to need some time to wrap my head around all of this.”

“You and me both.” I closed my eyes as I tried to figure out how to move forward.

Cadey slumped in her chair, looking almost as weary as I felt. “So, what are you planning on doing?”

“I need to see them,” I said. “Ditzy, Amethyst, my daughter.”

Cadey nodded slightly. “You do need to see them, and ... I’d better go with you.”

I smiled a little bit, because I needed any support I could get from my wife. “I’d really appreciate it. We can send a message to Twilight asking if we can come over so that we can sort all of this out. She knows everything, and I’m sure she’d be willing to help.”

“That plan sounds as good as any.” Cadey shook her head. “This is going to really complicate the family tree.”

“Sorry.” I grimaced. “I love you.”

“Yes, I know.” Cadey blew a lock of her mane out of her face. “And I love you too. Even if it makes life very ... interesting, sometimes.”

“Good interesting?”

The shadow of a grin showed on Cadey’s lips. “Most of the time.”

“So...” I rubbed my upper leg. This wasn’t a question I’d looked forward to asking. “How long am I on the couch?”

Cadey’s ears wilted. “I think I need a bit of space to figure everything out. Do you have someplace you can go for a couple of days?”

Ouch, even worse than couch time. Not that I could blame Cadey, I’d just hit her hard with everything, and we hadn’t even been married that long. “Yeah, probably.” I wasn’t so sure about crashing at Sparkle Manor, not when I was still mad at my parents, but there should be a barrack or friend’s house I should be able to sleep at for a couple of days. Maybe waiting a few days to hear back from Twily would help me get my head on straight, anyways.

Cadey shuffled on her cushion and then scooted over next to me. She placed a hoof on mine and smiled. “It’ll be okay, alright? It’s going to be rough for a while, but we’ll make it through this.”

“Thanks.” I grasped her hoof and smiled. As long as I had Cadey I was pretty sure I’d be okay in the end, however crazy life got. “Did I mention I love you?”

Author's Notes:

I'd like to thank my editors Chengar Qordath and Comma-Kazie, and my prereaders Trinary, Rodinga, Swiftest, Bronywriter, wolfstorm56, Stupidhand14, Alicorn Priest, and Poison Claw for all their help with putting this story together.