Collar glanced again at Cloudy, whose eyes never seemed to leave Rosemary, and wondered at the wisdom of keeping her there for what might be a difficult interrogation, depending on the nature of what he discovered. Or did not discover.

“Very well. First…” He took a breath and steadied himself. “What did you think you were doing?”

“Trying not to get exiled,” Rosemary said simply. That startled Collar, but not Cloudy, and he shot his lover a look that didn’t take much guesswork to figure out.

“It was the price of failure for my task as well,” Cloudy murmured. “Not explicitly stated, though.”

Collar closed his eyes and leaned lightly against Cloudy. “I know. You’re safe from that.” He let her lean against him for a moment before opening his eyes to find Rosemary studying them, her veneer of calm belied as false by the twitching of her coat and her ears.

Nowhere in her could he see the terror she’d shown last night.

“Why were you trying to abduct Prim Cottage?” Collar asked at last.

“I wasn’t trying to abduct him.” Plainly said, Rosemary’s answer had nothing on the surface to grab onto. “I wanted to get certain information from him. About you, my lord.”

“What certain information did you want to get?” Collar belatedly pulled out a scroll and made a few quick notes, wincing as Cloudy rolled her eyes. He couldn’t let the informality run the meeting, nor her apparent openness beguile him away from asking questions.

“Anything I could get him to talk about,” Rosemary said evenly. “I had planned to weaken his inhibitions about talking to a mare like me, a Rosethorn, and then approach his door openly and ask if he wanted to share a dinner with me.”

“Not sex?”

“I will not use my body for Roseate’s gain,” Rosemary growled, her ears flat, her tail lashing the floor. “Nor will I coax one who would otherwise be unwilling into bed with me. Regardless of reason.”

“Noted,” Collar said softly, glancing aside at Cloudy, her face an impassive mask… if he ignored the small tick pulling at her cheek telling him she was fighting to keep from clenching her teeth. “Please explain your plan, and any culpability of any others.”

“Others.” Rosemary’s voice was flat. “Roseate, you already know. No other was involved in my planning.”

“Not even Rosewater?”

“Do you think me incapable of executing a raid on my own?” Rosemary asked.

“Planning, no. Executing, yes,” Collar said simply, raising a brow. “It’s been clear from the start of our surveillance that your heart wasn’t in it, Rosemary, and while we had our suspicions about whether or not your playfulness was a ruse—”

“It wasn’t.” Rosemary seemed to slump even though she barely moved. “Stars above, it wasn’t.” Her eyes lifted to meet his, then slid off to the side. “I didn’t want to do any of this, Lord Collar. I had to do it. I had to take the risk.”

An inkling of what Rosemary was really like flitted through his mind. Those reports from Stride of her activities weren’t simply her making up a persona. He had no doubt in that moment that her every interaction with his guards, and her dancing and making light of her trespass were nothing more than they appeared on the surface.

A free spirit yearning to be free.

Collar checked the evidence bag he’d dragged in with him and rifled through the contents for a moment before he pulled out the three vials of perfume.

“As this will be used to determine your sentencing,” Collar said as she settled them on the floor in front of them, “please tell me what each of these does.”

Rosemary blinked at him, then at the perfumes. “My lord. What’s stopping me from using the white fragrance on you? I gave you a demonstration of what it does.”

“You did. But rather than use it on me, you used it on yourself.” Collar glanced aside at Cloudy when she flinched. “My trust in your integrity comes from a very reliable source,” Collar said. “Unless I have vastly underestimated you, I believe that you would not use these out of malice.”

“I would not,” Rosemary said, but still hesitated as she lifted the first one, the nearly viscous orange liquid lazily swirling. “Th-this is an appetite encouragement. It makes a pony hungry for the scent I captured. In this case, a brown-sugar roasted carrot casserole. I made sure Mr. Cottage had all the ingredients before I made the perfume.”

“How?” Collar asked, quickly flipping through the mental copies of the reports Stride had written.

“By smelling them. It’s how I knew there were cracks in his window. I drew out the air from inside and smelled it the night before I decided what recipe I would use.” The vial in Rosemary’s magic swirled slowly. “I would have made him hungry for it… then offered to make it for him, and talked to him while I was cooking.”

Collar resisted the urge to rub his muzzle. “Prim Cottage would have gladly welcomed you into his home, Rosemary,” he said instead. “He was…” He trailed off and waved for Rosemary to go on, the look in her eyes telling him she was at least eager to prove she wasn’t totally incompetent.

“He was the palace steward while you were growing up, and was a supporter of the Lace Reformations. Both were reasons why Roseate wanted him abducted. At least, I think so. To weaken support for the Reformations and to garner personal information about you.”

“But you weren’t going to abduct him?” Collar asked, glancing aside to see a very smug-looking Cloudy nodding along with his question.

“No.” Rosemary set the glass down again. “I was going to try to play ignorant with Roseate. I’m terrible at hiding. I know it. She knows it. You know it. I had a week still until the deadline came due, so even if playing ignorant didn’t work, I hoped she would give me a second chance.”

She wouldn’t have, dear mare. “Like she gave your mother.” For the briefest moment, Collar thought Rosemary was going to start crying again, but she held it in and shook her head. “What about this one?”

“Only if I needed to loosen his inhibitions about talking to me further.” Rosemary raised that one and swirled it, the liquid sloshing and almost seeming ready to burst into gaseous form at the slight motion, then sliding down back into a liquid. “One of the Garden of Love’s vintages, from…” She took a breath. “Before Carnation was taken from us.”

“Us.” Collar raised a brow.

Rosemary’s ears flattened, and for a brief, panicked moment she stared at him. Then she righted her ears and pushed calm back into her expression. “Us. Rosewater and I. Both of us loved her dearly, and it was devastating to both of us when she was exiled.”

“Rosewater turned into a recluse,” Collar said.

“Roseate made her a recluse!” Rosemary shot back. “I’ve tried so hard to push her out again, but she’s terrified that Roseate will take everypony else that she’s ever loved from her. Just like she did Carnation,” she finished in a whispered. “She took my mother from me. She took Rosewater’s mother away, too.”

He had to ask it. He hated that he had to, but he needed to know why. “Why didn’t both of you leave with her and start over somewhere else?”

Rosemary fixed him with a glower that he knew he deserved. “I love Merrie. I love my friends. I love that I am free to pursue love as I understand it. As for Rosewater… ask her. But as long as she stays here, I am needed here.”

That confirmed something Collar had long suspected ever since their first clandestine meeting. “You’re her sanctuary.”

He could have rubbed snow in her mane and gotten a less surprised reaction. “You know?”

“She told me.”

For a moment, it seemed like she was going to say more, then she closed up again, suspicion in her eyes and her demeanor. “Is it any wonder that we’re close? Carnation raised both of us. She’s lost two families, Collar, and I’m all that’s left of her second. I will…”

She swallowed, her ears drooping as she looked between Collar and Cloudy.

“I… I won’t be there for her, will I?”

“No.” Collar said the word softly.

He watched as the realization settled over her, the events of the night catching up to her along with all the implications of what her arrest meant. This wasn’t a jaunt across the bridge that she would joke with the friends she’d made of the Dammeguard about, and it wasn’t something she was going to simply walk away from.

“Will she be okay?” He asked after it seemed like the fullness of the ramifications had settled over her.

“I don’t know.” Rosemary stood, her legs shaking, and moved unsteadily around the bed to look out the window. The Clothier’s suite looked out over the courtyard, facing to the south towards Merrie. On the second floor of the palace, it wasn’t high enough to see over the buildings of Damme to its sister city, but she didn’t seem to notice as she sat there, coat shivering as unknowable thoughts passed over her.

She raised a hoof to set on the glass, flat and gentle as if she were saying farewell to somepony. She swallowed, and when she spoke again, her voice was rough and strained. “I don’t know, my lord. I don’t know.”

At the third repetition, she sank against the stone wall and wept quietly.

Cloudy was at her side in an instant, with only an apologetic look to him before she settled in to hold her former lover, a mare she still loved dearly.

Leaving Collar to stand and watch, and wonder what was going to happen to the relative calm he’d been able to gather to him in the past two years.

Cloudy found Collar reading reports, or at least pretending to read reports. His eyes were fixed on the page, but they weren’t moving, and a sweating bottle of chilled Dammerale sat on the corner of his desk, the condensation ring telling her he’d barely touched it.

He looked up briefly as she came in and slid the top page across to her silently.

Rosewater returned home early morning. She was not witnessed leaving the perfumery.

How she’d pulled that off, they would likely never know. A mist illusion on the door, perhaps. Or simply teleporting from within to without. Someplace she could observe the palace from afar and teleport the message and the bottle when Collar approached.

“She slipped up,” Cloudy said.

“But was it deliberate?” Collar eyed the bottle of Dammerale and took a long pull from it. “Or is she already cracking?”

“It’s not even been a day, Collar,” Cloudy said softly. “She’s stronger than that.”

“She is normally.” Collar drew in a deep breath and let it out, then took another swallow. “I need to ask a favor of you, Cloudy. I need you to watch for her on the river. If you see a chance to talk to her, try to take it.”

“Because if she’s unstable, we might have poked a badger.”

“The badger needed poking,” Collar said with a wry smile. “We can’t ignore the law for one pony just because her cousin—”

“Sister,” Cloudy said, certain of her intuition. “That wasn’t a cousin she was missing, Collar. That was her sister, and a dear one at that.” It was hard to describe to him, a single child, what it felt like to be separated from her family every day for the past two years. Even though it would only take a second to cross the river, and another few to land, the repercussions for her family would be wide-ranging.

Cloudy was a traitor in Merrie, and any visitation by her to her family would be seen as traitorous acts. Hundreds of years of familial history in that home would be ripped away from them in an instant if Cloudy gave in.

What she’d seen in Rosemary, what she’d felt as she settled in to cover the mare with a wing, was like that. It was a bond of family more potent than blood that had been broken.

“I see.” Collar leaned back in his chair and pushed his hooves against the desk. “I hate this war.”

“Gospel, sir,” she said and swiped the bottle to take a swig. It was a good batch, freshly brewed, but it still made her nose twitch as she set it back down. “I’ll be on the river, Collar. I don’t know that trying to talk to her won’t cause more problems.”

He grimaced and drained the rest of the Dammerale. “I wish I could just… ask her. Right now.”

Cloudy smiled thinly. “Duty.”

“Rutting duty,” he agreed. “Rutting war.”

Collar nosed his way into the suite, past the guard standing watch outside, and found Rosemary asleep on the bed, a pillow cast over her eyes and only her nose sticking out.

A nose that twitched when he pulled the cover off her lunch. “You didn’t have to cook what I made in my scent,” she murmured.

“It was from my mother’s trove of recipes,” Collar replied. “I had the kitchen make it for you.” He settled the platter of carrot casserole on the small desk and pulled out a chair, then hesitated and pulled one of the unused pillows from the bed to sit on, after the Merrier style. “You said you’d planned to cook it for him.”

“I did.” She didn’t elaborate.

“I wanted to talk to you informally,” he said softly, settling more comfortably in place and silencing the room to the outside. “About your sister.”

“I don’t have a sister.”

Collar pursed his lips and tugged at the pillow covering her face gently. “I know she’s closer to you than most cousins are.”

“She’s been…” Rosemary tugged the pillow back down with a hoof rather than a spell.

“You care a great deal for her, regardless of your relationship.” Collar pulled the pillow away. “And you can’t hide, Rosemary.”

“I’m not hiding. I have a headache.”

“My apologies, then. But I am assured that eating will help remedy that after a good cry.” He smiled encouragingly and pulled another pillow down from the bed to set in front of the desk. “I apologize for the lack of an actual table, but this room was never intended as a prison cell.”

“I’m not going to be sent to Prim Prison?” Rosemary asked, frozen halfway through dismounting from the bed.

“No. Given her… tendency to be overprotective of you, we felt it best to keep you in a more secure location.” Collar smiled at the furrow-browed frown. “Oh, it’s not easy to break into Prim Prison, but it has been done before.” He waited a beat, holding a smile until she glanced at him, brows rising. “Getting out again is the hard part.”

She snorted and sat at the desk, sniffing delicately at the dish, her Rosethorn marks glowing a delicate pink. “My mother…” She swallowed. “She used to make it like this.”

“Lace has been saying quite a lot about Carnation lately,” Collar said, not bothering to hide that he was fishing for information. “The impression I’ve gotten is that they were once very close.”

Rosemary glanced at him. “If they were, it was before I was born, my lord.” Her eyes widened slightly as the knife she was using to cut up the carrots practically fell through them without the need for pressure. “When Rosewater makes it, the carrots are nowhere near so soft.”

“She cooks a lot?”

“She does.” Rosemary fell silent while she ate a few bites, her eyes brightening more with each one. “You want to ask about her, my lord.”

“I do.” He settled in more firmly on his pillow and crossed his forelegs as he leaned against the desk. “But I’d rather ask about you. Or, rather, what your plan is.”

“Stay put.” She raised a brow questioningly. “Unless you’re asking if I plan on making an escape?”

“I trust enough in your integrity to post only one guard and to leave you the Mother’s Kiss perfume.” Collar shook his head. “Strictly speaking, that should be contraband, but I’ve felt its effects. There’s no harm to it.”

She opened her mouth, her eyes flashing, but stopped before whatever she had been about to say came out and settled back down to eat another bite of casserole.

“Your cousin can bottle emotions and sell them as perfume,” Collar went on. “How she does it, even with a talent, I don’t know. It’s a rare and dangerous talent, if that’s what it is.”

“And here, I thought you wanted to know about me,” Rosemary said flatly, then demured, ears dipping, and raised another forkful of casserole to her lips. “That was meant as a gift to me. I know you didn’t miss the filigreed representations of our strange little family.”

He waited until she swallowed before answering. “I did notice. But forgive me if I’d rather not give a prisoner the means to escape so neatly packaged.”

“You did not need to give it to me at all, my lord, and yet…” Rosemary glanced to the side where the bottle sat on the bedside table, the latch firmly secured. “Why?”

“I owed her a favor. A rather large one.”

“When Roseate tried to abduct you.”

“She told you? Last I’d heard on the street was that mother and daughter just happened to be fighting over me and I, mighty stallion that I am,” he said with a pull back of his head and puffing up of his chest, “defeated both of them readily.”

Rosemary giggled. “Strong as you are, Rosewater would still stand on level ground with you, my lord. And yes. She told me.”

“That’s why,” Collar said more gently, resuming his more relaxed posture. “Ponies are going to wonder where the Rosethorn Princess has gone, you know.”

“What?” Rosemary stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Ah. The rumors must not have reached Merrie yet, then.” Collar offered her a smile, and added, “The ghost of a Rosethorn mare pining after her lost love, dancing through the mists of Primline Park before sitting down on Prim Rock to hold a silent, eternal vigil for her love lost at sea.”

“That… that’s what they think of my dancing?”

“A lot of emotion can come out in motion,” Collar said. “Such as the mournful movements of a mare preparing herself to do something she doesn’t want to do. I have the reports from the night before you were arrested. Our watcher reported you were melancholic, or seemed so, different from your usual cheerful self.” He shrugged. “A mare, half-veiled, dancing by the moonlight and then watching the sea. It’s not hard to put a sad tale to it from a pony watching at a distance.”

“I had no chance to pull off my plan, did I?”

“No. But we didn’t arrest you because we wanted to believe that you wouldn’t.”

“I had no choice.”

“There’s always a choice, Rosemary. You could have defected to us, as Cloudy did. I would have loved to see Cloudy’s face light up to have you come to us willingly.”

“Do you think I didn’t consider that, Lord Collar?” Her face twisted into anger mixed with sorrow. “Do you think I wouldn’t wish for that to have been the easiest option?”

“Why wasn’t it?” he asked in as gentle a tone as he could.

It was curious to see her face close up as she shut down her emotional response to the question. It should have been an easy question to answer. It took her a long time to bring her breathing back to normal, and for the pain etched across her brow and ears to fade, but when she raised her head again, her expression one of careful, fragile serenity. It was how he imagined a younger Rosewater might react.

“Because it was not,” she said in a smooth tone, as though she’d been talking about the weather. “You read the letter. There are secrets I must hold close. Even inside a bubble of silence, I’d rather not even think about them too loudly.”

“I must ask. For the sake of my ponies and my city, Rosemary.”

Her eyes turned from him to the casserole, a look of understanding dawning in her eyes. “Was all this a setup to bring me here? To this conversation?”

“No.” He shook his head slowly. “I wanted to see what kind of mare Cloudy would fall in love with and hold onto for years of separation.” He had his answer, too, and he couldn’t blame Cloudy for her love. Rosemary was… different. “I didn’t want to ask, but I must.”

The fragile control she held over herself trembled, tears trickling down her cheeks as she stared over his shoulder, her throat bobbing, her jaw tightening and relaxing as she spoke carefully.

“I had a duty, too.” She closed her eyes. “I failed, and now she’s alone again.”

Rosewater. Collar swallowed. “She cares greatly for you. What would her reaction to your letter be, do you think?” He asked, his voice barely a whisper.

“Hide.”

Collar closed his eyes and saw her face again in the secret meeting on the bridge, the pain in her eyes barely restrained. “I’m sorry, Rosemary.”

“Me too.”

They stayed silent for a time, Rosemary struggling to bring herself back under control. He pondered what she’d been hiding, knew it must have been more of the same he was seeing in Rosemary’s eyes, only more expertly restrained, more firmly reigned over.

She resumed eating, but the joy of enjoying the food was gone.

“You know, Prim Cottage would have loved to get to know you even without the fragrances.”

Rosemary’s ears dipped once. “I know.” She opened her mouth, closed her eyes, her head sagging. “It wasn’t an option.”

“Why not? You made friends with my bridge guards easily enough.” He let a bit of his wry amusement show in a half-grin. “I had no idea what you were up to.”

“I didn’t, either.” She finished off the last of the casserole in silence, her eyes not lifting from the plate to give him a polite chance to talk to her. When she finished, she dabbed her lips clean, set the napkin on the plate and covered it again. “Thank you, my lord, for lunch.”

“Of course, Rosemary,” he said.

As he closed the door, he hesitated, watching her stand and take up the perfume bottle before sliding onto the bed, staring at it and the letter.

“Coat,” he said as he closed the door. “Listen for her, please. Let me know if anything changes.”

Author's Notes:

I was expecting to get this out before 7am... I slept in.