“Twilight. Twilight, wake up,” came a soft, soothing voice.

Twilight just curled up tighter, pulling the luxurious silk sheets over her head. She was far from ready to leave the safe haven of dreamless sleep. “Sun’s not even up…” she mumbled.

The voice chuckled and she felt somepony’s nose prod her side. “I’m fairly sure it is. I did raise it, after all. Come on, get up.”

“Muh?” was the most articulate response Twilight could muster at that moment. When the rusted gears in her brain finally got turning, her eyes shot open and she threw the covers off. Sitting next to her bed was none other than Celestia, a smirk on her face and her amusement plain. “Celestia! Sorry, I just, I, um…” She blushed when last night’s memories caught up with her and she realized three things: first, that she was sleeping in Luna’s bed; second, that Luna was fast asleep next to her; and third, most importantly, Celestia had just caught Twilight in bed with her sister. “I can explain?” she said with a nervous giggle.

“No need; Luna explained it to me at breakfast this morning,” the older alicorn chuckled, nuzzling her muzzle to her student’s. “Haunted by nightmares last night, yes?”

“Breakfast?” Twilight blinked and looked up at the clock, though it was hard to see in the darkness of Luna’s room. Both hands had just parted from their tryst over the number one a few minutes ago. “Oh wow, I really slept in,” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes. “Sorry, Celestia.”

“No harm done,” she assured. “It sounds like you needed it. Besides, I’m more than used to handling the duties of a ruler on my own.”

“Still, sorry,” Twilight said with a weak giggle. She tried to look her mentor in the eye, but every time she did the phantoms of last night’s nightmare clawed at her mind’s eye. She climbed out of Luna’s bed and used the excuse of stretching her legs and wings to avoid eye contact. “How much did you leave for me?”

“There is still much to be done, but that can wait for later. We have a press conference to attend, remember?” Celestia got to her hooves and cantered out the door.

Twilight’s heart sank into her stomach as she followed, her heavy hooves struggling to keep up with her teacher’s stately strides. “I remember now,” she mumbled.

“You don’t have to go up with me, though,” Celestia added. “Considering the circumstances and the personal nature of this whole affair, I don’t think it’d be fair to push you into the spotlight. I think you should be there, though, as a learning experience and to keep you in the loop. There are plenty of places to stay away from the prying eyes of cameras and still hear my address.”

Twilight bit her lip and looked to the side. She tried to distract herself with the gorgeous stained glass windows of the palace as the pair trotted past them, but her head was already spinning from anxiety and the cavalcade of colors wasn’t helping. “No, I’ll be fine. Just… could you do the talking, please? I didn’t get much time to review our official answers,” she asked.

Celestia gave her a soft, indulging smile that made Twilight cringe; it was that look that said that the older alicorn knew she was being lied to, but took pity and wasn’t going to call the liar out on it. “Of course. Don’t worry; I’ve dealt with far worse incidents. I know what to say to keep the masses from grabbing their torches and pitchforks.” Twilight shot her mentor a look and she added, “Sorry, poor choice of words. No harm will come to Spike, I promise.”

Twilight sighed and nuzzled Celestia’s side. “I know. I just can’t help but worry. No matter what we, I mean, you say, the papers are going to demonize Spike and drench the story in so much yellow journalism that Fluttershy’s coat will look white, and then some young fool with delusions of vigilantism is going to try to track him down to be a hero. This is going to get somepony killed!”

“Oh, I have no doubt about that,” Celestia said as they reached a flight of stairs leading them downward. “That’s the price of freedom of the press; truth isn’t necessarily required. I can’t tell you how many ‘biographies’ of my dear sister have all sorts of insane theories about the ‘real’ reason she turned into Nightmare Moon. I’m not so sure about that second part, though.” She chuckled and looked down at Twilight. “Did you end your embargo on reading dragon slayer stories recently?”

“No; I still refuse to read that xenophobic trash,” Twilight huffed. “But I do know how the stories go, and that other ponies read them, and that in all likelihood somepony’s going to try to imitate them.”

“It’s a possibility. All the same, not much can be done; the Everfree Forest, what’s left of it, is still too large to block off or keep surveillance on,” Celestia sighed. “Even we just have to accept that sometimes things are beyond our power. The most we can do is keep as many things under control as possible.”

“How does it feel, Twi, to know that most if not all of your life is completely out of your power?”

Twilight shook her head and winced, trying to shake off the memory tugging at the back of her mind as the stairs ended.

“Still, I’ll have Discord give Spike some warning next time they meet,” Celestia continued, not noticing Twilight’s wince. “I doubt anyone would be able to get very deep into the forest, but he should at least be ready to defend himself. For now, the best we can do is not give the press a reason to make this worse than it is, though they hardly need one.”

Twilight nodded mutely as the stairwell let out into the main entrance hall. Vertigo hit her like a firework went off behind her skull when the hail of camera flashes assaulted her eyes. Her lack of peaceful sleep caught up to her as she shakily followed the vague shape of Celestia down the stairs. She thought she could make out Celestia’s legs not being stable either, but it was hard to see through all the bursts of light. It was so hard to see or even think that she didn’t know they’d reached the landing above the crowd of reporters until she bumped into Celestia’s plot.

With a thankful lack of remark from her mentor, Twilight circled around and sat at Celestia’s side as she fought to control the blush on her face and look as awake and confident as possible. A rigid, regal spine, upheld head, and stiff upper lip did little to make her actually feel awake or confident, though.

Celestia cleared her throat. The motherly concern from her and Twilight’s conversation was gone, and in its place the practiced face of a solemn leader, with narrowed eyes and taught lips. “Good afternoon,” she started, her stately voice carrying across the hall. “I doubt you need much reminder why you’re all here. A few short days ago, the Western side of the Everfree Forest, a place that has long lived in our culture as a den of nightmares and untamable magic, was set ablaze and burned to the ground. We all saw the smoke and the rising flames here from Canterlot; many of you probably knew before I did. Many of our non-pony animal citizens that lived on the edge of the forest have died or lost their homes, and several villagers from Ponyville have been displaced. One of the Elements, Lady Rarity, has even been hospitalized.”

“I will not lie to you, directly or by omission,” she continued, swiveling her head to look over the crowd. Twilight could barely see the crowd, anyway, but tried her best not to look at the ceiling to get her eyes away from the camera flashes. “I have no doubt that the grapevine has been plumbed many times over before this meeting, so you all probably have a good idea of who’s responsible already. With the unique coloration of the flames and all the eyewitness reports, there never was any point to hiding it. The cause of the fire was Spike, dragon servant of the crown and a royal confidante.”

Twilight’s ear twitched and her teeth grinded; Celestia paused to allow the reporters to murmur amongst themselves, and Twilight could pick up many questions about why Celestia would let a dragon into Equestria in the first place and many words to describe Spike other than his name, like “beast” or “monster.”

“What do you think it feels like to me, being your ‘number one assistant’ for all these years and still having to answer to you? Being stuck in this library because nopony will ever trust me on my own? Being stuck in a town, in a society, in a country where I don’t even belong?!”

Twilight closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“We have reason to believe that the fire was purely accidental,” Celestia resumed. “Even so, arson and accidental slaughter are still serious crimes, especially on such a large scale. We do not know his exact whereabouts, but rest assured everything will be done to bring him in and have him face his punishment in court as a citizen of Equestria.”

Another wave of disbelieving murmurs washed over the assembly. Through the wall of flashing light, Twilight could barely see a figure amongst them stand up from its seat. “Your Highness, why in the world would you allow this dragon the privilege of citizenship after what he’s done?” a mare’s voice asked, the Manehattan accent very thick. “Why did you allow it in the first place?”

“The laws on citizenship are very clear: Any creature that is born within Equestria’s borders is eligible for citizenship, equine or not,” Celestia said. “Spike’s papers were filed years ago, and since his birth he’s been under the legal guardianship of Princess Twilight, her parents, and myself. As a citizen of Equestria-”

“An old interview with Princess Twilight clearly states that her test of admission into your academy was to make this Spike’s egg hatch while you were in attendance. No other instances of such a test exist in the schools’ records. Spike’s existence and relationship with the crown were quite clearly planned in advance. After the tragedy he caused, I think the public has the right to know what the purpose of that plan was,” the reporter cut in.

The room went quiet and the camera flashes stopped. The assembly seemed to be torn between admiring, hating, or gawking at the reporter with the cast-iron spine. Twilight’s mind seethed with less than flattering judgments of her past and character, from who she slept with to get her position to how many tin foil hats she must own. She glanced over to Celestia to find that her mentor’s face had changed little, though her calm gaze turned colder as she shifted her weight.

“This press conference is about the recent tragedy in Ponyville and the palace’s planned course of action. Any past details of the personal relationships between myself, Princess Twilight, and Spike are not open for discussion and strictly between us,” she announced, looking across the crowd as if they were all responsible for the lone mare’s gall.

“Then let Princess Twilight speak, Your Majesty,” the reporter pressed. “Princess Twilight, do you have any comments? Are you more willing to let the public know why you were given a dragon of all things as a pet?”

Twilight grit her teeth; the eyes of the crowd were all fixed on her. Her own gaze fell on the reporter that was causing such a stir, a unicorn with a short cut, dark red mane, mint green coat, and yellow eyes boring into hers. She fought the urge to practice the Royal Canterlot Voice then and there as she said, “First of all, Spike is not my pet. He’s like a surrogate son or a little brother to me, but not a pet. Furthermore, I have no reason to believe that Celestia would have ulterior motives to giving me a special test to enter the academy.”

“Besides that you’re the only unicorn in the long and storied history of the academy to be given one? That doesn’t seem strange to you?” the mare shot back.

“Face it, Twi, you were made to be a royal by a royal.”

Celestia cut in with, “I don’t think that this line of questioning is appropriate given the-”

“Even if it does, I trust Princess Celestia with my life,” Twilight interrupted in turn, her voice rising to block out Spike’s in her head. “She may not be perfectly open, but I trust anything she may be withholding from me to be for my own good and the good of her subjects.”

“You’re only living the life you have because Celestia pulled your strings, you puppet!”

“If she’s keeping things from you, how can we trust her not to keep things from us? Is there more to this story? Was her line about not lying by omission just a load of-”

“None of your business!” Twilight snapped, her teeth bared and her wings flaring.

The floodgates had burst wide open. The others in the crowd started joining in with their own questions in a confusing mass of meaningless, infuriating noise as the cameras resumed their blinding flashes. Twilight closed her eyes and ground her teeth together to try to drown it out.

“Silence!”

The entire room went deathly quiet. Twilight’s eyes snapped open as she looked to her teacher, her Royal Canterlot voice shaking her to her very bones. Celestia’s eyes swept across the room. “This conference is over. It has been a trying time here in the palace, as Spike has a special place in the hearts of the entire royal family. The guards will show you out, and Princess Twilight and I will return to trying to sort out this disaster and provide relief to those afflicted. Thank you.”

With a bow of her head, Celestia put a wing around Twilight and urged her to come with her. She complied, her head hung low in shame, not courtesy. Her hooves heavier than ever, Twilight followed her teacher within the comfort of her shadow. Celestia lead her away from the murmurs of the departing reporters and deeper into the palace, where the only sound was their own hoofsteps and their only company the stone-faced guards.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Celestia sighed. “I should’ve known better. All the same, you did well under the circumstances. After I was forced to consign my sister to a millennium of imprisonment, I did much worse with the public. I scarcely left my chambers for a long time. There were even rumors that I was dead for a while. I left Equestria leaderless when they needed me most. You had the courage to face your critics even at a very dark hour; you should be proud of that much, at least.”

Twilight said nothing. Her eyes were fixed on her hooves as she put one set in front of the other, the carpet strolling by like a lush red landscape.

“I’ll be lucky if I even have any friends besides you.”

“I’m sorry,” Twilight muttered, her view of the floor blurring with tears.

“For what?” Celestia asked softly, nuzzling her student’s horn.

“For ruining everything.” She charged her horn, and before Celestia could protest, she was gone in a flash of light. Next Chapter: Dearly Disgraced Estimated time remaining: 17 Minutes