word count: 11.4k
warnings: canon-typical violence, **depictions of dark content (feyd rautha warning, but this time in depth) - including: allusions to former sexual (consensual but still) relationship, manipulation (feyd and also coercions by the bene gesserit), past abuse, control, knife play (ish), violence (Harkonnen traditions are fucked), blood/licking blood, fear, injury/slight gore. but also there's finally some fluff lol, drinking/getting drunk, some allusions to smut but nothing nsfw.
** - if you wish to skip the flashback scene with this content, it is all italicized.
notes: okay part six finally :) im ramping up to crank these out so i can post the update on ao3 with the new chapter too :)) anywayssss plot is ramping up so i hope you guys enjoy.
feedback very much appreciated :)
series masterlist
My Dearest Niece,
Your letter reached me with great relief. However, it is with both regret and love that I must inform you I will be unable to attend the upcoming Space Trade Referendum or your arraignment, as I had dearly hoped. It is nearing the time for me to give birth, and travel is no longer possible in my condition.
Please do not mistake my absence for a lack of support. House Ginaz stands firmly beside you. Though I cannot be with you in person, my thoughts and every affection will remain with you throughout. Should the path ahead grow treacherous, you must remember – our doors are always open to you.
Take heart, my beloved niece. You are never truly alone.
With all my love and best wishes,
Lady Ginaz
THE PLANETS ARE UNIMPORTANT FROM SO VASTLY FAR AWAY.
You’ve decided, in the quiet hours between stars and the lumbering days swallowed in the unforgiving dark, that you despise space travel.
The ship that carries House Atreides through the void is cathedral-like in scale and shape, though it breathes no warmth; Cold drips from the walls in a silence complete and empty, the darkness beyond your window looming and ancient.
You grow nauseous with each passing moment; sitting with your knees drawn to your chest, a figure etched in silhouette and quiet breaths against the glass pane that spans your entire chamber wall. And beyond it – lurking, swallowing the winking distant stars: the vast and unforgiving absence.
Nothing stares back at you, undaunted by that snarl you’ve so coveted; No sky, no night – but instead, something far more knowing than either. The deep. The end.
Your lip has split down its center. Cracked from nerves, perhaps, or dryness, or cold; Time ticks and the blood wells, dries. One of your hands worries the cuff of your dress, worn thin between your fingers.
The days are counting down.
Three until the Referendum. Four until your fate is debated beneath the vaulted ceiling of the Landsraad: Your name. Your power.
I don’t wish to startle you, but I want you to be prepared, Duke Leto had said at dinner, just an hour past; The Baron will be there. And it is likely that with him will be one of the nephews.
That was all he said, but it was enough.
You do not speak his name. Not aloud; Not in the clean light of the Atreides ship, not where others might hear and recognize the flicker of hunger in your eyes.
Feyd-Rautha.
It echoes in the chasm of your mind, though you have spent weeks burying it; and now, on the eve of all things, still the name stirs.
There is rage; the kind of fury that shapes bone and heat and history, that tears at your ribs, dries your throat, twists your heart. But buried beneath it, a coal gone cold in absence, is something stranger. A memory of closeness; not tenderness, never tenderness – but of a warped craving, a softened proximity.
The hush of late nights when you could not sleep. The weight of a head resting on your chest. A hand lingering just a second too long.
The memories return unbidden.
Not the pain, though that too lingers somewhere deep; but the quieter things. A bowl of pigment, black as the void, smeared across a bare chest. The same paint, in the shape of your lips, pressed to rough palms before a door opens to a screaming arena. Red wax currants, bitter and bright, smuggled in secret from the traders of your homeworld. An expression, private and darkly unsure, that you did not understand until it was too late.
They twist inside you now — these images, these shadows — ribbons soaked in vinegar and honey. They do not belong to you anymore.
Still – still, you wonder what it would feel like to stand before him again. And you wonder, as you stare at your figure, so lovingly restored with the bright breath of Caladan – you wonder if Feyd-Rautha might recognize you now.
If the sight of your face could finally make him flinch.
It is not yet time to land for a few more hours; though someone knocks across your vaulted chamber.
You startle in your position, rising to tug the ties of your traditional formalwear tight and befitting.
“Yes?” you call, too sharply.
You are still steeped in the bitter, brackish memories of your shell of a life on Giedi Prime– it clings like soot to your ribs, makes you crueler than you mean to be.
A voice, small and careful, replies from the other side of the door – it is not Hestia, who has been left on Caladan with the rest of the House; no, the voice belongs to the younger handmaid. The timid one, who wears nervousness like perfume; Her words are cautious, but there is something in them – something unsettled. You wonder, idly, if it’s you she fears.
“My lady,” she calls through your door, “Lord Paul wishes to speak with you.”
For a moment, you hesitate. Then:
“Let him in. Please.”
Your voice is gentler this time; a forced, practiced smile in the hopes it might calm whatever unease she carries.
You do not turn when the door opens.
His steps are soft as he enters the room, but you feel him, a tremor in the air. He comes to stand beside you, and mercifully he does not speak right away.
Far from the sea winds of Caladan, Paul looks different – formal, steeled. His curls are tamed and he wears the Atreides sigil high at his collar.
The brass catches the starlight; So do his eyes.
You wet your lips before speaking, the tang of your own dried blood familiar upon your tongue. “Hello, Paul.”
Your words hang in the air like mist – you know too well that the garden still remains between you; unspoken, heavy, bruising something tender inside you both. A shame, a bruise upon the fresh skin of hope.
Still, you are grateful it is him now – it is easier to breathe with him near, even when it hurts. Even when it frightens you.
After all, you will be expected to stand beside him upon arrival – and for the rest of your days, you remind yourself – and at the thought, you begin to panic quietly.
You are not ready. Not to perform diplomacy, not to feign unity, not to pretend you are not terrified of the tribunal that awaits.
But in your panic, Paul says your name.
It startles something strange inside you, something sharp and flurried and placating; and so you wait, watching his lips part as though he debates saying something else.
He doesn’t.
Nor does Paul hold your gaze long – instead, he follows your gaze into the abyss of space, his posture tense, hands neatly at his sides. You are both dressed too finely to be comfortable; silks, metals, that youthful diplomatic grief.
Paul’s breathing is low, steady, and you soon find your own breath matching his without thinking; It soothes something that’s been scraping along your spine since the moment you left Caladan. After a few passing breaths, you bring your hands to clasp.
“Will you sit with your father for the drawings?” you ask, voice crisp, far more controlled than you expect.
“Yes,” he replies, “For the referendum. But not for the trial. Only House Representatives can sit the bench.”
You do not know whether to be relieved or disappointed; so you merely nod, hands twisting together and soothing the embroidery at your waist.
Paul is still watching the stars. “I used to get nauseous during space travel,” he murmurs, as if sensing you'd wish to leave the conversation topic.
You almost laugh at the coincidence; A short thought that’d grazed your mind not minutes ago as you rose from your bed and met a bout of nausea yourself.
“I haven’t felt quite right since we left orbit,” you admit, gaze flicking to him, soon letting curiosity and the small glimpse of warmth his rosy cheeks have given you loosen your rigid posture.
“Have you traveled off-planet much?” you allow yourself to wonder, imagining a young Paul wearing a little pressed uniform and staring glumly into the stars.
“Not particularly,” he shakes his head faintly, “Only to High Council sessions with my father. Kaitain, mostly.”
You glance at him sidelong. “Is it really just one enormous city?”
“Mostly Corrinth,” Paul muses, “I don’t…particularly care for it. The green spaces feel…” he frowns, searching for the words, “wrong. Curated. Like–” he shrugs in that single-shouldered way you’ve grown to mirror, “Like nature was an aesthetic choice by the city architects. There’s no fresh air.”
This draws a twitch of a smile to your lips. “Fresh air,” you mutter under your breath, twisting your necklace around your finger – an old nervous habit which feels far more weighted by the pendant of the Atreides hawk upon it. Paul watches your hand move; you pretend not to notice his reflection upon you in the plexiglass.
“Giedi Prime was similar,” you add quietly, “Even the rain smelt of oil.”
In the reflection, Paul looks at you again; there is a pause, and it hums between you. Gravity draws you back to him, turning slowly. His eyes are ink beneath the starlight; Watchful, gentle in a way that frightens you.
A violent rush of feeling coils in your chest with the chill of the air conditioning unit above your heads: dread, yes – and something quieter, more dangerous.
You have begun to rely on him. Not like before – not like Feyd-Rautha, when dependence was a matter of survival and fear; no. This is trust. Unearned, perhaps. Reckless, certainly.
But it grows nonetheless.
It has been a lonely many years. And in Paul, you have found – unexpectedly, and without warning – a cracked, wary mirror that you cannot stop yourself from staring into.
The hush between you settles like the snowfall of Sabberon’s Longnight; Paul’s gaze wanders beyond the window, a furrow ghosting across his brow. He speaks, and you wonder if those shadows of your mind have haunted him too.
“I haven't told you before. I can't... imagine what it was like,” he says, “But I admire your resilience.”
The word rings hollow to your ears – resilient.
You’ve heard it too many times, each utterance a small coffin nailed shut on what you once were. A title bestowed; a laurel for surviving what should have crushed you.
As if endurance were a choice.
Your sigh curls and cools in the air, though you cannot help the curl of your lip when you glance at him.
“Perhaps one day,” your voice is dry but teasing, “people will stop telling me how strong I am.”
In the corner of your eye, Paul turns to you; his presence feels strangely nearer now, as though he’s crossed some invisible boundary in the space between breaths. His brows lift in that boyish curiosity he so tries to hide. You see it, though. You see him.
“What would you have people say instead?” He wonders, a soft curve to his lip.
Hestia once insisted between doubtful glares from you that there was a flicker of humour that lived within Paul, strange and ill-timed as it may be. You’d rolled your eyes at that once, though perhaps that is what you see now: an ember of something human and reachable all at once.
Your stomach flips at his gaze on yours, and soon you ache.
A sudden, irrational yearning surges through you, a tide breaking over a cliff; how cruel it is, how shameful, to want things to be normal. To be young.
To be admired by a boy promised to be your husband – to be wanted not for your name, not for your ruined legacy, but simply for existing in a certain light.
For smiling and making his stomach flip as it so strangely does to you sometimes. To be courted, not bargained for.
What would you have people say instead?
So your grin is one of unsureness, of something skirting the lines you hardly knew you could draw.
“Maybe something shallow,” you murmur, not meeting his eye. “That… they like my hair, or the dress I’m wearing.” You sigh, a coy thing as you look back up at him. “What do people usually say to normal noble girls?”
Your words fall in the space between you, skittish but jesting and warm. And then Paul smiles.
A real one, not the one he uses for the court or for show, but something young, and boyish, and oddly sweet; The sight of it does something strange to your stomach.
“Well,” Paul starts simply, “I do like your hair.”
Your immediate glance is sharp and hot, betrayed by the warmth rising in your cheeks; His face is lit softly by starlight, and you blink away the girlish laugh of surprise that threatens to escape.
What comes from your lips instead is a small huff of both disbelief and flattery that only brightens his boyish grin.
“But... honestly,” he continues as he tilts his head, “I’m fairly certain if anyone complimented your appearance outright, you’d have their tongue.”
You scoff at this, another urge to laugh pulsing at your throat; you cover with a narrowed gaze, tongue poised to deflect even though your cheeks are hot. “Just because I’m–”
But Paul does not let you get that far; the impudence of it is regrettably charming.
“And your dress,” he assesses, tilting his head and surveying you with maddening attention, “I like the color, but it pales in comparison to the woman wearing it.”
And bless the void, his words actually work; In a desperate attempt to conceal your fluster, you roll your eyes so hard it might be audible.
A scoff dies in your throat as you weakly shove at his shoulder, swallowing down your flustered laugh. He lets you push him. He smiles back.
“That was awful,” you get out, failing to conceal the dance of a smile upon your lips nor the heat leaking across your cheeks, “I-” you stumble over a sharp laugh, “That was awful,” you repeat, a curved smile betraying your words.
His grin is too much.
You stare out at the plexiglass with hot cheeks and chewed cheeks to conceal your grin. “I’m merely following instructions,” he insists, tilting to lean into your space, searching for your gaze as his voice dances somewhere dangerously between mockery and affection. “I can be shallow and complimentary if that’s what you want.”
“You know I didn’t mean it like that,” you defend sharply with hot cheeks, arms crossing, “I didn’t actually want those particular compliments.”
Though he turns to face you fully, and his eyes dance with something keenly warm and unknown; The viridian of his uniform stands out starkly against the matte stone around you. And there he stands, a painting half-finished and still so devastatingly beautiful, light catching in strange places that make your heartbeat pulse.
“You seem not to know what you want,” he says with a small grin, and it doesn’t feel like a criticism – though still, the words strike deep.
Your smile slowly changes; his words, unintentional as they were, spin your mind toward Kaitain – toward its glittering rot, towards the expectations pressing on your chest, pulled taught as a leaden corset.
But you are slowly, grudgingly learning that Paul's silences are not anymore made from coldness, but the workings of a steeled and brilliant mind; that his distance now is not from disdain as it first was, but the weight of futures he carries with pride.
The guilt spurs you to some other breathless confession, underdeveloped and weak.
“I may not act like it all the time,” you murmur, barely above a breath, “but I am grateful. Your House has been… kinder than I deserve. And I’m sorry... for when I’m not what you deserve.”
The quiet is not cold, though it is not particularly warm either. Your breaths fall in the empty space where the warmth once lied, swaying with your uneven toes as you ignore the heat in your cheeks.
Paul does not answer with words – but you feel the brush of his pinky against your own as you stand and look out over the swallowing abyss of nothing together.
And the corners of his mouth turn up just slightly, the way the moon sometimes seems to smile down at the Caladan sea.
THE SUN IS HIGH AND BRIGHT WHEN THE CONVOY ARRIVES.
Paul steps from the spaceport into the muggy heat – humming with bowed Imperial courtiers, veiled greetings exchanged beneath polished pollution masks.
His own mask presses to dewy skin; His father clasps one man in an embrace, grinning like he’s a kid – Paul’s lips twitch in a grin beneath the fabric of the mask before he corrects his expression, standing rigid and proud.
You are beside him – still and severe as a carved statue, the gleam of the city glinting in your hairpiece; fire caught in gold. A crown of spires rises far beyond you: glass and metal piercing the horizon, fountains weeping into wide marble basins, banners fluttering like wounded birds along the boulevards.
The air is too warm, too bright; and yet Paul feels chilled, as if the dooming sense of belonging he’s felt since stepping foot onto the ground in Kaitain grows by the moment.
The transportation convoy winds through the city’s gilded arteries, past statues of golden emperors and theaters golden and wild. You sit beside Paul still, quiet as a mouse – and the whole time, your gaze never leaves the Opal Palace, distant and monstrous on the horizon.
Your brows are worried in that delicate, fixed way; a fracture beneath glass. Paul does not ask. He doesn’t need to.
He knows what awaits you.
If things tilt wrong in the days to come, your ancestral lands could be carved like meat between beasts; and already, the Harkonnens feast on the remnants.
Inside the shuttle, the air is recycled and the silence is brittle. His parents speak softly ahead, their heads canted to each other in a steeple, whispers dissolving like the echo of prayers. Paul leans against the window, the ache of sleepless nights dragging at his temples; dreams now leave him wearier than waking. And you are less of a girl and more of an evergreen, rooted to your seat with your stare piercing into the Opal Palace.
At the lodgings, a reception awaits.
Gilded uniforms, subtle bows, gloved hands shaking Paul’s then lifting yours to kiss. His hands twitch, mind ticking at each word uttered under breaths and around corners. You endure it all with deadly grace, but he sees it again: that flicker in your eyes, the coil in your spine, that terrible, animal instinct to flee.
It lives in him, too.
And all that remains in the tail of arrival is a brush of hands – accidental, fleeting – that stills him mid-step. When he glances, your gaze meets his. Some unspoken thing passes between you, brittle as spun glass, warm as blood; but as a maid gestures him forward, down another hall, Paul turns without a word. The back of his hand tingles.
Your absence follows like a shadow.
The days on Kaitain are stifling and seemingly endless. Paul does not see much of you nor his mother in the days following arrival; Conferences bleed into town halls, town halls into hearings, each one a theatre of veiled alliances and sharpened smiles.
As with most of his life, Paul listens more than he speaks; cataloguing names, faces, loyalties – every stance on the approaching referendum etched into his memory until his head throbs and his mind worries. His father insists on morning and evening debriefs, leaving little time for rest, and none at all for you.
Corrinth City is garish and over-perfumed; Even the sun feels artificial, too bright to trust.
Paul misses Caladan; misses the honest quiet of creaking floorboards and salt-stung air, the echo of Atreides guards and soldiers training, misses the way every window cuts with purpose, misses how each meal is prepared with love, intention.
On the second night, over a quiet supper, his mother speaks of the courthouse she visited that day with you and Thufir.
You’d gone to submit your genetic data; to sign the final documents naming you the sole heir of a house in litigation.
“Was it dreadful?” his father asks you upon noticing the flicker of disdain in your visage. You, so often serious and quick to miss a tone of jest, shrug smally.
“It was pleasant enough,” you reply cordially, pausing as you chew your lip, “Though I didn’t much care for the golden dome.”
Paul nearly smiles.
They do love their gold here, Paul thinks dryly; but as quick as he thinks it, your eyes cut to him sharply.
A blink and a draw of your brows, as if startled by something – just a glance, but it startles him too; He meets it without meaning to, an eerie creeping sensation crawling along his nape. Then it’s gone.
The conversation drifts elsewhere. Strategy, conversation, wine. But Paul remains still, the ghost of whatever just happened lingering longer than it should.
YOU SEE LITTLE OF PAUL AND THE DUKE IN THE DAYS LEADING TO THE REFERENDUM.
The Great Council’s chambers are forbidden to you; despite being the Head of your House, you are indeed the sole proprietor of your House’s trial, and thus remain exiled from the very fate that concerns you most.
There is nothing for you but waiting – a miserable fate, your days filled with the echo of distant decisions and your nights with the slow, curling dread that creeps into the hollows of your chest.
The time between arrival and the arraignment’s vote is littered with pageantry. Pointless gatherings, ornate dinners, whispered alliances wrapped in velvet; a plastic, fabricated replica of the more grand memories from your past – the ones with fur-lined halls and large flickering hearths, harps and waltzes and flakes of snow melting against the warmed wide windows of the Wolves’ Castle.
You watch Paul float through it all – tireless, unreachable – each morning, sulking to the dining table with sleep-heavy eyes and a low voice, muttering with his father over breakfast. There is a new gravity to Paul – or perhaps you simply regard him in a new way.
Your own days are even more dull by comparison.
After the short, sterile visit to that gilded, ugly court to provide your genetic data, there’s little left for you to do but sit and listen – await secondhand reports and offer your thoughts like distant echoes on a faraway pane of glass.
And though the Atreides try their best, it is evident at every turn. You are a ghost at your own trial.
One evening, you attend a play at the Imperial Opera House. One of the Emperor’s daughters is in attendance, and the nobles buzz around her like flies to rotting fruit. You loathe them; Each jeweled word they utter makes your skin crawl.
Lady Jessica stays close when she can, offering gentle conversation and quiet watchfulness – but she, too, disappears into her own veiled meetings, slinking into darkened corners and slipping through shadowed doors with secrets you cannot name. It is only a reminder of what is to come when you return to Caladan.
Hestia, your truest friend, did not come with you; The maid assigned in her place is kind, but timid – her eyes often flicker to the blade you keep tucked against your pillow each night. You say nothing. Let her wonder.
You spend long hours staring at the wall, turning over half-remembered pieces of old words, some echo that brims in the corner of your memory with a taunting, howling tremor. The Shortening of the Way.
You try, but there is no clarity, only static.
And despite the company, you feel alone. More than you have been in some time.
Perhaps that is why you fall asleep early on the eve of the Referendum.
Perhaps that is why you dream what you dream.
The slap of bare feet upon cold stone is a staccato rhythm, one swallowed by the dark, by the vastness of lifeless halls. Breath comes from your lips ragged and vicious, quelled only by a tremoring palm.
If this world had natural weather, perhaps there'd a storm clawing at the walls, shrieking your name through iron rafters; mocking the fear in your chest, the thrill in your bones.
A shout rings distant, one familiar as the blood that thrums in your veins – then laughter, low and rolling like thunder across poisoned skies.
He is close.
Your heart slams within you, though not merely in dread; The dull heat pooling in your gut grows sharp, aching lower, knotted tight beneath your ribs.
You should not want this – the hunt, the game, him. But there is something ancient and wicked inside you; those snarling whispers in the edges of your mind promising some shortening of the way – that does. Something that dares him closer.
You are not drugged like the others.
You are awake.
And it is your nameday.
The blade, cold and ceremonial, sits sheathed at your side. A gift on the nameday of the bride-to-be; Harkonnen tradition.
It glints, silver and virginal in the faint light – but by the end of tonight, it will taste blood.
You are a shadow in swishing silk through halls of Barony’s keep – the walls sweat oil and the castle moans like something dying. Your skirt snags on sharp edges and catches upon your bare feet as you press deeper into the dark. This place is alive – and it hates you.
The laughter is louder now – and in a thrumming heat of resolve, you accept your final option to prevent the inevitable.
Because this is not for control.
If he wanted such a simple thing, Feyd-Rautha wouldn’t need this theater; He has it already. Your rooms, your servants, when you train, the messages that are incinerated before they can reach you.
Everything, save one thing.
There is that one power, tucked beneath your skin; born in the years on Sabberon with your mother and sisters, in whispers and controlled breaths and flicks of eyes. Irresistible, silent, strategic. In hooded women and whispered chambers. Feyd-Rautha knows it.
He fears it, even as he yields to it. It is the one game in which you have the upper hand.
But desire is a dangerous currency, and indeed he’s learned to spend it well.
Worse still, you’ve come to hunger for it too. Because in the quiet hours, when he leans close to whisper, or when his bruised laughter coats your skin; when he watches you fight with that glint in his eye or touches your throat with reverence disguised as cruelty – you want him.
You want the power he leaks, the darkness he spills.
His laugh comes once more, too close. You freeze, breath caught. “Come out, little pet,” his voice purrs through the dark. “I can smell your fear.”
And maybe he can – but fear is not all that stirs inside you.
He enters the room with a predator’s leisure. You glimpse him; blades in his hands catching the light like twin moons.
You run.
He follows with a lurching glee – and footsteps echo in a chorus of hellish anticipation.
“You can run,” he calls, mockingly sweet. “But you belong to me.”
You slip down another passage. You are swift, silent – but not invisible, and he remains just behind you, bleeding from the walls and the shadows themselves.
You find a corner, press your back to stone. Blade drawn.
And when his shadow finally passes, you strike.
Steel clashes in a quick, fierce blur. You draw blood; several shallow cuts that draw out a sharp, sinister smile – but it’s not enough.
You are tackled in merely a few minutes.
The impact steals your breath; and he’s on you, knife glinting as he traces your jaw. You tremble, but not in fear; not entirely.
His weight pins you, and desire sears through you. Despite your sound mind and the curling hatred, still your body answers his every touch, hips arching, throat exposed.
And when he whispers against your throat, “Have you ever tried spice?” you can barely think to answer more than a groan.
He tastes you – chest, collarbone, blood. “When we go to Arrakis,” he curls, “you’ll have it.”
His knife drops. His mouth claims you.
Fingers grasp idly by your side for your blade’s hilt, but pleasure clouds your mind – and his voice curls again, lips slick against your own. “I’ve seen it, little pet. In a dream.” His voice is far away now, and you fumble for the knife. “A throne room. Spice glinting in the sand that trails in the doors… Me, on a throne,” Feyd-Rautha growls, nipping sharp at your lip, “and you, knelt before me.”
An eerie sensation, crawling with the memory faint enough to not be your own – some thing that lingers in the back of your mind. You shiver beneath him, and he laughs darkly. Your hand finally grasps the hilt of your nameblade, heartbeat galloping as you stare up into the absence of his eyes.
Your cheek has beaded with blood once more – his tongue follows the bloom.
The breath you give is not surrender, but it might as well be.
“Have you ever tasted yourself?” he wonders into your cheek, and you shudder – whether in disgust or longing, it no longer matters.
The deft fingers of a cold hand drag down your sternum – over your chest, caressing in a way that reminds you – this is celebration. This is how Harkonnen men mark their brides-to-be.
He presses his blood-slick lips to you with all the reverence of a lover, and none of the gentleness. You feel your own heat stir, involuntary, shameful.
You wish you wanted to deny him – but instead unfurls the hunger, the trainings and teachings of years piously knelt beneath an altar of women before you. Of dark veils and shadows and long-awaited tests and needles.
There is a dark thing in you. A darkness that drinks his presence, that invites him closer.
And you are a fool.
You drop the blade, and he smiles.
Not kindly – it is not the smile of man, but of beast; delighted by your surrender.
He leans close enough to taste your fear. And when you close your eyes, when your breath stutters with something near release, you barely notice the shift of his hand.
Not until the pain comes.
Not until the blade – your blade – blooms and paints itself anew between your ribs.
You arch in agony, and he watches you writhe, eyes lit with rapture. His mouth parts, a soft groan escaping as blood slicks his fingers.
You scream – not for mercy, but in betrayal.
You are not dying; the wound is shallow. Ritual. A marking.
But it is enough.
Enough to remind you of what you are, of what he has made you. Of what he will always be.
The blade drops, clatters as he kneels beside you, breath as ragged as yours; as if he’s just spent himself in the act.
Feyd's thumb drags the blood from your chest and presses it to his lips with a slow hum that nearly sounds like an apology.
You lie there, silent, the stone cradling your back like a tomb as his hands, trembling with some warmth you do not dare name, caress your side, watching blood slide down your sickly skin.
Your body burns. Your chest bleeds. And in your mind, something shifts.
The understanding of what must come next.
You will let Feyd-Rautha have this night.
And then one day, you will take everything from him.
Even his name.
THE MORNING OF THE REFERENDUM BREAKS OVER KAITAIN NOT WITH LIGHT, BUT WITH A DULL, SUFFOCATING HAZE.
Paul does not eat.
He sits at the long table beside his mother, across from you, sleeves rolled to the forearm like his father, all posture; but the silence in him is not passive. It hums, it bleeds – a memory, flayed open in the night and left raw beneath his skin.
He doesn’t look at you, but your presence gnaws at him all the same.
The dream had come in flashes. Shadows, screaming stone – the blade he recognizes all too well buried in soft flesh that should not have bled.
The ache in his chest pulses with guilt and the strange shame of a voyeur. He had watched it – all of it – helpless, dreaming as though it was not his own. And you had screamed like a dying star.
Now, you sit barely two arm’s lengths away, offering strategic insight on the viability of late-season fruit exports, voice clear and composed – as though your ribs had not been cracked open in his mind hours ago.
Paul chews his melon like ash.
He wants to believe it was a trick. A Bene Gesserit interference. A test. A cruel rehearsal of fear, perhaps, to root out some weakness in him or you or the bond that teeters on the edge of something unnamed. But no – this was not his mother’s way, not bid from the Reverend Mother.
Because Paul has grown up his entire life preparing to marry a complete stranger, as is requested by almost every noble person in the known universe – why, then, wouldn't they trust him to carry through with it, even if he had once believed you to be a spy? There is no dire need to ensure the marriage will happen – both of you have admitted your reluctance, but not once have you nor him declared to refuse the union.
And further, he is even more unsettled by it. He has never before shared memory. Not truly – not even with his mother, whose presence in his psyche he’s known since childhood like a light at the end of every dark hall. But when he meets your eyes, accidentally, briefly – you’re already looking at him. As if you know.
A shiver, thin as wire, winds down his spine, and he drops his gaze.
His mother watches him, eyes hawk-sharp above her tea. His father, though, is too engaged in conversation to notice his son’s strangeness; He listens to you, truly listens, brow creased with the weight of leadership and something softer, the quiet trust he has begun to place in your intellect, your ability to find patterns in the sands before others see the storm. Perhaps he keeps you engaged to prevent your mind from landing in the court you are to be in in just a day’s time.
Paul’s mind exhausts, spinning and whirring.
Could this be the Mentat training?
A new layer of perception awakening under stress? A capacity to reach – not forward, as one would with spice visions, but across – to the minds of others?
To project, to absorb, to trespass without intention? It concerns him more than he can name. And the dream – blood, screams, glinting smiles, sharp whispers – it echoes in the recess of memory. His stomach turns.
A steward appears; their transport awaits. His father rises. So does he.
He says nothing yet. But later – after the votes, after the speeches, after the sand settles – he will speak to Thufir. He will ask about Mentat dreams, psychic bleed, connection.
But for now, Paul Atreides follows his father into the lightless day, haunted by the echo of your blood on stone and the question he cannot yet afford to ask:
What is being set up for us? And more darkly still: What if it’s already begun?
The chamber is a hive of power; robed delegates from the Greater and Lesser Houses, Spacing Guild stewards, high-ranking Imperials all murmuring. A tide before a storm.
Paul sits beside his father, spine taut. His eyes scan the crowd, then flick, unbidden, to the seat that will hold you tomorrow. Alone, exposed. Answering for a family that he’s begun to believe never once answered for you.
He gnaws his lip, recalling the trunk he'd requested be brought with them on the trip to Kaitain; perhaps you could use a distraction tonight, from what's to come – or would that just make you more skittish, more ready to bite any hand near you? He hopes it soothes. He needs it to.
The lights above are surgical, too white. And there, a rotting blot in the crowd.
Paul’s spine goes rigid.
Across the hall, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen reclines grotesquely in his suspensors, his mass sprawled across two seats. His skin gleams like something left too long in the dark; Memories – not quite his – pulse like bruises.
His father exhales beside him. “Paul,” he chides in warning – as if he’d leap across the aisle and slit the Baron’s throat. Not here. Not now.
“I won’t,” Paul whispers in response to the unspoken statement, far too calm; But his fingers twitch against his knee, and the rage coils tighter in his chest. A quiet inferno. A promise.
And then: the vote.
One by one, the Houses call out – voices like hammer blows – siding with the new spacing reforms. It’s not yet a death sentence, not yet; but it's clear. The Baron's network of power has teeth now.
After a recess, the final votes are tallied; Imperial Mentats, their eyes flashing, approve of the calculations. The presiding official steps forward and addresses the gathered delegates.
“Esteemed Houses of the Landsraad, members of the Imperium,” he begins, his voice carrying through the chamber. “The new spacing trade routes have been decided.”
Paul's mind whirls with possibilities as the herald of change continues, “The routes are set to transform with a large expansion through the Epsilon Opiuchi system and the Campas system,” the herald announces, “along with direct routes through the Core Worlds of the Imperium.”
Paul closes his eyes.
Calm, unnatural, washes over him; too cold to be comforting. These changes could mean opportunity, yes. But it reeks of Harkonnen leverage. Of the Guild’s whispered alliances. Of shadows, crawling toward war.
He leans toward his father, lips barely moving.
“What do we do now?”
The Duke's jaw clenches, gaze unreadable.
“We adapt,” he says.
YOU'RE IN THE BEGINNING STAGES OF PANIC WHEN THE REQUEST COMES.
Having bathed and spent the last half hour staring blankly at the wall, letting tomorrow gnaw through you like acid, you barely register the handmaid’s voice until she repeats herself: “Lord Paul has requested your presence in his chambers.”
Your brows draw together.
It’s much too late for that. And yet, what else would you do?
The thought of another hour alone in this room makes your skin crawl; and so you slip into a nightgown, hair still damp as you follow the servant through the halls.
Your stomach is tight. Paul has an unnerving habit of finding you at your lowest ebb; when your mask cracks, when the ache creeps in, when silence becomes a punishment.
And whether it’s duty, or empathy, or something else entirely, you never know how to receive it.
And tonight, it’s especially jarring.
Supper had been more joyless than usual; muted by the final recount of the Referendum outcome.
The prospect of a Harkonnen monopoly over the new trade routes left a hollow dread in your small circle and a warning throb of anticipation in your stomach each time you consider the trial to come. You hadn’t touched your food. Paul had barely spoken.
And now this.
But when you enter his room, your breath catches.
Because it’s… not what you expect.
A table has been dragged near the hearth, an open casket beside it emptied and velvet. Five bottles of wine crowd the table’s surface like impatient guests, towering behind two untouched glasses. Paul is already seated, uncorking a bottle; the pop fills the air with something heady and dark.
You hesitate as you shut the door, a feeling of fight or flight leaking into your muscles. “Celebrating with a few bottles of wine, are we?” you ask, bitterness creeping into your voice.
Paul meets your gaze, expression grave but rather patient. “There’s little else to do but drink.”
You raise an eyebrow – this is Kaitain. You could go to a gallery, a park, one of those rooftop bars where the nobles pretend they’re gods.
But he clearly isn’t going anywhere; and certainly, neither are you.
Your feet pad against the floor as you sink into the seat opposite him, limbs heavy with tension. “I suppose,” you murmur, your fingertip tracing the rim of your glass. “Your hard work’s all but finished.”
He doesn’t take the bait of your offhand jab – and something in his stillness makes your throat tighten in guilt. He's extending a palm – and you ought not to bat it away.
“You told me once you’d never tried wine,” Paul says simply, as if stating the weather. “I thought you might want to.”
You’d told him that in passing, some time ago. You’re not sure how he remembered. He pours it slowly, and you watch in a sleepy lull.
What he doesn’t say lingers – I thought you might want to, before everything might change tomorrow.
A deep maroon fills your glass; dark, fragrant, almost velvety. It looks like blood in the firelight, and something in your chest stirs, warm and unsteady. “I prefer red,” he adds in a lull of his own, “they don't taste that different, but red feels… warmer. Deeper.”
His cheeks are pink.
Perhaps that's why a strange, grateful smile blooms, tugging at your lips before you can stop it. Maybe it’s exhaustion. Maybe it’s fear.
Maybe it’s that you don’t want to be alone tonight – and Paul, for all his mystery, understands the value of silence and company better than anyone else you’re met in your life.
You hesitate just enough that he lifts his brow.
“It’s not poison,” he mutters sardonically. You exhale from your nose softly, words falling plain but with some attempt at wit, “that’s exactly what someone about to poison me would say.”
Still, you sip.
It settles upon your tongue in layers: spice, smoke, something like cherry flesh and dark oak. Warmth spreads down your throat, into your ribs. Your gums tingle faintly.
You swallow and exhale through your nose, surprised. “It’s better than I thought.”
BY THE END OF THE THIRD GLASS, PAUL'S LIPS ARE STAINED RED.
You notice it faintly, dazedly – the rich, bruised color lingering in the center of his lip like a secret. Somewhere between the opening of the second and third bottles, things began to slip.
The Zincal – bold and earthy, from the Southern Continent of Caladan – warmed you more than expected. Paul had spoken about it with such practiced poise, as if lecturing from a podium rather than pouring into delicate crystal; He’d learned everything there was to know about Caladan’s culture, he said, to make the guests feel welcome.
You’d found it so incredibly endearing that you’d nearly laughed at it. The first sign you weren’t quite yourself.
The second was subtler; a slow, simmering heat in your belly that began the moment Paul leaned back in his chair and rolled his shoulders, casual and unthinking.
The stiff uniform from earlier is gone; only a thin under-tunic remains now, white and soft, unbuttoned far lower than before. His chest catches the firelight; flushed, gleaming faintly with warmth and wine, his throat exposed and moving when he swallows. You try not to look, but your heart drums against your ribs like a warning.
Is this what intoxication feels like?
Your cheeks are flushed, your limbs too loose, your mind wrapped in silk and fog. You’re sure your lips are just as stained as his – a matching hue of violet and mauve – but you can’t bring yourself to care. You're weightless. Softened. Unburdened.
It’s that same strange feeling you had days ago aboard the ship, watching the stars flicker past the hull, as if you’d slipped into a version of yourself that cares less. Or, perhaps, carries less. The version that doesn’t dread every coming hour.
And now, with the fate of your future waiting like a blade on the other side of the sunrise – you feel calm. Not safe, exactly – but real.
Content, despite the doom rumbling just beyond the horizon. And Paul, who sits across from you in silence, radiates a quiet that calls you deeper into it.
On the fourth tasting – a sparkling white, crisp as mountain snow and delicate as sleeping tides – something in you unfurls.
You feel it as the warmth seeps through your chest, into your limbs, loosening every guarded corner of yourself. Words fall freely now, like petals from a too-heavy bloom.
Paul listens with those gentle, grave eyes of his, stretched out on the bed like some untroubled saint; boyish and cast upside-down, a lion in sun-drenched repose. His curls dangle over the edge, hanging in loose, dark spirals.
You’ve migrated to the floor, sprawling on the thick carpet; just a girl in someone else’s room, full of summered secrets and flushed whispers.
“I met the Harkonnens when I was young,” you say, sleepy and warm, watching him through your lashes. He's been asking about your upbringing for the better part of half an hour now. “My mother was instructed to have me mate with Feyd-Rautha when I came of age, and I suppose it was seen as a savvy move for the Baron's alliances. We met twice before I was sent there. Once at ten. Then again at…” your brows furrow, searching for the memory far back in your mind, “...fourteen.”
There’s a noise of disgust from the bedpost.
Paul makes no attempt to be polite about it – a scoff twisting his mouth, his head still upside-down so that his handsome features appear strange, otherworldly, as he watches you. You stifle a laugh, your lips twitching, even as heat flickers in your belly.
He looks absurd like this – absurd, bizarre, and impossibly beautiful.
The air smells of cherries and cinnamon, the hearth spitting softly behind you, the fire’s glow painting everything in shades of gold and blood-red.
Your fingers graze your own cheeks, as if surprised by their warmth; You are drunk, surely.
But not the wild kind – no, this is dream-drunk. Fog-drunk. The kind that makes you forget who you’re meant to be, and lets you speak like a girl who never learned silence.
“It was a Bene Gesserit match?” Paul asks, though his voice is thick with wine, his mouth barely moving.
You laugh – light and girlish, and entirely unlike yourself. If you were sober, it would perhaps horrify you.
“Of course it was,” you say, sighing as you lean back on your hands, your head tilted sideways to better observe him. His brows – so full, so expressive – shift in playful exaggeration, clearly trying to coax another laugh from you.
“As is ours,” you whisper.
A quiet descends; eerie and weighted. You can almost hear the shift in Paul’s breath, the tightening in his shoulders. His eyes have lost their softness now; they narrow slightly as his thoughts churn. His face, flushed from either the wine or the heat or his strange position, looks flushed and too pink to be so noble. It's a thing neither of you have admitted to one another before now; the silky webs that tie you together through the shaded corners of the Landsraad. But you both know it.
The clock chimes softly in the corner, and your heart pangs with it. A reminder of the hour. Of the fate of the sunrise in the morning. “It’s late,” you murmur.
Paul hums, tipping his glass and letting the remnants spill onto his tongue. You watch the motion with interest, though you're already spiraling again – the fear returns, faint and unwelcome.
You should go. Tomorrow is court. Tomorrow is duty. Tomorrow is everything.
But the thought of returning to your own chamber feels cold and unbearable, and the wine whispers in your ear. Stay.
You sigh. “I don’t enjoy sleeping like I used to,” you admit, finishing your glass and reaching for the bottle beside you. Your voice, now syrupy, floats above the fire.
Paul watches you fumble with the cork, his eyes shining with amusement. You try to pry it open with your teeth, and he tilts his head, bemused.
“I can’t imagine why that could be,” he murmurs dryly, voice low and velvet as he watches you.
The cork gives, and your vision shifts. The dizziness feels like a memory – like those dreams you dare not speak of. The ones where his mouth traces your neck, his hands hold your hips fast, where desire blooms too quickly to want to stop.
So you speak, your mind hooked on the memory of his hands around your hips in dreams, of lips pressed to warm skin.
“Some of my dreams I don’t mind.”
Your words land like embers; The fire crackles.
Paul’s head lifts – just barely – his eyes sharpening, a blade honed by wind.
But it’s hit you, what you’ve just said – and so you avoid his stare, reaching instead for the dessert wine he’d described earlier. You pour, deliberately slow. Offer it to him.
He accepts it in silence, his face unreadable, lips parted slightly as if still stunned by your admission.
And yet you can feel it now, pulsing between you – the question neither of you dares ask aloud: Does he dream them, too?
Your eyes flicker to his hands, how deftly they move as he cracks a few knuckles - the vein that trickles down his arm, the creamy smooth skin that glows against the fire light. Does he see you similarly when he observes you in waking hours? Does he, in turn, dream about your sighs, about how it may feel to run his fingers through your hair as you lie on that white sheet in the middle of nowhere, to touch your heat and feel your desire?
The thought is dangerous. But the look he gives you is even more so.
I don’t mind some of my dreams either.
But the voice does not come from his mouth; You blink – slow, disbelieving. His lips haven’t moved – but the words feel real.
You stare, bewitched, from under your lashes as the heat in you rises, curling upward like smoke toward the ceiling.
You can't be bothered to move more than a crawl; your head pounds, but there is a warmth within you that spreads like wildfire in the summer when you move.
He watches you come closer to the edge of the bed with a stare that sends a shiver of intrigue over you. It is not what you expect; you expect wide eyes or maybe a blush – his cheeks are already pink, though, and there is something dark and hungry below his hazy, inebriated stare.
You swallow down your own hunger and sigh. “You got me drunk,” you whisper, dazed, cradling the bottle like a relic.
His mouth glistens, wine-stained and parted slightly with the crook of a grin. “Did I?” he muses, skeptical, eyes half-lidded.
You nod, though it feels more like swaying.
He smiles faintly. “I told you to slow down.”
“You did,” you agree, voice thick with velvet, unable to deny. He must find you amusing, for he huffs a breath that brushes your cheek – warm and wine-sweet.
“But I had to try them all,” you add, almost defensively. “Who knows if I’ll afford it after this week.”
He scoffs, but not unkindly, eyes flicking between your own even from upside down. “My wealth will be yours in just a few weeks.” The words hit you like an echo, but he speaks without teasing. “As will my name. And if you want wine for every meal, you will have it,” he murmurs. “Whatever you want.”
Whatever you want.
Your heart stumbles.
You blink slowly at him, bottle cradled in your lap. How odd you must seem from where he lies – flushed and clumsy, with such laced longing in your eyes.
“I don't know what I want,” you admit, your lips parting as you stare at his beautiful, angled jaw; it clenches under your scrutiny before he whispers softly, “That's okay.”
There is a magnetism that pulls you to him like a moth seeking a warm flame.
Your hand finds itself on his skin before you can think about it; Soft, slightly ingrained with the beginnings of stubble; over his jaw your thumb strokes, feeling the sharp edges that lie below the soft, porcelain skin.
To your surprise, he doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch. He simply lets you.
“Is it?” Your voice, a whisper under the flickering light of the hearth. “You made it seem like a flaw,” you muse, watching in intent fixation as those very lips move under your finger’s manipulation.
His lips part when your thumb runs over the bottom one, tugging it curiously. “It’s not a flaw,” he mutters in a gentle motion against your thumb; the words vibrate against your thumb, and the breath that leaves him hits your own lips.
When did you lean closer? When did he?
From this angle, his eyes shimmer like twin fragments of some forgotten star – liquid, lambent, and fixed upon your lips with an intensity that stills your breath.
Doubt flutters its wings within you, faint and delicate as moths in the chest, but it dies beneath the weight of longing, of warmth, of need. You are tired of talking.
The hush between you is heavy, heady; And his face, so close, so warm in the firelight, is too achingly inviting.
So you lean down, and your lips meet his.
You must tilt your face to fit him, his mouth unfamiliar, his lower lip pressing softly to your upper one, plush and strange. The kiss is chaste; just you leaning towards him, girlish and curious, barely there.
You draw back, heat rising in your cheeks as you blink in a daze, but Paul does not let you go far.
His fingers, cool as stones plucked from a shaded stream, slip around your neck with eager purpose, stilling your retreat. His gaze is hooked upon the glisten of your own shocked lips, parted and nearly trembling with curiosity and hunger – and a soft breath escapes you as he draws you back in, sudden, almost desperate.
He tastes of blackberries and sparkling wine, lips pressed to yours with an eagerness that makes your stomach flip.
You cradle his jaw between your palms; his hair, dark and curling, brushes your bare collarbone, where gooseflesh has bloomed under his touch.
The scent of the room is thick, intoxicating – cinnamon, cherries, and the syrup-slick spill of sweet wine. Did you knock it over? You can’t remember.
His mouth glides against yours, slow, reverent. When he exhales, it’s into you; a sigh like silk against the parted seam of your lips, followed by a gentle nudge of tongue. You inhale sharply, chest rising to meet him, parting your lips to welcome him in.
And with that, time fractures.
Everything tilts – sound warps and the firelight smears into molten streaks, as if the room itself were slipping sideways. The clock ticks, but its rhythm is wrong now, skewed and off its metronome; It no longer keeps time with the world, only with the slow thud of your heart, warm and floating.
Pulling away for a moment, you let yourself gather a breath; His fingers are cold but you presently notice how warm the rest of him is. Cheeks, jaw, shoulders, everything.
He’s moved upright on his mattress now; sitting up, he looms above you like a saint in stained glass, haloed in hearthlight over where you perch on your knees, staring up at him with glossy eyes. On your knees, you remain: A starved transgressant, begging for salvation from the solemn preacher before you.
A hand soothes over your hair. Between his knees, your hands settle upon his thighs; a heat rolls over in you when his palm slides down to cradle your jaw, eyes boring into your own.
Your hunger is unbearable, but your shock breaks through the daze.
What are we doing?
You don’t mean to think it aloud – but Paul’s brow twitches. His gaze stills. For one breathless second, you wonder if he heard you without your voice.
But the silence breaks again when his lips find yours – with greater hunger now. There is nothing delicate in this kiss; He presses forward, parting your lips with ease. You encourage his press with a small noise, tugging him impossibly closer.
His tongue tastes of wine, of salt and heat; your hands roam instinctively over the solid warmth of his chest, memorizing the flex beneath your fingers as they slide up to his nape, toying with the curls which lie unruly.
Still, even in the haze, you feel it when he begins to pull away.
His lips hover near yours, the ghost of breath between you. The moment lingers like a string suspended in the air, trembling.
“It’s so late,” he murmurs, and the words land like cold dew on fevered skin.
A shudder of reality courses through you, sudden and sobering.
You pull back, the enormity of the night crashing down like a wave – the arraignment, the dreams, the Bene Gesserit, Feyd-Rautha, the future. It all arrives in one breathless instant.
You retreat from him, blinking wide-eyed as shame prickles in your throat. Even as your heart sings for more. Even as his lips chase yours just for a moment.
“You’re right,” you murmur, smoothing your hair, your skirts, your shame. “I should – I should return. I'm sorry I kept you so late.”
You rise unsteadily, and he rises too, ever gallant. You loathe him for it just a little; how composed he seems as you tremble.
And though you cannot let yourself look, you can hear the quiet regret in his voice. As if he does not wish you to go. “It was me who kept you up.”
Paul’s voice is drowsy, frayed at the edges with drink and something heavier, more tender. He fumbles to open the door, sparing you from the humiliation of your own trembling fingers as your lips still buzz with the memory of his own.
The air in the hall is sharp – too still; and the walk to your own chambers is far too short. Your thoughts spin in a dizzy disarray.
At your threshold, he touches your arm. A feather-light thing, almost chaste and flustering in the juxtaposition of the way he touched you back inside his chambers.
He says your name so lightly, you nearly double-take. But he’s watching you, haloed by light as he peers down at your trembling figure. Wrought with what is to come.
His gaze lingers on your lips, unreadable, but he does not kiss you again. Still, you wonder – does he want to?
You wish he had kissed you again; and that is a dangerous thought: You barely know him, and yet you miss him already.
His curls glow faintly, kissed by lamplight, and you think: He looks like a boy still. How strange to be so undone by a boy.
His thumb caresses your arm where he’s stopped you. “It’ll be over quick,” he promises. “And then we can go home.”
He doesn’t say what it is. He never needs to. He knows your thoughts too well. And perhaps it is this, this very little moment in a life of large ones, where you realize what he is. What he could be to you, one day.
“I’m scared, Paul.”
It comes as a whisper, and it comes out breathless, reluctant.
He nods, gently. “I know.”
It does nothing to quell the raging sea of despair that has resided from its previous numbness, though his hand soothes the tremble upon your skin.
“I'm going to be there tomorrow,” he promises, “You may not see me, but I'll be there.”
You can only nod, knowing that tears will come soon; and you will be caught dead before Paul sees you cry. Grief returns like the tide, slow but certain; You bid him goodnight in a voice that barely feels your own.
You pretend not to notice how he lingers a moment longer before disappearing down the corridor.
Inside your chamber, you collapse on the bed, unmoving, eyes dry but stinging. The tears leak out quietly, unnoticed even by yourself – and you are brittle with dread. Hollowed by what awaits.
And though perhaps some part of you longs for familiar dreams – his hands, his mouth, the heat of his body – none come to you.
You sleep through the night in perfect, terrifying silence. A night without visions. A night without Paul.
Psssh, stop it but everyone saying how good your writing is just solidifies my point exactly!!!
I love that sm :’) please, you’re too nice to me, I swear I don’t deserve it! Yes! Bugs! Bugs kinda freak me out (ladybugs are possibly my biggest fear but it’s a secret) but I always think of your bug tattoos when I see the cute ones lmaoo. Pls it has been goin for a bit and I have another app in a few weeks, woot. That being said, we’ve been talking for over a goddamn year now, too?! Fucking crazy if you ask me. Oh god, cardboard neighbors, I’m obsessed w that HAHA.
Medically, awful. Mentally, also awful. But shit, I’m STILL kickin. I feel like I may know what’s causing my fucked up brain sooooo I have a doc app next week, we shall see if I can be fixed 🙂↕️ Also been writing loads and I’m thinkin I may actually publish???? Yep, I’m gettin wild
How are you and what’s been going on w you?! Hope you’re doing lovely, bb
cutie hi! ur the sweetest :')
my best friend is like terrified of butterflies :o i understand being afraid of bugs even ladybugs (your biggest fear omg??!!) for sure. i loveeee bugs tho!! stop thats so cute haha i love my lil buggy tats! A YEAR ALSO THATS CRAZY <3
did you get another appt for your sleeve?? im sorry your brain is being a villain but i hope the doc helped!! how r u these days? im sorry ive been so bad abt replying ::( I also wanna know how your writing's been and if you decided to publish omggggg i cant wait to hear about it all eeeeek
im ok! this is gonna sound insane lol but i went into anaphylactic shock a few weeks ago after developing a few sudden and serious food allergies - so i've been better lol - but i started immunotherapy and am on some new medication that's going to help. its been wild lol but besides that ive been good! miss u cant wait to catch up <3
was browsing (stalking) ur ao3 and OMG u wrote abt TSH? love that book (as well as the fic u wrote), it's my favorite!!!!
don't GET ME STARTED oh my god. that book is my fav too!! i have tattoos inspired by it lol </3 i love donna tartt so much she's such an inspiration :') omg im so excited u love it too!!!!
I love your writing so much. You don't know how much i love your story, i actually re-read it three times already. You also inspired me to write my own fanfiction. :) I can't wait for another update, please have a good time writing it! :*
stooooop omg this made my whole day !! im so happy you like my lil story and i cant wait to check your writing out as well omg :')) tysm bb, this gave me so much motivation hehe <3 excited for u to read another chap when its up!
Hello! I am entirely obsessed with your fix « Me and the Devil ». It’s so nice to read and I got so curious I found it on ao3, and now I’M split between waiting for the rewrite which is incredible or reading it all before reading the rewrite. I see there are 15 chapters published there, but the story is not over..? Do you intend to write more for it or focus on the rewrites which will bring a conclusion?
Thank you so much again for your work, do bro give up for you have people following and loving it!
hi cutie!! thank you so so much :')) yes, there are still a few more chapters that haven't been posted, but i am going to need to finish revising before i publish the rest of the story, so it is on a hiatus.
i'm simultaneously working on the rewrites and finishing the last few chapters, but will have to wait until the revisions are caught up because there are some significant changes/additions that will be important to the ending :)
& thank u so so much this made my whole day!! im so happy that you have enjoyed it and i rly appreciate you taking the time to reach out & tell me ugh <3333
I remember when you first posted Me and the Devil!!!! Just wanted to say I’m a HUGE FAN of your writing!!! Literally one of the best Paul atreides x reader fics on the platform, on the PLANET
STOOOOOP we've been together a long time then bb <<333 thank u for staying & supporting! ily so much thank you what da hell!!!
word count: 11.2k
warnings: canon-typical violence, allusions to past abuse (feyd rautha warning), blood, v light allusions to smut, choking, height difference mentioned (paul is taller), more mommy & daddy issues, nothing else i can think of but always lmk if you see anything
notes: okay part five!! yay!! referendum/arraignment is coming v v soon ... also i know that the beginning parts may be boring (i try hard to make them interesting!!) but they're becoming increasingly important to the plot so just letting u all know!!
feedback very much appreciated :)
series masterlist
Houses Prepare to Assemble for Landsraad Council:
Next week's Space Trade Referendum, set to take place on the capital planet of Kaitain, will see the great houses Major and Minor deciding on crucial galactic matters, foremost among them the future of space trade routes.
Following these decisions will be the proposals to establish standardized protocols for resource extraction and deposit of space debris; as well as the final arraignment in the trial of House Bourbon and their case against House Harkonnen.
Expected on the agenda is the recent and surprising disruptions in Spice supply, which has forced the Spacing Guild to explore alternative fuel sources in preparation for the increased traffic of intergalactic travel for the Referendum. Nexarite and Petroleum have both arisen as proposed substitutes by Guild engineers. Although Nexarite proves to have dimensional warping implications if used at lightspeed, petroleum is still secondary and, similarly to Nexarite, less effective than Melange.
Pressure has befallen Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, whose governance over the planet Arrakis provides House Harkonnen the most influence in Melange trade; While petroleum may serve as a stopgap measure in the absence of Spice, its inherent limitations underscore the urgent need for a sustainable, long-term solution to the galaxy's Melange consumption.
Will there be a decision drawn up at this Referendum, or will the scarcity of Spice thrust the market power of these new fuel sources?
– Collected Galactic News report sent to Duke Leto Atreides, 10191. Caladan.
CASTLE CALADAN HUMS WITH LIFE IN THE EARLY MORNINGS.
Even before the sun rises over the cliffs, before the bright orange and pink haze begins to leak into the sprawling halls and tickle the high wooden beamed ceilings, there is movement.
Coughs, whispered words, faint laughs. They ebb and flow, the foam of the sea curling along a dewy and sleepy shore; footfalls, approaching and disappearing outside the heavy doors to your chamber.
Today you dress yourself in thick layers of gauzy Pine – slow and syrupy, mind numb with the languid whispers of memory; A strange way to wake up, gasping in fear with Paul's name turning to ash on your tongue.
A sharp gasp, a glint of crimson – Paul, slumping against you, those mossy eyes fading to gray. Your throat is tight; the scent of the drying lingonberries upon your table sends your stomach churning.
You’ve left them for days; a favored snack, one you’ve enjoyed since childhood. Hestia brought them days ago – you’re not sure how she knew they were from Sabberon, nor why you’ve refused them – or why you protested their departure from your chambers.
Rotten fruit, your mind hums in some amused way – and your gaze tears from the mirror before you.
Your nameday blade sits untouched upon your boudoir across the room; today you leave your chambers without it, a sick taste upon your tongue as it glints mockingly in the morning light.
The halls hum with life, though you float through them – for the Strategy Council awaits, and you are not one to keep them as such.
You arrive in the chamber, heart thrumming, mind cast far away from the Referendum, from the arraignment. No – as you walk into the room full of House attendants and members, you think of one thing.
One thing, one dream, one memory; of a blade plunging into flesh, of eyes turning in eerie familiarity. The gasp of recognition. You think of him.
And his chair is absent.
Though your face remains placid, you swallow back the biting inhale of concern that claws up your throat. Paul’s chair is absent.
Your worries are not eased as you take your seat, nodding numbly along as Duke Leto begins the meeting, avoiding casually as Lady Jessica stares through your skin; and though there is a hushed din of murmurs, it is ceased with the caramel lilt of Duke Leto’s voice.
“Before we begin, there is a matter of great importance to address,” Duke Leto’s eyes find your own; an intent tone, which brings memories of your own incompetent father to shame.
“The arraignment of House Bourbon is set for the day following the Space Trade Referendum. It is imperative that we prepare for it accordingly.”
You blink. It has all but been accepted in your mind that, come next week, you’ll be labeled a criminal in front of the Imperium; and during sleepless nights you've prepared yourself, through painstaking bitter humility, to beg the Atreides to buy your bail in front of the Landsraad Houses.
You’d not expected to discuss it – and certainly not at a Strategy Council.
Your hands shake; you clutch them in your lap. Ever since news of the charges levied against your house and the consecutive assassination of your family came, you’ve efficiently ignored the inevitable. But now, it is here.
You must look it in the eyes.
You nod, glancing to the empty seat beside Duke Leto. “Yes, my Lord,” you steel yourself with a flare of humiliation at the heavy stares around the war table. Your lips part again, heat floods your cheeks – no words come.
But Duke Leto gracefully fills the deafening silence, curbing the unwanted attention upon you and commanding it towards himself with a flash of something warm in his eyes. Your stomach curls in something like shame.
“The council and I have discussed it, and I am fully committed to advocating for your house’s interests during the arraignment on behalf of House Atreides.” He leans, elbows firm upon the table, “I plan to do everything in my power to convince the other houses to see reason and vote in your favor as well.”
Your brows raise, mind swarming with the warmth of gratitude and the icy stab of fear in your stomach. Given the political complexities surrounding the case, your doubts flicker.
Your lips puff before you find your voice. “This...could put you in a precarious situation, my lord,” you begin, swallowing around a dry throat, “I appreciate it more than you'd know, but…”
Your throat stings; and around you, faces that were mere enemies to you weeks ago. All of them, loyal to the end of the House they serve; the House that is claiming you as one of their own, even in the looming presence of what might come.
You clear your throat. “The Harkonnens are –” you flounder under the scrutiny of attention, and you’re struck with a sudden embarrassment. “Powerful,” you finish dumbly, cheeks hot, heart filled with dread.
“We understand your concerns my dear,” comes a voice from down the table; Lady Jessica, with lips poised and eyes kind, “But you are a part of our House. We will protect you.”
A surge of gratitude bursts through your chest as you concede, nodding smally, catching the gaze of Duke Leto before lowering to stare at your curled fists to hide the sting in your eyes.
“House Bourbon has long been allies of House Atreides,” Gurney Halleck affirms from down the table, “this is a return of the favor.”
Your voice comes, and it is warm for what might be the first time in a long time. “Thank you,” you breathe, knowing your cheeks are warm still, “Your support means more to my h– to me than I can express.”
You force a smile onto your face, hoping it comes across less as a grimace.
“I cannot speak for the other houses,” Duke Leto admits, “but I worry there may be those who seek to exploit this situation for their own gain. Whatever the outcome, you have the support of House Atreides behind you.”
He has voiced your very own concerns; The great houses are not in your good graces, and you not in theirs. And Harkonnen pockets run deep.
As the subject is laid in preparation of the upcoming off-world travel, you try your hardest to absorb the information about the Referendum next week; though your mind gnaws at its cage. A small gnat lumbers past your vision, and you blow it off-stream with a gentle breath, watching it flutter towards Paul’s empty seat.
The council ends after only a few hours – by now the sun has risen in the sky, and your gut has twisted from fear into a sharp, pressing anxiety.
The council is dismissed; You fight off visions of your dream as you rise and bid farewell.
A pained voice gasps in your ear; labored breathing, a stutter of your name curdled with blood. Feyd-Rautha’s sickly skin glinting in the sharp sunlight.
Blood spills, and it sounds like rain.
The hallways are alive.
You must find Paul.
IT DOES NOT TAKE ANY SHEER FORCE OF WILL, NOR A MIRACLE, FOR YOUR LUCK TO BE STRUCK.
Duke Leto accompanies you out of the council; and to your surprise, invites you to his own quarters for another meeting.
It is the first of what is likely many wedding planning sessions; A smaller party in number than the Strategy and War Councils, yet infinitely more intimidating.
You were never awarded a voice in your wedding plans with Feyd-Rautha; perhaps, in some ways, that is why it never came to pass. Though you haunted the dark halls of Giedi Prime for four long cycles unwed, you are fortunate indeed that he spent those years instead behind the closed doors of war rooms, spice councils, and roaring arenas.
He was a beast infinitely more loyal to conquest than vows – and, if the matter ever did surface, it was dismissed with the flick of a knife and an insistence that marriage meant little unless you bore him an heir.
And though the taste of power that leaked from the bite of baroness on your tongue was sweet, you knew just as well that it dripped with poison; and you learned to bite your tongue. Not that you ever dreamed of veils or vows – but here you are; and what are you to do when your future is carved by another’s blade?
And so the pleasant enthusiasm you express, however incredibly minute, goes over well with the Duke; for perhaps he reads the lilt of your eager yes to be some girlish fantasy of gowns and handsome boys. Though truthfully, the verity of your willingness lies in the assurance that Paul could not possibly miss this meeting – lest his parents chastise him like a petulant child.
You walk the halls to his quarters. The Duke makes for a surprisingly easy interlocutor; you find comfort within his voice, a welcome distraction from the shadows of dread. You even draw out a short huff of laughter from him – after admittance of your interest in learning to pilot a ship, Duke Leto informs you that he himself wished to be a pilot when he was young.
The Duke’s Study is a more intimate room; a round table with five chairs, two of which are occupied – and the moment you cross the threshold behind Duke Leto, you find what you’ve searched for all morning.
Paul stands abruptly from the table – a jolt of water spilling from the glass before him, his lips part. Though you are far more focused, dead in pace, upon the alarm swimming within his gaze.
He must know.
A curling horror slides through you at the thought, and you hardly blink before Paul has crossed the space towards you, drawing the surprise of both his father and the other person in the study.
His hair falls unruly; your neck cranes as Paul steps towards you, glare stony as it slips from your visage and lower, as if searching you once more. What you search for rests far away in another wing of the castle, you wish to tell him, it is not here.
But just then: A blink. A furrowed brow as he flicks his gaze suddenly back up to your own, then to your mouth; and Paul stares at you, nearly bewildered in the tense silence. A sickening thing grows unnamed and unknown in your stomach.
Yet he seems to remember himself; A barely visible shake of his head. “Good morning,” he greets stiffly. It comes breathless and heavy with unspoken urgency, with a gaze struck with alarm.
Your heart stamps into your throat as you greet him back. You must speak – but not now.
And so Paul guides you tersely – eyes screaming, swimming – towards the table, pushing your chair in and accidentally brushing against the twist of your hairdo as he lowers himself into his own seat. Two pairs of eyes stare in varying degrees of observation as you and Paul settle stiffly, cheeks aflame, hearts racing.
“Thank you both for joining us. This is our House Administrative Assistant,” he introduces the woman to you; a woman with a strong nose and an accent from the Eastern continent of Caladan.
You wish indeed that you could be more grounded in the moment, for she draws an interest from you that the subject material cannot; but alas your mind drifts, uncooperative, shielding you from the weight of what this truly is.
The thought of planning a wedding — your wedding — is dull, distant; for much more pressing is the threat that looms beyond silken ceremonies.
War brews; economic or perhaps otherwise – and you know far too well who pulls the strings. Sinister, manicured hands which reach into every House, every bed, every bloodline. And you want no part in the role they’ve written for you.
Or, if his words from last night are true – for Paul.
It’s then your gaze slips to the final empty chair. Of course — it must be for Lady Jessica, who has not attended. You find yourself regretting her absence; for her poise, her loyalty to both House and Sisterhood are, in truth, admirable.
Beside you, Paul has shifted – his fingers trace the curve of the table absently, knee bouncing restlessly underneath. There is some residual relief in your heartbeat now that you have located him; and this very thought draws stubborn hackles upon your back.
You look away from his profile, gaze slipping into the middle distance – when did you start to see yourself on Paul’s side?
Hardly was it the lunch shared between you, nor the books of your culture kept so diligently at his bedside – you know better than to place your trust in something as futile as kindness.
Was it his candor about his mother – and about the Reverend Mother’s visit? Are you truly so simple as to forget one adversary, when a larger foe emerges more present in the distance; so foolish as to believe that the enemy of your enemy is your friend?
No.
Perhaps, it’s the dreams.
Not those laced with heat and hunger — those, you insist to your rebellious heated cheeks, are irrelevant. Desire is a weapon, not a weakness. You are not so easily undone.
But it is the other ones that stay with you. The darker ones, that feel more like memory than fantasy.
And just as your thoughts begin to turn, you are pulled from the depths by the accented voice drifting from the table.
The coordinator launches into plans – gliding over the surface of logistics, a blade over still water.
You nod along with a placid enough expression as she glides from venues to guest lists to ceremonial rites. And you – a ghost at your own table, drifting just beyond the veil of the present. Beside you, Paul traces the grain of wood with his nail absently.
An evening affair – elegant and grand, with most of the court and family in attendance. A traditional wedding.
Memories of marbled floors and echoing halls, of feasts and grandeur while flurries of snow pile high and squalls howl outside castle doors; and you are washed with a horrible bout of nostalgia.
A traditional wedding – a mockery of an idea.
The words come before you can think twice, and they curl around a sharply vicious stare. “Shall we invite my father to walk me down the aisle as well?”
The room stills at your words.
A horrible thing, the slow stares of three virtual strangers – uncomfortable, tense, discomfited. Duke Leto sits straighter; the woman pursing her lips as words die on her tongue. Paul’s eyes flicker in your peripheral, latching upon the pendant round your neck. And you, alone, a pine in a clearing of skeletal trunks; shivering in the dead of winter.
Your regret comes instantly.
In the quiet, you see it too clearly: a body crumpled in the arena, the crack of spine against sand, head flung back. The glint of a crushed signet ring, a snarling wolf coated in slick, black blood. Weak, lifeless.
A puppet with severed strings.
After a thick silence, the coordinator forges through with a hard blink and a clear of her throat as shame curls around your cheeks and flushes over your throat.
“I would actually like to speak to you on the matter of your family’s traditions, if that is okay,” the coordinator delivers delicately. Images still cling like cobwebs as you snap your gaze to her own: a blood-slick blade, the gasp of a dying breath, brown curls soaked in crimson.
“We’ll be sure to incorporate them into the ceremony as you see fit.”
A slow shame draws your brow, for she doesn’t elaborate, which leaves you little room to feign understanding. Your hands fold tightly against the table, as if to keep yourself from unraveling. Paul’s fingers tap once more against the grain to your right.
“I must admit,” you start, “I’m not as familiar with my house’s traditions as Paul is.”
Paul’s gaze meets yours – steady, unreadable until he betrays some glint of amusement. A tilt of his head: I offered you the book, his eyes remind you with a boyish flicker.
Your eyes flash in reply, your embarrassment melting into some unfamiliar warmth: I know.
The corner of his mouth lifts, brief as a candle flicker — gone before it can fully become a smile, lest the idea of one. And yet still, something coils in your stomach.
You look away sharply – across the table, where the Duke’s lips twitch into a quiet, knowing smirk. He’s seen something, read something in the moment; something you didn’t intend.
“Is that right?” the Duke asks his son – and Paul nods, gazing out beyond the treeline of the window, detached and unbothered, though his cheeks have grown pink in the stormy light of morning.
Duke Leto nods once more, the remainder of his smile bringing heat to your own cheeks. “Whatever rituals you deem appropriate will be incorporated into the ceremony,” he promises, “We're aiming for a date just before the galactic year’s end.”
His gaze lingers on you, quietly gauging your reaction. You give him none.
He nods in lieu of your silence. “I believe that concludes things for today. Perhaps the two of you can review Bourbon and Atreides customs and speak with our coordinators once you've agreed on what feels fitting.”
Paul nods with the practiced ease of a well-trained highborn, his eyes flicking to you like a signal.
You meet his glance, stare unwavering – silent, urgent. You nod once, with a rush of heartbeat in your throat and a buzzing desire to talk without prying ears.
“Do you still have the book on Bourbon customs?” you ask, voice flat as polished stone; and Paul, if he’s as perceptive as he prides himself to be, will understand what you’re really saying.
“I do,” he answers simply. Behind his stony stare, there are machinations; a strategy forming in his mind.
“Perhaps we can reconvene after the Referendum,” he offers. “In the meantime, Lady Bourbon and I will review our house traditions and decide what feels most appropriate for the… ceremony.”
A flicker of approval touches the Duke’s features — satisfied, though glinting. Analyzing.
Dismissal follows swiftly, but Paul is already on his feet, striding toward the corridor before you’ve even begun to rise.
The required pleasantries are traded with the coordinator and the Duke, each word a small weight as you glance over your shoulder to the empty threshold; your mind whirs, buzzing to trace the disappearing footsteps out in the hall.
You move swiftly, shadowing Paul’s retreat with a pace that’s nearly a chase; Your blood thrums, fingers itching for the familiar feel of worn leather.
Your urgency is buried expertly beneath silk and etiquette, but it thrums below your skin.
“Paul.”
Your voice carries far down the dim hall leading to Paul’s quarters; his tunic is nearly gray in the low light.
“Paul.”
Your footsteps echo off the stone, hard and fast as you try to match his pace – mercifully, he stops, though only just enough for you to catch him.
Your name escapes his mouth edged in urgency and, without pause, he takes your wrist and pulls you with him, deeper into the shadows.
You nearly stumble after him, off-balance, jarred by the feverish anger so suddenly radiating from him; He’s always been precise, measured – but there is a burn in his eyes now, something wild. Something familiar.
You hardly make it into his room before he spins on you, voice low and sharp as a blade.
“It was you.”
There’s a look in him you haven’t seen before – dark, unguarded. You don’t ask for clarification.
Your nod is solemn, heart clenching. “Yes,” you affirm. Then, after wetting your lips, slowly turning your head, pacing around him in slowly measured steps as he turns in your radius, tracing your movements with his gaze. “And you–” you cut yourself off, wary of the fear stabbing your stomach.
He barely inclines his head, but the gesture is enough. Your breath catches.
“It was ordinary at first,” he affirms, wide emerald gaze hooked on your own, voice thin with disbelief, and cheeks pink after the word ordinary. “But then we were standing there – and…I felt it.”
He stares you down, jaw tense. You feel sick – and then, his voice comes again. “I know it was you.”
Before you can react, his hand grips the edge of your robe and yanks it aside – fingers searching, expecting the familiar hilt at your hip. “You used this.”
But where he expects to find the incriminating evidence, there’s nothing. No blade, no sheath, just the quiet press of your skin against fabric.
He stills in a moment of surprise, and you use it to your advantage, catching his wrist and wrenching it away – but you keep him in your grasp, tight and defensive. Charged.
Paul's lips part slightly, confusion clouding the jungled fury that lives in the outskirts of his verdant irises. Eyes roam, hungry and searching – scanning your figure as though the weapon might still be here somewhere.
It takes the moment of hesitation, the look of uncertainty in his visage, for it to hit you. Your stomach drops as you realize it –
He dreamt that you stabbed him.
Your bewilderment must reflect upon your visage. “Paul. I didn’t–” you begin, voice tight, “I didn’t stab you.”
His eyes shift to the stone wall behind you, sharp breath leaving his nose. His wrist is heavy, warm and sharp in your grasp. His heart races in your grasp, wild and erratic. “You did.”
Your voice comes stubborn, breathless. “No, Paul. He was behind you.”
The room cracks with a strange heat, a static hum in the air between your bodies. As if awoken from a trance, Paul rips his wrist from your grasp and your hand drops to your side, fist curling tight in the absence of his weight.
“Feyd-Rautha,” your voice is laced with the hackles upon your back, “he had my nameday blade.”
Paul’s brows draw; a devastating scowl, a pout laced with stubborn apprehension. “You stabbed me. I felt you.” He sighs sharply, tongue dipping over his lower lip. “You were with me.”
An urgent fear arises in you, and with the knowledge of fate hanging in the balance in just a week’s time, you have suddenly lost whatever control you had. “–I know I was,” you snap. “But you’re not listening.”
“–Why should I?” His voice breaks the hush of urgency, sharp and cold.
“I—” You drag your hair from your burning eyes. “Fuck, Paul. I don’t know.”
And you don’t.
But the implications strike, a sharpened blade plunged into the soft side of your stomach. But it felt so real – not a dream, but a memory. And if what passes between you bleeds into dreams and reality alike… your heart seizes, and a darker fear begins to fester.
Staring up at Paul – who watches you in turn with a heaving chest and wild, fearful eyes – you swallow thickly. Whispers curl in the depths of your mind, at the edges of his irises.
The fear grows, festers.
And you pray, silently and without hope, that Feyd-Rautha has been sleeping in dreamless silence.
Because if he hasn’t – then something far older has already chosen your path.
After a moment, Paul’s voice comes faint, solemn.
“We can’t trust her.”
You blink, nodding faintly – he needs not elaborate of whom he speaks. “I know,” you breathe, licking your lips in an anxious tell. Paul’s gaze catches the movement, dropping lower for a moment over your frame.
You are suddenly aware of the slight chill upon your bare shoulders; the tank-top you wear is breezy without your robe to cover your exposed skin. The material pools lazily around your bent elbows and yet you do not move to pull it up.
“We can’t risk telling her,” Paul murmurs, urgency threading his voice. “If she finds out about the dreams, she’ll never let us pursue Sabberon.”
It catches you off guard – that he’s already done the calculations in his own head, staked claim without needing convincing.
Again, you’re struck by the quiet insistence despite what you tell yourself: that he is not only sharp, but merciful – a future ruler shaped by something perhaps more than just ambition. And a match worthy of, perhaps, more than just circumstance.
You drag a hand down your face ungracefully. “So we just hope she can’t read us?” your voice is bitter, “Paul – that’s nearly impossible.”
He pauses, a shadow settling behind his gaze; unnamed, heavy. “She’ll stop at nothing if we stray from their orders, whatever they may be.” His voice drops low, eyes swimming. “We just…don’t know what we’re doing. Yet.”
Your spine is rigid. Steel lines your voice. “I won’t let them take my planet.”
You don’t know if you mean the Sisterhood or the Landsraad; or if, in the end, they’re simply the same serpent with two heads. But before he can answer, footsteps fall down the stone corridor.
The echo of them is short, distant after a moment – but it serves to startle both of your erratic dispositions.
Paul’s hand grasps your arm swiftly, both bristling like startled hares in a disrupted burrow; Without a word, you together draw back from the doorway, further into the hush of his quarters.
Near the bedpost, he leans in; you circle him once more. His breath is warm against your skin, your cheeks warm under the sidelong beam of sunlight.
Paul’s curls hang loose, uncombed, and his eyes are rimmed with sleepless thought: Rumpled, real. Your throat tightens.
His gaze flits to the table, then back to you. “I think...” he swallows thickly, “I think you need to let my mother train you.”
You blink – the shock lances through you like icewater, sharp and buried deep beneath your ribs. A bitter, disbelieving laugh escapes you.
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
But somewhere quiet and traitorous within you, you know he does.
Paul’s stare does not leave your visage. “I do. And you know it.” His voice is grave, “Even if we can’t lie to her, we need to know what the Sisterhood wants with these dreams. They mean something, or they wouldn’t keep coming. She wouldn’t keep asking about them.” He whispers your name softly, sternly. “We need to be ready.”
You lift a brow, folding your arms. His gaze breaks to follow your movements before returning sharply to the uptick of your chin. “And if nothing comes of it?”
He searches your face, something flickering in his expression, some exasperation leaking through. “You really think this is all in our heads?”
There’s a crack of vulnerability in his tone; a leak, a glimpse. Just enough to hear the boy beneath the heir – hoping the terror might be imagined.
Your sigh is sharp; He takes it for the answer it is.
“You didn’t bring up the Harkonnen petroleum reserves for no reason,” he presses. “Or the materials on Sabberon. The threat is real — and even if it isn’t, the dreams are. That should be enough.”
Sharp, glistening fear flirts with the nerves in your chest.
“You sound like your mother,” you snap, the words cutting out too quickly. “She clutches at every syllable that comes from the Reverend Mother like it’s gospel.”
His eyes flare, incredulous. “And you were in my dream. Or have you forgotten?” His voice: steel behind silk, boy behind heir.
“Unless we unknowingly drank Spice before bed, that was real.” His sardonic tongue needles at your temper; He’s right, though this merely carves the dread deeper.
Paul was raised under the Sisterhood’s doctrine, you remind yourself; You stare at your betrothed for a moment in the late morning light.
The curls which hang by his temples, the pout upon his lips, the turn of nose, his sparkling, sharp stare. His chest, rising and falling with the same futile attempt to calm his heartbeat that you mimic.
A male Bene Gesserit.
The possibility scratches at the edges of your mind, begging a name; A prophecy. Whispers curl in your mind, but you do not understand them. The shortening of the way, they taunt.
The phrase shivers through you – Ancient, unmoored; You do not know what it means, but the words feel as though they were pressed into your bones long before you were born.
In a moment of paranoia, you wonder if Jessica had somehow dosed your morning tea – some odd alchemical manipulation; a Spice-laced seduction of the subconscious.
But even a drug-induced fate feels almost kinder than the truth that haunts your blood, slinking in shadows and whispering through empty, ransacked halls leagues away: that this has always been coming.
That this path was carved before your ancestors ever drew breath.
“Paul.” You start evenly, brows knitting upward in what you know might reveal a vulnerable expression, the first of any such thing to cross your features in his presence. He drinks it in patiently, eyes boring into your own.
“This is a bad idea,” you say plainly, grateful – truly grateful – that you can argue with your husband-to-be without threat of a palm across your cheek. That he allows you your voice and, within the last day, even seeks it; even when it cuts. And, in a bristle of defiance, you tilt your head, “why should I trust your judgment?”
He exhales, a dry scoff. “Why should I trust yours?” His arms cross, a mirror of your own. “You try to kill me in half my dreams.”
Your glare is instant, vicious, and your huff is exasperated. “Well, I haven’t killed you yet, have I?”
His returned look is dry. “I know my house better than anyone. I know my mother better still.” Your glare is hot at the growing resolution in his tone. “So... We train with her. Together. It’s the only way to unearth what they want from us. And Mohaim can’t know.”
You sneer. “You’re naïve if you think she won’t. This is futile.”
Paul’s jaw ticks; your eyes track the movement. “I’ve spent my life preparing to make choices like this.”
Your voice whips back. “And yet you choose wrong.”
His eyes flash, stooping down towards you. “Watch your tongue.” His voice; low, quiet – a warning laced with silk. “I will be your Duke one day.”
“And I your Duchess,” you retort swiftly, lifting your chin. “That title means little to me, my lord.”
You are close now – so close you can smell the hush of his soap, the warm edge of sweat, of citrus and the forest far across the grounds. His breath is tight, visage angled to take in your molten gaze. He’s nearly regal in his anger; sharp cheekbones, curled locks, shadowed eyes.
“That means little to me, my lady,” he returns, cruel and quick. “You’re here, so you’ll do as I say.”
His eyes are greener than the billowing grass fields outside his window. Something wild coils in you.
You’re mine to keep. There's plenty of life left for you to serve.
Feyd’s voice, twisted and slick in your mind – and for a sickening moment it morphs. It becomes Paul’s.
Your hand flies without thought.
A burn of instinct and old scars; You aim to slap him, to strike, to wound, to reclaim your breath.
But he catches you.
Faster than you imagined – his fingers wrap tight around your wrist, stilling your blow an inch from his cheek, hovering with a buzzing heat that makes your heart stop.
Time freezes – the chimes by the window stir, whispering in the stillness, in the back of your mind. Paul’s nostrils flare, and as the energy in the room shifts, his lips barely move.
“Don’t.”
Not spoken – but threaded into you; It ripples through your spine, turns marrow into ice, turns your limbs into jelly. Not yet refined, not yet absolute – but there, unmistakably. The Voice.
You truly, stupidly fight the urge to obey.
You fight the weight that pushes your hand down, as if you could still strike the boy in front of you despite the way you cannot move your arm.
A trickle of fear rolls down your spine – a whisper.
Power: Real, ancient, terrifying. His.
You knew Jessica trained him, though perhaps you haven’t thoroughly understood what that truly means.
You linger in limbo, thoughts warring in your mind of what it means to see patterns where others see only dust.
The Shortening of the Way.
It echoes in your blood like prophecy remembered, though you snap from your haze with a sharp inhale and a renewed fury.
You twist your wrist in an attempt to wrench yourself free – though his grasp is resolute, and your other hand comes to shove hard against his chest, sliding your thigh to pin on impact.
Paul’s spine thuds against the wall beside his bed with a dull knock. A sharp exhale of breath, his grip iron-locked upon your wrist, your fear bubbling into rage.
Your forearm comes to flatten against his chest, holding him to the wall as his heart thuds fast, uneven beneath your grasp. His eyes are wild, and in their reflection you seethe.
“Do not ever use the Voice on me again.”
His breath is as wild as your own, and your lip curls. “No man holds power over me,” you spit. “And you are no different.”
His breath changes minutely, but he doesn’t let go. Neither do you. And there you remain, both sucking in air through flared nostrils, two creatures caught mid-transformation, mid-dream; mid-destruction.
His eyes are hooded with shadows you cannot find as he tilts his head to you calmly. Far too calm.
“It’s not just men you should fear.” His gaze does not waver, though a curl comes across his brow as he shakes his head gently. “Whatever else they are – the Bene Gesserit can give us power.”
The weight of it presses on your ribs; Your fury simmers, but something more weak coils underneath it: dread. Destiny.
In your faltering heat, Paul snuffs the flame. “After all, you should be used to living with enemies.”
Your jaw sets to snarl, to lash out; but something whispers in your mind – that he is right. You are used to this. The Sisterhood is not your friend, but neither is it wholly your enemy.
Slowly, your arm drops from across his chest.
Though your other hand falls, his fingers still clutch your wrist with some leaking wariness – the flicker of fear that if he lets you go, you might drive a hidden blade through his stomach.
He’s right, you know; to walk blindly into what waits ahead without any attempt at control is a foolish fate. Independence – that stubborn thing that laces the straight line of your spines and tilts your chins high – will not be enough.
You are not thinking clearly these days – a storm brews, and in its thunder is the promise of the upcoming arraignment.
Paul still watches you, hackles raised, chest heaving. Eyes wild. His breath is warm against your cheek. Your lips part to speak, but just at the very moment–
“Paul?”
The voice is not yours.
It cleaves the silence, a blade through gauze – and you both jolt, heads whipping to the door in tandem, marionettes startled from rest.
“I’d hoped to speak with you about my absence—” But the words wilt in Lady Jessica’s mouth as she crosses into the threshold. A Houseworker follows behind her, arms cradling a basket of linen, stopping with a short blink.
Quite immediately, Lady Jessica’s gaze drifts – first to your flushed face, then to Paul’s, then in a horrific series of quick equations in her mind – to the bed so dreadfully close to you.
You can almost see the thoughts rolling through her surprised stare: The heat, blooming thick in the air, a rustle of bedsheets warm from the sudden absence of bodies.
Your face burns, a wildfire of panic and embarrassment – and your stomach, knotting tight as a sailor’s rope.
Lady Jessica’s poise is impressive, though a strange color rises to her cheeks – surprise, suspicion, and something stranger still.
Your heart freezes. How much did she hear?
Between you and Paul, a glance unfurls wordless, warlike, and quickly flashing into a shared agreement. The truth is perilous, but the lie is easy; almost comforting in its simplicity. Caught lovers. It is decided in the blink of two pairs of eyes.
“Forgive me,” Jessica murmurs in her polished steel, “I hadn’t realized—”
Paul at once steps away from the bed with an awkwardly careful grace. “No.”
You gather your composure like a young bird draws in a broken wing – unease, tilting on uneven feet with a slight flutter.
A quick breath before Paul's knuckles brush your shoulder; he's adjusting the sleeve of your robe, untwisting it over your shoulder as you hide an unwanted shiver under a glance to his rouged cheeks.
Lady Jessica’s eyes follow the movement with something warm and almost approving; you let out a quiet breath. Good – better to be caught in passion rather than treason.
“We were just... discussing,” he excuses, “the wedding.”
The Houseworker has busied herself leaving the basket beside the door, her lips pressed in a tight line. You know how the words will wind their way back to Hestia by this evening, you’re sure of it; your cheeks heat at the thought of the inevitable lies you’ll have to sew to her.
Jessica’s smile is soft, knowing. “I did not mean to interrupt, truly. My apologies. I can find you later.”
She turns to leave, and you blink with a short breath, lips moving quick. “No – please, my Lady–”
She pauses kindly and you fix her with a smile; a tender, paper-thin thing that feels rather alien still after all this time. “I was just leaving,” you assure with a small nod.
And with your words, with your heart hammering in your chest, quaking with the worry that Lady Jessica had heard much more than she let on – you drift toward Paul soft-footed, swift.
Your hands find purchase on his shoulders as you hoist yourself upon the tips of your toes – he stiffens, eyes flaring as if you might unsheath a blade and gift it so sweetly to the flesh between his ribs.
And perhaps if this were another moment, another day, another life, you'd have giggled at the panic behind his calm visage, at the swirling irritation and bewilderment living behind the mossy banks of his gaze.
But you hardly give it time.
And as your breath stirs against his cheek, he bends imperceptibly down towards you – sharp, he is, and he has found your cover at last.
His hands are fists, but still they come to your hips as your lips hover by his cheekbone. “Find me later,” you whisper, soft as breath.
His curls brush your face as he nods just imperceptively; and so you press a brief kiss to the sharp ridge of his cheek.
Over his shoulder, Jessica averts her eyes.
And as you pull away, your heart thuds with the hope that the scene is convincing; shy young lovers, stealing a moment. If only it were that simple.
When you turn to leave, there is a slight blush blooming across Paul’s cheekbones.
A convincing actor, then.
You offer a quick bow to Jessica before you slip past them, heart in your throat, palms clammy.
PAUL DOES FIND YOU LATER.
Out in the gardens of Castle Caladan, the season ends with the turn of the year – the plants that bloom are resilient to the less rainy months that come. Paul watches the fatter drops of dew slide from thick corded leaves beside him as he winds his way into the garden.
Light trickles down from gaps in the clouds, spilling like thin milk over garden stones. His hair catches in a disjointed wind, warmer than cold – Paul walks past petals which close when they should bloom; in the near distance backwards birdsong echoes in the forest. The air tastes faintly of copper and cinnamon.
He finds you drifting ahead of him, barefoot, your pale dress damp and whispering at your heels. A slow thing; so unlike you to walk with little purpose, syrupy and languid all the same but with less resolution.
He steps closer, though before he can call your name, your body snaps in reaction to his presence behind you.
A creature startled — you turn, pressing him into the hedge with the same force you’d unyieldingly used just this very morning; thorned leaves tickle his neck and Paul’s hands find your form with more instinct than intent.
One, falling to brace at your hip – the other, sliding to cradle the winged muscle of your shoulder; as your eyes flash into his own, the pad of his thumb presses into the hollow at your throat to stabilize your wrath.
Though where he expects anger, fear, fury – he finds none.
Your voice comes syrupy and knowing. “I dreamt of you this afternoon,” your voice trickles, thinner than rain. Paul fights a vague uncanny haze, blinking as he watches your humming frame. An odd mood he’s found you in this evening – it serves to wholly unease him.
“Did you?” he wonders breathlessly.
You lean closer, lips grazing his; there’s no kiss, merely a whisper, and his heart beats at his throat in confusion. He swallows thick, ears humming with lapsed birdsong and an upwards roar of sinking waves in the far distance.
“In a throne room,” you confirm. The words unfurl, soft petals in the first shy glance of spring; your breath mists upon his neck and his fingers flex just to feel the erratic beat of your heart below his palm. “Spice, glittering in the sand that trailed in through the doors.”
There is a numb alarm in his chest, though it dissolves with the stroking of your hand. You curl further into him, eyes sharp as a reverence, hungry as a threat. Paul sinks into the thorned hedge, still holding you close despite the unnerving glint in your stare.
“You were on the throne,” you breathe, “...and I knelt before you.”
His stomach flips; Your hands slide lower.
The alarm is a faint memory now; Paul lets you guide him. Lets you sink, a priestess before some altar, eyes flashing with gold and flicks of strange cerulean hues.
Paul’s vision swims; velvet, static. Hands trail down his stomach, and his hands grasp a veil he cannot see.
You speak against him, lips brushing his tunic; Paul’s warmth and confusion grown in a sick tandem. You smile; an omen.
“I heard it, Paul.” You hum, “But it wasn’t your voice.”
Paul tries to recall what you’re saying – what you’d said before; anything, perhaps, to make sense of your uncharacteristic behavior and why he is not putting a stop to it –but your mouth is warm and you’re humming softly. The garden spins. A moan escapes him, gasping, quiet.
And when you look up, your face is beautiful and wrong, blurred around the edges; a painting submerged in oil.
Behind you, the garden grows darker, wilder – a glint in the hedges, the glint of a blade behind thorned leaves and a faint glimpse of sickening, pale skin. Above him, the sky is bruised with clouds, and it begins to rain; though the drops seem to rise up from the ground.
Paul opens his mouth to speak, but the taste of cinnamon and copper curls in his throat, and then he’s–
Paul jolts upright, breath caught in his throat like a noose; cold sweat sticks his tunic to his chest, the breeze from the open window chilly. The room is bruised with the dusk-light of a sky about to break open – already, the rain has begun to weep.
“Shit,” he mutters, voice ragged as his head drops back against the pillow, heartbeat thudding in his ears.
Water whispers against the yard outside his open window. He must’ve slept for hours – the sun was high when he returned from his lesson with Thufir to his chambers, lying down to rest only for a moment.
Now, the sea churns and swallows the light – the castle’s wing is quiet and bare. He’s missed supper.
Dragging himself up, Paul stumbles under his shower – frigid water to cool heated skin and a racing, betraying heart; and he stands there, unmoving, as it bites through to his bones.
And still, the dream clings. The memory clings.
And the dread remains.
EVENTUALLY, PAUL RESIGNS TO SEEK YOU IN THE LAND OF THE LUCID.
He emerges from his chambers – shower-freshed and storm-eyed, steadfastly ignoring the whispers of his dream, pacing the corridors in search of any hints of you.
It’s late; you’re likely finished with lessons by now, perhaps stowed away in your quarters with supper and your stubborn solitude.
His footsteps carry him to your chambers with a lilt of hesitance; the dream lingers, taunting and mocking – his cheeks remain red as summerberries even when his knock echoes through the corridor.
He calls your name into the still room, when there is no response, eyes cast down in hopes of avoiding any improper sights – tracing instead over the few personal belongings scattered through the chamber.
“Paul?”
He rounds the corner to find Hestia, standing beside your modest table. She blinks at him as if he is some apparition, arriving before its haunting hour.
“Oh,” he says simply, brow twitching upward. “Hi.”
Before her sit two place settings; a crumb stubbornly remaining at the corner of her mouth. She nods at him, eyeing him warily – a waver in her stance, clearly just as thrown off by his presence as he is with hers.
There is a set for two that she gathers from the table and a flicker of interest curls in his gut. “You’ve been eating together,” he observes, “voluntarily?”
Her lips press together, brow raising, “Perhaps I like her better than you,” her voice comes with no regard for status between them; a thing Paul quite admires about her, even when she is taking a tone of tease. “She doesn’t sulk nearly as much.”
His expression must be incredulous – for she laughs shortly, shaking her head as she clears a jar of jam.
“Well, I guess she just has better reasons to sulk,” Hestia mends, “–And she does it more gracefully.”
Paul gave her a flat look, though he knows it’s true. “You’ve known her for two weeks.”
“Some people don’t need years to be tolerable.”
A short breath exits through his nose — a growl that’s halfway to a laugh, yet bristled. “Where has she gone?” He wonders, eyes flicking to her own now.
A smirk grows on her visage, arms crossing. “Who?”
Paul’s eyes narrow, some odd warmth spreading in his stomach.
“My betrothed,” he levels, less than placated by the teasing glint in her gaze.
With a hum, she glances to the lapsed rain, where night covers the misty ground. “She left for the gardens.”
Paul’s stomach drops in surprise.
Out your window is a distant view of the rolling sea; far and glinting in moonlight, it is swallowed by marshes and moors of darkened green and whispers of long grass in the shadows of night. Lost in thought, Paul notices after a few moments the odd look in Hestia’s stare.
“What?” He asks, nearly defensive.
“It’s a little uncanny, you asking after her like this.” She says bluntly, lifting a brow, “you’ve not exactly been showing her much… gallantry.”
He fights the twitch of his lips, something shameful curling in his gut. His voice comes out the same, sharp and defensive. “I speak to her.”
She blinks at the crossing of his arms across his chest, her lips quirking. “Barely.”
Paul shifts. “I listen to her.”
Her brows raise incredulously. “When?”
A retort dies on Paul’s tongue as he scoffs – cheeks grow warm, lips flounder. The night’s sky is speckled and clotted with clouds which draw heavier and low by the minute.
“Do you plan on pestering me all night, or will you let me leave?”
A huff falls from her nostrils – an amusement at his exasperation that curls over the bend of her lips and the crow’s feet of her eyes.
“Depends. Are you going to tell her you came looking?” Her accent, a thing of deep Caladan native heritage, rolls thick off her tongue just as her mother’s.
His eyes roll to the heavens and back to her. “Why else would I look for her?”
Hestia seems to be enjoying herself.
“Plenty of reasons,” she flashes a grin, “though, none either of you would admit.”
He lets out a bitter sound and backs toward the door with a parting glare. She’d do well to remember her place; though he’s never once chastised her for speaking her mind before.
“Hestia,” he grumbles, instead, “do try not to gossip too much before I find her.”
“And you,” she calls sweetly after his retreating figure, cheeky grin bleeding through her lilt, “try not to look so desperate when you do.”
IT DOES NOT HIT PAUL UNTIL HE IS ALREADY TOO DEEP WITHIN THE GARDEN.
He retraces phantom of footsteps past shadows; down hedgerows, damp earth curling into the air, a flicker of lamplight beyond the sprawling walls of green – he was here not hours ago in a dream.
But Paul is awake now; and any warmth that climbs onto his cheeks is quenched with a roll of his eyes towards himself. Coincidences won’t kill him, he reminds himself, but you might.
You repose against a bench at the center of the garden – wrapped from head to toe in piney gauzed fabric, face bare in the moonlight as you squint up towards the soft mist darkening the sky.
He calls your name from far enough away; Your gaze finds him slowly, as an owl might watch a mouse meander over a field from her perch. “Paul,” you greet in that rich cadence – whispers of your homeplanet seeping from your tongue.
He comes to rest beside you; wind threads through the night, a breath from the cliffs that climb higher still than the ones this ancient castle sits upon. The sky clotted with thick dark clouds that rumble gently, heavy with the remnants of rain.
“I told your mother I will resume my training,” your eyes remain upon the clouds, “I don’t believe she heard anything today.”
A breath unravels past Paul’s lips as he drags a toe through the moist dirt below. You’re watching him with that look of yours, eyes wide, wise beyond your years.
“She seemed pleased,” you add, voice drifting like a solemn, faraway lyre. “Suggested I begin after the Referendum.”
Paul knows better than to say I told you so, but it sits smug on the back of his tongue.
He’s not surprised; only days remain before the Houses leave for the Referendum – and your arraignment. It would be trifling to begin training in the looming shadow of such events.
A cold shadow brushes the back of his neck; the dulling loom of the arraignment. Your eyes catch the low light – and in them, dark and glinting, there is encroached dusk, the glow of the castle windows – a blanketed storm of flurries.
“How do you feel about it?” At his words, you exhale sharply through your nose – that familiar, clipped disdain that leaks through girlish tones of amusement; though tonight, there is none of that.
“You must know how I feel about the Bene Gesserit by now, Paul,” you whisper into the swirling mist of eve; and Paul tilts his head to catch the glossy tresses of hair that slips away from the ornamental wrappings of your clothing.
“No,” he murmurs, cheeks warm despite the bite of an early spring chill. “The arraignment.”
You, a pine stilled in an ancient forest, shifting only in the breeze as you blink – calculated, measured. There is a ripple in the pool of your masked emotions, and Paul sees it for what it is.
Fear.
He knows that very phrase that echoes in your own head as much as in his own at this moment; a silence, punctuated by the whispers of women long past. I must not fear.
But the silence persists, and he does not rush to fill it.
When he does speak, he blinks ahead at the climbing green walls, at the rustle of thick brush and the distant swish of wild grass far off in the nighttime breeze.
“The Baron is a cruel man,” Paul glances to you, studying the turn of your nose in your profile. “We’ll do everything we can to keep him from swaying the other Houses. And when the time comes…” Your throat bobs only slightly where it disappears in the swaths of fabric, but Paul continues, “We will defend your heritage.”
A slow brush of wind drags your gauzy dress skirt along his calf. A chill brings shivers down his spine. Paul’s voice is a whisper in the soft sway of hedges.
“We will defend you.”
And after a breath – a shift, a shake of snow from the petals of a winterbloom – your lips curl into a smile. Soft, elusive; a ghost passing through frost.
It is a slow thing, one that suits you almost too well. It is a beautiful one.
“You’re so much like him,” your voice comes oddly reflective; As if speaking through a door not quite open. “Your father.”
A bloom of pride curls in his stomach – though he doesn’t know why you say it. There is that familiar haunt clouding your eyes as you watch a toad hop lazily from a pond out to the walking stones, a baby upon its back. Paul watches your lips twitch as the small toad holds on to its mother tightly.
He doesn’t know why you say it, but Paul also doesn’t ask – and as two fingers trace the damp stone beneath him, he realizes a part of him simply doesn’t mind.
A hush settles between you, and then, quietly: “You’ll be a good Duke.”
From you, it is not some empty praise.
Paul’s chest tightens as your words curl around the mist. There is something here, his mind whispers; perhaps, days ago, he’d think your words were some slithering trick. But for once, he doesn’t bristle or deflect.
His cheeks are warm, and he knows well that he cannot hide the twitch of his own lips. “And you,” his voice is far too soft, “will be a good Duchess.”
You laugh, breathy and laced with disbelief. You do not meet his eyes, and he does not dare push you to – but your cheeks glow even in the faint lamplight through the windows of the castle.
The silence ebbs when you take a deep inhale, voice coming once more hollow and steady.
“I know House Bourbon holds no true claim over Sabberon anymore,” your nails pick at the loose cut of your gauzy dress absently, lips bitten between breaths, “But it still falls under our sovereignty–” you purse your lips, blinking languidly. “–My sovereignty, by decree,” you mend with a glow upon your cheeks again. His heart cinches.
Hedges sway slowly across the way, listening as if your words are being pulled out from some cavernous place within you.
“When I lose it next week,” you continue, so sure in the future that it blends and obscures in that way that dreams have begun to, “when that decree is rewritten–” Your lips purse, though he sees the tremble beneath. “It cannot go to the Harkonnens.”
There’s something deadened in your tone, but something burning beneath it, too, as you shake your head towards the cloud-muddled moon high above.
“They are… unfathomably evil.”
And Paul knows; he does. But he understands, now, that he does not know like you do.
Your fingers graze absently over a faint scar on your hand, spun silky and webbed in the moonlight.
He has seen the blade that made it; in waking, in dreams.
He has read the histories, the customs, the barbarism hidden beneath their traditions.
A nameday knife, meant for a bride of House Harkonnen.
You came to Caladan in a kennel; teeth bared, voice barbed, fury like a hound at your heels. Paul should never have been so childish enough as to blame you for it.
A beast, you wanted to be seen as – but you are not a beast.
You are difficult. Frightening, often – just as storms, or change. You are frightening, he decides as your eyes meet his in the dark night of spring, but you are not unknowable.
You are just a girl, as he is just a boy; Thrust into the hands of old men and old women and older laws.
And today; the memory curls back into his mind as your toes trace idly along the damp earth in a stunted, unknowing waltz with his own – a memory of warm breath on his cheek, lips pressed against skin.
A teasing remark over the books by his bed. A joke about Paul’s word choices. A laugh tampered down before it could turn girlish and true.
A glimpse of someone real; Not a specter, or a strategy, or a title.
You speak before he can come to terms with the realization. “My aunt is the Lady of Ginaz,” you murmur – though it is a fact spoken more to fill space than inform; Paul watches with growing tension in his jaw as your fingers dig along the edge of the stone bench, worrying at the crumbling cracks.
“On Giedi Prime, her letters were destroyed before I could read them.” You stop with a slight pause. “But I’ve been speaking with her again.”
Paul says nothing; with you, silence carries more weight than answers, and his head has begun to ache from the waves of fear that tremor through his skull each passing moment.
“They’ve long remembered their oaths to House Atreides. If we need bodies – projectiles, blades – I could write her. Ask for the Swordmasters.” Your voice carries with the wind – the word blades curls, smoke in the air; you say it far too softly, too familiar. Paul’s nerves dislodge.
You sigh then, nearly a smile – a ghost of a thing which flits across your visage like a leaf stirred by the wind. “We’ll have to invite her to the wedding, of course.”
It is a brittle joke, a poor one, but Paul huffs a quiet laugh nonetheless, lips curled like he’s chewed something bitter. His eyes catch your own. “You looking forward to choosing the flower arrangements?”
You tilt your chin; the moonlight kisses your cheekbone. “I suppose it’s a good thing our house colors are both shades of green,” you muse in that rolling tone, “one less decision to fight over.”
He huffs smally, “more time to argue over the ribbon for the handfasting.”
The breeze blows a spray of mist-thick air over Paul’s nose, lashes fluttering in the chill air. Your gaze is upon the hedgerow – the very same one that has swallowed both Paul’s and your stare again and again.
Your lips purse and then puff out a small breath, “whose tradition is that, yours or mine?”
Paul’s swallow is thick, a pang of contrition singing in his veins. “Yours.”
You nod slowly, and Paul suddenly cannot look at you any longer. A deep churn of his stomach catches, and he lowers his gaze to the flowering shrubs along the path in the dim midnight air.
“When you arrived,” Paul murmurs, “I was cruel to you. Because I knew you were Bene Gesserit.”
You watch him; he can feel your gaze hot upon his profile as he sets his jaw. “How did you know for certain?” You wonder.
His jaw clicks, recalling the cool drop in the back of his mind the moment he saw your veiled figure slink out of the transporter in the rain those weeks ago.
“I just...knew it. When I saw you.”
If it is significant to you in any way other than disbelief, you do not reveal it in your expression; your stare penetrates, and Paul continues despite the slowly accelerating beat of his heart.
“And I knew what kind of power you could hold over me if it was true.”
You look at him, and it is not a kind expression. “And are you not afraid of that same power, which your mother holds over you?”
A twitch of irritation, Paul’s jaw ticks – though he does not let you disarm him. He does not answer your question; instead shakes his head, “my mother loves me too much. If she knew we were both dreaming of death, she would not let us go to Sabberon.”
You wipe away one lone raindrop from your thigh and he continues in a slow murmur, “You don't love me. If you were Bene Gesserit, and knew what path the sisterhood intended for me - for us - you wouldn't hesitate to encourage it." He admits, and feels no particular heartbreak at the concept; after all, you hardly know each other.
You appear similarly unaffected. “I don't know,” you sigh, “but I'll be Bene Gesserit again soon. I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.” You mutter bitterly, voice imbued with regret.
A curl of your hair ripples in the breeze; His own lashes catch the cold dew of the coming rain.
Your resentment to the idea formulated is clear, and Paul sighs quietly. “I know you don’t think training with her is right,” he murmurs, “but what would you have us do?”
“I don’t know,” you answer sharply, “but it feels like we’re walking straight into a trap.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Paul mutters, the phrase worn; armor that no longer fits.
“I know we don’t,” you insist with crossed arms, “But... what if every good thing we try to build is just another step toward the wrong path?”
It is a thought too many times agonized in his mind; and now, out loud with you, Paul is struck with a miserable foreboding. Something is coming; it stirs in the storm clouds, lurks upon the horizon. He knows you feel it too.
“So then... we play the hand we’ve been dealt,” he says – stiff. Empty.
Your voice, when it comes, is frost crawling over glass; icy, uncaring. Sharp.
“But that's so easy for you to say.”
Paul’s gaze snaps to yours, a curl of heat in his chest at your tone – your eyes blaze with some spitting condescension and your lips curl around the words that come next. “It’s all means to your end, isn’t it. Aren’t I?” You scoff, “You were never meant to suffer for this. You were groomed for it. Studied for it. Taught secrets that should’ve been forbidden.”
A long-awaited reaction; from the very moment Paul told you he’s trained in the ways of the Bene Gesserit, he has awaited the moment that festering seed of mistrust would bloom – yes, the accusation is not new, but it still stings. You do not truly trust him.
He has power, he knows; and you remind him of it not because he forgets that he has it, but because you never can.
And despite how your words are received unobjected to him, despite the truth in your argument – you, too, are highborn. And you, too, speak as though in some ways, the Sisterhood has already claimed you, throat and hands and soul alike.
Paul was meant for something. So were you.
He wonders, suddenly, if you know more of the odd prophecy whispered behind doors shut than he does. One of two candidates, the voice whispers. You have more than one birthright, boy.
Paranoia grows; Paul can imagine your nerves are tender from the upcoming arraignment and the fear of the trade war impending. He, too, faces the silky webs of despair in the quiet moments within his mind. But there is pride laced into Paul’s heart. And where there is pride, it can be wounded.
Paul’s voice is sharp – the last knife in the drawer.
“I don’t know why you pretend to know me.”
You don’t flinch. Your voice is small, but it is ice. It cuts cleaner than any knife could.
“Me neither.”
There is nothing left to say; in three days, the House will leave for the Space Trade Referendum, and you will accompany him and the representatives to Kaitain. Only a few days after, you will be representing your own House for the final arraignment. There is nothing to do now but wait.
You don’t look at him any longer; your nails trace along the cracks in the stone, jaw set, eyes shining with wrath.
He leaves you in the gardens, surrounded in the dark.
THAT NIGHT, PAUL DREAMS OF YOU AGAIN.
Beneath the Great Pine that cracks and weeps resin, there is a hiss; serpentine, unseen. Below him, you tremble in his hands, buzzing and alive, breath fanning warm against his throat.
But somewhere beyond that velvet dark, something watches.
A flicker of silver: a knife, unfamiliar in shape but not in meaning. A pale hand wraps around the hilt. Then, in the midst of some trembling, ground-shattering distraction, your gasp comes; sharp, small, broken.
Visions crash through his mind: a reddened horizon, a warm desert wind; your face, streaked darker than water, washed away by freezing rain. And Sabberon. Always Sabberon.
And then, threaded through it all – a voice. Not yours, not his mother’s, nor the Sisterhood’s.
It coils, smoke through a keyhole: low, sweet, curling, rotted at the root.
“I will never let them keep what is mine, my pet.”
You – pressed half in agony and half in ecstasy at his throat, teeth scraping along his racing and fading heartbeat – do not hear it.
But Paul does.
And when he wakes with your name in his mouth, the echo of it clings like ash to his teeth, dying on the dry heat of his parched tongue.
Honestly though smh. But your writing is flawless and I swear it would be a best seller, I’m willing to bet on it.
Ah, I love that for you!! That’s so sweet of him and that’s such a simple but lovey thing to do, stop it. And don’t laugh at me hahah. I’ve actually been doing everything in my power to keep my yap shut recently but sometimes it flies out without my control lmao. If it made you laugh then I’ll let it slide this time :’) but I already know they look amazing. I’m going to sound like an idiot if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure you said you like bugs and have some tattooed already so it ties in so beautifully. I’m obsessed and I’ve never seen any HAHA. I’ve added more to my sleeve and she’s coming together very nicely. I fear after this next session, I have to take a break because I’m going in a cardboard box on the street for a bit if I keep it up hahah
shush!!! i bet urs is too omg :')
& ty!! hes a sweetheart i love him haha. stop you dont have to keep ur yap shut i LOVE it sm! also shush ty, they look so cute i love them!!! yes i loooove bugs so much and i do have some other ones ugh ur so cute for remembering omg. stop i bet the sleeve looks so cool these days!!! you've been adding on to it for so long i bet its awesome im jealous. fr tho i also need to put on the brakes with the tattoos or else we'll be cardboard neighbors ;)
n e ways i hope ur doing well!! what have u been up to bb
That’s a dangerous game :’) but shit, I’m really considering it and going under a pen name keeps my ass safe if all goes to shit and people hate my writing style LOL.
Shut uppp, it’s truly so cool and I swear to fuck if you have a partner to do all of your adventures with, I’ll scream for you and your happiness. Lord, that makes me remember when you said you had a brother and the first fucked up thing I thought was if he was single and then I thought about if you were. Yeah, no, I’m going to shut the fuck up now. Oversharing is a curse.
But oh my god! I appreciate so so much. What are you getting?! Or actually, what’d you get?! I actually had a session two weeks ago. We are fucking it up with the ink, I love it.
omg yeah bc not that i ever would but if i did ever try to publish a real writing i feel like id have to hide my real name too in case i embarrass myself LMAO
and aw hehe :')) i do actually have a bf and he drives me wherever i want <33 (also my brother has a gf im sorry HAHA u make me laugh omg). i'm getting some dragonflies on my shin and also touching up a few older ones :)) what did you get??
dededos
origamiaround
snowghoul
romaincrisis
izzy806
discoholicmusic
theartofmadeline
