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.
series warnings (read individual for extra warnings): slow burn. enemies/strangers-to-friends-to-lovers. arranged marriage, violence, canon divergence (aged-up characters, can be read as pre-canon; characters are in their 20s), past non/dub-con, canon-typical & vague references to incest/pedophilia (the Baron & Feyd-Rautha), angst, eventual smut, blood and gore, trauma, plot heavy, religious imagery, paganism, lore-heavy
↬ prelude
an ancient house falls. paul atreides learns he has become betrothed.
↬ i
you are ripped from your nest of darkness and shipped to a new world — or — destruction: the only thing you and feyd-rautha may have ever had in common.
↬ ii
you are tainted with blood - not atreides, not bourbon - but harkonnen. paul will always see you as a beast, wife or not.
↬ iii
there is a phantom blade buried between your ribs. paul has begun to harbor odd dreams.
↬ iv
for the second time in his life, paul is roused by his mother in the dead of the night. you begin to recognize your strange dreams.
↬ v
you and paul begin to accept that you should not be wasting your anger on each other. destiny begins to harbor a new name.
↬ vi; part one - coming soon.
it has been a lonely many years. and in paul, you have found a cracked, wary mirror that you cannot stop yourself from staring into.
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.
series warnings (read individual for extra warnings): slow burn. enemies/strangers-to-friends-to-lovers. arranged marriage, violence, canon divergence (aged-up characters, can be read as pre-canon; characters are in their 20s), past non/dub-con, canon-typical & vague references to incest/pedophilia (the Baron & Feyd-Rautha), angst, eventual smut, blood and gore, trauma, plot heavy, religious imagery, paganism, lore-heavy
↬ prelude
an ancient house falls. paul atreides learns he has become betrothed.
↬ i
you are ripped from your nest of darkness and shipped to a new world — or — destruction: the only thing you and feyd-rautha may have ever had in common.
↬ ii
you are tainted with blood - not atreides, not bourbon - but harkonnen. paul will always see you as a beast, wife or not.
↬ iii
there is a phantom blade buried between your ribs. paul has begun to harbor odd dreams.
↬ iv
for the second time in his life, paul is roused by his mother in the dead of the night. you begin to recognize your strange dreams.
↬ v - coming soon.
you and paul begin to accept that you should not be wasting your anger on each other. destiny begins to harbor a new name.
word count: 11.7k
warnings: canon-typical violence, allusions to serious injury, heavy descriptions of blood, family death, brief mention of dying during childbirth, plot (im looking at u rn. u know who u are), foreshadowing. v v v brief allusion to former feydxreader (finger sucking. blood. im sorry its over quick). besides that, fluff and light angst - and a fair amount of lore. btw. if you're russian and reading this i love you
notes: hey cuties!! it has been so long and i apologize for that! i was in a cast for my hand for a few weeks, and then life got busy. things are still busy busy and rough but here's an update for u all for being so effing nice :) i rly hope you enjoy, fun things are coming i swear! love u all
[header image is for aesthetic purposes only.]
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Dearest Niece,
I hope this message finds you in good health, despite the trying times you have endured. I cannot begin to imagine the pain and sorrow you must have experienced in the wake of the tragedy that befell our family. To have been thrust into the midst of such turmoil and danger must have been unimaginably difficult.
Today I write to you also with heartfelt congratulations on your recent betrothal to Paul Atreides; While I understand that this union may have come at an inopportune time, I have every confidence that you will make for yourself a splendid future on Caladan. Duke Leto is a noble, honorable man, and I have no doubt that his son is the very same.
Please know that you are not alone in your sorrow, my dear niece. Know that our home is always open to you, and one day I would be honored to meet your new husband and welcome him to Ginaz.
In the meantime, I hope this message brings some small comfort to your troubled heart. I have every confidence that you will emerge from this darkness stronger than ever before.
With all my love,
Lady Ginaz
- Message sent to Lady Bourbon from the Lady Ginaz. 10191. Caladan.
For the second time in his life, Paul is roused by his mother in the dead of the night.
At her hushed instruction, Paul blinks blearily, staggering after his mother’s grave visage, padding barefoot across the wing; a hall, lit only by the lick of waxed moon looming in the sky and the curling tendrils of slumber pulling at his mind.
It is not until his mother opens the door that the sense of dread fully solidifies within his chest – a chamber at the end of the hall, an ornate chair placed in the center – and sat within it, the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohaim.
Any remnants of tired sighs and heavy eyes cease immediately; Paul’s eyes snap forward, blood thrumming and alert.
Searing pain; a memory of years ago washed onto the shores of his mind – humanity, that nameless obscurism. The Gom Jabbar. A test.
A bitter reminder of the consequence of trust; Paul spares a glance to his mother, his posture rigid. A crack in granite, a splintered thorn on a plucked rose.
The reminder is acidic upon his tongue.
He is dropped within the choppy waters of silence and anticipation – a phantom memory of pain and disquiet alike; and with a square of his shoulders, Paul steps forward towards the shrouded woman. It is a test in of itself, his mind computes in a whirring, quick blink, steel yourself. Do not betray your mind.
“What’s this?” His voice drips in condescension; no effort at all to hide such disdain.
The voice comes; a low drawl, chrisomed in black. “Tell me of your dreams, Paul Atreides.”
It is the sharp, needle-like stare that sends that wave of dissent through him – and a sharp glare is then moved to level his mother. She merely nods towards the Reverend Mother, and Paul drowns in the waters.
So, Paul steps forward, and he speaks of the hauntings that come to him each night.
Lapsed by the less pertinent details of his dreams, Paul’s lips spill of eerie clearings, a shroud of ceremony white against the weeping earth; flakes of smoky snow raining from a clear sky, streaks of missiles cracking along the orange the horizon, splintering the world in two. A large pine, shivering and quaking as its limbs creak and bend, unfurling its burnt sap and smoldering barked skin.
“I’ve tried to make use of them,” he murmurs, brows furrowed with visions of soft skin, sharp gasps and ashy snow.
And they are a portent of doom – that crawling thing that clutches his chest and reminds him with a pang of fear about the very dream he’d been roused from not minutes ago; of the flash of silver, the sharp gasp, and metal, piercing soft flesh.
Pain, in any other name.
“They’re…elusive.”
His voice is small and cold in the wide yawning chamber, and the piercing sparrow eyes of the Reverend Mother do not blink. His shoulders are weak, despite the way he holds them back; a weary voice, the swallow of a shaky worry, some hidden fear that nestles into his ribcage.
“She’s always there.”
And there is a small flashing under the thickened veil – a horrifying breath in which Paul reconsiders if he’d truly just seen the woman smile.
His stomach churns. There is no part of him which yearns to continue speaking – though a sharp glance from his mother draws forth the recent memories of his dream this very morning, the one he’d just been roused from.
“And…the last dream, sh–” His jaw is increasingly tight, though his efforts to conceal emotion prove decent; a vision burnt bright in his mind, the sharp memory of tissue pierced and torn, a sharp gasp – a black hilted knife. An engraved blade. “Someone stabbed me.”
He does not say what he indeed feels – the flutter of fear, the boiling anger, and that lick of worry that curls around corners of his racing mind.
You stabbed him. It was you.
Paul braces himself for the far-reaching consequences, knowing he cannot afford to hide what plagues his mind as the Imperium stirs in the eve of war.
Not if what you said about Sabberon is true.
There is a small leak in the window in the far right corner – Paul can nearly see the small droplets as they fall from the wooden beams and kiss the stone floor, dripping slow and passing the time as a grandfather clock.
“Your dreams hold great significance, Paul Atreides.”
Unimpressed with her words of grandiose, Paul's jaw ticks in indignation; he could have guessed as much himself.
It is an effort to resist a snarl; confusion is an unwelcome addition to anger and it simmers low in his gut. Great significance, she says.
“I am the heir to House Atreides," Paul starts, jaw tights, "The Imperium might hang by the brink after the coming Referendum,” as he spits, his mother places a hand on his shoulder, her sharp inhale bristling the hair on Paul's neck. It does not quell his anger. “I won't entertain any manipulations in the name of my fate–”
“Silence.”
Words dissolve on his tongue; lips shut, eyes roll, light disappears from their sconces in the murky corners of the room.
And in that hazy, prickling way, he emerges from the momentary dreamstate with a wash of shame, of sheer wrath. She once again dares use the Voice?
But she has begun speaking, and Paul has no choice but to listen.
“You are the heir to a great legacy. But with that inheritance comes duty.”
He does not dignify her with any response.
To his defiance, she tilts her head – a crow of black and veiled, her beading eyes glint through the low light. “Tread carefully, Paul Atreides. The choices you make will shape the fate of many.”
A spoiled disdain of fanatic manipulations – the words are discomforting as they are incendiary in Paul’s brain.
The Reverend Mother continues. “You possess a strength within you, a strength born of both blood and spirit; but true strength lies not in the wielding of power, but in the mastery of oneself. Trust in your instincts, but do not let them blind you.”
His mother is fearful behind him. He feels it, radiating off of her; that pulsing worry that leaks from a wounded antelope in the twilight of a chase, the bleeding heart of a wounded animal.
It seems that the Reverend Mother grows tired of Paul's presence, for after a terse moment, she nods harshly. “You may go.”
Paul finds no better relief than turning heel and stalking briskly towards the door.
“–Not you, Jessica.”
It is with fury that he nearly turns around; but somewhere in his mind is a hazy insistence from his mother – urging to leave them; and so he does, lingering with an ear to the doors as a child would, straining to find the hushed words whipped into the chamber.
“The boy..." and then, "the girl, too,” The voice is a whistled wind in the ears of an unwelcome fate; The fragments of sentences are chopped and warbled, “–down the right path.”
He does not bother to stay and hear the rest of it.
The morning crawl of sunrise comes crisp as you cross the halls to the training rooms.
It is early - far earlier than your usual training hours, though you still cross into the room, stopping upon your toes at the sound of fighting.
In lieu of the common sight of Duncan perched in thought, cleaning blades and awaiting your presence, you’re met with the thud of skin meeting skin, exercised breaths and grunts of focus; the sharp slice of blades against shields.
You haunt the doorway, staring owlishly as Paul and Duncan spar.
It is an odd thing, you observe as the morning sun climbs higher into the cool sky; it is odd, the way that Paul Atreides fights; quite unlike the fluid but brutish style of your formerly betrothed, with his painted chest and curved blades.
These are slower; ones that awaken some dormant emotion low in your stomach. The patterned leaps and strikes, the circling toes; It is a dance – a rhythm that beats the same as the blood in your veins.
One, then the other – legs lunging, arms parrying, striking; hawks, in a circling prance.
You realize, with creeping horror: You know this song.
There is a melody in it, that old formulaic law of the vast universe, beyond the Imperium. Those whispers of the people who came before yours, who carved their faces into the mines within Sabberon’s tallest peaks. Their dance, their song.
The Zakon Roka. The martial art from your ancestors, who poured their song into the teachings of the Ginaz Swordmasters.
Your lips are wettened with your tongue as you watch the slide of thighs, a sharp spurt of strength emphasized with the glinting of rich curls; Paul has struck Duncan across the shoulder. The Law of Fate, as it were; a dance with blade in hand.
And in this waltz, you find that familiar beat, the quick jolts of Kozachok; A cautious precision. Soldiers with thick trousers and balanced on ice-bracketed boots; gliding between sword parries and swipes to the legs. Thick dresses and furs; whooshing in the passing air as pointed toes slice through cold, tapping upon ice with the kiss of a feather.
Paul’s movements are fluid, graceful, calculated; your worry doubles but is only quelled by the growing discomfort in your ribs.
So he is trained in the ways of your people.
Something about it twists an ancient melancholy in your gut.
Your mouth is bitter. He should, by principle, be little match for Duncan Idaho; A young man so clearly well-endowed in the areas of strategy, politics, governance, you’d hoped you could wheedle out some clear pitfall of the heir.
But instead you watch, a phantom of snow and evergreen in the doorway, as his watery movements outmaneuver his counterpart; the lapping of cerulean waves against a frigid shore, the laugh of a hawk in a frosted forest – a game of échecs, placed upon a checkered board – or, in this case, a sparring mat.
Nevertheless, the Atreides heir fights in a way all too familiar, and you’d strike yourself a liar if you said it did not coax some unwanted heat around your neck.
Your heart throbs painfully in your ribcage. The boyish laughter of your youngest sister, hair unruly as she leapt to your brother, rapier prodding the shield protecting his precious skin.
Snowflakes still fell in those last days before you left for Giedi Prime; and you still held on to those foolish dreams of springtime in an Imperium that would soon be frozen in winter.
A sunbeam streaks through the green of Paul’s eyes just for a moment, glittering just as that sea which lies beyond the horizon. Your skin has grown small gooseflesh; a shuddering breath from your lips, furrowing your brows as Paul leaps, avoiding a low swipe from the glinting blade of his counterpart.
He fights like them, yes – like the wolves of Sabberon – but he too mirrors those quicker movements, the ones that were taken from ancient cultures of other civilizations; an amalgamation of the sharpest fighters in the Imperium, honed into one pattern of dance steps.
A waltz of death.
You should have expected as much.
After all, he's grown up here on Caladan – a Duke's son, trained to become a ruler one day; and he has been tutored in this dance by the greatest fighter you’ve known, a man who shared the blade with your people for many years.
Paul matches him blow for blow; and his cheeks, glowing and dusted with pink – to your dismay, barely a glean of sweat across his furrowed brow.
A strike against Duncan hits unblocked once more; The older man, in turn, lets out a huff of laughter – pride leaks through that sound.
Your blood turns to acid; and your patience is rapidly expiring in the knowledge that your betrothed is once again quite talented – and Duncan watches Paul as if he were his own son, an observation that festers somewhere horribly sore in the bruised chasm of your emptied, wanting heart.
Anger bites at your heels, and though you know he had no control over your fate, the bitterness lingers. The bruises upon your soul, the clawing betrayal of abandonment those years ago. Of when you last saw him.
Harvest season came on Sabberon with gusts of spiced air and merry visitors – each revolution of orbit, with leaves of crimson and amber falling to the ground; the scent of roasts and cider blowing with the harvest wind with the first few flakes of wintertide.
Each year, Duncan Idaho would visit; and then, even when you were no taller than his elbow, it’d been a dance for you too – your body in step, giving and taking with his own. A Waltz of Death. The Zakon Roka.
You’re brought back when Duncan's blade presses to Paul's side; Grunting, Paul cannot seem to parry – your eyes flicker with the red flash of the shield’s warning.
A vision behind your lids once more – viscous liquid, gleaming in the sun – a curved blade, dripping carmine.
The blade is slow, and it penetrates Paul’s shield; Your veins thrum in excitement at the widening of viridescent eyes, the glance of a doe along the point of a hunter’s bow.
God forbid he hurts that precious porcelain skin. What color, you wonder absently, would his blood flow from such a blade?
Feyd-Rautha's blood was so dark it was nearly black.
A crimson color when it smeared across his skin, though reflective and glinting in daunting light; a tangy, sharp metallic taste when you’d brought his bloodied fingers to your own lips.
A gasp echoes in your mind, a sickening squelch; the expiring rattle of breath, eyes desperate beneath knitted brows. Fear floods your stomach, a horrible thing as the outline of the sun leaks a halo over Paul’s curls.
It seems your dream from this morning has not left you – the dread threaded into your muscles as you’d woken pulls at your lips, weighs upon your shoulders.
A phantom pain lingers in your stomach.
Paul has escaped the slow blade somehow as you stood daydreaming; and he now moves along the ring of sunlight from the window.
His lips, furled in concentration – those lips, pinked and bitten in the haze of your memory, a dream of sighs and of bites against warm flesh.
Heat creeps once more around your neck: And your haze snaps, any such grasp of patience you may have had is gone.
It takes only a shift upon your feet to catch the attention of the two.
At the sight of you, Duncan hesitates. Seizing the moment, Paul strikes and Duncan tumbles to the ground with a blade to his throat.
You do not hide the lift of your brows.
Paul releases his grasp, pulling Duncan up with himself. With a wipe of sweat from his brow, Duncan's eyes skirt to the clock and he huffs, “Sorry. Must’ve lost track of time.”
Humming, you slink onto the mat; a panther stalking along the limb of a tree.
In greeting you receive a nod from Paul; though his gaze is more a fleeting brush from your face to the blade at your hip. It is a split moment – though the green in his eyes snags like a hook, reeling you back — back to the dream you woke fresh from this very morning. Of blood, bright as a jewel; A breath, shuddering its last. The sharp sting of fear - the whisper of a hidden blade.
“I’m early,” you reason, slipping past Duncan’s startled stare as he takes in your uncovered visage. It is the same look you received from the Houseworkers all morning.
The fresh-faced Bourbon.
Paul’s frame glows. A bathe of soft golden, flickering as his hand wipes sweat from his brow, chest heaving. A stirring deep in your chest turns bitter when it rises, warm and wanting, to your neck. You shove it down, recalling the ebbing gaze of his stare last evening aside the small tide pools.
In the turn of only a few weeks, you will have to use this marriage as leverage; should the referendum reap rotten fruits — and if you ever want to make sure the Harkonnens stay off of Sabberon— you must build trust.
Paul might be your only bridge towards redemption if the arraignment crumbles.
And so it is with these thoughts that you slink next to him, toes gracing along the floor, an ancient beat in your pulse.
Paul’s gaze catches through the corner of his eyes before returning to the disinfectant in his hands, running it along the side of the knife. His offer held out in the glint of a blade is declined softly, with a shake of your head.
“No, thank you,” your hands find the hilt of your blade.
In a chilling instant, his visage turns and his gaze flickers lower; a green sea staring at the glint of your knife at your side. Lips, pressed tight into a polite smile. “Right.”
He wastes no time. In his leave, he brushes your shoulder, brow gleaming with a thin sheen of sweat.
You begin to stretch, ignoring Duncan Idaho’s watchful stare.
It's only a moment before you run your mouth. “He fights like you,” you observe; and if it's instigative, you let it be.
Duncan’s hum is amused. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
The unsheathing of your blade conceals your eye roll as you begin to sharpen its edges — and in the creaking quiet, his stare burns into the side of your uncovered face.
Your patience wears thin after only a minute; and so in the sterile silence, you lift a brow.
“Did you expect me to be bald under the veil?” you snap, tired of the stare burning into your visage.
He hardly blinks before you turned to him, some resent nestling familiar in your chest. “I lived there long enough, didn't I?”
Duncan twists the blade in his grasp, eyes softening in that way that makes your heart race, an unknown urge to fight or to run. His voice comes out far too gentle. “You’ve grown up.”
Your eyes sting. You turn away frilly, fighting the rising tightness within your throat; though his words come soft and far too close to your heart.
“You just…” he sighs. “You look like your mother.”
Your stomach drops; you throw your knife onto the table, whirling to face him as the metal clangs. “Don’t.”
His stare is much too patient; your heart tremors in its cage, your vision swimming. A shaky inhale in the empty room. And then, the words spill.
“I was never prepared to be the last Bourbon alive.” Your step comes forward in some vague threat, though your mind is far beyond the sparring mat. “I’m barely a Bourbon at all anymore,” you laugh, a bitter thing that falls flat in the sterile room. Duncan has nothing to say to this, it seems.
“My betrothed had to inform me of my own culture’s traditions,” you spit, glaring sharp at the man standing before you, “Do you know how humiliating that was?”
Your anger is misdirected; This you are well aware, and yet you must resist the urge to strike him at the words ringing in your head. You look like your mother.
It is a bitter laugh once more as you look out to the coastline warbling far beyond Duncan’s shoulder, a jeweled sea tickled by stray rays of sunlight. “My mother ensured long ago that any chance of my house’s traditions being preserved would die alongside with my father,” your jaw clenches, fury quivering in your breast. “So it doesn't really matter, in the end.”
A gull flies far in the distance, circling the sea. “There’s nobody left to witness those traditions being broken but myself.”
Duncan remains; and with a small nod, his voice comes heavy with the burden of bodies hanging above your heads. His words bite when they hit you.
“You don't have to face it all alone.”
The disbelief must reflect on your visage as you let out a short bark of a laugh. “Then where were you?”
His face changes – a subtle shift, in the bright of his eyes, drawn in my a thick line of brow. The silence is suffocating.
Shadows crawl in your mind, a whisper of screams, of ears pressed against heavy locked doors; you suck in a heavy breath. “I was there with them – with him – for four years. Four years!” Your voice cracks through the room, a whip sharp as you lurch in your pain.
Your hand finds the weapons table as you snap. “Not one single fucking check-in, no visit, nothing. Nobody batted an eye when my messages stopped delivering?” Your voice, boiling and nearly splintering, warbles when you look back to Duncan, “When there was never a wedding?”
And, despite your rage, Duncan lets you continue.
It is a spill of the festering thoughts you’ve kept within for years – since that fated day, waving weakly from the window of a ship as your family, five strong, draped in green and swathed in furs, waved back.
“–They had to have known what kind of monsters they’d shipped me off to,” you whisper, “House Bourbon was allies with the Atreides for centuries,” you shake your head bitterly, “We've always known what the Harkonnens are.”
You lift your shoulder, shaking your head. “And yet, they sent me happily to marry the devil.” You glare at Duncan. “To become one.”
You press your hands to your cheeks to soothe the heat; Thankfully, no tears fall. “I don't blame you.” You snap, and the words feel weak even to yourself. "I don't. but..."
You break the stare, gaze dropping to the mat below you. “You’re the only person left to be angry towards.”
His voice is heavy when it comes, and you fight the small instinct clawing at you to pull him into embrace. “I'm sorry for everything you’ve lost. Everything that’s–” he clears his throat, then, and the floor swims with unshed emotion below you. “For everything that happened to you.”
You do not go to him – instead you stand, barren and alone, rooted evergreen in the middle of the floor.
“I should have been there for you.” He takes a step forward, “They should have, too.”
And how ugly is your heart, to force him to say such things when his grief mirrors your own?
His voice comes once more. “It’s okay to still be angry with them – what they did to you – even if you’re mourning them.”
Your throat tightens, exhaustion settles deep; a weariness, carved from years of fear, abandonment, festering anger. It has been far too long you’ve stood alone, always looking over your shoulder, twitching your fingers towards the blade that lives upon your hip.
His eyes are too warm for what you deserve.
“I shouldn't have treated you so coldly,” you admit with a sting of humility. “I…” your mind crawls to the message that sits in your chambers from the castle at Ginaz. Your throat tightens, your voice wavers weakly, and you curse yourself. “You're the closest family I have here.”
And Duncan remains patient as the Pine. “There is nothing for you to apologize for, Little Bourbon.”
The name settles deep; your mind finds the melancholic memories of chilled cheeks, plumed breaths, flakes catching on blades. A youthful laugh bubbling through the buzzing anger in your heart – and despite yourself, your lips twitch. A ghost of a smile, from the ghost of a girl.
He knows better than to dwell; and so you catch the blade he tosses to you gratefully.
But just as you roll your shoulders, the sound of footsteps disrupts you. A soldier walks through the room; though to your shock, he addresses you and not your master.
“Lady Bourbon,” he nods, “the Lady Jessica wishes to speak with you over lunch in her quarters now, if you have a moment.”
Something within you deflates. A glance shot to Duncan, whose gaze is already set upon your visage with a mild interest that does very little to soothe your upticked nerves.
Whispers flood your mind as you blink numbly – a syrupy dizziness that finds you so often when you consider the Sisterhood, whenever you catch Lady Jessica's stark eyes. You cannot deny how unsettled you are by the thought of being alone in her presence right now.
But you know better than to refuse the lady of the house’s wishes.
“And spoil my fun here?” You muse, sharing a wry glance with Duncan.
You follow the soldier anyways.
If there is one thing you can certainly appreciate, it is that Lady Jessica burdens neither of you with the pretense of smalltalk.
In fact, lunch is hardly picked at before she brings it up.
“You were once on the path of the Bene Gesserit,” she starts over the soft clinking of silver and china. Your gaze remains steady, your spine uncurling as if awakened by an ancient memory.
You nod stiffly.
She continues – penetrating and warm, her eyes take in the curve of your shoulders, the pride of your spine. Her voice carries all the calm melody that your mother never possessed.
“Circumstances may have led you away, but your training has not been forgotten,” she sips the cup of tea before her. This change in subject comes as no surprise to you; in fact, since the very moment you stepped out into the rainy morning of Caladan that first day, you’ve been waiting for it to return, to curl in from the shadows. Somewhere in the murky ruminations of your mind, voices whisper. You blink them away.
“Yes, my lady,” you set your own fork down and offer her a tight-lipped attempt at a smile. “I studied the Ways when I was younger.”
She nods. “Have you considered continuing this path?” She tilts her head, and an icicle slides into the soft flesh of your stomach. “Honing your skills once more— to strengthen your voice, your intuition, your presence?”
To you, the Sisterhood is an unforgettable chasm; memories flooding the fur-floored halls of your mind. Your mother's stern visage, relentless training regimens; elixirs, smoking incense, warm spice behind heavy doors. Knives flicking from sleeves, robes wrapped around you and your sisters, swishing as your hands found the soft skin of each other’s weakest spots.
Women veiled, with eyes that slithered; boxes which screamed, needles which threatened, words which controlled. A heavy past.
And though it is skepticism that tugs at your mind at her words, there is still a part of you that can't help the twinge of curiosity; Such an ancient order – such power, the only kind possible to have as a woman in a cruel world such as your own. And then, there is that looming thing; for your mind trembles at the impending shadow of the upcoming arraignment. The thought of protection is a glamorous one.
But you know better.
You saw that very mistrust sewed in your own house; The crack between your father and his court, of the looming shadow of your mother and the sisterhood through the halls of Castle Bourbon, of the loss of thousands of years of tradition.
You have been struck with a bout of dread, and your throat has dried. “I’m…” you purse your lips, “I haven't, my lady.”
Her voice is earnest as she leans closer. “I understand your hesitations,” her eyes flicker to the empty doorway and back, “but given the current circumstances, it may be wise to strengthen all of your skills. Including those you learned with the Bene Gesserit.”
The dread swirls in like the tide, and you swallow thickly. “Circumstances?” You parrot, tilting your head. You know what she's implying; it doesn't ease the suspicion that rises, the feeling that the strings which tie themselves to Lady Jessica are being pulled from much higher above your head; somewhere unreachable, unattainable.
“It's imperative to ere on the side of caution,” she murmurs; though you feel no such assurance at her message. You are unsettled as she takes in your posture, at your fingers, curled in your palm.
“Tell me,” she starts then, stirring the tea in front of her, “Even after your time with the sisterhood, did you ever experience visions?” Her eyes penetrate, and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up at her next words.
“Dreams that stayed with you long after you woke?”
Your throat dries so quick you almost choke. A chill finds you when your eyes lock with hers.
So it was a look she shared with Paul at the strategy council yesterday. It seems Lady Jessica has been keeping close tabs on you, after all.
Heat licks around your neck, creeping over your chest – you hope she cannot read your mind thoroughly, for she would likely not enjoy the more intimate parts of your dreams.
The dread has surfaced; your hair still prickled, you level your visage to hers, calm. Your voice is chill in the warm sunbeams of midday.
“You seem to already know my answer.”
Lady Jessica's lips press together. “Indeed,” she affirms; gentle, yet probing. She nods nearly imperceptively, “but I need to hear it from you.”
You pause, grappling with the memories that surge forth at Lady Jessica's inquiry; The dreams, the visions— they haunt you, asleep and awake – and despite your reluctance to acknowledge them, they have persisted; lingered, a shadow waning in the corners of your vision. There is a thin sheen of sweat growing across your breast, in the insistent thump of your heart.
And then your voice comes.
“Yes,” your voice, barely above a whisper.
She is a master in her own craft, and any attempt to analyze the twitch in her gaze would reap futile.
“I suspected as much,” her eyes swim, gleaming in the warm sunlight. A clink as you raise the tea to your lips, obscuring the tremor threatening to jolt your composure.
“I must advise you, my dear," she nods. "Dreams are often the key to understanding the path that lies before you.”
Cool dread rises to your lips, pressing wordless screams to your lips. You do not let them leak.
Her words hang, exasperatingly cryptic; And you are, in your silence, forced to acknowledge for the first time that these dreams, torturous and haunting as they are, are still a calling, a beckoning towards something that you cannot ignore. A whisper comes in the back of your mind, a forgotten mantra, though you do not know what it means: The Shortening of the Way.
Your jaw has begun to ache; you force yourself to release the tension, setting your saucer down gently. It clinks in the empty silence of the room.
Lady Jessica speaks your name once more. “I urge you to consider resuming your training with the Bene Gesserit,” she suggests, and your fingers twitch subtly. “Not out of obligation, but out of necessity. In times of uncertainty, it is essential to be prepared.”
Prepared.
You meet Lady Jessica's gaze; and despite your reservations, despite the ghosts of the past, you cannot deny that which you have always known. Power comes to those who seek it - and it is a dangerous thing to wield a blade when its other edge is hidden.
Your mother’s voice finds your mind, a haunting ghost of a life lost to time and pursuit of power: To wield raw power is to bare yourself to forces far greater.
You are overcome with the overwhelming sense that you are far over your head – and with a squared shoulder, you nod curtly. You are not safe.
“I hope you will understand my wish to reflect, my lady," you respond, willing your heart to remain untampered by your unease. “And I thank you for your guidance."
Lady Jessica offers you a reassuring smile, though it does little to quell the raging in your stomach.
And then, at her final words, your stomach drops.
“Consider it, my dear,” she nods, gaze unceasing, penetrating. “To wield raw power is to bare yourself to forces far greater.”
That night, Paul exits his mother’s quarters as the moon kisses the coast.
An exhausted drag of feet over the stoned flooring, Paul yawns against his palm, thinking quite fondly of his bed and pillow.
In the empty corridor, his stomach groans; a normally ravenous appetite eluded in the wake of the Reverend Mother’s early morning visit today has left Paul on the edge of shaking hands and a racing, unsettled heart.
An evening sparring his mother on knife skills would, on an average night, be nothing of consequence to Paul; though the last few hours were tense, laced in the budding and unusual mistrust that has sprouted in the dawn of the day. Any such attempts to pry the truth from behind closed doors this morning had resulted in gentle stern looks and tight words from his mother. This sentiment, naturally, only serves to worry him further; and lost in the puddle of unidentifiable dread, Paul quickens his pace.
Absent footfalls come and go as he passes towards his quarters; in the drooping tangle of his curled lashes, a shadow flickers.
Of course, he realizes much too late that the shadow comes with a body.
A careening impact, one that sends both you and Paul into a sharp inhale as you both rear back in shock; two does caught in the crosshairs of a hidden scope.
He meets your eyes, and in them there is that particular glint; a cold thing in nature, but warming in his gut as he takes in your startled figure.
You, draped in warmth and soft clothes, with gently parted lips and wide eyes; you, so unlike yourself in the daylight.
“I'm s-" he shakes his head faintly. "Apologies,” he stutters intelligently, inclining his head in a respectful effort to valiantly hide his suddenly warm cheeks.
Your lips twitch, and he watches the curve of gloss in the faint glow of moonlight. Your tormented stare follows his own almost reluctantly down the hall you both seemed to have been headed towards; and though the thought of accompanying you to your chambers when his mind is on the brink of exhaustion is less than favorable, it is highly outshined by the stroke of unease through Paul’s heart at the sight of the knife upon your hip.
Not unlike your blade, your hair glints in the light, sliding against the skin peeking from your collar. Paul feels a tickle upon his neck.
“No harm done, my lord,” you nod with that same guarded visage.
There is that unsettled, ashamed tug in his chest when your gleaming eyes find his own once again – and though it has been a day, he’s still starkly arrested by your bare countenance.
You don't have to look away, you know. I'm still the same beast as before.
His cheeks are warm. With a quiet cough, he gestures down the hall. “I was just heading–”
“–So was I,” you interject with a surprisingly endearing lurch upon your toes.
Paul’s lips press together, plagued by visions of glinting blades and dribbling crimson; though still you fall into stride together, shadows slinking over the halls quietly.
It is odd; perhaps in an ordinary world, Paul might feel giddy to walk his prospective wife to her quarters after a long day. But this world is not ordinary, and neither are you.
There is a large casement on the eastern cast of the wing; the window kisses a silvery breath over your figure - so soft in the forgiving nature of evening - before hushing you back into the shadows again. An eclipse in his blinks, and he wonders vaguely what the moons are like on Sabberon.
If there is one forgiving thing about the misfortune you’ve both happened upon in this late hall, it is that neither of you seem keen to speak – and Paul is more than pleased with this, knowing not what to say nor how to respond should you say anything first.
But indeed, the twisting of your fingers, the sly glances up towards his visage, and the silence do not last; soon your lips part, and from them spill words that nearly stop him in his tracks.
“I had lunch with your mother today.”
Your eyes are sharp; and he does not hide his consternation. Your gaze is intense – and if he were any less wary, perhaps he’d find it in him to flush under the sheer weight of your attention.
“What did she tell you?” His accusatory tone is poorly concealed, and he once again chastises himself for letting you wheedle through the small cracks in his tenacity.
You, with sharpened teeth and a gaze hungry for the scent of fresh blood; a brow lifts over your blinking eyes and Paul slows his pace.
“Why do you assume she had things to tell?” You lilt.
And damn you.
A weary sigh from his worried lips must encourage the loosening of your own, for your jaw sets but still your voice floats, dreamy and melodic and wholly troubling all the same.
But you do not play this song and dance further – for that he is grateful – until you tell him. “She suggested I take up Bene Gesserit studies again.”
Your stare drinks in his tightened jaw, the hardly perceptible shift in his breathing; and though his unease has spread to each stretch of his being, he wills it not to show. Words flicker in his mind, images of women whispering in corridors, of windy planets, of trickling gardens and sharp needles.
Down the right path.
In a breath of unease, he has quickened his pace; and your footfalls stumble only once as your frame turns to keep up, tilting your head up to him.
His words are quiet in the hall, and his gaze is focused upon the doorway far on the left. Whispers curl around the dredges of his mind, a terrible tone that laughs at the thump of his heartbeat.
And though the dread has spread, he urges his heart rate to steady. Paul gives a valiant effort to appear less than affected by this revelation.
“She asked about your dreams?” It is not a true question, for he already knows the answer.
And now it is he who watches for a reaction: Green eyes study, analyze, explore the curve of your cheeks, the swallow of your smooth throat. And in his search lies the answer – a blink of bare and curling lashes, a stuttered inhale.
In that way you do, your spine stiffens; brows furrow over your jeweled gaze, tilting your head as a few stray tresses kiss along the fabric of your top gently. Your lips have parted in a flare of worry.
“My dreams?” Your hand is warm as you grasp his elbow – a sturdy thing, tugging him to stop fully. “How–”
But it seems you’ve wizened to the footsteps of houseworkers in the chamber just to the right of where you and Paul now stand before each other, transfixed in the harmony of stuttering heartbeats and the steady shake of uneasy breaths.
And as the houseworkers fade to the other side of the wing, there grows a horrible bout of silence.
His mother’s guarded visage flickers in his mind when his gaze casts once back towards the hall he came down; your breaths are much too schooled, far too even. Paul knows the flickers of Prana-Bindu, even when they are ingrained deep into veins and concealed within skin thick as stone.
Visions; some sunsoaked melody of Weirding Ways, sharpened blades – of you, standing opposite his mother, raising that very same blade that haunts his dreams.
His gaze returns to the hilt that peeks from the soft drape of your tunic. Along the corridors of his mind comes the harsh lilt of the Reverend Mother this morning: Down the right path.
There is danger there, something whispers to him – and memories of dreams, of lulling whispers, of sharp gasps of pain, soft sighs of ecstasy; the glint of sunset-streaked skies, rustling trees, the flashing of sharp metal – of hands that wander, that grasp, that plunge.
The breeze through the hallway is a sobering one – and soon enough, there comes another echo down the hall.
An inkling of fear creeps along Paul’s nape, and he shakes his head minutely. “We shouldn’t be speaking of this here.”
You blink, and he cannot help but stare – a truly beautiful creature, hardened with subsistence yet so softened in the trickery of night.
You merely nod.
It could be a treacherous thing, he knows. The Bene Gesserit are a force that machinates far above his head – far above his mother’s, for that matter.
And although Paul knows not what silky ties such whispering hands might weave across the Imperium these days, and though spiders might descend wrapped in the trickery of gowns and sharply beautiful smiles, it does not mean he is completely blind to the signs of a webbed trap.
“Come,” he requests; though in the starkly quiet hall, it finds his own ears as more of an order – and though he glances only sparingly at your neckline, his gaze hooks nearly regretfully upon the pendant clasped and catching the light just below your throat.
At the memory, he cannot bring himself to meet your eyes.
You do not try to catch his stare. Instead you merely follow, a silent tempest of resistance and obstination.
He opens the door to his quarters – and your sly glance around to survey for any witnesses brings a slight heat to his neck; still, your frame slips past where he holds the door ajar.
Paul knows how active you’ve been in your time on Caladan so far; And yet here is a place of which you are completely unfamiliar.
Paul’s chambers – where your spine stays rigid and your steps precise, where your eyes snake over each revealing aspect of his personality; tracing over books and figurines and the photo projector across the way.
You repose upon the chair across his room, but he finds himself restless, standing before your expectant gaze.
“Paul,” your voice brings his name in that crisp and yet breathy way, that accent that curls dense and throaty through the air.
It's a startle to his senses, for you to use his given name; and when he snaps his gaze once more to you, he finds you resting upon pointed elbows, a flicker of anxiety lurking beyond your limitless stare.
“If we are to do this together, we must build trust," you murmur.
And you’re right; This – marriage, ruling Caladan, representing the House Atreides – and whatever else is to come. He nods solemnly; your tongue smooths over your bitten lip.
“Why does your mother wish to know about my dreams?” You’re blunt – a thing he quite appreciates. “How did you know she’d ask me of them?”
Answers come to the tip of his tongue and dissolve just as he opens his lips; you watch him, lying in wait, and yet the truth lies in some thick plane of dust, of sand, and Paul cannot stop slipping through it.
“I don’t…” he swallows, shaking his head. Because he does know; and the truth sits heavy upon his shoulders.
His sigh is sharp. “The Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam visited this morning.”
And if you are surprised, it only comes in the stiffening of your spine and the flat tone of your voice as it slips, a caress of silk in the low light of his quarters. “She visited Caladan? This morning?”
He blinks at you, nodding once more. “My mother woke me early,” Paul murmurs.
“And... she came for the Duke?” you ask slowly – though Paul is no fool for the pattern of lies upon your tongue, nor the schooling twitch of muscle upon the curve of your cheeks, “...or for Lady Jessica?”
His jaw ticks slowly, lifting his chin. Your own head mimics the motion.
He admits it slowly, watching your stare trace the pattern of the words from his lips.
“She came for me.”
You remain evergreen and cool in the shade of night, silhouetted by the warm glow of lamp shade.
“What did she want with you?”
And though instinct tells him to deflect, he cannot look away from your penetrating gaze. His tongue drips with verity.
“I’ve been having dreams.”
And he sees it in the sharp inhale, the way your gaze breaks from his eyes to somewhere near his stomach, just for a split moment. It is miniscule, a farce; but to so sharp a refined mind as his own, it is enough. You are scared.
“You’ve had dreams?” Your voice is sharp.
His own mimics yours. “About Sabberon.”
And he’s firm, ignoring the foreboding tendrils of apprehension that lurk within his heart. He continues. “In those dreams, I feel like…” a stray curl comes loose in his vision, though he does not tame it. “...Like I have to go there. Like I’m... meant to.”
Your skin has grown ghostly as you nod absently; and in the lapse of your words, Paul fills the silence with all he can admit.
The night turns slowly, minutes folding by in the cadence of his voice. Your expression melts more and more as Paul recounts the Reverend Mother’s words, to his encounter with her previously those years ago. This, it seems, sends you into a state; for your eyes snap to him, unblinking.
“The Gom Jabbar?” You ask suddenly. Paul nods, “Yes, it is a kind of test–”
Your head shakes, tresses ablaze with the licks of lamplight, falling in tendrils across the soft fabric of your tunic. “–I know of it,” you interject purposefully, voice melodic and syrupy in that way your people are, “I also received it,” you explain quickly before your brows furrow in that way they sometimes do; shaking your head minutely. “I just do not understand why she might administer it to you.”
In a nervous habit of childhood, Paul’s lip has grown raw from troubling it with his teeth. A pause sits heavy in the room, and the lull of his bed behind him calls quietly; Outside, the coast shines with ripples of lazy moonlight.
Paul debates in his mind, glancing over the sharp turn of nose, the hook of your jaw – the curve of your lips.
Knowledge – a weapon, a burden.
His breath falls short, and he whispers your name as calmly as he can. “My mother has trained me in the ways of the Bene Gesserit too.”
Your visage morphs; a momentary lapse in control, some flame burns bright in your gaze, a fury he knows not.
It is gone in a moment, though it is ingrained into his retinas.
It is only within a blink that you remain muzzled by this revelation – and after a breath, you return to his stare; it hits him at once, that shift. Your eyes are cold, sharp.
Perhaps the dread he feels is not unrequited.
Though there are larger beasts lurking in the depths of these waters; and you lean back upon palms, shoulders broad and head tilted to take in his standing frame.
“She warned me, at lunch.” You speak bluntly, “That resuming to practice the ways of the Bene Gesserit is not out of obligation, but necessity. She told me…” and then your eyes flicker to the very same spot upon his stomach as before. “She told me something odd. That dreams are keys. To understanding the path before you.”
Paul’s stomach drops.
Down the right path.
A crone, that Reverend Mother; playing you, his mother, and Paul; all of you, puppets strung high above the dark chasm of the Imperium, that shadowy something that lurks in the dark corners of each House’s history books.
And dredges of childhood memories, of harsh whispers and trials-in-twos and of ears pressed to closed doors: Paul swallows thickly, heart pounding in his chest.
“My mother spoke to my father once of a tale,” he rushes, biting his lip. “A tale, or– a prophecy. I was young, eavesdropping through the closed doors,” Paul has to shake off the sudden flare of amusement, some odd hidden recognition in your gaze at this; heat creeps round his neck, though he continues. “I didn’t hear most of it, but I did hear… parts.”
The tale comes choppy, haphazard – a stream of uneasy consciousness spilled to the only person who might be of any help deciphering it.
“She said something about... dual contenders. About me being tested one day,” he mutters, hand swiping over the bridge of his nose. “And years later – the day the Reverend Mother administered the Gom Jabbar– she told my mother there would be two candidates for something.” Paul’s brow furrows, “Today…” his throat is tight, stomach pitted. “She spoke to me of my dreams. Said nearly the same thing my mother did to you.”
You do not speak, and a lurch of nerves urges Paul to mutter: “I just..." he shakes his head absently, mind far away, "I find it troubling.”
A heavy beat. Your lashes tangle when you blink up at him – and then comes a stark, shocking noise; a laugh, tumbling sharp from your lips. “You find it troubling,” you nod with a wry grin, “do you, Paul?”
And he realizes quickly how much of an understatement it'd been; and despite the tug of indignation in his chest, his lips press together, biting back a boyish grin of his own.
Your laugh bubbles away with his own breathy chuckle, and in an ungraceful surrender, Paul finds himself plopped upon the chaise lounge beside you.
Your fingers are adorned with bands; jeweled and draped with the bleeding hearts of your homeplanet’s jeweled mountain caverns, your fingers tap against the bland fabric of your trousers in an unwilling rhythm. They glint, jaded, emerald, even rubied; and in the night’s light, they seem to sing.
Your words come just when Paul feels the deep pull of exhaustion drag at his eyelids.
“I dream of it too.”
His stomach forms a pit of ice as he stares.
“Sabberon,” you supplement; though it is not needed, for he feels the pang of dizziness at the implications. It is never a good thing, no matter who you are, to share dreams.
You continue, your hair falling in loose strands over your haunting visage. The lamplight melts the cool stab of your stare and he finds himself lulled in by the gentle rhythm of your accent.
“My planet,” your brows furrow in that way Paul has come to recognize in your past day free of the veil, “we have a sacred Pine. It's symbolic of our Harvest.”
And though Paul knows this from the very book that lies across the room, he merely nods.
You bite your lip, “It has grown for thousands of years, upon a mountain beyond the Castle Bourbon. I’ve never actually been.” You shrug your shoulder, eyes glinting in veiled unease. “At least, not lucidly.”
And you start again, pressing your fingers to your palms. “When I dream of it, I’m…” your gaze snakes over his posture, following the lines of his shoulders, up his neck, tracing the warmth as it spreads to his cheeks. Paul wills it away with a quick breath.
You clear your own throat, a heat creeping along your cheeks that Paul staunchly ignores as his own memories of dreams come to mind. Your voice is sharp, though quiet. “I’m always there with you.”
There is a special sharpness to your stare; Fear, Paul’s mind whispers. A similar feeling slithers over his heart, clutching it in ice.
Despite himself, still he feels it: Another soul, trapped in this web of visions, and politics, and power; it is a dizzying thought in of itself, to sympathize so rawly with you – though he cannot deny that the gleam of worry in your stare is surely mimicked in his own.
His lips part easily. “You're there. In my dreams, too.”
Minutes pass after his admittance. It is punctuated by the harmony of rising breaths and schooled exhales, of tapping metal and restless knees.
Paul, slumped with consternation – and you, rigid with anxiety. He can feel it ebbing from you in waves, can feel the pulse of your heartbeat within his own. The silence has just grown comfortable with the resignation of fate when you speak once more.
“Do you trust her?”
Your voice is quiet, and it strikes fear deep in his chest: for it is a foolish thing to ask one of one’s mother – but it is just as telling that Paul hesitates, that he chooses his words with painstaking analysis.
That his words are not a true answer.
“The Sisterhood instructed her to have a daughter,” Paul starts, “and yet instead, for my father, she bore a son.”
He needs not explain to you how the Reverend Mother is still unhappy about his mother’s choice. It seems his words answer your question in a way; for your inhale is deep.
Paul tugs at a spare thread that pokes from the chaise lounge below him. “I was dismissed this morning,” he murmurs, “but I stayed outside. Pressed my ear to the door.” And this truth brings some flicker to your gaze – a quirk, again, of amusement – that familiarity glinting in your eyes as if remembering some long past memory.
“You seem to keep a habit of this,” you murmur dryly. Heat creeps along his cheeks at the curl of your voice.
His laugh is quiet, shy – hardly audible. He pushes on, ignoring the glossy tresses that fall over your shoulder and bring a soft scent of citrus and forest.
And the grin melts from his face as he recalls what he’d heard, the dread settling once more. “The Reverend Mother said something to my mother about–” he clears his throat, “the boy. And... the girl. Going down the right path.”
You peer at him from beneath evergreen lashes. “And then, your mother offered, quite abruptly, to tutor me in the ways of the Sisterhood once more,” you piece it together with pursed lips.
There is a small figurine of a bull that sits upon the table before you; Paul’s gaze traces over the carved horns, studying it with an absent worry budding in his stomach.
“It’s about us,” he murmurs, watching as your shoed toe drags along the pattern of his rug softly, brushing curves and pressing gently. “Whatever this is. But... it’s not about us.”
Two candidates.
You nod in his peripheral; a glinting of a pendant upon your chest, the tinkling of jewelry draped over your hands.
“Will it ever be?”
Paul solemnly shakes his head towards the bull, unable to look you in the eyes.
I shall wear it like a dog.
Your face is solemn – a permanent thing, one Paul has quickly grown used to. Admiring of, in a way, though it draws forth heavy visions, swirling fabrications of screams, of years spent in shackles – of families falling to the ground, of blood staining gowns.
You tilt your head to him, hair catching the light from behind his own frame. “It is a heavy burden to bear,” you say softly when it becomes apparent that Paul cannot speak. Your voice echoes the exact sentiments that roam in Paul’s mind; Heavy, yes. And Paul knows you are used to burdens.
He leans back in his seat, blowing away a strand curl from his vision in exhaustion; and though your eyes flick to him in his peripheral, he does not notice the way your eyes track the action and flick away almost shyly.
The quiet is cold.
“If only I’d had a sister,” Paul sighs.
You snort softly from your nose, and it is an endearing noise – his eyes rove over the quirk in your lips, the faraway gaze in your eyes.
“I had three,” you murmur quietly, “They were a handful.”
It is the first time you’ve spoken of your family to Paul; his interest piqued, he hums gently – for he can nearly picture it for a moment. You, ten years smaller, just a young teen – traipsing and wrestling in a snowy field with three sisters, a little boy stumbling after you. Screams from nearby onlookers as the youngest sister jumps into a half-frozen and emerald lake – the dampened silence of white fields and evergreens forests slumbering in the distance, broken by cracking ice and sharp gasps of frigid thrill.
Laughter – sharp and bubbling, smooth and melodic as you run and plunge, dress and furs, into the icy depths, pulling your sisters with you. Scolding nursemaids and soldiers in wolf armor running to fish you out. Attendants rushing to bundle and protect your young brother's frail, weak skin. Shivering, blistered cold – and then, hands cupping tea, toothy grins bit back, ruddy cheeks warmed before a grand hearth.
“What was it like?” Paul wonders.
You shift in your seat, your own gaze now tracing the curve of the bull’s horns before you. “Complicated,” you breathe out – Paul watches as your spine relaxes just slightly, arms wrapping around yourself. “We were close in many ways, though…distant in others.” You bite your lip, eyes hooked upon the wood carving. “There was competition. Always. Even when we were young, especially between me and my sisters. My mother was in the Sisterhood. Very strict.” Your voice has grown terse; he sees the flicker of fury in your gaze as you stare down the bull. “My elder sister died in childbirth after she married. She left Sabberon just before my twelfth nameday. I never saw her again.”
Your boots are foreign against the rug on his bed chamber floor as you drag the tip across its swirled pattern. “They were my only friends,” you murmur – a lilt in your tone that makes Paul uncomfortable – a rawness that you are trying hard not to let through. “They made me laugh like no other.”
And when you look back towards the bull figurine, your gaze is far away. “I loved them very much.”
It hits Paul with a rush of guilt: He's studied so much about Sabberon, learned about your House's old customs and traditions – but yet, he realizes how little he truly knows about you. And still, now - in the warm lit din of his room, you remain rooted in that chilly, resiliently ethereal way. The chill of your stare, the curl of your lips as frost bites the corners of windows in a winter morning. Your heart beats strong below your breast.
How foolish he’d been to think of you as any bit Harkonnen.
Paul’s chest is tight; a pang as he swallows thickly.
“I don’t have siblings.” He clears his throat, “But I’ve always wished to be a brother.”
And to this, you turn to him. Paul is shocked to see your kind smile; glacial, small – his neck heats. “You'd be a good one,” you murmur.
Paul has to look away – and in a glance to your hands once more, he notices the small blemish lying in your palm. With a small nod, he gestures to where there had been a large irritation just yesterday. “It looks better.”
You smile once more, a sheepish thing – and it brightens the room as you huff a small laugh, clearly relieved to be done with such heavy topics. “I thought you were trying to trick me,” you admit, “trying to make me look foolish.”
He hums at this, tilting his head with a small grin of his own, “I assumed you'd thought I was trying to poison you.”
Your voice is serious when you respond. “The possibility did cross my mind.”
Paul has to hide his grin in his shoulder; You seem unaware of his reaction, though there grows a faint flush across the apples of your cheeks.
Your eyes have wandered – and after a moment, you suddenly rise onto your feet.
Paul watches as you pad over towards his bedside, tilting your head to run your finger over the spine of the book that lies upon his bedside table. The Noble Lineage: Exploring the Customs and Cultures of the Houses Major of Landsraad: House Bourbon.
“Is this yours?” You wonder, hair splayed in the air as you lean. Paul’s cheeks are hot with embarrassment at your discovery, but he nods, soothing his palms along his thighs. “If you’d like to read it, help yourself.”
You crane your neck back to catch his gaze. “Is it interesting at all?”
For a moment, Paul flounders – but it dawns on him that you’re teasing; and with a small grin, he laughs, still quite unused to the privilege of your trust, no matter how small it might be now.
“I haven’t decided,” he quips back. Your lips twitch before turning back to the book, your eyes tracing its spine. “Maybe I’ll borrow it, then,” you hum, “I’ve been sleeping very poorly. Perhaps this will finally be the thing to put me to sleep.”
He cannot hide the huff of amusement that falls from his nose – nor the odd, melting sensation in his chest as he watches you. It is not until he sees your eyes blink rather slowly that he remembers himself and his manners. That despite the worry and the foreboding sense that has crawled into the back of your minds, you are still his guest – his betrothed.
When he stands to meet you, he is struck by how your neck cranes to meet his eyes. “You should get some rest then,” he murmurs, “we’ve got the Strategy Council in the morning.”
You blink, and soon your face is that cool slate once more. “Yes– apologies,” you clear your throat, “It’s been a long day.”
Paul escorts you quietly to the main hall – where you insist with quick words and a small nod that he need not walk you all the way to your quarters.
He watches the fabric of your tunic catch the corner of the hall as you walk away.
The warmth that had enveloped you at such a late hour wears off quite quick when you return to your chambers.
The shadows climb here; whispers, worries – promises of galactic war, of the haunting wraith of the Harkonnens – of the Bene Gesserit and their webs; of petroleum reserves and trade routes, of Sabberon and her insurgent factions. Of Castle Bourbon, standing alone and empty before the Pine.
And those dreams – Paul, sharing them? Your cheeks heat at the mere thought; though your mind strays, an attempt to ignore the fear twisting in your gut.
Paul's room had been very warm – and his eyes quite jeweled; he keeps his chambers neater than you’d thought, clustered only by books on planets, flora and fauna, biology, culture.
And you must admit; Though the subject left you on edge, it is terribly reassuring to have someone who not only you could speak freely with about your dreams and the Bene Gesserit, but who seems to hold similar consternations as you.
There remains upon your clothing a faint scent of his bedroom, and your neck heats as you catch yourself pulling your tunic tighter, biting back against the warm spread onto your cheeks.
You are exhausted; but as your eyes catch upon your bureau, upon the daunting metal that stares at you gleaming from across the room, you resign yourself.
The message remains on your desk, where it's been since being delivered a few days ago. You'd read it already, yes – read it, avoided it – but now, you suppose, it is time to respond.
And in due time, it's finished.
My Dearest Aunt Ginaz,
Your letter arrived at a very uncertain time for me and for that, I am profoundly grateful. I apologize for the delayed responses – my keepers on Giedi Prime preferred I did not receive or send messages.
For my betrothal to Paul Atreides, your kind words of congratulations reassure me; Truthfully, the prospect of marrying into such a noble family is daunting, yet they have been quick to ensure that I have felt welcomed.
The loss of my family continues to weigh heavily upon my heart, and there are days when the pain feels unbearable. But there are things here that help. I spend my days tutoring, training your old friend Duncan Idaho. I have begun to sit in on the Duke's Strategy Councils.
I believe I will live well here.
Though I am assisted by the Atreides', each day that the arraignment nears, I grow in my unease. I wonder, will you be in attendance?
I look forward to visiting you and the family. In the meantime, know that I am safe and well, and that I carry your love and affection with me always.
With all my gratitude,
Your loving Niece
There are lies trickled through the entire letter – though you feel no such need to burden your mother's bastarded sister, a woman you’ve admired your whole life, with petty things such as your betrothal.
Your Aunt Ginaz; who succeeded your mother's parents when they died, who inherited the noble last name as one of her father's dying wishes. They’d had several daughters – all married off to other houses, like your mother; and your aunt had been reared to run the Swordmaster School. She now rules over their house with her husband, who took the name Ginaz.
In an exhausted haze, your mind wanders too freely. Paul Bourbon.
Your huff is less of amusement and more of shock, shaking your head to wipe yourself of such odd, childish thoughts. For it is late, and the ghosts of your dreams wait impatiently at your windows.
You’ll have Hestia send the message out in the morning; you sink into the mattress, and your eyes are closed as soon as your head hits the pillow.
You know you’re dreaming this time.
Sounds are muted, blurred – and your head is heavy, numb. The hands that are on you are Paul’s – you know this. But you're not embracing, no – there is no pleasure.
No. His hands are slippery against your flesh; you're gasping in pain, gasping for breath. You are bleeding.
Or, is that his gasp – his blood?
The ground is a muddy landscape of slush and crimson; and the hilt of your nameday blade glints in the sun, blood dripping from the tip.
Horror courses through you, heavy as the confusion pulsing through your veins. Who wields it?
Paul leans against you, his weight heavy; the air is heavy with snow.
Your brows furrow as a flake lands upon your lashes – but no, it is not snow; ash.
Ash, that rains from the sky in flurries as the earth tremors below you, smoke gathering in thick clouds somewhere in the near distance. Your throat is thick with fear.
Another flash of your knife, this time in a grasp.
Gasping, your hand comes away from your own abdomen, tainted black – black as the sun you once lived under.
“Hello?”
A fuzzy voice, laced with pain; warbled in this state, though you could pick it out of millions.
You look into his eyes and see green; shining stones, glistening lakes, rustling needles, waving fields. Paul’s hands cup your cheeks, staining handprints over your trembling cheeks. An explosion somewhere in the distance–
“Paul,” you breathe, fear lacing every fiber of you.
But then, his face changes.
A sickeningly lucid recognition flickers over his features when you speak, and something shifts as his gaze pierces, brows furrowing. Your lashes flutter in some muted pain. There is something wrong.
And then Paul says your name as if he's surprised to see you; and it is wrong – as if you are in the wrong place.
Paul’s groan of pain draws your horror – a wound, bloodied and black with expiring life; right upon his stomach.
Your cry of his name is silent to the whipping winds.
He looks down, as if expecting to see something between the two of you; some memory of a bejeweled hand, draped with bands and jewels of green and gold, plunging a blade; but you gasp in horror.
Because with his head tilted down, you squint, just barely making out the glint of another figure across the clearing.
Glowing skin, sickeningly pale. A creeping, black smile.
There is someone behind him, and he is holding your nameday knife.
series warnings (read individual for extra warnings): slow burn. enemies/strangers-to-friends-to-lovers. arranged marriage, violence, canon divergence (aged-up characters, can be read as pre-canon; characters are in their 20s), past non/dub-con, canon-typical & vague references to incest/pedophilia (the Baron & Feyd-Rautha), angst, eventual smut, blood and gore, trauma, plot heavy, religious imagery, paganism, lore-heavy
↬ prelude
an ancient house falls. paul atreides learns he has become betrothed.
↬ i
you are ripped from your nest of darkness and shipped to a new world — or — destruction: the only thing you and feyd-rautha may have ever had in common.
↬ ii
you are tainted with blood - not atreides, not bourbon - but harkonnen. paul will always see you as a beast, wife or not.
↬ iii
there is a phantom blade buried between your ribs. paul has begun to harbor odd dreams.
↬ iv - coming soon.
for the second time in his life, paul is roused by his mother in the dead of the night. you begin to recognize your strange dreams.
tysm for all the love & feedback on here!! just wanted to update that i'll be on a hiatus for a while - my job has been fully effected by the trump administration's seizure of federal funding, and i'll be in d.c. until further notice so it's likely i'll be too busy to write or be on here much if at all.
love u all and i'll update my story/post more fics when i can! xoxo
word count: 14.4k
warnings: canon-typical threats, violence - serious bodily harm. graphic injury, blood, light smut, allusions ish to oral (f receiving), fingering, light choking, biting, very very brief dubcon (feyd warning tbh i should just call it this), unprotected PiV, fantasies, fair pulling. food sharing & mentions of hunger, discussion of alcohol, religious/cultural trauma, familiar trauma. freaky dreams, foreshadowing. fluff and some angst too - and a fair amount of politics that i made up lol
notes: hiiii guys <3 a long chapter here, there's no good way to cut it up hehe - also i am sorry i didn't edit this after rewriting it so im sorry abt any typos.
feedback very much appreciated!
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Concerns Rise Over the Destabilization of Sabberon
In the wake of the unseating of House Bourbon and the resulting power vacuum on the House’s formerly fiefed planet Sabberon, concerns are mounting over potential destabilization within the planet's region. Situated in a crucial sector of the galactic trade route, Sabberon's turmoil could have far-reaching implications, not only for orbital stability, but for the economic prosperity of the Landsraad's main trade economy.
With no governing body to maintain order, rising insurgent groups throughout the planet threaten to plunge Sabberon into chaos. The potential for conflict and upheaval remains a significant concern for the wider galactic community – yet as of today, there has been no comment by the Emperor.
This all comes to head a month before the Imperium's Annual Referendum, wherein new negotiations on Space Trade routes will be drawn, along with the final Arraignment of the House Bourbon.
- Collected Galactic News report sent to Duke Leto Atreides, 10191. Caladan.
Somewhere high upon the northern continent of the planet Sabberon, there is a trail that leads through the forest.
Past the Castle Bourbon, it winds up the slope of a mountaintop – in the short springtime, when the snow thaws and the glaciers spill their icy veins through the woods and ravines, the ground grows spongy with wild grass.
It is soft below your feet now.
The highest range of mountains tower in the distance; they dominate your sight, caps bald with such reflected sharpness that you have to squint against the rays. It is warmer in these elevations, and though the path you walk now is thawed and overgrown with alpine flora, those peaks on the horizon never lose their ice – nor the bursting jeweled-veins they hide deep within.
The sun is shy and springlike; it glows upon the skin revealed beneath your dress and glistens off dripping pine needles swaying to the ground in the breeze. Bare feet; cold, toes stained with earthy soil, and the warmth of a weight tugged within your grasped hand.
Trees rustle and whisper around you as you pass slowly, a breath echoed in the woods – branches smack against your bare arms as you near the secluded clearing ahead. It is small, though venerated; embraced by tall trees, laden with chiffon ribbons of green. Laid within your vision beneath the sinking shade is a pyre lit with candles, in offering and loomed only by the Pine which grows so high that it is swallowed by the breath of clouds high above.
The breath that falls from your lips is one of peace.
The sheet laid before the safety of the Pine is welcoming – you lie upon it, strewn with the breeze and the song of birds through the trees; overhead, the sky streaks pink and orange.
An arm brushes your own – a body lies beside you, and as your eyes flutter shut, you feel the touch trail slowly up the expanse of your side, curling around your arm to soothe the goosebumps which arise.
A pair of lips find your own, and though you see merely darkness and glimpses of glistening sky high above, the heat consumes you: Slowly and kindly.
A sigh against plush lips, hands searching for the heat of your husband, a soft breath of a chuckle against your cheek. He is bare chested; and his skin burns when he presses against your yearning palms, desiring, willing, hungry.
His own fingers trace the trail of goosebumps up your thigh and under the hem of the dress; pleasure follows in his wake as your head tilts back, a long-dormant yearning awakening at the sound of his breaths. And in the small noises you emit, a smile presses to your throat, a small hum of satisfaction from your husband above you. Though the sun is warm and orange upon your eyelids, you do not open them - far too caught in the warmth of your husband’s touch.
A grasp of the plush of your thigh – a soft thing, though intent in their own right; and you turn to receive his waiting body, a line of warmth upon your own as his touch teases over your heat. A long gasp when a warm palm finds your aching desire and teases you, light as the wind in your hair and the birds chirping in the woods.
Your lips find his once more, breath hot as his fingers press, agonizingly slow, into you; a sigh that slips towards a moan in the uptick in singing birds, the rustle of wind through whistling leaves as he hums into your mouth.
Tingling with anticipation, with desire, you clutch him – and muscles lithe and warm strain underneath your nails, his touch sliding to press against you once more, slowly moving into a rhythm that brings a gasp lodged into your throat.
A phantom tickle graces across your forehead – hair, though you’re unsure if it’s yours or his – and though he leans forward and grasps the sheet beside your head, his other hand continues its ministrations, stirring arousal from the deepest pits of your being.
In the throes of passion, you throw your head back once more, inhaling deeply in an attempt to conceal any possible hitch in control; though instead of the fresh forest, instead of your husband – you choke on the suddenly tinny air that seems to leak from the sky, which presses into your lungs even as you rock in pleasure.
A hazy thought meanders through your lapsed consciousness – your husband smells different here, upon the ground of the Sacred Pine; not like the fresh scent of sea-salt soaps and wooded forests; though the the metallic scent washes away as lips trail down your throat, nipping at your heady skin when your head falls back onto the white sheet.
Following the soft moan you let out is a shush from his lips, gentle as the breeze through the needles of the trees; Ecstasy dances through you, lighting a fire of desire that has your legs squirming to close as your husband presses them back open with the palm of his hand.
His presence is warm, eager; and consuming.
Though his hands push, bunching your dress over your hips; your eyes flutter to glance at the Pine, standing tall above you. From upside-down, it sways rather curiously, licks of heat igniting from high in the branches – and the sky is streaked in a bizarre breath, a strike of unease in your gut that is swallowed by the dip of light below ridged peaks in the distance.
Though even in the evening light, it seems as though the branches of the Pine are ablaze; and before you move to sit up, perhaps observe closer, your husband’s wanting lips slot against yours once more.
You melt into the sheet below; a warmth pressed eagerly against your own heat strikes a match within you, your eyes rolling back in pleasure before shutting in bliss. The moan that slips from your lips rings warbled in the clearing, as though fallen through a lake – and your husband nips at your kiss-bitten lips slowly.
The ridges of his spine tense as your hands slide along – and the length presses against your aching core, his lips grazing your cheek.
Wind whistles through the trees, ashy and blown. In the quiet of the forest, you whisper softly and your voice is nearly swallowed by faint screams.
“I love you.”
Barely a breath of words against his lips – and his hands tug your hair gently, exposing your neck to his wanting teeth once more. The Pine above sways again, belying a breath of orange and a scream of heat – but you blink and soon teeth are biting sharply, pain striking you through your spine.
Chuckles into the open air around you, curling in your mind as a hand slides down your side; though your words were no such thing of humour, your gaze flutters shut and lips press on in search of the more sensitive areas of your neck.
The chill breeze flutters over your bare skin, goosebumps cascading over every curve of you; though the more your husband bites down, the stronger the foreign smell grows – and in a grunt of discomfort, you shove his mouth away from your throat.
His warmth leaves you, and in an instant, his voice curls into your mind and seeps dread through you.
“I know, pet.”
A whisper - cold and sinister; you have less than a moment to shift, to scramble away from the huffing chuckle from the shadows of your vision, before it happens.
A sharp pain punctures through you.
Blood curdling – the scream you let out tears through the woods, sending a murder of crows to the sky with screams of their own; and your eyes fly open to find your husband’s eyes–
Though it is not Paul at all.
Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen smiles cruelly, watching with a hunger in his eyes as he presses; The pain between your ribs is unbearable, and your hand flies in a choked gasp to cover his own, feeling the sickeningly familiar hilt protruding from you.
In terror, you look down:
A sickeningly pale hand grips your own nameday knife, the exposed part of its blade glinting in the dim light of the ceremonial candles; a lick of flames which were moments ago above you, around you, within you.
You are struck with paralyzing fear – and Feyd-Rautha’s breath is hot against you as he slowly leans down, lips cold; you feel the hilt twist just as his lips press to your forehead.
Blood seeps a slow march; over your body, it soaks into the sheet below you, tainting the ritual in crimson – and you remain in your expiring breaths, a small glowing ember carried to the hearth of forgotten gods; lied and lying, taking and taken.
“You're mine.” And his hand turns the blade deeper, glinting as you scream. “My little wife.”
Rays of sunlight pierce your vision when you jolt to life.
A haunt of touch still upon your ribs; and a face hovering before you, staring deep into your racing heartbeat. And so in your delirious panic, you lash out – a fight to get the body off of your own, your fist swings wildly in your blind haze.
Though a palm of defense catches the brunt of your offense, and you are effectively jerked aside as a gasp floats into the still dust of the room. For a moment as your heart pounds, you consider how many moves it'd take to disarm your attacker – but when you blink yourself into focus, your stomach drops.
Hestia, cheeks red as she breathes, her round eyes wide; her grip is firm, gentle around your closed fist, but her brows are knit with worry.
"My lady," Her voice is airy, eyes searching your panicked gaze, “You were only dreaming.”
It is ragged, the gasps you take – and you blink in rapid attempt to dispel the lingering tendrils of nightmare that still cling to your consciousness. Dread finds you; regret clasping your ribs in a deadly embrace.
“Void above,” You whisper, eyes pricking in regret, “I-I'm sorry,” you stammer, the weight of your actions crashing down upon you as you realize what you've done. "Are you okay? Hestia, I didn't mean to–”
Your hand is squeezed gently within her own. “It's alright,” she says, “You were frightened. I woke you while you slept. Anyone would react the same way.”
It is a lie wrapped in a gauzy layer of kindness; and guilt gnaws within you, a lump in your throat.
“I wouldn't hurt you.”
Though your tone is less than a whisper into the morning beams of light, Hestia's visage remains unwavering and calm. “I know you wouldn’t,” She promises, “And you didn't. I'm just glad you're alright.”
You are struck with relief at her words and you allow yourself a moment of breath as she takes a step away from your heaving chest to draw further the curtains across the way. The bruises and marks from your old life took several days to fade after your arrival on Caladan; though she, nor the other maids, ever said a thing, let alone stared too long when you’d slipped a tunic over the jagged scar across your ribs each morning– nor when they offered the makeup in the tone of your skin to cover the odd-shaped marks upon your neck of fading teeth – nor when they helped you pull the mourning veil over your face.
You’ve grown quite fond of them all. Particularly Hestia, in her tenderness and willful amiability; it occurs to you slowly as you watch her gather your clothing that you never found this kind of humanity on Giedi Prime.
And even after you and Hestia finish your breakfast, she doesn't ask about the dream; And you don't tell her.
It is certainly not the first of these dreams you've had – such a place has haunted you nearly every night since you begun dreaming again in the wake of the poisonous sun; Those mountains, the hills, the pathway to the open clearing: Each night, it calls to you, singing a song you cannot hear.
But never, not until now, has there been a man with you.
Never has Paul, nor Feyd-Rautha, found you in those dreams.
A sharp pain still clings to your breaths – and still lingers that phantom blade, stuck through your ribs; haunted in the shadows by the cold stare of the man you were once promised to forever.
A haunting thing, to near such a pleasant dream – only to be ripped from it by the ghost of shadows; and you reel anyways in shame from the beginning of the dream – fading at the tips of your fingers, such a warm and hungry thing it’d started out as…
Paul, your mind reminds you as you swallow the unease in your stomach, it was Paul who was with you in the beginning.
An odd ritual it’d been – one that felt faint yet familiar, as though some ghost long dead had whispered such things to you in your sleep; and you shake off the dusty robes of the past in search of the present, a more tangible and decidedly less salacious thing.
Dressing is a solemn affair this morning.
It is slow that you drape yourself in the fineries of a life far left behind; cloth made from the veins of plants alpine and far away – they smell of the ocean now, and you watch the pines in the distant western forest bristle in the breeze. It is not until Hestia brings forth the gifted necklace that you hesitate.
It glints in the morning rays – precious stone carving the hawk and sigil, a soft thing, but cut sharp with the cerulean green valleys and ridges of the jewel; and though Hestia is slow as a hunter to a startled doe, you still stiffen when he moves to lace it around your neck.
She's not unused to this; it's been half a week since it was given to you, and each day you have bared your teeth as she clasps it around your neck – though still, beneath the veil, holding the skin above your heart captive, you wear it.
She is beside you, now, and it is not hard for her to tell where your mind’s gone.
“You said he apologized?” She asks it tentatively, as though you might slit her throat at the mere mention of Paul; though instead you merely huff a humourless laugh. “He did,” You affirm, “Though only after I told his parents.”
Your agony is received; you sigh once more, “I acted like a child. Perhaps I was in the right, but nevertheless–” You glance out towards the glinting forest and moors beyond, clenching your jaw at the memory of Paul’s sharp eyes and accusatory tongue. “He must hate me more now.”
The necklace is clasped over your clavicle, and you can feel the incredulous look Hestia sends you; though you merely press your lips, admiring the pendant against your skin in the morning light of the mirror. It does well suit you, much to your chagrin; a fine piece as ever to hold above your head.
Power always seems so beautiful in the morning light.
She says your name gently, whispering into the empty bedroom, “He gifted you a family heirloom – look at it! It must be older than the two of us combined.”
And her irreproachability is as charming as it is unnatural – it is still an adjustment, to take in her joyous nature, the curve of a smile so genuine and spirited. It is still an adjustment, then, to see people so human and to try to return some semblance of that humanity in gratitude; and though she is lighthearted, it does not quell your distress.
Your teeth worry into your bottom lip as you hum gently, shrugging, though you wish to simply melt into the girlish giddiness that leaks from her and infects the corner of your smile.
“It's not so simple”
Your eyes cast down, where your bare feet stand against the floor – and for a blink, beneath them lies wild grass, a white sheet; a seep of crimson leaks through the pristine fabric and you snap away, taking a step back and staring skittishly at Hestia. “I think he’d prefer for me to remember who now holds my reins.”
And if anything, it is a relief to be able to speak so candidly with someone; a trust, knowing it will not leak from your lips through her own and into the ear of the Duke – or his son.
“Or, it's his way of trying to welcome you into House Atreides?” She suggests with a lifted brow, and the indignant part of you bristles as she continues, “He does not mean ill will, I promise. He's... slow to trust.”
You turn, figure shrouded in the morning light’s beams through your large windows. Your brow lifts, your tone teasing; A foreign thing – one that, out of rusty exercise, delivers more accusatory than intended. “You seem to know Lord Paul quite well, Hestia.”
And, as expected, she flushes red; you hide your smirk in the palm of your hand as she shakes her head, eager to dispel any perceived accusations.
“N-nothing like that, my lady –" And it is rather frantically she rushes to assure you, "My mother is Lady Jessica’s in-waiting,” She explains quickly, fingers fidgeting with the sleeve of your blouse, “And Paul is only a few years older than I - and though I am just a worker, he and I were reared very close.”
You’d figured as such; though she speaks highly of him, there indeed has been no inkling of affection held more than anything platonic in her musings. Though, if there had been, perhaps a part of you could not blame her; for visions of a youthful teen, curly hair and a sharp laugh, green eyes that swim with light and pool with the gentle fountain of dutiful intelligence. Perhaps he is someone you do not know; that odd feeling, that light when you know only a stranger’s shadow – just as you might be to him; his green ghost that haunts these halls.
You nod gently with a smile that grows in Hestia’s melting embarrassment – and she notices not a few moments after you crack.
A smile blossoms and it brings warmth into your sullen heart. “You tease me,” She observes with a small grin of her own.
You laugh only quietly, shaking your head, “I apologize, I couldn’t help it.” You admit, pacing away from the window to gather the garment from her arms.
“So you’ve known Paul for your whole life?” You wonder, unable to bite back the intrigue which laps at the shores of your mind.
And then comes a sweet kind of existence, one which lives in the early hours between the sun’s rising and the castle’s; Hestia nods, setting to work on your sheets, straightening them as you begin to dress yourself. “I've got no siblings of my own,” She muses lightly, “Though I imagine he is exactly what a brother should be.”
A memory is sharp in the bruise of your heart, and you blink back the vision of the boy falling to the sand, fingers grasping a blade too large for his palm. The numb ache crawls in an eclipse of your pleasant mood and you fight it with a blink.
There is a chip in the boudoir beside you; it glistens against the waxy shine of the sun. Hestia’s warmth, that song of unburdened amity, lulls the dull ache of your heart into a placant thrum.
“– Kind, thoughtful. He entertains the most foolish subjects and also the most serious –” A pause and a rustle, as if she’s turned to glance at you – you do not return the stare, mind too lost in the Paul that Hestia knows; the Paul you have yet to meet.
“And, if you’d believe it…” She says it almost conspiratorially, arriving to button the back of your tunic, as you turn from her, listening quietly, “he can be quite funny sometimes."
Funny. You send her a look; this time there is no fooling – she laughs gently at your doubt and nods, “Believe it or don’t,” she muses, “He is good. He will warm up to you.”
And though she says it in good nature, there is a dejection which leaks into your heart, which pools around the memories of sharp tongue and mistrusting eyes – of a short apology and a pendant wrapped around your throat, binding your wrists.
Instead you force a smile, hoping it appears more brilliant than you feel.
She is a sweet girl – a girl not familiar with the burden of family, of how it falls at your feet in a slump of black and pale and gray and death – and so you imagine her as a young girl, hand-in-hand with a young Paul, skipping down hallways and whispering conspiratorial through the doors of the worker’s quarters.
A melancholia visits you quite suddenly, and your eyes drift to the cobwebs of silk which spin small patterns across the high beams of your ceiling.
“I always seemed to fight with my siblings.” Your voice is a whisper in a breath; what a distant dream it is now, those nights curled together by the grand hearth, the days running through ornate halls, learning to hunt in the woods. Bows pulled from hair and tied into your own – a hand smaller than yours tugging you into an icy lake – screaming, crying, the thud of young limbs hitting another. Anger, that ferocious thing that is only so well known by that of your own kin; A hard thing it is to remember, when their faces have begun to slip away.
“I had four of them,” You offer to her – and though she knows just as well as each person within the Imperium knows now of your family and their end, you feel the comfort of choice; the warmth of choosing to reveal such information about your family to a lended ear. Your brows knit – there is a nest of brown twigs and dried mud just below your window. “And we would scream, and hit, and fight, – all the time, when we were young.” A gaggle of young chickadees vie for the worm in their mother’s mouth within the small nest, and you watch on with burning eyelids. Your breath is solemn, and your fingers trace over the healing scars upon your palm. “But they were my favorite people in this entire universe.”
It is still in the somber moment, though you break your shell with a cleared throat, tearing your eyes from the soft burgeoning feathers of the chicklets in the nest. And after a deep inhale, you smile wistfully, clearing your throat as you slide on the hand jewelry she offers to you; Hestia doesn't say anything, and you're grateful for it.
She lingers beside you as you slide rings over healed knuckles. Your voice comes once more, and it is stronger. “Family, blood or bond, is a precious thing,” you decide, turning to slip on your shoes and tie your trousers. “I am quite glad you and your mother have found it.”
And though there lingers some despondent hesitation, Hestia nods in agreement, her own wistful smile playing on her lips. “Indeed, my lady.”
Your hair catches the rays of sun in the mirror before you – tainted with the leaking green of your veil, you place the ferronnière above it; and you are beautiful in this light, yes – beautiful, but miserable. A dog with a collar for the Atreides leash.
Your gaze leaves yourself to find Hestia watching with a small smile.
An offer of her arm and a small nod brings forth a balm to the stinging hesitance of leaving your room.
“Now, let's get you to this War Council.”
Paul’s sigh is sharp in the empty room.
An aseptic scent pierces his nostrils, contaminating his brain – distracting him. The castle becomes very sterile, deep in the more secluded chambers; here, where he breathes and feels the world breathe too, the air has a chill to it – sharp with some kind of disinfectant.
“Concentrate, Paul.”
His mother’s voice is low, though soothing. “Project your will.”
But he can’t bring himself to look up – his mother stands just a few paces away, her eyes boring into him; Focus. He needs to focus.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he hums gently, a twitch of focus in the crook of his neck; but then, flames flicker up the sides of his vision – a large tree, smoke leaking from somewhere above where it pierces through the clouds. His name, sighed gentle as the breeze through the trees, trickling into his mind; hands, threading through the curls at the nape of his neck. His nostrils flare as he shakes his head, letting out a small groan of irritation. Focus.
Within him, an energy builds; something comes, and he knows he must not lose it – but as he begins to speak, a strange sense of trepidation washes over his mind; a nagging suspicion of unease, some dripping chill down the bumps of his spine. He falters in his words for a moment, confidence waning as doubts creep through the cracks in the shadows.
It's silent for a moment, before she sighs from across the room.
“You’re distracted this morning, Paul.”
He bites back a sharp I know – and instead sighs, a sagging weight in his shoulders as he pushes his hair back with the heel of a palm. “I didn’t sleep well.” He excuses, pacing towards the water pitcher; his mother follows, reaching for the glass he offers. She hums, sipping on the water as he stares into the reflection of his own.
“Dreams?”
She reads him so well.
Paul wills his spine not to tense at her words. With a half a breath, Paul takes another sip of his water – a purchase of time, perhaps. There is a giving degree to which he understands the Bene Gesserit’s plans, and how perhaps he might fall into them; this alone is cause for hesitation. Those years ago – almost two, now – the searing, bone-gnawing pain of that box; the whispers around closed doors, the breath that plumed when the Reverend Mother told his own lady mother that there were two candidates.
Two candidates – for what, he still doesn't know – and yet Paul may one day be one of them. It is an instinct, perhaps some method of survival written into his very DNA; he accepts the churning sick in his stomach at the thought of what his onslaught of dreams mean.
“Yes,” he acquiesces – any possible lie he could have thought to fabricate would have been sheared by the blades of her mind, anyway – and he turns to her, guarded but concerned. She is his mother, after all.
“I've been having dreams,” his voice is slow to regain traction – there is a small scuff on the floor and he traces it with his toe. “Vivid dreams…” He murmurs, chewing upon the skin of his lip, “of Sabberon.”
And perhaps to an untrained eye, there would be no change; But Paul's eyes are indeed quite trained.
A flicker of concern passes through her and it serves nothing but to feed the pit of anxiety that grows in Paul’s stomach.
“Sabberon?” She echoes with a wary tilt of the head, “And what do you see in these dreams?”
The hesitation comes once more, although the memory is still fresh in his mind: For in the beginning, it is that spongy earth, toes imbued with dirt. Soft whispers of his name from voices he cannot see, a caress of the wind in his hair, the glistening mountain peaks that glitter like jewels in the distance, the ribbons tied to trunks and candles lit unyielding even when the sky falls.
And then there is you; a soft thing, an inevitable one – with the soft skin of your thighs trembling in the wake of his wanting lips. There’s the sigh, hitched and breathy, as his hands hold your hips to the pristine sheet below you; the bunching of a dress, the glint of a blade's silvered and black hilt almost golden in the reddening sun.
Your gown, thin and blowing in the breeze, the same color as the veil which still hides your face from his wanting gaze; even in the dying light, the streaks of orange and pink in the sky, snow falling weightless from dark clouds above. That fabric, woven from the skin of alpine hemp which grows in clusters around your planet – bunching by your hips, your chest tremoring in the flickering light of ceremonial candles; breath, warm and willing upon his neck – palms teasing and eager alike, crawling in descent towards his own waistband. A soft moan, the smell of ash –
Paul is drawn back from the glimpses of skin and the flashes of metal, the smell of smoke; he swallows thickly, staring at his mother with the glance of a lamb before the jaws of a wolf – though he shifts, clearing his throat, and the veil lifts.
“I always…” He chooses carefully the truths he can forgive, “I always see a white blanket on the ground. Above, there’s a… the Great Pine of Sabberon. Visions of…” His brows furrow, swallowing the thick of concern, “of knives, and streaks through the sky; I think they’re… missiles. And we’re there together…she and I.”
Barely a blink from his mother as she murmurs, “Lady Bourbon?”
He barely nods, blinking away visions of shining hands and whispers threading through pine needles in the wind.
“I don’t know why it’s always the same dream,” He pleads to his mother – tell me it’s fine – and though his voice is barely audible, he cannot shake the calling for him, that odd feeling that something importing awaits him on Sabberon. “Maybe I've been reading about Sabberon too much,” He half-shrugs.
And it is a relief to admit it finally to someone – since your arrival, perhaps even in the days leading up to it, he’s unsure; but his dreams have ebbed and flowed in the brook of consciousness, always floating back to that place. Always there, and now, with you – and after the lessons the other day, he is sure: it's Sabberon.
He dreams of it burning; he sees it up in flames, and sometimes, you with it.
His mother does little to quell the concern that brims in his gaze – though she sets down her glass and kisses his brow. “Be cautious with your dreams, Paul,” She chides, “Listen to them, learn from them.”
Her gaze brings no such comfort to him as he watches her gaze flick from the cliffs through the casement and back to him.
“Dreams are messages from the deep.”
Though it is only late morning, the Strategy Council finds you quite weary.
You sit, toying with your fingers as you drown in a sea of House Atreides; and once again, the only solace in the room is your blade, laid in front of you on the table for all to see.
Certainly a warning, this time.
Nearly everybody you've met of importance during your sojourn is in attendance – the table is large and long, so much so that you know you will have to project your voice to be heard by the dredges of your periphery; and around you sit war masters, strategists, women and men with intense stares and the symbol of house Atreides upon their clothing.
It is a fight, after Duke Leto sets a brief introduction, to not sound too sharp nor calculating; your gaze skitters over the listeners as you speak, their eyes interested, respectful – it is a shock to your body as you trail off, aware of the respect that brims in the quiet of the room.
But worse still is the fight to stifle your yawn as the Duke reviews intelligence reports; Gritting your teeth, you sit up straighter – through no hitch of boredom but instead the dreadful absence of rest, now is perhaps the worst time for your body to punish your mind for your lack of sleep.
And beside the Duke this time rests a chilling gaze, one you’ve yet to meet in such a scenario – Paul rests with a straight spine and a stare hooked upon the pendant hanging from your neck, and you fight not to stir with the heat of the green boring through your veil.
Until now, there's lived a cold silence between the two of you that has not been broken since it befell; that night when you were gifted the necklace – and besides the stiff apology he issued you the morning after, assuring you he was out of line for treating you with disrespect in his father’s study that morning – all that’s grown between you and your betrothed are cordial nods or a tight-lipped smile from him in passing, whenever a house member is around. Nothing more would dare be said between you, lest you pull a blade to his throat.
If you'd been less indulged in your studies and training – or perhaps he, less prideful – maybe it would not have gone on this long; a stalemate as stubborn as its proprietors.
But seeing as you've barely been in the same room once since that dreadful dinner several days ago, it's no different. You aren’t to be wed until the end of this year, but you know sometime soon, you will have to learn to live with him.
Paul does not notice your attention on him for some time as the strategy council rolls on; He is seemingly in his own world, gazing intently at the necklace in a way that gives you a rush of unease – and you, drawn into the world of dreamlike memory: Of hands smooth against skin, of soft breath upon your cheek, of curls tickling your forehead.
But it’s as if a shock hits him – and suddenly, a green stare finds your own; and though it is near impossible to discern your face unless mere inches away, Paul never fails to find your eyes behind the veil.
In his stare, your mind convulses; brought forth unbidden and unsolicited, you see them: Curls that kiss your forehead, lips plush and pressed to your neck – a hand snaking up the bareness of your thigh.
You swallow thickly, shifting in your seat; you’ve grown quite used to the demons which sleep in your mind – of Feyd-Rautha’s shadows curling to grasp your mind when your eyes shut – yet this strange thing, this new thing?
Now, you're flushing each time you catch your husband-to-be's eyes – like some innocent girl, lovestruck and awake to be put in a corner; catching those very same eyes which regard you as a pawn on the chessboard of his House, no less.
And yes – there is not a part of you so vain as to lie and say Paul is not extremely attractive. A creature made of dark curls, sharp angles, plush lips, that cooled, smooth voice; anybody worth their wits could see his allure – but even just this innocent observation rings forth a violent urge of resistance. An urge, to rip off the necklace; to scream at him, at the Imperium – I am not yours to keep.
Though, before you can do much of anything, his gaze is gone from you; Paul breaks the turmoil in your mind with a simple turn of his head.
Begrudgingly, you try to do the same.
Though it yields nothing but more trouble: Your eyelids droop as you fight to stare at the Duke, who speaks in what you can only perceive as background noise as your mind soldiers on against your own will.
“Lady Bourbon?”
And with that, your eyes snap up, heart suddenly beating hard under the alarmingly paternal gaze of Duke Leto; In fact, through the silence, you observe that every eye is on you expectantly, including Paul’s.
It is with ignorance of the concerned look etched upon his countenance that you snap out of your reverie, embarrassment flooding you; Paul's green eyes bore into you even when you turn to address the Duke.
“Apologies, Duke Leto,” you clear your throat, willing your cheeks to stop flushing from the attention, “I've been having trouble sleeping lately. I've been having some…” You reluctantly admit the burdens of your mind, “…odd dreams. They've been keeping me awake at night.”
After a beat, you stir, “Could you please repeat yourself?” You wonder with a flushed face and twisting fingers – but there is a quick glance sent from Lady Jessica to her son and your attention is stolen.
Paul’s own gaze meets his mothers and then casts suddenly downwards, as if deep within his own mind; and it is clear – whatever she delivers within her gaze, he is clearly avoiding – though there is little pause from the rest of the council, and you soon forget the look shared between mother and son.
From down the table, Thufir Hawat denotes a remedy in the form of an elixir you can take before sleep that should help you; the Duke orders a worker to have it brought to your quarters this evening, and in the expiring embarrassment of your slip-up, your mind rocks from its pulling descent to slumber.
You’re painfully alert after this, and when you are finally called upon to share your thoughts, it is by Gurney Halleck: “My lady, you’ve before mentioned certain endeavors during your time on Giedi Prime.”
You nod and he takes the affirmation with a nod of his own, “What do you know of their Spice exploits?”
And eyes once again fall to you from across the room; in a ticking of your jaw, you wish once more to rid yourself of the cursed veil that constricts your vision. Your spine straightens at the question and you choose your words quite carefully. “I do not know much of their spice harvesting,” you begin, “and it must be said that what I know is mostly second-hand; I learned most of what I know through the na-baron Feyd-Rautha.”
A murmur from the end of the table, one you are quick to squash with a withering look behind the veil: “He is vicious,” You affirm, folding your hands, “but he has his own weaknesses, ones which the other Harkonnens lack.” And though the implications of your words settle in unease around the room – the Lady Jessica’s head turns to you just slightly – you do not drop the Duke’s stare. “I might remind you all that Spice is not their only source of power.”
And in the wash of a renewed power – eyes are hooked upon your cloaked figure, on how the words drip from a mouth so concealed. “They have large petroleum reserves – from refineries around the planet, stored in the bowels of Barony; I've seen them, they're never-ending."
This makes the duke shift in his seat; likewise, Paul's brows furrow in thought.
Your voice is a beam through a forested canopy of pine and spruce, bursting forth into the sterile room; A perk of interest that bristles through the icy surface of a sleeping scape. “It is true, I was not an agent for my family; though from what I’ve been able to piece together, my family was recording Harkonnen reserves, and monitoring their activity with the Spacing Guild.” Your voice hangs, words heavy with implication. You swallow down the worry that gnaws in you before you continue. “Not just for spice, but petroleum. I was none the wiser until after they were caught.” You spare a glance to Paul, meeting his stare with your own. “–But of course, who is to believe me?”
Paul’s gaze is promptly cast away, written with some flash of guilt; and you continue once more.
“I assumed it is is why the Great Houses likely allowed for me to be brought to Caladan – in hopes that I know something of my family’s findings.”
Your eyes fall to Duke Leto. “Am I right, my Lord?” You wonder; the room is quiet as your words are absorbed, a rainbow of faces all varying degrees of surprise.
Duke Leto is an honest man. “Yes,” he affirms, “It is one of the reasons I believe the Landraad passed the ordinance for your betrothal to be transitioned.”
The knowledge does not do much to ease your worry – indeed, just some figure of strategy in a game above your head.
His words are not unkind, though: “We've been concerned with any acts of retaliation to our house after this ruling, and though it hasn't come yet, we need to be prepared. We must know what you know, my lady.”
You press your fingers along the blade before you as you nod. “When the betrothal was annulled, they were distraught,” you admit with an open air, catching the guarded surprise of several glances. It is mirthful, the small smirk that sneaks onto your lips as you take in their expressions. “Not for some attachment to me, mind you,” You ease them, “Feyd-Rautha was the worst of them when it came to the dissolution of our engagement – but the truth is…” you offer a half-shrug, shaking your head in some bitter mirth. “Harkonnens don’t like when their toys are taken away from them.”
It is just as uncomfortable as ever; Paul’s stare is focused down, upon the grain of wood below your fingers, and you do not flinch at the set in his jaw. In the silence, you push forward, “Thufir has been tutoring me on local economics,” You nod to the man down the table, “I understand that the majority of the trading exports from Caladan are agriculture – fine wine and rice?”
Paul’s voice comes from the depths. “Yes,” he confirms; and you nod, the chain of your headdress chiming slightly as you hold his stare. You wet your lips, “The Baron could easily flood the galactic market with cheap petroleum, garnering almost no externalities for himself.” You tilt your head, “An influx of cheap fuel like that could disrupt the transportation networks – the market for space transport and exportation would be saturated by the Harkonnens within days.”
Sparse glances of thought and furrowed brows across the table – and after a moment, you hear the thought that has lingered in your mind since the moment you saw the refineries’ stock at Barony.
“An action like this would highly disrupt our direct trade access from this system to most others without use of the Spacing Guild.” Thufir adds – the Duke still looks at you, urging you to continue. You do.
“What I fear,” You crack your knuckles gently, knee bouncing just slightly under the table, “Is the vacuum that’s been left on Sabberon. There is no governing body now that my family has been eliminated.” It is a blunt, unemotional statement, and you move past it before the ghosts which linger in the corners of your heart come out of the shadows. “If Harkonnen boots hit the ground there, they could rather easily take control of the planet's resources and exports. Their battalions could easily squash the insurgent groups in the North and South.”
A nod, a sparse murmur – and then, a woman a few seats down from you leans forward to catch your gaze. “Sabberon's industries are commercial fishing, fir, logging.”
Hardly much to worry about, you know – and you turn, nodding. “Yes, they are – but I more mean the glacial deposits within our mountain ranges.” You purse your lips, a secret kept in the confines of Castle Bourbon tilting from your lips. “The highest ranges contain precious minerals and ores whose compounds are quite valuable for industrial applications. It’s how we industrialized so quick in the Turning Age.” You wish to avoid any history lessons – but it is important; and you clear your throat as you set down the pneumatic tubes you'd prepared before the council.
“I've documented, to the best of my ability, everything that I remember here. Feyd-Rautha knows about the deposits on Sabberon; I believe it is fair to assume the Baron does, too.”
It is in the lull of the moment, heavy and steeping with thought, that his face comes to you – and a sickly hand around your neck, a black smile: You're mine to keep. There's plenty of life left for you to serve.
In a blink, you’re back to the grain of the table, tracing along it with your nail. Paul leans forward, brows furrowed. “If the region of Sabberon is destabilized – controlled by Harkonnens or in civil conflict – we could lose almost all of our exports. It’s a crucial line of trade in the system for us.” He echoes your concern, “Giving them access to the resources is dangerous enough, but a near-monopoly on petroleum, Spice, and the Space Trade Route?”
There is a spark of intrigue at the sharp point of his intelligence – but nonetheless, you merely nod in agreement, pushing away any such girlish thoughts in sacrifice of the matter at hand.
Gurney Halleck’s voice cuts through your observation of Paul’s hair against the light: “We need to consider this carefully. If the Harkonnens make a move to Sabberon, we must be ready to respond. But acting first could have larger consequences.”
Duke Leto nods; with a glance to the War Master and back to the others. “Halleck's right. The Referendum is soon – the Landsraad will be redrawing the Trade negotiations then,” His gaze flickers to you, “–and your arraignment is set for the same congress. It seems the best option is to wait.”
Dread fills you; stuck between a rock and a hard place, you’re left with nothing to do but wait – wait for the impending trade drawings, for the impending arraignment. You’re no fool – the arraignment might leave you with no inheritance, no claim to Sabberon. Your gut coils in anxiety, and it is not soothed by the urgent sense that curbs the meeting: plans are drawn out to set more strategy meetings before the Referendum; you are requested to attend them.
Fear clubs up the ridges of your spine with each nod you give to passersby – and a panic pulls your eyelids to droop, your brain aching for rest.
By the time you return to your chambers, you are much too exhausted to seek lunch.
Instead, you are asleep within minutes.
Your name calls to you.
A hum in response as you thread your fingers through locks of curls; in the distance, birds sing. The sun drags streaks flying across the sky in its descent, and flakes flutter gently around you – though it smells not of snowfall. A bonfire crackles somewhere, you can smell the heady cedar embers, see the flames in your blinks.
Your hair is tugged; in a huff of laughter, you tug the tresses laced between your own fingers – but in another surprising jolt, you’re tugged again and you gasp, catching the flicker in green eyes. “That hurt,” Your floating voice chides, though there is no malice – your words are faint and dancing around the falling flakes – a warm palm grasps your jaw to tilt your head up.
“I'm very sorry,” he does not even trying to cover the lie, smiling against the dying sun. “Let me ease the pain,” He whispers, gentle and teasing against your jaw. A faint chuckle when he nips down your exposed neck and you breathe out; His hands are quite daring, slipping your dress over your head until you're bare against the sheet, blinking up warmly at the forest. The breeze of springtime is chill and disarming against your flesh; birds sing. His fingers trace you slowly.
And there is nothing but arousal snaking through you as he sinks lower, lips painting a path back up your thighs, nipping gently at your soft skin; A swat to the top of his head, and a short noise of protest from him in response as you bite back a smile.
“Paul,” you whisper, and it disappears through the trees as if off to find some other world. He hums in a teasing lilt, vibrations rippling from his lips to your warm skin, sending a cascade of goosebumps through you.
“Come back to me,” you whisper – and he listens, though he usually doesn't; His lips are replaced by his hips and soon, after a small roll, a gentle moan leaks from your lips. It is still slightly cold in the death of spring, but his skin is warm; His lips are warm.
“I'm here, aren't I?" His eyes are upon yours, and your stomach flutters, “I'm always here.”
And when he slides into you slowly, his lashes tangle in a kiss of deep brown – and your head tilts back against the sheet, his hand hitting the trunk of the Pine above your head, grasping with a thud; a long whimper is swallowed by his lips, consumed by his warmth, by the deep sensation that sends your back to arch.
And any semblance of chivalry dissipates as Paul begins to move; A palm gliding up from your hip, sliding over your breasts, pinching a pert nipple before rising – and you with a clutch upon his shoulders, grasping the warm skin and revelling in the sweet relief of pleasure. Fingers glide over your heaving chest as hips slide into your own – you’re pushed down against the earthy floor in ecstasy, and his grasp finds it suddenly–
A finger traces over the emblem clasped around your throat: A hawk, cerulean and shining, over your sweat-sheened, thundering chest.
And before any such disdain can leak from lips so wanting of affection, he’s pulling with a startling force – the necklace breaks under Paul’s grasp and falls apart, stones and pearls rolling over your bare chest and pooling onto the sheet below you.
And it’s a thing of pleasure, the way your hand snakes to press his grasp to your thundering heart; the pendant is thrown far behind you as Paul’s desperation leaks through.
A groan from his lips as his hand squeezes over your neck just lightly, your own grasping it in a shocking pleasure – it is unlike any sensation you’ve yet experienced, and soon pours his breaths and groans like a river of desire broken for you. A whispered phrase, over and over, spilling from your lips and his alike – lulling you into a state of euphoria as his body rocks with yours, breathing to the earth and feeling it breathe back.
Hands grasp skin tight and desperate – your nails find the line of his smooth back, clutching to the lithe muscles that move with his hips; and he, tracing each curve of your face and neck with his lips, gasping as the flakes that fall around you begin to burn as embers. Smoke lingers somewhere far off; though you are with your husband and you cling to him, whispering that same phrase over, and over – a jolted gasp of pleasure – and once more; over, and over, and over –
“I'm yours.”
Something rouses you from sleep, much quicker this time, and you wake with a start.
Broad daylight streams through your chamber windows when your eyes open, your heart thundering as you shift on the sheets; A blurry form comes into view, fluffing the untouched pillow beside you on the bed. You do not strike this time, instead swarmed with shame and embarrassment in the wake of such tangible dreams.
“Bad dream again?” Hestia she sets down a fresh set of clothing; you swallow and wince at your dry throat, heart thudding. Bad dream... You can feel your face flood with embarrassment – you'd rather be caught dead than admit what you'd just dreamt, so instead you push your hair from your face, fanning your cheeks.
“Yes.” You croak, accepting the glass of water she offers you, “I did not mean to fall asleep.”
The sheets are warm and your spine is lined with sweat; you slide out of your bed with the elegance of a newborn mare, eyes flicking around.
The sky is sunny, not a single rain cloud; and your chambers are heavy, tight.
“I need some fresh air.”
Paul’s shadow dances across the wild grass as the midday sun follows his steps.
The breeze is much more permanent down by the shore; he brushes stray curls from his eyes, tracing the shoreline below with a lingering absence; It's only a few hours until he should be back in the strategy chambers with his father, helping draw plans for the upcoming Referendum – but the castle has grown stuffy and sterile at the same time, and his stomach growls in hunger. He needs some fresh air.
Though the sea mists his cheeks, his mind is stuck high above him, spinning in the memory of the Strategy Council meeting. Paul would be struck dead a liar if he were to say you were not one of the most intelligent women he’s met; and after this morning, there is truly nothing much else he has been able to think of – and despite himself, the growing bud of admiration sprouts within his mind, even despite your predisposition to violence and solitude.
Paul almost feels foolish for how blinded he was – if war is really on the horizon, he supposes it’s very lucky that House Atreides took you in; If not for your capabilities and sharp intellect, then for your claim to Sabberon, for your connections with the Ginaz and their Swordsmen; for your intimate knowledge of Harkonnen power.
It’s now as important as ever that Paul ensures you remain on the Atreides’ side, should this war come – a burden to hold you should you somehow wish to return to the black embrace of Giedi Prime, but one he will have to keep. Because you are too valuable to his House to let you go over trivial things; Politics is all two way streets; you will help them with your insights and they will protect you. And with this, perhaps, comes the truth – that Paul has begun to learn of you, of the you that shines through any small cracks in the armor.
And over the meadow he walks, he sees that lush green forest again; a woodpecker against bark, your hands sliding into his own as you lean him back against the trunk of a tree – the smell of smoke, an explosion on the horizon; laughter swallowed by the wind, lips pressed to parted lips.
Paul sighs harshly.
He's not sure if it was the correct decision to tell his mother about these dreams, instead of his father; skepticism is a biting friend as his feet trudge over the cliff and down, closer to the beach.
Paul loves his mother, but he is indeed not naive to the manipulative nature of the Bene Gesserit; in some dreadful way, he wonders once more which silent partners in the Imperium influenced the decision for the Houses to order his betrothal to you.
A small whisper in the back of his mind, that sickly voice of the Reverend Mother those years ago: Two candidates... Paul may one day be one of them–
The skittering of a rabbit through the grass calls his attention to the path, his jaw clenched tight.
The wind is swallowed by the structure under which he ducks; It is a small alcove – one of many below the cliffs which hold a cluster of tidepools, small and large. And this particular one catches his eye, just on the left – a soft smile grows upon weary lips.
When he was younger, he often played in these very alcoves with the few other children his age in the castle; swimming, playing hide-and-seek, sparring with wooden daggers.
His feet take him into the alcove without any hesitation – the rock grows slick with seawater and the scent of the brackish pools; it isn't until he's into the shade that he sees the figure seated among the pools.
You wear the same clothing you'd donned at the Strategy Council, your feet bare and dipped into the shallow waters.
For a moment, he considers turning back to his path towards the beach; but your back grows rigid as you turn to him, and he’s struck with a breath of beauty blowing in the breeze of your veil.
A thick silence; a silence lived between you, lodged like an unwanted burden – it has been some time since you were last alone. A memory of his shaking hands, the bite in your words as you’d clasped that pendant to your chest - of that sheer veil, of your glistening gaze across the table.
It is time to leave such hesitancy behind; and so with a tentative swallow, Paul takes a few steps closer.
“I hadn't expected to find you here,” An honest and neutral observation.
Somewhere beyond that gauzy veil, you stare back at him; and your fingers twitch towards the blade upon your hip before curling once more into a soft fist, cradled in a palm. “Nor I you,” you reply coolly – and in the uneasy silence, Paul sacrifices his pride and endures the agony of discontent.
He does not ask if you mind if he joins you – he knows that you would; so instead he sits gently, leaving a wide berth of space between you.
And while you bristle at his arrival, stiffening as he sits across from you and drops the bag from his back beside him, he cannot bring himself to blame you.
It is a peculiar posture you give; a cradling of your hand as you watch the ripples in the tide pool that he slowly dips his feet into – it is soon that he recognizes the gives of pain from your figure. And that very agony it is almost palpable in your silence as he looks down at where you rub the skin of your hand, swollen and red.
“I assume you met the crabs.”
And the headdress of metal jewelry that adorns the crown of your forehead chimes when you turn to watch him, surprise laced into your posture.
“I did.”
Your affirmation is punctuated by an unfurling of your palm, revealing blistered, irritated skin; He winces more for your own sake than in true surprise before letting his eyes roam gently over the near landscape – moss grows in clumps throughout the rocky pools, though he searches for that short, stalky root which grows just outside the reach of the water.
And after spotting one beside you, he reaches; you flinch, though he pays no mind to the hitch in your breath as he gives the stalk a quick tug – and the plant is ripped out, roots and all.
He hands you the root of the stalk, gesturing for you to take it: “You can use this plant.”
And in your evergreen poise, you grasp the root hesitantly, as if sensing a trap. It dangles limp from your grasp, earthy as the gems upon your jewelry – and you return to your statued posture, watching him, faceless and green as the moss around you.
He nods after a moment of awkward breath, gesturing to the stalk. “Chew it.”
You do nothing but breathe at him for a moment – and perhaps if he could see your eyes, he’s sure he would find disbelief; Skepticism. And perhaps if it were any other time, any other person, he’d laugh at the silent incredulity that leaks between you.
He shifts, feet circling in the pool of water. “It soothes the itch and the pain. You chew it, and spit it onto your palm.” Patience is lost when you do not respond – and perhaps out of the growing blush on his cheeks in your refusal to act, he sighs sharply, “It's not poisonous.”
I'm not trying to kill you, he almost says; but something in him stops the words before they leave his mouth and he instead tilts his head in a short mock of your own.
And he swears in the breeze carries a huff from beneath that gauzy fabric – and then the root disappears rather awkwardly under your veil.
In the glinting light of the cave, he can just nearly make the shape of your lips, hear the small snap of the stalk between your teeth. And in the quiet lap of waves against the shore in the distance, Paul watches expectantly – from years of habit, he is used to the milky taste; but he remembers how unpleasant it can be the first time.
And those eyes catch his own, some phantom force from behind shades of green – slowly, you spit it out onto your palm, as if questioning if you were doing it right. Paul’s face feels suddenly warm – a trail of saliva falls from lips glistening in the spare ray of sun, alight with a forested green and the milky blood of the root. It is a harsh reminder of the dream he'd woken up from this very morning; and with a sudden sense of panic – as if you might somehow reach into his mind and see such salacious thoughts – he forces the visions away.
The waves lap idly against his feet; you rub the mixture into your palm quietly.
“How did you know to do that?”
Your voice is curious, and the fingers not matted with the root-paste press against the spongy moss beside your pants. You’re a vision of that first day, when you’d whispered words of interest at the very plant nor beneath your touch; a vision of green and poise, of stoic quiet and twitching fingers. Despite himself, Paul’s lips curl up in a small grin.
Squinting against the sunshine, the beach in the distance is a warbly thing, foamed and bubbled by the current – and his left shoulder shrugs. “I played here when I was young. I got pinched a lot.”
You don't necessarily laugh, but there’s an exhalation from your nose that curves his own lips; and when, after a few more minutes, you reach to rinse your hand in the pool before you, the angry skin has returned to its glowing health.
Waves crash quietly within the cove and Paul warily watches one of the bluecrabs meander across a rock beside you – just when he parts his lips to warn you, your fingers move away, head tracking its path across and towards the smaller pool behind you.
And in the moment of silence, he hears the unmistakable rumble of your stomach.
“Are you hungry?” He asks suddenly, clearing his throat; Your hand has taken to drawing idle circles in the tidepool, and you hardly cease the hypnotizing movements as you shrug with a small nod. “I slept through lunch today.”
A moment of hesitation before he looks over his shoulder at you – unassuming, running your nails across the patch of bare skin awarded by the cuffing of your trouser legs; and slowly, from the bag beside him, he pulls out the food that he'd taken from the kitchen.
Apples, crackers, some imported cheese; sparkling juice from the vineyards south of Cala City, and a foil filled with bits of chocolate.
But through his focus on unwrapping the pack, your voice cracks into the cove, incredulous – almost amused. “This was all for you?”
Paul bristles defensively, giving you a wide glance, cheeks warm. “I was hungry,” He defends; and with a hard blink, he’s brought back to the week previous, when all that he saw when you were around was red – anger, trepidation, mistrust.
And though thoughts whirl in his mind quicker than he can catch – of you, your family, your time on Giedi Prime – he finds himself mildly pleased with the stalemate that has come about; a hand reached across an abyss, and a hesitant grasp in return.
Your voice is light when you speak again. “If I can confess,” your head trails down sheepishly – Paul’s attention follows you. “The veils have never made it easy to enjoy a long supper. They tangle in my hair no matter how it's styled, anyways.”
And despite himself, he huffs a short laugh; was that a hint of a joke, from you?
It is not so abnormal, veils – he has known many women in his life to wear them – but never in a custom such as yours; to not remove it in front of anybody for months and months of mourning – He cannot fathom how bizarre a change it must be, even if it is how you were raised.
So when your hands raise, he does not expect them to go towards the hem of the fabric.
And he does not expect you to slide it from the crown of your head.
It is sharply that he whips his head away; in a skipped heartbeat, the glimpse of your hair unfettered by the green gauze haunts his mind – what in the hell are you doing?
Paul’s heart thunders against his chest, though he cannot find any words to string into a meaningful sentence – he watches a bluecrab crawl into the pool across the way.
“I don't mean to shock you,” your voice is so very close, now; he swallows down the flutter in his throat at its lilt, “Truth be told, I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to wear these still.”
Confusion laces through his mind – the rock you sit upon is wetted and dark, clumped with bright emerald moss; and you, as if unknowingly, throw kindle into the fire of nerves in his chest.
A mirthful tone you bring with your words: “You don't have to look away, you know. I'm still the same beast as before.”
And he does look, after that.
Paul cannot help himself: he stares at you – really you – no fabric to cover the slope of your nose, the curve of your chin, the round of your cheeks; the way your brows gather, a canopy above the most expressive eyes he’s ever seen in his life.
And your hair is loose – let wild and uncovered, swayed gently by the sea breeze; glossy in the glint of sun off the sea in the distance. Paul wonders absently, in some foul derivative of jealousy or hatred, if Feyd-Rautha enjoyed your hair; unique as it surely was on a planet full of hairless beings.
Paul quickly schools himself – perhaps in another life, he’d be rather ecstatic to see that he has such a beautiful bride-to-be; yet it just serves to wash over another pang in his stomach. Your words of moments ago haunt over his mind as he once more meets your eyes, waiting for him. I'm still the same beast as before.
There is some inevitability to your gaze – disfavored to him, yes – but perceptive, knowing.
The pull of the tide must be answered by the shore, Dr. Yueh once told him; Perhaps that is true, and perhaps that is why Paul stares at you, the sense of mistrust breaking way to a new sense of dread, of regret.
You are no beast to me, he should say. But he doesn't; not when he’s unsure if it would be a lie coming from his lips.
Instead, he can only voice the astonishment in his mind at the sight of your veil held between your hands. “Why did you take it off?”
You blink; heavens, your lashes are long – they kiss your cheeks against the soft light from the grotto. He swallows thickly, busying himself with the apple and a knife.
Your voice comes as matter-of-fact as you’d been in the meeting that very morning. “Well, I'm quite hungry.”
You lean over – your tunic rustles in the movement, and Paul averts his gaze from the glinting necklace upon your chest, the slide of your hair upon the fabric of your back. Slowly, you take to slicing the cheese for you both with your very own blade – and Paul’s confusion has not quelled, but instead grown in the breeze of your nearly casual movements.
It’s as if the veil took with it the cold, calculating dissidence; you sit in front of him a young woman, plain. Pretty, sharp, cunning; but, simpler than that: Hungry.
A simple thing indeed – one that, as his own stomach rumbles, he knows he relates to. And so he offers you a slice of apple warily, watching you with some lingering shame, as if he's stumbled upon on a shrine long since sacred and wanting.
“I thought you wore them for nine months,” He states, tilting his head, "The anthropologists in the video said–”
But you’ve reared to stare at him, blinking in some odd vision of shock: “–Nine months?" You interrupt, voice more animated than he's ever heard; it nearly startles him, the youth in your voice, the life. You nearly bemoan, furrowing your brows as if hoping to recall a long lost memory. “It’s hardly been three weeks and I’ve already begun to fantasize burning them.”
Confusion must paint his expression, for your face changes sheepishly, falling into a solemn line. “Forgive me,” You clear your throat, “It's grown apparent to me as of late that am not well-versed in my own customs.”
And it is a stony, quick change from your previous cadence; Paul’s brows furrow, though you seem to offer him further elaboration as you take in his countenance.
“My family did not often uphold many of the old religion's traditions once I got old,” You sigh as you chew on an apple, tilting your head, “I was educated by the Bene Gesserit as my mother wished when I was young - and in many ways, our family adopted their customs in replacement of our heritage culture.”
It is a stone dropped into his stomach at your words, though he lets no emotion betray him – your voice licks with the lilt of trepidation in the mention of the Bene Gesserit; and your eyes, wide and expressive, only pull him in despite the foreboding churn of his stomach.
This is certainly not what Paul expected – why, then, have you been wearing the veil so devotedly?
“I have a book,” He says dumbly – and with a cleared throat, he ignores the sudden flush that crawls from the collar of his tunic. “If you– if you want to read more about it.”
You fix him with a look, and he’s struck by the rawness of your features. “A book?” you echo, and he shifts upon his seat awkwardly.
“About your family's customs. I j–” he stops himself, combing a stray curl back, “We thought it would be pertinent to know what your courting traditions are, what your customs are. To make you… comfortable,” he reasons gently, guilty that it was not so apparent from the beginning, “If… if we are to marry, it should be honorable. For both of us.”
It's as if his words have seeped into the spongy spin of your mind; your eyes have grown distant as they course over the shoreline across the way, brows settling in a line across the smooth skin of your forehead. Moments pass and the words he left hanging in the air stay; Waves kiss the sand of the cove and Paul toys with the knife in his hands quietly. He’s unsure how he might pull you from those cold depths of your thoughts, and so he sits, watching your lips purse and catch between your pearled teeth gently.
And after a moment, you come back to him. “Thank you,” You say – and your voice is once again that blank, cold tone – as if a wall had been snapped up suddenly, “I only remember wearing the veils when I was–” You break off for a moment, ripping the skin from a slice of apple. “When my sister died. I wasn’t quite old enough to remember much from it, and… I was eighteen when I left Sabberon. As I got older, our castle was so often full of visitors that we would regularly forgo most customs of my father’s family.”
It is a melancholy thing when you look back up at him. “If I can be honest, I… suppose I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Involuntary as it is, Paul cannot help his gaze from darting to the necklace you wear around your neck; and just as quickly he moves to search your visage – looking perhaps for any emotion. He finds none.
I shall wear it like a dog.
The breeze catches your hair. Paul’s brows furrow, “The veil wasn’t your choice,” he realizes. Guilt, that drooping, wilting guest, slumps upon the stoop of his heart.
And you shrug, glancing at your lap, “True, it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to make choices for myself,” you admit – and it’s an admission far too heavy for the air in the cove, as you swirl your toes in the pool, as his own press to the rock beneath the water, his heart heavy. A hand flickers to the veil that lies with its adorning metal headpiece to your left. “I guess taking it off is one of them.” You clear your throat, nails digging into the earth exposed from where Paul had ripped the root – and your other hand rises, almost as if you endure a sharp pain in your ribs – and you cradle the spot, fingers lingering in a haunting line before falling to the rock below. “Feyd-Rautha would not have let me wear the veil even if I had wanted to. But at least I am making the choice for myself now.”
And it is a jolting reminder, one of horror – when you had arrived on Caladan, Duncan's arm still bleeding with the result of your fight, Paul had seen a Harkonnen. A dagger wrapped in layers of silk and velvet.
And perhaps the Caladan air has changed you; but more likely, you have begun to heal yourself – and although you do not look well-rested, there are indeed healing wounds upon your arms; wounds that churn Paul’s stomach, that strike his heart in acrimony, in wrath. A nightmare, you’ve come from – and he knows now that whatever you’ve endured is something that would break many.
Still, you’ve changed in a gradual shift: You are not so fervent or distrusting as you were those first few days – though you remain that ghost haunting the halls, you walk with less wrath, more credence; He knows you speak with your chambermaids freely – you take sparring lessons with Duncan after Paul each day, and tutor in the mornings before he does. Your voice in council this morning: Grown and defrosting, confident; born to take on such a role.
You sit perched upon the dark rock – the light hits your hair and the slope of your nose, bathing your eyelashes in an ethereal glow. You’re a sharp woman, keen and astute; He watches your straight spine, the slow breaths which grow from a proud chest.
You will make a good duchess.
And in a moment, Paul notices – a wide gaze, searching his face; it occurs to him that perhaps this is also the first time you have seen him unobstructed. And so, with an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach, he lets you stare; a secret relish in the silence and its change in demeanor.
A once excruciating thing, leaking with the sentiment of shared disdain, of mutual mistrust – though now grows a respect, or maybe the roots to it; a slow thing, plotten in frozen soil and hoped to grow despite harsh weathers.
You finish your half of the apple, and he watches the glint of your necklace as you lean back upon your palms. “Can I…” His voice breaks through as an ocean does a cliff; “Can I ask you something?”
It is a beautiful collar. I shall wear it like a dog.
And Paul is so very suddenly tired – fatigued from his lessons, the council, the marriage, the prospect of war with the Harkonnens, of his dreams; his head feels as though it swims, light above the clouds and yet tethered to the ground below.
Your brows dip slightly, as if your hackles rise. “Yes,” you murmur warily, eyes roving over his figure.
He swallows thickly, willing himself to spit it out. “Do you choose to wear that?”
He need not gesture to the necklace that hangs around your neck; and you, stilling in the cold wind of truth. When it comes, it is not through words: Your eyes are wide and, if Paul did not know better, they reveal the sting of fear.
You say nothing, but in time, you shake your head slightly.
And this does not ease his conscience.
It is an echo of words bitten through clenched teeth and the onslaught of rain; it is in the weeping willows of that ceremonial dress, in the sliding of shade over your veil that first time he ever met you.
He’s not sure why he says it, but it comes as a whisper, as wind snuffs out a flame, as fog creeps across the shoreline in the early hours:
“Threats demand evolution.”
His murmur is swallowed by the breeze in the cove, by the rustle of the veil beside you.
His words bristle your spine, though you say nothing; and for a long minute, he avoids the burning stare of your gaze against his profile.
It is only after the food is prepared and spread over the moss between you that you speak; and in the time it takes for Paul to lay out the food, it occurs to Paul that this is the most you and him have spoken without being plagued by tense silences or passive-aggression – or at least without enduring the childish embarrassment of being mediated by his parents as they ask you both questions at the supper table.
A nail, trimmed and coated in a deep paint, traces the glass bottle that lies half in the bag – the soft clink of your tap brings his gaze from the pools below. “Did you intend on drinking yourself drunk this afternoon?” You wonder – a warmer tone, that inkling of amiability returning so suddenly.
He hands you a piece of bread and his knife, shaking his head wryly – though the lingering hesitance of unfamiliarity restricts him from jesting in return.
Having intended to be alone, Paul had not grabbed a glass, let alone two; and so he grasps the bottle by its neck, twisting on the cage atop it to begin to open it. An irritating curl lies across his forehead – and so he flicks his head to jolt it out of the way; your gaze tracks the motion.
“It's sparkling tea.”
At his words you hum slowly, glancing at the bottle in his hands.
“That’s a shame.” You muse, hand brushing one of your own strands away, “I've never tried wine.”
Paul's eyes flicker to you in surprise; Had you not been offered wine at supper here? Had you never had it in your youth, as a highborn?
“Not even when you were young?”
And you shake your head, a wistful smile gracing your lips; your hair is silken, even in the shade – Paul hadn't expected it to be such a shade, but suits you.
“Never,” you confirm, “Where I come from, our preferred drinks are mead or ale, usually served warm. And…” You trail off, shrugging, “On Giedi Prime they favor liquor that is made from anise – you know, the spice?” You inquire, and continue when he nods, “It's much too bitter for my taste,” you continue, your voice tinged with a similar bitterness that you describe, “And even if I did enjoy it, I… tried not to drink there, when I could.”
Paul looks out to the sea – clouds crawl in an ominous roll towards the shore, the air thick – it’ll rain this evening.
There is nothing to say; and so, he begins to ease his thumb over the cork, pressure pushing against him.
“In the South, all that grows are fields and fields of vines,” he explains after the moment passesa dn clouds swallow the sunlight. Dripping sun, wide-reaching hands of vines, drooping with heavy clusters of sweetgrapes in the South. “They make all kinds of fine wine there. Sweet, sparkling, aged.”
You hum at this, your gaze tracking his own to the sea, tracing the crash of waves against the stark cliffs in the distance.
Your small lunch passes by in intermediate silence after this: Both you and Paul are insatiably hungry, and in minutes the food is nearly gone – you’re not particularly warm, and neither is he; and it matters not. He is well consumed with his own thoughts to give himself the company you do not provide.
Though as the sun continues its peak in the sky and you continue to eat quietly – clearly attempting to remain amiable with him – a sense of regret bubbles in his chest.
“I owe you an apology.”
And it startles you – his throat is dry, and your jump goes unaddressed, your nails digging into the moss beneath as he refuses to meet your gaze. “I've…” He pushes away the pride that burns at his throat, “I’ve treated you poorly. Acted like a child,” he admits.
In his peripheral, you turn to him.
His sigh is weary. “I didn't expect for it to happen like this,” and the corner of his mouth lifts mirthlessly – emotionless, as he gazes to the coast. An understatement on his part, and surely yours, too – but it is indeed the truth.
And perhaps it is not polite to admit to your betrothed that you loathe the idea of marrying them, but he knows the feeling is more than mutual. And he does not blame you for it.
Paul is admittedly not usually one for so many words with a stranger – but they come forth very easily in the quiet of the cove. “I was… displeased with how this worked out. Shocked. But–” He shakes his head, unwilling to lose his thought, “But that doesn't excuse how I've treated you.”
You don't say anything, but he can feel how tense you've grown – a statue once more in the dying afternoon sunshine. You have every reason to hate the Harkonnens just as much as his family – if not much more; and with a clammy palm, Paul runs his hand over his forehead.
The thunderclouds loom in the horizon; the salt carries thick in the growing wind.
And with the absence of your words – perhaps in a moment of resignation, he says your first name; Never having said it out loud, it comes out as a murmur on his lips, a small hymn that coaxes your gaze to his own.
“This path was set for us.” He admits, swallowing thickly, “Though we can–” He turns to watch your eyes, how they swirl with unbridled emotion. “Maybe we can navigate it together.”
And in the afterbreath of his words, your breathing is heavy with emotion. Paul is not naive enough to believe it is tears, though he averts his gaze all the same.
“Yeah,” you finally whisper – and though it is dispassionate, withdrawn, it is laced with some small drip of desperation. “Yes.” You mend – though your eyes are far away, tracing the violence in the crashing waves, watching the foamy white caps break in their wake.
“I won't disrespect you again,” he insists, “I swear.”
You lift your feet from the water, curling them under you as you stir, nodding slowly. “Thank you,” Your eyes are sullen. “But don't make promises you can't keep, Paul.” And though he expected as much, the emptiness of your tone churns his heart and spins his head. “I've had my fill of broken vows.”
You aren't hostile in your words; instead they are melancholy, a dreary wind whistling through an empty ravine – beneath Paul, another small bluecrab treks across the terrain, rocking in the gentle water tides.
You’re right – and he's soon filled with the same sense of dread that he's felt after each dream that has haunted him since they began; that same melancholy which envelopes you as you rise, gathering your belongings, preparing to walk back to the castle.
And Paul walks beside you, little more than a few words escaping either of you as you go; a brush of your shoulder against the crook of his elbow, the hitch of a breath concealed with a glance to the shoreline.
By the time you enter the main gates, fat raindrops have begun to fall on Paul’s face, sticking heavy to his lashes.
You, likewise, shield slightly from the rain, your hair kissed with teardrops from the skies, sliding over your cheeks like the tears you’ll never give.
The halls are slick with intracked rainfall – workers offer towels, scold him, tease him; and yet they stare, though they try not to – eyes warm his neck, and pierce through the girl who walks at his side.
But still you walk with your head high, spine straight. Your eyes are guarded, almost insecure at the prying faces who watch your visage as you pass – but even as Paul walks you to your chambers, you don't give in.
series warnings (read individual for extra warnings): slow burn. enemies/strangers-to-friends-to-lovers. arranged marriage, violence, canon divergence (aged-up characters, can be read as pre-canon; characters are in their 20s), past non/dub-con, canon-typical & vague references to incest/pedophilia (the Baron & Feyd-Rautha), angst, eventual smut, blood and gore, trauma, plot heavy, religious imagery, paganism, lore-heavy
↬ prelude
an ancient house falls. paul atreides learns he has become betrothed.
↬ i
you are ripped from your nest of darkness and shipped to a new world — or — destruction: the only thing you and feyd-rautha may have ever had in common.
↬ ii
you are tainted with blood - not atreides, not bourbon - but harkonnen. paul will always see you as a beast, wife or not.
↬ iii - coming soon.
there is a phantom blade buried between your ribs. paul has begun to harbor odd dreams.
word count: 8.5k
warnings: familial trauma, descriptions of blood/violence, irrationality due to bad coping mechanisms, fear, Paul has one (1) almost-panic attack, switching POVs, arranged marriage, politics, not much else. mutual mistrust.
notes: hi again <3 here with chapter two remastered of this fic. feedback very much appreciated, i rly love 2 chat :) also a little bit of smut in the next chapter ! should be coming soon.
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series masterlist
In the traditional customs of House Bourbon, the path to marriage is paved with symbolic rituals and gestures, each sacred to the planet Sabberon's native culture. Though the house may have dwindled in stature over the past three centuries, its customs and rituals remain rooted deeply in the enduring legacy of a once-great lineage, which claims to come from the root of the planet itself.
Unlike the grandiose affairs of many larger noble houses, betrothal within House Bourbon is considered an intimate and sacred process, guided by the rhythms of nature. Rooted in their own ancient spiritual religion – which has embattled centuries of change and upheaval – marriage is viewed as not merely a union between two individuals, but an acknowledgement of the ancestors who came before them, and those who will come next.
This section reviews the process of Courtship and Betrothal for the House of Bourbon, including:
Betrothal Gifts
Heirloom Exchange
Harvest Festival Offering
Ceremony: Handfasting Ritual and Vows
Marriage Consummation: The Sacred Pine of Sabberon
- “Chapter 68: Customs of Marriage,” The Noble Lineage: Exploring the Customs and Cultures of the Houses Major of Landsraad. Atreides Library.
A skip in the audio of the holovideo playing before Paul jolts his vision.
Gathered back to the land of the living, his head jerks in the palm of his hand, lashes sleepily knotting over the glossy page below him.
The video does not cease its accented drone, the voice sounding eerily similar in cadence to your own Sabberovna accent; though his eyes laze along the words as they are read out to him in the documentary; a faint twitch of muscle below his eye does not give up as he blinks the syrupy remnants of his dozing away.
"Marriage consummations are a deeply personal and intimate affair–” An innopportune time perhaps to focus; an unease pools within Paul’s stomach as his eyes flick from Thufir back to the textbook before him, fighting a sprout of resistance that blossoms into disdain as he reads the page.
Among the more unique traditions of House Bourbon, the consummation of marriage takes place outdoors, through a path walked by many ancestors. Upon a pristine white sheet, under the House's Sacred Pine tree, this ritual symbolizes not only producing legally recognized descendants, but also the sacred union of the betrothed with nature and their ancestral lineage.
It grows increasingly hot in the study room; Paul’s cheeks burn, his throat drying up as his ears pick up the droll words that read just a line behind his own pace. A glance to Thufir reveals an irritatingly calm expression – Paul blinks away his rising anxiety, some stirring creature of reluctance and alarm; what kind of archaic ritual culture does your house have?
Paul can hardly imagine you practicing any such traditions on Geidi Prime – though the very thought of what your life had been like sends a wave of nausea through him.
Words blur and dance; mocking with implications, with visions of white, with soil under grasping fingers, with soft sounds swallowed by thick brush, sharp gasps dissolved by the call of birds in the trees.
A sunbeam penetrates his vision, and it is searing; with a sharp breath, Paul's fingers pinche the bridge of his nose.
A life guided by the words of duty and future is one too swaddled by a promise of one day – but to Paul’s horror, one day has seemingly overnight become today, and he feels the sands of time slipping through the cracks of his cupped hands, blinded by the sun.
Noises are too loud – birds scream in the sky outside, the wind howls and wails – the hum of the holovideo has set his teeth on edge, and the quiet breathing of the tutor in the corner has caused a twitch upon his eye.
It is all very suddenly too much.
Here he sits, a boy in a castle; and a looming presence upon his shoulders, shadows which bend in the light and whisper the names of those who have sabotaged his family for centuries. Such small panic suddenly festers and blooms into a garden of contempt, curling with branches of sharp thorns.
A hand to keep within his own – a hand which curled around pools of shadows for years. You, who walks the halls of this very castle – who haunts his mind with the ghostly absent gaze and your very own kinds of shadows.
It is too much.
With a sharp sigh, he snaps. “Don’t you think it’d be more pertinent to study Harkonnen tactics, instead of this?” Paul’s voice cuts clear through the accented drone of the video, his arms crossing sharply. “She’s just as accustomed to that, I’m sure.”
Erratic breathing takes his senses in a moment; and he is left with a sweat-stuck tunic and a panicking heartbeat. Thufir turns to Paul, eyes sage, wary.
“Paul, she was–”
And immediately, his voice is far too calm for the matter at hand; a Harkonnen puppet walks these halls, and yet even in the preparation for the upcoming Space Trade Referendum, Paul seems to be the only one with any such sense of alarm.
It is just as soon as Thufir begins that Paul’s rage takes hold. “–No! Nobody will listen. She was one of them for almost half a decade. She was accused of espionage, her family was proven of it – who's to say this isn't just another trap?"
Mentat training can take a lot out of one, Paul has been told; and so Thufir lets him release his anger, with very little protestation – it serves to irk Paul further.
There is that anger once more, the scraping hunger that claws through his chest and calls for him to pick up a blade. Abruptly, Paul rises – an uncharacteristic burst of emotion, he swallows. “Thufir,” His heart thunders, panic rising, “I will finish my readings on Sabberon later, I swear to it. But I’d prefer to do it on my own, if it’s alright.”
Thufir holds his gaze for a moment, though a ghost of acceptance reflects in his visage. “Very well. Though I may remind you: Your father suggests you initiate the heirloom exchange soon.” He finishes; Paul’s overwhelmed expression must bleed through the deep breath he takes.
“Sit down, young lord. Let us begin today with cause and effect–”
On Caladan, the sun casts long shadows through the windows at midday.
But hiding behind drawn clouds of moisture, it is sullen and gray this afternoon. The third day waking up within the castle has brought you news that the Duke wishes to meet with you in the late afternoon; and that you are invited to join the Duchal family for supper this evening – though besides this, your day is free.
A daunting thing indeed.
The morning is spent staring warily at the dark corner of your chambers, awaiting the ghost to crawl from the shadows once more; though he does not, and your dreams begin to slip away into a misty memory of a wooded forest and a sinister grin.
Despite your fears of the dark, it is serene in your chambers – natural curves of patterned wooden beams, spined arches which draw in the warmth of the sun; steaming tea and three girls who sit with you quietly, watching you move as if you’re made of porcelain.
The news of your impending meeting with Duke Leto has settled anxiety deep within you – a foreboding thing in of itself, but the sense of apprehension has spiraled you into a restless stirring.
It is not until you finish preparing your hair for the mourning veil that you speak – and with a voice soft but firm, you turn to the girls who tidy your space. “I'd like to go explore,” you decide, turning from your vanity to watch their looks of surprise.
You have not left your chambers much since your arrival; aside from attending sparse meals and the first morning when Paul had escorted you through the premises, you’ve remained in the dreamspace of your room, twitching at shadows and waking yourself up with hoarse screams.
In truth, you yearn for the comfort of metal and leather curled beneath your fingers; an itch unable to satisfy, a phantom limb which looms somewhere in the depths of the castle. In a blink, you're lost to it: A glint of a blade from your dream, hands lithe and pale reaching for the hilt.
You watch the shine of the sun over the sea as your veil is lifted over your eyes, haunted by visions of metal glinting under a black sun.
It is with mercy that you are dressed today – dark trousers and a tunic the same deep cerulean as your veil.; and your chambers are left quietly with a denial of company from the workers who clear your tea.
You slink in that way you know how; with a small smile growing on your lips unbidden as you inhale such a clean breeze that courses through the ancient place. It is, in a way, quite a solace; your lungs, so heavy and exhausted by the recycled air of Giedi Prime – a fresh breath, one that does not sting your throat.
A freedom licks at your spine as you continue, turning corners on a whim, eyes sliding in avoidance of any other being you pass, though you bid them a good day with a nod of your head. It is peaceful in this castle, and some resentment bubbles in your stomach because of it. Beams high above your head are patterned and shaped to breathe intricate shadows over your frame; high, vaulted ceilings, old stone cool beneath your palm. Along the castle, plants burst with the fruits of healthy care; and laughter echoes somewhere far off in its depths.
In another world, you would have felt such joy to call this your home.
Today's clothing is more forgiving; your trousers are loose but more reinforced at the hips and waist, allowing you to move much quicker and quietly through the halls. A gentle swish comes from the cloaked veil upon your head – and you, with a moment of resistance, nearly rip the damned thing off. How easy it would be, to toss it into one of the several lit hearths in the vicinity, eliminate the evidence of it.
There still remains a small rage within you, simmering and igniting more each day you go on like this – resentment for the customs that you barely know, for your house that no longer exists; for the people lost to time and slipped through the grasp of your family’s lineage. An embarrassment, you know, to be told of your own family's traditions by foreigners.
Out the window is a glimpse of the glistening sea. Violent in its own way, it slams against the cliffside, silent to you but louder than life; it is green in the way everything is, and once more, you wish to see the planet without the veil’s tinted vision.
But in a blink, the sea changes; it is dirt, soil acidic and unfamiliar – and a casket is lowered into it, forested and glossy; it is sand, sun glinting and white – and bodies are thrown down upon it, black blood leaking and jeweled.
Guilt is an old friend, and you welcome its embrace with a swallow and shaky hands.
You leave the window behind.
The walls seem much more empty as you go further into the castle's bowels, dragging your palm along the cool stone; at the turn of a corridor, you find yourself at an ornate doorway. There are intricate carvings deep set within the wood – a man and a bull; your fingers trace the slope of the man’s shoulders, pressing gently to feel the door give way easily.
The air is still within the room – a study, one with shelves and shelves of ancient artifacts, of tomes and scrolls. Your arm stirs the sunbeam leaking in from the high-set window; dust particles swirl and dance in your wake. A slow turn yields an understanding – several pieces of select furniture are covered with sheets, as if the room is no longer commissioned; You bite back the lingering feeling that you're somewhere you're not supposed to be.
There is no true danger – if you were to wander somewhere you didn't belong on Giedi Prime, you'd have been punished; though in truth, you doubt the guards here would dare touch you unless you gave them a reason to.
You walk among the forgotten room, hidden away from prying eyes; fingers over the spine of a leatherbound tome, eyes tracing over the foreign language.
You come upon a large hawk spreading its wings carved in the window in front of you: large, proud; green and black with gold embellishments. The Atreides colors.
And then, another book that your forefinger traces – a deep blue color, the spine is old and well-read. A few of the pages are even dog-eared, the dust deliberately swept off its pages as if it was read recently.
Caladan: A Comprehensive Ecological Study of Biodiversity.
You pull it out gently, if only to study its contents quickly, momentarily forgetting the task of finding the armory in your piqued interest; Yet before you can explore further, you hear footsteps approaching from behind.
Hair stands up on your neck.
They're light, sneaking – intentionally quiet. In less than a breath, you whirl around, slipping the book into the waistband of your trousers, hidden by the train of your veil from behind. Though the presence becomes apparent, your hand instinctively goes to your hip; and you come up empty, a flash of irritation washing over you as a reminder of your absent beloved nameday knife.
Paul Atreides stands in the doorway, expression guarded as he takes in the sight of you, stood amidst the shelves.
You flounder, having expected it to be one of your handmaidens coming to redirect you, or perhaps a member of the Duke's guard – but his stare is similar in its surprise; flecks of green turn suspicious, glancing to the desk beside you, towered with old Atreides family war strategies and tomes of battle tactics.
“What are you doing in here?” His voice is accusatory in itself; no greeting to you beforehand to soften the blow of accusation. His cheeks are flushed, eyes narrow – he is harsh in the dim light, and you do not need to see the crazed look in his stare to know he’s agitated about something. Irritated.
This causes no waver in your position; you lift a concealed brow. “The door was open.”
His voice returns with its same sharpness. “This is my father's old study.” He takes another step into the room, “It's not meant for prying eyes.”
A lurch in your heart at the implication, a rush of heat prickling your skin. You stiffen.
“I was looking for a place to train,” your voice shoots back, stubborn and defiant. No matter how thinly veiled, you bristle at his suspicion. “I didn’t intend to intrude on your father's privacy.” You continue, “You may give him my apologies when you see fit.”
Dust swirls in a storm next to Paul; his gaze is piercing, laced with distrust despite his chivalrous facade. Your pride prickles under his narrowed scrutiny.
“Forgive me if I’ve offended you, Lady Bourbon,” His words clip you and set your jaw tight, “Considering certain circumstances, I'm sure you understand our cautiousness in matters of trust.”
A bristle in your spine, temper heating your cheeks as he continues, “But if you're lost, then allow me to escort you.”
Your step forward is no such acceptance of his venomous tongue. “Forgive me for assuming you’d know better than to judge based on matters of circumstance,” you retort, your voice sharp with wound, “Please don't exert yourself, my Lord, I'm sure I can find the armory without a chaperone.”
It is a brush past his shoulders in the doorway; you leave with a burning frustration, fingers flexing for a blade – your footfall echoes in the corridor, some staccato rhythm you cannot care to hide any longer. Anger pulses through your veins, simmering your resentment; a belittling thing, to let Paul speak to you like you are the enemy.
Paul told you just yesterday that you will one day be Lady Atreides; if he is so afraid of your so-believed connections with House Harkonnen, why has he not insisted you be cast away?
Resentment is a familiar beast clawing in your heart: Your own lineage is gone. A house as old as the planet it ruled, burnt to the ground – the other Houses Major, complacent and willing to see it happen – and they plan to use you for themselves.
You may be betrothed to Paul Atreides, but you will never be a part of their house; your blood is the ancient blood of the Pine, of the Sword.
You'll have to be a wife to the future Duke – sire an heir, live in the castle, command the planet.
But you will not go down easy.
The armory is not as empty as you'd wished.
In fact, it is one person too many; you're mistaken sorely when you storm in, chest heaving and cheeks hot with anger, to find one person standing in the middle of the floor. Hurt and anger boil dangerously within you; and the only thing that might placate you is swinging a blade.
Your arrival is not quiet.
“Duncan.” You greet the man icily; He faces you, blinking back his surprise with a poorly concealed expression.
And, salt rubbed into your poorly healed wounds: He uses your first name; a gentle thing as he nods to you. "Is everything alright?" He wonders.
A foolish question, really.
In anger, you nearly scream; Why did you wait so long to get me? Where were you? Where were my parents?
But you already know the answer. They were doing nothing.
You grit your teeth, instead striding purposefully towards him, tossing the book from your waistband onto the floor with a smack. “You're the Swordmaster of the Duke,” Your voice is cool, masked – and of course, this is known; He's been Duke Leto's Swordmaster since before you were born into the world.
“That's right.” He affirms, wary of your movements as you stride towards the weapons rack.
You hum, fingers tracing over the various weapons laid out – none of which, your precious nameday blade. “I find myself missing my knife,” You muse, “If I remember correctly, you took it from me on Giedi Prime.”
It is then that you walk slowly towards the center of the sparring mat where he stands, in front of the rack of shortswords. You look up at him. “I would like it back.”
To your surprise, Duncan nods – a flicker of something in his gaze. “Of course,” He agrees, “Would you like to spar for it?”
He reads you like a book.
You, after only a brief moment, acquiesce: “No honor without a fight.”
And so without waiting for a response, you snatch a blade from the rack; He tosses you a shield that you activate swiftly around your wrist, assuming an offensive stance as he settles his own.
For a moment, neither of you move; your blood sings, eager to take out your anger; eager to show him who you've become.
To show the beast everyone expects you to be.
You lunge at him; it is quick that you are reminded of his impeccable skill – you’ve not sparred with anyone in over a week and a half, save the weak attempt at a fight you gave to Duncan and his men when you were taken on Giedi Prime.
In the commotion of your family's abdication, the arenas had been filled to the brim with your house's soldiers and advisors the whole week leading up to your exit from Giedi Prime; Even Feyd had been too occupied to fight with you.
It takes only minutes before your muscles are aching, screaming.
The frustration of the morning and the despair within your stomach spurs you forward, keeping your feet under your body; and soon, your panting and the clang of steel on steel fills the room, punctuated only by both you and Duncan's measured breathing.
It’s been a lifetime and a half since you last trained with Duncan Idaho.
There was a time that you moved together like water, even when you were just fifteen; he'd taught you how to fight like a Ginaz Swordmaster just as much as your own family did – and though his visits were sparse, he'd never miss Sabberon’s harvest festivals.
He, arriving onto the snow-kissed tarmac and you, always with a blade in your grip and your brother's hand in the other.
You were graceful when you were young and still learning – but now you're quick, snarling like a rabid dog, lashing out with tooth and nail. It feels nothing like it used to be, and it shows in his expression.
“Have something to say, Idaho?” you hiss – a quick gasp from you as he gets near to taking you down, ducking at the last second as he charges your right side. He lets out a breath as you slide past him, slamming your elbow hard into his side; A dirty move.
You have little room to feel relief that he seems some manner exerted – you, however, are drenched in sweat, fatigued, and alight with endorphins. A sheen over his forehead in the light leaking into the room is all forgiven to you as you duck a blow. His brows raise. “You fight different, Little Bourbon.”
And a pang in your stomach once more at the nickname, how easily it comes to him. As if nothing’s changed. “You already told me that.” You hiss, wiping sweat from your brow and parrying a strike to your side, “It's the veil.”
To be fair, it could be the veil – it's restrictive, catching on corners, pinning beneath your arm, tangling as you fight hand-to-hand; simply, it is inimical to your interests.
Though he does not bite at such bait. “Is it not the years with those beasts?”
Your blood runs cold.
“What do you know of those beasts?” You snap, heart pounding; memories of pale hands slipping over yours, of a glinting black smile – the one that'd called you pet but paraded you like a wife; Spoiled you, ruined you – haunted you, nurtured you.
What is that old saying, about biting the hand that feeds you?
But in a swish of the veil and a blink, Feyd-Rautha is once more in front of you; curved blades, painted chest, and a sinister smile.
Your steps stumble back in shock, your breath caught in your throat. An intimidating, lithe frame of shadow – and he laughs a mirthless, dangerous chuckle.
Don’t worry, my pet. I will find you again.
It is all you can do: You lash out, grunting as you swipe at his face – though as your blade comes down against the shield, it is once again Duncan in front of you.
You can't hide the gasp as you blink away the vision, heart thudding heavy between your ribs.
His recovery is swift, tutting, “I didn't mean to imply that it is a weakness, my lady.” He blocks a blow and you struggle for a moment against his sheer strength; with a twinge of anger, you can tell he's going easy on you.
He continues on. “–Far from it. You seem to forget that I've fought them, that I know them, too.” He's momentarily distracted when he disarms you, and you use the opportunity to flip sideways, jumping gracefully over the water station to retrieve the blade. His countenance betrays a grin of appreciation at your acrobatics, smirking as the pitcher of water upon the table shakes slightly.
Concealing a grin, you creep back around, launching into an attack that he parries quickly, dropping you on to your side. You grunt, kicking with your legs to twist, trying to force his body off of yours – you strain, muscles screaming.
He stares down at you, raising his brows. “I'm just saying – maybe there's aspects of your training that could benefit from a balanced approach.”
He finishes his sentence just as he bests you, your blade flipping against your own ribs as he forces your arm tight against yourself; your shield flickers red.
He's won.
Still fighting the adrenaline from your vision of Feyd, you hiss. “What are you implying? I'm too rabid an animal to tame?” Your head tilts on the ground, dragging your veil upon the mat.
“Is House Atreides scared of Little Bourbon?” You muse, still heated by the previous encounter with Paul this morning, by Duncan’s unremarkable reaction to your jabs, by the ghost who seems to haunt you awake and in dreams. “Or, are they just afraid I've become Little Harkonnen?”
Once more, he does not take your bait – instead he rolls off of you, offering a hand. With a sharp glance, you take it, letting him pull your full weight off the ground as if you're nearly weightless.
You sigh, side cramping as you move from his grip to pour yourself a glass of water. You pour a shaky one for Duncan, too, trying to fight the creeping sensation that he's talking to a stranger. He regards you, wiping sweat from his brow, “What I am saying is that I am here every day. Come train whenever you please.”
You give him the glass and he grasps the water gently, watching you from the corner of his eye. The hesitation makes your jaw clench in anticipation; You busy yourself by examining the various blades that lie before you, knowing what's to come.
Finally, he says your name softly. You hope he does not see your spine stiffen.
“We haven't had the time to speak about…” A gesture half-thought; he is clearly trying to put together words, but you cannot bear to hear them. You drag your finger along a curved blade, eyes squinting shut, pain swirling in your heart.
“I'm sorry. I–” Duncan starts gently but trails off as if he can't bear to say it out loud. His fingers hesitate just before your bicep, as if reaching out to you; For a moment, you almost lean into his presence – but a memory of sharp words and harsh eyes courses through you. I'm sure you understand our cautiousness in matters of trust.
You swallow down bitterness as you step away slightly, tossing the knife back on the rack with a clatter. “I'm fine,” you reply curtly, voice steelier than ever. “Nothing to do about it now.”
Duncan sighs, but does not call your bluff. You almost appreciate him for it.
You turn to face him again, glad for the veil to conceal the glint of tears upon your waterline.
“Now where did you put my knife?”
It is one of the many things that strikes you about the Atreides as you sit in the conference hall that evening: They do not sit like a council, looking down at you – instead, the table is rounded, attended at all sides with only one chair unoccupied. You suspect Paul's is the body absent from the chair – he’s training with Duncan, then; you must have just missed him on your way back.
Your newly reclaimed blade shines, restored and clean, with etchings inlaid across the hilt; you’re significantly fatigued after your sparring, though Duncan’s words have threaded unease through you. This string of angst pulls taught when your eyes land upon Lady Jessica. A relieving presence, quite welcoming – though her ability to stare through the veil and into your own gaze is rivaled only by her own son. It is a wholly unsettling talent of them both.
A press of your finger upon the tip of your blade; it beads with a lick of crimson, and you sigh.
After a moment, you set the blade in front of your place for all to see; a threat, or a sign of respect – you’re unsure.
Though in the flash of your fingers upon the hilt, guards in the room unsheathe their own blades – and without a blink, Duke Leto holds a hand to halt them, signing something to them in their war-language.
You watch on with a stilled heartbeat.
“Lady Bourbon, thank you for meeting with us.” His voice is a deep caramel, “We understand the weight of your sudden responsibility, and it does not go unappreciated.”
There is a knot in the table before you, glistening within the polished wood; you nod rather curtly, not particularly keen to drag out the pleasantries of this meeting. Your voice comes stonily. “How may I be of service, my Lord?”
At your deflection, he merely nods slightly. “I was told you spent the afternoon training with Duncan Idaho.”
He speaks plainly and you are, if nothing else, appreciative of that; His eyes glance over the short sword that lays in front of you, to the signature black leather that wraps around the hilt. Once, it had served as a claim: A detested thing, one held out of self preservation; perhaps in a way it still is.
“Yes, my Lord.”
Brows draw over his eyes; an expression serious and dutiful, and for a moment you can see the echoes of Paul in his father’s expression.
It is not surprising to you that Paul is a well-respected figure in the castle; even the workers who tend to your quarters each morning seem to speak well of him. Hestia, around the rim of her teacup just this morning, had spoken to you of his rigorous training, the time he spends with his mother and with Dr. Yeuh, Thufir Hawat, and Duncan Idaho; and though you were less than interested in the more sentimental aspects of her recount, of some promise of intelligence, of depth, of humor – a thought you find most impossible – you can admit that he will easily assume his father’s role when the time comes.
A voice from beside the Duke: “We’d like to reiterate that you are free to pursue your interests, to educate yourself, and to engage in hobbies that bring you joy or interest. We hope for you to consider this your home, and know that we are here to support you in any way we can.”
In the moment that follows, you blink rather dumbly; thrown off-balance, a raft in a sudden clench of rapids – this is not how you’d anticipated the meeting would go.
And here you sit, rigid as a board, eyes wide: It is not shocking to learn that your unease and discomfort on this planet has been rather clear – you hardly rest, you have never eaten around any others than your handmaids, you barely speak; hostility grows from you as branches of a willow weeping in summer.
You shift within your seat, growing uncomfortable under such attention, the kindness so raw and unburdened in the room. “We’d like to know of your interests, so we may set you up with any materials you may need. I'd like to introduce to you Dr. Yueh, as well as Thufir Hawat, who have volunteered to help tutor you, should you wish.” The Duke’s words bring a rush of heavy emotion through your chest, “Duncan Idaho also wishes to help you train if you see fit. I understand you knew him when you were young.”
Your eyes have begun to sting with the lurching sensation of emotion; For the first time in what feels like an eternity, you're being offered a taste of freedom, and it has sent you into a state.
It is a feeling of fight or flight; your heartbeat pounds against your ribs, your hands clenching tight against the healing crescents within your palms. A mantra in your mind, some whisper of a breath leaking from your lips as your gaze bounces wetly from Duke Leto, to the knife before you, to Lady Jessica.
I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
With a sharp inhale, you come back to life; a blossoming willow as your headchain chimes, steadying your palms on your thighs. “Apologies, I…” A weak attempt, and with a swallow of humility, you begin again: “Your generosity overwhelms me.”
In a silent beat, it occurs to you that they await your revelations; and with a sheepish swallow, you wonder: What, indeed, are your interests? Have you any, anymore?
You swallow the burning bile climbing up your throat. “I was educated in politics and Imperial economics for some time.” It is difficult to speak of yourself as the faces watch you – though you continue stoically, your heart thunders in your ribcage. “I've always been fascinated by cultures, by botany and ecology– I…” your mouth is incredibly dry, voice void; a tear has escaped your waterline, and you hope it does not come through in your voice. You don't know what else to say.
“Thank you.”
There is a small gleam of recognition that passes Duke Leto's eyes at your words, his smile intrigued. “Those are all noble pursuits, my Lady. You have similar interests to my own son; I believe you two will have much to discuss.”
A laughable thought – and your mouth bitters at the realization; For a moment, you'd slipped away – into a world where you are their daughter, a world where you aren't tainted by the last several years, by the crimes of your House, of your blood – where you haven’t been turned into a monster that hisses at a glimpse of the sun.
“I’m sure we will.” You echo; and in the breath following, it becomes clear there is no good will for free:
“Though we are hesitant to put you into another painful situation,” Gurney Halleck’s voice errupts from across the table; you move to stare at him with the patience of a statue, back stiffening. “It is hard to deny just how helpful you could be to us, my Lady.”
Your eyes snake over his pressed uniform, back prickling. You resist the urge to run, or to throw your blade at his head.
Though his following words are surprisingly delicate: “–And we hope, when you are ready, you might give us some insight into your previous arrangements.”
It is a song and dance well-known from your time on Giedi Prime: Coercion disguised as cooperation.
You do not by law owe the Atreides anything besides marriage to their son; though perhaps cooperating with them would be in your own interest as well as you await the upcoming arraignment.
Faces watch you, sharp and poised; a dark green that runs nearly blue in the light, their uniforms are cerulean and pressed, and you wonder indeed how many lifetimes ago it was that you were back in the strategy room on Sabberon, surrounded by tan and green.
Perhaps, if not just the Harkonnens, they prefer you for your relationship with your mother’s sister, the lady of House Ginaz; This thought has several times crossed your mind, but you're sure they'd be displeased to hear of how strained such relationship became when the Harkonnens started filtering your messages.
It has been ages since you heard from her – the Baron grew suspicious at such interactions, and you’re near certain almost none of your letters made it out of Barony Castle at all. Certainly none came in after only months.
A mountain grows within you – one with sharp slopes, with hissing winds – a self preservation remaining from the days of survival. You unfurl slowly, calculated. “During my time with the Harkonnens, I became privy to certain…” Your lips purse, “lateral moves.”
Gurney Halleck's eyes fly to you, as do Lady Jessica's.
Your jaw ticks beneath the juniper fabric, “However, my interactions were primarily with Feyd-Rautha.” Your eyes flick to the blade before you before rising again to Duke Leto, “The Baron held little interest in me until my family was accused, and even though I saw him quite rarely, Glossu Rabban suspected me of being a spy long before he’d ever met me.”
An effort you put in to pretend not to notice the flicking of Lady Jessica’s hand’s by her side; the eyes of the Duke and War Master following the motions.
You continue, harboring a slight upper hand that you cling to with your resolve. “I admit, I do not know much about their deals on Arrakis. But I have gathered enough about their industries on Giedi Prime.” You say, eyeing them all. Recalling Paul’s earlier mistrust, you add, “The Harkonnens destroyed my life. I have no reason to lie.”
In the corner of the room, a sunbeam strikes through a swirl of dust; it pierces through the budding leaves of a jade succulent and casts a dappled shadow onto the table. The members of House Atreides discuss in short whispers until Duke Leto turns back to you.
“I’d wonder if you might attend a meeting with our Strategy Council next week.” His proposal sends your brows to raise in intrigue. “As you are surely aware, there is a Space Trade Route Referendum on Kaitain during the same summit as your House's arraignment. I believe we would benefit greatly from your insight as we prepare for the drawings.”
A wildfire of flush spreads across your cheeks; pride, that little kerneled seed, festers in the poisonous soil of your heart – and yet you must remind yourself where you are, who you are. Yes, they see your value, a mistake your last keepers have reaped; but a key is only valued for the locks in which it can turn.
You are a rabid dog for them to muzzle; a blade to sheath. A pawn to play.
“I’d be pleased, my Lord.”
Melodious as it is in its Sabberovna lilt, your voice remains short of genuine in tone and you cannot effectively mask your apprehension.
Duke Leto says your name once more, and it sends a jolt through you. “If I may.”
You wait in your evergreen stillness, and he takes your quiet as acceptance to continue. “Plans have changed quickly, as you well understand. Though regrettable, it is more than understandable if you have felt unwelcome, or alienated here on Caladan.”
The breath out of your lips blows the veil; you bite back a bitter quip regarding his son’s willingness to chew you out for walking the halls of what is supposed to now be your castle – and instead take another breath.
Your anger and resentment is not the Duke’s nor Lady Jessica’s to receive; no matter how distrusting or misguided their son might be – because they have shown nothing but respect for you since your arrival.
Quarters with a view of the coastline, of rolling moors of green that shoot up suddenly in dark rock – bowls of fruit in the mornings with your tea, an offer to study any such subject you wish… you bite your lip, the gnawing pain of guilt bleeding through the bodice in your gown just as your sisters did that fated day in the black sun.
“I regret that I have come off as ungrateful.” Your voice lands softer than anticipated, a footfall in fresh snow; you thank the void that the Atreides boy is not here to snicker at your apparent misery – though as sharp eyes turn to regard you, the self-deprecation melts away once more into a small beast of disdain towards Paul and his disrespect. “It was never my intention.”
You, calculating, choose your words carefully. “I am not unused to being treated like a spy, even in the house I am supposed to become a part of,” Your chin is tilted towards the Duke, resolved and unflinching. “Though perhaps if I were less interrogated by select members of House Atreides, I might feel more at ease.”
And, if nothing else, perhaps a childish part of you hopes Paul will face some hand to ear for this, some chastising by his father or mother. You do not falter at the faces of men and women who have known Paul his whole life, who have known you for mere days; you will not be pushed around.
You continue in the absence of response, folding your hands neatly before your nameday blade. “I'd like to pass along my personal apologies for entering your old study this morning when I was lost, Duke Leto,” You nod to him, “Lord Paul informed me that it is off-limits to my kind.”
And perhaps it is worth it, the indignation, if only to see the varying degrees of surprise upon the visages before you; the Duke, however, glances sidelong to the empty seat beside him before clenching his jaw. Halleck sighs gently, hand falling over his forehead; it is evident the Duke is about to speak – though you do not wish to hear whatever excuse is provided for the actions of his childish son, your future husband, who did not even bother to attend this meeting.
Alas, you do not dare disrespect Duke Leto, after all he’s done for you; and so you sit, knee bouncing restlessly, as he purses his lips.
“The suddenness of your arrangement was a shock to Paul, as I’m sure it was to you. Though that does not permit any disrespect towards you. You have my promise it will not happen again, my Lady.”
This, indeed, comes as surprise to you, having expected them to support Paul’s each whim; and you sit forward, spine still rigid, though interested.
“–As for my former study, it is now used as an archive room. I apologize if there was any confusion regarding its accessibility – I will speak with my son about the importance of clarity and respect in our household.” His words, stern – scolding, though not towards you; a silent admonishment instead directed towards his absent heir. “You are allowed wherever you wish.”
It hits you in some dropping sensation within your stomach: Perhaps the Duke's son has his own opinions about you and your history, but that does not mean his parents feel the same. Soon grows a small spark of rebellion; could you find some new purpose within this House, despite any ulterior motives – or, perhaps, because of them?
After all, your house was once a strong ally of theirs; and the thought, a tantalizing one, lingers for a few moments before being swiftly extinguished by the reality of your situation.
No, you remind yourself bitterly.
You are tainted with blood – not Atreides, not Bourbon – but Harkonnen.
And it seems Paul will always see you as a beast, wife or not.
Supper is called later than Paul expects.
It is past dark when he greets his parents in the room, his formal clothes dark and pressed. Paul’s stomach growls quietly in protest; though more than his hunger, he is mocked by the box he holds.
He places it beside himself, and it will sit there until the end of dinner; It glares at him tauntingly, mockingly.
He avoids its stare.
Words, echoed through his mind in the wake of his childish fit from earlier; and his father’s voice, then:
You may not always like her, but you will treat her with the respect and care befitting of a future spouse.
How foolish he’d been this morning – held captive by the terrene emotions in his mind: flustered, angry at the arrangement – and what awful coincidence he'd run into you, snooping around the old study.
Paul is no fool; he knows better than to treat you in such a way, despite his apprehension. It is difficult to dismiss the knot in his stomach as his father’s gaze lingers; the tension from their earlier argument hangs heavy, but still, Paul’s path is clear.
Whatever his doubts, it changes nothing – you will be his wife, and he your husband. Paul, with a quick glance to the dark horizon, rolls his neck; a sharp pop breaks the silence.
There is, of course, that aching sorrow he holds for you, still; he knows that whatever he is feeling, you're likely feeling a hundred times more.
So for both of your sake, he will learn to endure, to coexist; And it begins tonight.
It begins with the box at his side.
You find the dining room with a burst of doors; and despite himself, Paul’s cheeks heat rather quickly.
Your dress is a dark forest; simple – snug around your figure, though the sleeves flow and pull low near your ankles. Paul’s lashes tangle as he blinks slow, shocked.
Your veil, gossamer thin; it softens you in a way, though it hides less than any you’ve worn yet. Through its shroud, your eyes find his nearly immediately as you walk in – you stare, wide, unyielding.
Paul is struck with a bout of iced chill when he comprehends that he can see your stare, the fullness of your lips, the upturn of your cheeks, the line of your brows, the way you take in a quick breath; He's struck immediately with your evergreen, growing beauty.
The sweet slope of neck, a swirling lick of hair brushed beyond proud shoulders; and Paul forces himself to nod and greet you, his palms clammy from the heat from the castle’s hearth.
You sit beside him, and still there’s that look you always have: Contained, a schooled politeness – but Paul knows better.
A stolen glance once more – and eyes glow against dark green mesh, glinting just like the metal beads that fall over the crown of your head. Paul is struck with the strange desire to see more of you.
Instead, he stares at the knot in the polished wooden table before him.
Mercifully, dinner is an endeavor less strenuous than anticipated; you, more relaxed than he’s ever seen, though your voice is still calculated and stoic. Even his mother is relaxed. She asks you of the wintering sports you enjoyed in your youth; you describe stiffly the pack of wolves your family had and raced with on sleds, about the waxed narrow planks you strap to your feet to race down snowy slopes. His father, enamored with the bladed skates you'd wear upon the glacial lakes when their surfaces froze over; Paul's small huff that is met with a quick glance when you quietly recount the tale of you breaking your femur upon a tree while racing your sister.
Paul’s interest in the lifetime spent upon Sabberon is eclipsed only by the looming box beside him, watching him throughout the meal.
By the time the dishes begin to be cleared away, his heart is hammering in his chest. It is inevitable, something tells him in his mind; the first of several of your House's courting steps – he’d kept true to his words and poured over the chapters about your culture before going to train this afternoon.
Paul anxiously thumbs the box under the table, knee bouncing against the grain of wood – perhaps this won't be the most traditional example of your culture's marriage customs, but most of your people are gone, anyways – he simply hopes it will be adequate.
He will no longer fight it; and he can only try his best to make you feel more comfortable here, especially after his foolish actions this morning.
His parents excuse themselves, and you rise as well; with a jump of panic, Paul calls for you to stay, just for a moment.
You, stilling in your cascading dress, with your stare and your coolness; you stare at him, wordless, and he lingers as his parents wish you a good evening.
When they are gone, you remain standing half-turned from him, solid in your ground, rooted in the ancient sway of your gown. Your eyes are wary; Perhaps you expect him to berate you again.
A quick sigh, his eyes fluttering closed – and the passage flickers through his mind once more.
Gifting heirlooms is a sacred tradition, passed down through generations, where the betrothed proudly wear the sigil of their new house as a symbol of unity and commitment.
Paul's heart races – he wipes a palm upon his tunic, straightening it before approaching you; you, a flower thorny and veiled beneath a layer of frosted snow; you, a blade sheathed in silk.
He can see the apprehension in your gaze, now – an odd thought, one that stirs something foreign in his stomach – and with each step closer, your eyes sharpen with the glint of suspicion. One hand shifts through the skirt of your dress, as if searching for something; though you have no chance to wield any such weapon as he rounds on you, holding out the velvet box with a tremor.
His reluctance is swallowed down with a force of duty; he flips the box open, waiting with his gaze upon the crown of your veil.
You stare down at it, your demeanor guarded, unreadable.
And then, plush lips – partially hidden behind gauzy green – part gently; and for a moment, Paul wonders why indeed you seem completely...shell-shocked.
His brows furrow, though he brushes aside the thought – the formality of the gesture after his childish behavior earlier in the day must have brought upon some whiplash, and that he understands.
Paul chooses to go unspoken the intent of the gift; for it is your culture’s tradition, after all: “My Lady,” His voice is steady though a part of him winces internally at the tinge of nervousness, “I hope you will accept this pendant as a token of my–” Sharply cutting himself off, he clears his throat, “Of our betrothal.”
It is a mercy to have been so trained in diplomacy, Paul knows; for he sounds much more confident than he feels. “I apologize for how I acted this morning. It was childish,” His voice is quiet in the room, and his stomach flips at the memory of your muscles tensing in the morning light, watching him; a ghost in emerald, haunting the halls.
You stare at the necklace still within his palm.
Your lips remain parted, your gaze likely taking in the green and gold sigil of Atreides; a hawk.
Small, ornamental – it was his great-great-grandmother's, from her wedding day; cherished for many years.
It took him many hours to find something that seemed fit to uphold your family's tradition; though he’d decided upon this pendant once he laid eyes upon it – the color will suit you.
Paul awaits your response, hoping you'll see the gesture for what it truly is: An attempt to bridge the gap between the two of you; Suggested by his parents, yes, but chosen and executed by himself.
He, in the unease of the silence, nearly says more; but soon your eyes harden and your reach moves towards the box.
“Thank you.”
But your voice is much too cold; your eyes hold none of the shine he’d seen previously, and it is with a pang in his stomach that he recognizes your sharp glance sideways, towards the sparse workers who attend the dining room.
Your eyes are lethal – just as lethal as the rest of you.
You would not be as civil if it were just you and him, he is sure of it; His parents may be gone, but there are servants who watch you with the corner of their eyes as they clear dishes.
A crawling sense of regret, some grimy dishonesty that rises within him – perhaps he should have waited until the two of you were truly alone; he’d not even considered how it may look to you.
Your own hands shake as you reach under your veil – Paul watches warily as you clasp the necklace slowly; his lips are dry, throat begging for the relief of water – and he knows better than to recognize your tremoring hands as anything but a result of your sheer resentment towards him, towards the marriage.
Your lips are plush as they are freed from the trappings of your teeth.
“It is a gorgeous collar,” you utter; and with a turn to stare up into Paul’s eyes, his heart thuds, breath catching. His head tilts to hear you – and your voice comes just as it always does.
“I shall wear it like a dog.”
The choice of words unsettles him completely; a pang of regret within him – but you are out of the door before his lips find anything to say.
word count: 8.5k
warnings: familial trauma, descriptions of blood/violence, irrationality due to bad coping mechanisms, fear, Paul has one (1) almost-panic attack, switching POVs, arranged marriage, politics, not much else. mutual mistrust.
notes: hi again <3 here with chapter two remastered of this fic. feedback very much appreciated, i rly love 2 chat :) also smut in the next chapter ! should be coming soon.
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In the traditional customs of House Bourbon, the path to marriage is paved with symbolic rituals and gestures, each sacred to the planet Sabberon's native culture. Though the house may have dwindled in stature over the past three centuries, its customs and rituals remain rooted deeply in the enduring legacy of a once-great lineage, which claims to come from the root of the planet itself.
Unlike the grandiose affairs of many larger noble houses, betrothal within House Bourbon is considered an intimate and sacred process, guided by the rhythms of nature. Rooted in their own ancient spiritual religion – which has embattled centuries of change and upheaval – marriage is viewed as not merely a union between two individuals, but an acknowledgement of the ancestors who came before them, and those who will come next.
This section reviews the process of Courtship and Betrothal for the House of Bourbon, including:
Betrothal Gifts
Heirloom Exchange
Harvest Festival Offering
Ceremony: Handfasting Ritual and Vows
Marriage Consummation: The Sacred Pine of Sabberon
- “Chapter 68: Customs of Marriage,” The Noble Lineage: Exploring the Customs and Cultures of the Houses Major of Landsraad. Atreides Library.
A skip in the audio of the holovideo playing before Paul jolts his vision.
Gathered back to the land of the living, his head jerks in the palm of his hand, lashes sleepily knotting over the glossy page below him.
The video does not cease its accented drone, the voice sounding eerily similar in cadence to your own Sabberovna accent; though his eyes laze along the words as they are read out to him in the documentary; a faint twitch of muscle below his eye does not give up as he blinks the syrupy remnants of his dozing away.
"Marriage consummations are a deeply personal and intimate affair–” An innopportune time perhaps to focus; an unease pools within Paul’s stomach as his eyes flick from Thufir back to the textbook before him, fighting a sprout of resistance that blossoms into disdain as he reads the page.
Among the more unique traditions of House Bourbon, the consummation of marriage takes place outdoors, through a path walked by many ancestors. Upon a pristine white sheet, under the House's Sacred Pine tree, this ritual symbolizes not only producing legally recognized descendants, but also the sacred union of the betrothed with nature and their ancestral lineage.
It grows increasingly hot in the study room; Paul’s cheeks burn, his throat drying up as his ears pick up the droll words that read just a line behind his own pace. A glance to Thufir reveals an irritatingly calm expression – Paul blinks away his rising anxiety, some stirring creature of reluctance and alarm; what kind of archaic ritual culture does your house have?
Paul can hardly imagine you practicing any such traditions on Geidi Prime – though the very thought of what your life had been like sends a wave of nausea through him.
Words blur and dance; mocking with implications, with visions of white, with soil under grasping fingers, with soft sounds swallowed by thick brush, sharp gasps dissolved by the call of birds in the trees.
A sunbeam penetrates his vision, and it is searing; with a sharp breath, Paul's fingers pinche the bridge of his nose.
A life guided by the words of duty and future is one too swaddled by a promise of one day – but to Paul’s horror, one day has seemingly overnight become today, and he feels the sands of time slipping through the cracks of his cupped hands, blinded by the sun.
Noises are too loud – birds scream in the sky outside, the wind howls and wails – the hum of the holovideo has set his teeth on edge, and the quiet breathing of the tutor in the corner has caused a twitch upon his eye.
It is all very suddenly too much.
Here he sits, a boy in a castle; and a looming presence upon his shoulders, shadows which bend in the light and whisper the names of those who have sabotaged his family for centuries. Such small panic suddenly festers and blooms into a garden of contempt, curling with branches of sharp thorns.
A hand to keep within his own – a hand which curled around pools of shadows for years. You, who walks the halls of this very castle – who haunts his mind with the ghostly absent gaze and your very own kinds of shadows.
It is too much.
With a sharp sigh, he snaps. “Don’t you think it’d be more pertinent to study Harkonnen tactics, instead of this?” Paul’s voice cuts clear through the accented drone of the video, his arms crossing sharply. “She’s just as accustomed to that, I’m sure.”
Erratic breathing takes his senses in a moment; and he is left with a sweat-stuck tunic and a panicking heartbeat. Thufir turns to Paul, eyes sage, wary.
“Paul, she was–”
And immediately, his voice is far too calm for the matter at hand; a Harkonnen puppet walks these halls, and yet even in the preparation for the upcoming Space Trade Referendum, Paul seems to be the only one with any such sense of alarm.
It is just as soon as Thufir begins that Paul’s rage takes hold. “–No! Nobody will listen. She was one of them for almost half a decade. She was accused of espionage, her family was proven of it – who's to say this isn't just another trap?"
Mentat training can take a lot out of one, Paul has been told; and so Thufir lets him release his anger, with very little protestation – it serves to irk Paul further.
There is that anger once more, the scraping hunger that claws through his chest and calls for him to pick up a blade. Abruptly, Paul rises – an uncharacteristic burst of emotion, he swallows. “Thufir,” His heart thunders, panic rising, “I will finish my readings on Sabberon later, I swear to it. But I’d prefer to do it on my own, if it’s alright.”
Thufir holds his gaze for a moment, though a ghost of acceptance reflects in his visage. “Very well. Though I may remind you: Your father suggests you initiate the heirloom exchange soon.” He finishes; Paul’s overwhelmed expression must bleed through the deep breath he takes.
“Sit down, young lord. Let us begin today with cause and effect–”
On Caladan, the sun casts long shadows through the windows at midday.
But hiding behind drawn clouds of moisture, it is sullen and gray this afternoon. The third day waking up within the castle has brought you news that the Duke wishes to meet with you in the late afternoon; and that you are invited to join the Duchal family for supper this evening – though besides this, your day is free.
A daunting thing indeed.
The morning is spent staring warily at the dark corner of your chambers, awaiting the ghost to crawl from the shadows once more; though he does not, and your dreams begin to slip away into a misty memory of a wooded forest and a sinister grin.
Despite your fears of the dark, it is serene in your chambers – natural curves of patterned wooden beams, spined arches which draw in the warmth of the sun; steaming tea and three girls who sit with you quietly, watching you move as if you’re made of porcelain.
The news of your impending meeting with Duke Leto has settled anxiety deep within you – a foreboding thing in of itself, but the sense of apprehension has spiraled you into a restless stirring.
It is not until you finish preparing your hair for the mourning veil that you speak – and with a voice soft but firm, you turn to the girls who tidy your space. “I'd like to go explore,” you decide, turning from your vanity to watch their looks of surprise.
You have not left your chambers much since your arrival; aside from attending sparse meals and the first morning when Paul had escorted you through the premises, you’ve remained in the dreamspace of your room, twitching at shadows and waking yourself up with hoarse screams.
In truth, you yearn for the comfort of metal and leather curled beneath your fingers; an itch unable to satisfy, a phantom limb which looms somewhere in the depths of the castle. In a blink, you're lost to it: A glint of a blade from your dream, hands lithe and pale reaching for the hilt.
You watch the shine of the sun over the sea as your veil is lifted over your eyes, haunted by visions of metal glinting under a black sun.
It is with mercy that you are dressed today – dark trousers and a tunic the same deep cerulean as your veil.; and your chambers are left quietly with a denial of company from the workers who clear your tea.
You slink in that way you know how; with a small smile growing on your lips unbidden as you inhale such a clean breeze that courses through the ancient place. It is, in a way, quite a solace; your lungs, so heavy and exhausted by the recycled air of Giedi Prime – a fresh breath, one that does not sting your throat.
A freedom licks at your spine as you continue, turning corners on a whim, eyes sliding in avoidance of any other being you pass, though you bid them a good day with a nod of your head. It is peaceful in this castle, and some resentment bubbles in your stomach because of it. Beams high above your head are patterned and shaped to breathe intricate shadows over your frame; high, vaulted ceilings, old stone cool beneath your palm. Along the castle, plants burst with the fruits of healthy care; and laughter echoes somewhere far off in its depths.
In another world, you would have felt such joy to call this your home.
Today's clothing is more forgiving; your trousers are loose but more reinforced at the hips and waist, allowing you to move much quicker and quietly through the halls. A gentle swish comes from the cloaked veil upon your head – and you, with a moment of resistance, nearly rip the damned thing off. How easy it would be, to toss it into one of the several lit hearths in the vicinity, eliminate the evidence of it.
There still remains a small rage within you, simmering and igniting more each day you go on like this – resentment for the customs that you barely know, for your house that no longer exists; for the people lost to time and slipped through the grasp of your family’s lineage. An embarrassment, you know, to be told of your own family's traditions by foreigners.
Out the window is a glimpse of the glistening sea. Violent in its own way, it slams against the cliffside, silent to you but louder than life; it is green in the way everything is, and once more, you wish to see the planet without the veil’s tinted vision.
But in a blink, the sea changes; it is dirt, soil acidic and unfamiliar – and a casket is lowered into it, forested and glossy; it is sand, sun glinting and white – and bodies are thrown down upon it, black blood leaking and jeweled.
Guilt is an old friend, and you welcome its embrace with a swallow and shaky hands.
You leave the window behind.
The walls seem much more empty as you go further into the castle's bowels, dragging your palm along the cool stone; at the turn of a corridor, you find yourself at an ornate doorway. There are intricate carvings deep set within the wood – a man and a bull; your fingers trace the slope of the man’s shoulders, pressing gently to feel the door give way easily.
The air is still within the room – a study, one with shelves and shelves of ancient artifacts, of tomes and scrolls. Your arm stirs the sunbeam leaking in from the high-set window; dust particles swirl and dance in your wake. A slow turn yields an understanding – several pieces of select furniture are covered with sheets, as if the room is no longer commissioned; You bite back the lingering feeling that you're somewhere you're not supposed to be.
There is no true danger – if you were to wander somewhere you didn't belong on Giedi Prime, you'd have been punished; though in truth, you doubt the guards here would dare touch you unless you gave them a reason to.
You walk among the forgotten room, hidden away from prying eyes; fingers over the spine of a leatherbound tome, eyes tracing over the foreign language.
You come upon a large hawk spreading its wings carved in the window in front of you: large, proud; green and black with gold embellishments. The Atreides colors.
And then, another book that your forefinger traces – a deep blue color, the spine is old and well-read. A few of the pages are even dog-eared, the dust deliberately swept off its pages as if it was read recently.
Caladan: A Comprehensive Ecological Study of Biodiversity.
You pull it out gently, if only to study its contents quickly, momentarily forgetting the task of finding the armory in your piqued interest; Yet you can explore further, you hear footsteps approaching from behind.
Hair stands up on your neck.
They're light, sneaking – intentionally quiet. In less than a breath, you whirl around, slipping the book into the waistband of your trousers, hidden by the train of your veil from behind. Though the presence becomes apparent, your hand instinctively goes to your hip; and you come up empty, a flash of irritation washing over you as a reminder of your absent beloved nameday knife.
Paul Atreides stands in the doorway, expression guarded as he takes in the sight of you, stood amidst the shelves.
You flounder, having expected it to be one of your handmaidens coming to redirect you, or perhaps a member of the Duke's guard – but his stare is similar in its surprise; flecks of green turn suspicious, glancing to the desk beside you, towered with old Atreides family war strategies and tomes of battle tactics.
“What are you doing in here?” His voice is accusatory in itself; no greeting to you beforehand to soften the blow of accusation. His cheeks are flushed, eyes narrow – he is harsh in the dim light, and you do not need to see the crazed look in his stare to know he’s agitated about something. Irritated.
This causes no waver in your position; you lift a concealed brow. “The door was open.”
His voice returns with its same sharpness. “This is my father's old study.” He takes another step into the room, “It's not meant for prying eyes.”
A lurch in your heart at the implication, a rush of heat prickling your skin. You stiffen.
“I was looking for a place to train,” your voice shoots back, stubborn and defiant. No matter how thinly veiled, you bristle at his suspicion. “I didn’t intend to intrude on your father's privacy.” You continue, “You may give him my apologies when you see fit.”
Dust swirls in a storm next to Paul; his gaze is piercing, laced with distrust despite his chivalrous facade. Your pride prickles under his narrowed scrutiny.
“Forgive me if I’ve offended you, Lady Bourbon,” His words clip you and set your jaw tight, “Considering certain circumstances, I'm sure you understand our cautiousness in matters of trust.”
A bristle in your spine, temper heating your cheeks as he continues, “But if you're lost, then allow me to escort you.”
Your step forward is no such acceptance of his venomous tongue. “Forgive me for assuming you’d know better than to judge based on matters of circumstance,” you retort, your voice sharp with wound, “Please don't exert yourself, my Lord, I'm sure I can find the armory without a chaperone.”
It is a brush past his shoulders in the doorway; you leave with a burning frustration, fingers flexing for a blade – your footfall echoes in the corridor, some staccato rhythm you cannot care to hide any longer. Anger pulses through your veins, simmering your resentment; a belittling thing, to let Paul speak to you like you are the enemy.
Paul told you just yesterday that you will one day be Lady Atreides; if he is so afraid of your so-believed connections with House Harkonnen, why has he not insisted you be cast away?
Resentment is a familiar beast clawing in your heart: Your own lineage is gone. A house as old as the planet it ruled, burnt to the ground – the other Houses Major, complacent and willing to see it happen – and they plan to use you for themselves.
You may be betrothed to Paul Atreides, but you will never be a part of their house; your blood is the ancient blood of the Pine, of the Sword.
You'll have to be a wife to the future Duke – sire an heir, live in the castle, command the planet.
But you will not go down easy.
The armory is not as empty as you'd wished.
In fact, it is one person too many; you're mistaken sorely when you storm in, chest heaving and cheeks hot with anger, to find one person standing in the middle of the floor. Hurt and anger boil dangerously within you; and the only thing that might placate you is swinging a blade.
Your arrival is not quiet.
“Duncan.” You greet the man icily; He faces you, blinking back his surprise with a poorly concealed expression.
And, salt rubbed into your poorly healed wounds: He uses your first name; a gentle thing as he nods to you. "Is everything alright?" He wonders.
A foolish question, really.
In anger, you nearly scream; Why did you wait so long to get me? Where were you? Where were my parents?
But you already know the answer. They were doing nothing.
You grit your teeth, instead striding purposefully towards him, tossing the book from your waistband onto the floor with a smack. “You're the Swordmaster of the Duke,” Your voice is cool, masked – and of course, this is known; He's been Duke Leto's Swordmaster since before you were born into the world.
“That's right.” He affirms, wary of your movements as you stride towards the weapons rack.
You hum, fingers tracing over the various weapons laid out – none of which, your precious nameday blade. “I find myself missing my knife,” You muse, “If I remember correctly, you took it from me on Giedi Prime.”
It is then that you walk slowly towards the center of the sparring mat where he stands, in front of the rack of shortswords. You look up at him. “I would like it back.”
To your surprise, Duncan nods – a flicker of something in his gaze. “Of course,” He agrees, “Would you like to spar for it?”
He reads you like a book.
You, after only a brief moment, acquiesce: “No honor without a fight.”
And so without waiting for a response, you snatch a blade from the rack; He tosses you a shield that you activate swiftly around your wrist, assuming an offensive stance as he settles his own.
For a moment, neither of you move; your blood sings, eager to take out your anger; eager to show him who you've become.
To show the beast everyone expects you to be.
You lunge at him; it is quick that you are reminded of his impeccable skill – you’ve not sparred with anyone in over a week and a half, save the weak attempt at a fight you gave to Duncan and his men when you were taken on Giedi Prime.
In the commotion of your family's abdication, the arenas had been filled to the brim with your house's soldiers and advisors the whole week leading up to your exit from Giedi Prime; Even Feyd had been too occupied to fight with you.
It takes only minutes before your muscles are aching, screaming.
The frustration of the morning and the despair within your stomach spurs you forward, keeping your feet under your body; and soon, your panting and the clang of steel on steel fills the room, punctuated only by both you and Duncan's measured breathing.
It’s been a lifetime and a half since you last trained with Duncan Idaho.
There was a time that you moved together like water, even when you were just fifteen; he'd taught you how to fight like a Ginaz Swordmaster just as much as your own family did – and though his visits were sparse, he'd never miss Sabberon’s harvest festivals.
He, arriving onto the snow-kissed tarmac and you, always with a blade in your grip and your brother's hand in the other.
You were graceful when you were young and still learning – but now you're quick, snarling like a rabid dog, lashing out with tooth and nail. It feels nothing like it used to be, and it shows in his expression.
“Have something to say, Idaho?” you hiss – a quick gasp from you as he gets near to taking you down, ducking at the last second as he charges your right side. He lets out a breath as you slide past him, slamming your elbow hard into his side; A dirty move.
You have little room to feel relief that he seems some manner exerted – you, however, are drenched in sweat, fatigued, and alight with endorphins. A sheen over his forehead in the light leaking into the room is all forgiven to you as you duck a blow. His brows raise. “You fight different, Little Bourbon.”
And a pang in your stomach once more at the nickname, how easily it comes to him. As if nothing’s changed. “You already told me that.” You hiss, wiping sweat from your brow and parrying a strike to your side, “It's the veil.”
To be fair, it could be the veil – it's restrictive, catching on corners, pinning beneath your arm, tangling as you fight hand-to-hand; simply, it is inimical to your interests.
Though he does not bite at such bait. “Is it not the years with those beasts?”
Your blood runs cold.
“What do you know of those beasts?” You snap, heart pounding; memories of pale hands slipping over yours, of a glinting black smile – the one that'd called you pet but paraded you like a wife; Spoiled you, ruined you – haunted you, nurtured you.
What is that old saying, about biting the hand that feeds you?
But in a swish of the veil and a blink, Feyd-Rautha is once more in front of you; curved blades, painted chest, and a sinister smile.
Your steps stumble back in shock, your breath caught in your throat. An intimidating, lithe frame of shadow – and he laughs a mirthless, dangerous chuckle.
Don’t worry, my pet. I will find you again.
It is all you can do: You lash out, grunting as you swipe at his face – though as your blade comes down against the shield, it is once again Duncan in front of you.
You can't hide the gasp as you blink away the vision, heart thudding heavy between your ribs.
His recovery is swift, tutting, “I didn't mean to imply that it is a weakness, my lady.” He blocks a blow and you struggle for a moment against his sheer strength; with a twinge of anger, you can tell he's going easy on you.
He continues on. “–Far from it. You seem to forget that I've fought them, that I know them, too.” He's momentarily distracted when he disarms you, and you use the opportunity to flip sideways, jumping gracefully over the water station to retrieve the blade. His countenance betrays a grin of appreciation at your acrobatics, smirking as the pitcher of water upon the table shakes slightly.
Concealing a grin, you creep back around, launching into an attack that he parries quickly, dropping you on to your side. You grunt, kicking with your legs to twist, trying to force his body off of yours – you strain, muscles screaming.
He stares down at you, raising his brows. “I'm just saying – maybe there's aspects of your training that could benefit from a balanced approach.”
He finishes his sentence just as he bests you, your blade flipping against your own ribs as he forces your arm tight against yourself; your shield flickers red.
He's won.
Still fighting the adrenaline from your vision of Feyd, you hiss. “What are you implying? I'm too rabid an animal to tame?” Your head tilts on the ground, dragging your veil upon the mat.
“Is House Atreides scared of Little Bourbon?” You muse, still heated by the previous encounter with Paul this morning, by Duncan’s unremarkable reaction to your jabs, by the ghost who seems to haunt you awake and in dreams. “Or, are they just afraid I've become Little Harkonnen?”
Once more, he does not take your bait – instead he rolls off of you, offering a hand. With a sharp glance, you take it, letting him pull your full weight off the ground as if you're nearly weightless.
You sigh, side cramping as you move from his grip to pour yourself a glass of water. You pour a shaky one for Duncan, too, trying to fight the creeping sensation that he's talking to a stranger. He regards you, wiping sweat from his brow, “What I am saying is that I am here every day. Come train whenever you please.”
You give him the glass and he grasps the water gently, watching you from the corner of his eye. The hesitation makes your jaw clench in anticipation; You busy yourself by examining the various blades that lie before you, knowing what's to come.
Finally, he says your name softly. You hope he does not see your spine stiffen.
“We haven't had the time to speak about…” A gesture half-thought; he is clearly trying to put together words, but you cannot bear to hear them. You drag your finger along a curved blade, eyes squinting shut, pain swirling in your heart.
“I'm sorry. I–” Duncan starts gently but trails off as if he can't bear to say it out loud. His fingers hesitate just before your bicep, as if reaching out to you; For a moment, you almost lean into his presence – but a memory of sharp words and harsh eyes courses through you. I'm sure you understand our cautiousness in matters of trust.
You swallow down bitterness as you step away slightly, tossing the knife back on the rack with a clatter. “I'm fine,” you reply curtly, voice steelier than ever. “Nothing to do about it now.”
Duncan sighs, but does not call your bluff. You almost appreciate him for it.
You turn to face him again, glad for the veil to conceal the glint of tears upon your waterline.
“Now where did you put my knife?”
It is one of the many things that strikes you about the Atreides as you sit in the conference hall that evening: They do not sit like a council, looking down at you – instead, the table is rounded, attended at all sides with only one chair unoccupied. You suspect Paul's is the body absent from the chair – he’s training with Duncan, then; you must have just missed him on your way back.
Your newly reclaimed blade shines, restored and clean, with etchings inlaid across the hilt; you’re significantly fatigued after your sparring, though Duncan’s words have threaded unease through you. This string of angst pulls taught when your eyes land upon Lady Jessica. A relieving presence, quite welcoming – though her ability to stare through the veil and into your own gaze is rivaled only by her own son. It is a wholly unsettling talent of them both.
A press of your finger upon the tip of your blade; it beads with a lick of crimson, and you sigh.
After a moment, you set the blade in front of your place for all to see; a threat, or a sign of respect – you’re unsure.
Though in the flash of your fingers upon the hilt, guards in the room unsheathe their own blades – and without a blink, Duke Leto holds a hand to halt them, signing something to them in their war-language.
You watch on with a stilled heartbeat.
“Lady Bourbon, thank you for meeting with us.” His voice is a deep caramel, “We understand the weight of your sudden responsibility, and it does not go unappreciated.”
There is a knot in the table before you, glistening within the polished wood; you nod rather curtly, not particularly keen to drag out the pleasantries of this meeting. Your voice comes stonily. “How may I be of service, my Lord?”
At your deflection, he merely nods slightly. “I was told you spent the afternoon training with Duncan Idaho.”
He speaks plainly and you are, if nothing else, appreciative of that; His eyes glance over the short sword that lays in front of you, to the signature black leather that wraps around the hilt. Once, it had served as a claim: A detested thing, one held out of self preservation; perhaps in a way it still is.
“Yes, my Lord.”
Brows draw over his eyes; an expression serious and dutiful, and for a moment you can see the echoes of Paul in his father’s expression.
It is not surprising to you that Paul is a well-respected figure in the castle; even the workers who tend to your quarters each morning seem to speak well of him. Hestia, around the rim of her teacup just this morning, had spoken to you of his rigorous training, the time he spends with his mother and with Dr. Yeuh, Thufir Hawat, and Duncan Idaho; and though you were less than interested in the more sentimental aspects of her recount, of some promise of intelligence, of depth, of humor – a thought you find most impossible – you can admit that he will easily assume his father’s role when the time comes.
A voice from beside the Duke: “We’d like to reiterate that you are free to pursue your interests, to educate yourself, and to engage in hobbies that bring you joy or interest. We hope for you to consider this your home, and know that we are here to support you in any way we can.”
In the moment that follows, you blink rather dumbly; thrown off-balance, a raft in a sudden clench of rapids – this is not how you’d anticipated the meeting would go.
And here you sit, rigid as a board, eyes wide: It is not shocking to learn that your unease and discomfort on this planet has been rather clear – you hardly rest, you have never eaten around any others than your handmaids, you barely speak; hostility grows from you as branches of a willow weeping in summer.
You shift within your seat, growing uncomfortable under such attention, the kindness so raw and unburdened in the room. “We’d like to know of your interests, so we may set you up with any materials you may need. I'd like to introduce to you Dr. Yueh, as well as Thufir Hawat, who have volunteered to help tutor you, should you wish.” The Duke’s words bring a rush of heavy emotion through your chest, “Duncan Idaho also wishes to help you train if you see fit. I understand you knew him when you were young.”
Your eyes have begun to sting with the lurching sensation of emotion; For the first time in what feels like an eternity, you're being offered a taste of freedom, and it has sent you into a state.
It is a feeling of fight or flight; your heartbeat pounds against your ribs, your hands clenching tight against the healing crescents within your palms. A mantra in your mind, some whisper of a breath leaking from your lips as your gaze bounces wetly from Duke Leto, to the knife before you, to Lady Jessica.
I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
With a sharp inhale, you come back to life; a blossoming willow as your headchain chimes, steadying your palms on your thighs. “Apologies, I…” A weak attempt, and with a swallow of humility, you begin again: “Your generosity overwhelms me.”
In a silent beat, it occurs to you that they await your revelations; and with a sheepish swallow, you wonder: What, indeed, are your interests? Have you any, anymore?
You swallow the burning bile climbing up your throat. “I was educated in politics and Imperial economics for some time.” It is difficult to speak of yourself as the faces watch you – though you continue stoically, your heart thunders in your ribcage. “I've always been fascinated by cultures, by botany and ecology– I…” your mouth is incredibly dry, voice void; a tear has escaped your waterline, and you hope it does not come through in your voice. You don't know what else to say.
“Thank you.”
There is a small gleam of recognition that passes Duke Leto's eyes at your words, his smile intrigued. “Those are all noble pursuits, my Lady. You have similar interests to my own son; I believe you two will have much to discuss.”
A laughable thought – and your mouth bitters at the realization; For a moment, you'd slipped away – into a world where you are their daughter, a world where you aren't tainted by the last several years, by the crimes of your House, of your blood – where you haven’t been turned into a monster that hisses at a glimpse of the sun.
“I’m sure we will.” You echo; and in the breath following, it becomes clear there is no good will for free:
“Though we are hesitant to put you into another painful situation,” Gurney Halleck’s voice errupts from across the table; you move to stare at him with the patience of a statue, back stiffening. “It is hard to deny just how helpful you could be to us, my Lady.”
Your eyes snake over his pressed uniform, back prickling. You resist the urge to run, or to throw your blade at his head.
Though his following words are surprisingly delicate: “–And we hope, when you are ready, you might give us some insight into your previous arrangements.”
It is a song and dance well-known from your time on Giedi Prime: Coercion disguised as cooperation.
You do not by law owe the Atreides anything besides marriage to their son; though perhaps cooperating with them would be in your own interest as well as you await the upcoming arraignment.
Faces watch you, sharp and poised; a dark green that runs nearly blue in the light, their uniforms are cerulean and pressed, and you wonder indeed how many lifetimes ago it was that you were back in the strategy room on Sabberon, surrounded by tan and green.
Perhaps, if not just the Harkonnens, they prefer you for your relationship with your mother’s sister, the lady of House Ginaz; This thought has several times crossed your mind, but you're sure they'd be displeased to hear of how strained such relationship became when the Harkonnens started filtering your messages.
It has been ages since you heard from her – the Baron grew suspicious at such interactions, and you’re near certain almost none of your letters made it out of Barony Castle at all. Certainly none came in after only months.
A mountain grows within you – one with sharp slopes, with hissing winds – a self preservation remaining from the days of survival. You unfurl slowly, calculated. “During my time with the Harkonnens, I became privy to certain…” Your lips purse, “lateral moves.”
Gurney Halleck's eyes fly to you, as do Lady Jessica's.
Your jaw ticks beneath the juniper fabric, “However, my interactions were primarily with Feyd-Rautha.” Your eyes flick to the blade before you before rising again to Duke Leto, “The Baron held little interest in me until my family was accused, and even though I saw him quite rarely, Glossu Rabban suspected me of being a spy long before he’d ever met me.”
An effort you put in to pretend not to notice the flicking of Lady Jessica’s hand’s by her side; the eyes of the Duke and War Master following the motions.
You continue, harboring a slight upper hand that you cling to with your resolve. “I admit, I do not know much about their deals on Arrakis. But I have gathered enough about their industries on Giedi Prime.” You say, eyeing them all. Recalling Paul’s earlier mistrust, you add, “The Harkonnens destroyed my life. I have no reason to lie.”
In the corner of the room, a sunbeam strikes through a swirl of dust; it pierces through the budding leaves of a jade succulent and casts a dappled shadow onto the table. The members of House Atreides discuss in short whispers until Duke Leto turns back to you.
“I’d wonder if you might attend a meeting with our Strategy Council next week.” His proposal sends your brows to raise in intrigue. “As you are surely aware, there is a Space Trade Route Referendum on Kaitain during the same summit as your House's arraignment. I believe we would benefit greatly from your insight as we prepare for the drawings.”
A wildfire of flush spreads across your cheeks; pride, that little kerneled seed, festers in the poisonous soil of your heart – and yet you must remind yourself where you are, who you are. Yes, they see your value, a mistake your last keepers have reaped; but a key is only valued for the locks in which it can turn.
You are a rabid dog for them to muzzle; a blade to sheath. A pawn to play.
“I’d be pleased, my Lord.”
Melodious as it is in its Sabberovna lilt, your voice remains short of genuine in tone and you cannot effectively mask your apprehension.
Duke Leto says your name once more, and it sends a jolt through you. “If I may.”
You wait in your evergreen stillness, and he takes your quiet as acceptance to continue. “Plans have changed quickly, as you well understand. Though regrettable, it is more than understandable if you have felt unwelcome, or alienated here on Caladan.”
The breath out of your lips blows the veil; you bite back a bitter quip regarding his son’s willingness to chew you out for walking the halls of what is supposed to now be your castle – and instead take another breath.
Your anger and resentment is not the Duke’s nor Lady Jessica’s to receive; no matter how distrusting or misguided their son might be – because they have shown nothing but respect for you since your arrival.
Quarters with a view of the coastline, of rolling moors of green that shoot up suddenly in dark rock – bowls of fruit in the mornings with your tea, an offer to study any such subject you wish… you bite your lip, the gnawing pain of guilt bleeding through the bodice in your gown just as your sisters did that fated day in the black sun.
“I regret that I have come off as ungrateful.” Your voice lands softer than anticipated, a footfall in fresh snow; you thank the void that the Atreides boy is not here to snicker at your apparent misery – though as sharp eyes turn to regard you, the self-deprecation melts away once more into a small beast of disdain towards Paul and his disrespect. “It was never my intention.”
You, calculating, choose your words carefully. “I am not unused to being treated like a spy, even in the house I am supposed to become a part of,” Your chin is tilted towards the Duke, resolved and unflinching. “Though perhaps if I were less interrogated by select members of House Atreides, I might feel more at ease.”
And, if nothing else, perhaps a childish part of you hopes Paul will face some hand to ear for this, some chastising by his father or mother. You do not falter at the faces of men and women who have known Paul his whole life, who have known you for mere days; you will not be pushed around.
You continue in the absence of response, folding your hands neatly before your nameday blade. “I'd like to pass along my personal apologies for entering your old study this morning when I was lost, Duke Leto,” You nod to him, “Lord Paul informed me that it is off-limits to my kind.”
And perhaps it is worth it, the indignation, if only to see the varying degrees of surprise upon the visages before you; the Duke, however, glances sidelong to the empty seat beside him before clenching his jaw. Halleck sighs gently, hand falling over his forehead; it is evident the Duke is about to speak – though you do not wish to hear whatever excuse is provided for the actions of his childish son, your future husband, who did not even bother to attend this meeting.
Alas, you do not dare disrespect Duke Leto, after all he’s done for you; and so you sit, knee bouncing restlessly, as he purses his lips.
“The suddenness of your arrangement was a shock to Paul, as I’m sure it was to you. Though that does not permit any disrespect towards you. You have my promise it will not happen again, my Lady.”
This, indeed, comes as surprise to you, having expected them to support Paul’s each whim; and you sit forward, spine still rigid, though interested.
“–As for my former study, it is now used as an archive room. I apologize if there was any confusion regarding its accessibility – I will speak with my son about the importance of clarity and respect in our household.” His words, stern – scolding, though not towards you; a silent admonishment instead directed towards his absent heir. “You are allowed wherever you wish.”
It hits you in some dropping sensation within your stomach: Perhaps the Duke's son has his own opinions about you and your history, but that does not mean his parents feel the same. Soon grows a small spark of rebellion; could you find some new purpose within this House, despite any ulterior motives – or, perhaps, because of them?
After all, your house was once a strong ally of theirs; and the thought, a tantalizing one, lingers for a few moments before being swiftly extinguished by the reality of your situation.
No, you remind yourself bitterly.
You are tainted with blood – not Atreides, not Bourbon – but Harkonnen.
And it seems Paul will always see you as a beast, wife or not.
Supper is called later than Paul expects.
It is past dark when he greets his parents in the room, his formal clothes dark and pressed. Paul’s stomach growls quietly in protest; though more than his hunger, he is mocked by the box he holds.
He places it beside himself, and it will sit there until the end of dinner; It glares at him tauntingly, mockingly.
He avoids its stare.
Words, echoed through his mind in the wake of his childish fit from earlier; and his father’s voice, then:
You may not always like her, but you will treat her with the respect and care befitting of a future spouse.
How foolish he’d been this morning – held captive by the terrene emotions in his mind: flustered, angry at the arrangement – and what awful coincidence he'd run into you, snooping around the old study.
Paul is no fool; he knows better than to treat you in such a way, despite his apprehension. It is difficult to dismiss the knot in his stomach as his father’s gaze lingers; the tension from their earlier argument hangs heavy, but still, Paul’s path is clear.
Whatever his doubts, it changes nothing – you will be his wife, and he your husband. Paul, with a quick glance to the dark horizon, rolls his neck; a sharp pop breaks the silence.
There is, of course, that aching sorrow he holds for you, still; he knows that whatever he is feeling, you're likely feeling a hundred times more.
So for both of your sake, he will learn to endure, to coexist; And it begins tonight.
It begins with the box at his side.
You find the dining room with a burst of doors; and despite himself, Paul’s cheeks heat rather quickly.
Your dress is a dark forest; simple – snug around your figure, though the sleeves flow and pull low near your ankles. Paul’s lashes tangle as he blinks slow, shocked.
Your veil, gossamer thin; it softens you in a way, though it hides less than any you’ve worn yet. Through its shroud, your eyes find his nearly immediately as you walk in – you stare, wide, unyielding.
Paul is struck with a bout of iced chill when he comprehends that he can see your stare, the fullness of your lips, the upturn of your cheeks, the line of your brows, the way you take in a quick breath; He's struck immediately with your evergreen, growing beauty.
The sweet slope of neck, a swirling lick of hair brushed beyond proud shoulders; and Paul forces himself to nod and greet you, his palms clammy from the heat from the castle’s hearth.
You sit beside him, and still there’s that look you always have: Contained, a schooled politeness – but Paul knows better.
A stolen glance once more – and eyes glow against dark green mesh, glinting just like the metal beads that fall over the crown of your head. Paul is struck with the strange desire to see more of you.
Instead, he stares at the knot in the polished wooden table before him.
Mercifully, dinner is an endeavor less strenuous than anticipated; you, more relaxed than he’s ever seen, though your voice is still calculated and stoic. Even his mother is relaxed. She asks you of the wintering sports you enjoyed in your youth; you describe stiffly the pack of wolves your family had and raced with on sleds, about the waxed narrow planks you strap to your feet to race down snowy slopes. His father, enamored with the bladed skates you'd wear upon the glacial lakes when their surfaces froze over; Paul's small huff that is met with a quick glance when you quietly recount the tale of you breaking your femur upon a tree while racing your sister.
Paul’s interest in the lifetime spent upon Sabberon is eclipsed only by the looming box beside him, watching him throughout the meal.
By the time the dishes begin to be cleared away, his heart is hammering in his chest. It is inevitable, something tells him in his mind; the first of several of your House's courting steps – he’d kept true to his words and poured over the chapters about your culture before going to train this afternoon.
Paul anxiously thumbs the box under the table, knee bouncing against the grain of wood – perhaps this won't be the most traditional example of your culture's marriage customs, but most of your people are gone, anyways – he simply hopes it will be adequate.
He will no longer fight it; and he can only try his best to make you feel more comfortable here, especially after his foolish actions this morning.
His parents excuse themselves, and you rise as well; with a jump of panic, Paul calls for you to stay, just for a moment.
You, stilling in your cascading dress, with your stare and your coolness; you stare at him, wordless, and he lingers as his parents wish you a good evening.
When they are gone, you remain standing half-turned from him, solid in your ground, rooted in the ancient sway of your gown. Your eyes are wary; Perhaps you expect him to berate you again.
A quick sigh, his eyes fluttering closed – and the passage flickers through his mind once more.
Gifting heirlooms is a sacred tradition, passed down through generations, where the betrothed proudly wear the sigil of their new house as a symbol of unity and commitment.
Paul's heart races – he wipes a palm upon his tunic, straightening it before approaching you; a blade sheathed in silk.
He can see the apprehension in your gaze, now – an odd thought, one that stirs something foreign in his stomach – and with each step closer, your eyes sharpen with the glint of suspicion. One hand shifts through the skirt of your dress, as if searching for something; though you have no chance to wield any such weapon as he rounds on you, holding out the velvet box with a tremor.
His reluctance is swallowed down with a force of duty; he flips the box open, waiting with his gaze upon the crown of your veil.
You stare down at it, your demeanor guarded, unreadable.
And then, plush lips – partially hidden behind gauzy green – part gently; and for a moment, Paul wonders why indeed you seem completely...shell-shocked.
His brows furrow, though he brushes aside the thought – the formality of the gesture after his childish behavior earlier in the day must have brought upon some whiplash, and that he understands.
Paul chooses to go unspoken the intent of the gift; for it is your culture’s tradition, after all: “My Lady,” His voice is steady though a part of him winces internally at the tinge of nervousness, “I hope you will accept this pendant as a token of my–” Sharply cutting himself off, he clears his throat, “Of our betrothal.”
It is a mercy to have been so trained in diplomacy, Paul knows; for he sounds much more confident than he feels. “I apologize for how I acted this morning. It was childish,” His voice is quiet in the room, and his stomach flips at the memory of your muscles tensing in the morning light, watching him; a ghost in emerald, haunting the halls.
You stare at the necklace still within his palm.
Your lips remain parted, your gaze likely taking in the green and gold sigil of Atreides; a hawk.
Small, ornamental – it was his great-great-grandmother's, from her wedding day; cherished for many years.
It took him many hours to find something that seemed fit to uphold your family's tradition; though he’d decided upon this pendant once he laid eyes upon it – the color will suit you.
Paul awaits your response, hoping you'll see the gesture for what it truly is: An attempt to bridge the gap between the two of you; Suggested by his parents, yes, but chosen and executed by himself.
He, in the unease of the silence, nearly says more; but soon your eyes harden and your reach moves towards the box.
“Thank you.”
But your voice is much too cold; your eyes hold none of the shine he’d seen previously, and it is with a pang in his stomach that he recognizes your sharp glance sideways, towards the sparse workers who attend the dining room.
Your eyes are lethal – just as lethal as the rest of you.
You would not be as civil if it were just you and him, he is sure of it; His parents may be gone, but there are servants who watch you with the corner of their eyes as they clear dishes.
A crawling sense of regret, some grimy dishonesty that rises within him – perhaps he should have waited until the two of you were truly alone; he’d not even considered how it may look to you.
Your own hands shake as you reach under your veil – Paul watches warily as you clasp the necklace slowly; his lips are dry, throat begging for the relief of water – and he knows better than to recognize your tremoring hands as anything but a result of your sheer resentment towards him, towards the marriage.
Your lips are plush as they are freed from the trappings of your teeth.
“It is a gorgeous collar,” you utter; and with a turn to stare up into Paul’s eyes, his heart thuds, breath catching. His head tilts to hear you – and your voice comes just as it always does.
“I shall wear it like a dog.”
The choice of words unsettles him completely; a pang of regret within him – but you are out of the door before his lips find anything to say.
series warnings (read individual for extra warnings): slow burn. enemies/strangers-to-friends-to-lovers. arranged marriage, violence, canon divergence (aged-up characters, can be read as pre-canon; characters are in their 20s), past non/dub-con, canon-typical & vague references to incest/pedophilia (the Baron & Feyd-Rautha), angst, eventual smut, blood and gore, trauma, plot heavy, religious imagery, paganism, lore-heavy
↬ prelude
an ancient house falls. paul atreides learns he has become betrothed.
↬ i you are ripped from your nest of darkness and shipped to a new world — or — destruction: the only thing you and feyd-rautha may have ever had in common.
↬ ii - coming soon.
you are tainted with blood - not atreides, not bourbon - but harkonnen. paul will always see you as a beast, wife or not.
word count: 7k
warnings: arranged marriage, politics, graphic scenes of blood, violence, & death of family. trauma, past abuse (harkonnen&feyd rautha warning) not much else. mutual mistrust.
notes: hi! tysm to my new followers ily all <3 here's chapter one remastered of this fic [originally posted on @tremendum ] - (inspiration for reader's family is taken from the family of tsar nicholas ii, so if it feels familiar that's why.)
feedback very much appreciated :)
series masterlist
Penitent Crimes of Retaliation;
“In accordance with the legal doctrine of the 'Reprisal Accord', as sanctioned by the High Court of the Landsraad, attacked houses are granted the right to retaliate against proven offenses committed against them; This action shall such be labelled as ‘Penitent Crimes of Retaliation.’
Under this mandate, should sufficient evidence be presented, the aggrieved house may initiate a retaliatory strike and is sanctioned to engage in warfare against the offending party. While reparations for damages incurred during the conflict are mandated, perpetrators shall be exempt from criminal sentences ensuring a balanced recourse within the framework of inter-house disputes; as deemed by a jury of the Great Houses Major and Minor at court."
- From the Reprisal Accord, Office of the Padishah Emperor. Imperium, 10041.
There was once a time when green was your favorite color.
You'd enjoyed a childhood of it – Peridot stones glittering upon headdresses, jade figurines, the velveted forest of winter dresses; halls draped with verdant portraits of the faces which came before you, and before you, and before you – all shroud in that forested pride; an ancient thing, to know the ground of the planet and to take life from the same roots as the trees around you.
A life cushioned in the nested hearth of mountainside and jade pools of glacier; and of course the breathstealing height of the sacred Pine. Viridescent flicks of the woven banner of your house, waving in the snow-whipped wind; A snarling green wolf upon grey armor, a hall of decadent verdant heirloom stones.
And in the three months each year when the ice melts off the lower glaciers – the glacial lakes, thawed into that deep emerald green. Your brother, your sisters and you, charging with wild hollers and flailing limbs as tutors and soldiers alike chased after you; scolds and yelps of fear dying on chapped lips as young bodies leapt into the glossy pools, rippling screams through the woods.
In the yawning abyss of childhood, there’s always been that lingering haunt color; When the men of a faraway House Major arrived to retrieve your older sister, she'd been shroud in that very same sacred pine-satin. An elegant dress, you remember quite clearly – draped in gold and jade, haunting the mouth of the ship in her shining emerald headpiece as she turned to wave goodbye for the last time.
A constant source of home, perhaps; and a reminder of the ever-churning yield of abundance the planet gifted your family. Gifts of life, spurting through the ice, growing over centuries within the warm breast of mountain caverns – miners returning to the villages and towns surrounding the castle, hands stained with verdant dust. Green, that gift of life.
Even at your sister's funeral.
A glossy forested casket, laid to rest in the ground of a foreign planet – the wind was sharp against the dark emerald veils of the women of House Bourbon the day you said goodbye to your sister.
Killed by the birth of her first – a son. You became the oldest of your siblings that day.
It was an honor, your parents had told you through tears as the earth swallowed the emerald peeks of casket through handfuls of dirt; an honor to serve your family, to serve the Sisterhood, to serve the Imperium.
Years churn on, as they always do – and somewhere across the Imperium, perhaps a new life has sprouted ,evergreen above the plot where your sister lies in eternal rest. But you can hardly stand to look at green anymore.
No, instead, you mostly see black.
They'd sent you away to make for your house a fortune; a son, they'd wished, for your sake - and, by whispers of your Lady Mother, a daughter – but the nest you made was one of fear and survival; a place crawling with shadows and monsters and deadly smiles.
Your na-Baron.
If Feyd-Rautha ever had a semblance of hesitancy, it was when you first met four years ago. You were at the end of your seventeenth year and he, freshly eighteen – a cordial boy by at least Harkonnen standards; escorting you with an arm held out, eyes malicious and teeth glinting but nonetheless tamed to curved glances and sickeningly sinister grins.
He'd even called you Lady Bourbon those first few months on Giedi Prime.
Perhaps in many ways, you can consider yourself lucky. Even if only for your bloodline, or the power laced through the syllables of the name you come from – or even, Maker forbid, in some way for yourself – Feyd-Rautha has indeed taken special care of you. Perhaps he does care for you – the care a panther reserves for his chosen prey.
Despite his endless vanity, he still has stooped so as to admit he waited too long to claim you as wife; a feat which, in some way, might bring him just a step higher in the chokehold his family holds the Imperium – and you, with tongue as sharp as your mind, know when to push and when to dissolve into those dark shadows he loves so much.
So you’ve let him stew in fury, avoiding eyes and sneaking from column to column; ears pressed to oaken doors with a trembling hand.
The accusations had come from Baron Vladimir; House Bourbon has been stealing the precious refinery codes, committing treason against the trading accords along the Harkonnen-dominated exportation route. And perhaps, he thought, you’ve been the one to plot against your beloved future family.
But Feyd-Rautha knows better – knows you'd never dare betray him for the sake of your life or purely through the denial of access. Feyd was, after all, the one to demand a public execution of your family and, in the same breath, redirect your sentencing to imprisonment. As if you weren't already.
Don't look away. See what we do to scum, my pet?
Hatred flows thicker than blood; and perhaps if you'd had your blade this morning, you would have finally plunged it right into the junction of creamy skin upon his neck, right there in the stands.
You were, in some ways, relieved when their bodies hit the sand fast. You've never seen your brother's skin so reflective as you did this morning; and the black sun, oppressive as it is intense, still could not hide the blood that had seeped from him.
A deafening roar of the crowd still did not muffle the glistening cries of the two girls; the ones no older than seventeen and nineteen, the ones who carry your nose, and your hair, and your laugh, and your blood. The crowd could not muffle the sharp loss of breath as the blades slid slow across the seam of their necks to spill that which you share so intrinsically.
You'd swallowed thickly, twitching to look away, gasp – to cry; but any semblance of pain was concealed under layers of unbudging, seething hatred. There is no space here for anguish; Your na-Baron would love it too much.
Why don't you leave me with them, then? You'd hissed through your teeth.
Though he was wild and psychotic, growling with hunger at the bloodsport in front of him, he heard you for what you'd said. Feyd's fingers pulled your hair hard, forcing your chin up towards his crazed stare. A sickly glint in the black sun, his teeth shone with hunger.
You'd have me throw you to your Wolves, and lose my prize? He'd tutted, kissing your forehead with a sickening sweetness; enough so that the servants had turned away their spider-black gazes. They didn't care much for the acts of affection you'd occasionally show one another – they know just as well as you that in a world marred by ugliness, any glimpse of beauty becomes a hauntingly grotesque show of power.
He'd snarled, a growling rumble through the chanting crowd of spectators screaming kill the Wolves; His breath was hot against your cheek. You're mine to keep – there's plenty of life left for you to serve.
He'd held your hand tight as they slit your father's throat – he was too drugged to put up a fight worthy of retaining his life; after minutes, his blade fell. It was then both of your sisters, swift deaths prolonged only by the wisps of prana-bindu that remained in their muscles’ memories, by the screams that heightened the jeering crowd in bloodthirst. Next came the assassination of your brother; the Tsarevich, the boy whose grasp on his knife shook as he looked up towards your seat helplessly.
Your mother had fought as much as she could in her drugged state – a Weirding Woman, whose flashing arms and darting legs outsmarted the Harkonnen fighters for far longer than what must have been expected. A Ginaz fighter until the end.
You saw it all with nails torn into your palms; the Harkonnens are ruthless, and Feyd-Rautha had sat calmly beside you with a sickly grin.
Your mother met the slow knife’s blade against her throat. It should have finished quickly – but in your horror: The neckline of her gown was too high, and too thickly inlaid with encrusted heirlooms.
Bless their voided souls.
The emeralds that tore from her gown as she'd spilled her blood to the sand sent a ripple of pain out of your throat; and Feyd had buried his face in your neck, teeth sharp and gaze glued to your own ruby blood beading out of your clenched palms, blackened in the sun's light.
If anybody would have bothered to look before burning the bodies, you know they'd find all the family diamonds sewn into the fabric of their clothing. Centuries of your House, melted away.
And Feyd-Rautha had drank up your agony with his lips, smiling as his hand wrapped around your throat.
Now, alone and away from the thick industrial air, your chambers are cold and suffocating.
There are screams coming from the hall – not the kind that you've grown to associate with your na-Baron testing his new blades, but the kind that comes with danger. With change.
As it turns out, you are not Feyd-Rautha's to keep any longer.
A loud noise outside of your quarters jolts you from your bed with shaky legs, whispering to yourself. They're coming for you. The sheets are crisp against your awaiting, tensed body; the blade gifted to you on your nameday three years ago by your husband-to-be grasped in your palm; still tainted with the ghost of your own blood.
Your whispers reverberate in the empty room, a spiny crawl of black moulding curling around your bed and awaiting the coming voices. "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me–”
Your voice shakes, despite yourself. Air puffs from your lips as your blood rushes - few things remain from your early days of training, before you were sent off to become a Harkonnen; This remains a relic.
A loud clash outside – blades against the failing force of shields.
For a moment, a hand grasps your arm; ghost-white and possessive, it claws at your skin, voice rumbling through your mind. Don't look so sad, my pet.
The door to your chambers begins to slam with an external force; Soon, the soldiers will enter, and you will do what must be done.
The hand squeezes upon your wrist harder – you bite back a cry. I will never let them keep what is mine. I will find you again.
You almost wish he will.
Slow as a predator, you rise from the sheets; a preparation for a fight that will end before it begins. A fight that has already been won.
Even when the hand upon your arm is gone into the shadows, succeeded only by a whispering ghost of bruises clutching your skin, you do not stop the old prayer; in fact, you hardly notice that you're saying it at all.
Even as the doors give in.
"-and when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing – only I will remain–”
The soldiers arrive in a burst of splintered doors and smooth movements; the one at the front, flanked by only two others clad in Atreides-tan armor, triggers some faint memory from a lost childhood.
He moves towards you in the sickeningly familiar stride, and it fills you with rage.
Duncan. Why did you wait so long?
It is too late. You lunge, snarling like the wild beast you've become; You fight, because that is the only thing you know how to do. It is the only thing you have left.
Your blade falls within minutes and you're taken by the man from your past not a minute after; you're on a ship, watching the black Opiuchi B disappear in an hour.
“My Lady.”
There is a buzzing downfall of drizzling rain that slides over the umbrella’s spine above you. The air here is thicker, laced in salt and terra; the voice snaps your mind back to the ground. Wind whips the veil draped over your head as you step forward stiffly, arms sore and eyes heavy.
The dress you wear, salvaged from your family's old castle, is dusty and pressed.
It clings to your skin, drowns you, as the rain falls. A staff of House Atreides holds the umbrella above you, shielding the intricate detailing inlaid along the trim of the dress as you walk.
The dress upon your shoulders is as tight a cage as the one you inhabited on Geidi Prime; and though it was an effort of good intentions, the Atreides' insistence of providing you with the necessities for you to perform your Sabberon's traditional customary mourning rituals has left you with a prickled spine and a saturation of spite bleeding into your heart.
Your family may be gone, but the ghosts of their deeds remain with you; a hard goodbye to give when you alone remain to pay for their transgressions. Still, you have found yourself draped with the veil, the dresses, the jewelry; you, alone on a strange planet with the symbols of their crimes, of their betrayals, of their poisoned love. It's what they would have wanted.
It is a death march from the hangar into the covered acceptance hall – banners of Hawks climb high towards the ragged cliffs, whipping and cerulean in the afternoon light. And ahead, stoic and proud, the members of House Atreides await you.
Your hands brush against the dark velvet – a texture you have not felt in years. It is odd, you notice, to catch the light of your skin not wrapped completely in black fabric; It has been many years, too, since you found yourself in green.
It is with a prickled glance that you slow your pace behind Duncan Idaho – the man turns and glances at you when you begin to ascend towards the House members, but you can't bear the look of unfamiliarity that flickers over him when he looks at you now. Your chin remains high, your eyes over the line of cliff climbing towards the sky.
Duncan, after these years, still looks the same – perhaps less tall, but that has more to do with your growth than his own; You, however, are not the same girl he last saw on Sabberon. Your hackles raised, your talons flexed within your palms: A coiling beast of hatred backed into a corner.
There is a coastline far beyond the hangar – and it calls to you quietly; a vast thing, cerulean, cold, and deep. You’d been otherwise occupied when the ship entered atmo to Caladan this afternoon; the sea remains something only within your mind, a figment whispering of golden lips and curling tides in the corners of your dreams.
An urge strikes you as you begin to ascend the stone stairs towards the welcoming party; and subtly, you crane your neck outwards to catch a glimpse of that sea – a crashing call in the distance, the circle of gulls cutting through the clouded rainfall. But there is no ocean within sight; only jagged cliffs which rocket hundreds of feet above or drop off sharp below.
Duncan stops just before you; Your spine straightens once more, vision concealed in hues of pine and evergreen as you take in the retinue standing before you.
Duke Leto Atreides at the center; a man with peppered age, a tall pride and commanding stare – beside him, a woman in a gown of the same deep cerulean – Lady Jessica.
A flood of knowing penetrates you the moment your eyes find hers; through the veil she stares at you, before flicking her sight beyond you, to the Reverend Mother who’d travelled with your retinue as per High Court orders. A voice curls in the back of your mind, stalling your heartbeat for a slow moment. Hello, sister.
Your lips purse as you look to the right, stood tall next to Lady Jessica; a boy intense in stare and proud in ceremonial uniform, eyes already awaiting your gaze with a sharp curiosity. Paul Atreides.
The son to whom you're now destined.
Even from your obstructed vision, there is no hiding such sharply beautiful features – a sculpted visage kissed with a smattering of freckles from the Caladan sun, pale from the weather; a curve of pouted lips, full, furrowed brows – curled dark locks and eyes wide and just as penetrating as his mother's. A properly handsome heir, you allow your heart's skip; But Maker, you realize as he solemnly watches your veil shift in the breeze, those eyes are so green.
And most peculiar – within them, there is no hunger; nor hatred, no inkling of emotion besides a giveaway twitch of curiosity in the dragging gaze over your shrouded form. Some ancient stirring in your chest, a hibernated anger, a desire to bare teeth towards such an unassuming and altruistic stare – though you do no such thing, remaining balanced upon your feet and tense with the coiled hibernation of an awaiting serpent.
There are eyes upon you with each movement of breath from your chest, and it stirs your fear in a way you’ve not felt in a long time.
It was easy to go unseen with the Harkonnens; by nature of arrogance and brashness, they paid no mind to the girl hiding around the shadows, slinking through the halls with a dark stare but blood that still bleeds green. The Atreides are no fools, and you are not one to think so; where Harkonnen honor lacks, Atreides honor flows in abundance. Though still, any such action that might come from a place of intrinsic value sets your teeth to edge.
The Great Houses of the Landsraad have charged you to leave your nest of shadows, and you have done so. You have been shipped to a new world, a new chain to which you will forever be shackled.
You have learned to find the betrayal of emotion that lingers within the stare of men like Feyd-Rautha and Vladimir Harkonnen – the hunger, the greed, the danger; you have learned to sharpen your edges with the blade of their power, and you know now what your place in this galaxy must be.
And yet, Paul Atreides: His stare betrays no emotion but duty; a foreign thing to you in these times, though as you scrutinize the twitch of his brow or the brush of eyelashes against cheek, you find yourself struck wary and off-balance.
He does not have that wolfish hunger in his stare that you’ve come to know – in truth, if not for the boyish pout of his pink lips and his freshly-shaven jaw, you might have dared mistake him for his father; A Duke.
You might have remained in your study of your betrothed if not for the echoing voice of Duke Leto speaking your name. A snap of your gaze towards the man in front of you as he nods warmly, “Welcome.”
It is an effort to bow in return to him, wincing through your stiffened muscles as your headpiece chimes with your movements.
“We are honored to welcome you to Caladan.” It is an exceedingly polite, humane tone with which he addresses you; you, a stranger who has been delivered from the protection (which itself might even be a laughable term) of their sworn enemy.
Though despite the sincerity, you find yourself struck with a stinging embarrassment: There is no honor to your presence, not anymore.
It gives you a moment to gather your expression, however hidden behind the veil it may be – perhaps they can't quite make out your face, but Lady Jessica watches closely. She sees.
You take a sharp breath, swallowing away the lump of emotion in your throat.
“Thank you, Duke Leto.” It is steel which grinds the melodically polite veneer of your voice; and without a hesitation you turn to greet the Lady of the House.
“Lady Jessica, it is a pleasure.”
In response you are offered a smile as warm as the Duke’s voice; there is a flicker of understanding which floats along the line of blue in her irises, and it compels you to continue, “Thank you for welcoming me to your home,” You finish, hoping the steely reflection within your voice does not bleed unto the other ears.
The rain falls quietly overhead, sliding over the high-drawn ceiling of the open acceptance hall. “We understand that these are trying times,” Lady Jessica begins; your legs feel weakened in a moment of shortened breath, though she finishes in a quiet nod. “We are relieved to have you on Caladan.”
The spin of worldchange has caught up with you at the reminder of such trying times – a day and a half’s travel between systems behind you, and yet the deaths of your family meet you still with a fresh sickness of shock each time you close your eyes. Your headdress chimes lightly when you bow your head once more in appreciation of her words.
The welcome feels rather intimate, in this moment – a retinue of four strong flanks behind you: Duncan Idaho, the Reverend Mother, and two Atreides soldiers; and before you stands the Duke and Lady, their Heir, and a party of five men in Atreides uniforms. Your eyes sweep them efficiently – no weapons; a surprising show of trust, knowing who indeed you have just been delivered from the clutches of.
Perhaps they'd thought they'd be taking in some injured little dove; a cooing thing, wings clipped and battered by the ferocious boy who'd gifted her with a knife plunged between her ribs on her eighteenth nameday. A bitter thought.
The scar that lies just below your breast on your right side is not a reminder, but instead fate carved into flesh – it does not ache; it hums with the echoes of pain grown to purpose.
It echoes of the months spent thrown into a pit under the glaring black sun; Not the arena that rang in the end of your family, no – this pit is smaller, with one large seat for the na-Baron himself; one not with a crowd of vicious jeering but with drugged concubines and slaves clutching blades to service his na-Baroness.
A place to watch his pets play.
Your eyes glance to the curved wounds scabbed over your hands – little half moons, skies of pain, etched into the palms of your hands. Destruction: the only thing you and Feyd-Rautha may have ever had in common.
Unfortunately, you endured; a hard lesson, to live with Harkonnens, to be one of them – and with a clip of fear, you worry you may never be able to unlearn.
It has been long enough for a bout of thunder to rumble up in the heavens above; you turn to the young man who stands next to Lady Jessica.
Your betrothed watches you in a peculiar tilt of head – subtle, but analytical; a gaze so green you have to look away, nodding slightly as you speak once more. “My Lord,” your heart thuds in your chest uncomfortably, wondering if he, too, will be as displeased as Feyd so often was when you spoke to him; though Paul does not so much as move as he inhales softly, eyes coasting over your jaded silhouette.
“My Lady.” He returns the formality with a voice much softer than expected; your heart is struck with a cool unease, distrust tightening its clutches around your throat.
A silent moment hangs thick between you; it is only then that you see the tense coil of Paul’s shoulders – surely a mirror of your own. Defiance, your mind tells you. Though Duncan Idaho’s voice cuts through your observations quickly. “We have much to discuss.”
Cutting to the chase, as always; you are relieved for the attention to fall off your presence as you let out a short exhale. “Yes–” though the Duke lifts a brow, eyes caught on the lump of gauze which wraps around Duncan’s bicep, concealed by his uniform. “–Idaho, Do you need to see treatment?” He questions the Swordsman.
As Duncan laughs, your shoulders tense; and before you can consider some quieter death, he begins to speak. “No. Harkonnen blades are sharp – but so are Lady Bourbon's nails.”
It is immediate, the prickling of eyes which befall you from all sides, and a heated stare from your betrothed that you steadfastly ignore for the sake of glaring at Duncan. There is a smirk growing on his lips as the Swordsman addresses you. “You fight differently than I remember, Little Bourbon.”
An old nickname, unearthed from the catacombs of the life you once lived in the wintered palace of Sabberon; a nickname so cherished in your youth and so foreign now that it knocks the air from your chest. Resentment curls within you at the warmth upon his tongue.
The shame floods you just as fast as the pride does, and in the aftermath, you stand just as rigid as before, hands clenched into the velvet of your skirt, seething under your veil.
There is no hiding the shock upon the Atreides' countenances; before them stands some monster, some savagery wrapped up in a gown and a pretty smile hidden beneath a veil.
It had been a habit – rabid hounds don't tuck tail when cornered, do they?
Nonetheless, you smile tight behind the veil, trying not to think of the life you've just left – of what cold life lies ahead.
When you respond, your voice is frigid. “It has been a long time, Duncan.” You muse; Paul’s piercing gaze of green penetrates the veil, but you ignore him.
“Threats demand evolution.”
The rain is gone into mist by the next day.
It rolls in fog along the moors outside, taunting an echo of tides far below the castle – in the morning room, forks scrape over blue-plated China. A grandfather clock lives in the corner; the seconds pass in quiet, insistent ticks.
A cleared throat, a swallow of water – air blown across a plane of steeped tea.
Your eyes burn from exhaustion.
To your relief, your arrival last evening held no such time for small talk – you were whisked away by the service staff to make sure your quarters were comfortable; in the minutes you’d been given to yourself, you’d found the clothing of a former life – dresses, tops and trousers of yourself, your sisters and your mother; the dressings salvaged from the Castle on Sabberon in the week leading up to the trial at Harko Arena.
All washed thrice of soot and rubble, hanging in wait of your touch within the wardrobes in the room. A sickening feeling had haunted you the moment you’d slipped your mother’s old ceremonial ferronnière and hair chain; the reflection of your stare in the mirror resembling too close the sharp gaze of her own. And that feeling had lingered in the shadows of your room still as you shut away the diadem of gold and emerald, the gowns, the old trousers your sister would wear to ritual; your eyes, burning along the skyline in the distance as you locked the wardrobe with trembling fingers.
Late in the evening, you'd attended a meeting in a small conference hall.
There, sat across from Paul, Masters of War and Swords and Strategy, a Mentat, and Lady Jessica, the Duke had asked you questions, ensuring you were not harmed – and perhaps more importantly, trying to ensure there was no malicious intent to your presence. It was in your sleepy haze you first detected the twitching motions of Lady Jessica's hands, the flicking gazes of the others as your voice carried to them. A war language, you’d realized quite quick. They think I am lying.
You'd only been there for ten minutes before you were escorted by a handmaid back to your chambers, where you sat without rest through the night.
Truthfully, you're breaking fast this morning with Lady Jessica and Lord Paul out of courtesy; You were up far before the sun had teased the horizon this morning, staring emotionless at the ghost who stood in the corner of your new chambers.
He is not a new visitor; in the hazy world between waking and dreaming, you’re well used to the ghost – how he smirks by the foot of your mattress, whispering with sharp teeth, with sweet memories, with promises of blood and pain. You’d grown used to his presence, and you’d remained upright for most of the night – until something moved in the corner of your vision, and you screamed.
That had woken one of the servants.
She came in with her head tilted down, holding a pitcher of water; you asked her to stay.
Her name is Hestia; close enough in age if not younger, as she must be merely twenty – the silence was hesitant but not wholly unpleasant as she’d sat, wary but willing as you shared the pot of tea brought for you.
It wasn't until she'd brought you breakfast a few minutes later that you realized the staff must have been informed of your ancestral customs before your arrival – she said nothing as you ate silently, staring out towards the coast of rocky cliffs and rolling moors you could just barely make out from your chamber windows. She’d helped silently to smooth your hair under your veil as you’d drawn it in preparation to leave the room; and with a beat of hesitance, you’d almost admitted to her you did not wish to wear it.
Now, you sit quite similarly; hands perched in your lap, tea in front of you untouched as the food on your plate.
Your future husband sits across the table from you – with a motion sluggish and ruminating, he pushes the omelet around on his fork. You find the boyishly restless knee from Paul, one which shakes the table just slightly, jilting your glass full of water.
A polite and quiet conversation follows; some throw off observation of the weather this coming week, how you seem to have brought the sunshine – a comment that makes both you and your betrothed share a sharp glance; heat following the sudden shared connection.
Efforts to bring you into such discussions are met with your polite, quiet words – and after a short time, a woman enters and whispers something to the Lady at the end of the table. Nodding, Lady Jessica takes her leave with a pointed look at Paul, suggesting he might escort you around the castle to settle you in.
Some cold dread licks its way up your spine, though you force yourself to nod – to adapt.
“–If you have time, my Lord, I'd appreciate it.”
He seems equally pricked by his mother’s suggestion, though he hides it quite well – a quiet, chivalrous demeanor suits his striking features, and you find your distrust mounting in some self-preserving effort.
Lady Jessica’s leave brings a gust of air through the morning room, and soon you’re met with the scent of forest; a warm soap, sharp with the efforts of Caladan’s bright ocean salt and wooded hills to the west that lingers upon his skin. Your face flushes in the heat of the sudden morning rays, exposed by a gap in the clouds.
It's silent for a few moments as only the two of you remain; Your food untouched, his half-eaten.
The wall behind Paul boasts an intricate geometric wall of wood and empty-space; a fascinating architectural choice which complements the beauty of Caladan’s moors – you find yourself intent on tracing each line laid before you, ignoring the glossy glint of Paul’s hair in foresight. In the silence of youthful discomfort, the quiet feels inescapable – until it isn’t.
“Are you one of them?”
His eyes trace you when you return to his visage. Them?
In a slow realization, it occurs to you that Paul might assume you are just as bald and sickly as each Harkonnen; that perhaps their soil, so poisoned, might have penetrated the evergreen veins that carry your life to each part of you – might have wilted the very things that make you so uniquely yourself.
You shake your head, thankful for the lack of chains upon the crown of your head today; you are not a Harkonnen, and you never will be.
Perhaps that would have been the preferred choice of words, but instead from your lips fall a curt sentence: “I have hair.”
In the morning light, you glance at the skin of your arm; The skin that boasts arm hair, none of the sickly pale skin that knew of no clean air nor healthy sunlight – your skin, glowing with real melanin and health.
It is a brash choice to speak with such frivolity; You'd not dare speak so freely on Geidi Prime – stars, you'd never have spoken this freely at home on Sabberon, either – but there is no home anymore.
And if you've learned one thing in your years since coming of age, it's that the Great and Noble Houses of the Landsraad are crawling with perjurers, fabricators; Paul is likely the same.
If the Atreides boy must be wed to you, you cannot help that; They can dress you, insist on your traditional customs – but you will not go down easy. No matter how cold the home, you can be colder – you are more than the bones which hold you up; crueller than the demons that kept you in their ghostly grip for four years.
Though at your words, Paul’s cheeks flush a peculiar pink – and his lip twitches in a momentary lapse of stoicism. A lost battle, it seems, as you are rewarded with a small, boyish grin flickering over his visage. “No,” he starts again, eyes penetrating your own somehow, even beneath the layers of green that wrap around you. His breath comes in a short exhale, “Not Harkonnen,” His elaboration grows quiet as he continues, “I meant…Bene Gesserit.”
Your stomach chills.
His eyes seem to know the words which whisper around your mind, and a faint sense of memory gnaws at the cage within your head. After only half a moment’s hesitation, you shake your head. “No, my Lord.”
It must be what he expected – he does not so much as blink; though a flicker of knowledge passes over his face and he closes off, eyes flashing.
You are – despite your resolve – coaxed by his expression to continue, “I suppose I was…” Your hand tugs the sleeve of your gown.
“–Or, I was supposed to be.”
Your tone, unemotional; Paul bites back the suspicion that climbs up his throat. He’s no fool; he saw the glances between his mother and you, however short – in those breaths, the buzzing of his mother’s whispers behind shut doors, her eyes quaking and steadfast in the same.
And, of course, the lapping memories of dreams upon a beach of consciousness; a face beneath a shroud, a whisper from golden lips, a pathway dimly lit and forked into the foggy horizon.
He stands when you rise from your seat.
The dress you wear is unlike any he’s seen outside of your culture’s books; a waterfall of emerald that pools and flows – some frozen-limbed weeping willow, kissing the face of a thawing lake. He offers an arm to you, and you loop yourself to him with only a breath of hesitation.
Your voice comes again from those lips so hidden behind the veil of pine. “I was supposed to be a lot of things.”
Your voice is undeniably beautiful; strong, cold, unwilling. Polite, yes – but calculating, aggressive. Coiled in a nest, watching, waiting to strike.
She tells the truth.
His mother had signaled during the council the night before a dissection of your honesty; Yet trust is a fragile thing, and as much as he places faith in Duncan and his father, the thought lingers of distrust.
He saw the claw marks you'd left upon Duncan; a man you've known since you were a young girl. By decree, Paul is now bound to you in marriage; but he has spent endless hours unraveling the Harkonnens — their cunning, their strategy, their thirst for power – and yet, according to Duncan, the Baron and his brutish nephew simply let you go, unscathed and unpursued.
It gnaws at him, such inexplicable mercy from a house that knows no such thing.
Paul’s wariness does not bleed through his posture, as indeed it does not with you: You walk with your chest out, back as straight as a soldier’s; your words are cordial, indifferent.
Halls pass as he murmurs a light overview of the castle’s history, introducing you to Houseworkers as you stop to greet them; he is rather surprised by your indifferent charm that seems to enrapture the workers and scare them all the same; he wonders, then, what this life will be like, when you become the Duchess and he Duke.
A revolt in his heart; one childish and quelled by duty and understanding – and by his father’s words, burnt sharp into his mind.
Duty often requires us to navigate paths we may not have chosen for ourselves, Paul. You may not always like her, but you will treat her with the respect and care befitting of a future wife.
Love may come to you in other ways. But you will marry her, you will respect her, and when the time comes, together you will sire an heir.
Outside the walls, it is quiet – the wind is calmed, the tide drawn by the looming moon in the morning sky; you and Paul share no more than one unintentional glance broken up by wind-warmed cheeks and a softly cleared throat.
It is not until he escorts you along a path that winds down out of your sights that he notices your change in demeanor. Beside him, you take a deep breath, footsteps faltering as you slow – a blink of concern until he follows the direction of your veil towards a clump of moss sprawled across the earth. Curiously, Paul slows to a stop beside you.
For a moment, you stare down at the dirt and fallen tree limbs, the grassy field and rocks; though as if an invisible string pulls you upwards, you snap your head, voice sheepish behind your veil. “Apologies, my Lord.” You start to turn, “I've read of plants like this, but never seen them before in person.”
It is an odd moment in which Paul comes to understand: He knows what Giedi Prime is like, and your homeworld, from what he's read in the books on Sabberon, is mostly Glaciers, forests, and high altitudes.
The notion of you finding interest in Caladan’s flora and fauna is as bizarre as it is endearing – and so instead of moving along, Paul bends to grasp a bit of moss from a fallen trunk.
Your veiled visage tracks him as he returns to his full height; The earthy dirt spreads between his nimble fingers, green and soft against his skin. You watch him silently, curiously.
“It absorbs up to twenty times its dry weight in water,” He explains in an echo of an old ecological lesson, pushing the spongy material with the nail of his thumb. “Banks of it grow just around the brackish tidepools below the castle.”
Your interest, piqued, causes your head to crane slightly from your small height – he can tell, even without seeing any part of your face, that you are fascinated; it brings him a moment of pride.
At his gesture towards the coastline just peeking below, you follow in a slow move of interest, breath coming soft from hidden lips. He watches the side of your silhouette flutter in the breeze. “Am I allowed to see?” You ask stiffly, arms hanging at your sides.
An odd request – one which penetrates any semblance of protectiveness for his homeworld and instead strikes alarm in his chest. What such monsters do you come from that you must ask such foolish questions?
He lets the moss fall back to the stump, brows furrowing. “You are to be Lady Atreides one day.” His voice does not reveal any hint of his resistance to this fact, and for this, he is grateful. “You do not have to ask permission to see your own land.” He finishes, cheeks warm with the insistence of the seabreeze and the alarm which still thuds through his heart.
You have grown quiet – in the rushing blow of wind, you are still as an evergreen.
The wind from the sea whips in misty breaths even this high; inky tresses swirl around his vision and are swept away by his own hand – there are no words from you for several very long breaths, in which you clear your throat.
“I…do not feel well.” Your voice is sudden, thick with some hint of insistence – though your spine does not bend, it does not yield; a small breath as your head cranes up. Paul sees a glint of eyes through the ripple of green. “Please, if you would excuse me.”
It is not below Paul to entertain your fib – for your sake, sure; but rather for the growing weight of bitterness that festers in his chest each time he thinks of what is to come. Paul escorts you to your chambers in a tense silence that echoes only the footfalls and the swishing of velveted fabric.
You slip into your chambers with a polite and half-whispered thanks to his looming frame. Paul watches the fabric of your dress curl around the corner as the door shuts.
Upon his return to his own quarters, Paul catches Hestia; a girl known long before she began working for the House. He requests she bring you some bread and cheese, and send Dr. Yueh to check on you once more.
An insistent tapping grates in his mind as he stalks the corridor towards his rooms; a clock from halls away, ticking away the seconds – hands clench, flex; an itching shiver down his spine as he turns corner towards his chambers. A flicker of green around the corner just across the hall sends his stomach to tense, stilling in a moment of suspicion; hackles raised, Paul blinks away paranoia as a Houseworker trims a houseplant. A hand swipes over his visage, massaging his eyes.
Threats demand evolution.
The memory of your voice pierces his thoughts – and with a second thought, he turns heel and makes towards the training room, fingers itching for a blade.
series warnings (read individual for extra warnings): slow burn. enemies/strangers-to-friends-to-lovers. arranged marriage, violence, canon divergence (aged-up characters, can be read as pre-canon; characters are in their 20s), past non/dub-con, canon-typical & vague references to incest/pedophilia (the Baron & Feyd-Rautha), angst, eventual smut, blood and gore, trauma, plot heavy, religious imagery, paganism, lore-heavy
↬ prelude
an ancient house falls. paul atreides learns he has become betrothed.
↬ i - coming soon.
you are ripped from your nest of darkness and shipped to a new world — or — destruction: the only thing you and feyd-rautha may have ever had in common.
it rains on caladan. you are ripped from your nest of darkness and shipped to a new world.
— or —
destruction: the only thing you and feyd-rautha may have ever had in common.
word count: 1.2k
warnings: arranged marriage, politics, familial assassination.
notes: hii <3 ive decided to revamp and continue this fic from its original [posted on @tremendum ]. this is a re-written version of the fic and will be posted regularly while i work on new chapter updates! feedback very much appreciated :)
series masterlist
In a shocking show of mercy, the High Council of the Landsraad has decreed the pardon of the last Bourbon:
After a week-long raid on their home planet Sabberon, the House of Bourbon has been declared dissolved; following the Tsarist-Duchal ruling family's sentencing to death at the Harko Arena on Giedi Prime.
The counter-insurgent attacks enacted by House Harkkonen have been ruled by the High Council as 'Penitent Crimes of Retaliation' following the damning allegations of espionage and theft of Harkonnen technology and intelligence.
The House of Bourbon is succeeded only by the sole heiress and daughter of the Tsar, whose betrothal to the na-Baron of House Harkonnen has been abruptly terminated by the High Court of the Landsraad.
The daughter, who carries the bloodline of both House Bourbon and House Ginaz, has by decree of the High Council of the Landsraad been pardoned of the Harkkonen sentencing of political imprisonment, and subsequently has been determined not guilty of her accused crimes in association with the Bourbon plot. The case’s arraignment is set for a few months' time.
As once-standing political allies to the House Atreides, the Lady Bourbon has been decreed to wed to the son of Duke Leto Atreides by the closing of the standard year.
— Collected Galactic News report sent to Duke Leto Atreides, 10191. Caladan.
A muffled crash of falling plates rolls through the dampened halls of Castle Caladan; a faint gasp echoing in response, soft rumbling murmurs in their wake.
Paul does not bat an eye.
In the corridors behind him, servants pass — they carry with them dishes, plates, crates filled to the brim; Ladies walk by briskly with emerald velvet draped across their arms, returning from the washrooms with dutiful, quiet whispers.
A celebration has been planned with the news of Duncan’s return. Ceremonial, Paul had been told earlier – an acceptance of the Tsarist-Duchal family in a time of exigency, a welcomed embrace from one Great House to another. But something has changed now — the Housestaff walk with wide eyes and whisper in quiet gulps; the guest wing has remained unprepared, the grounds have not been arranged for a large reception, the cooks have not wrought in more than the usual baskets of crabs and seacatch. Hearths die dim in the absence of tending.
Something is not how it should be.
It had just as clearly been written into the faces of those he passed on his way to his father’s study just now; worry, anticipation — change.
Paul knew there was something wrong when he was woken from his sleep earlier than he usually rises for training — though what followed this dismal morning amidst the onslaught of rainfall was not breakfast, nor training, nor lessons; Merely a request to attend his father's study as soon as possible.
Should there have been any such doubt as to the shift in the air this morning, it would easily have been eliminated by the seal stamped upon the message his father has deposited on the desk in front of him to read: A gleaming, unmistakable seal. The High Council's signet.
Teardrops pelt the study’s windows in a violent onslaught. Another crash, this time deeper in the bowels of the castle; The world breathes and stirs around him, though he cannot feel it. Instead, Paul Atreides stands, shellshocked in his ceremonial uniform.
A breath falls almost forgotten from disbelieving lips.
“Married?”
Two solemn faces stare back at Paul.
"Yes,” his Lady mother affirms, eyes cooled in the wet light of morning dim.
The shock of his mother's bluntness has never been quite so abnormal before; though in the moment he takes to swallow down the information, his father clears his throat gently, his mother awaits with a steadied spine. The room shortens; a hazy thought lingers in Paul's mind, though he cannot yet taste it. Gurney Halleck, who sits in the corner, absently plucks the strings of the Baliset upon the wall — far too casual, it stirs the pit within Paul's stomach.
Married.
A far effort to wade through the thickening marsh of his mind. Paul's lips part with a disbelieving huff before he murmurs, "I thought Duncan was returning with Duke Bourbon and his family." Dark brows furrow only the slightest - the fruitful reaping of a lifetime schooling emotions into placidity; a weakened throat constricting as he glances at the message unread before him. "Where is this coming from?"
His words hang, suspended in a silence as tense as it is regretful; beyond the high-climbing cliffs, the sky cries slowly.
A shift of weight from his father, a sigh deep from his chest. "Their house has fallen. Duncan Idaho returns from Geidi Prime this evening."
His words come with no such semblance of comfort — the blood drains from Paul's face, his heart thumping into his throat. Duncan returns from Geidi Prime — not the Bourbon's homeplanet, Sabberon.
It is a valiant fight to not sway upon his own feet, a rushing surrealism hitting his mind in a haze: When the Atreides Swordsman had been deployed, there was not even a whisper or a word of marriage — not a single consideration of betrothal, nor of Paul’s involvement whatsoever.
It was an expedition — to aid an old ally, against the oldest foe that House Atreides has. Paul’s lips purse in the bitter defiance that courses through his veins. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. A foolish thing to think.
It is slow, the realization that blossoms first as a seed of doubt and soon to a flower of disgust. "I am to be wed to..." His sentence is interrupted by a choking of his own saliva, a vicious turn of reality upon him.
Wed, to one of those monsters from Geidi Prime? The bile that rises in his throat is of disdain, of hatred — he is expected to marry a monster?
It is not some act of childish dissent; to be a future Duke is to understand from a young age that marriage is not for love, but for the good of the House, of their people.
Paul has long awaited a future marriage of convenience, of strategy; but to be wed to one of them is an entire new blade of danger.
"A Harkkonen?" Paul snaps, bitter and sharp as the glare thrown towards his father’s windless visage. And as if only some slight error, some amusement sparks within his father’s gaze; with a slight tilt of the head, Leto Atreides declines the accusation of his son.
"No."
Lips part in a puffing sigh of relief, hidden only by the flaring confusion which wraps around his ribs and nestles itself into his beating heart.
Across the room, a Houseworker sets down a teapot and cups with flickering eyes before scurrying out of the room once more. His father, after a glance to his mother, resumes with a firm tone, soothing over the sheets of rain cascading outside.
"She is not a Harkkonen, Paul,” He insists, “Though she has resided on Giedi Prime for nearly four years. She was, up until yesterday, to be wed to the Baron's nephew."
There's another silence, in which the rain slides down glass panes like tears.
"–She's one of Idaho's." Halleck delivers the information rather off-handedly, shifting weight in the corner; Paul, in turn, stares at the man previously occupied with tuning the baliset. A fuzzy sensation as he blinks — one of Duncan’s?
Paul's bewilderment must reflect poorly upon his countenance; his father sighs. "Her mother was the eldest child of the House Ginaz. Duncan Idaho trained with her mother and father at the Ginaz Swordmaster School. It's why he insisted on going to Geidi Prime after Sabberon fell — she is now the heiress; the last of the House Bourbon."
The words soothe only the immediate hackles that a Harkonnen bride brought upon his mind; and although the distrust has begun to slither through his mind, simply Paul nods, clearing his throat.
"–And as part of the High Council's rulings..." His hand gestures weakly towards the sigil atop the message, resigned to the fate which has been inscribed within its contents. "Now, we will marry."
A curt nod affirms the dread coiling within his gut; and the string severs with the glance from Gurney. Paul’s cheeks heat, be it the attention or the frustration of such news. His father, knowing well the troubles of a brilliant young mind, has begun to lay out the battlemaps: "We believe it is for the best. She was nothing but a political prisoner." Duke Leto does not need to duck to catch his son's attention - though in a split moment, Paul meets his mother’s eye; within her gaze is that humming feeling, that flicker of knowledge which sets his teeth on edge.
His father continues. "She is still close with her aunt, the Lady Ginaz. If anything changes along our routes following the Referendum, we will need House Ginaz’s allyship."
It's not a horrible plan of action, Paul's mind reminds him. Gurney plucks a wiry string in the corner; the message sits unread before him, mocking his spiteful stare.
The council of Houses Major, choosing to whom he is to marry; what a twisted, thorny fate. Bitterness is a taste unpleasant as any; and it is made worse when his own Lady Mother speaks up. "Paul. The Reverend Mother found it pertinent-"
But any words she might advise are drowned out by the ringing in his ears, by the words inscribed as he begins to read the message for himself. The ruling is firm — he is to marry you.
Perhaps his mother speaks on, but all that echoes is your name; a bell, hollow and cracked, chiming into an empty hall. His mother’s reinforcement: You will be a smart pair. It is a good match.
The string of fate is severed. A seed of suspicion planted through his mother's insistence: you, a girl from a House fallen from grace, protected by the Landsraad court — a good match. Doubt creeps down his spine — Whispers around his mind, a forgotten promise that lingers only when the shores of conscious pull at the fringes of dreams. Bene Gesserit. A spy for Harkonnen ears. All part of some mechanic political stratagem; and he, in the center of it. Paul, actionless, to be wed to a woman who was made for another.
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