On this day, Jessica has given him a son. A boy who would inherit the dukedom of Caladan, who would carry the name Atreides past Leto’s death. It would not die with him, sinking like a rock into the depths of untreaded waters. It would live on. Here it would stand, here it would remain. It does not slip past Leto’s observations that what Jessica did here today was an act of something. Love, perhaps, or defiance. But he finds his heart swelling regardless, for Jessica had heard his desires for a son, and she had delivered one to him.
And a girl, Leto thinks, staring down at the little restless thing in his arms.
Gradually, his daughter’s eyes open, and when her eyes find him. His daughter’s eyes are a deep gray, half-visible through her squinted gaze, as if she were assessing him. There is a certain focus to those eyes, almost scrutinizing. It is a temporary thing, for soon the girl’s eyes open fully, and her fussing quiets and her eyes now blaze with curiosity. Those eyes flicker to her father’s face, then to the midwives standing close at hand, across the room, finding Thufir in the corner, and the ceiling…everything, everywhere, all at once, blazes her curiosity.
Leto’s smile, he realizes, is so wide his cheeks have begun to ache.
“Do they have names, my Duke?” inquires the midwife.
It is Jessica who speaks first, with utmost confidence - no moment of hesitation. “Paul,” she says. “Paul Atreides.” Her green eyes, like a forest with no end, turn to the girl in Leto’s arms. “Eurydice.”
