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Chapter Text

Despite the sun’s fatal blaze, the light was always soft in the Freman’s halls. Laila suspected it was a combination of the yellowed windows and the plumes of dust that slipped in from the desert, turning the air murky and muting the sounds of distant footsteps. Usually, she didn’t mind it, preferring the deep shadows and golden hues to the ferocity of the outside world. Today, however, she would have torn the roof off of the building with her bare hands for a breath of fresh air.
Are you insane? Her father’s scathing tone, painful despite its familiarity, had rang out over the dinner table several weeks ago when she’d dared to question him. We have no idea of the intentions of the Atreides. You are not to step a foot outside this house until I tell you otherwise.
A few weeks was nothing in the overall scheme of things, Laila tried to remind herself as she paced the dark hall outside her chambers, eager to rid herself of some of her nervous energy. She’d gone months at a time locked indoors in the past – longer, even, when she had been young. Younger, she corrected herself automatically, before cursing her sister and her constant teasing. Inaya should’ve seen herself at fifteen, prancing around and refusing to participate in any of Laila’s games of hide-and-seek or make believe. She had certainly considered herself an adult then.
No, Laila wasn’t a child anymore. And yet, here she was, still confined by her father’s orders and the walls of the compound, forced to twiddle her thumbs or count the ceiling tiles or learn dead languages or do anything other than something useful. Even when future of the entire planet hung in the balance. This was what she was supposed to be training for.
Resisting the urge to flop to the floor with an indignant sigh, aware that it would only confirm her sister’s claims that she was no more than a petulant teenager, Laila took three deep breathes, straightening her spine and rearranging her features into something more composed. Throwing a tantrum would hardly convince her father that she was ready to meet the real world. It had certainly never helped in the past. Although, if she was honest with herself, her restlessness had little to do with political negotiations and everything to do with Joseph.
You’ll be back? He’d asked her breathlessly, pressing a few final kisses to her face as she’d backed from his house.
Yes, she’d giggled, delirious with being wanted.
Tomorrow?
Tomorrow. I promise.
She cursed herself now. A stupid oath to make. Her father’s orders had come that night, and with them, this urgent pull toward the creaky door that opened onto the face that she’d now come to know better than her own, only a few reinforced walls, patrolled streets, and heavily guarded doors away. A pull that she could not give into, no matter how badly it hurt.
She hadn’t slept last night, taking turns between tossing between the silken sheets of her bed and gazing aimlessly out of the window at the brilliantly starred sky, so anxious for the sun she was almost sick with it. If all went to plan, Isaiah would return today, with news of a newly formed alliance and the key to Laila’s chambers. An end, for a while, of this terrible yearning. Not that things were likely to go to plan.
Now, perched daintily in a golden windowsill and plucking at a mandolin with dutiful skill, Laila waited. And waited. And waited. Right until she thought she couldn’t take it anymore. Then, her door burst open.
Inaya didn’t spare a glance for her sister as she strode into the room, tossing her rapier to one side with careless abandon as her other hand pulled at the bindings of her armour. To Laila’s dismay, she was dripping wet, covered with the orange clay that formed if one dared to spill any precious water onto the desert sand. A benefit of being the great royal warrior, Laila noted bitterly. Father had no problems with making exceptions for Inaya when it came to her training.
“You didn’t think to at least towel off a little before trekking mud through my bedroom, hmm?” Scrunching her nose in exaggerated distaste, Laila fixed her sister with her haughtiest glare, tossing her head so that her red hair spilled over her shoulder, the light catching the golden thread woven through her curls and transforming the fifteen year old into the picture of regality. Inaya smirked as she recognised the game, stooping into a low bow and pressing her hands to her heart in mock apology.
“Forgive me, your Majesty,” she pandered, eyes twinkling with familiar mischief. “I’m afraid we don’t all have the time or the servants to look as glorious as you.” She straightened with a laugh, turning her back on Laila and making away once again, still intent on her stillsuit’s mechanisms.
“You may rise,” Laila called after her drolly, and Inaya tossed her a flippant hand over her shoulder as she passed into the bedroom. Disgruntled at being so quickly dismissed, Laila stood hastily from her perch, taking a moment to rein in her enthusiasm before following with a practised elegance.
Laila watched from the doorway as Inaya came to a stop beside the long dining table, stripping down to her training clothes after finally having worked the stillsuit loose. An outsider would not have been able to place the two as sisters; one, raven haired, sharply carved features gritted with sand, sporting wounds from countless training exercises and humming to herself in a voice so sharp it could cut glass; the other, softer, warmer, her blood-red hair and polished features marking her permanently and invariably as other. She was her mother’s daughter, and Inaya was her father’s.
She was weaker, Laila couldn’t help but think to herself, and hated herself for it.
“Have you any news of the negotiations?”
“No. How would I? And stop speaking like you’re in counsel around me.”
Laila stuck out her tongue at her sister’s back.
“I thought you may have run into Father on your way here.”
“The guards say that there is no sign of Isaiah as yet.” Inaya’s use of their father’s real name was pointed, her tone as defiant as if he were here to reprimand her. She turned back toward Laila as she started working her fingers through her dark hair, her fingers catching on the clumps of clay gluing the strands together. Laila watched her for a moment, at her lip puckered in concentration and the impossible angle at which her head was craned, and sighed, gesturing impatiently for Inaya to take a seat. Inaya grinned, abiding without complaint, having struggled only because she knew that Laila couldn’t bear to watch her.
Laila returned with a hairbrush and moved to stand behind her sister, combing through her hair with begrudging care and secretly relishing the task that she always complained was a nuisance. Besides Joseph, there was no one she missed more during these long hours trapped inside than her sister. It was a relief, now, to be allowed this simple closeness, to fuss over her and take care of the things she always claimed she was too busy or not bothered to do herself, to hear her laugh and groan and tease. To hear her breathe and know that she was alive, because there was always a part of Laila that feared she wouldn’t make it back each time she stepped out into the harsh Arrakin sun.
“You have control issues.” Inaya’s words were needling, but her tone was warm.
“Shush. I’m doing something nice for you.”
“It’s about time!”
“Shall I stop?” Inaya quietened, but Laila could tell she was still smiling.
With practised ease, Laila began twisting a braid into her sister’s hair, wishing that she had twine or flowers or jewellery to add so that she could force her to sit here for a few minutes longer. The spirited creature that she was, however, Inaya was already humming with restlessness, twisting her head upward to get a better look at Laila’s face.
“Why so morose, dear sister? Don’t you know that today is the long-awaited end of our people’s grievances?” She was venomously sarcastic. Inaya had maintained since the beginning that the arrival of the Atreides would bring nothing but a new type of horror to Arrakis. They’re not like us, Laila, she’d warned her sister darkly one night. They have no honour, no respect for anything but themselves. They’re here for the spice and nothing more. We cannot rely on them to protect us. We cannot. Why waste our time on such pointless fantasies?
Laila liked to be a little more optimistic, although even Joseph agreed with Inaya. Then again, Laila had managed to choose the two most cynical inhabitants of Arrakis to love.
“You’d do well to believe it.” Laila reproached her gently, without any real edge. Arguing this further was pointless. Only time would tell.
A glance out the window showed the sun as it began to slip below the horizon, marking the end of another day spent waiting, waiting, waiting. Of course the passage of time wasn’t so painful for her sister. How could it be, when, as a self-proclaimed realist, she saw nothing to look forward to on the horizon?
“Don’t be naïve” came Inaya’s retort. Laila only sighed, moving to take a seat beside Inaya as she brushed her fingers across her neatly braided hair, pleased. Then, she sobered, her brow furrowing in a way that told Laila she was being genuine. “I mean it. I can tell somethings wrong.”
“Really?” Concern was Laila’s immediate response – she’d been practising for years in the art of keeping her face carefully poised, concealing any shadow of distress or anxiety. A skill essential for a queen. To Laila’s despair, despite her battle-training and complete freedom to let her true emotions show, Inaya was still better at such posturing. Fighting a surge of annoyance now along with her worry, Laila relaxed her frown, lifting her chin as she did so to reclaim a little of her dignity. Inaya just watched, half-amused, still clearly expecting an answer.
“I’m just anxious for the news.” Laila spoke the words carefully, adding just the right amount of tension to her voice. Lies. And it was near-impossible to lie to her sister, no matter how necessary. Not only did it make Laila feel disgusted with herself, Inaya could read people almost as well as she could hide herself. But not quite as well.
“I know. Me, too.” Inaya dropped her gaze to the floor, biting the inside of her cheek as she considered. Laila let herself relax a little, relieved to have gotten away with the deception. Joseph may not be the only secret she’s ever kept, but he was certainly the biggest. And the most dangerous.
It doesn’t feel dangerous, Laila had pleaded with herself on various occasions. It feels good. And indeed it did. Better, in fact, than anything ever had before. From the moment she’d first caught sight of him in the marketplace, his browned skin dirtied by the combination of dust and hard labour, the sheer bulk of him as he’d straightened up from his stoop with almost predatory grace, his dark eyes glimmering as he’d fixed her with that slow, self-assured smile, it had felt more than good. For the first time in her life, Laila had felt right.
A feeling that had only grown in the days and weeks and months to come. With every harried glance, every desperate brush of the other’s fingers, and, later, every languid, torturous touch that they shared during the nights that Laila was brave enough to sneak into the village, the knowledge that what they had together was as vital as water and as powerful as the gods grew more and more apparent. That, then, was where the danger lay.
Well, there and in the fact that Joseph was a Harkenen.
“Has Xavier said anything to you about it?” Again, the carefully measured tone. Her heart still racing, Laila was eager to push the conversation into safer waters. Predictably, however, her sister only shrugged.
“Nope.”
Laila sighed, exasperated. “You two are useless.” Still, she couldn’t help but smile at the thought of Xavier and Inaya in the training pit, Xavier sweating as she bested him over and over again, happy to bear the blows to his ego so long as it meant he could spend a few more minutes in her company. Oh, yes, Inaya had a few blind spots of her own.
Of course, thinking of Xavier lead to thinking of love which lead to thinking of Joseph, which left Laila right back where she started; quietly and painfully desperate. Watching her sister work the clay out from under her fingernails, her striking face alert even in the relative safety of the palace and her curves not quite able to conceal the hard layers of muscle that she had built up over years of training, Laila felt another surge of bitterness. Inaya was driven and cold, perfectly capable of serving her people, unswayed from her path by such fickle things as love or desire. Even Xavier, her best friend since she was a child and someone who was a perfectly acceptable conquest for a princess, couldn’t distract Inaya from her duty. If Laila knew what was good for her – if she cared, truly, about her people – she would forget about Joseph, ignore the aching in her heart, and be more like her sister. Strong, and righteous.
Impossible. Any attempt to stay away would be nothing more than an exercise in futility. Laila was utterly condemned to her fate.
At that moment, Laila’s train of thought was interrupted by the great doors once again flying open, a familiar figure surging into the room and carrying with him a distinctive chill. Inaya was her father’s daughter, indeed.
Both girls took to their feet, Laila sharply, her spine straight and her expression haughty, Inaya a little more grudgingly. Rather than motioning for them to sit, as he usually did, Isaiah stalked across the room and came to a slow stop at the window, his face eerily empty, leaving the two sisters to glance nervously between themselves.
A silent argument ensued. Laila, as usual, lost.
“Father,” her voice didn’t betray her nerves, as she had been taught, though she glared furiously at Inaya as she spoke. “What news of the treaty do you bring?”
A moments pause. Then;
“Success,” Isaiah intoned, his face still devoid of emotion. “Terms of alliance have been agreed upon.”
Inaya watched as her sister’s face wavered, betraying her sudden surge of elation. She quickly quelled the flicker, wiping her expression smooth and dropping her eyes to the floor. Still, Inaya could see her eyes shimmering, and felt a creeping sense of dread.
“If the meeting was a success,” Inaya hedged, narrowing her eyes as she watched her father, wishing she could shake the answer from him instead of this pitiful cowering, “then why do you look like you’re being sent to the firing squad?”
Isaiah’s eyes, too, flashed with emotion; anger, this time, rather than joy. He turned sharply toward his eldest, the deep frown lines around his mouth harshened by the quickly fading light. Oil lamps were beginning to buzz to life at the edges of the room, but they weren’t enough to combat the dimness. Their sickly glow reminded Inaya of the dreaded sunrise, and cast more shadows than they banished.
“There is no reason,” his voice, strained yet still even, was at odds with his smouldering gaze. “I only regret that I must be the one to give you some difficult news.”
Beside her, Inaya felt Laila stiffen, her gaze once again lifting to appraise her father. Already, Inaya could feel her simmering fear, and wished for the thousandth time that she had done a better job of protecting her little sister.
He’s just a man! She wanted to shout at her. He’s no greater than anyone else!
Laila would agree, but she wouldn’t believe. And even now, she stayed silent, obedient and submissive to the last.
Inaya would follow no such rules.
“What is it?” Sharp as a whip, her voice rang out across the room, riding the sudden surge of panicked thoughts that whatever bad news Isaiah was about to deliver could impact on her little sister. Inaya felt her hands curl into fists, the instinct to protect clouding out rational thought. An instinct, Inaya noted spitefully, that her own father should have, and yet seemed to lack so keenly.
Isaiah hesitated. Inaya noted this with vicious pleasure. So, then. He still had some empathy curled in the stone of his heart.
“In order to cement the relations between the Freman and the house of Atreides,” Isaiah drew consciously from his courtly manner, assuming the position of king in order to quell his daughter’s objections. He commanded, rather than spoke. “Inaya will be wed to the Duke’s eldest son, Paul Atreides.”
A moment of frozen silence.
“What?”
The girl’s voices rang out in harmony, one tortured by disoriented agony, the other burning with unbridled anger. Inaya felt the hair on the back of her neck raise, felt her heart begin to race with the adrenaline that came from the promise of a fight, surely only moments away. And yet, just as quickly, a second, stronger urge descended upon her. Duty.
This was Inaya’s cross to bear. No one else’s.
Isaiah’s blue eyes met his daughter’s identical ones. They shared a moment of unlikely allegiance. And together, they felt the fight melt out of the air.
All that was left was Laila, and her sudden terror.
“You heard me.” Isaiah’s tone was merciless, but there was no urgency in it. Just like his eldest daughter, he knew that any resistance was heedless, and doomed to fail.
Inaya turned to look at Laila, taking in the wide-eyed gaze and shamelessly angelic pout that left her beautiful face so open and vulnerable, like a child who had trusted their mother before she left them, unbelieving, in the arms of a stranger. Inaya couldn’t help but lament this quality in her sister, this innocent naivety that left her so defenceless to those that she loved. Because her sister did, somehow, love Isaiah, after all of these years.
“You – you cannot do this.” Laila’s breaths were quick and frantic, her eyes darting between her sister and her father, begging each of them in turn for support. “I won’t allow it.”
“You won’t allow it?” Isaiah said disbelievingly, his eyebrows raising in a way that signalled to Inaya of danger.
“Laila,” She warned softly, keeping her eyes carefully downcast, her hands folded together in compliance. All she got in return was that look of fraught anguish, that unbearable aphrodisiac. Never had Inaya wanted so desperately for her sister to grow up.
“This has nothing to do with what you allow, child.” Isaiah took one threatening step toward Laila when he failed to see her waver, determined to uphold his power in the face of this unruly disobedience. Part of him, deeply buried, suffered to see his daughter so distressed. But such was the way of this world, harsh and unforgiving. He would not lose another of his women to weakness.
“You will not send her away.” Laila had found some of her own steel, clawing for shreds of her royal training in an effort to impose her own will. Feeling apart from herself, as if she were watching a stranger from across the room, Laila hardened her expression, set her blue eyes aflame, concealed her fear behind the mask of the future queen. “No. Send me instead.”
“No.”
“Send me instead!”
The slap was sharp and well-placed, leaving a burn across Laila’s cheek and a ringing in her ear. It was meant to shock and humiliate, not hurt, but it hurt none the less, and Laila hated herself as tears welled in her eyes. She avoided Inaya’s gaze, shaking with repressed anger, and glared at her father’s feet.
His voice, when he spoke again, was cold and inflexible.
“I will not allow you to be so foolish, or so insolent. You are not to leave this house, and you know that. Inaya is the eldest, trained in the ways of espionage and battle. She has prepared her whole life for this assignment. Do you see her complaining?” Here, Isaiah shot a significant look to his eldest. Her eyes were smouldering, but she was still. “You are the future of our people. You were born and raised to be the next queen. And yet you stand in front of me, cowed and pathetic. Is this how I have taught you to behave?” Laila simmered. “Look at me.”
Inaya watched her eyes dart. A tear slipped down her sister’s cheek.
“I said look at me.”
With a flinch, Laila did as she was told.
“You will obey me. Do you understand? I will not hear another word about it.” Laila sent one last desperate look to her sister, silently pleading. Minutely, Inaya shook her head. “I said, do you understand?”
Slowly, Laila nodded. Isaiah towered. She batted her eyes, and once again Inaya grieved her helpless beauty.
“Yes,” Laila croaked.
Isaiah took a deep breath. He cast a look at Inaya, his gaze heavy with, for once, a grudging respect, before turning back to Laila. A few more breathless seconds passed. Then, in his typical fashion, Isaiah gave in, just a little, for his youngest.
His browned skin, marking him as Laila’s father and deviating from Inaya’s, whose skin stayed soft and pale despite countless hours in the sun, blended in gently with his daughters as he placed a hand on the side of her face, clumsily yet tenderly sweeping his thumb across her cheek as he did so. Unwillingly, Laila closed her eyes, unable to resist being comforted by Isaiah’s calloused fingers on her skin.
“It’s alright. Your sister knows what she is to do. I have prepared her well.” He nodded once at Inaya, a nod that she returned, even as bitterness turned her stomach. Laila opened her eyes again, dolefully grateful for these weak words of consolation. Isaiah released her roughly, unpractised in the art of solace.
“You may leave us.” Inaya spoke for the first time since her outburst, her tone measured and even, bargaining that she would get away with the dismissal after such a ruthless actions on behalf of her father. Indeed, when he looked at her it was with slight anger, but after a moment he gave in, most likely thankful for a chance to flee the room.
“We leave for Arrakeen in two days. Laila, you are to be presentable and honourable at the wedding. Under no circumstances are you to throw such a tantrum again.” Isaiah’s tone was final. With a sweep of his cloak, he turned and strode from the room, leaving a stunned silence in his wake.
Inaya felt as if she were underwater, the sound of her own heartbeat distorted and alien in her chest. The news her father had imparted was too mammoth to comprehend, and felt so distant that he may as well have told her that she would be leaving not in two days, but two decades from now; news such as this couldn’t be prepared for. One could only cling to the present and deal with reality as it arrived. Inaya would simply have to go on as she always had, and not spend time dwelling on this impossible fate. After all, Isaiah was right. She had been training for this her whole life.
One look at her sister told her that Laila was not thinking along the same lines.
The two shared a few moments of fraught stillness. Then, Laila opened her mouth and whispered, as if terrified of the answer;
“How old is Paul Atreides?”
Inaya blinked in surprise.
“Forty-three.”
“What!?”
“I’m kidding. He’s nineteen, like me.”
Laila glowered at her sister. Inaya returned it for a moment, before cracking a small smile and opening her arms. Without hesitation, Laila stepped forward into the embrace and buried her face into Inaya’s neck, feeling the braids she had so carefully woven only a short while ago tickle the skin of her face. A grief so potent it pained her welled suddenly in Laila’s chest, and she gasped with the weight of it, recognising, at least in part, that this new weight was now hers to carry for as long as she was parted from her sister. It settled, with an ache, beside the one she carried for Joseph. Not for the first time, Laila cursed her own ability to love.
“Don’t worry, Laila.” Inaya forced a laugh into her voice as she squeezed her sister tightly, determined to play the role of protector for as long as she was able. “The Atreides are soon to be our very wealthy overlords. I’ll be more than comfortable in their compound, probably eating delicacies shipped in from distant planets and wearing gowns made from baby alpaca fur.” She drew back a little, letting Laila see her smirk. “I shall command a greater army than even you one day, dear sister.”
Her tone sulky and heavy with tears, Laila let herself for a moment be as childlike as she felt.
“I don’t want an army. I want you.”
Inaya sighed. This was another small moment of betrayal, a crossroads where she had to choose between being a leader and being a sister. Her heart told her to cry with Laila, to mourn together and spend the next few hours in a saddened haze. But logic told her that this would not be wise. Unavoidably, two days from now she would be across the planet, under the command of a different people, married to a complete stranger. And Laila would be alone, entirely without the guidance of the only person she was right to trust. This was not a time for weakness. Inaya needed her sister to be unbending.
“Laila. You know that this has to be done, don’t you?” Understanding that she would not be getting the sympathy that she craved, Laila retreated back behind her defences, and Inaya watched her go with more than a little sadness. “This is what you wanted. This is what we’ve been striving for. The Freman are done cowering, alright? And they need you to be their leader.”
Still with that frown curving her features downward, Laila nodded, the oil lamps catching strands of her ruby hair and turning them into tongues of flame. Behind the face of a fifteen year old, Inaya could see the strength of a queen in her sister’s eyes, and found herself more comforted by this than the feeling of Laila’s hand held between both of hers. Yes, Laila would be alright. And so would she.

Chapter Text

Inaya threw Xavier’s hands from her shoulders in one fluid motion, years of combat training kicking in as she was startled by the unexpected contact. Whirling around to face him, muscles tensed in preparation, Inaya took in his familiar features and relaxed momentarily, recovering from her shock. The relief, however, was short lived; Xavier looked stricken, his strong features contorted in an expression of unchecked anguish. A second fear replaced Inaya’s initial one. Though as children she had held his hand as they crept past dark open doors or slept in their beds during nights in the compound, Xavier terrified, as he was, of the unknowns crouched in shadowed corners, there was little these days that could shake his resolve. Laila maintained that it was an act, unwilling to admit to the boy who for so long had played the role of her older brother that he had, indeed, grown into a solider, and a worthy one at that. Inaya, on the other hand, found comfort in this trait. It was hard to fear when Xavier was always so sure, as steady and dependable as the sandstone walls of the Great House or the shifting of the sands on the desert.
Now, though, Xavier was horror-struck, and Inaya felt herself shiver in response. Silently, reaching for a second time to grasp her arm, he tugged her out of the dark corridor along which countless Fremen soldiers milled, content to loiter now that it seemed all was well with the allegiance. Inaya would usually never dream of letting someone drag her so roughly, and habit made words of reproach rise in her throat as Xavier turned to close the door to the dining hall behind them, the sharp bang echoing through the cavernous room. She forced herself to swallow them, watching him with wide eyes as he ran his hand through his tousled hair and finally began to speak.
“I won’t let him send you away.” Xavier often reminded Inaya of puppy when the two weren’t on the training field; unlaboured and untroubled, easy to laugh and quick with a joke, especially around Laila, whom he doted on. Now, though, his voice came out in a near growl, his blue eyes darkened with anger. At his words, however, Inaya felt her stomach begin to unclench a little; this argument, and the subsequent goodbye, would at least be slightly easier than the one she had to have with her sister.
“You sound like Laila.” Inaya replied flippantly, giving Xavier a slight smirk as she tucked her hands behind her back and began to stroll deeper into the room, as if they were discussing something no more upsetting than the weather.
“I – how can you be so cavalier about this?” He rarely stammered, and yet. A lump rose once again in Inaya’s throat, though this time it was provoked by heartache, rather than anger. Again, she reminded herself of the necessity of strength in the face of these final few days with her family. If she let herself be overcome, then she could be no more useful to her people than if they had sent a common villager behind enemy lines. She couldn’t protect those that she loved if she allowed herself to crumble.
Inaya ran a finger idly along the dining table, noting the thin layer of dust that had accumulated in her father’s absence. Dust, of course, was inescapable on Arrakis.
Dust more valuable than gold, Inaya noted dryly.
“I’m not cavalier,” she intoned, casting her eyes to the ceiling in an effort to dodge her best friend’s eyes. “I just don’t see what’s so shocking about this whole arrangement.”
Xavier was momentarily stumped. Like her, like her sister, like her father, like every Fremen who had enough common sense to string two words together, Xavier could see the practicality, the inevitability, of Inaya’s fate. She had been born to marry the Duke’s son or another like him, destined, as the eldest Fremen princess always was, to be used as a bargaining chip on the round table of house politics, just as the younger was born to rule. There was no bitterness in this for Inaya. It was the way that things were. There was only this inescapable grief as she looked at her closest friend. A grief that she had resolved to bury.
When she swept back around to regard Xavier, finally giving in in the face of his silence, he was still staring at her, mouth agape, his hands shaking slightly at his sides where he had them curled into fists. At last, Inaya felt tears well in her eyes, and wrapped her arms around herself so that she would not be tempted to wrap them around him instead.
“This is the only way.” Her murmur was rough, and betrayed her sorrow; this, at last, seemed to break Xavier’s icy stillness, and he started forward, reaching out for her once again. Inaya found herself unable to move as his hands closed over her shoulders. She could feel the strength of them, the callouses that marked her palms in the same way, built up from years of training. The two stood together, as if carved from stone, an epic tribute to the ebony-and-ivory princess and her golden-haired warrior, their beauty tragic as it froze in time. Though of course, Inaya thought to herself as she searched Xavier’s eyes, he wasn’t her warrior, not really. Xavier was sworn to protect the throne, just as his father, the commander of her father’s armies, was sworn. Xavier would spend his life serving her sister, Laila, once she was queen, protecting her during her waking and non-waking hours, ruling her armies with an iron fist, willing to lay down his life in her name. A job Inaya trusted to him, sleeping soundly, as she did, with the knowledge that he loved Laila almost as dearly as Inaya did herself. And Inaya would go elsewhere, willingly, when the time came. She would not be his to protect. Inaya did not need protection.
But a small part of her – a deeply buried part, shunned and shameful – wanted his protection. Perhaps it was this secret longing that let his stay strong around her.
“Inaya,” he whispered, his eyes darting between hers. He was so close that Inaya could feel his breath on her lips, and she pressed them together, trying to maintain her resolve. Pathetic, she scolded herself half-heartedly. How on earth are you going to keep a hold of yourself with the Atreides if you’re not even in control now? “Tell me you won’t go. Tell me you won’t marry a stranger, leave us all behind!”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Inaya tried to channel her father’s ruthless manner, to leave no room for argument. “This is the only way to achieve peace, Xavier, actual peace, for the first time in eighty years! Of course I’ll do it!”
“Oh, don’t tell me you believe that bullshit. The Atreides don’t want peace, they want the spice, and they’ll say anything to get it!”
“They would hardly marry of their only heir for an empty gesture.”
“And I wouldn’t have thought your father such a fool as to marry of his into a blatant trap!”
“Do not speak that way of my father.”
Xavier started. Fell silent. Inaya felt her own stomach drop with the shock. She had never defended her father. Especially not to her best friend, from whom she kept no secrets. Her loathing of Isaiah was as obvious between them as the necessity of oxygen to life. And yet the words had burst forth, born of a drive within herself that shook even Inaya herself.
Xavier switched tactic, lowering his voice.
“What of Laila?”
Inaya forced incredulity into her tone, masking the sudden surge of anxiety that his words brought forth, the anxiety she had been doing her best to ignore. “What of Laila? She’s the heir to the throne. If this allegiance goes well, she’ll be one of the wealthiest monarchs in recent time.”
“You won’t leave her here, alone.” He was grasping at straws. Inaya’s words of Isaiah had begun to sink in, and Xavier was faced with the hopelessness of the situation, the situation that Isaiah had designed and approved. The king was an opponent too formidable to dream of beating.
At last finding the resolve to push away, Inaya put a few forceful steps between her and Xavier, watching as his shoulders heaved with aggrieved gasps.
“I’m not leaving her alone. I’m leaving her with you.” At last, Inaya let her voice betray the depth of her emotions, suddenly anxious to grab ahold of one certainty in this reeling chaos. “And you’ll protect her. Right?”
Inaya watched as he registered her words, understood the gravity of them. After a moment, he nodded, slowly, eyes not straying from hers.
“Of course. I won’t let anything happen to her. You know that.”
The two shared a moment in a shared fear, both of them, briefly, united by their love of Inaya’s little sister, who was perhaps more stubborn than the two of them put together. Inaya was reminded of the similar moment, only a few hours before, between herself and her father, an unlikely parallel of the bond she shared with Xavier.
How angered she would be, Inaya thought of her sister, to realise that she is the one responsible for convincing me of the necessity of this marriage.
Inaya pictured Laila’s outraged expression and grinned despite the smarting in her chest. Xavier misinterpreted her smile and furrowed his brow, confused at her amusement.
“Who knows,” Inaya spoke again in a lighter tone, joking with him now in an effort to ease some of the tension between them. How she longed for a few more hours of normality, when she and her partner could spar and sweat and banter between themselves of the distant missions and menaces that they would one day face. “If you stick around long enough maybe you’ll end up marrying her. Blonds aren’t her type, but she doesn’t get out much, so I’d say you have a fair chance.”
Rather than laugh, Xavier’s face darkened once more, warmth flooding his cheeks as he looked at Inaya with an expression that curdled her stomach. There was something animal about it, disbelieving, hungry, almost repulsed. Inaya couldn’t help but take a step back, not fast enough to hide the flash of worry that distorted her smirk.
“How could you be so blind?” Xavier whispered the words, his eyes so wide it were as if he were the one who had been blind, and was taking in the world for the first time. “How can it be that you truly cannot see it?”
“See what, Xavier?” Inaya tried to laugh, but even to her it sounded forced. Her friend just stared, stricken once more, ignoring her words.
“Even after all of these years?”
The very walls seemed to hold their breath as the two Fremen warriors stared each other down, transformed in that moment, from two adults who had together taken their first steps, spent nights in each other’s beds telling ghost stories, and knew each other’s faces so well that they could’ve sketched them blind, into wary, oppositional strangers wondering which would make the first move in a knife fight.
Xavier did, and for all of Inaya’s training, she was not fast enough to dodge him.
Inaya had been kissed before, but rigidly, as if neither party had truly been present in the action. But now, as Xavier’s rough hands stroked along her face, drawing her so close to his body that she could hear his heartbeat as it raced, all she could feel was him, him and her, their proximity somehow alien and natural as breathing. Though she stood still, her feet planted on the stone ground of the dining hall, in her mind Inaya was flying, swept from the compound and over valleys and mountains, tossed deep into the desert until all she could see were sand dunes, endless, shifting, in every direction. She was lost, completely, on the planet who’s lands were little more than an extension of her body and her mind. Inaya felt consumed by it, by the hunger that drove her to dig her hands into Xavier’s tousled hair, to push up onto her toes and kiss him back in a clash of tongues and teeth. There was no hesitation in his movements as he responded in kind, his body curving into hers as if made for it, pushing in toward Inaya as a thrumming began between her ears, an incessant beat that quickened as his hands stroked down her back, an alarm getting louder and louder.
Inaya opened her eyes. As if sensing it, Xavier opened his.
I know those eyes, Inaya thought to herself. And, as violently as he had grabbed for her, Inaya shoved Xavier away.
They gasped, both of them, in awe of their own daring. A glimmer of triumph shone in Xavier’s eyes, and he flexed his hands, the first smile Inaya had seen on him today threatening at the corners of his mouth. In contrast, Inaya now looked as horrified as he had when they’d first made contact, all of her efforts useless at hiding the distress darkening her features.
“Are you alright?” Xavier asked as if he knew the answer, and liked it. And when Inaya’s retort came, as fast and brutal as the blade of a crysknife, he staggered back slightly, crippled.
“What the fuck were you thinking?”
The momentary joy fled from his features, leaving only that pain once again.
“Inaya –” But this time, she would not hear it. Inaya felt scattered, ruined, as if Xavier had taken her surety, her logic, everything she knew to be true and torn it up in front of her eyes. Like a switch had been flipped inside of her, Inaya began to tremble at her future, at the fate that awaited her in Arrakeen, the knowledge that in less than a few days she would be married to a young and fickle heir of whom she knew nothing more than what she had studied in preparation for the Atreides’ arrival. A future she would face without her father, her best friend, or her sister. A future that was coming for her, and her alone.
How could he do this?
She wanted to turn and demand it of him, to fling the question in his face, to claw at his skin with her bare hands and leave scratches running down his face. Inaya had never felt so furious in her life, so blindsided. And yet, the tears that streamed down her face as she ran from the room, Xavier calling after her, anxious to give chase but chained to the ground by the look of disgust that she had given him, were born not of the anger that Inaya felt bubbling under the surface every day of her life, the anger that seemed to be erupting as she fled, but of crushing heartbreak. She would never kiss Xavier again. And she wanted to. Oh, god, she wanted to.

Chapter Text

Paul Atreides was nervous.
He didn’t like admitting it, even to himself. Like his mother, Paul prided himself on his resolve, on the unshakable composure that came with the Bene Gesserit training. But as he watched the sun set on his new home, Paul felt a lump in his throat that he couldn’t swallow, a weakness in his knees that refused to be walked off, no matter how many times he paced back and forth across the balcony. The stifling Arrakin heat had finally begun to mellow, and Paul welcomed the merest hint of a breeze that rumpled his black curls, tossing them impatiently out of his eyes as he looked up to survey the horizon once more. His mother had been pestering him to get his hair cut for weeks. In fact, it was the most recent of her naggings that had sent him, anxiously, to the balcony in the first place.
You must get that cut before the wedding, she had said.
Paul had nodded dismissively, only half-listening, as usual. Then, as if he were hearing an echo, the full weight of Jessica’s words had registered.
Before the wedding.
Paul was getting married tomorrow.
When his father had delivered the news, gentle but firm, a strong hand on Paul’s shoulder and a sympathetic glisten in his eye as his son took the news as well as he was able, Paul hadn’t been surprised. In truth, he’d felt a little hollow, like a bell or a steel drum, the news clanging around loudly on his insides but showing no signs of disruption on his metal surface. His mother had been even more tender with him, taking him into her arms and stroking his hair as if he were a boy again. The comfort was useless, and he’d tried to tell her so silently, drawing back and giving a closed lip smile, a small huff and a shrug, as if to say, what can you do?
What could he do? This was his duty, after all, and an opportunity that his house would be fools not to take up. The Fremen were notoriously vicious and unbending, as dangerous to the colonists as heat in the desert. That they were willing to make such an allegiance was nothing short of a miracle.
Unless, of course, it was a trap.
No. Paul shoved the niggling worry away, striding forcefully once more to the other side of the balcony, grasping the stone rail so tightly that he could see his bones stand out underneath his skin, his fingers turning white with the pressure. The Fremen had as much to gain from this as the Atreides. More, even, what with the rule under which they had suffered for the past eighty years. And Duncan trusts them. Yes. Everything would be fine.
Of course, there was still the issue of the marriage itself, the looming elephant that only now seemed to have caught Paul’s attention. Marriage for the purposes of alliance was an obvious move, one so drilled into Paul that even as a child he knew that it was a sure feature of his future. But it had always seemed distant, abstract, rather than a tangible event that would be happening soon, now, tomorrow.
Paul didn’t even know what she looked like.
Inaya, his father had said. The Princess Inaya, the eldest of two sisters, daughter of Isaiah and one of the most fearsome Fremen warriors roaming the sands. Paul’s bride-to-be.
Paul raised his head. Scanned the horizon. Wondered to himself what exactly it was that he was looking for.
“Don’t be a child,” he muttered to himself as he felt his stomach twist with anxiety, clenching his jaw tightly in frustration, both at his nerves and at his proclivity to speaking aloud to himself whenever he was upset. It was a dangerous habit, and would only become more so once he was the Duke. There were ears everywhere.
Besides, Paul thought to himself bitterly, resuming his walking once more, watching his feet as they travelled in mindless circle after mindless circle. There’s no one here to listen. There never is.
As he stretched his eyes out once more over the Arrakeen deserts, with a shock, Paul realised that the view had been transformed. No longer were the sands a lifeless brown, the distance insurmountable, the sky flat and smothering. Now, the dunes rippled to life in his eyes, rolling waves of colour and sound as if the sand itself was dancing, the sky painted with brilliant oranges and reds, the air electric with some kind of magic, as if the planet itself was awakening with an almighty yawn. Because, Paul thought of himself, tall and slender in his black dress uniform, curls tickling his forehead, watching the sun set over his planet just as he was now. But this time, he was not alone. This time, a woman stood beside him, beautiful and glowing in the setting sun, her blue eyes luminescent and as sharp as crackling flames. Someone who would answer when he spoke aloud.
Inaya, Paul thought to himself. This time, there was a little suggestion of hope, holding hands with his fear.
Paul was tired of being alone. And, he had no idea that across the sands, his soon-to-be sister-in-law was also pacing her bedroom floor, wishing with all her heart that someone would answer her calls.

- - -

Laila’s prayers were answered.
This is why they say be careful what you wish for, she thought in the split second before Joseph had shoved through the cracked door and pulled her mouth to his.
Every protest, every worry, every memory and every thought that Laila called her own dissipated the moment their lips made contact, Joseph’s touch unravelling her completely until all that was left was the very core of her being. Laila felt as if he turned her into music, as if the rush of breath and the beat of their hearts was the sound of every love song her mother taught her when she was a child, every thrum of the strings on her violin or the humming of the sand on windy days. Joseph was the beat when Laila danced, and the melody when she sang, and when her sister grabbed her hands and pulled her around the hallways when she was in a good mood, belting old drinking songs and forcing her sister to waltz, it was Joseph Laila felt as she smiled and laughed and drank in the music.
What have you done to me? She had giggled when they’d first awoken together, hearing for the first time the way the notes floated to her on the breeze as it slipped in his open window.
You tell me, he’d replied, grinning, and leant down to kiss her nose.
It was agony to pull away from him now, to put a stop to the crescendo that had been blowing up into a frenzy between her ears. But she must. Because –
“What the hell are you doing here?!” Laila gasped, trying to pull away in horror but finding her hands gripped between both of Joseph’s. Despite herself, she felt her knees weaken as she took him in, the stubble that shadowed his jaw, the almost feminine curve of his lips, the furrow between his brow that she loved to smooth out with a stroke of her fingers. Desperate to hold her ground, Laila sucked in a deep breath, trying to compose herself and only managing to catch his scent, peppery and metallic and off she goes again, swooning.
“I had to come.”
“No, no, you didn’t! In fact, you absolutely shouldn’t have! Joseph, have you gone mad?” Laila’s fear propelled her forward and she reached upward, taking his face into her hands and running her fingers across his cheeks and into his hair, frantic to convince herself that it was really him, here, and that he was okay. The true danger of the situation was beginning to catch up with Laila, and she felt faint with it, especially as she took in Joseph’s eyes, the blue that she had put there beginning to give way to his emerald green.
“I should ask the same of you!” He was angry, growling almost, but his touch was soft as he placed his hands over hers where they held his face, sliding down to hold her wrists. Joseph towered over her when he stood upright, but now he leant down, their foreheads touching and their noses just centimetres apart. I think you’re the tallest person I’ve ever met, she’d said to him one day. You don’t get out very much, he’d replied.
“What are you talking about?”
“Are you kidding? It’s all anyone is talking about in the sietch, all anyone is talking about on the whole planet, I’d wager. You really think that I’m letting you go to Arrakeen?”
This gave Laila pause. She’d barely spared a thought for anyone but her sister for the past twenty-four hours. It had never occurred to her that Joseph, who had never met Inaya and had never shown any concern for her, would ever be upset about her impending departure.
“I – you’re worried about Inaya?” Laila looked at him bewilderedly, her red hair curling softly about her face in the way that Joseph usually couldn’t resist but to reach out and touch, wrapping the loose strands around his finger before tucking them behind her ears. This was yesterday’s hairdo, he noted, most likely awry from the anxious tugging she gave in to when she was nervous. It pained him to think of her, alone and upset, isolated by her godforsaken father and forever out of his reach within these stone walls. Usually, Joseph could resist even this image, could resist the urge to run to her, could wait for her knock on his door once again, however painful it was, because he knew that the risk that lay in trying to reach her here outweighed any damage that waiting may do him. But not this time.
Laila watched his face crease in similar confusion, drawing back a little to glower at her from his full height.
“Inaya? Jesus, no, I’m worried about you! They can’t be serious, sending you into the fucking wasp’s nest! Anything could happen in Arrakeen, crawling with those cursed Atreides. You can’t go. I won’t let you.”
Laila almost laughed, a sense of déjà vu washing over her as she heard the words she’d uttered so many times to Inaya coming out of Joseph’s mouth. How bizarre, that she must now soothe him with the same promises that she had so resisted.
“You’re laughing at me.”
“No. Nay.”
“I mean it, Laila.”
“I know you do.”
“I won’t allow it.”
“Shhh.”
Laila pressed her palm to his forehead, and he leant into her once more, head bowed as if he were in prayer, his hands holding her wrists so that his fingers overlapped themselves, closing his eyes almost unwillingly at the contact. The two stood for a moment, awash in the golden light streaming in through the windows that peaked up above ground. Laila felt as though the compound had been altered by his presence, the halls that always felt cold to her despite the heat suddenly alive with the bars of a beautiful medley. How strange to have him with her in the place that she always missed him the most.
Knowing that if she let him build up steam he’d soon be off to track down Isaiah himself, roiled up and raring for a fight, Laila coxed Joseph backward, taking small steps until he was allowing himself to be eased onto her bed, seated on the edge and blinking up at her as if he wasn’t quite sure how he’d gotten there. Laila wasn’t quite sure herself, feeling her breath catch at the sight of him, as unreal in her eyes as if he were an angel, settled amongst the fixtures of her everyday life. Laila felt herself walking a dangerous knife edge, balanced between the normal and the divine, the line that thus far she had been satisfied to simply toe, keeping everybody as safe as possible and stealing a few moments of conviction, like a worshipper banned from a church. Joseph, however, was refusing to stay on his side of the line.
“You know you can’t be here,” Laila said, returning to what she saw as the most pressing point. “I mean it. If anyone sees you –”
“They’re sending you behind enemy lines, for fuck’s sake. You’ll be literally surrounded by people who would only benefit from murdering the heir –”
“Joseph, it’s bad enough even for a Fremen to be found in the compound, much less a Harkonnen in my bedroom –”
“They’re monsters, Laila, they don’t have a code to abide by, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be safe even if it’s a wedding –”
“Oh, hush!”
Having no clue as to another way to shut him up, Laila threw herself at Joseph, pushing him back into the pillows and landing so awkwardly that her forehead hit his chin with a crack and both of them let out a yelp of pain. His was quickly followed by a laugh, however, and after a moment of surprise he took her into his arms, twisting them around until their legs were intertwined and Laila was held against his chest, fitting so perfectly against him it was as if she were made for it. The believer in her, the one who had knelt with her grandmother in prayer every morning while Inaya had shuffled and complained beside them, wondered if perhaps she had been, if perhaps God had looked down to see her Joseph all alone in the universe and had turned to his workbench.
“You’re trying to distract me.” Joseph’s low tones sent tingles down her spine, and Laila pressed her face closer to his shoulder in order to hide her smile. She tried to remind herself of the danger, of the urgency with which she must shoo him from the compound, but found herself unable to feel the magnitude of the issue when one of his hands was against the small of her back, the other holding her head close to his.
Curse him and curse his stupid, beautiful hands, Laila thought to herself, but there was no venom in it.
“No,” she whispered back, biting her lip to try and keep her smile from showing. “I’m pushing you out the door, like I should be.”
He kissed her again, and she melted. How was it that she was given such a gift as to be alive and breathing at the same time as Joseph Harkonnen?
As his lips moved to her jaw, her nose, her brow, Laila tried one more time to be responsible.
“You really have to go.”
“Mhm.”
Fuck it.
Laila pushed up onto her knees so that she was kneeling over him, taking his face into her hands once more and kissing him back with force, so that a groan slipped from between his lips. How long has it been? She wondered to herself, and a reply came immediately. Three weeks, four days, thirteen hours. Oh, how she’d missed him.

Laila could scarcely believe that she had been so riddled with panic over the past few days, that worry had ever consumed her, that she had ever felt anything but this deep sense of peace that spilled from Joseph’s fingers as he traced the length of her spine, drawing patterns and spelling meaningless words across the skin of her back. She had been wrong to think of these rooms as foreboding, to wish that she could be free of them; at this moment, Laila would have gladly locked the doors and crushed the keys to dust if it meant that she could lie here forever.
Of course, there was still the matter of the wedding. Laila could feel as a grumble started in Joseph’s chest, the argument brewing there as both sat in this false serenity, him unwilling to forget and her hoping that he would.
Stubbornness is a good attribute in a queen, her father had told her. She was about to find out.
“You’re yet to promise me that you’ll stay.” He said the words against her shoulder blade, so that she felt them more than heard them.
“You know that I can’t,” she sighed, turning her head away from him, disgruntled that this grace period had come to an end.
“You must. I’ll sit on you if I have to.”
“Me and my father both. I’m not sure Isaiah would be as willing as I.”
“Mmm, you’re very willing indeed.” His hands crept down her sides and Laila twisted away from him, trying to push his hands away without any real force. After a moment of playfulness, he held her more firmly, forcing her to meet his eyes. They were truly green now, and Laila’s heart shuddered at their beauty, so unlike the blue that shone from the faces of every other person she had ever known. Laila sometimes thought that she would have loved Joseph for his eyes alone.
“It’s too dangerous, Laila.” Lovely as they were, his eyes were darkened now, shadowed with a fear too old for his youthful features. Laila stroked his brows, his eyelashes, the skin beneath his eyes, wishing that she could wipe away the pain that she saw there.
“Don’t you think you may be a little biased?” She whispered, wary to upset him. The rivalry between the Harkonnen’s and the Atreides’ was well known even to the Fremen, who had lived under Harkonnen rule for decades. Joseph’s hatred of the house ran deeply, and hadn’t been swayed by the propaganda and promises that the Duke Leto had flooded the planet with.
Surely enough, Joseph’s brow furrowed further at the suggestion, but Laila could see that he accepted it, despite his anger.
“Perhaps,” he murmured, his hands gliding gently over her bare skin, stroking down her arms, across her sides. He looked at her like a man enlightened, afraid to blink lest that what he was beholding would dissipate like smoke. “But I’m not willing to risk it. If anything happened to you…”
“It won’t,” she replied, blinking ruefully in an effort to look her most persuasive. “Isaiah is the most suspicious person on the planet. If he thought something could go wrong, he wouldn’t allow me to come. Really, the fact that he’s bringing me at all is a miracle.” When Joseph continued to frown at her, as stubborn as a sulking child, she gave him a small smile. “Besides, surely you won’t rob me of my first and probably only chance to leave the sietch? If I have to stay here much longer, Joseph, I might just walk myself into the desert and let the Shai-Hulud take me!”
She had been joking, but Joseph’s frown deepened as if she’d meant it.
“I’ll take you someplace else.” The words were simple, but they spoke magnitudes. Laila could see a whole future in them, a fantasy that she longed to be true, a dream of an Arrakis that was kind and just and sounded like the music that sang in her ears as she kissed him. An impossible dream, though his offer was a genuine one. That, Laila thought, was what hurt the most.
“I can’t.” She croaked, the sudden welling of tears in her eyes betraying her heartache. Joseph reacted immediately, reaching out to brush them from her cheeks with a soft noise of concern. “You know I want to. You know I would –”
“Shhh.” It was his turn to calm her, to ease the frown lines between her brows. Laila felt the fight drain out of him at the sight of her tears, as he saw the pain he caused her with his unbearable promises of forever. He knew, after all, that she meant it when she said that she couldn’t, that it was impossible. Not for the throne, which he knew she detested the thought of, but for her sister, her father and the people that she would not abandon, who were as much a part of her as the spice sands or Joseph’s own body, intertwined with hers. She’d told him once that when the Fremen were sure in their own might, safe on their path forward, then she would go with him, go with him wherever he wanted. But not before. This drive in her, this selfless concern for those around her, those she loved and those she had never met, to protect and to love, wholeheartedly, for simply being human, was perhaps what kept them apart. But it was also why he loved her. It took a lot of goodness to see it in others in this unforgiving world.
So he pulled her close, told her he loved her, and told himself that it would be alright. Just as she always promised him.

Chapter Text

Laila fixed her sister’s hair with shaking fingers. Here were the jewels she wished for, after all. She fiddled with them for far longer than necessary, avoiding Inaya’s gaze in the mirror for as long as she was able. She didn’t want to cry for her sister. Not again. She didn’t want to let Inaya leave afraid. This would be Laila’s one small gift to her, a present on her wedding day, a tiny token to say thank you for all of Inaya’s years of protection.
She would be brave for her sister. She would keep everyone safe in her absence. She had to let her believe that everything would be alright. Even if Laila couldn’t help but doubt it herself.
When she finally raised her gaze, Laila found Inaya already staring at her, her hooded eyes dark, her sharp cheekbones making her look regal and fierce, like a panther or a bird of prey closing in on its target. But Laila could see past the harsh mask, could see the fear that quivered behind Inaya’s eyes.
She smiled a false smile, praying that Inaya couldn’t tell the difference, and placed her hands on her sister’s shoulders.
“You look beautiful.” Inaya’s earrings brushed the backs of Laila’s hands. She could feel the minute movements of Inaya’s shoulders as she breathed. She tightened her grip, as if she could hold her sister’s very life between her hands.
Stop being so dramatic, Laila scolded herself. She could hear an echo of her father’s voice in her words.
“Beautiful enough for a Duchess?” Inaya replied, her tone half-scathing. Laila just nodded, momentarily overcome, and raised her gaze to survey herself in the mirror, unable to keep her sister’s gaze. Once again, Laila wished she could see more of her sister in her own face, wished she had her dark hair or her ivory skin, her strong nose or her square jaw, so that she could pretend there was still a piece of Inaya with her wherever she went, like an angel riding on her shoulder and whispering advice in her ear.
“Yes,” She finally managed after a moment, but even she could see the absence in her eyes. “You say yes, but you were looking at yourself,” Inaya joked, but her tone was forced. Laila said nothing.
Sighing, Inaya stood from her chair, the folds of her golden gown rustling and settling around her. It had been many years since Laila had seen Inaya in a dress of any kind, and she was relieved to see that she looked just as powerful in a gown as she did in armour. It was a work of art in itself, albeit one slightly terrifying in its beauty, layers of fabric wrought with precious stones and beads, careful embroidery that Laila herself helped the seamstresses sew with aching precision into stunning patterns. Laila’s own dress was made in a similar fashion, emerald green with a swooping neck to reveal her collarbone and shoulders and the strings of jewels that hung there, long swathes of fabric dripping from her back in a train. But, for Laila, wearing an elaborate dress was familiar, and she stood in it with far more ease than her sister, who was rigid in its folds. Laila was almost glad for her discomfort. It made Inaya look all the more formidable.
Inaya, in her endlessly frustrating way, recognised Laila’s mournful expression for what it was, and took her sister’s delicate face in her hands, sweeping her thumbs across her cheekbones, the faint freckles that were scattered there, and she melted slightly at the touch.
“It’s going to be alright.” Inaya half-whispered, leaning forward to rest her forehead against Laila’s, closing her eyes against her sister’s piercing stare.
“I know.” Lies.
“You look beautiful, too.” Drawing back slightly to better take in her sister, the words brought an unwilling smile to Inaya’s lips. Laila did look beautiful. And infinitely sad, her mouth curved downward in a pout, like a tortured victim who had long ago accepted their fate without murmur or complaint.
Laila wanted to crumble, to collapse into Inaya’s arms, to sob and dig her nails into her dress and beg her not to go. She wanted Joseph, wanted to feel the peculiar rough-softness of his tanned skin, for him to sooth her with his voice so deep it was half a growl and hands so big they could cover the span of her back. But she had pushed him out the door, just as she would do to Inaya, just as she must, for the good of those she loved and for the good of the people she must protect. Laila didn’t want to feel sorry for herself, but sometimes that was unavoidable. Sometimes it felt like she was doomed to be alone.
“Come on, Inaya,” Laila sighed, taking her sisters hands from her face and placing them, firmly, at her sides. “Let’s go and get you married.”

The hall echoed, and as a result, Paul could hear every lord as they shifted their weight, scuffed their foot on the stone, murmured to the people on either side. The benches that ran down the length of the hall were filled, and he kept his eyes stubbornly above the heads of the people seated there as he waited, arms stiffly by his sides, chin raised and jaw clenched. He was aware of his father beside him, but refused to meet his eyes, though he could feel Leto searching for his gaze. Just past him, his mother stood, her sharp eyes scanning the crowd as if she were an assassin. Of course, she may not be the only assassin in the room. Paul stood in a crowd of unknowns.
Because across the stage from him, transfixing in their otherworldliness and terrifying in their mystique, stood the Fremen, their leader and their youngest princess, whom Paul has only caught glances of from the corner of his eyes, and a collection of their own lords and warriors, clad in formal wear not so far unlike those of the Atreides. The Fremen seemed, if possible, even more uneasy than the Atreides, almost deathly quiet, their ranks flawless, one eye fixed carefully on their leaders and the other on the army of conquerors that stood beside them. Two men, one slightly wizened and the other perhaps a little older than Paul himself, seemed to Paul to have been tasked with the job of keeping watch, for their gazes were even more intense than the others. There was something about the young man in particular, blue-on-blue eyes as deadly as the Caladan sea in a storm and skin toughened by the fierce sun, that made something twist in Paul’s stomach.
He had never before been looked at with such loathing.
Abruptly, the quartet in the corner raised their instruments and began to play, the sound momentarily eerie in its incompletion before the tune became a recognisable hum of melody.
The crowd tensed, all taking to their feet in abrupt silence, the apprehension mounting until the air was thick with it. Paul wondered if there ever before been a wedding so fraught with fear.
He himself felt nothing more than a stutter in his heart, a quickening of his pulse. Paul was ready. This was his duty. Even the momentary clasp of his father’s hand on his wrist, reassuring and regretful, dulled his resolve.
Then the doors opened and in walked Princess Inaya of the Fremen. And Paul was floored.
It was her. The girl that stalked his dreams and waking hours, who’s face came to him through shadows in the depths of the night. It was the first time he’d ever laid eyes on her, and yet the familiarity, the nostalgia, the sudden relief from the curious sense of longing that he had endured for months – it was too much. Paul shook with the power of it.
So they had not been dreams, then, after all.
She was beautiful, of course. He could see that as she came closer, her features striking and proud, so strong it seemed she had been carved from marble. Rattled to his core, Paul longed for some flicker of recognition or desire to show in her gaze as she climbed the stairs to stand by his side, but it remained impenetrable, unyielding. The softness that he had seen in her in his visions was missing; this girl, however much he seemed to know her, was closed off from him. A stranger, though his every sense denied it.
Inaya came to his side, looked him squarely in the face. She searched him as Paul searched her, though, he imagined, not for softness, but for danger. There was no sentimentality in the princesses eyes. Only determination. Paul wondered what she saw in him, as, for the first time, a pit of dread sank his stomach.
As one, they turned to the celebrant, his lined face emotionless as he bent his head to read from the Orange Catholic Bible. Paul could hear Inaya breath beside him, felt the weight of her pressing against the air.
Those are the breaths of the girl, he thought to himself, and felt faint. Then, with even more shock – of my wife.
The celebrant nodded to Leto, to Isaiah on the other side. Then, he began to speak.

As they walked down the aisle, side by side, arms interlinked and both staring stubbornly ahead, Paul rolled the sound of Inaya’s voice around in his head, overcome by a feeling of significance that was so close and yet so dissimilar to what he had longed for. Paul had wanted a sense of bTonyging, but all he felt was anxiety as he replayed her words over and over.
I do, she had said in husky tones, her voice solemn for a girl, like she didn’t often use it to laugh. Another shock, then, as he’s only heard her use it to call his name, the rolling sound echoing in his ears as he leap from his bed. Then she had rattled off some words in the Fremen language, which sounded more like music than words to Paul’s unpractised ears, to appease the traditions of her culture. Paul was startled by the sounds of her voice, the voice that he was now tied to, would wake up to the sound of, would be yelled at with, teased with, argued with, soothed with. Not that she seemed like the soothing type.
He could hear the rustle as the lords and ladies stood up as the new couple walked the aisle, a motley parade of Atreides and Fremen following them in tense comradery. He was stupidly worried about accidently treading on Inaya’s gown, which flowed like a river behind them. Wouldn’t that make a good impression, he thought to himself bitterly.
The gust of wind, despite its heat, was a relief after the stifling air of the hall, the brief trip across the courtyard that must be made in the afternoon glare Paul’s few seconds of freedom. To his surprise, he didn’t sense Inaya looking to the sky as he did, keen to catch a glimpse of blue sky. She kept her eyes straight forward, unbothered, unfeeling. She unnerved him.
But he had no time to wallow in this apprehension, as soon their respite was over and they were met with the far more raucous sounds of the lesser members of the Atreides and the Fremen, lining the walls of the greater hall, lively music played by an orchestra in the corner, footmen hefting trays of food and drink gliding across the floor as if participating in some complicated waltz. Automatically, Paul raised a hand to the applause and cheers of the crowd, forcing a smile through chattering teeth. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Inaya do the same, her chin lifted to greet the masses, as opposed to the slightly downcast eyes that was custom of a duchess.
Not that Inaya’s fighters stance, her slim figure padded with muscle, and unforgiving gaze were custom of a duchess, either. Paul had unwittingly wed himself to a warrior.
The newlyweds took their place in the centre of the floor, tiled in stone and depicting some intricate design that had been worn smooth by countless feet. For the first time, Inaya drew to face Paul directly, and her face showed no flicker of emotion as they drank each other in.
With a start, Inaya realised that her husband’s eyes weren’t the unbroken Fremen blue that were all she’d ever known, but hazel, light green flecked with patches of brown and yellow. They bore into hers with well-disguised terror, but Inaya had had far too much practise with her sister’s near-flawless mask to ever be deceived. The future duke, for all of his supposed might, was frightened by her, and her people lining the walls. This knowledge filled Inaya with a surge of power, dark and billowing and not entirely pleasant. Unlike her father, Inaya had never enjoyed another’s fear.
Inaya was not entirely without fear herself. Only a fool does anything with complete confidence. Everyone Inaya had ever cared for was within these walls, trapped in practise if not in name, at the mercy of former enemies with only their own precautions to aid them. Inaya tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that, not only by her side, but beyond the walls as well, hidden in nooks and crannies and prepared to whisk her away in a second, were dozens of Fremen soldiers sworn to protect her sister at all costs. Xavier himself had promised not to leave her side.
Besides, Inaya thought as she looked at her new husband and they began to dance, if he did anything to hurt Laila, she would personally see to it that it would become the biggest regret of his life.

The music began to play, and the newlyweds began to dance.
“Lady Inaya,” Paul murmured to his wife, the first words of greeting they would exchange, cursing as the tiniest quaver in his voice snuck through.
“I am no –” Inaya cut off, a slight huff of air betraying her bemusement. “Well. I suppose I am, now.”
“A lady?”
She said nothing, just cast him a glance through her eyelashes. Paul felt slightly taken aback by the look, as if his foot had found empty air where he’d expected solid ground. Indeed, his wife was beautiful. And so, so familiar -
“I trust your time here thus far has been comfortable.” Feeling slightly blindsided and entirely out of his depths, Paul spoke the polite words with clipped tones, desperately searching his mind for some kind of out. Inaya certainly wasn’t going to provide one. All she replied with was another soft snort, tossing her head, her sharp features well suited to disdain. Paul was grateful of the space between her and the onlookers, that they could mistake her indifference for bashfulness. An appearance of strength was as necessary now as strength itself.
“No?” He pressed her, his voice slipping from chilly to cold.
“One can never be entirely comfortable in a bed made by ones enemies.”
Paul’s eyes flicked to Inaya’s in surprise.
“We aren’t your enemies.” Bold of her, to be so forward in her distrust. The shock of it showed a little in Paul’s widened eyes, and he fought to get himself back under control. But even as he tried, more memories surfaced, memories of her laugh, the way her hands felt on his bare skin.
“So we shall lie to each other, then, as well as to our people?” Inaya seemed to be more interested in something over Paul’s shoulder as she spoke, as if only a part of her was focused on the conversation while the rest of her mind was occupied by other, more important things.
“I have told you no lies.” Except perhaps by omission. But what could he say? Inaya was shorter than Paul, but not by much, and he did his best to tower as he led her in even circles across the floor, moving to the rhythm of the muted whispers of the crowd as to the music. Unlike the tension of the ceremony, the air in this hall felt lighter, the energy festive, the lesser Fremen and Atreides indulging in the hope that their leaders were so wary of. “And I did not intend to wed my enemy.”
“Oh? Then your father should not have proposed.” Inaya was a graceful dancer, but Paul couldn’t help but feel she was leading him through a duel and not a waltz.
“My father wants peace for Arrakis. Peace with the Fremen.”
“So he says.”
“Yes! So he says! The Duke Atreides words are not to be taken lightly.” Paul’s heart was racing now, his palms damp with sweat. At this last proclamation, Inaya finally met Paul’s gaze, her eyes the dark blue of flint and burning with all the rage of the Arrakeen sun.
“I judge a man by his actions, not his words.” Her hands tightened on Paul’s, the pressure slight and threat unspoken, but he felt it none the less. “We shall see exactly how much the Duke’s words are worth.”
A few tense beats of silence between them as the music swelled into its final crescendo, Paul releasing his grip on the Fremen girl and taking a relieved step back. Together, they bowed to each other, heads dipped in submission but eyes locked in silent challenge.
“We shall see,” he echoed quietly, before the masses descended.

The introductions, the pleasantries, the posturing, all of it grated on Inaya and Paul, though neither of them allowed the other to catch so much of a glimpse of this. Inaya remained polite but detached, the Fremen’s mystique serving to motivate her new subjects to keep a safe distance. She kept an unwilling hand tucked into Paul’s elbow, the sensation of the movement of his body, the rhythm of his breathing, his scent of dust and boy and sweetness all so uncomfortably unfamiliar that she found herself prone to jumping at any small movement.
At last, the two turned toward the royals, to Paul’s parents, to Isaiah and Laila, where they still stood on a podium, elevated above the crowd. Inaya felt a sudden rush of emotion at the sight of her sister, beautiful and haughty by her father’s side, a rush that was equal parts grief and relief.
Paul, on the other hand, caught his breath at the sight of the other Fremen princess. Here was another figure that had emerged straight from his dreams and nightmares, a girl so golden it seemed she was forged from the sun’s light, her hair of the richest scarlet, so stunningly beautiful it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. He had seen her, watched as the wind blew her hair across her face while she studied the horizon as if searching for oncoming doom. Despite the differences in their appearance, he could mark them as sisters, as they shared the same practised poise, the same unshifting elegance. Although, he noted, the younger princess, Laila, seemed to be a little calmer, as if where Inaya’s combat training kept her alert and watchful, Laila could allow herself to settle.
Almost glad for a chance to avert his eyes, Paul sank into a bow at Laila’s and Isaiah’s feet, pausing for them to acknowledge him before guiding Inaya up the podium steps. He expected her little sister’s eyes to observe the closeness between them with possessiveness, or perhaps to see a flicker of jealousy in her blue eyes, but she remained entirely unmoved, her composure even more unwavering than Inaya’s.
Laila returned Paul’s bow, though Isaiah stood unmoving, glaring at Paul with thinly veiled disgust. Here was an even more marked family resemblance; Inaya had obviously learnt her hatred from her father.
“Princess Laila,” Paul greeted Inaya’s sister, the unfamiliar words tripping over his flustered tongue. Her mouth quirked a little in amusement, and he felt chastened, knowing she’d only let him see what she had wanted him to.
“Hello,” she replied, in a tone that lilted and danced, coloured with a giggle, as if she knew a delightful secret that you didn’t. “Forgive me, I’m not so sure of your title.”
By her side, Isaiah grunted, a low sound of warning. Laila nor Inaya faltered, though Paul did.
“I see red hair runs in your family, too,” he pressed forward, a slight stammer marking his words, ignoring the jibe, and he resisted the urge to shake his head at himself as he watched the two sisters trade a glace. Feeling overwhelming stupid, he gestured lamely toward his mother, where she stood a few metres away, though her reddish-brown hair was a poor excuse beside the princess’.
“The Fremen say that she was blessed by the Shai-Hulud at her birth,” Inaya spoke at last, offering her first words in an hour that weren’t entirely meaningless. “They say he blessed her with hair the colour of the sands at sunset.”
“Blessed, or cursed, as I say,” Laila replied smoothly, as if once again enjoying some kind of private joke while her eyes fluttered aimlessly around the room, seemingly bored with the conversation.
“Cursed? But it’s so beautiful, Princess.” Indeed. Especially under the Arrakeen sun. Half-dazed by the image, Paul felt as though he was being played for a fool as he watched the Fremen family exchange dubious looks. A feeling that was quickly and undeniably proven true.
“Beautiful, perhaps, but it earns me a lot of unwanted remarks.” At this, her gaze returned sharply to Paul’s, her look of contempt, strikingly at odds with her angelical features, so stark Paul felt his insides go cold. It seemed the two sister’s had a talent for flooring you with a glance.
And, he thought bitterly, and with undeniable wonder, a talent for witchcraft. How else do they walk through my dreams?

Chapter Text

The gut-wrenching moment of sheer panic that grips Inaya upon waking is among the strongest she has ever felt. Perhaps it is the most nightmarish situation of all; opening your eyes to find that you are not where you expected, that you actually have no idea where you are, that you are completely disorientated, and completely defenceless. Inaya hated to be defenceless, and, more than that, she hated to be afraid. Fear was the spy among your ranks, sabotaging you from the inside. Inaya would not be afraid.
So she leapt from the strange bed, her hand ducking under the covers to retrieve the crysknife she wore bound to her torso, her feet tangled in the bedraggled sheets. Breathing heavily, glaring through tousled hair made damp with sweat, she scanned the room, searching for the imminent threat. After a few moments of silence, it came back to her. The wedding. Her husband, with his feminine features and dark curls and wary eyes. Saying goodbye to her sister, who dissolved into tears at the final moment and was dragged onto the plane by Isaiah as he shook his head in disgust. Being led to her chambers, discarded by her new husband and the duke like some ornament only to be brought out on special occasions and kept in storage for the rest of the year. It was there, alone at last, attended only by a few jittery servants posted outside her door, that she stripped off her wedding gown and collapsed into bed, comforted by the sight of the few bags she had filled with things from the sietch, Fremen clothes and little artefacts that her sister had made for her over the years. Only Inaya’s army training allowed her to fall asleep, the deeply embedded instinct to take full advantage of any quiet moments overcoming the fear of a strange place.
But for that second of terror, Inaya was not a solider. She was just petrified. For the first time, she understood it, all of it – being alone, in Arrakeen, the wife of a future duke. As she stared around at mammoth room, the dusty gold drapes, the glowing spheres that hung in the corners of the room to illuminate the shadows, her fear waned and was replaced by a horrible grief. The first she had let herself feel it, this bone-deep sorrow. Inaya was a solider of the dunes, and now she was locked within stone walls. She was without her sister, her people. She was doomed to spend the rest of her life underneath a man that, until yesterday, she hadn’t met in her entire life.
Away from her sister, her father, Xavier, everyone she had ever known, Inaya allowed her shoulders to shake, her fists to clench, her eyes to close. Slumped amongst foreign sheets that didn’t smell like anybody and with an audience of zero, Inaya let herself begin to cry.

Even though she was fairly sure she was supposed to be collected for breakfast, Inaya couldn’t really care less. Wrapped into one of the silken gowns that she hadn’t donned since she was about twelve but reminded her of her sister, Inaya’s tears were a thing of the distant past, and anyone passing would only see the severe beauty of a warrior unfazed. Trying to mask her curiosity as she swept down the wide halls of the ducal home, Inaya studied the murals carved into the walls out of the corners of her eyes. Sprawling patterns of sand and the Shai Hulud and dancing soldiers created by her ancestors, she noted, and, most likely, vastly misinterpreted by the building’s current inhabitants.
Inaya cringed as her footsteps echoed wildly down the halls, but didn’t allow her pace to falter. She had no reason to creep through these corridors. She would not let them cow her into submission.
A vow that was immediately put to the test when she rounded the corner and came face to face with a mountainous man, dripping with blades, his face promising violence.
Inaya’s body leapt into action before her mind registered the movement, years of training seizing the controls in her moment of shock. She flattened herself against the wall, cursing the billowing skirts of her dress, and, quick as the snakes that skated under the surface of the sand, snatched a blade from the belt of the man and turned it against him, the knife pressing against a chink in his leather armour. He froze, still several moments behind Inaya, still stuck processing the sudden appearance of the princess. For a second, Duncan Idaho was in the same position as Inaya had been that very morning – disorientated, and defenceless.
Then, he let out a bellowing laugh, one that came from deep in his stomach, a laugh that sounded like it was used often and genuinely every time. He stepped backwards, slowly, his hands raised in cajoling surrender and his mouth widened in a grin, though Inaya noted the tension that remained in his shoulders, a little part of him still preparing for a fight.
“Lady Inaya,” the solider chided, his voice grating and full in a way that reminded Inaya uncomfortably of her father. “We often save those kinds of manoeuvrers for the training room.”
Once again, Inaya’s body acted before her mind could catch up with the abrupt direction change of the situation, saving her from a moment of dumbstruck silence.
“Here on Arrakis, you may find that you need to stray from the training room,” She got out from between her teeth, reeling, “Our planet is not a forgiving one. Unlike the Caladan that you came from.”
Good-naturedly, Duncan shook his head, refusing to feel the sting of the jibe.
“I shall pray that I never need to use them against you, my Lady, within the training room or out of it.” Still smiling, he holds out his hand, palm up. It takes Inaya a moment to realise that he’s asking for the knife, and a moment longer to pass it too him, feeling slightly cowed, like a child who’s been caught stealing food from the kitchen table.
“Why?” Inaya lifts her chin haughtily, masking her sheepishness. “Were you taught never to hit a lady?”
“No,” He laughs again, his scarred features twisting so that Inaya could see how handsome he was, underneath all of the gruffness. “Because I don’t want to lose my head.”
This, at last, slipped under Inaya’s defences, and she allowed him a small smile, turning away from him slowly with exaggerated slyness. To her surprise, Duncan turned to keep pace with her, taking her elbow to steer her down the halls.
“Looking for the breakfast hall, Lady?” It wasn’t really a question, but Inaya allowed him the dignity of a slight nod, accepting his aid with wordless gratitude.
“I’m afraid that, though I know your father quite well by now, I don’t think I’ve ever made your acquaintance.” Though the soldier spoke with the Atreides pretentious affects, the formalities sounded gruff on his tongue, and Inaya could tell that they were unpractised. This made her like him a little more. She knew from her father, and her sister, that Duncan truly had settled in with her people, that he, if not the rest of them, was truly genuine in his efforts to make peace.
Although, if her father liked him, perhaps Idaho and Inaya wouldn’t get along after all.
“I’ve heard a lot about you from my sister.” Inaya kept her voice carefully even, but couldn’t keep the slight edge of equal parts fear and affection that came with mentioning Laila. She was reluctant to even broach the subject – she was painfully protective of her, and all too aware of the tendencies of men when faced with a beautiful young woman. Still, Duncan seemed to have some form of honour. “I know you met her when entering the sietch.”
“Indeed,” He chuckled, a hand rising to press against his heart, as if the memory of Inaya’s little sister had touched him deeply. “A true firecracker, that one. She was one of the more difficult things to get a handle on during my time with your people, and trust me, there was no shortage of difficult things.”
Inaya couldn’t help but smile in bemusement. Her gentle, sweet-tongued little sister, who cried over birds who fell out of their nests and beamed every morning to see the sun rising in the East, a firecracker? Inaya wondered if perhaps Duncan had met some other red head and grown confused.
“I take it she wasn’t sweet on you?” Inaya kept her eyes on the artwork still stretching down the hallways as she asks, but true curiosity kept her attention on Idaho. It frightened her how much she missed Laila after less than a day.
“On the contrary, she was the most welcoming of the lot.” Inaya thought she caught a wink out of the corner of her eye, but decided that it can’t have been more than a trick of the light. She waited for Duncan to go on, but he’s apparently resolved to keep his mouth shut, and she refused to give in to the bait. Instead, she picked up the pace, forcing Idaho to keep in time with her, forgetting, for a moment, that she didn’t actually know where she was going.
Duncan seemed content to play this game. Though he kept his head turned toward her, she couldn’t help but feel a slight reluctance to meet his eyes; it would take her a while to get used to the Atreides’ unsettling whites.

Apparently, averting those unsettling eyes isn’t a manner held in high regard by Lady Jessica – or, perhaps, she simply doesn’t extend the courtesy to Fremen. Inaya couldn’t decide between ignoring the concubine to show how little it bothered her or meeting her stare head on, and compromised by tossing her contemptuous glances between bites of toast. The bread stuck in her mouth as if her teeth were coated in the sand that the Atreides keep stubbornly locked outside, poor souls endlessly sweeping the halls in an effort to defeat the dust that blew in from underneath the doors. She wondered how long it will take for Arrakis to overcome them, for the newcomers to realise that there is no hiding from the a sun that washes away every shadow.
Even more unnervingly, Jessica ate nothing as she watched Inaya, despite the banquet laid out in front of her, and Inaya shivered to remember the bony wrists and balding heads of the children trapped in the city outside. That’s always the way of the outsiders, though – they expect forgiveness, from the land, from the people, from their gods. But Inaya’s gods were merciless, and so was her planet.
She was entirely at Jessica’s mercy, yet she fought to hide a smug smile.
“As soon as you’re done,” Jessica spoke suddenly, her reproachful tone indicating that Inaya should’ve finished her toast already. “I will take you through today’s schedule.”
Jessica hadn’t known what to expect of the princess in the days leading up to her son’s wedding; she knew the girl’s name, of course, had known everything about her that could be read in the reports prepared by Duncan and his scouts. The nineteen year old had been trained to serve in her father’s group of militants since she could walk; unless she was needed in battle, she would protect her younger sister as she sat on the throne in a backward custom of inheritance. Jessica had heard of the practise and sneered to herself; this, then, was the Fremen way. The eldest child devoted to battle, while the younger, barely a teenager, ruled the wild people, untrained. War, before politics, before organisation or strong leadership. No wonder their population had floundered in the years since the Harkonnen’s invaded.
And, of course, it meant that now she was faced with the task of training a desert animal into a presentable wife – albeit, a beautiful desert animal. Nevertheless, Jessica had cursed when she saw the younger sister, Laila; the delicate creature would make a far more elegant wife for Paul, without the grating edges of her sister, her manner more pliable, her seraphic looks more lovable. But no matter. Paul needed someone who could take care of herself, Jessica reminded herself forcefully, not a pet to look pretty.
Still. It was hard to bear in mind as Inaya ate toast with more insolence than the Lady thought was possible. The girl would learn. She would have to, if she wanted to survive in her new world.
“I can eat and listen at the same time,” Inaya informed Jessica flatly, and Jessica curled her lip in distaste. Clearly, she could eat and talk at the same time too.
“Very well.” She kept her voice smooth, unrattled, refusing to descend from her position as concubine. The former princess would learn to respect her as her other subjects did. “You will undergo training in the fields of politics, court manners, accounting and philanthropic relations. I will oversee your lessons, though I won’t teach you myself – I have other duties with which to occupy myself with.”
Inaya should have nodded quietly, sipped at the watery tea that the servants brought over with lowered heads; instead, she straightened, raised an eyebrow in thinly-veiled contempt.
“What of combat training?”
Jessica, who had expected this, simply blinked.
“What of it?”
Inaya, who nursed more of a temper than her sister, tried to remember the incantation Laila had taught her to recite when she needed the gods to grant her patience. She found it difficult to recall as she stared into the old Bene Gesserit’s face, her orange hair slicked back into a severe twist, her lips pursed in obvious disgust. If only Shai Hulud had granted her with her sister’s temperament and not her father’s.
“When is my combat training?” Inaya gripped her knife tightly, fantasising about sticking it in the witch’s eye and twisting. She held back a laugh as she pictured Laila’s appalled expression. She once asked Laila whether she could read Inaya’s mind, given her uncanny ability to guess exactly when Inaya was clinging to her final straw, to which she replied, only when you’re thinking violent thoughts. So, most of the time, Inaya joked back.
“You won’t be undergoing combat training.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t need it. You won’t be in any combat situations.”
Inaya glowered at her plate. Yes, she would definitely appreciate the aid of her sister’s deft diplomatic hand now.
“There’s also the matter of your dress,” Jessica continued after a loaded pause, the two women refusing to meet the other’s eyes.
“What about it?” Suppressing a groan, Inaya twisted her butter knife in her hand, watching her reflection curve and break, around and around and around.
“There are clothes for you in the dressers in your room. You don’t have to wear the Fremen… gowns.”
At this, Inaya was unable to hold in her huff of derision.
“I beg your pardon, but if I’m going to be torn away from my culture, I’d at least like to wear it.”
That shut the woman up.

The poor old woman tasked with her training dithers helplessly as Inaya strides from the room, a twinge of guilt twisting in the princess’s chest as she pulls the clunky door shut behind her. Everything here is heavy and formidable, but Inaya can’t help but think about how unsuited it is to the climate, lacking the flowing fabrics and supple wood that the Fremen use to bend and sway with the sands, their structures as much a part of the landscape as the dunes themselves. Just like all off-worlders, the Atreides have refused to compromise, hoping that brute force will be enough to keep them upright. Inaya sees their blindness so plainly that she marvels at the sheer luck it must’ve taken for them to survive this long. She sees their weakness so clearly that she can’t help but think, bitterly, how it was that the Fremen have failed so badly at protecting their home.
Still, despite their idiocy, not all of them have had a hand in the destruction, and the only evil that her frail teacher has committed was having the bad fortune of coming into contact with Lady Jessica. Never mind. Surely she will not be punished too harshly for letting her charge slip away from her. Inaya will pass any test that the Lady Jessica could set for her; she’s been studying the Atreides for months now, preparing for their arrival, planning the counterattack.
The lessons the woman tried to teach her were laughable. The names of the Great Houses. The family tree of the Emperor. The endless ancestors of the Great Leto Atreides, and the duties of Inaya’s new husband, Paul. As if Inaya was an idiot. As if the Fremen were illiterate, uncivilised, scattered. As if these titbits weren’t the names she whispered under her breath as she trained in the art of killing, the promises she made as she stroked her sister’s hair until she fell asleep, the war cries Inaya and her father screamed at each other until they were hoarse. The Atreides had invited an spy into their home without even bothering to consider how much she already knew. Inaya felt almost stupid for the fear that was still settled in her stomach, an icy-cold stone that refused to melt in the Arrakeen heat.
Now, alone again in those echoing halls, Inaya allowed her instincts to guide her, following the overhead lights and reeling mosaics as they grew more ornate, leading her to what she was sure were the regal quarters. She wasn’t sure who, exactly, she was seeking out, was sure only that she was bored, impatient, and, ashamedly, lonely.
Inaya’s ears pricked as she made out the distant sounds of flesh against flesh, the sombre drum that any soldier should be able to identify a hundred yards away. Somewhere in the surrounding rooms, a battle was being waged.
She slowed to a creep, grabbing fistfuls of her gown, regretting her previous stubbornness. Perhaps the Atreides had put some flexible battle wear in her wardrobe, battle wear that would’ve been handy right about now – though, after her conversation with Jessica, she sincerely doubted it.
Pushing her sleeves up over her elbows, Inaya came to another mighty door, the rearing figure of a Shai Hulud etched into its surface, behind which she could hear those unmistakable noises, the grating clang of metal on metal, the sharp breaths of the duellers, the scrape of tired feet across stone. Adrenaline tensed her muscles, sped her heart, but the familiar sounds also put her at ease, a breath of certainty in amongst all of this strangeness. Inaya was no stranger to war.
She threw open the door, on hand tight on the crysknife bound to her torso by the Fremen robes, eyes darting around the room to take stock of whatever situation she’d walked into.
Rather than the blood-bathed scene she’d imagined, Inaya found a vaulting room, one of the wall entirely devoted to a vast display of weaponry, littered with mannequins dressed in Harkonnen uniforms and butcher’s paper covered in what she assumed to be battle manoeuvres. In the middle of the floor, two Atreides men, dwarfed by their surroundings, turned toward her in obvious bafflement, their swords locked in contest, both frozen in ridiculous fighting stances. After an awkward moment, Inaya recognised her husband with a jolt, his uncropped hair falling forward to obscure parts of his sharply-boned face, eyes filled with a fierceness that she hadn’t seen the day of their wedding. The man across from him was another she had met at the ceremony, another she had read about in the weeks leading up – Gurney Halleck, soldier, advisor, one of Paul’s companions since birth.
It took several more seconds for the two to spring apart, relaxing their poses, both clearly trying to recover from the shock of her appearance. To her surprise, both sank into stiff bows, glancing at each other as if not quite sure how to address her.
“Lady Inaya,” Paul clears his throat before speaking, his tone, to her surprise, betraying none of his surprise. He speaks lowly, his tone more gravelly than she would expect from his slight frame, more self-assured than she remembered from the wedding. Perhaps he had been overwhelmed, unable to keep up the ducal façade. She couldn’t find it in herself to blame him. He was young, after all, as young as she was, and his life so far had been forgiving. Now, on his home ground, with his wife outnumbered, Inaya could see Paul Atreides as the man he was supposed to be; the proud heir to his father’s legacy, the future of Arrakis.
Inaya thought the words with a sneer.
Gurney mumbled the words with haste, apparently willing to follow Paul’s lead. She simply regarded them for a moment more, chin raised so that she glared at them down her nose. The two men shifted uncomfortably. They’re afraid of me, she realised. Afraid of the little Fremen girl who was such a mystery to them.
“My lords,” she eventually replied stiffy, dipping her head ever so slightly in acknowledgement. This seemed to set them at ease, and Paul took a few brave steps toward her, even daring a slightly crooked smile. An attractive one, Inaya allowed, but found that she was unable to be drawn to skin so unblemished by the sun, a smile so obviously false.
My husband, she kept thinking, as if trapped inside a sand storm, buffeted on all sides. My husband, my husband.
“Did my mother send you to fetch me?” The words were innocuous, but his eyes glimmered, and Inaya heard the implications in Paul’s tone. She had no real reason to be here, she heard. This was no place for a princess. Leave the men to their duelling and go learn how to sip tea with a pinkie finger raised.
“No.” Speaking bluntly, but refusing to stoop to outright defensiveness, Inaya moves smoothly into the room, glancing around her with arid curiosity. “I sent myself.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Inaya sees the men share a bewildered look, and smirks to herself. If only Fremen men were this easy to bewitch. Though, she allows, she’s seen the way they run around like hopping mice to please her little sister. Perhaps Inaya is just better suited to charming off-worlders.
“What for?” Gurney’s gruff tones reminded Inaya of the horns they blew at celebrations in the sietch, the mass army of instruments that grated and sighed in a cacophonous mess that had Laila grinning and clapping her hands, peering over at her sister to share in the delight. “M’lady,” he added hastily at the pointed look from Paul.
“The Lady Jessica neglected to tell me when my combat training would take place.” Inaya addressed the walls, the ceiling, the floor – anywhere but her husband – as she spoke, hoping that some of her false self-assuredness would begin to ring true. “So I thought I would come and find out for myself.”
With a forced laugh, Paul stepped into her sightline, raising an arm as if to grab her and hold her in place, before thinking better of it and tucking it back behind his back.
“I’m not sure it would be safe for you, Inaya –”
“Not so fast, Paul.” To her surprise, Gurney interjected, bouncing slightly on his toes as he spoke as if physically preparing for an argument. “The Fremen are a capable people. In desert living, spying, technology – and combat. And as for a Fremen princess… well, I’d imagine you pretty well know what you’re doing. Isn’t that right, my lady?”
Inaya, thrown, met Halleck’s eyes, and was surprised to see a hint of begrudging respect in them. What was this? An Atreides whose skull wasn’t solid all the way through?
Inaya expected another false laugh from Paul, another throwaway insult, for him to maintain this act of a young leader who was always in control, never bothered, never threatened. But Paul only looked at her, then at Gurney, and at her once more, before bowing his head and stepping out of her way, the jumping muscles in his jaw betraying how tightly it was tensed.
“Well, then, Lady Inaya,” Gurney continued after it was clear that neither of the young married couple intended to speak; “Let see what you can do.”
Gurney offered her the floor with a flourish, stepping backwards to make room. Nonplussed, Inaya accepted his invitation, self-conscious of the swirls of her gown as she swept onto the floor. Laila always managed to make it look graceful, but Inaya, moments away from a fight, just felt foolish and tangled. Trying to overcome this, she drew her crysknife in one fluid motion, turning toward the two men and sinking into a fighting stance with practised ease. Gurney watched her expectantly, arms folded almost smugly across his chest, but Paul was still just staring, eyes narrowed as he stared at Gurney, like a small child willing a parent to finish up their conversation so that they can beg for a sweet.
“Well?” Both Inaya and Halleck spoke at the same time, shooting each other an amused look. Paul seemed startled by their sudden address, his mouth falling open slightly.
“What?” He replied, apprehensive. Inaya found herself, once again, underwhelmed by the strength of her enemy. He couldn’t even keep it together here, in his home, with an ally at his back. Maybe, Inaya truly had nothing to fear. Although, she thought with sudden uneasiness, if she had nothing to fear from the Atreides, then it was nothing but a façade of strength that kept the other Great Houses at bay, the Harkonnens from attacking. A façade was nothing but a wall built of sand, a dune vulnerable to the shifting of the wind.
Paul isn’t a solider, she thought to herself in some backward form of comfort. The Atreides army is one of the most trained across the system. Just because this boy is inexperienced doesn’t mean that they all are.
But Inaya couldn’t shake this new anxiety, prickling across her skin like heat rash.
“Aren’t you going to take the floor, young Paul?” The formalities were dripping in sarcasm, Gurney obviously keen to see how the oncoming battle would pan out. Paul’s eyes widened in surprise, taking another of those pathetic steps back.
“You want me to fight her?” Now the laugh was back, a tired shake of the head, his nonchalance so stiff it hurt to watch.
“Yep.”
“But Gurney, she’s a girl, a princess –”
“And you’re keeping her waiting!”
“I don’t understand –”
“Are you afraid of a little competition? Get out there, man!”
Still chuckling thinly, Paul gave a small sigh of defeat and took up a second blade from the table, swinging the two knifes in his hands as if testing their weight. He stopped a few feet from Inaya, settling into position with exaggerated casualness, though Inaya could see the dark determination in his green eyes. For the first time since arriving, she felt her heart speed in anticipation, and not fear.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” He asked her lowly, as if he was kindly offering her a final chance for mercy. His slight smile promised no judgement, but Inaya knew that this was a make-or-break, a little sign to both of them for what was to come.
She smiled sweetly back at him.
“Are you?”
Without waiting for an answer, she leapt.

Gurney watched the princess fight the Lord Paul with rapt attention, unable to hide his smile as she darted and twisted her way around him, as if she were ballroom dancing in twirling fabrics. Paul’s expression shifted from bemused to shock so quickly it seemed to Halleck that a switch had been hit; though he knew he should be rooting for his future duke, he couldn’t help but enjoy watching him learn the lesson that had been a long time coming.
Inaya, on the other hand, was startled by Paul’s almost sluggish movements, the sudden jerks forward followed by the slow slices, wondering with rising anger whether he was playing with her, acting slow to belittle her. The infuriation only fuelled her as fought, her muscles responding to her pounding pulse, her eyes greedily sucking up all the world had to offer, her crysknife a third limb as she drove Paul back and back and back.
When he dove and hesitated once again, a growl of frustration slipped from Inaya’s lips, his sudden change of pace causing her to stumble a little, unbalanced. Fed up, she tossed her hair and met his eyes with a burning glare, teeth bared in open anger.
“What are you playing at?” She hissed, barely pausing in her attack as she spoke. Paul only pressed his lips more firmly together, cheeks reddened, it seemed to her, with exertion.
Paul’s heart was hammering, yes, but not only with effort. Years of training with Duncan, with Halleck, honing his abilities until he spent his nights dreaming of fighting Harkonnen soldiers, and now here he was, being backed into a corner by a princess a little younger than himself. His chest rattled, his feet were slowing, and his faced burned with humiliation. He hadn’t believed the reports he’d read, the lesson’s he’d sat through in preparation for the move to Arrakis. He’d heard of the Fremen’s might, but he had not believed it. But the girl was uninhibited by a shield, her movements serpentine and darting, and Paul seemed to be losing.
What’s more, she was angry at him. He could tell. Not a general anger, either, brought on by the heat of the battle or directed at the people he represented. She was angry at him, Paul, the man she had met only yesterday, specifically and significantly. She wouldn’t cut him, wouldn’t kill him but she wanted to. It was at odds with all Paul knew of her – or thought he did. The Inaya he knew called his name with love. Gazed at him with knowing. Trusted him as he guarded her back. He and his Inaya had spent every night together since he’d first woken from a dream of Arrakis, orange sand, and the two foreign princesses.
This Inaya wanted him dead, whether she knew it or not. And if Gurney wasn’t in the room, watching, Inaya would probably have her way.
Abruptly, Paul’s heel connects with the back wall, and his moment of shock is all Inaya needs to hook her foot around his leg and bring him to the floor. The wind is knocked out of him with a gasp, and Inaya allows him no time to regain his breath before straddling his chest, crysknife held to his throat, their faces only separated by a few inches.
The two pause in a stricken moment, the princess so close to Paul that he can see every shade of blue in her eyes, the colour that from a distance looked so impenetrable actually as flowing and deep as the Caladan sea. He can feel her heartbeat, thudding against his ribcage. He can see her eyelashes, the baby hairs tucked behind her ears. She could kill him, right now, and he would be powerless to stop her. And yet.
Paul cannot find it in himself to be afraid of the girl from his dreams.
Then, Inaya laughs, a harsh sound, mirthless, another weapon in her arsenal.
“Not so dangerous after all, husband,” she drawls, lifting her head so that Paul can no longer feel her breath on his skin.
“Perhaps not,” he manages, voice thick with an emotion he cannot name.
With another of those cruel laughs, Inaya rises to her feet, walking away from him without a backward glance. He can hear Gurney’s approving chuckle, can hear their good-natured banter. But for several moments more, he cannot find it in himself to move.

Chapter Text

Joseph watched the thopter sink behind the walls of the compound with equal parts relief and aching; relief, that she was safe again, and aching, that she was once again captive within stone walls. Laila always laughed at him when he said things like that.
The only captive is you, my darling, she’d chide, teasing out bits of his hair between her fingers and a smirk on her lips.
Are you my captor? He’d reply in warning tones, hoping that she’d say yes so that he would have an excuse to pin her to the mattress and teach her a lesson in disrespecting him.
But she would always reply, you know I’m not, with that sobering look in her eye. Laila worried too much, which amused him, because she also believed in the ultimate powers of the Shai Hulud and was therefore powerless at their fateful hands, so on so forth, making worry about as useful as carrying an umbrella around in the desert.
But she would say the same thing about Joseph and his constant ranting, as she called it. Nothing could happen to her in the sietch. She was the best guarded girl on the planet, literally forbidden from braving the outside world. It was unimaginable that she wouldn’t be safe.
Joseph tried to believe it. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that the stone walls would not be there forever.
A gruff call from his supervisor had Joseph leaning back down over his work, hands dusty and worn from hefting the heavy stones that were being used for the foundation of the new water catchment. He wanted to give his boss the finger, call gruffly right back at him, shake him roughly until he understood that there were far more important things going on than moving these godforsaken stones from A to B. But he knew better than to shake a foundation so delicate.
The villagers tolerated Joseph. They tolerated his presence, his temper, his Harkonnen-ness. And if any Atreides or Harkonnens or even the Emperor’s men themselves ever came clamouring through the village, the people in it would simply bow their heads and close their mouths, averting their eyes from the sagging hut where Joseph had, until recently, spent his nights alone. He could trust the Fremen not to give the game away. But the trust was tentative.
Joseph would keep from making a fuss unless it was absolutely necessary. But he worried that, with the changes coming from Caladan, it would become necessary sooner than he had hoped.

Night was falling, and Inaya was still, stupidly, pointlessly, afraid. The temporary relief of the fight had faded from her bones; she was shivering in her gown now, pacing the echoing length of her bedroom floor.
Her fear was unspecific and aimless, born, she thought, out of a restlessness that after only one day had begun to build a nest in her body. Inaya had never gone so long without training, without duties, without battling the sands or her father or her sister. She missed the sun, as foolish as that was. She didn’t consider herself to be sentimental, wouldn’t allow herself to be, usually, but she missed the sietch’s low ceilings and murky light, missed her bed, missed her sister, missed Xavier. It was usually at this time of night that they’d break after dinner, a meal that Xavier would have doubtlessly spent boisterously recreating an old Fremen war stories for the simpering men and women who hung around in the dining hall for no reason other than to see him. She’d roll her eyes over her soup and tire of his admirer’s antics and wince every time she shifted her position, muscles aching from the day of hard training. Xavier would walk her back to her chambers, bid her a sarcastic goodnight, even though the joke had grown old many years before, and stroll away into the halls beyond. Then Inaya would check on her sister, who would be asleep, slumped in her window seat, having failed, once again, to wait up. Inaya would creep around her bedroom, avoid Isaiah, wherever he was. Shower. Pick at the fruit basket left on Laila’s dining table, because there was never enough food at dinner. Drag her unwilling, dazed little sibling into her real bed and order her to sleep. Wait for the soft knock on the door.
Inaya had seen the raised eyebrows and suggestive looks for as long as she could remember. It was a badly-kept secret that her training with Xavier continued well into the night, without the supervision of Fremen warriors or lesser court members who hung at the walls to watch. What wasn’t as well-known was the fact that, in their late night training sessions, Inaya and Xavier did just that – train. They worked each other into rages, beating each other bloody with the flats of their crysknives, sneaking out of the sietch to sprint across the sands, each daring the other to push it a little harder than the night before. And nothing more. No matter what was thought, it had never been romantic between Inaya and Xavier. Both knew that it never would be. They’d known their roles since they could walk. In truth, Xavier had been training to marry Inaya’s little sister just as Inaya had been training to guard her little sister’s back.
No, though they spent every day together, their friendship never blossomed into something more. But that didn’t mean Inaya didn’t long for him now. She did. She would never admit it to him, but she missed him.
She had no friends in Arrakeen. Just a people who feared her and a husband who would never understand her.
This final though pushed her out of her stupor, abruptly unable to bear the sight of these four walls for a moment longer. She burst through the heavy bedroom doors and into the hallway beyond, disappointed that she felt just as alone out here as she had inside. Still, not be dissuaded, she stalked with false confidence out into the complex once more, hoping that a destination would find her even if she didn’t have one in mind.

Inaya did not realise that the room wasn’t empty until it was too late. Leto cut an intimidating figure as he bent over the table, silhouetted by one of those strange floating orbs that followed you around if it thought you needed light. She thought she may have been able to back out if she did it quickly, and quietly. But Inaya wasn’t a coward.
Her footsteps echoed as she moved further into the room, holding in an involuntary wince at the noise. The Duke looked up sharply, severe in the dim lighting. Bearded, dark hair dashed through with grey like rusted silver, built like the ex-soldier he was – Leto was the kind of man that Laila would gush over after a council meeting, fake-swooning in her bedchamber while Inaya laughed and shook her head in disapproval. Leto was made up of hard, solid lines where his son was smooth and fine. He was the bullish Atreides’ nature personified. Yet, Inaya found him less unsettling than his son. Here was a man she could predict, she thought to herself. Here was the man she had been expecting.
“Lady Inaya,” He said smoothly, straightening up with dignity. To her gratification, he looked at her with neither disgust nor irritation; he seemed to have been expecting her, had been wondering what was taking her so long.
“My Lord Duke.” The title was stiff on her tongue, but she forced it out. She might enjoy riling Paul, but this, here, was the person who truly controlled her fate.
“Can’t sleep?” His voice had a timbre that set her at ease, despite her better knowledge. Still, she couldn’t see any reason to keep her distance, and moved further into the room, coming to stand across from him at the mighty table. With a pang, she remembered the sietch, and the similar table that she’d stood beside as she begged Xavier to let her go.
“It’s odd not to hear the wind.”
Surprised, Inaya paused – she hadn’t intended to say anything so candid. It was true, she found the silence eerie; she was used to being lulled to sleep by the whistle of sand against sand.
Rather than draw away, Leto chuckled to himself slightly, his gaze unfocused like he wasn’t looking at her at all, but something far more pleasant.
“I feel the same way,” He admitted, knocking his knuckles gently against the edge of the table as if trying to ground himself. “Except, of course, I’m missing the sea. You could hear the waves for miles inland on Caladan.”
Inaya could think of no reply. The concept was meaningless to her; she had never even seen a picture of the ocean. Though, once, she had rolled over in her bed to see Laila beside her, eyes wide in wonder. What? Inaya had asked brusquely.
I just dreamt of the ocean, Laila had replied, breathless.
Inaya humoured her sister. What was it like?
But Laila had just shook her head wordlessly and rolled over.
“I’ve heard it’s very beautiful,” Inaya tried, but it came across insincere, betraying her indifference. The Duke was gentleman enough to let it pass without comment.
“So, you’re settling in alright?” As if she was a willing guest. As if she wasn’t practically a captive here.
“Yes, quite.” Inaya searched her mind for ways to prolong the conversation, unwilling to go back to her empty bedroom. “It must be strange, for you, and your son, to have me living here. I imagine you’re as unused to such company as I am.”
“Strange, maybe, but necessary.” With his raised brows, Inaya couldn’t help but feel she was being chided. “The Atreides need the Fremen, need your people, if we’re going to succeed with our endeavours on Arrakis.”
Inaya was rankled. Were her people to be used, then, tools rather than targets to the conquerors, allowing these foreigners on their lands only because they had no choice yet expected to bear it with a smile and open arms? And what were these endeavours, then? Peace, her sister had said, but in reality it would simply be the same Harkonnen methods dressed up and made to look pretty, shameless harvesting of the land that they gave nothing back to while they paraded their Fremen captive around as if she was the equivalent of a blessing.
The true irony was not hidden from Inaya, either. Her father had seen the Emperor’s command for it’s true motives the moment it had reached Fremen ears; the Atreides’ name was well known to him and his advisors, the Great Houses’ movements carefully studied and kept track of. This was an act of war, thinly veiled and unapologetic. The Harkonnens would not stand for the affront; the Atreides would die, and the Fremen, used as their living shield, would die with them. The Emperor would watch, two mighty enemies slain with one fatal blow.
This was the truth Inaya had kept from her sister, guiltily allowing her to hope while knowing that any peace that came with the Atreides would be a shortly-lived lie. All Inaya could hope to do was find out enough information to maybe keep her people safe when the time came.
The silence that followed the Duke’s words was thick with this knowledge and more. The two looked at each other, two tired rulers of two tired people who knew just how tightly their fates were sealed. And then, with a sigh that seemed to echo up from the Arrakeen core, the Duke dropped his mask.
“You know.”
Inaya played the fool.
“Know what?”
“The Emperor’s schemes. The real reason we have been sent here.” The Duke had no patience for her acting – he seemed charged, suddenly, with a fervour that had him leaning over the table toward her, hands clawed on the dark wood.
Unwilling to give herself away, Inaya merely tightened her jaw, ramrod straight and unbending beneath his gaze. Still, the Duke seemed satisfied with her wordless answer, relaxing his stance and ducking his head as if shamed that he’d let himself lose his composure.
“My apologies, my lady.” He only murmured, by Inaya found herself ever more mollified by it, this honesty amidst so much performance. She wondered how a boy such as Paul could’ve come out of a man such as this. “I did not mean to raise my voice.”
He turned, almost as if to go and leave her on her own again, and Inaya found that she could not bear it. In an almost identical movement to Leto’s only moments before, Inaya darted forward and leant toward him, doing her best to keep her voice from sounding strangled.
“I know!” He turned back toward her, startled by the loud noise. Clearing her throat slightly, Inaya tried again. “I know. My father… saw it immediately.”
The Duke’s eyebrows creased, face darkening with confusion.
“Then why send you here? Why did you marry my son, if you were so sure that we were doomed?” Ha, Inaya thought to herself. Perhaps my father was just hoping that the emperor would kill me so that he didn’t have to. She knew that this wasn’t the true answer, though had Laila been with her, she would’ve said it, just to see her outraged expression. But this wasn’t a time for humour, or resentment. The duke was being honest with her; it was time for the spy to shed her mask, however momentarily.
“Because,” Softly, fingers curling on the great table, Inaya forced as much truth into her words as she was able, desperate for the Duke to see through to her true intentions. “The Fremen have had a hard time, for a long time. My father isn’t a perfect man, but he is a good ruler. And he knew that the only way - the only chance we had, however how small - lay with the Atreides. And the Fremen.” She paused, unable to hold his simmering gaze for a moment longer. “Neither of us can face the Emperor, or the Harkonnens, alone. Probably not together, either.”
A moment of silence stretched out between them. Then, Inaya raised her head to see a twinkle in the Duke’s eye, a slight smile on his face.
“But we can damn well try, eh?”
She allowed herself to smile back.