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Chapter Text

the sea air had a way of finding its way through stone, even here, in the high hush of the house atreides keep, so that the scent of brine and the distant breath of waves folded themselves into aisha’s chambers as naturally as if the walls had been made of mist instead of rock. the hour was late enough that the sky beyond her balcony had softened into that deep caladan blue which seemed almost black at first glance, yet held within it a lingering band of silver where the last of the daylight clung along the horizon. the lamps in her rooms were lit, not overly bright, the flames shuttered so that they flickered in a subdued, steady way, casting a honeyed light over the carved panels, the woven hangings, the polished table where her jewels lay dispersed, akin to fragments of a broken constellation.

aisha stood before the long mirror, the ornate one that had been brought to her chambers when she had grown tall enough that the childish glass no longer sufficed and had to be replaced by something more befitting. she watched her reflection with that mixture of detachment and unease that had never quite left her since she came here as a child. at eighteen years and some months, she was well used to seeing herself in finery, leto’s household did not stint on making his ward look every inch the lady of atreides that she was. yet, there were nights when the awareness of how she appeared struck her differently, as if some unseen line had shifted while she was not looking.

the gown she wore was a thing of caladan silk, loomed in the coastal villages that clung to the cliffs facing the endless sea, dyed in a shade that hovered between pale sand and ivory, the color deepening where the fabric folded and draped. it clung more closely than some of her heavier dresses, the silk fine enough that, under lamp light, the suggestion of the lines of her body could be seen when she moved. it had been made for her only recently, a gift from leto that had come without melodrama, wrapped in his seal, with a brief message in his hand that had said simply that it might please her to have something lighter for the warmer season. the sleeves were long and almost sheer, the neckline modest yet cut in such a way that it framed the soft rise of her collarbones, the hollow of her throat where tonight she had chosen to wear one of the duke’s more extravagant gifts, a necklace of worked gold, delicate and polished, with dark-green stones that, when they caught the light, echoed the color of caladan’s deep waters.

her hair fell loose down her back, unbound as it rarely was beyond the threshold of these rooms, a cascade of dark, wavy strands that reached below her waist. mara had brushed it until it shone, until it lay like a living thing over the silk, and rava had stood with her arms crossed, watching with that appraising gaze of hers, keen and calculating, as if each lock was one more detail in the composition of an image that needed to be flawless. aisha was used to this contrast now, her own adornment, and in the corner of her mind, lady jessica, who favored garments of simple elegance, dark and unadorned, with her brown hair often coiled tightly at the nape of her neck, her face composed and austere, the quiet beneath which something sharp and disciplined always watched. where jessica walked akin to a blade in a sheath, aisha had been made, by blood and inclination, to be more like the jewelled hilts her mother had once worn in portraiture, striking, visible, made to draw the eye. she did not know if this pleased her or filled her with doubt.

she lifted a small lacquered box from the table, its surface inlaid with patterns of silver waves and tiny ivory ships, another caladan piece, another gift. inside were earrings of gold filigree that matched the necklace, and a narrow band set with three small stones. leto had a way of giving such things, he did not remark upon them often when he did, he simply saw something that suited her and had it sent, as if there were no question that his ward, his beloved friend’s daughter, should be presented with the best caladan could offer. he had done so more frequently of late, and it was in those gestures, as much as in his words, that she had begun to feel the change.

she thought of him as she stood there, as she did more often than she allowed herself to admit even within the privacy of her own mind. duke leto atreides, lord of caladan, head of house atreides, the man who had taken her in when she had been a frightened ten-year-old with eyes too old for her small face, her father’s blood cooling a world away on giedi prime. he had been a towering figure even then, all stern dignity and solemn kindness, a man whose voice could rouse armies and yet had softened when he had taken her hand and said, simply, that she would be safe here. she had grown under that assurance, watching him from council galleries, from the shadows of practice yards, from the vantage of doorways and hallways, learning the shape of his movements, the cadence of the decisions he made, the burden of the responsibilities he carried without complaint.

and somewhere, in the slow turning of the years, the image of him in her mind had changed. she did not know precisely when it had happened. perhaps there had never been one instance, only a series of half-noticed ones, each insignificant on its own, the way he had once laughed, unexpectedly, at a remark she had made in council, the sound warmer and freer than she had ever heard it, the way his hand had rested, briefly, with unconscious familiarity at the small of her back when guiding her through a crowded reception, the nights when, instead of sending a secretary, he had come himself to speak to her on some trivial matter and had stayed, talking of caladan’s history, of distant stars, of things that had nothing to do with policy, simply because he had wanted to hear her thoughts. she was a mentat-trained mind now, or near enough, able to follow the lines of decision, to calculate probabilities, to weigh words, but all that logical training had not prevented affection from curling in her chest whenever he looked at her in a certain way, whenever he said her name in that low, tired voice that somehow never quite surrendered to weariness.

she knew, too, that she ought not to let that affection grow. she had been raised in this household. she bore the atreides name through her mother, she sat at their table, she had slept as a child in rooms only a corridor’s length from paul’s, had held his hand when he had been younger and scared of storms, had been scolded by jessica for climbing the outer battlements. the keep treated her as family. the servants called her my lady with the same deference they used for jessica. paul called her sister. to allow her heart to wander towards the duke, of all men, was to court a kind of scandal that would not only break her own situation but tear at the fabric of the household itself. and beyond the political, beyond the gossip that would break upon jessica like a wave, there was the matter of feeling. aisha was not blind. she had seen the way lady jessica watched leto when his back was turned, the way her voice altered, imperceptibly, when she said his name.

that knowledge had been the trouble against which her heart had struggled. it was one thing to love a man in silence, it was another to love him where that love might wound a woman who had done nothing but attempt to be kind, even through the strain. she had thought she might keep it all bound away, folded tightly as if it were an old letter never opened, had thought that propriety and gratitude would hold the lines firm. but leto had not been entirely himself, these past months, and that had made it harder.

his concern for her safety, which had always been marked, had deepened. where once he had merely inquired after her studies, after her bene gesserit training, after the occasions she attended, now he seemed to seek ground beneath her feet at every step. he sent word to the physicians if she so much as felt a chill after a cold sea wind, he had admonished the weapons master for a bruise she had taken in practice as if the man had struck paul himself, he had taken to asking, with an earnestness that made her chest ache, whether she ate enough at table, whether she slept, whether her duties were overtaxing. he had begun to send her gifts not only on her birthday or on the feast days, but because, as he had once said, he had seen something and it had made him think of her. at formal dinners he addressed more of his remarks to her, asked for her opinion on questions before the council, let his gaze linger on her longer than protocol strictly required. other nobles had started to notice, and though they were too politic to comment in front of him, aisha had the experience of walking into a hall and feeling conversations pause, of laughter dimming for a heartbeat as eyes went from her to the duke and back.

and there had been no crossing of a boundary, no improper touch, no word that could be pointed to as irrefutable proof of anything beyond a guardian’s heightened fondness for his ward. leto was not a man to forget his duty, nor to embarrass a woman under his protection. but there was something in the way his gaze seemed to weather when it rested on her, something in the way his mouth softened when she laughed, something in the way concern for her threaded through his more general concern for his people, that made her wonder if what she felt, tremulous and deeply buried, was not entirely unreturned.

aisha grasp on the jewelry weakened and she tried to gather herself into something calmer, more orderly. she told herself she would simply read on the balcony tonight, as rava had planned, take some political treatise and let the measured cadence of its arguments pull her mind away from the dangerous paths it kept treading. she turned somewhat, her gown whispering over the stone, and glanced towards where her attendants were.

mara was near the windows, checking the shutters, making sure the latches were properly secured against the wind that could do sudden things on caladan after dark. she was shorter than aisha, with hair the color of charcoal tied back in a loose knot, her tanned hands deft and quick, her expression open in a way that suggested every feeling she harbored sat close to the surface. rava stood nearer the inner door, arms folded over the front of her darker gown, her posture as straight as a drawn line. she was not beautiful in the way that turned heads in the hallway, but there was an alluring severity to her that drew the eye in a different way, as if one sensed the cleverness of her mind and the hardness of her resolve before she ever spoke.

“mara,” rava said, her voice carrying that strict tone that always made mara’s shoulders tense, “you will see that there is wine on the balcony table, and the apricot pastries the kitchen sent up, before the lady sits down with her reading. we will not have her lacking for comfort while she studies. and check the brazier, the wind is stronger, it will be cooler later.”

mara glanced back over her shoulder, eyes cast to aisha as if to take her mood’s measure, then nodded.

“yes, rava,” she said, and there was no real sulk in the words, only a familiar reluctant obedience. “i will see to it now.”

aisha turned the box between her palms, the corners pressing lightly into her skin, and opened her mouth to say that perhaps she did not need wine tonight, that tea would suffice, that she was not so delicate that she required a an assortment of refreshments every time she took to the balcony with a book, but before she could speak there was a sudden sound at the inner door. the latch moved with a quick, decisive motion and the door opened inward.

a guard stood there, one of leto’s personal men, in the dark livery of house atreides, the hawk crest glinting on his chest. his hand was still on the handle as if he had moved too fast to remember courtesy until after the fact. at the sight of aisha and her attendants he drew back almost half a step, his expression tightening.

“my lady,” he said, inclining his head in a hurried bow, “forgive me. i should have made my presence known. the duke bade me come at once and i obeyed.”

the box slipped out of aisha’s fingers. it was not clumsiness, not exactly. it was more as if the muscles in her hands had forgotten, for a fraction of a second, how to grip. the lacquered container tipped, slid, and fell, striking the edge of the table with a sharp, wooden sound before falling onto the carpet. the lid flew open, its contents spilling, a glisten of metal, a scatter of gemstones. mara gasped softly and moved before aisha could, stooping to catch one rolling earring before it disappeared beneath the chest at the foot of the bed.

“you say the duke sent you,” aisha said, her voice soft, and noted, with a sort of detached dread, that her heart had begun to beat faster. she took a single breath, then another, steadying herself. “is he… has something occurred in council?”

“no grave matter, my lady,” the guard replied quickly, straightening, perhaps sensing her sudden spike of tension and eager to smooth it. “his grace is in his private chambers. he requests your presence. you are to attend him at once.”

her fingers, freed of the box, curled against her palms. she felt a small, entirely unbidden thrill run through her, something sharp and potent as a line of lightning across the surface of her thoughts. she had no right to it, she knew, but it came nonetheless. he had sent a guard directly here, not a servant with a written summons. he wished to see her now, alone, in his private rooms. she tried to tell herself that it might be about a household matter, something to do with arrangements for visiting suitors, with some small problem in the staff that he preferred to address with her rather than jessica because it touched more on her own attendants. even as she supplied herself with these reasonable explanations, the buried, traitorous warmth remained.

“of course,” she said, setting the matter of her disordly jewels aside as if it were something distant and unimportant. “i will go immediately.”

mara took a step forward, still on her knees, her hands full of gold and stones.

“my lady, shall i gather your shawl?” she asked. “or at least accompany you as far as the lord’s chamber…”

rava’s head snapped around.

“no,” she said, a little too quickly, then tempered her tone, though the steel remained. “if the duke had wished an attendant in his private chambers, he would have said so in the summons. he has his own staff there. he asked for the lady alone. you will remain and put the lady’s belongings away before they go missing.”

mara’s mouth pursed, but she did not argue. she glanced at aisha instead, all her questions and worries resting in that look. aisha offered her a ligjt smile, meant to be reassuring.

“i will be well, mara,” she said. “the guard will escort me.” she turned to rava. “see that the brazier is lit on the balcony nonetheless. when i return, i will likely wish that book and that wine you are so determined i should have.”

rava’s severe expression eased enough to show something close to satisfaction.

“as you say, my lady,” she replied. “go. the duke does not like to be kept waiting.”

the guard stepped back into the corridor to let her pass. as aisha moved, the silk of her gown brushed against her legs, the coolness of the stone under her bare feet yielding to the intricate rugs that lined her path as she crossed the threshold. she felt every detail, as if her skin had become more sensitive in the span of a heartbeat. the guard fell into step half a pace behind her and to the right, the professional distance of a man doing his duty but aware that he escorted the duke’s ward, one whose safety was a matter of personal interest to his lord.

the corridors of the keep were quieter at this hour. the servants who had spent the afternoon and early evening in a flurry of movement had retreated to the lower levels, or to their own quarters, the watch rotations had shifted. they passed only a few people, a scribe carrying a stack of tablets, a pair of guards walking the opposite way, who paused to bow their heads. the sea’s distant roar was a constant undertone, a low, steady sound that seemed to rise from the very stones. lamps set in their posts along the walls cast pools of gold light, between which the shadows gathered. aisha walked through them, her mind racing ahead of her feet.

what could he wish to speak of, alone, and at this hour. he had spent the afternoon in council, she knew, dealing with affairs of shipping, of a minor border dispute on some distant world under atreides protection, of correspondence from the landsraad. jessica had been present for some of it, paul for a part. there had been talk, in the morning, of suitors, of yet another house with pretensions sending an heir to caladan to see whether the duke’s ward might be tempted into an alliance. aisha had smiled and nodded, and leto had looked at her over the heads of his councillors, his expression unreadable. perhaps this had shaken loose some decision in him. perhaps…

she forced herself to slow her thoughts. she could not walk into his presence already dreaming, already imagining that he would say such words she could barely admit she wanted to hear. he was a duke, a ruler of a great house, a man whose every move was watched by the nobility of the landsraad and by the padishah emperor. he could not take romance a woman without consequence, least of all his own ward. he was also a man of honor, he would not lead her into some arrangement that would shame her, nor would he indulge a fancy at the cost of his household’s stability. whatever he said, she would need her mind clear to hear it.

they reached the door to his private wing. another guard stood there, one whose face was familiar to aisha; he had been in leto’s service longer than she had been on caladan, his hair now touched with grey. he nodded to her, then to the man who had escorted her.

“the lady aisha, as you sent for her, my lord,” the escort said.

from within came leto’s voice, muffled slightly by the door but unmistakable. it carried that calm authority that seemed simply to exist in him, even when he was tired.

“admit her,” he said. “and see that we are not disturbed.”

the older guard opened the door, stepped back, and gestured her inside. aisha felt her pulse like a drum in her throat. she smoothed her hands lightly over the front of her gown, a pointless, insignificant gesture, and went in.

leto’s private chambers were not as grand as some might have expected of a great lord. there was space, yes, and fine things, but the overall impression was one of practical comfort rather than ostentation. the outer sitting room held a long table with maps and reports spread over it, a few chairs, shelves with books and data tablets, a carafe and glasses on a sideboard. beyond that, through an open archway, she could see the more personal space, a low couch, a fire set into the wall, a broad window with its shutters half-open to let in the sound of the sea and a gust of cooler air. the lighting here was softer than in council chambers, lamps turned low, it made the stone feel warmer, almost like wood.

he stood near the table when she entered, half-turned as if he had been looking out toward the dark line of water before her arrival. he was not in full formal dress. instead of the high-collared, heavily embroidered coat he wore in public, he wore a simpler garment, dark and well-cut, the fabric easing along his shoulders in a way that emphasized his height and the breadth of his frame rather than hiding it. his hair was slightly disordered, as if he had run a hand through it more than once. the effect, to aisha’s eyes, was disarming, it was as if she had stepped not into the duke’s hall but into some more intimate sphere where he was simply a man, unarmored by ceremony.

he turned fully at the sound of the door closing behind her. for a long stretch of time he simply looked at her. she felt the intensity of that gaze travel from the unbound fall of her hair to the line of her gown, to the necklace at her throat, and something in his expression shifted, a softening around the eyes, the indistinct deepening of the lines at the corners of his mouth.

“my lord,” aisha said, dipping into a formal curtsey almost automatically. it gave her an excuse to lower her eyes, to collect herself. “you sent for me. if i delayed, i beg your pardon. i was with my attendants.”

“aisha,” he said, and there was that thread in his voice, the one that made her name sound different when he spoke it. “there is never need for you to beg my pardon for taking time to come. and how many times must i tell you? there is no need for such formality when we are in private.”

she straightened, lifting her gaze to his. there was a small smile on his lips, the kind that did not yet quite reach his eyes but wanted to.

“forgive me, my lord,” she replied, attempting a lightness that did not entirely hide the quickness of her breathing. “if i am too casual here, i may forget myself before the landsraad and bring you scandal.”

his mouth curved, more genuinely this time. he gestured towards the inner room.

“come away from the door,” he said. “if the guards see you curtseying to me in my own sitting room, they will think i have grown more tyrannical in my old age.”

“never that,” she said, before she could stop herself, and then bit back further words. there was an ardency in his eyes at her denial, and it made her stomach flutter.

she walked further in, the silk of her gown flowing over the smooth stone. leto watched her take those steps with an attention that felt almost physical.

“you look…” he began, then seemed to consider his words more carefully. “that gown becomes you. the silk suits the lines of you. and those gemstones,” his gaze touched on the necklace, on the earrings that mara had managed to fasten before the guard’s arrival, “i had thought they might suit you. the color is better on you than it ever was in the display case where i found them.”

aisha felt heat rise to her cheeks. she moved a hand, fingers brushing, unconsciously, over the chain at her throat.

“you are kind to say so,” she murmured. “you flatter me, my lord.”

“it is not flattery to speak what is true,” leto replied quietly. “there are many who might be called lovely in this keep, even beyond the court, although…” he hesitated, and she saw the moment where he chose to continue rather than retreat. “the only woman i have seen whose face might rival yours was your mother’s, when she was young and the world had not yet had the chance to bruise her. even then,” he added, “i do not think she had your particular… radiance.”

aisha’s hand held against the necklace. she had seen holo-portraits of her mother, of danae as a girl in the early years on caladan, standing beside leto’s late father, beside leto himself when he had been barely older than paul was now. she had always thought danae almost unreal in those images, her beauty like something painted rather than living. to be compared to that was no small thing.

“my lord, you honor my mother’s memory,” she said, keeping her voice as steady as she could, “and me, by extension. but i think you see me through too kind a lens. i could never match your lady jessica for discipline, nor for the elegance she carries without need for jewels. she walks into a room and all there know she is…” she searched for a word that would not cut, “refined, in a way i am striving towards.”

there was a pause. leto’s expression altered, enough that she could see the shift, something tensed, then smoothed again. he moved, slowly, away from the table, coming closer to where she stood, as if closing a distance he had been keeping out of habit more than desire.

“jessica is a woman of grace, yes,” he said. “and of great strength. i do not deny it. her composure has been an asset to this house.” he stopped within arm’s reach of her, his gaze steady on hers. “but i have known that composure for many years. i know its contours. you…” he drew in a breath, as if steadying himself, “you came into this place like a storm. you were all eyes and silence and dignity. over the years you have learned our customs, our politics, our ways, and you have done it without losing your true nature or self. you have remained sincere to your heart.”

she had no ready answer for that. the air between them felt thicker suddenly, as if the sea’s dampness had concentrated in this room and hung heavier. she swallowed, feeling her pulse in the hollow of her throat.

“thank you,” she managed, and the words seemed small compared to what he had said. “i do not always feel so certain as you make me sound. when i was a child here, i thought you were some kind of statue that spoke. now i see you are…”

she broke off, horrified at herself. what had she nearly said. human. vulnerable. a man. things no ward should say to her guardian in private.

leto’s mouth curved again.

“careful,” he said, with a hint of humor, “you will ruin my reputation as the stern lord of caladan if you speak too freely.”

“gurney halleck says it is already ruined,” she replied, before prudence could stop her tongue, “by the way you allow your men to see you at the practice yard, taking blows like any ordinary soldier.”

“gurney says many things,” leto said. there was that rare softness in his tone when he spoke of the troubadour-warrior, even when he pretended irritation. “some of them even worth hearing.”

aisha saw his gaze move beyond her, to the window, then back. he seemed, to her practiced eye, almost like a man standing at the edge of a precipice, measuring the drop, calculating whether the leap was survivable. it was a look she had seen on his face in council, when some decision of particular importance lay before him.

“i asked you here,” he said at last, his voice losing its lighter tone, the words taking on that deliberate cadence she knew meant he had rehearsed them in his mind before speaking. “because there is a matter i must speak with you about, and it is not one for the ears of my council, nor even of jessica or paul, at least not this hour. i thought…” he exhaled, “i thought of sending for you in the formal way, in the day, with witnesses and all the proper order. but this is not a matter that bears the spectacle of too many eyes. i owe you the courtesy of speaking plainly first.”

aisha’s fingers grasped on the fabric of her gown, gathering a fold of silk between them. the surge of hope she had been trying to keep tamped down rose again, dangerously. she kneaded the cloth gently, anchoring herself.

“whatever the matter is, my lord,” she said, “if there is some way i may be of service to you or to house atreides, you have only to ask it of me.”

“it is hardly a service, in the way you mean,” he replied. “though it would… change the course of your life, if you agree.” he looked at her with an intensity that made her want, simultaneously, to look away and to step closer. “tell me, aisha, when those suitors came last month, and the month before, the young men with their polished manners and their carefully practiced compliments, did any of them catch even the smallest piece of your regard?”

she blinked at the sudden turn of the conversation.

“my regard, my lord,” she repeated, stalling for a moment. “they were courteous, in accordance with their stations. some more earnest, some less. but i… no.” she shook her head. “they were strangers. i have no wish to speak ill of any house that has treated you with respect, but my heart is not so easily given that it would be moved by a few afternoons’ talk and a dance or two. if you wish me to accept one of them for the good of house atreides, i would do so,” she added quickly, because she felt she ought, “but i have never felt eager to leave caladan. this keep is more my home than any place i recall.”

his gaze did not waver.

“and if i did not wish you to accept any of them,” he asked, “would that be a relief to you?”

she hesitated. honesty warred with caution. she thought of danae, far away, of her mother’s insistence that she never be made anything less than a legal wife, of her father’s oath that no daughter of his would be given as if she were a pawn. she thought of leto, standing here before her, asking a question that, on the surface, seemed simple but in his mouth felt like something far more significant.

“it would be,” she said at last, quietly. “i know i could grow used to another place, to another house, if duty demanded it. but…” she let her eyes fall for a moment, looking at his hand where it rested at his side, strong and capable, callused a tad from real use rather than ceremonial swords, “my loyalty is here. with you. with paul. with lady jessica. this house took me in when all else had been burned. it would…”her voice caught, and she forced herself onward, “it would hurt to leave.”

“then you need not,” leto said.

there was no grand gesture accompanying the words but the finality in his tone struck her harder than any dramatic gesture might have. she raised her head again.

“my lord,” she said, bewildered, “what do you mean.”

he did not answer immediately. instead he moved to the low couch and, to her surprise, sat, not with the full, imposing posture he used in council but with a weariness, his elbows resting on his knees. he laced his fingers together, looking down at them for a minute as if the lines there might give him courage. when he spoke, his voice was steady, more intimate, carrying less for distance and more for her ears alone.

“come here,” he said softly. “i find it easier to speak hard things when i do not have to look up at someone.”

the request was strangely vulnerable. aisha hesitated only a heartbeat before she stepped closer, then, after a moment’s apprehension, sank to knees before him, the way she had when she had been a child summoned to talk after some mischief. it felt familiar, and yet everything about the air now told her that this was not that kind of conversation.

“my lord,” she said again, because there was safety in the formality, “has something occurred? are you unwell? is there some matter pressing upon you..?”

“no,” he said, and there was a trace of frustration there, though it was not directed at her. “i am in as sound health as a man my age has any right to expect, and the matters pressing upon me are the same as they ever are, shipments, treaties, the emperor’s subtle games, the baron’s overt ones. this is… something else. something i have carried here.” he lifted one hand from where his fingers had been laced and touched his chest, over his heart. “for some time now.”

aisha watched the movement of his hand, the way the fabric shifted, the way his throat worked as he swallowed. she felt suddenly as if the room had shrunk, as if the walls had drawn closer.

“i have tried,” he said, “so very hard, to put it aside. to cast it aside as a foolishness, as a thing that a man in my position has no business entertaining. you are my ward. you are the daughter of my dearest friend. somewhere in the imperium, there are courtesies written about these things, and doubtless they would all scream against what i am about to speak.” he let out a breath that was almost a laugh, but not quite. “but the soul has a way of ignoring the neat lines others would draw for it.”

aisha’s heart was beating so loudly she could hear it in her ears. she dared not move. even the small shift of her weight on her knees felt dangerous, as if it might break whatever delicate balance he had found in speaking.

“when you first came here,” he continued, his gaze momentarily fixed on the middle distance, “you were a child, all sharp bones and sharper eyes. i thought of you then as a charge, a duty, one i took on freely because i loved your parents and could not bear the thought of their daughter being left to the mercies of those who murdered your kin. i have watched you grow. i have watched you learn to walk these halls with your head high even when whispers followed you, to hold to your name even when others tried to stain it.” now he looked directly at her, and the force of it was like a physical blow. “and somewhere along the way, i found that my regard for you had developed from a guardian’s concern to something… else.”

his hand lifted, hesitated, then descended gently to rest against her cheek. his fingers were warm and the touch careful, as if he feared she might startle like a wild thing and flee. she stayed unmoving, every muscle taut.

“i have wanted,” he said, the words coming more hesitantly now that he had stepped into this, “for months now, to tell you. not to press upon you, not to demand anything, simply to give you the truth. i care for you, aisha. not merely as danae’s daughter, not merely as my ward, but as a woman. as yourself. i find my thoughts turning to you when i ought to be thinking of harvest yields and star charts. i find myself seeking your presence at table, at council, in the garden. i have tried to scold myself out of it, to remind myself that i am no strong youth, that you deserve more than the complicated affections of a tired duke, but…” he shook his head, “it does not lessen. it only grows. and i can no longer in good conscience keep it unspoken.”

her throat closed. a thousand answers crowded there, none of them coherent.

“i do not wish,” leto went on, perhaps mistaking her silence for fear, “to unsettle you, or to shame you. if my speaking of this brings you only discomfort, if you would prefer to forget that you ever heard such words from me, say so, and i will do everything in my power to make it so. you will never lack for protection, or for status, or for anything else i can provide, regardless of how you answer. i will not make you the price of my own feelings.” his thumb brushed, very lightly, the high of her cheekbone. “i have done many hard things in my life, but i cannot, in truth, go on pretending to myself that what i feel for you is something less than love.”

when the word came, it seemed to stop the air itself. love. spoken by the duke of house atreides, here, alone, to her. it was something her foolish, secret heart had imagined in restless nights, but always in words more flowery and less grave with the trouble of who he was. to hear it like this, simple and unadorned, made it more real than any romantic fancy.

he leaned forward, then, and pressed his lips very softly to her temple. there was nothing greedy in the gesture, nothing that claimed more than he had any right to, it felt, to her, the kind of blessing an old soldier might lay on a standard before battle. when he drew back, his hand fell away from her face, leaving her skin tingling in its absence.

“you owe me nothing in return for that confession,” he said. “if it has disturbed you, then i beg your pardon. i could not… continue without being honest. i will carry whatever answer you give me, and i will not let it change the protections this house affords you. if you wish to forget this conversation, i will do my best to act as though it never occurred.”

aisha’s vision blurred for a moment, the silhouette of the room softening. he loved her. he loved her. the words echoed through her mind with the cascading of waves against stone, over and over. and with them came the immediate, inevitable awareness of the cost. lady jessica. paul. the household, which had settled into its own balance over the years. the landsraad, with its hungry eyes. and beyond those, the consequences of what it would mean for her to accept, to step from ward to wife, from protected to protector.

she swallowed, hard, and found her voice.

“my lord,” she said, and her voice shook, so she paused, drew in a breath, and tried again. “leto.”

his name, unadorned by title, tasted strange on her tongue, she rarely used it, reserving it for instances when protocol relaxed. he looked at her with something like pain and hope melded in equal parts.

“yes,” he said.

“your words…” she began, slowly, “you have not unsettled me. you have…”the corners of her mouth trembled, and she let herself smile, small and incredulous, “you have made my heart more light than it has been in years. i have tried to bury the feelings i have grown to hold for you, to press them into some corner of myself where they would not make trouble, because i knew what they would mean, if spoken. you are not merely a man. you are the duke. you are my guardian. i feared that, even if you might, in another life, have loved me, the depth of all that stood between would keep you forever from saying it. to hear you speak as you have…” she shook her head, a soft, disbelieving laugh escaping her, “i cannot pretend it brings me distress. it brings me joy. and fear, yes, but the fear is not of you, nor of what i feel. it is of what might follow.”

something in his shoulders eased, as if a tension he had been holding for a long time had finally found a place to go.

“then you… feel as i do,” he said, not quite a question, because he had heard the answer, but needing to shape it.

“i love you,” she said, the words hushed but no less true. “i have loved you, in one way or another, since you took my hand when i was ten and told me i would not be sent back to giedi prime. that love has… changed, these last years, become something i did not at first recognize and then tried not to. but it is there. it has been there, every time i have watched you in council, every time you have asked my opinion and listened to it, every time you have returned from a journey and my whole body has loosened with relief. i have tried to tell myself that it is only gratitude, only faithful affection. it is not. i know the difference now.”

his eyes closed briefly, as if he were absorbing the words like a blow. then he opened them again, and what she saw there made her chest ache, an intimate, cautious happiness that she had never seen on his face in public.

“then,” he said very softly, “i am not alone in this madness.”

“you never have been,” she replied.

for a long period of time, they simply looked at one another, everything between them suddenly laid bare. the old forms of address, the careful boundaries he had maintained, the subtle dances of glances and half-comments, all of it seemed, if not gone, then at least acknowledged as insufficient. aisha became acutely aware of how close she knelt, of the warmth radiating from his body, of the way the lamplight picked out the silver beginning to thread his beard. he, she thought, must be aware of the way her gown clung to her where she knelt, of the accents of light on her throat, of the rise and fall of her breathing.

he drew a breath, steadying himself again.

“there is more,” he said. “forgive me. one truth opens the door to another. i did not call you here only to unburden my heart, selfish as that may sound. i have thought long and carefully on what must come, if we acknowledge these feelings. i am not a man who can offer you a secret corner and a few stolen moments, aisha. you deserve more than that. your father would demand more, were he alive to stand before me. your mother, even bound as she is, would not forgive me if i treated you as anything less than your birth and your worth demand.”

she nodded, once. danae’s voice seemed to echo in her mind, from letters smuggled in through imperial channels, from that last day on caladan before she had been taken to the imperial court, when she had taken aisha’s face in her hands and said, with a fierceness that had frightened her child’s heart, that no daughter of hers would ever be concubine to any man, no matter his rank.

“my father swore it,” aisha whispering, giving voice to the thought. “he said no daughter of his would be concubine. my mother made me repeat it.” she hesitated. “i… could not break that oath, not even for love of you.”

“nor would i ask you to,” leto said, with a firmness that allowed no doubt. “if i have any shred of honor left in me, i would never take you in such a way. jessica came to me under different terms, terms we both understood. when she bound herself as my concubine, she knew that, one day, there would be a legal wife beside her, for the sake of this house’s standing. i have delayed that, perhaps longer than is wise, for many reasons. but if you will have me, i would have you as duchess. as my official, lawful wife. not hidden, not lesser.”

the words landed with the significance of a commandment. duchess. it was a title she had worn in dreams, half-formed and half-shamed, but always with the understanding that it was impossible, that such things were for other women, women born solely to be atreides, unshadowed by the name harkonnen. now he spoke it as if it were not only possible but right.

“your duchess,” she repeated.

“my duchess,” he said. “not my ward. not my niece. my wife. it will not be a negligible thing, announcing such a marriage. the great houses of the landsraad will hum with it. the padishah emperor will take note. the baron, doubtless, will rage. jessica will…” his jaw tightened somewhat. “she will be hurt. i am not blind to that. i have…”he paused, searching for words that would not be unkind, “i have a great deal of respect for her. she has been loyal, she has given me a son. i honor that, and i always will. but the law of the imperium is clear. she is concubine, and has ever known that one day i must take a legal wife for the sake of succession and for the position of this house. if i must do so, then i will choose the woman my heart has already chosen, rather than some stranger whose name would sit cold beside mine.”

aisha swallowed. the elation that had been rising in her now had to contend with a sharp spear of guilt that dug at her ribs.

“and paul,” she said softly. “what of him? what of how he will see it? i would not have him believe i have… displaced his mother in your regard.”

“paul is not a child any longer,” leto replied. “he is old enough to understand that affection is not a simple sum that diminishes when shared. i will speak with him. he loves you, you know that. he has always looked to you as an elder sister. he may chafe at first, but he will see that this strengthens the house, that it does not break it.”

aisha thought of paul’s keen eyes, of the way he watched everything, of the mind that ticked behind them, already too clever for many of the adults around him. she thought of lady jessica’s restrained discipline, of the way she would accept this with a face like a carved mask and then go to her private chamber and perhaps allow herself, for a fleeting instance, to indulge in her anguish. she thought of the servants’ whispers, of the way rava would stand straighter, of the way mara would probably weep with happiness in a corner.

“i would have your consent,” leto said. “your willing consent, not born of obligation. if your answer is no, then that will be the end of it. i will bear the punishment of having spoken. but if your answer is yes…” he reached into the inner pocket of his coat, his hand emerging with a small object that gleamed dully in the lamplight. “then there is something i would give you.”

he opened his hand. resting there was a ring, old by the look of it, the gold worn smooth where it would have rested against skin, its surface engraved with the stylized hawk of house atreides, wings outstretched, a small, oval stone set beside it like a captured drop of the sea’s color. it was simple, compared to some of the showier pieces she owned, yet it radiated a quality that made her breath catch.

“this belonged to my mother,” leto said. “the last duchess of house atreides. my father gave it to her when they were wed. when she died, he kept it beside his bed until his own end, and then it passed to me. i have carried it since, knowing that one day i must pass it on again. if you accept my suit, it will be yours.”

aisha stared at the ring. it seemed, in that moment, to embody everything she had ever wanted and everything she had ever feared. to take it would be to step irrevocably into a life from which there would be no retreat. she thought of her father, eduard, whose name was ash and smoke on giedi prime. she thought of danae’s letters, of the insistence that she never accept a lesser place. she thought of her own heart, which had long since given itself to this man before her.

“leto,” she said again, and now the word came not with uncertainty but with a kind of steadied resolve. “if i accept this, there will be anger. there will be whispers. the baron will hate you more than he already does. the emperor will watch you more closely. lady jessica will suffer. are you prepared to carry all of that?”

“i carry worse every day,” he said, with a tired amusement that did not quite conceal the steel beneath. “the enmity of the harkonnens is a foregone conclusion, regardless of whom i wed. the emperor’s gaze is already on me. jessica… deserves honesty. i will not pretend that this will not wound her, but it would be a different cruelty to take another wife whom i did not love and chain myself to a lifetime of cold courtesy. this way, at least, the pain has purpose.” he extended his hand slightly, the ring glinting. “do not let the fear of what might follow make you deny what you truly wish, if it matches my own. you have already been denied too much in your life.”

she reached out, slowly, as if her hand moved through water, and let her fingers brush the ring. the metal was cool, solid, real. she lifted her gaze to his once more, searching his face for any trace of uncertainty, any sign that this was some passing impulse he might regret. she saw none. only that same iron determination she had seen when he had gone to the emperor’s court, when he had negotiated treaties, when he had chosen mercy over expediency in judgments that could have gone either way.

“i would not be able to forgive myself,” she said, her voice scarcely more than a whisper, “if i denied you, and myself, out of fear, when you have given me no reason to doubt your constancy. you have been the one fixed point in my life since childhood. if you say you would have me as your duchess, as your wife, then…”she drew in a breath that felt as if she was stepping off a jagged cliff, “then i accept. with all my heart.”

something like light passed through his expression. he did not smile broadly, that was not his way. but the small, subdued smile that creased his face was more precious, to her, than any grin.

“then let us not circle this any further,” he said gently.

he took her left hand in his, his grip warm, steady. with the other hand, he slid the ring onto her finger. it fit, as if it had been made for her. the metal warmed almost instantly against her skin, the weight foreign and yet eerily right.

“aisha atreides,” he said, speaking her forsaken name with emphasis, making it not the shadow of danae but something new born out of his own house’s acceptance. “by this, i pledge that, when next the sun rises high enough that the bells can be heard from every tower, i will announce to my household that you are to be my wife. after that, we will inform the landsraad, and the empire, in the proper forms. you will stand at my side not as ward, but as duchess.”

her hand trembled in his as he spoke. she could not help the tears that gathered in her eyes then, though they did not fall, she had always promised herself she would not weep easily in front of him. he saw them, of course. leto saw more than most men would.

“if i may ask one thing,” he said softly, his thumb brushing over the back of her hand where the ring rested. “in all of this, in the storm that will follow, hold to the knowledge that i did not choose this for advantage alone. it will, doubtless, bring its own advantages and complications, but at its core, my decision is simple, i desire you at my side because i love you. let no one, not even you, convince yourself that you are merely a piece in some larger game within the imperium.”

“i will remember it,” she said, her voice thick. “and if anyone says otherwise, i will contradict them, even if it is paul.” a small, shaky laugh escaped her, almost a sob. “perhaps especially if it is paul.”

“ah, poor boy,” leto said, and there was a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, tempered by genuine concern. “i must find the right words for him. he is old enough to understand, but that does not mean it will come easily. i will speak with him before the formal announcement. jessica…” he paused again, his expression serious. “i will speak with her as well. she deserves to hear it from me before anyone else. but that is my task, not yours. i will not ask you to stand before her until she has had time to… arrange herself.”

“she will hate me,” aisha said, the words slipping out before she could stop them. “even if she knows, as you say, that this was always someday to happen. i have seen the way she looks at you when she thinks no one watches. i know what it is to love you. i cannot blame her.”

“she may, for a time,” leto admitted. “and she will have that right. but she is bene gesserit, trained in poise. she will master herself. she has always placed paul, and this house, above her own comfort. she will continue to do so. do not borrow the sharpest point of that grief for yourself. it is mine to face.”

aisha nodded, though the guilt did not entirely ease. yet, beneath it, the joy remained, steady and astonished. leto loved her. he meant to make her his duchess.

he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers lightly, the gesture reverent.

“i will not,” he said, “touch you as a lover until we are wed. i owe you that honor, and i owe it to the memory of your father, and to your mother’s vow. there will be gossip enough without adding fuel to it. if there is any who accuse you of having come to me before the proper time, they will be liars.”

“you have never been otherwise,” she said, moved by the care in his words. “a man of honor, i mean. it is one of the things that…” she broke off, a shy, embarrassed smile curving her lips, “that drew me to you.”

“then let me hold to that, at least,” he replied. “we will seal this understanding with words and with this ring, and with no more until after the ceremony.”

“as you wish,” she said. “my…” she hesitated, then allowed herself the word, tasting it carefully, “my lord.”

a hint of mischief, rare and ephemeral, passed through his eyes.

“you may, in time, find other titles for me in private,” he said. “but that is a conversation for after we have stood before those marital vows.”

she laughed then, softly, the sound breaking some of the heavier tension.

“i will endeavor to think of one that suits you,” she replied.

he released her hand and rose from the couch. for a moment, he looked down at her, who was kneeling, then he made a irritated sound and reached to take her by both hands, drawing her gently to her feet.

“i will not have my future duchess on her knees before me like a supplicant,” he said. “you will stand. you have earned that much.”

she stood, the room seeming closer now that they were both upright, their heights bringing them within easy reach. she angled her head back slightly to meet his gaze. he looked at her for a long moment, memorizing something in her face, as if committing this version of her, flushed, wide-eyed, the ring newly gleaming, to memory.

“i must return to my work,” he said at last, reluctantly. “there are dispatches that will not write themselves, and arrangements to be made. tomorrow, i will send for the master of protocol to begin drawing up the announcements. there will be pages and pages of formal words that will say, in essence, only what we have just said here.”

“that you asked me and i said yes,” she said, with another small, incredulous smile.

“precisely,” he said. “but the imperium loves its formality. we must give it what it expects.”

“and tonight,” she asked, “what would you have me do? return to my chambers and… pretend nothing has changed until the bells ring tomorrow.”

“for tonight, at least,” he said, “let the change be yours alone. look at the ring as you please. turn it on your finger. let yourself grow used to the feel of it. speak of it only to those you trust most, if you cannot hold it in. your rava, your mara. i would not rob you of the bliss of telling them. but beyond that, let the household sleep one more night in ignorance. tomorrow, we will begin.”

“as you command,” she said, though there was no servility in it now, only a shared understanding.

he reached out once more, laying his hand briefly against her cheek, his thumb brushing the bone of her jaw.

“you have made me happier than i thought i would be again,” he said, with the hush of a man admitting something more vulnerable than any declaration of strategy. “i had resigned myself to a life of duty without… this. thank you.”

“it is i who should thank you,” she replied, leaning, without quite touching him further, into that touch. “for choosing me. for trusting me with your name.”

he let his hand fall reluctantly and stepped back.

“go,” he said gently. “before i forget my own vow to wait.”

she felt a flush rise at the implication, and nodded.

“good night, my lord,” she said. “sleep, if you can.”

“i will try,” he said. “though i suspect my mind will be too full of wedding plans.”

she inclined her head, then turned and made her way toward the door. it opened for her at a gesture from leto, the guards beyond straightening instinctively. she passed through, feeling as if the world had subtly shifted around her, as if the very axis of the keep had moved.

the walk back to her chambers felt both longer and shorter than the one that had brought her here. the corridors were the same, the lamps the same, the sea’s roar unchanged, yet each step seemed to carry a new resonance. she kept her left hand before her, her thumb resting lightly against the ring, as if to reassure herself that it was truly there and not some hallucination conjured by a mind too full of longing. servants they passed bowed as always, none of them noting the small change in her adornment, the gleam at her finger. tomorrow, they would know. tonight, it belonged to her and to those few she would tell.

when aisha entered her chambers again, the first thing she saw was mara, seated near the table, the jewelry box now properly closed and the scattered pieces tucked away. the brazier on the balcony glowed, banked embers radiating a comfortable warmth into the cool air. rava stood with her back to the door, looking out, her hands folded.

both women turned at the sound of the door. mara’s eyes went immediately to aisha’s face, then flicked downward, scanning automatically for some sign of harm or distress. rava’s gaze was cool, assessing, as always, but the set of her mouth softened a fraction when she saw that aisha looked more luminous than shaken.

“my lady,” mara said, rising quickly. “did the duke.. is everything well…?”

aisha lifted her left hand slightly, nearly shyly, letting the lamplight catch the ring. mara’s eyes widened. she took a step closer, peering as if she scarcely believed what she saw.

“by the seas,” she breathed. “that is… that is not one of your usual rings, my lady.”

“no,” aisha said softly. “it is not.”

rava moved closer too, slower than mara, her gaze sharpening as it fixed on the ring. she had spent long years in the atreides household, she knew, as well as any older retainer, which pieces belonged to whom, which heirlooms had been displayed and which kept in private. a flash of something that might almost be awe crossed her face.

“that is the late duchess’s ring,” rava said. it was not a question. “i saw it once, years ago, when the old lord was alive and i served your mother when she visited caladan. he would not let anyone touch it. i was told it would go to the next duchess when the time came.” she lifted her eyes to aisha’s, challenging and hungry for confirmation. “has the time come, then?”

aisha felt her lips curve in a smile she could not have smothered even if she had tried. it spread, slow and bright, from somewhere deep within her, reaching her eyes, softening the lines of tension at her brow.

“the duke,” she said, and for a second the word caught, filled with more meaning than it ever had before, “has asked me… to be his wife. his legal wife. his duchess. he spoke with me in his chambers. he said..” she laughed, helplessly, the sound laced with disbelief and delight, “he said he has loved me, and that he will announce our betrothal to the household tomorrow.”

mara’s hands flew to her mouth, “oh, my lady,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “oh, aisha! is it true? truly true? he asked you. and you said…”

“i said yes,” aisha replied. “how could i not?”

mara let out a small, choked sound and, forgetting for a moment all the careful lines of propriety, she stepped forward and took aisha’s hand in both of hers, staring at the ring as if it were some holy relic.

“i knew it,” she said fervently. “i knew he favored you, but… to make you duchess. you will be mistress of this house. they will have to stop all their whispering then. they will have to bow to you and know you for what you are.”

“they already bow,” rava said sharply, but there was an undercurrent of fierce satisfaction in her tone. “this will only make it official.” she studied aisha’s face, every nuance of expression. “when i told you, you remember, that the duke’s gaze lingered on you longer than on any other, you chided me for imagining things. i was not imagining. even with that concubine roaming in this keep, he had kindness set aside for you. now the imperium will know that the low-born jessica is concubine and you are bride and duchess. as is proper.”

aisha flinched at the contempt in the tone rava said jessica’s name. she had never liked that part, even when rava’s loyalty warmed her. although, she could not deny the thrill that ran through her at the thought of standing beside leto as his equal in the eyes of the empire.

“we will speak more carefully of lady jessica,” she said gently, though there was sternness in it. “she has been nothing but correct towards me, and she is paul’s mother. but… yes. the duke means to make it known that i am his legal wife. it will change much.”

“everything,” mara said, looking as if she might burst with happiness. “he has given you his mother’s ring. that means his heart is in it, not only his duty.”

“he… said as much,” aisha replied, heat rising in her cheeks again at the memory of his words, his hand on her cheek, his lips at her temple. “this is not, he told me, only a matter of alliance. if he wanted an easy alliance he could have taken a lady from any number of great houses. he chose me because…” she trailed off, the words feeling too private, too intimate, to be spoken aloud just yet.

“because he loves you,” mara finished, in the simple, unvarnished way of someone who saw no need to embroider a truth.

“yes,” aisha said. “because he loves me.”

rava inclined her head, her eyes gleaming with a rare satisfaction that made her seem, for only a second, younger.

“it is as it should be,” she said. “you were not meant to be some lesser thing. your mother said as much, even when she feared what the emperor would do. she will be… pleased, when she is permitted to know. if she is anything of the woman i recall, she will rejoice in this, even if she must hide it behind a mask before the imperium.”

aisha thought of danae, locked up in the imperial residences, playing the role of grateful dependent, smiling and bowing to the very man whose hand had been in her husband’s death. she thought of how her mother had always spoken of leto, of the trust she had in his honor. to know that her daughter would be his wife, that the promise made in some half light of the past had come to fruition, would bring her a kind of vindication no imperial favor could.

“i hope so,” aisha murmured. she looked down at the ring again, turning it tenderly, watching the engraved hawk catch the lamplight. “for tonight, we will keep this between us. tomorrow, the whole keep will know. the bells will sound different to me, i think.”

“i will not sleep,” mara said frankly. “i will sit awake and imagine what your wedding robes will look like. and i will go to the kitchen first thing to make sure they are prepared, because the whole house will come for food when the announcement is made and they will need twice their usual bread.”

rava snorted softly.

“trust you to think of bread in the same breath as weddings,” she said, though there was no real derision in it. “go then. tell the kitchen. but keep your tongue in check. the lady said tomorrow. if you stir up gossip tonight, i will know it’s you.”

“i can keep a secret,” mara protested, affronted.

rava lifted an eyebrow.

“you cannot,” she said. “but you can try. if you must chatter, chatter about the pastries.”

mara turned back to aisha, squeezing her hand once more before releasing it.

“my lady,” she said, her voice softening, “i am so happy for you i think my heart might break. you have always borne so much without complaint. it is time you had something purely for yourself.”

aisha felt her eyes water again. she reached out and pulled mara into a brief embrace, societal differences forgotten for a moment.

“you have been at my side through all of it,” she said quietly. “i will need you even more in the days ahead. do not think this changes that.”

“i would follow you if you married a beggar,” mara said fervently into her shoulder. “that you are to be a duchess only makes it easier.”

aisha laughed through the thickness in her throat and let her go. mara wiped at her eyes, flustered, and hurried out, doubtless already composing lists of what needed doing.

rava remained, watching.

“and you,” aisha said, turning to her. “you will tell me honestly if i stumble. if i fail to carry myself as a duchess should. you will not spare my pride when the stakes are too great.”

“i never have,” rava replied dryly. then, more softly, “i will do as i have always done, guard you as best i can from the foolishness of others and from your own, when it surfaces. but tonight, i will say nothing sharply. i will only say this, you have stepped onto a road from which there is no turning back, but it is a road you were born to take. walk it with your head high. you are no one’s ward now. you are the future duchess of house atreides.”

aisha drew in a slow breath, “yes,” she said. “i am.”

she moved then to the balcony, drawn by the sound of the sea, by the need to feel the air against her face. the brazier glowed warmly at her side, the scent of charcoal mingling with the salt. she stepped to the balustrade and rested her hands upon the cool stone, feeling the ring press lightly against it as she did. far below, the waves crashed against the cliffs, sending up bursts of white foam that the darkness swallowed almost immediately. the sky overhead was a deep velvet, shimmering with stars. somewhere out there, ships bore the atreides hawk into the wider imperium. soon, she thought, that hawk would be hers as well, not merely as a ward sheltered under its wings, but as one of the hands that guided its flight.

she turned the ring slowly on her finger, feeling each ridge of engraving, each tiny imperfection worn into the metal by the life it had already lived on another woman’s hand. she wondered, what that duchess had thought when it had first been placed upon her finger. had she loved the old duke as aisha loved leto? had she understood, fully, the fate she had accepted? had she stood, as aisha did now, listening to the crash of the caladan sea and feeling the archaic history of a house settle onto her shoulders?

the wind tugged lightly at her hair, sending a few strands lifting, akin to a dark banner. she closed her eyes and let it touch her face, feeling, for the first time in a long while, not only the ghost of old griefs and the echo of old fears, but a new, tremulous hope that was entirely her own.

tomorrow, there would be announcements. tomorrow, there would be faces, and formal words, and the shifting of loyalties and resentments. tomorrow, jessica’s eyes would be cold, and paul’s searching. the landsraad would murmur, the emperor’s courtiers would whisper into their sleeves, the baron would curse. the bene gesserit would adjust their calculations and write new notations in the margins of their breeding charts. the imperium would move.

tonight, here, she was a woman who had been asked for her hand by the man she loved, and had said yes.

aisha opened her eyes again and looked out at the dark, endless sea, the ring warm on her finger, and knew, with a clarity that steadied her, that whatever storms came, she would not face them as a chattel of another house, nor as a young girl taken in on sufferance. she would face them as a duchess of house atreides, as leto’s chosen, as herself.

Chapter Text

the sea breathed beneath the windows, a low and constant hush that had seeped so deeply into aisha’s bones over the years that sometimes she thought she could hear it in her blood, in the slow rhythm of her own pulse. caladan mist rolled and thinned beyond the glass, the day pale and gray, the kind of light that smoothed edges and made stone look softer than it truly was. inside her chambers, however, there was no softness, only motion, only purpose. servants went in and out with armfuls of folded linen, lacquered chests, polished caskets of jewelry, the quiet scrape of trunks being slid along stone floors; voices murmured, the occasional laugh quickly stifled when someone remembered whose apartments these were, what they were being turned into.

the duchess’s chambers, they were calling them again, though no duchess had slept here in years. the rooms had been closed, half used as storage, half preserved as a piece of ceremonial architecture that belonged more to the idea of house atreides than to its daily reality. now screens were being dusted and repositioned, rugs beaten and laid, cushions aired and plumped, a larger bed brought in with a carved headboard that bore the falcon of caladan in deep relief. the air smelled of beeswax and the faint metallic tang of the sea, of lavender oil from opened chests, of new fabrics being unrolled, heavy with their own stored scents of dye and spice.

aisha watched all of this from her stool by the window, knees gathered neatly beneath the fall of her gown, back straight as ever, her posture an instinct that had never left her since giedi prime, since the years in leto’s house as ward. her hair was unbound for once, loose and long down her back, the black strands gleaming where the light caught them, and rava stood behind her with a comb, drawing it patiently through in slow, careful strokes. every motion was soft and steady, as if each pass of the comb were a line of script being written into aisha’s scalp, into her mind, smoothing tangles, ordering thought.

mara, near the open wardrobe, knelt over a half-open chest, carefully lifting out folded gowns and laying them on the bed in a sequence only she understood, her lips moving as she murmured to herself about embroidery and color and whether the ivory silk would sit better under the candlelight of the great hall or the pale blue that caught her lady’s eyes.

“the seamstresses have finished the final alterations, my lady,” mara said at last, her voice soft but bright with pride as she straightened, a gown held before her. “they worked by lamp through the night. they said the duke himself sent wine for them when word came that they were done.”

aisha’s fingers, resting in her lap, curled slightly at that, a small, involuntary tightening. she did not look away from the window at first. she watched a gull trace a pale arc over the waves instead, the bird a brief white mark against the gray.

“did he,” she murmured. it was not a question so much as an exhale of thought given shape. “the duke should be resting, not thinking of gowns.”

“dukes must think of everything,” rava said behind her, the comb sliding neatly down through a section of hair. “that is the burden of a ruler, and of the wife who will stand at his side. silk, steel, treaties, blood, the way a gown falls on a stair. nothing is unimportant once the eyes of the landsraad are upon you.”

mara glanced at rava with a reproving look that aisha caught in the reflection of the window. mara always flinched a little when rava spoke in that tone, the one that sounded as if nothing in the room escaped her measure, not even the angle of sunlight or the way someone’s hand trembled.

“this one for the ceremony, perhaps,” mara persisted, determined to keep the conversation anchored to her chosen subject, lifting the gown higher, letting the light catch at its details. it was a deep caladan blue, the color of the sea under sun rather than under cloud, embroidered along the hem and cuffs in silver thread so fine it seemed almost white, the pattern a series of abstract waves and falcon feathers. “and the white for after, when you stand beside the duke to receive the great houses’ courtesies. you will be the most beautiful woman in the hall, my lady, i swear it. they will all forget how to breathe.”

aisha smiled, but her smile felt thin, stretched over something knotted. she could see herself in the glass somewhat, superimposed upon the gray of the ocean, and in that l reflection her eyes looked too dark, too wide.

“they will breathe well enough,” she said. “and they will whisper better.”

rava’s hands halted for a heartbeat, then resumed. “what they whisper does not matter, so long as they kneel,” she said.

aisha let out a small, breathy laugh that was not quite amusement. “that is not how the landsraad works and you know it,” she said. “they will call it folly, or proof that the duke has grown sentimental, or a slight against lady jessica and the bene gesserit order. they will say he should have married some daughter of house moritani or house fenring, tied some profitable knot in choam. instead he chooses his own ward, a harkonnen exile raised on his charity, and gives caladan’s duchy to her womb. they will say i have bewitched him, or that the duke has lost his wits.”

“let them say what they like,” mara said quickly, almost hotly, clutching the gown a little too tight so the silk creased beneath her fingers before she caught herself and eased her grip. “you have given house atreides many years of loyalty, my lady. you have stood beside the duke in counsel, you have spoken for his people in the minor councils, you have gone among the fisherfolk and the farmers and the dock-workers, and they love you. they say your name as if it were one of their own. any house that calls you unworthy is blind.”

“blindness is common in the landsraad,” rava observed, her tone mild. “and envy is abundant.”

aisha’s shoulders tightened, a small movement under rava’s hands. her gaze drifted inward, away from the sea, away from mara’s anxious earnestness, away from the comb’s patient pull. she saw instead the hall of oracles on kaitain in her mind, though she had never been there, only heard of it in danae’s letters, the way her mother described the play of light on gold and stone, the sound of the emperor’s courtiers whispering under the dome. she imagined their faces when word reached them that duke leto atreides had announced he would marry not some alliance bride but the harkonnen girl he had taken in. she imagined shaddam’s thin smile. she imagined the baron’s laugh, that awful, rolling thing she remembered from childhood, the way it made the air feel thicker.

she swallowed and her hands tightened further in her lap.

“it is not only the landsraad i fear,” she said quietly. “they will talk as they always talk. their words are knives but they are familiar ones, it is here that cuts deepest.”

mara looked down, understanding at once. rava did not move.

“lady jessica,” aisha continued, the name tasting like both gratitude and ash. “and paul. they have been my family these past years as much as the duke. more, in some ways. jessica taught me the courtesies of this house, the way the people prefer the harvest festivals arranged, the proper form when accepting a fisher’s gift of salt fish. she taught me how to manage a household of this size, how to ensure the staff are fed and heard. she taught me to listen with more than ears, to see with more than eyes. she said she would treat me as a daughter, and she has, in her way. and paul, you know how he is.”

mara’s face softened, the corners of her mouth tugging upward despite the tension in her shoulders.

“the duke’s son was always following you,” mara said. “even when he was small and you were already taller than he was, he would trail you like a little shadow. i remember when he insisted on carrying your cloak in the rain and nearly fell down the steps with it.”

a reluctant warmth rose in aisha’s chest at that memory, the image of paul, small and serious, brows drawn down in determination as he struggled with the weight of wet wool, refusing to let mara or any other servant take it from him because lady aisha was his responsibility today. she had laughed then, reaching down to steady him, the two of them nearly tumbling together.

“i do not wish to hurt them,” aisha said, and there was a raw honesty in those words that she did not try to hide from rava, though rava had a way of turning honesty into weapons later. “it is not as if i woke one morning and decided i would take from jessica what has never been mine to take. it is not as if i am stealing anything. the duke offers his hand of his own will. yet she will feel it as theft, and paul will feel it as betrayal, and i, who owe them my life, stand at the center of it.”

rava bent her head closer, “you owe your life to many,” she said. “to your father, who defied his own house and was killed for it. to your mother, who sent you here to keep you beyond the emperor’s reach. to the duke, who accepted the charge. to the blood in your veins that is fremen and atreides and harkonnen and corrino, all of it tangled. if you spend that life trying to balance every debt until none are offended, you will never move. you will be nailed to this gilded seat while others play their games around you.”

aisha’s jaw clenched at that, there was something harsh in rava’s tone that pressed against the part of her that wanted, stubbornly, to be kind.

“and to you,” aisha said, not without irony, her lips curving. “i owe you a life as well, do i not. how many times did you drag me from some misstep in those early years, whispering what i must say, what i must not say, what i must see and pretend not to see.”

rava’s hands softened on the comb, just for a moment, a rare tenderness appearing across her features, gone almost before it could settle.

“you owe me nothing,” rava said. “i am your mother’s servant. i serve her will and yours. if that service has kept you from falling, then it is its own reward.”

mara made a light sound as if she wished to protest that, but the sound never had a chance to become words.

there was a noise at the outer doors, the dull thud of flesh against wood, the scrape of boots, the crack of a command. ruyn’s voice rose, sharp and strained.

“my lady, you cannot..!”

a second voice cut across his, a single word, low but potent with something that vibrated through the stone itself.

“stand aside.”

it was not shouted. it did not need to be. the resonance of it made aisha’s skin prickle. there was a peculiar timbre to the sound, a depth that seemed to slide under the bones, and aisha recognised it instantly, though she had rarely heard it used in years.

the voice.

rava’s hands pulled taut briefly in aisha’s hair and then released at once, the comb slipping down to hang from its leather thong around her wrist. mara set the gown down in a quick, clumsy fold, her face going pale. both women moved, almost as one, stepping closer to aisha’s stool as if to form a wall, though they knew as well as she did that trained bene gesserit could pierce any human wall that did not wield the same weapon.

the doors burst inward.

lady jessica stood there, framed against the wider corridor, breath sharp in her chest, her usually smooth copper hair slightly disordered, a few strands unbound from their careful coil. her green eyes were not the calm, weighing gaze aisha had grown used to over a decade, they were bright, raw, glittering with unshed tears and a fury so controlled it felt colder than any open rage.

behind her, ruyn and two other guards hovered in a cluster, breathing hard, expressions caught between shame and alarm. ruyn’s hand was tight on the hilt of his blade, but he did not draw it. aisha could see the echo of jessica’s word on his face, the vague slackness that came after one’s will had been neatly turned aside.

“my lady,” ruyn began, his voice hoarse. “we tried to…”

jessica did not even glance back.

“leave,” she demanded, without turning, the command edged with enough of the trained tone that none of the men hesitated. they bowed, half stumbled, and retreated down the corridor, pulling the doors shut behind them. the closing felt final, like the sealing of a chamber before flooding.

aisha rose slowly from her seat. her legs did not feel steady, but habit made her movement graceful, the fall of her gown unruffled. she was taller than jessica now, but in that moment she felt very young again, ten years old, standing on caladan’s shore in borrowed clothes, watching the waves and wondering if the water here would feel different from the water of giedi prime.

“lady jessica,” she said, forcing her voice to be level, her hands open at her sides. “you should not have needed to use the voice to come to me. you have but to knock.”

jessica crossed the room in three strides, her skirts whispering against the stone, and rava moved to place herself between them, hand outstretched.

“my lady, please,” rava said. “this is not..!”

jessica’s hand shot out, faster than aisha had ever seen her move, she pushed rava aside with a force that sent the handmaiden staggering into the dressing table. glass clinked, an ivory vase toppled and rolled. mara gasped and stepped back, her hands at her mouth.

jessica did not care. she reached for aisha, fingers gripping the fabric at her shoulders, twisting, pulling her forward so sharply that their faces were close, aisha looking down into eyes that held a depth of hurt she had not anticipated.

“you,” jessica hissed. “you ungrateful child.”

the word struck harder than any slap. child. she had not called aisha that in years, not since aisha had come of an age where she took counsel with leto and thufir, where she had a seat at the minor council table. the term was not affectionate now. it was an accusation.

aisha’s fingers fluttered up, halfway to jessica’s wrists, then fell again. she did not push her away.

“i have never been ungrateful,” aisha said, her voice hushed, but jessica spoke over her.

“i took you into my house,” jessica said, her grasp constricting, the fabric biting into aisha’s skin. “i taught you, i shielded you when the old guard muttered that a harkonnen brat had no place under atreides roofs, i watched you sit at my table, i watched you eat my bread, i watched my son follow you like a little hawklet after a falcon, and all the while i thought, very well, this is a kindness that costs me nothing, this is what leto wishes and what hurts him i will not do. i treated you as daughter, and you, you sink your claws into him the moment you are grown.”

“no,” aisha said, the word escaping her like breath punched from the lungs. “no, i have never…”

“do not lie to me!” jessica snapped.

the trained edge of her voice, even without full exertion of the voice, made aisha flinch. it was not a command, not quite, but it was a blow.

“you stand here, in the rooms prepared for you, while they strip mine of adornment and move trunks of gemstones and silk through the halls,” jessica went on, each word more grievous than the last. “you listen to the servants rehearse calling you ‘duchess.’ you accept the gowns and the jewels as if you were born to them, as if you had not come here years ago with nothing, nothing but a name that reeked of my enemies’ blood. do you know what it is to be concubine, girl? do you know what it is to love a man and know that the law will never call you wife, that your son will always be in question because some ceremony has not been held before a herald and a priest? i chose that. i chose it because the sisterhood required it, because leto needed an ally of my training more than he needed an alliance bride. i gave him my life, and now he gives the title that should have been mine, the security that should have been paul’s, to you, a scheming whore.”

her voice broke for the first time, a fissure opening under the smooth control. tears brightened her eyes and threatened, finally, to fall.

aisha’s own vision blurred. she could feel mara trembling somewhere at the periphery of her awareness, could hear rava’s sharp breathing as she righted herself, but her world had contracted to jessica’s hands, jessica’s face.

“i did not seek this,” aisha whispered. “he asked, i did not…”

“you did not refuse!” jessica shouted, and there was such weariness in that, layered beneath the fury, that it cut aisha in a different way. “you could have said no. you could have spared me this humiliation, this spectacle before the landsraad. but why would you? why would you, when you can have caladan itself pour at your feet? you will stand where no harridan of harkonnen has ever stood, you will wear the title that should have been mine, and you ask me to believe that you did not see the bargain in that.”

aisha’s throat closed. she shook her head, weak, helpless.

“i love him,” she said, the confession pulled out of her, not by voice but by the simple need to say something true. “i have loved him for years. not as a ward loves a guardian, not as a vassal loves her lord, but as a woman loves the man she has seen in pain and in kindness, in doubt and in resolve. if he were not duke, if he were nothing but a fisherman on these shores, i would love him still. i did not set out to steal him from you. there is no theft where there was no marriage to break. he is not a trophy that can be passed from hand to hand. he chooses.”

jessica’s mouth contorted, not quite a grimace, not quite a smile.

“he chooses,” she echoed. “yes. he chooses, and i am left to live with it. as always. that is a lesson they teach us in the schools, you know. men choose, and women move around their choices like water around rock. but i thought, at least, that he would honor the limit we set between us.”

her free hand dropped from aisha’s neck, and for a moment aisha thought, with a wash of relief, that she was letting go. but instead jessica reached to her belt and drew out a blade.

it was not one of the great milky crysknives of arrakis. such a weapon would have been sacrilege to wield in this place and for such a purpose. this was a small, elegant knife carved from some pale green stone, the edge painstakingly honed, the hilt wrapped in dark leather. aisha had seen it once on jessica’s dressing table, a kind of keepsake or tool for personal defense.

the point hovered at the hollow of aisha’s throat.

mara made a strangled sound. ruyn took a step forward, every line of his body screaming to intervene, then jerked to a halt as jessica’s head snapped toward him, eyes narrowing.

“do not move,” she said, and there was just enough of the voice in the command that he froze, every muscle locking.

“lady jessica,” ruyn said, fighting it, his words dragged out of him against invisible restraints. “i am sworn to protect her.”

“and i am sworn to the duke,” jessica answered, gaze flicking back to aisha. “you think he will punish you, ruyn, for letting me vent a little righteous anger on a traitor in his own house?”

aisha hardly heard him. the cold kiss of the blade at her throat wiped out everything but the present moment. a drop of blood welled where the stone had already nicked her skin, trickling downward, a bright line against the pale.

she could have fought. some distant part of her knew that. she had her own training, and while jessica outmatched her in strength and conditioning, a sharp blow, a twist of the wrist, a shout might have bought a second. but every reflex that would have defended her had been trained, over ten years, to obey this woman. jessica had been her instructor and her shield, every instinct to resist tangled with an old child’s desire not to disappoint.

“if you kill me,” aisha said softly, “you will wound him more than any whisper in the landsraad ever could. and you will break paul.”

she saw the words land. jessica’s hand trembled, just a fraction, the knife’s edge scraping against her skin as it shifted.

“you presume,” jessica said. “you presume to tell me what will break my son?”

“i do not presume,” aisha replied, forcing herself to keep her gaze steady. “i have watched him. i have watched you. you taught me to see, lady. you taught me to weigh the knife and the target. if you spill my blood in his name, he will taste that spill forever in every cup of water he drinks on dune. he will see it in every knife he lifts. it will fester in him.”

for a heartbeat, the blade pressed harder, as if in defiance of reason. then a voice sounded from the doorway, deep and command-steeped.

the door flew open again, striking the wall with a crack.

“enough.”

duke leto stood in the doorway, his cloak thrown back as if he had walked faster than was his habit, the herald at his shoulder, a handful of armsmen behind him, faces tight. his eyes, sea-grey, went at once to the knife, to the hand that held it, to the pale line of jessica’s throat.

for a heartbeat, the room held its breath.

“jessica,” leto said. “put the knife down.”

jessica did not look at him at first. she stared at aisha, the blade still poised, her breath shallow.

“if i do,” she said, “tomorrow you will stand with her before the whole court. you will call her wife and duchess. you will place your house sigil on her hand. you will have the herald proclaim it to the landsraad and to choam. and i, who lay beside you when there was no one, will sit in the gallery akin to some discarded wench and watch as you sanctify what you have done.”

leto moved forward, slowly, as if approaching a wild animal that might bolt or strike.

“you speak as if i meant you harm,” he said. his voice was steady, but there was strain under it, a severity around the mouth. “as if this is some cruelty devised to wound you. you know me better than that.”

“do i?” jessica said, finally moving her gaze toward him. “i thought i did.”

the knife slipped from jessica’s fingers, the blade clinking softly as it struck the stone floor. her hand hovered for a moment, empty, then lifted the knife from the ground to her own throat.

aisha’s breath caught in her chest as she realized what jessica intended. paul saw it too.

paul slipped in around his father, almost unnoticed at first, a lean shadow in dark clothes, his face pale, his eyes wide, darting between his mother and aisha and the knife. he looked younger than his fifteen years in that moment, more boy than the composed heir he tried to present at council.

“mother,” paul said, voice rough. “stop. please. this is not you.”

jessica’s hand quivered now, the knife point pressing just enough to dimple the skin without drawing blood. her eyes met paul’s and in them aisha saw a flash of something like terror, not for herself but for him.

“you,” she murmured. “you, my poor boy. do you understand what he does to you. what she does. he gives your place to her, to whatever child her womb yields. he takes from you what little security this world might offer, all for love, is that what he calls it. and you stand there and beg me to live and watch it happen.”

paul flinched as if struck. then he stepped forward, ignoring the herald’s sharp intake of breath, ignoring the way one of the armsmen half reached toward him and then thought better of touching the duke’s son.

“what you do now hurts me more,” paul said, and there was something in his voice that did not sound like a boy’s at all. it sounded older, as if some shadow of the man he would become had leaned forward into the present. “if you die by your own hand in front of me, that wound will not heal while i live. you taught me there is always a choice beyond despair. do not teach me that you lied.”

that landed. aisha could see it, jessica’s face crumpled, the knife hand shaking more visibly now. the discipline drilled into her since childhood warred with the storm of her grief. leto’s eyes drifted between them, weighing, calculating.

“this is not only about promises between you and me,” leto said, his tone harder now, the duke speaking, not the lover. “this is about the house. what you are doing now, jessica, is kanly against my future wife in all but name. you raised your hand to her in my own halls, with murder in your thoughts. understand me. if that blade so much as touches her skin in harm, you will leave me no choice. i will have to treat you as i would any who attempted the life of the duchess of caladan. you know the penalty for that.”

death. he did not say it, but the word hung there, heavy, in every ear.

jessica’s lips parted, a stifled gasp emerging that might have been disbelief, might have been a bitter laugh. tears finally spilled, tracking down her cheeks.

“would you truly put me to death, leto?” she whispered. “after all these years?”

leto’s jaw flexed. his hand firm at his side. “do not force that choice on me,” he said quietly. “i beg of you. if not for my sake, then for paul’s. you speak of his place and his security. what place will he have in this house if his mother dies in disgrace by her own hand in an attempt on my bride? what security will he feel then?”

the room was silent amidst the tense atmosphere. aisha could feel the pounding of her own heart, could hear mara’s soft sobbing breaths behind her, rava’s thinner, more controlled inhalations.

jessica looked at paul again. he stood so straight, his eyes dismal and huge, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, nails biting into skin. he had inherited that from leto, that way of standing when hurt, drawing himself up instead of folding in.

“mother,” paul said again, but softer now, almost a child’s plea. “please.”

the knife hand sagged.

slowly, jessica lowered the blade. her fingers opened. the knife slipped from them and fell, striking the stone with an echoing sound, spinning once before coming to rest.

she seemed to diminish in stature. her shoulders bowed. and then, as if her legs could no longer hold her, she sank to her knees on the woven rug before leto.

his breath hitched. he took an involuntary half step forward, as if to lift her, but stopped himself, every line of his body a study in conflict.

jessica pressed her forehead to his knees, her hands clutching the fabric of his attire as if it were the only solid thing in a world that had betrayed her.

“i loved you,” she said, the words muffled against the cloth. “i have loved you since they first set me at your side. i chose against my order for you, bore you a son, stood with you against the emperor’s whims, shared your bed when there was no advantage in it for me but the fact of you. i have been faithful in heart and in counsel. and now you do this. you break your word, you disgrace me before my son, before your ward, before the servants, before the very stone of this house. perhaps i am mad to have raised a hand, perhaps i am weak to have thought of ending it. but do not tell me i have not earned my grief.”

leto closed his eyes briefly. when he opened them, they were glistening.

“i do not deny that you have cause for pain,” he said. “but pain does not excuse putting a blade to your own throat in front of our son, nor threatening the life of the woman who will be duchess of this house. i will not have the staff whispering that my concubine tried to murder my bride on the eve of our wedding. this house must stand. it must stand before the eyes of the emperor, of the landsraad, of choam. i cannot allow such a weakness to show.”

his hand lifted at last, not to touch her but to gesture, a sharp movement toward the guards.

“escort lady jessica,” he said, voice gone formal, “to the southern wing. she is to be confined to the rooms there from this day forward. she is to be treated with respect befitting her rank and her years of service to this house, but she is not to quit that wing without my explicit permission. she is not to approach the duchess’s chambers nor the central command halls without my explicit summons. this shall remain in effect until i judge it safe otherwise.”

the guards hesitated, stunned. paul’s eyes went wide again.

“father,” paul began.

“silence,” leto said, more harshly than aisha had ever heard him address his son. then he softened, only slightly. “we will speak of this later, paul. not now.”

jessica lifted her head slowly from his knees. her face was streaked with tears, her lips pale.

“so that is my reward,” she said, the bitterness back, honed now to a finer edge. “a prison at the far end of your own house. very well, duke. do what you must. it seems we are both prisoners of necessity. i, of my heart. you, of your bride.”

she got to her feet without awaiting a hand, back straight, chin lifted. whatever unravelling had shown a moment before, she pulled it in now, wrapping herself again in the cloak of her training. her eyes went once, briefly, to aisha. there was no warmth there, only a hard, unreadable assessment, as if she were looking at an enemy she had once mistaken for kin.

aisha’s throat worked. she wanted to speak, to say something, anything, to reach for her, to apologise, though apology seemed small and foolish in the face of such hurt.

no words came.

the guards moved in, slowly, cautiously, as if they were approaching a coiled serpent that might strike. jessica allowed them to flank her, to walk with her toward the door. she did not look back again.

paul lingered for a heartbeat, caught between them. he looked at aisha, and in his eyes there was a confusion so sharp that it made her chest ache, love for her, love for his mother, loyalty to his father, all grinding against each other without resolution.

“paul,” leto said quietly. “go with your mother. see that she settles. then come back to me.”

paul nodded once, wordless, and turned away, his shoulders rigid. the door closed behind them all. the room seemed suddenly too large, too empty despite the presence of servants and guards and the herald hovering uncertainly near the wall.

aisha realised she was shaking. her hands trembled, and when leto moved toward her, she stepped back without meaning to, as if his touch might ruin what thin composure she had left.

he halted, his expression shuttering for a heartbeat, pain flashing across it.

“aisha,” he said, her name heavy as he spoke. “i am sorry you had to endure that. she had no right to touch you so.”

aisha drew in a breath. she tasted salt and wax and the subtle trace of jessica’s perfume on her own gown where those hands had gripped.

“lady jessica had every right to feel as she feels,” aisha said, the words spilling out quicker now, as if she had to get them out before something inside her burst. “she is not wrong that this hurts her. that i am the instrument of that hurt. she is not wrong that the landsraad will sneer. you have taken a concubine who believed herself your only companion and set another woman above her in law and ceremony. you have taken a son who thought himself your heir and placed a shadow beside him, the possibility of another claimant born to a higher rank. i stand in the midst of that and you tell me i must simply be happy because i love you and you love me.”

leto flinched, though he bore it with a duke’s composure.

“do you regret accepting me? he asked, and for a moment it was not the duke, not the strategist, but the man, vulnerable in a way he would never show the landsraad.

aisha closed her eyes for only a minute. she saw again the night he had asked, the way the lamplight had lain on his face, the way his hand had shaken when he held out the ring that had last adorned a duchess of caladan generations ago. she had felt then as if the world itself had narrowed to the space between them, as if giedi prime and kaitain and arrakis were distant stars whose light barely reached the room. she had said yes because there had been no other word in her mouth.

“no,” she said, opening her eyes. “i do not regret loving you. i do not regret saying i will be your wife. but i regret that my joy must be built on someone else’s broken heart.”

he took another step toward her, slower now, and this time she did not step back, though every nerve in her seemed to be humming.

“pain is seldom avoidable in politics,” he said. “or in love. if i had married some daughter of a great house, would jessica have been less wounded. would paul have felt less displaced. at least this way i marry someone my house already knows, someone who understands our ways and our people, someone i trust. there is a mercy in that, for all of us.”

aisha laughed then, a brittle sound.

“mercy,” she repeated. “tell that to lady jessica when she sleeps alone tonight at the far end of your house. tell it to paul when he returns to find his mother’s rooms stripped of warmth and affection.”

he reached for her then, his hand lifting to touch her cheek, his thumb brushing away a tear she had not realised had fallen. his lips grazed her brow, a brief, tender kiss meant to soothe.

it did not.

she felt suddenly as if the walls were closing in, as if the air had thickened with the weight of what had just happened. the image of jessica on her knees, clutching at his tunic, burned against the back of her eyes. she could still hear paul’s voice, the anguish in it.

aisha pulled back, the movement jerky.

“i need air,” she said, her voice raw. “forgive me, my lord. i need to breathe.”

she did not wait for his answer. she turned, skirts whispering, and walked swiftly toward the inner door that led to the more private corridor, the one that came out near a lesser gallery where she sometimes went to be alone. mara called softly after her, but did not follow, rava did.

the corridor beyond was narrower, cooler, the noise of servants muffled. tapestries and murals depicting old caladan battles and hunting scenes watched her as she passed, their woven eyes catching lamplight. the stone under her shoes felt uneven, somehow, as if she were walking on shifting sand instead of solid ground.

she reached the gallery and stopped, one hand braced against the windowsill. the glass here looked out onto a different aspect of the sea, a cove where the waves crashed harder against dark rocks, sending up plumes of spray that caught in the wind.

her breath came too fast. she pressed her forehead to the cool glass, feeling the chill try to sink into her skin. jessica’s words echoed, ugly and sharp, clinging like burrs.

scheming whore.

she had never in her life been called that. the insult sat ill on her, alien, yet it found purchase in all the places where shame had already made hollows, shame for her name, for her house’s crimes, for the fact that she had been taken in by those whom her blood had wronged. shame that she now stood poised to receive honors that others would say she did not deserve.

behind her, footsteps, swift and controlled.

rava’s hand caught her shoulder and spun her lightly, not violently but with enough force that aisha was no longer pressed to the glass.

before she could speak, rava’s palm cracked across her cheek.

aisha staggered, more from shock than pain. her cheek stung, heat blooming under the skin. she stared at rava, eyes wide.

“do not do that again,” rava said, her voice low and shaking in a way aisha had never heard. the hand that had struck trembled, she lowered it slowly, fingers curling into her palm as if she regretted the motion and yet would repeat it if necessary. “do not pull away from him like some frightened girl. do not run from the room as if you were a servant who had seen something she should not. you are the future duchess of caladan. you will be his wife and the mother of his heir. you cannot afford, ever again, to indulge in such softness.”

aisha’s eyes burned. anger flared, sudden and bright, cutting through the muddled guilt.

“softness,” she repeated. “softness is not what i felt in there. i felt as if my heart had been torn in two, between the woman who raised me and the man i love. i felt as if i were standing in the middle of a battlefield with no armor. and you tell me this is softness?”

rava’s gaze sharpened.

“yes,” she said. “because you let that feeling rule your body. you let it guide your steps, pull you away from your place beside him. you let it make you hesitate when you should have stood firm. what do you think that looked like, to the herald, to the armsmen, to the servants peering from the hall. the future duchess flees at the first storm. they will smell weakness. and in this universe weakness invites teeth.”

aisha pressed her lips together. the sting in her cheek throbbed in time with her pulse.

“you think i care what servants whisper?” she said. “what i care about is that lady jessica almost died in front of us?” that she looked at me as if i were her enemy. that paul’s eyes… rava, he looked at me as if he did not know whether to hate me or beg me to fix it. how am i to stand at a wedding like this, when the house is split?”

rava’s expression softened for a heartbeat, then hardened again, as if she could not allow herself too much sympathy.

“you cannot mend what was broken there today,” rava said. “that is beyond you. that is between the duke and his concubine, between a man and a woman who made choices long before you ever set foot on caladan. do not take onto your shoulders guilt that is not yours. your place now is to stand where the duchess must stand and to think of the child you will carry one day, the future you will secure. danae did not send you here so that you could destroy yourself with pity.”

the mention of her mother’s name brought a different kind of ache.

“do not speak to me of my mother,” aisha whispered. “she is not here. she did not see what happened. she did not see lady jessica on her knees, or paul’s face. you did. perhaps if she were here she would not be so quick to demand hardness. perhaps she would remember that i am flesh, not stone.”

rava laughed then, a short, humorless sound.

“your mother has seen worse than this from gilded cages on kaitain,” she said. “she knows what it is when a woman’s heart is broken for the sake of politics. do not make the mistake of thinking her softer than she is. she loves you, yes. that is why she did what she did, why she sent you here, why she has shaped your path with such care. she wants you alive, and more than alive. she wants you powerful. power does not come to those who weep for their enemies.”

“lady jessica is not my enemy,” aisha said, anger sparking again. “nor is paul. they are my family.”

rava’s hand flashed again, another sharp slap, but this one landed less on skin and more on the word.

“no,” rava said, her eyes burning now with unshed tears of her own. “they were your family. that was before. today changed that. today you saw what lies under the surface of their affection when their interests are threatened. jessica was ready to plunge a knife into you, if not into your flesh then into your standing. she called you whore, schemer, ungrateful. she showed you what you can expect from her, from those who will see you as the usurper of their place. paul may love you, yes, but he will always first be his mother’s son. the sisterhood trained her to cling to her offspring, she is not wrong when she sees you as a threat to him. you must understand this. if jessica held more power, if leto’s love for you were less, she would have you sent away or worse. she is dangerous, my lady. you cannot afford to pity her more than you fear what she might still do.”

aisha’s eyes blurred again, from the blows and from the truth that lurked under rava’s harshness. she remembered the cold in jessica’s gaze as guards took her away, the way that moment, when kinship had unraveled, had looked almost like pure calculation.

“i do fear her,” aisha admitted, the words hushed. “she is bene gesserit. she can move minds with her voice. she sees through lies. but i also remember the times she held my hand when nightmares came, when i woke hearing the baron’s laugh in my sleep. i remember her teaching me to breathe through pain, to stand straighter when slander came. i remember her telling me that house atreides is more than blood, that it is a way of being. am i to cast all that away because pain has led her astray her for a moment?”

rava’s expression calmed finally, only by a little. she reached out, this time not to strike but to take aisha’s hand into her grasp.

“you are good,” rava said softly. “too good for this universe. that is why i do what i must, even if it makes you hate me. i will not let your goodness be the knife that cuts your own throat. listen to me. from this day forward, you must remember that love and loyalty in a great house are never pure. there is always interest tangled in them. jessica once loved you, yes, but she loves her son more, and her own pride most of all. paul once you, but he loves his mother and his expectations of his future. leto loves you, but he loves his house, his name. you must love yourself, your child, the destiny that is yours. if you do not, someone else will write it for you, and they will not be kind.”

aisha swallowed hard. the mention of a child, of a destiny, made something twist deep in her belly, not yet a physical quickening but the knowledge of what would come, what her dreams whispered, what danae’s letters had hinted at in veiled phrases.

“you speak as if everything is already written,” aisha said. “as if i have no choice but to become hard, to see enemies where once i saw kin.”

rava shook her head slowly.

“you have choice,” she said. “that is what frightens the sisterhood and the emperor and the baron most of all. you were not supposed to exist, not like this. you are a point where many lines cross and intersect, but you are not bound to any single one of them. you can choose how you move. i am telling you only that if you choose to stand in this place, as leto’s wife, as future mother of… what you will be mother to, you must not let yourself be blinded by nostalgia for what was. you are no longer a guest in this house. you are its future mistress. there is a cost to that. there is always a cost.”

aisha leaned back against the stone, feeling its chill seep through the fabric of her gown. outside, the sea crashed and hissed, indifferent to human anguish. gulls wheeled and cried.

she thought of giedi prime’s poisoned sky, of her father standing in a lovely and lush garden he had carved from that grim world, his hand on her shoulder as he told her that even in the darkest soil something might grow if given enough stubborn care. she thought of her mother’s letters from kaitain, ink digging deeper when she spoke of the emperor’s smile, of the gold of the palace that covered fear. she thought of jessica’s hands guiding hers in some menial household task, the bene gesserit’s voice warm then, amused. she thought of leto’s mouth on her lips, just now, full of a tenderness that had not been there when she first came to his house. she thought of paul’s eyes, full of doubt and pain.

“i do not want to become like the baron,” she said at last. “hard for the sake of hardness. cold for the sake of survival at any cost.”

“you will not,” rava said. “you are not made of the same metal. but you must learn, as he did, to see where others might strike from. then you can choose to spare, to forgive, to show mercy. mercy is only real when it comes from strength. otherwise it is merely helplessness.”

aisha let out a long breath. some of the shaking left her limbs, replaced by a tired heaviness.

“very well,” she said. “i will try. but do not expect me to be a woman without love for her kin. not even if they hate me.”

rava’s lips curved, a sad, proud line.

“i would not dare,” she said. “that love will be your anchor, but do not let it be your chain.”

they stayed there a while, in the narrow gallery, the sound of the sea their only witness. when aisha finally stood straight again and turned away from the window, her cheek burned where jessica’s fingers had gripped and where rava’s hand had struck, her heart burned more. yet when she walked back toward the duchess’s chambers, her step was steadier.

mara, when she returned, rushed to her at once, hands fluttering, eyes puffy from weeping.

“my lady,” mara whispered. “are you well? did he… did the duke say anything more?”

aisha reached out and took mara’s hands.

“i am well enough,” she said. “the duke has made his decision. the wedding will proceed. lady jessica will be confined to rooms in the southern wing. that is all anyone needs to know for now.”

mara bit her lip, then nodded. her gaze drifted to aisha’s reddened cheek, but she did not comment. she went back to her work with the gowns, though her movements were more subdued.

rava resumed her place behind aisha, lifting the comb again. her hands were gentler now, but there was an added firmness in the way she twisted and pinned the dark hair up, as if each pin were a small anchor, fixing aisha in the place she must occupy.

outside, the servants continued to move trunks and tapestries. word of what had happened would already be trickling through the staff corridors, altered in the telling, sharpened or dulled depending on the tongue. in the southern wing, jessica’s old rooms would be being stripped even now, her things carried away, her presence redistributed among lesser chambers.

in a few days, the great hall of caladan would be filled with the scent of candles and the murmur of the noble houses’ representatives. the herald would raise his staff and proclaim the names. leto would take her hand before the eyes of the world, and she would become duchess in truth.

under all of that, under the silk and the oaths and the ceremony, the fracture that had opened today would remain, a sliver in stone that might widen with time or be filled, partially, by new mortar. aisha did not know which it would be. she only knew that when she thought of jessica’s knife, of paul’s plea, of leto’s threat and order, she could not pretend any longer that this marriage was simply a romantic culmination of two hearts.

it was a knife, cutting paths through futures. and she, a harkonnen child with fremen blood and atreides loyalties, had been handed the blade and told to wield it with care.

she sat very still while rava pinned the last cuel of her hair in place and mara held up the blue gown once more against the light, imagining how it would look under the eyes of the landsraad. her cheek throbbed. her heart ached. and somewhere deep within, where prophecy and blood whispered, something, someone, turned toward the sound of the sea and waited.

Chapter Text

within the chambers, there was organized chaos, the carefully orchestrated rush of women who had done this sort of thing before for other noble houses but never, until now, for a caladan duchess. the rooms that had stood empty for years, kept tidy and aired, yet without a personal imprint, had taken on the scent of aisha’s oils and the particular mingled fragrances of her wardrobe, the spice of fremen incense she kept hidden in a small carved box, the whisper of fresh-gathered flowers. servants moved akin to a low tide through the adjoining antechambers, carrying in trays of jewelry, folded linens, the last few items of clothing that had been altered to fit her new rank. somebody laughed outside the door, a swift burst of nervous mirth, and another voice shushed it, mindful of propriety.

mara knelt at the low cedar chest near the dressing screen, hands buried up to the wrists in white silk, lifting the wedding gown in cautious stages as if it were alive and might bruise. the dress had been crafted on caladan by women whose grandmothers had dressed generations of atreides bridesmaids and cousins, but never, until now, the duchess herself. its fabric was a soft, heavy silk that took on the colors around it, in this morning light it appeared almost like water, shimmering when mara’s fingers shifted. tiny beads, the blue of deep sea and the pale shimmer of shell, were sewn in patterns along the sleeves and down the front, evoking waves and the arcs of diving birds. it had taken dozens of hands weeks to complete, and when aisha had first seen it she had pressed her own fingers to her lips, not quite believing that something so beautiful could be intended for her.

rava stood behind her now, as she had on so many other mornings, comb in hand, but there was a different gravitas in her posture. her movements remained precise and unhurried, part of that disciplined serenity that had made her so invaluable both on giedi prime and here, yet under it aisha could feel the tension coiled like a drawn bow. each time the comb’s teeth slid down a length of her hair, rava seemed to be counting, measuring, as if the very number of strokes mattered. aisha’s hair fell heavy and black down her back, the wave in it catching against the comb, and rava smoothed oil through the ends with the tips of her fingers so that the shine would catch properly in the ceremony torches.

“hold still, my lady,” rava murmured, her voice low, pitched for aisha’s ears alone. “if you fidget, i shall have to start again, and then we will keep the emperor waiting, which would make this a very short marriage indeed.”

aisha let a breath out, a small huff of laughter that quivered.

“i am not fidgeting,” she said, eyes on the changing light beyond the window. “my heart is, perhaps, but not my body.”

mara glanced over at her as she lifted the gown from its chest, arms straining under the weight of all that fabric and ornament. she had dark circles under her eyes from too little sleep and too much fretting, but her expression held nothing but fierce pride.

“your heart is allowed,” mara said. “if a duchess is not permitted to tremble on her own wedding day, when is she ever permitted.”

aisha smiled and let her fingers rest against the windowsill, feeling the cool damp that always clung to the stone. she tried to gather herself, tried to make sense of the mingled rush inside her, the sharp, bright thread of joy at the thought of standing beside leto before the assembled houses, the softer ache of grief that her father would never see this, that her mother sat on kaitain under the emperor’s eye, that makar’s jokes would not be there to undercut the solemnity. she had dreamed, when she was younger, of all of them together in some imagined hall, eduard laughing at the awkward pomp of it all, danae correcting the tilt of her veil, makar making some dire prediction about how she would step on her husband’s foot during the dance. instead there would be pausing glances and careful courtesy, the watchful eyes of men and women who thought only in terms of alliances and leverage.

“do you think he is nervous?” she inquired.

rava’s hands moved, separating a section of hair, maneuvering it gently, pinning it in place.

“the duke,” rava said, “is a man who has led troops into battle and faced the emperor’s envoys with less than nothing to bargain with but his own honor. he knows how to wear calm when it suits him. i doubt he will show you nerves, even if he feels them.”

“and the emperor,” mara added dryly. “if shaddam is nervous, i shall eat the entire feast myself and then go for a swim.”

aisha did not quite laugh at that, but the comment eased some nerves. the idea of the padishah emperor twitching in his seat because of one dukedom on a sea-washed world felt absurd, even though she knew in the back of her mind that nothing about this day was trivial to him. he had come to cala dan for reasons that had little enough to do with camaraderie and everything to do with watching the atreides with his own eyes, considering their strength, reminding the great houses of the landsraad that all their little ceremonies took place under his shadow.

“you will look at leto,” rava said, securing another pin, “and you will remember that this is not about the emperor, nor about the sisterhood, nor about the baron, nor about any whispering lord in the hall. you will remember that you and your duke have chosen this. the imperium may call that sentiment, but it is yours.”

aisha let those words wash over her, anchoring herself in them. she closed her eyes as rava’s fingers moved again, braiding a coil of hair in the caladan style and then letting the rest fall free, a compromise between her upbringing and her blood. when the work was done, rava stepped back and mara stepped forward with the gown, and the world narrowed to the sensation of silk settling over her shoulders, of cool fabric gliding down her arms, of the weight of beadwork as it found its place.

they dressed her in stages, each layer a small ritual. underdress, gown, a translucent mantle that floated when she moved, jewelry at wrist and throat and ears. a chain of small pearls and polished blue stones was fastened around her neck, and when aisha looked down she saw the way the gems rested against her skin, cold at first and then warming slowly, as if accepting their new place. rava brought out the last piece, circlet, not heavy with gold and ostentation but shaped like the curves of waves, tiny hawks hidden in the pattern. it had belonged to leto’s mother once, long ago, when caladan had been less important, when the atreides had not yet drawn so much attention. now it would crown a harkonnen-blooded, fremen-blooded woman, and the old metal seemed to shimmer with the shock of that.

“look at yourself,” mara whispered, turning her gently toward the tall looking-glass of polished metal that stood near the bed.

aisha did. for a moment she did not recognize the woman in the reflection. the gown transformed her height, made her seem taller still, all long lines and controlled grace. the fall of her hair, the way the circlet sat above her brow, the subtle cosmetics that had darkened her eyes and warmed her cheeks, all conspired to present someone who might, if one did not know, have been born to this. only the glint in her gaze, the slight parting of her lips, betrayed the turmoil beneath.

“you are beautiful,” mara said fervently.

“you will eclipse them all,” rava said, not as flattery but as a statement of fact. “even the princess.”

the mention of irulan made aisha’s stomach flutter oddly. she had never met the emperor’s eldest daughter. she knew of her as the landsraad knew of her, a clever mind, a careful tongue, a young woman raised between the sisterhood and the throne, groomed to observe and to record. the idea of being considered by those eyes was troublesome.

“come,” rava said softly. “it is time.”

the procession through the keep felt like walking inside a half-remembered dream. the servants had fallen back, leaving the corridors clear so that aisha, accompanied by rava and mara and a small cluster of lesser attendants, could move unhindered. at intervals, guards stood with spears grounded, helms polished, their faces impassive. as she passed, they bowed their heads, and she felt the significance of their shared history, their loyalty to leto, the suspicion some of them had once carried for her and the way it had, over the years, softened into something near acceptance. ruyn walked a pace behind her, hand on the hilt of his knife, stormy eyes scanning every doorway and alcove, the tension in his body coiled but contained. he had not spoken much to her since the confrontation with lady jessica, his respect had become edged with something more watchful, as if the sudden flare of intra-house danger had sharpened his sense of his own role.

they approached the great hall, now transformed for the ceremony. tall doors carved with waves and hawks stood open, and beyond them aisha caught a glimpse of color and light that made her breath catch in her throat, banners from dozens of houses, their sigils gleaming, ranks of seats filled already with lords and ladies in their finest attire, chandeliers hung with crystals that caught the glow of the flameless lamps and turned it into cascading shards. at the far end, on a raised platform, the duke waited with a small cluster of officiants and witnesses, a representative of the orange catholic priesthood in sober robes, an atreides master of ceremonies, and the reverend mother mohian herself, sent to observe, to report as the emperor’s truthsayer.

somewhere in that crowd, she knew, sat the padishah emperor. she did not look for him yet. for a moment, all she saw was leto.

he wore a formal uniform of deep black with a high collar, the atreides hawk picked out at breast and shoulder in silver thread. no ostentatious decorations, no dripping ornaments, as always, his dignity lay in restraint. his hair had been combed back, his beard trimmed close, but the sea wind had still had its way with a few strands, giving him that slightly untidy, human touch that so disarmed people in council. when he turned at the announcement of her approach, his eyes, clear gray, found hers across the breadth of the hall, and for a moment the murmur of the gathered houses faded to a low, indistinct hum.

aisha walked forward along the central aisle, each step carefully placed one at a time. the music, soft, played on stringed instruments and a flutelike caladan pipe, wove around her. as she passed, she could feel glances like physical touches, some curious, some cold, some calculating. a few faces she recognized from earlier visits, men and women who had come to caladan to negotiate water-rights or trade agreements. others were strangers whose house crests she knew only from study. she did not let herself look too long at any of them.

when she reached the front and mounted the last few steps to stand beside leto, she allowed herself a fuller breath. he extended his hand, palm up, and she placed her own in it, feeling the warmth of his skin through the thin gloves she wore. his fingers closed around hers, strong and steady, and he gave the smallest, almost imperceptible squeeze, something meant for her.

“you are radiant,” he murmured, so softly that she doubted anyone else could hear.

“and you, my lord, are very calm,” she replied under her breath, finding her voice in the echo of his composure.

“it is an old atreides trick,” he said, the corner of his mouth lifting. “we pretend to calm until it takes us over. perhaps it will work for you as well.”

the officiant cleared his throat gently, and the ceremony began.

the words were formal, drawn from orange catholic texts bound up with caladan custom and atreides family tradition. vows were spoken not only to each other but to the house, to the land, to the water. promises were made about stewardship and loyalty, about the raising of children, about the sharing of burdens. aisha repeated her parts clearly, her voice carrying, though inside she felt as if each sentence carved another line into her fate, binding her ever more eternally to this man, this house, this perilous path between emperor and baron. the bene gesserit reverend mother watched with that particular stillness they cultivated, eyes reflecting layers of evaluation.

at one point, she was instructed to turn and face the assembly, to receive formally the acknowledgment of the houses. she did so, angling her chin a fraction as she had been taught, letting her gaze move slowly over the sea of faces.

there, near the front, to the right of where the emperor sat on a raised, modest throne, surrounded by his chosen retinue, she saw paul atreides.

he wore formal attire, similar to his father’s but tailored to his adolescent frame, the hawk crest smaller but no less proud. his hair fell into his eyes a little, and someone, perhaps jessica, perhaps thufir, had tried to smooth it back unsuccessfully. his posture was straight, trained, but his hands were clenched on the arms of his chair, knuckles pale. his verdant eyes met hers, and in them she saw so many things at once that it made her chest ache, hurt, yes, that clear and raw, confusion; a stubborn, burgeoning resolve to master those feelings, and under it all a thread of affection that had not yet been entirely poisoned by resentment. he did not look away. he sat there, the duke’s son, the product of jessica’s careful shaping and leto’s hopes, and watched her become the bride that displaced his mother.

beside him sat lady jessica.

if a few days’ confinement in the southern wing could age a face, it had done so to hers. in truth, aisha suspected that what she saw was less the work of time and more the work of strain, jessica had always carried her burdens deep, and now they seemed to have carved sharper hollows beneath her cheekbones, added a streak of silver to a strand of hair near her temple. she wore a gown of dark green that matched the house colors, modest and elegant, with no jewelry beyond a single ring. her posture was perfect, hands folded in her lap, and any sign of what she felt was contained behind that mask the sisterhood taught so well. only her eyes betrayed her. when they lifted and met aisha’s, it was akin to being struck by a blade made of ice.

there was no longer any open hatred there, jessica was too disciplined for that, but there was a kind of fixed intensity, a cold appraisal that viewed aisha not as a young girl she had once soothed and trained but as a rival, as the woman who had been chosen. it was worse than the earlier explosion, somehow, this contained malice, because it spoke of a wound that had not closed and now would be tended in private, in the fertile soil of jessica’s own mind, where the sisterhood’s teachings and her personal injuries intertwined.

aisha’s heart lurched. she almost stumbled on the next step of the ritual. leto’s hand took hold of hers, gently guiding her back to the pattern of the ceremony, and she forced her gaze away, fixing it instead on the officiant, on the sacred text he held.

she did not look directly at the emperor, though she saw him from the corner of her eye, shaddam iv, the padishah, dressed in robes of restrained luxury, nothing garish, his hair touched with gray, his gaze hooded and assessing. beside him, princess irulan sat upright, golden hair braided and lovely, her face a composed mask of interest. aisha felt that interest like a touch, the way a historian might look at a figure whose life she already knew would end in a particular way, even if that figure did not yet.

at the moment appointed, after vows and responses and the symbolic exchange of water, she drinking first from a small crystal cup offered by the officiant, then offering it to leto, both of them participating in the old caladan marital ritual, the master of ceremonies announced the union complete. applause swelled in the hall, polite at first, then louder, some genuine, some forced. the officiant stepped back, and leto turned toward her, his expression warmer now that the formal words had been spoken.

in front of the assembly, in view of emperor and concubine and son, he did not take her mouth, that would have been too intimate for this context, too informal for a house that held to certain ideas of dignity. instead he leaned close and kissed her forehead, lips brushing the skin just above the line of the circlet. it was a gesture that managed to be both chaste and deeply personal, an acknowledgment of her as something to be cherished rather than simply claimed. when his hand rose to cradle the back of her head for a moment, she closed her eyes briefly, letting herself sink into the contact.

“my duchess,” he said quietly.

“my duke,” she answered.

for a heartbeat she let herself imagine that her father and mother stood somewhere in that crowd, that makar had found a way to slip out of whatever afterlife awaited him to grin his crooked grin and remark on the extravagance of her attire. she felt the absence of them like missing limbs. she wondered if her mother, on kaitain, had been permitted to view this somehow, through some imperial projection, or if she sat in a room alone imagining it from the letters rava would later send. no matter how many eyes watched today, the three she wanted most were not among them.

the recessional followed, the two of them walking back down the hall between bowing heads, the music swelling, petals scattered by younger cousins of minor caladan families. when they emerged into the courtyard, the pale moonlight felt almost harsh after the interior glow, but the roar of the sea and the smell of salt steadied her. the formalities of the ceremony gave way to the looser forms of celebration.

feasting and dancing in the great hall followed, the tables set in long rows, groaning under the burden of caladan’s best offerings, platters of roasted fish with herbs from the duke’s own gardens, loaves of bread with crusts glazed to gold, bowls of fruits brought from offworld at some expense, casks of imported wine. musicians played on the raised platform, tunes that had been part of caladan’s culture for generations now interwoven with more fashionable themes from kaitain. the air filled with the murmur of conversation, the clink of cups, the occasional bray of coarse laughter from some lesser lord emboldened by drink.

aisha sat at the high table beside leto, the position of honor making her all the more aware of every glance. she tasted the food, though her appetite was thin, she sipped the refined wine, letting it warm her throat. the emperor spoke a brief formal toast, gracious, laced with an undercurrent of subtle warning about the responsibilities of great houses, which she and leto acknowledged with equal courtesy. irulan watched everything, her gaze wandering from duke to duchess to concubine, noting patterns. the reverend mother gaius helen mohiam spoke little, but her presence at a secondary table, surrounded by lesser sisters and a few sympathetic ladies, was an enigmatic force.

after the first round of courses, there was dancing. this was caladan, not kaitain, the forms were less elaborate, less showy, but no less meaningful. leto danced the first with aisha, leading her with a surety that made the complexity of the steps feel easier. she could feel the strength in him, the way his arm supported her, the way he adjusted almost unconsciously to account for the gravity of her gown. around them, other couples joined, swirling patterns forming and dissolving. at one point, as the dance brought them near the space where paul and jessica sat, she saw that paul had declined to dance, remaining beside his mother, who had allowed herself to be led into a token turn by one of the house officers. the sight caught at her again, jessica moving through the steps with precise grace, face composed, while paul’s eyes followed aisha and leto, watching.

as the hours went on, the press of sensation began to bear down on aisha. the music, the fragments of conversation drifting up to the high table, the constant need to smile, to respond graciously when addressed, to read the subtle currents of favor and disfavor in each remark, wore at a part of her that was tender from the previous days’ events. her limbs grew a little heavy. the sensation of the circlet on her brow, the pull of the gown at her shoulders, even the gleam of the lights catching on the beadwork started to feel less like adornment and more like armor she had to hold upright.

leto noticed before she fully registered it in herself. she felt his hand under the table, finding hers where it rested on the linen, fingers closing around it. his thumb stroked once along the side of her hand, and when she turned her head toward him he was looking at her with that blend of concern and humor he saved for private moments.

“you are fading,” he said in a low voice, pitched so that only she could hear.

“i am only a little weary,” she replied, attempting to smooth the exhaustion from her voice. “it has been a long morning. and now afternoon.”

“this will go on into the night if i permit it,” he said, mock rueful. “caladan seldom has such a gathering. the lords would dance until dawn if allowed.”

“we cannot end it early because i am weak,” she said. “i would not have them say that. i would not have them remember our wedding as the day the new duchess could not endure her own feast.”

he took her hand, bringing it to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. the gesture was intimate, but in this context, on the dais, it could be read as nothing more than a loving husband’s public display, entirely acceptable.

“i care very little what they say,” he murmured against her skin. “they will invent stories regardless. i care that you are not overtaxed. and i care that this day not be remembered by you as a trial you barely survived.”

she hesitated.

“i can stay,” she said. “truly. i do not want to spoil…”

“aisha,” he interrupted gently. “you cannot spoil anything for me by admitting you are human. i am not marrying a statue from some imperial sculptor. i am marrying a woman whose wellbeing matters more to me than a few hours of grandiose display.”

she looked at him, at the lines etched into his face by years of shouldering burdens for this world and this house, and she felt something inside her soften.

“if you truly wish to end it,” she said, “then end it. but do not let them think it was my will.”

“they will think what i tell them to think,” he said, a hint of that steel underlying the mildness. “watch.”

he released her hand and rose, the movement drawing the attention of the hall as surely as if a bell had been struck. conversation faltered. the musicians let their current tune come to a natural close. the emperor’s gaze sharpened, jessica’s head raised by a degree, paul’s eyes drifted between his father and aisha.

“my friends,” leto said, voice carrying easily. “lords and ladies of the landsraad, honored emperor, honored guests. it has been my great joy to share this day with you, to see my house and my bride honored by your presence. but i find, to my surprise, that the years weigh on me more than i admit. your duke grows old, it seems. the morning’s solemnities and the afternoon’s celebrations have taken their toll, and i must ask your indulgence.”

a ripple of polite denial moved through the crowd, laughter, protestations that he did not look old at all, but he raised a hand, smiling faintly.

“i would not offend by collapsing into my soup before the night is done,” he went on. “and if i am honest, i find myself yearning for something i seldom allow myself, a little quiet with my lady, away from all this splendor. so, with the emperor’s gracious leave, i will take my duchess and retire. you may remain and drink my wine and wear out my musicians as long as you like.”

shaddam inclined his head in a gesture of magnanimous acceptance, lips curved in a small smile that did not reach his eyes. the hall erupted into applause and good-natured cheers. someone called out an earthy blessing for the bridal chamber, which drew scattered laughter. leto stepped away from the table, came around to where aisha sat, and held out his hand.

“come, my lady,” he said.

her cheeks warmed, but she placed her hand in his and let him draw her to her feet. in a flourish that was half tradition, half spontaneous theater, he lifted her into his arms, cradling her as if she were no heavier than a child, and turned toward the exit. the hall roared approval at that, the old, primal delight of seeing a man carry his bride. somewhere in the din, she heard mara’s delighted laugh and rava’s softer, more controlled amusement. she did not look toward jessica, she could not bear to see what expression might be on that face now.

as he bore her through the doors and into the corridors beyond, the noise faded akin to surf receding. he did not set her down until they were well away from the great hall, in the more private passage that led not to the duchess’s chambers but to the duke’s own suite, a set of rooms that had seen more council than comfort for years.

when he finally lowered her to her feet inside the main chamber, the door closing behind them with a soft, solid thud, the silence that fell felt almost holy. the room was large but not ostentatious, its stone walls hung with a few tapestries depicting caladan’s seas and hills, its floor covered with thick woven rugs. tall windows looked out toward the ocean, now a shifting gray-blue under the later afternoon light, and a fire burned low in the hearth, taking the edge off the sea-chill.

“you did not have to do that,” aisha said, voice a little hoarse. “now they will say you have gone soft.”

“let them,” he replied. “i have earned the right to be soft in private, at least for one night.”

he stepped closer, the formal distance of the hall gone now. his hand lifted, fingers brushing along her jaw, tracing the line where rava’s earlier slap had faded to a bruised mark, then up to the place where jessica’s knife had cut her days before, now a small, healed mark.

“how do you feel?” he asked, and it was not the polite inquiry of the duke at a public function, it was leto, the man, asking as if the answer mattered more than any political calculation.

she let out a slow breath.

“as if i have been carved and gilded and placed on a high shelf,” she said. “and now i am afraid to move lest i fall and shatter everything.”

he smiled, something tired and tender in it.

“you are not glass,” he said. “you are much more dangerous than that.”

“dangerous,” she repeated, a little incredulous.

“yes,” he said. “to emperors and barons and bene gesserit who thought they knew how this would all play out. you and i, by standing together, have altered more plans than we will probably ever know.”

he leaned in then and kissed her, not on the forehead this time but full on the mouth, his lips warm and sure against hers. the contact startled her for an instant, until now he had been so careful, so restrained, but she responded almost before she had time to think, her hands lifting to rest against his chest. she felt the steady beat of his heart under her palms, the solidity of him, the taste of wine and something distinctly his on his tongue when the kiss deepened.

he did not press, did not crowd her, his touch remained gentle, exploratory, reverent. when he drew back slightly, breath mingling with hers, his eyes searched her face.

“aisha,” he said quietly. “we have taken vows before all the world. but there is a part of this union that is not for them. i have waited because i would not dishonor you. i will not begin our marriage by forcing anything upon you. so i ask, plainly, do you wish to share my bed tonight?”

her heart thudded hard enough that she could feel it in her throat. she had thought, in vague ways, of this moment, had imagined it in snatches, in half-formed dreams where his hand brushed her hair back from her face in the dark, but the reality of being asked, of having the choice named so clearly, made her chest ache.

she looked up at him, at the lines of his face, at the concern and the desire held in careful check in his eyes. she thought of her father, who had tried to build something better in a harsh world, of her mother on kaitain, enduring in the hope of this future, of danae’s letters that spoke in coded phrases about love and destiny. she thought of jessica’s knife at her throat. she thought of paul’s gaze in the hall. all of it melded together, and in the midst of it there was the simple, clear fact that she loved this man with a fullness that frightened her.

“yes,” she said, voice soft but steady. “i want to be your wife in all the ways that word means. i want to share your bed. i have wanted…” she broke off, heat flooding her cheeks.

he smiled, a little of the tension easing.

“then we will go as slowly as you need,” he said. “this is not a battle to be won. it is…” he glanced around, as if looking for a word, then gave a small, self-deprecating huff. “something i am better at living than describing.”

she laughed softly, the sound easing the tension inside her.

he lifted his hands to the fastening of her circlet, fingers deft as he loosened the hidden catches and lifted it away, setting it carefully on a nearby table as if it were something fragile. his fingers then moved to the clasps of her gown, starting at her shoulders, each touch light, unhurried. she felt more than heard the tiny clicks as the fastenings released, the whisper of fabric loosening around her. his lips found hers again, and the world blurred in a way that had nothing to do with politics or prophecy, narrowing to warmth and shared breath.

the lights softened as the evening deepened. outside, the sea went on beating itself against the cliffs, indifferent, but within the duke’s chamber there was a different set of waves and tides. the beadwork of her gown whispered to the floor. his hands were careful, always, even when his breath grew rough. he spoke her name more than once, not as a title but as something precious.

the night passed, as all nights did, through its dark hours.

when morning came, it did so with a pale, clear light that seeped around the edges of the heavy curtains before any servant dared draw them fully. aisha woke slowly, surfacing from a sleep that had been deeper and stranger than she was used to, filled with fragments of dream, the feel of blistering sand under bare feet, the taste of salt on leto’s skin. for a moment she did not quite know where she was. then she became aware of warmth at her side and of the scent of sea and man and smoke.

she turned her head.

leto was already awake, propped on one elbow, watching her with an expression that made her stomach turn. his hair was tousled, his beard shadow slightly darker for lack of a razor, and the lines at the corners of his eyes were softened by a smile.

“good morning, my lady,” he said.

her voice came out raspy by sleep.

“good morning, my lord,” she answered.

he bent to kiss her, slowly, a kiss that tasted of the night they had shared and of the beginning of something new. when he drew back, there was satisfaction in his gaze, but also a tenderness that might have undone her if she had let it.

“i took the liberty,” he said, gesturing with his free hand toward a low table near the window, “of ordering the morning meal be brought in. i told the kitchen i would cut off any hand that tried to wake you. i do not think they believed me, but they obeyed, which is the important part.”

she followed his motion with her eyes. the table was laden with covered dishes, a pot that sent up steam fragrant with coffee, a smaller one that likely held spiced tea, plates of sliced fruit whose colors peeked from under silver lids. someone, mara, she suspected, had added a small vase with a single caladan flower, blue and white, as a floral touch.

“you think of everything,” she said.

“i am motivated,” he replied lightly. “i wanted our first morning not to begin with thufir at the door and a list of demands.”

at the mention of thufir, she half expected to hear the old mentat’s tread in the corridor, the soft click of his staff, but all remained hushed. the keep seemed to be holding its breath around them, respecting this small pocket of peace.

they rose, dressing in the comfortable silence of two people now sharing a space in a different way. he pulled on a robe over simpler clothes, disregarding the full formal uniform for once. rava had anticipated her needs, a softer gown of blue rested folded over a chair, and when she slipped it on, the fabric slid like cool water over her skin. her hair was loose, falling down her back, she pulled it over one shoulder, fingers combing through it absently.

they sat together at the table, close enough that their knees brushed under the cloth. he poured coffee for himself, tea for her, knowing her preference without having to ask. they uncovered dishes to reveal bread warm from the oven, butter, honey, thin slices of cured fish, small sweet pastries that melted on the tongue. for a little while, they simply ate and enjoyed the ordinary pleasure of good food and shared company.

“you know,” leto said after a time, breaking a piece of bread and dipping it into honey, “it is almost tempting to declare that this is how all mornings should be. no petitions, no reports, no training schedules. only coffee and your company.”

“it would not last,” she said. “the emperor would send a message. the landsraad would descend. gurney would burst in to drag you to the practice yard.”

“that is true,” he conceded. “gurney would never allow such decadence. he would see it as his duty to shake me out of it.”

she smiled tenderly, but as the quiet stretched, an older weight pressed in. she found her gaze wandering to the window, to the mist that clung to the cliffs, to the glint of the sea beyond. her fingers toyed with the porcelain of her cup, tracing the rim.

leto watched her. he had always been observant, it was one of the reasons he had survived as long as he had in a political landscape mined with subtle dangers. now he used that acuity on her.

“there is something,” he said. “you were lighter, for a time, when you woke. but now i see it back. that shadow in your lovely eyes. what is it.”

she shook her head.

“nothing,” she said. “forgive me. i do not wish to ruin this morning. it is only…”

“only jessica,” he finished, not unkindly.

she looked at him, startled.

“i know you,” he said. “you carry other people’s pain almost as readily as your own. it is one of the things i love about you and one of the things that worries me most. i would be a poor husband if i pretended not to see when something strikes you. i saw how you looked at her in the great hall yesterday.”

she dropped her gaze to the tablecloth.

“i saw her too,” she said softly. “she seemed… older. not in years, but in some other way. and there was a look in her eyes…” she trailed off, remembering the way that green gaze had fixed on her, cold, condemning.

“she has taken this hard,” leto said. “harder than even i expected. confinement to the southern wing was not a penalty i imposed lightly. i did it because i believed it necessary for your safety. but i would be lying if i said it does not weigh on my conscious.”

“she loved you,” aisha said, the words tasting like betrayal even as she uttered them. “she told you so, there on the floor of my chamber.”

“yes,” he said. “she does. and i care for her. she is the mother of my son. she has stood by me in times when the house was more isolated than it is now. i do not forget that.”

“but you married me,” she said.

“i married you,” he affirmed. “and i do not regret it.”

he set down his cup and reached across the table, taking her hand again, the gesture becoming familiar.

“hear me, aisha,” he said. “the empire, the landsraad, the sisterhood, they will all have their opinions. they will all tell you what you owe and to whom. but when it comes to this house, to the line that will carry our name forward, there is a simple truth, you are my duchess. you are my chosen woman. the children we may have together will be the ones who sit in positions of precedence, not by accident but because i intend it so. jessica’s place is secure in that she is paul’s mother and has served this house. but she is not duchess. that distinction matters.”

aisha’s fingers constricted involuntarily around his.

“it feels cruel,” she said. “to speak of precedence and children when she sits a handful of corridors away, exiled in all but name.”

“it is cruel,” he said. “this entire game we are forced to play is cruel. i did not design it. i only try to navigate it with as much honor as i can salvage. if i had been a lesser man, or a more ambitious one, i might have set jessica aside long ago under some pretext when a more advantageous marriage presented itself. i did not. i held to her, perhaps too long, perhaps not long enough. now we have come to this point. i cannot pretend it is not a wound. but i also cannot allow that wound to dictate every choice henceforth.”

she studied his face, the way he carried his own guilt. she knew he was not a man who took pleasure in hurting those he cared for. that he did so now, and justified it, told her how high the stakes were.

“and paul,” she asked. “what of him?”

“paul is my son,” leto said. “nothing in that has changed. i will continue to train him, to prepare him for the duties he may have to carry. the emperor watches him. the sisterhood watches him. you know there are plans woven around him that neither you nor i were consulted about. i cannot undo all that. but i can ensure that he understands that you are not his enemy, that this house is not two factions but one. and, in time, he will have to accept that there is another child, a younger one perhaps, whose claim to the dukedom comes before his.”

she thought of what her mother had hinted at in letters, of the way rava spoke of future children as if they were already inscribed somewhere. she swallowed.

“you speak as if you have always known it would be me,” she said, groping for a lighter note to shift the solemnity. “as if this was decided when you were still a boy on these cliffs.”

a small smile tugged at his mouth.

“in a way,” he said. “when danae and i were children, we would sometimes sit on the eastern wall and make outrageous plans about the future. one day, i declared that when i married, my son would marry her daughter, and thus the atreides would bind themselves to her line forever. we argued about who would have the first child, who would be oldest, ridiculous things. she laughed at me and said i was foolish. ‘perhaps, leto,’ she said, ‘it will be that i have a daughter and you are the one who marries her. men marry later, after all. you will be old and gray, and she will be young and will boss you about.’”

aisha could not help a soft laugh at the image of a young danae teasing an adolescent leto.

“and you scoffed at her,” she said.

“of course,” he replied. “i told her i would never marry anyone but duty and my house. it was the sort of thing a dignifed boy says to impress his tutors. she rolled her eyes and said i would regret those words. i see now that she was right in a way neither of us could have predicted. your mother sent you here, and here we are.”

he squeezed her hand.

“i know your mother, aisha,” he said. “i knew her as a girl and as a woman. she is many things, clever, stubborn, more attuned to the currents in the court than i ever was. but she is not careless with what she loves. she would not have entrusted her daughter to me if she thought i would treat you as a pawn. i intend to honor that trust. and one day, when the time is right, i will bring her home from the emperor’s cage.”

her breath caught.

“you cannot promise that,” she said. “shaddam does not free his favored pets easily.”

“i do not make empty promises,” leto said. “i do not say it will be easy, or quick. perhaps it will not be in triumph, perhaps it will be in some bargain when the emperor finds his reach overextended. but i will look for that opening. i will press where i can. she deserves to see what has come of her choices. she deserves to sit at our table under caladan’s sky again, not breathe only kaitain’s bitter air.”

he leaned across the small distance and pressed a kiss to her temple, lingering there for a second as if in benediction.

“you are not alone in this,” he said against her pallid skin. “do not carry all of it by yourself.”

she closed her eyes, absorbing the warmth of his words, the sincerity. for a little while, it eased the anguish in her chest. she let herself imagine danae stepping off an imperial shuttle onto the damp stone of the keep’s landing, her face lined by years but her eyes sharp and vibrant, the moment of recognition when she saw her daughter crowned and her old friend older but unbowed.

yet when she opened her eyes again and looked past leto, past the table with its half-eaten bread and cooling tea, to the misted window where the sea’s reflections played, another image rose, stubborn as a weed between paving stones, jessica’s face in the hall, pale and taut, eyes akin to polished green stones fixed on her with misery that no vow, no kiss, no promise could erase. that stare had lodged somewhere deep, a memory that would not be softened by time or logic.

she knew that the bene gesserit sisterhood taught their adepts to turn pain into fuel, into resolve. jessica, wounded, would not remain merely hurt; she would make something of that pain, something focused. whether that something would fall on aisha or on the emperor or on the baron or on the sisterhood’s own plans, she could not yet tell. but she felt, as she sat there with leto’s hand around hers and the taste of honey on her tongue, that the story of yesterday’s malice was not finished.

for now, she did what she had been taught from childhood to do when the trouble of visions and possibilities threatened to overwhelm her. she returned her gaze to the man in front of her, to the small, solid details, the warmth of his palm, the crease at the corner of his mouth when he smiled, the sound of his voice as he began to speak of the day’s lesser duties they would have to face once they emerged from this brief cocoon. she let those things anchor her. the future would come, with all its storms. today, she was duchess of caladan, wife to leto atreides, and whatever else the universe might have forgotten to give her, it had not withheld this.

Chapter Text

the last morning on caladan rose with a washed-out light, the kind that did not so much fall from a clear sky as seep in slow and reluctant through the gray haze of the clouds, so that the sea and the stone of the keep and the slim towers of the shuttle gantries all seemed made of the same muted substance. the ocean below beat against the cliffs in its tireless way, indifferent to the affairs of great houses and the imperium, sending up plumes of spray that dissolved into mist before they reached the height of the windows. in the inner courtyards, the fountains had been stilled, their pools covered over and sealed by careful hands, water hoarded and measured in a gesture that foreshadowed the world to which house atreides would soon go. above the keep, in high orbit where the eye could not quite see but where every mind felt the presence, the spacing guild’s heighliner waited, a vast and secret shape in folded space, its cargo holds being slowly filled with all that caladan could send to arrakis: machines and men and seed stock, records and weapons and memories packed into crates.

inside the keep, the day had begun far earlier than the dawn. for three days and nights before this one, the corridors had run thick with movement, with the particular, urgent choreography that came when an entire noble house uprooted itself. lists had been compiled and cross-checked, then broken and remade as some vital item appeared late or some portion of the cargo space was reassessed by the logistics teams under thufir hawat’s tireless eye. every hallway had seen something carried through it, rugs rolled and bound, paintings protected in suspensor frames, household shrines wrapped in cloth and tucked into containers between more obviously practical items. soldiers moved in and out in ordered groups, their kits squared away, their faces tight with the sober anticipation of men going into an uncertainty they could not yet name.

aisha felt as though she had walked every one of those corridors in the last week, and then walked them again. when the duke’s herald had proclaimed her duchess some time ago, she had understood, in an abstract way, that she would take up the duties lady jessica had once carried as mistress of the household. she had imagined overseeing feast prepartions and greeting visiting envoys, standing at leto’s side when he received delegations, lending her presence to the subtle theater of rule. she had not imagined the sheer, grinding labor of inventory, the endless chain of decisions to be made on the most insignificant of matters. which cooks to bring and which to leave, which of the minor stewards could not be spared, how many of the keep’s older servants could bear the journey and how many must be pensioned and left on caladan with honorable provision. she had found herself adjudicating disputes between functionaries over cargo space and arguing quietly with thufir about the importance, or lack of it, of transporting certain ancestral pieces of furniture, all while keeping one eye always on the men whose lives would depend on the equipment they brought.

at her young age, she had possessed energy enough in ordinary times to throw herself into the tasks of the day and find some reserve to walk the cliff paths at dusk or sit in leto’s study listening to the sea batter itself against the world. but these were not ordinary times. since her wedding, the demands on her had doubled, then doubled again, and some invisible reservoir within her had begun to draw down more quickly than it refilled. she had said nothing, at first, caladan had taught her that water must not be complained over, and she had learned in her father’s house that harkonnen children did not show weakness. so she had met each report, each petition, each whisper of some minor crisis behind the scenes, with the straight-backed composure of a duchess.

now, in the upper antechamber adjoining her own rooms, she stood while mara adjusted the fall of the gown chosen for departure, and she felt, beneath the pleasant flow of the fabric, the dull, persistent ache at the base of her skull that came when she had gone beyond what her body wished to bear. the gown had been made at leto’s insistence to honor both caladan and the planet they were going tom its main body was the deep, gray-blue of caladan’s sea, but the lining and certain small panels were of a sandy, golden-brown fabric that caught the light in a way that suggested the dunes of arrakis. the sleeves were long and close, with narrow cuffs embroidered with the atreides hawk picked out in silver thread, and at her throat she wore the same chain and stones she had worn on her wedding day, the pale drop of caladan’s sea, the green of its cliff-sides, the hidden blue from a desert she had yet to walk.

“do not move, my lady,” mara murmured, reaching up to smooth a wrinkle at the shoulder. “if the duke sees that fold, he will blame the tailors and order the whole line remade.”

“let him,” aisha said, but there was no real irritation in it, her voice lacked its usual lilt, and she knew it.

rava stood a little way off, arms folded, watching with the piercing gaze she turned on anything that might touch aisha’s comfort or safety. in the last months, since the wedding and the subsequent shifts in the household’s center of gravity, rava had moved from the unobtrusive position of a trusted handmaiden into something like a power in her own right, though she would not have called it that. the staff understood that where the duchess could not be reached directly, rava’s word carried importance. letters came to her from kaitain, their seals outwardly innocuous, and she read them in the quiet of the night, deciding which parts aisha must see and which must be held back for her own consideration.

“breathe,” rava said now, hearing the catch in aisha’s breath. “not like you are about to step onto a dueling floor. in and out. you have been running yourself ragged for days, no one will praise you if you collapse in the middle of the embarkation.”

“it will be said that the harkonnen duchess cannot bear a little work,” aisha said, but she obliged, drawing in air slowly, letting it out. the room swam for a heartbeat, the peripheries of her vision darkening, then steadied. she swallowed, annoyed at herself.

rava’s eyes narrowed.

“sit,” she ordered.

aisha almost laughed at the tone, which reminded her of the way rava had spoken when she was ten and had tried to sneak out with the soldiers on some training run. but she did as she was told, easing herself down onto the cushioned bench by the window.

“we leave in a few days,” she said. “the duke has called all the main officers and household heads to the grand room to coordinate the last permutations. there are decisions still to be made.”

“then they will wait,” rava replied. “you will make better decisions if your head is not pounding like a shield generator. the duke can spare you for a quarter of an hour. he would prefer you healthy.”

a knock at the door forestalled any reply. ruyn’s voice came through, as steady and controlled as ever.

“my lady,” he said. “doctor wellington yueh is here, as the duke requested.”

aisha glanced up, frowning.

“yueh,” she repeated. “what..?”

rava shot her a look that was half exasperation, half vindication.

“good,” rava said. “bring him in.”

“the duke requested?” aisha said under her breath. “when?”

“last night,” rava answered. “you did not see him watching you at the feast when you could barely lift your cup without using both hands. he sent for doctor yueh first thing this morning, before he went to the council chamber. he said, in my hearing, that if the household had worked you into illness, he would have the lot of them reassigned to scrubbing the kelp-tanks.”

aisha felt a trace of warmth under the fatigue at that. she should have expected as much, leto might accept many burdens in silence, but not harm to those under his protection, least of all to her.

the door opened, and doctor wellington yueh stepped inside, his movements precise even in something as simple as entering a room. he wore his usual long coat, dark and unadorned save for the diamond tattoo, the imperial conditioning mark, set into his forehead. his face was thin, the cheeks slightly hollowed, narrow eyes dark and thoughtful, framed by a fringe of hair that seemed never to quite lie flat. there was a softness to him, a gentleness in the way he held his hands, that made the harshness of the diamond more striking.

“duchess,” he said, bowing his head with the deference due her new rank, his voice carrying the faint accent of his schooling. “the duke expressed concern. he asked that i examine you before the trek to your transports.”

aisha rose again automatically, then allowed herself to sink back when she saw yueh’s slight frown.

“i am well enough,” she said. “only a little tired. there has been much to do.”

“tiredness is not a trivial matter in these days,” yueh said gently. “new worlds bring new strains. it would be a grave dereliction if i allowed the mistress of the house to embark compromised. may i?”

he gestured to her wrist, to her eyes, to all the small places a physician touches. aisha nodded.

“of course,” she said. “i do not mean to impugn your diligence.”

rava stepped closer, the set of her shoulders calm but her eyes sharp.

“you will understand, doctor,” she said, “that if anything is overlooked, the duke will hold the entire medical staff accountable. missing anything concerning the duchess would be seen as a grave insult to his house and his person.”

yueh’s lips twitched, an expression that might have been a rueful smile.

“my conditioning does not permit negligence,” he said. “even without the duke’s displeasure in mind. but your concern does you credit, rava.”

he took aisha’s wrist between his fingers, feeling her pulse, counting silently. his touch was chilled and calm. he studied her face, lifting one eyelid, then the other, noting the dilation of the pupils, the tone of the sclera. he asked her to open her mouth, to say ah, to breathe deeply. he listened to her lungs, his head bent close, the scent of some bitter herb clinging to his clothing.

“have you had nausea in the mornings?” he asked, his tone casual, as if asking about any minor symptom.

aisha hesitated, thinking back.

“some,” she admitted. “perhaps more than i thought. i put it down to nerves. the… scale of all this.”

“any dizziness?” he asked. “bouts of faintness?”

“occasionally,” she said. “when i stand too quickly, or after long hours.”

he nodded, not writing anything down, his mind, trained in more than simple medicine, made its own notes.

“your appetite?” he continued. “increased? decreased?”

“it depends,” she said. “some food turns my stomach. other things i crave more than before. pears. those small sour ones from the eastern orchards.”

yueh shifted his hand, pressing gently against her lower abdomen with the practiced caution of a man who had done this many times.

“does this hurt?” he asked.

“no,” she said. “only… strange. as if something is slightly fuller than it was.”

he stepped back, folded his hands, and for a moment simply looked at her, his gaze different now, focused inward as if aligning this information against some internal chart.

“well,” he said at last, the corner of his mouth lifting.

rava’s patience, never infinite, frayed.

“doctor,” she said, a hint of bite in the way she formed the word, “if something has befallen the duchess, say it plain. we have neither the time nor the heart for riddles.”

yueh glanced at her, then back at aisha, and his smile gained a genuine warmth.

“something has befallen her,” he said. “but it is nothing to call the duke’s wrath down upon the household for. unless he objects to good news. duchess, if my hand and eye are not wholly deceived, you are with child.”

for an instant, the words did not quite register, floating in the air like a foreign language. then they slid into meaning, and aisha felt the room tilt not with dazed sensation now but with a swift, soaring rush from some deep core of her being. with child. pregnant. bearing a life that was not merely her own.

she drew in a breath that shuddered.

“you are certain?” she asked, though the question felt like a formality, something in her had known, perhaps, before this second, but had not allowed itself to name it.

“as certain as i can be without more elaborate instruments,” yueh said. “but your symptoms, the timing, the physical signsm they align. you are perhaps seven weeks along. perhaps a little more. early yet, but not so early that the body has not begun its adjustments.”

rava’s hands, which had been clasped together, relaxed, then tightened again, her fingers digging into her palms. she had known the prophecy danae had carried in her heart for years, had heard it whispered over that small, squalling infant on giedi prime, that this daughter would bear a messiah child who would be the slayer of lies. now, seeing this moment, she felt the hair rise at the back of her neck. but she schooled her face, letting only the appropriate joy show.

“praise be,” rava breathed. “finally. this house will have a rightful heir!”

aisha half laughed, half choked.

“paul is an heir,” she said reflexively, the fairness in her balking at the idea of erasing him so quickly.

“paul is the son of a concubine,” rava replied, not unkindly, but with the bluntness of someone who had grown up around the old noble customs. “you are the duke’s legal wife. the law will not ignore that. nor will the imperium.”

yueh inclined his head by a degree.

“her assessment accords with the statutes,” he said. “the birth of a child from your union will… alter certain inheritance expectations.”

he did not say, not here, how much it would unsettle the arcane calculations the bene gesserit had made around paul. he thought of his own wife, wanna, and the iron grip the harkonnens held over her fate, and something like a shadow passed behind his eyes. if he helped bring into the world a child of this union, what line in the skein of fate would that strengthen. he could not know, and yet he felt, obscurely, that it mattered.

aisha pressed her hand flat over her abdomen, as though she might feel some answering pulse. there was nothing yet but the familiar planes of her body, the tension of muscles used more than they liked. and yet she felt, in some other sense, that she was no longer alone in that space. delight rose in her, swift and fierce, surprising her with its intensity. she had wanted this, though she had scarcely dared to name the wanting, a child that was hers and leto’s, a living vestige between the atreides and whatever part of her harkonnen line might be redeemed.

“thank you,” she said, looking up at yueh, and her eyes shone. “thank you for telling me.”

“it is my duty,” he said. “and an honor.”

she turned to rava, a dozen impulses crowding her, to run at once to leto, to send a message to the shrines, to light candles for eduard and danae. practical matters, as always, stepped in.

“rava,” she said, slipping back into the tone of the mistress of the house, though it trembled, “see to it that doctor yueh receives… something appropriate. gifts from my own coffers. and speak with the steward about an increase in his salary. say that the duchess insists.”

yueh flushed, unused to such direct patronage.

“that is unnecessary,” he protested. “i am well provided for by the duke.”

“then let it be unnecessary,” aisha said. “it will still be done. you have given me news worth more than coin, doctor. do not deny me the pleasure of gratitude.”

he bowed again, more deeply this time.

“as you wish, my lady,” he said.

rava dipped her head, lips pursed in what, on her, passed for a smile.

“you do our house a great service, doctor,” she said. “we will see you remembered for it.”

yueh did not quite shiver at the layered tone, there was always something of the desert in rava’s voice when she spoke of debts and remembrance.

“i will send you some tonics,” he said to aisha, recovering his professional manner. “herbal infusions to ease the nausea and support your strength. you must not overtax yourself. the journey to arrakis will be stressful enough without additional strain. avoid heavy lifting, extended periods on your feet. rest when you can. and if you feel any unusual pains, you will send for me at once.”

“yes,” she said, and for once did not think of arguing.

when he had gone, rava turned on her with a light in her cerulean eyes that aisha had never seen so openly before.

“do you see?” rava said softly and reverently. “do you see what this means, little one?”

“i see that i am carrying leto’s child,” aisha said, her voice still hushed with awe. “for now, that is enough.”

rava searched her face, saw the simple happiness there, and held her tongue on the deeper web of meaning. there would be time to write to danae, to craft the words that would tell her that the lineage she had staked so much on had quickened. for now, the moment belonged to the young woman before her.

“you must tell the duke,” rava said. “and not in some corridor with servants rushing by. he will want to hear it from your own lips, in front of those who must know.”

aisha nodded, the thought of leto’s face when she told him sending another burst of ardency through her fatigue.

“he is in the grand room,” she said. “thufir called a final council of the household heads. they are aligning schedules with the guild’s timings. we are to depart within the next three days.”

“then we will go there,” rava said. “but you will walk, not run, and if you feel even a little lightheaded, you will tell me, and we will sit you down, even if it is in the middle of the great hall and gurney halleck himself must trip over you.”

aisha laughed, shaky but genuine.

“very well,” she said. “i submit myself to your tyranny.”

they left the antechamber and moved into the main corridor, ruyn falling in behind them without a word. the path to the grand room took them past windows that looked down into the main courtyard, where the household’s baggage had been arrayed in ordered stacks, each tagged and listed. from this height, the people moving among the crates and shuttles looked like pieces on some vast game-board, soldiers in green and gray, stewards with slates, guild representatives in their peculiar garb, a few messengers already present after a expedition to arrakis, their blue-on-blue eyes like splinters of the world-to-come embedded in caladan’s gray.

the grand room, some called it the war room, though today its function was as much logistical as martial, was a high-ceilinged chamber with a long table at its center and walls lined with projections and charts. currently, the holographic displays showed rotating schematics of the orbital transports, cargo allocations flickering as thufir’s mentat mind adjusted for last-minute changes. the air was thick with the smell of men who had been awake too long,sweat, recycled air, the ozone scent of projection equipment.

as aisha stepped through the wide doors, conversations faltered, then paused. she was used to being noticed now, since her marriage, the eyes of the house had followed her as they once followed jessica. yet, there was something in the quality of the silence that made her realize her entrance had some urgency to it, perhaps because she moved faster than she usually allowed herself in such spaces, her gown whispering around her ankles, rava close at her shoulder.

leto stood near the head of the table, one hand braced on the edge as he listened to thufir, gurney and duncan bracketed him like the cardinal points of a compass. paul stood a little way off, close enough to hear but not yet fully in the circle of decision-makers, his presence more a symbol of succession and training than of command. jessica occupied a place near the wall, where she could see and hear but where her lack of formal status now as concubine rather than duchess’s equal was evident, she wore a plain dark dress, and her hair was bound back tightly, face pale but composed.

leto’s head snapped up as soon as he saw aisha. his eyes went at once to her face, to the too-bright flush in her cheeks, the shadows beneath her eyes. he straightened, the lines of his body shifting from council stance to something more protective.

“aisha,” he said, stepping away from the table, ignoring for the moment whatever thufir had been saying. “you should be resting. i told rava to keep you from this chaos until we were ready to embark. have they been driving you with duties? thufir, if the household has overtaxed her…”

“they have not,” aisha said quickly, raising a hand as if she could physically ward off his indignation. she crossed the remaining distance between them with more haste than grace, the excitement in her too large to bear with the decorum she usually maintained. “for once, this is not exhaustion’s fault. do not threaten to reassign half the stewards before you hear me.”

he stopped, the anger in his eyes arrested, transformed into concern and curiosity.

“what is it?” he asked. “have you been hurt? are you ill?”

she smiled then, the expression breaking across her face like a patch of sunlight through cloud. in the corner of her eye she saw jessica stiffen, saw paul’s gaze sharpen. she reached up, placed her hand lightly against leto’s cheek, a gesture both familiar and daring in this more formal setting, and rose on her toes to brush a gentle kiss against the angle of his jaw.

“nothing ill,” she said. “nothing but good news. the greatest news i could bring you. doctor wellington yueh has examined me at your request. he says…” she drew in a breath, savoring the words, “he says i am with child. your child. a new heir for house atreides.”

for a heartbeat the room held perfectly still. even the schematics seemed to pause in their rotations. aisha watched leto’s face as if in slow motion, the widening of his eyes, the way his mouth parted without words, the way his hand, still on the table, tightened until the knuckles went white and then released.

“with child,” he repeated, and his voice was different now, hoarser, as if it had come from somewhere deeper. “you…are you certain? yueh is certain?”

“he is,” she said, laughter trembling at the edges of her words. “he says perhaps seven weeks along. early yet, but not so early that he cannot tell. i told him to expect many gifts.”

some sound burst out of leto then, something between a laugh and a breath of relief that came from far back in his chest. he reached for her, his hands settling on her shoulders, then sliding down to frame her pallid face, as if he needed to be sure she was real, that this moment was not some mentat’s hallucination.

“aisha,” he said. “by the water of caladan. by all our ancestors. a child.”

he drew her into his arms, not caring for the watching eyes, his body closing around hers with a protective tenderness that was almost fierce. she felt the strength in him, the way he held her carefully, mindful now as much of the smaller life she carried as of her own.

“our child,” he murmured into her hair. “you have given me more than i had dared hope for in these years.”

she could feel the undercurrents beneath his words, the knowledge that the duke of a great house, unwed for so long, had always carried the risk that his line would falter, the way the great houses of the landsraad and the emperor had watched for any sign of weakness. paul had been a blessing, born of devotion and defiance of the sisterhood’s plans, but as a concubine’s son he lacked the unassailable weight a legal heir carried in the eyes of the law. this new life altered those balances in a way that would send shockwaves through the political sphere of the known universe.

through the joy, aisha became aware again of the room, of its witnesses. thufir hawat’s face had gone very blank, the way it did when his mentat mind raced faster than his flesh could show. gurney halleck’s scarred features softened in a way she had seen only when he played certain sad songs on his baliset, his eyes bright with something like fierce protectiveness. duncan idaho smiled openly, his expression that of a man who had found one more thing worth fighting for. the guild representative’s opaque gaze turned toward them, as if calculating what this meant for the balance between atreides and corrino. the bene gesserit sister in attendance lowered her lashes, hiding whatever reaction rippled through her.

and lady jessica.

even as jessica schooled her features, even as a lifetime of bene gesserit training rose to smooth the muscles of her face, aisha saw it, the flash of something sharp, like a blade catching light, in those green eyes. a touch of malice, aching and cold, that cut through the brief widening of shock. the knowledge solidified in her, this was the day jessica had always dreaded in some hidden corner of herself, the instant when the legal wife would not only exist but carry proof in her body that paul was no longer the unchallenged heir.

jessica raised her chin, the tiny movement full of contained strain.

“my congratulations,” she said, her voice perfectly civil, though aisha, listening with the ears jessica herself had trained, heard the bitterness under the surface. “this is… momentous news for the house. you must forgive me, your grace…” the title aimed at leto, not aisha, “...if i excuse myself. the prospect of such… change… is a little much on an already strenuous morning.”

before leto could answer, before anyone could interpose, she inclined her head with the exact degree of respect required and turned, moving toward the door with measured steps. no one attempted to stop her. paul, torn for a heartbeat between his father and his mother, shifted his footing, then remained where he was, jaw clenched.

aisha’s instinct, sharp and almost painful, was to go after jessica, to call her back, to say, what? that she had not meant to take what had already been hers in law but not yet in blood. that she saw jessica as the woman who had steadied her sword-hand. she half turned, her gown catching the light, but rava’s eyes met hers across the space, icy and hard, a subtle shake of the head holding her in place. not now, those eyes said. do not go to her now, when she bleeds inside and will only cut you for the trespass.

leto’s arm tightened around her, anchoring her attention back to him.

“you have done nothing wrong,” he murmured, low enough that only she could hear. “her pain is her own, do not make it your burden as well.”

paul stepped forward then, the hesitation in him pulled taut by training and expectation. he approached, stopped at the appropriate distance, and bowed, head inclined, hands at his sides in the formal atreides way.

“my lady duchess,” he said, and the formality of the title sounded strange on his tongue, as if he had never had to place it there before, “i offer my congratulations. may the water of life bless the child you carry, may he, or she, grow in strength and wisdom. this is a great day for house atreides.”

he raised his head enough that she could see his eyes. there was hurt there, and a kind of hollowed-out place where some simple boyhood assumption had lived. but he spoke the words clearly. there was, too, genuine affection beneath the stiffness, whatever else had changed, she was the woman who had played with him on the cliffs, who had drilled forms beside him under gurney’s watch.

“thank you, paul,” she said, allowing some affection into her voice. “your blessing means much to me.”

he held her gaze for a moment longer, then stepped back, blending into the circle of men at his father’s side.

aisha turned her attention then to the practical gifts she could offer, the ways she could shape this moment into something that might ease future frictions.

“leto,” she said, speaking more loudly now so that the room heard, “this news, if you permit, i would like to mark it not only with private joy but with generosity. i would grant gifts and coin to the household in honor of the child. to the retainers, the stewards, the soldiers. and to those closest to you, to paul, to lady jessica, to gurney, to thufir. it is as much their work as ours that has brought us to this day.”

leto looked at her, his eyes softening even further.

“you are the most generous of women,” he said. “and the most kind. you think first of others even now. yes. whatever you desire to grant, the house will honor. say the word, and the treasurers will open their books. you are my duchess, and now the mother of my child, there is nothing in this household that is denied you.”

thufir cleared his throat, the sound threaded with both approval and the mental note of yet another set of figures to account for.

“we will see to the appropriate distributions,” he said. “it will do the men good to feel the duke’s line strengthened. and the symbolic gesture toward lady jessica and young master paul will not go unnoticed.”

some of the tension in the room eased at that, the practical minds turning toward logistics.

after a short interval, during which thufir and gurney resumed a hushed exchange about embarkation order, the door at the far end of the room opened again. jessica returned, her step as composed as when she had left, her hair and dress in the same neat order. if she had wept, she had done it quickly and efficiently, leaving no visible trace. only the slight swelling at the inner corners of her eyes and a new, fine tightness around her mouth betrayed anything to those who knew her.

she approached with the measured gait of a woman crossing a dangerous space and stopped at a distance appropriate to her current station. she kept her gaze on aisha now, pointedly.

“duchess,” she said, her voice level. “i must apologize for my earlier abruptness. it was… unseemly. this is a day for rejoicing. you carry the duke’s child. you ensure the continuation of a noble line that has served caladan with honor for generations. accept my formal congratulations.”

the words, on the surface, were correct. they acknowledged aisha’s rank, her role. but aisha could hear, beneath them, the things left unsaid, you ensure that my son is displaced. you have taken the place i held in all but name. you have done what i could not, in the eyes of the law.

aisha inclined her head, because anything else would have been either weakness or insult.

“thank you, lady jessica,” she said quietly. “your good wishes mean a great deal.”

for a split second, their eyes met, and in that instant aisha saw something that went beyond simple resentment. jessica’s gaze dropped to aisha’s abdomen, then went back up. there was fear there, not for herself, but for paul. fear of the currents gathering around them, the padishah emperor’s duplicity, the impending move to arrakis, the new variables introduced by this unborn child. aisha thought, suddenly, that jessica would not harm a baby of leto’s body, not because she had any love for aisha, but because to do so would be to wound the man she loved and to strike at the house she had given everything to. the bene gesserit trained their sisters in many ruthless arts, but not in the sort of self-destruction that would come from such an act.

still, the thought lingered through aisha’s mind, if the fates of paul and this child cross in ways none of them yet see, what might desperation drive any of them to. she pushed it aside. prophecy and desert whispers were for another time.

leto, recovering some of his accustomed command, lifted his head, his arm around aisha’s shoulders.

“this changes certain arrangements,” he said, his tone practical now, though warmth still threaded it. “duchess, from this moment, you are relieved of any duties that might tax you unduly. you will not spend long hours in the storerooms, nor stand at the embarkation lists haggling over cargo. the journey to arrakis will be strain enough. the mistress of the house’s burdens can pass, for now, to other hands.”

his gaze slid briefly to jessica as he said it, and a subtle ripple went through the room. tradition would suggest that the concubine, who had once been the mistress of the household in all but law, would naturally take up those duties again while the legal wife carried the heir. some of the older retainers straightened, sensing the potential restoration of an old order.

jessica’s lips parted by a fraction. there was a quick flare of something like hope in her eyes, swiftly masked. before she could speak, rava stepped forward, her timing precise as a blade finding the seam between armor plates.

“if i may, my duke,” rava said, bowing her head just enough to show respect without diminishing her own stance, “there is another way. the duchess’s mind is as sharp today as it was yesterday. it would be a waste to remove her entirely from the flow of decisions, especially when so much of what we carry to arrakis will shape her domain there. the more taxing tasks, the hours on the feet, the sorting and lifting and chasing down of errant stewards, these can fall to me and to those i direct. i will take on the physical weight of the mistress’s duties. all that is being done, all that is decided, can be brought to the duchess for her approval. in this way, she maintains her authority without imperiling her health.”

there was a beat of silence. aisha felt the audacity of it keenly. rava, a handmaiden, however highly placed, was proposing to insert herself formally into a space traditionally held by women of blood rank. that such a suggestion would have been unthinkable on kaitain or giedi prime only underscored how different caladan was, and how much leto’s trust in aisha and aisha’s trust in rava had reshaped traditional customs.

jessica’s eyes flashed again, a quick, sharp light. this was a second blow. not only did the child in aisha’s body displace paulm now the practical duties jessica might have used to maintain her status, to armor herself in usefulness, were being diverted to a woman she considered of lesser station. the insult was subtle, not spoken, but she felt it all the same.

leto’s gaze drifted between aisha and rava. he contemplated, in that moment, not only the political niceties but the real capacities of the people before him. he had seen rava’s efficiency these past weeks, the way she had moved between levels of the household, smoothing frictions before they reached his ears, keeping aisha’s path as clear as she could. he had also seen jessica’s composure crack under the strain of recent events, seen the way her grief and resentment had twisted inward. to place the heaviest duties back on her now might support tradition, but it might also further poison an already delicate balance.

“it is a sensible proposal,” he said at last. “we must adapt to circumstances, as always. rava, you have my leave to assume those burdens. you will coordinate with thufir and the stewards. no decision of major signifiance is to be taken without the duchess’s assent. minor matters, you may handle as you see fit. we will formalize the arrangement once we are settled on arrakis.”

rava bowed again, satisfaction flickering, quickly suppressed.

“as you command, my duke,” she said.

jessica’s jaw clenched. she did not protest, that would have been beneath her. but she inclined her head, very slightly, in acknowledgment of the new order, and when her eyes met rava’s, there was a coolness there that bode no future fondness between them.

aisha, caught in the middle, felt again that sense of standing on a narrow bridge over deep waters. she wanted, irrationally, to pull back some of what had just been given to her, to ease the strain on jessica’s shoulders. but she knew, too, that to argue against rava’s offer would be to undermine the trust she herself had placed in that woman for years. the house needed structure. her child needed her strong. compromise, in this instance, would satisfy no one.

leto turned, addressing the room at large.

“you have heard,” he said. “the duchess is with child. this is cause for celebration, but also for vigilance. she is to be spared unnecessary stress. the household will make every effort to ensure her comfort and safety on this journey. if i hear that any of you have demanded more of her than is wise, you will answer to me.”

there was a murmur of assent, some of it heartfelt, some of it merely prudent. men who had sworn to follow him into battle now found themselves pledged, in a quieter way, to guard the well-being of a young woman and the unseen life she carried. gurney’s hand went briefly to the hilt of his weapon, a habitual gesture whenever he considered a new threat to guard against.

aisha felt her cheeks heat at the attention, but she also felt the net of protection forming itself around her in the room, practical, imperfect, yet real.

she leaned into leto’s side, letting her head rest against his shoulder.

“i am best in spirit and in health when i am near you,” she said softly, knowing thufir and gurney and paul could hear but not caring. “it is not duty that wears me down, but distance.”

he smiled, the expression small but genuine.

“then i will keep you near,” he said. “on the ship. on arrakis. whatever storms we go into, we go into them together. this child will know, from the first, that he was wanted, that his parents stood side by side.”

he bent and kissed her, not with the fervor of their wedding night but with a gentleness that carried all the complexity of their bond. for a brief minute, the war room, with its charts and projections, its mentat plans and imperial gambits, narrowed to the space between them.

when they parted, aisha looked once more around the room. at paul, who watched them with something like resolve beginning to kindle in his eyes, as if the displacement had awakened not only pain but a grim determination to find another path to promience. at jessica, whose face, smooth and controlled, could not quite hide the ember of bitterness glowing beneath. at rava, whose mind was already working through lists of tasks she would assume. at thufir, at gurney, at duncan, each of them adjusting, in their own way, to the new axis on which their house would turn.

outside, beyond the stone and the mist, the shuttles waited, their engines humming, ready to bear house atreides up to the waiting heighliner and from there to arrakis, to the desert world of sand and spice and dormant prophecies. aisha felt, deep in her bones, an answering pull, as if some buried part of her blood remembered dunes and whispered names. she laid her hand again over her abdomen, over the place where the future shifted and gathered.

caladan would fall away beneath them soon, its gray seas and familiar rains becoming a memory. ahead lay a sun like a blade and a land that drank men whole. between those worlds, in the narrow passage of time that remained, aisha had taken on a new name, mother. it settled on her shoulders alongside duchess, harkonnen, atreides. heavy, yes. but she thought, as leto’s fingers laced with hers, that she would bear it, as she had borne all the others, and pray that when the heir came, though she did not yet know his name or face, drew his first breath, it would have been enough.