AN: Sapphira has now become co-author to this story. You'll see why when you read it. There's a depth to it that I know wouldn't have been there without her help. Also all the other chapter's have been reposted and there's a lot added so if you read them already I'd strongly advise you to go back over them. Trust me. When I say the girl is good I'm not lying.

Chapter Four

Sleep didn't come easily for Shandre'la that night. She was worried. She was in pain. She was frustrated. She'd waited all her life for the moment that she would stand face to face with the fabled Leto Atrates… dreamed of the moment that she would offer him her body and eventually her heart, and he didn't even seem to want to look at her. She had trained and studied and subjected her people to their final resting place to get here, yet he stood unmoving, uncaring. Not batting even an eyelash when he had pushed her away.

Letting out a breath in frustration, she sat up, silken bedclothes pooling in her lap as she looked over at Marisa, who was snoring gently where she rested upon their shared bed.

Sleep well my friend… At least one of us will. Quietly sliding off the opulent bed big enough to fit eight and only holding two, Shandre'la's slender hands reached through the rich sheer panels of curtains that removed the sleeping arrangements from the rest of the room, and slinked past them. Letting them fall back into position with a silent shudder of fabric against fabric. Shards of moonlight cast a simple yet elegant play of pale and dark shadows across the large chambers. Encompassing her as well within its embrace. The play of light against dark danced upon the revealed skin of her neck and shoulders, catching iridescently and swallowed up within the thick and luxuriant mass of black curls that cascaded in a giant tousle to a place slightly below her hips.  

Padding stealthily over to the chair where her black over garment rested, she picked it up and slipped it on… Buttoning it up almost absently, she looked out into the night and over the massive veranda that was laid open to her Chambers, shielded only by a few more sheer panels of cloth that fluttered welcomingly in the moonlight. Inviting the scent of the desert winds and sands to play upon her senses.

She wondered where within that vast desert was her worm. It would take too much strength and concentration than she was willing to spend at the moment to call to her in the darkness of the night when she was probably sleeping comfortably, and considering that there was genuinely no reason to do so as of yet, it would be more than a little foolish to try.

Suddenly catching movement out of the corner of her eye, she felt more than saw Marisa move restlessly in her sleep and Shandre'la quickly stilled. She didn't need company tonight. She needed solitude and peace, and she would only find that on her own.

Sleep my friend, and dream of a better world where The Golden Path has taken no victims. And Marisa relaxed. Drifting down further within her slumber.

Pacing over to the entrance into the Chambers, the black silk of her robes brushing sensuously against her toned body, she carefully opened the door till a slender crack of open space appeared, and peered out.

She saw the guards that were posted outside her door and sighed more in annoyance than anything else. They were meant to keep a watch on her, and insure that she did not leave her quarters. Bringing to mind in bemusement the words she had spoken tauntingly to Ghanima earlier. Words that were being flaunted oh so obviously back into Shandre'la face.

If she were in the mood for it, it would be child's play to tamper and play tricks on their unprotected minds, but as it was she just didn't feel like it if she didn't have to.

She closed the door and turned to face the open veranda. Looking uneasily down at the massive drop to the sand below, she suddenly remembered why she had always been afraid of man-made heights and turned rather quickly away from it. Feeling that annoying sense of vertigo bubbling up from within her stomach and not liking it one bit.

It looked like it would have to be the guards then. She opened the door again in resignation. Just as careful as before not to give her position away.

The waking and the sleep will bond tonight. Let your wishes take wing and your hearts stay light. Work while you sleep and let me free as I say, so mote it be.

She smiled slightly to herself in satisfaction as a glazed expression fell across their features like the curtains had fallen back just moments prior to shield her bed, both instances also similar as they allowed her the right to leave unheard and unseen, and then frowned at herself in reprimand. Remembering all the lessons she had been privy to growing up about the wrongness of using your powers against the unsuspecting.

But she would have to chide herself later. After she came back from making good her little escape from this palace/prison and had finally had a chance to breathe in freely the secrets of the desert sands that her soul was crying out for so insistently with an almost feral intensity that if she had stopped to think about, she would have realized just wasn't something that she had experienced at such a level before, at any time in her life.

Setting out in determination, she tried to recall the exact route that the guards had taken her and Marisa on, but a sinking suspicion rose up rather quickly within her mind that they'd been taken through a maze of corridors, filled with disconcerting twists and turns, so that they'd become confused and get lost if they tried to leave on their own. When she saw the same exact painting for the fifth time, Shandre'la pulled to a stop and glared at it as if it was to blame for her present circumstances, till it occurred to her what exactly it was she was looking at.

It was a panting of the royal family. The twins and their mother and father. Obviously painted from the imagination of some wistful artist, as such an event had never had a chance to take place. Such a moment had been lost forever that fateful night that the twins had been borne to a night being torn apart by lightening storms and the finality of the course of the future. Heralding the changes that were shifting through the sands beneath them and the beginning of a terrifying destiny. A destiny that their mother had died for, and a father who had abandoned them to. Unable to face the envisioned future ahead for them all. A future that he had unknowingly taken a part of creating.

 She studied him for a while, eyes tracing the hansom but strong, regal lines of his remembered likeness. Wondering if he had known the hell his son would suffer for his inaptitude. Knowing that he had. Which is why his son had had to accept the agony of the destiny that his father had not been strong enough to take upon himself as he had always been meant to.

It was then that she sensed it. Bringing her out of her reflection of the Royal Family's past. The light caress of silk across her skin, and the phantom smell of fresh air as it whispered to her. Calling for her.

Closing her eyes as her body subtly relaxed, she followed it and the smell of the spice. The way it resounded against the core of her body and pulsed within her veins.

Her brain was on auto-pilot, called by some unfamiliar but welcoming force, as she walked where it willed her. Passing pillars without hitting them and going unnoticed in the dark of night by the servants. She was nothing more than a shadow to the world around her, and when her feet finally hit the sands…only then did she open her eyes. Blinking warily.

Taking in a deep breath of the wonderfully scented night air, finally free from the stifling confines of the Palace walls, she found herself gravitating towards a sharp cliff overhand that looked out over the desert just a little ways off in the distance. It held a power over her that wrapped snugly around her heart and body and made her feet move of their own violation towards it, as the wind brushed across her skin and against and through her dark silk robes. Pressing the fabric against her body, lining it in sharp relief, and sending locks of her soft hair tumbling into her face. Catching upon her lips and eyes and forehead as they danced in the gentle breeze. Her feet sinking rhythmically in the still cooling sands… Still carrying lingering traces of the warmth from the day's sun.

When she finally drew closer to her goal, she saw that two figures were already standing like lone sentinels upon the cliff. One male and one female. Golden tresses spilled from the female, and as she walked closer Shandre'la recognized it to be Ghanima.

She couldn't help the fact that her lips twisted sardonically at the insinuation this image produced, and stepped closer out of devious curiosity, knowing that they could neither see nor hear her.

But, as she found out, taking another step brought her face to face with Leto. Who most certainly had.

Which would make her wonder later as she thought back on it, just how long he had been watching her.