The week leading up to the wedding was a frenzied blur of activity. Servants brought chairs out of ancient closets and spent the mornings polishing silver. In the afternoons, they unloaded shipments of fruits and meats and cheeses and stowed them away in the cold room before returning to the lower level to iron linens. Princess Irulan saw very little of Feyd during this time. They sat at opposite ends of the long wooden table during meals, their views of each other obscured by antique candelabras. Her father at one head with her to his right and Feyd in a seat of honor at the other – a stroke of brilliance she ascribed not to her father but to the Reverend Mother, whom she deduced was intentionally keeping them apart so as to give her as few opportunities as possible to change her mind about accepting the match without causing a scene.

It was working. The initial dread Irulan felt when she looked at her bridegroom began to soften with each passing day. Feyd was surprisingly mild-mannered, and she was starting to get the sense that she didn't interest him. His courtesans – if one could call them that – traveled with him, and though she'd initially bristled at the idea of sharing Paul with Chani, this arrangement suited her just fine. Despite his placid demeanor, she hadn't forgotten the brutality of the fight or Margot Fenring's words: he loves pain. Irulan had reason to suspect his tastes bordered on the unusual, and she was relieved that he seemed to have an outlet – even if she found the girls unsettling to look at. He didn't bring them to meals. She assumed they ate in his quarters. She'd heard rumors of what he fed them but decided not to dwell on it. Out of sight, out of mind. She looked at Feyd as he picked at his dinner and wondered when he'd stopped standing out amongst the other men. His teeth no longer frightened her; his baldness no longer repelled her. He was just a man. An eccentric man to be sure, but a man nonetheless.

She was determined to make the best of it. Losing Paul had been so unexpectedly crushing that she decided to start listening to her father's advice: the heart is not meant to rule. She repeated those words to herself several times that week.

There was one difficulty: she had no desire to leave Kaitain to live on Giedi Prime. When she'd expressed this thought, over a game of chess with her father, one of the last afternoons they had to enjoy each other's company in the courtyard, the Reverend Mother scoffed at her: "Consider yourself lucky, girl. We could have bred you with the former Baron." And it was true. Irulan was simply following the footsteps of a millennia of women who came before her, and as far as it went to her intended's appearance, she could have done much worse. She'd adapted to his face – his lips were pleasant to look at if you ignored the stained black teeth, and even the teeth had begun to look commonplace. She could adapt to the black sun. She had read there was color indoors.

There one thing that kept bothering her – one thing she couldn't refrain from asking about at the first opportunity, which turned out to be days later, as the Reverend Mother appeared to be avoiding her – only popping in now and again and leaving before Irulan had a chance to get a word in:

"If you knew I was to marry Feyd-Rautha," blurted the Princess, "why did you breed him with Margot Fenring?" She was sitting at her desk in the second library, the sunlight warming the rows of metal scrolls arrayed in front of her. The Imperial Truthsayer stood by the doorway, having unexpectedly stopped by to brief her on the schedule of events.

"Contingency," said the Reverend Mother with a frown. "If Paul had prevailed in the duel, it would have spelled the end of the Harkonnen bloodline."

"Isn't that what got us into the war?" asked Irulan with a bit more edge than she'd intended, "too many prospects?"

"Don't be short, girl. You know as well as I do that one must plan for all possible outcomes. As you can see, the prophecy failed."

Irulan couldn't argue with that. It was hard to see the Reverend Mother's face with the way the light was shining through the skylight.

"Don't let it worry you. Margot's child will be a girl: you will still produce an heir."

"Since when have we ever cared about the laws of succession?"

Her teacher looked at her coldly. "There will never be just one prospect, Irulan. I would have thought you were above such vanity," she paused, scrutinizing her pupil, "Perhaps I've misjudged you. Perhaps you're a bit more like Lady Jessica than I thought."

"Lady Jessica disobeyed direct orders," said Irulan, "I'm merely asking questions."

"It's not your job to ask questions," said her teacher, "It's your job to obey. It's your job to put aside selfish ambition in pursuit of a greater good."

Irulan knew that her teacher was right. Wanting more is what had caused her to nearly crumble on Arrakis, and she would do well to listen to the older woman's advice. "Yes, Your Reverence."

"You won't be seeing her again regardless. She's been reassigned."

"Reassigned? Where?"

"That's not for you to know."

And of course it wasn't. Considering they would both give birth to prospects, it made complete sense for the Bene Gesserit to keep her in the dark, lest she or her children take matters into their own hands.

"Don't take it as a slight, Princess Corinno. It's not you I don't trust: it's your intended. He is hungry for power – will stop at nothing to get it."

"Will he not inherit the throne?" asked Irulan.

"He will almost certainly succeed your father," said her teacher, "but he isn't one to sit idly by. Nor will he tolerate competition."

"I understand," said the Princess, knowing that something had shifted between her and her teacher. She was no longer a pupil: she was a pawn. "There is something else," she began, partially because she longed for her teacher's confidence and partially because she knew it would weigh on her mind regardless of whether or not she gained it: "Feyd-Rautha knows about my father's betrayal. He was there when Paul spoke."

"Yes"

"You once told me not to rely on hope but to rely on careful planning," she said while watching her teacher's face, "Do we have a plan?"

"At a certain point," said the older woman with a sigh, "you will have to decide whether your loyalty lies with your father or your Sisters."

"Did you always mean to sacrifice him?" asked Irulan. Steadying her voice took some effort, and she could tell her teacher noticed the strain.

"He has outserved his purpose."

"Have you considered," started Irulan, "what it would mean for a man like Feyd-Rautha to sit on the throne? A man you can't so easily control as my father?"

"That's what I have you for, my dear," said the older woman, "Now – was there anything else? There's more business I need to attend to as the foreign dignitaries start arriving."

"My father is all I have left."

"Then you'd best find a way to keep your husband entertained," replied her teacher, turning out of the room with a swish of her robes. Her voice sounded tired, as though she had had this conversation dozens of times before.


Irulan took a walk in the gardens to soothe her nerves. It was one of the last times she'd see green foliage or warm light or blue skies dotted with clouds for the foreseeable future. She tried to take in as much of it as she could, commit it to memory, so she could take a piece of it inside her when she left for Giedi Prime. An ancient myth from Harmonthep came back to her then: a young maiden captured by the God of Darkness. Her father, the Sun God, went mad and stopped performing his duties. He was able to negotiate his daughter's occasional return, but only for specific times of the year at the discretion of the God of Darkness, who had taken the young maiden as his bride. According to tradition, this was why the planet had such unpredictable weather. Irulan doubted her father would go mad in her absence. With how preoccupied he'd been since the murder of Leto Atreides, she wondered if he would notice at all.

Where would this God of Darkness take her? She had never been to Giedi Prime, but by all accounts, it sounded like something out of a myth. Was the Harmonthep God of Darkness also a sociopath, as Margot had said Feyd-Rautha was? It was childish, she knew, to compare herself to a mythical figure, but after her talk with the Reverend Mother, she'd had enough of pretending that history was just a series of transactions. Hadn't the Reverend Mother emphasized the power of faith during their virtually all of her lessons – the power of story? Of writing it all down? She had been the one to insist that Irulan start a diary. The truth is created by she who tells the story, she had said, and the Princess preferred stories that had meaning. She'd toned down her natural expressiveness and tried to mimic the style of the Bene Gesserit texts, but today she didn't feel like being disciplined. She had been careful all her life to follow every rule imposed upon her, and now she was being shut out of the very sisterhood she'd shut out the universe for. She'd missed her own sisters' childhoods – not the Bene Gesserit disciples who traded secrets in whispers behind closed doors – her real sisters – who had grown into ruthless women she could on one hand understand but on the other never trust. She'd missed the narrow opening for kinship, dedicating herself only on her father and her training. Their mother had died giving birth to her fourth sister, and the Emperor didn't know how to foster any closeness between his daughters in her absence. Irulan twisted a blade of grass between her fingers. Despite the pleasure she felt at the sun on her neck, there were too many soldiers about for her to be thinking such private thoughts.

She turned back the direction of the castle, knowing full well she'd remember the day in the future and ask herself Why? Why did you spend it inside when you could have been out amongst the flowers? Her thoughts drifted back to the Harmonthep myth. Was the maiden happy with her fate? Did she grow to love the God of Darkness, or did he take her by force? These were all things she imagined girls discussed with their mothers before their weddings, but she had no mother to ask. She couldn't even remember her mother's face, not clearly, though she remembered her demeanor: a strict woman with exacting demands. She suspected this was the root of her attachment to the Reverend Mother, despite their frequent clashes. Irulan knew she had disappointed her today – it was as if she had lost five years of her training. She remembered the annoyance in her teacher's eyes when confronted with her deficiencies, and Irulan suddenly felt like crying. Not now, she told herself, you're being watched. Wait. She steadied her breathing and flattened her face, knowing she only needed to hold up the dam until she reached her quarters. There were other things to think about: things to plan.

The wedding itself would be easy: all she had to do was show up. It was the wedding night that scared her. She wasn't afraid of the pain: she was a Bene Gesserit. It was the uncertainty and unfamiliarity of it that unsettled her. She had no idea what to expect other than the obvious mechanics. The idea that Feyd-Rautha – that Feyd – might be ordinary frightened her more than the idea that he might be a monster. Margot had said he loved pain. She could give him that, could give him her pain – but what if he wanted something else? The Reverend had sent Margot for a reason: seduction had always been her specialty, not Irulan's. Not that their teacher would ever consider wasting something as precious as Irulan's virginity on a contingency plan – as the Emperor's daughter, she was to remain chaste for obvious reasons. She had done as much research as she could through reading, but there are certain things one can only learn from practice, and Irulan had never even kissed a man who wasn't her father.

Sex was the ultimate weapon, according to nearly every book she'd ever read. Therefore, Irulan decided, it was reasonable to approach her wedding night like one might approach a duel. Not a battle to the death – that unnerved her – but a match between soldiers. What would she do if she were a soldier approaching his first match? I don't even know how to hold a sword, she thought to herself as she crossed the threshold of her bedroom, shutting the door behind her and locking it. She suddenly wished more than anything she could talk to Margot. How odd, she thought to herself, to want to talk to my future husband's former lover. But she did. She'd always disliked Margot, who was a natural at everything without trying and made sure Irulan knew it, but in this moment, the Princess wanted to talk to her more than anyone. What would Margot tell her to do?

She would be purposefully vague, thought Irulan, and avoid telling me anything of use so as to make me feel inferior. And that was true. But perhaps that was partially Irulan's fault: Irulan had never earnestly asked her for help. Like rival daughters, they each had their own claim on the Reverend Mother's praise: Margot for her physical ability and Irulan for her intellectual strength. They were never going to be close considering the competitiveness of their education. Irulan wished she had an hour with her tonight, just one hour, to talk without being observed – to talk about something unrelated to their studies or their futures. She wanted to talk about sex. She settled onto her bed, stretching out on top of the covers.

There were no full-length mirrors in her quarters. She supposed it was because she had servants to dress her and make sure it all looked right when she entered an important room. Had she ever gotten a good look at her own body? Would her husband be satisfied with what he saw?

She stopped herself. This was a duty – an obligation she had to fulfill – an ordinary task assigned to every wife as long as there have been wives. She would approach it the way she approached everything else: through research and study and careful observation. And if she didn't satisfy him, he had a full harem. She'd find other ways to prove her usefulness. Approaching her first duel from a place of insecurity would only ensure her defeat.

She was letting herself get distracted again. She was not the Sun God's daughter: she was the eldest daughter of an ordinary man. She was a disciple, not a prophet. Not even the lover of a prophet. A historian whose duty it was to record all of the prophets and all of the lovers so that future generations would know what had happened – would know the stories that had been worth recording. Not hers – hers served a different purpose, albeit no less important (she reminded herself again of her father's words: the heart is not meant to rule), and she was determined to make peace with it. She had years of training under her belt, and she wasn't going to lose perspective just because she was inheriting a new role. She was a Bene Gesserit, betrothed to Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen: in no way would this end well for her. It was her life's work to bear the sacrifice with grace, to listen to orders, and to record everything she saw.

Still… she knew Margot would find a way to revel in it. And maybe that was part of it – getting lost in the story until one forgets who one is. Becoming someone entirely new. Someone formidable. Someone with power. Someone with the will to change her own destiny.