The crowd was deafening. Irulan let Feyd scoop her into his arms and carry her to one of the openings of the perimeter. She slumped against his chest as the world around them shuddered and glitched.

The white light disappeared, and suddenly they were in a cold, black room like the one she remembered entering from.

She blinked, and they were in a bright metal hallway that reminded her of the insides of a cargo ship. Attendants in black robes rushed toward them, but Feyd ignored them and turned into a side room featuring what Irulan recognized as a medical chair. He dumped her onto it, and she writhed against the leather in discomfort, smelling alcohol and bleach. The lamp behind him flickered, and she recoiled from the light.

"What did you do to me?" she asked.

He raised his brow at her as attendants flooded the room behind him.

"The drugs," she muttered before groaning. "What did you give me?"

"Vitamins"

"What else?" she grunted, as the staff began cutting through her dress with scissors.

"Neurovasodil. For the fight."

"Neurovasodil," she repeated, trying to infer its effects.

"Did it help?" he asked, watching her curiously, as a bald doctor slid wet fabric off her shoulder.

She turned her head to look and saw there was a chunk missing from it. Blood still flowed from the wound.

"My lord," said the physician examining her, "she'll need surgery."

"Fine," said the Baron. "Do it. Think twice before leaving a scar."

"Yes, my lord," said the man, as he began to strap Irulan down with the restraints attached to the base of the chair.

"Send for the handmaidens," Feyd said to a guard, before fixing his eyes on the Princess. "You must have a favorite."

"A favorite?"

"Of the girls," he rasped. "You'll need one to assist you."

"Oh," said Irulan, trying to think. "Soline." It was the only name she remembered.

"Very good," he said, petting her face.

"Will this hurt?" she asked, usure of the surgical procedure on Giedi Prime.

"Not a bit," he replied, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'll be back when you wake."

Yes, she thought, her head swimming, a bit of rest would be good.

A nurse in black wheeled in a large machine. Attached to it was a segmented tube that fed into a stiff metal mask. She lowered it over Irulan's face, adjusting its position until the vacuum seal activated and locked into place. Irulan couldn't see - couldn't breathe. She bucked against her restraints.

"Ready," said muffled voice to her left, as her body screamed for air.

Then the mask lit up, and Irulan heard it whirring to life – tasted the sudden puff of gas – before it all went dark.

She awoke to the sound of hushed whispers. Her eyes opened, and she was looking at her reflection in a grand mirror that hung above the surface she was lying on. She looked clean – her hair had been brushed – and she was wearing a black medical gown, and whoever had put her there had cocooned her in black silk sheets.

At the sound of her stirring, her six handmaidens leapt from where they'd been sitting to rush to the foot of her bed, where they immediately fell to the ground to bow before her.

"Where am I?" asked Irulan, still trying to remember how she'd gotten there.

"Your bedchamber, my lady," said a voice from the floor.

"Right," said the Princess, looking around.

The room was built entirely out of metal. It was cavernous, luxurious, and sterile. She smelled nothing except the soap she guessed they had bathed her with, and the walls were an intricate texture of silver. Irulan glanced back up at the mirror above her and noticed the handmaidens were still prostrated at the foot of her bed. She saw that they were trembling.

"Please get up," she said.

"Sorry!" squeaked several of them, as the six girls jumped to their feet. Irulan's eyes landed on the girl on the far right, who sported a blood-soaked bandage around her left shoulder.

"You there," she said to the handmaiden, who briefly looked up at her before staring back at the floor, "what's your name?" She had a sinking feeling she already knew.

"Soline, my lady," said the trembling girl.

Irulan unbuttoned the top of her medical gown to examine her own shoulder. The bandage she wore was curiously free of blood, and when she removed it, she saw that her flesh was as good as new aside from a faint red line that marked the initial incision site.

"The red should fade with time, my lady," stammered the girl on the left. "The surgeon wanted us to assure you. He's good at his job. It should only take a week – there's an ointment!"

"Soline…" began the Princess, looking back at handmaiden whom she suspected was still bleeding.

"Yes, my lady!"

"What happened to your shoulder?"

"M-my lady?"

"Your shoulder," repeated Irulan.

"Y-you. You needed muscle, my lady."

Irulan's hand flew to her mouth, as she fought the urge to retch, and the girls rushed to assist her.

"Grab a basin!" cried one of them.

Irulan swallowed it back and held her hand up to stop them. "I'm okay."

The six of them froze in place, black eyes wide in fear. If Irulan hadn't been so horrified, it would have been comedic.

"Soline," she started again.

"My lady?"

"I am terribly sorry."

"Why would you be sorry?"

"Yours was the only name I could remember. I didn't know they were going to hurt you."

"Oh," said Soline, looking strangely crestfallen.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"N-no of course not, my lady. Please don't apologize. It was a privilege. To be selected for the duty."

Irulan stared at the girl, who was clearly fighting back tears. "Is this customary?" she asked gently. "I'm new to Giedi Prime, and while I've studied the planet, there is still much I'm unfamiliar with."

"Of course," said Soline. "It was wrong of me. T-to assume you meant to honor me."

"I assure you – I remembered your name because of the excellent massage you gave me in the arena. The Baron asked me to select a handmaiden to assist with my recovery. I assumed he meant someone to help me change bandages. This procedure… is not something I'm familiar with."

"Then what do you do on Kaitain!" blurted the girl on the left before her eyes widened and she clamped a hand over her mouth.

"Not that," said Irulan.

"But what about scars?" asked one of the girls in the middle. "How do you get rid of them?"

"We don't."

The girls gasped.

"Well," said Irulan, "we do our best to clean our wounds. And there are topical treatments to lighten discoloration. And certain kinds of light. But some more serious injuries leave a mark."

"But you're royal!" said the girl second to the left.

"Which means I don't often find myself with wounds."

They seemed genuinely confused by that.

"Does it hurt?" Irulan asked the bleeding servant.

"Not nearly as much as when they cut me."

"They didn't..." Irulan's words trailed off. The girls peered at her curiously. "They didn't sedate you?"

"I'm a servant," said Soline. Her tone surprisingly earnest.

Irulan stared at her in morbid fascination. "And what would happen if I needed more than just muscle? What if I needed a liver? Or a stomach?"

"There are six of us, my lady," said the girl, "Surely you'd get whatever you needed."

Now it was Irulan's turn to gawk at them. "How were you chosen to be my handmaidens?"

"DNA testing," said Soline, "and then the remaining fifty-seven of us competed for the honor."

"Why would you want to?"

"B-because – "

Irulan interjected her: "I'm not upset with you. I'm just confused. You seem afraid of me now."

"You're the Baroness."

"You weren't afraid of me before."

"He hadn't claimed you yet."

"The marriage was consummated back on Kaitain."

"Not in blood," explained Soline.

"We didn't think he was going to keep you," said one of the girls in the middle. "The former baron never kept anyone."

"It was wrong of us to doubt you, my lady," chimed the one on the left before turning to the other one to shoot her a look.

"It's alright," said Irulan. "I'm still a bit disoriented from surgery. I got confused. Thank you for helping me understand."

All six of them bowed. It was all coming back to her now – the arrival, the arena, the fight.

The kill.

Irulan squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, blocking it out. There would be time to process later. Once she could get rid of the handmaidens. Once she had her transcriber and the solitude to think. "I had some belongings with me on the ship," she said. "Do you know where they've ended up?"

The girls looked at each other as if to determine who should speak.

"With the Baron, my lady," said Soline, who appeared to win the title of spokeswoman. She earned it, thought the Princess to herself with a grimace.

"Right. Okay."

"Anything else, my lady?"

"No, that'll be all," she said. She longed for her transcriber. Recording her thoughts always helped to ease her anxiety. But she supposed her thoughts might be a bit jumbled after all of it – had she really only arrived that morning? Perhaps a night to let the shock settle would give her a better sense of accuracy when she recorded it. "Actually."

"Yes, my lady?"

"Are there no rooms with windows?" She felt claustrophobic even in the massive space.

"Prolonged exposure to the black sun isn't good for you, my lady. I'm sorry your chambers aren't to your liking."

"Never mind."

"We must let the Baron know that she's awake," whispered the girl on the left across the others to Soline.

"The Baron wished to know when you'd awoken," said Soline.

"Very well," said Irulan, a smile tugging at her lips as the girl on the left scampered off. Now that they were past their introductions, she decided that the girls were cute. She wanted to take care of them. Like sphinx kittens, she thought to herself fondly, before realizing that's exactly how her husband would describe them. She frowned.

"Is something wrong?" asked one of the girls in the middle.

"No," said Irulan, "just still waking up from surgery. Do you mind if I have the room for a bit? I'd like to rest before seeing the Baron."

"Of course, my lady," said the girl, bowing her head.

Irulan waited for the door to shut behind them before turning back to examine her shoulder. Was a piece of Soline really living inside her now? She ran her fingers over the incision, which was warm to the touch. It bothered her. It shouldn't bother her. She had just killed a woman, and that didn't bother her.

That thing was not a woman.

But it was.

What had he done to it – done to her? Irulan remembered the woman's eyes – for she was trying as hard as she could to remember it had once been a woman – the emptiness behind those eyes. Did he do that? And did he mean to do it to her?

If he did, it was working. There was no denying that it was working. What had she been on Giedi Prime for? Less than an hour? Less than an hour and he'd reduced her to mere savagery. Irulan remembered the way the crowd went quiet the moment he raised his bloodstained hands. Not a subtle dampening of sound: complete and utter silence. In an instant, because he'd willed it. Just like he'd willed her. He had marked her as his, according to the handmaidens. Taken the Emperor's eldest daughter and made her Harkonnen – and therefore dominated the Emperor by doing so. But he had given her power, too, whether by accident or by choice. And the more time she spent observing Feyd-Rautha, the more she doubted anything he did was accidental. So if he'd raised her status by choice, and Irulan decided that he had, it only left her with one question: why?

She would find out. The Reverend Mother would be there in three weeks' time. All she had to do was get from here to there in one piece. In the meantime, she would start by learning more about the drugs he'd given her. There were many mysteries to solve, but that would be the easiest one to start with. She could summon a doctor, ask for a sedative, slip it under her tongue and spit it out after he left – finding some hole within the exchange to ask a casual question about the effects of Neurovasodil. The world around her was nebulous and unfamiliar, but she could narrow her lens: pick one objective and focus. Like she had in the arena. She hadn't fled – hadn't submitted. She had killed.

Kill or die.

Irulan felt a surge of adrenaline, and she felt the urge to stand and pace around her room. She would stand then. She would pace.

She had never felt anything like it before – nothing at all – and the feeling was still there – the feeling from the arena – the feeling of focus – of clarity – of submitting to the inevitable without buckling under its weight. The feeling of power – of mastery – not over the woman she had killed – no that wasn't it – wasn't exhilaration at her kill – it was that he had given her a choice – kill or die – and she had lived.

And she was pacing because she had lived – because apparently her legs still worked – because she'd lost a chunk of her shoulder but she had stopped the beast from killing her.

She had lived.

And she was shaking while she paced, but she wasn't uncomfortable. Her cheeks were hot. Her head was clear. Her fate was still within her control. The Princess thought of her father – of Paul – of the planet she had lost – of Thalassa and her makeup kit – of the dyed silk chemise – of her modest travel dress splattered with real blood.

The door opened and Feyd-Rautha entered, crossing diagonally so that he still stood a good way's away from her.

"Baron," she said, as evenly as she could. She normally had more self-control but found she couldn't stand still.

"Battle tremors," he explained with a quirk of his full lips. "Your body is ridding itself of residual tension."

"I see."

"Shouldn't last long though. You won."

"Yes." She felt more naked than she had on their wedding night, trembling before him like this. He was looking at her the way she'd caught herself looking at the handmaidens. "Did you know," she began, forcing herself to maintain his gaze despite the shakes, "that I would win?"

"Yes"

She didn't know what to say to that. And if she hadn't known what to say if he said that, then why had she asked?

"How's your shoulder?"

"Better."

He took a step towards her, and she took a step back, suddenly remembering her handmaiden's message.

"Not even a scar," she said, keeping her voice flat.

"Is that so?" he asked, looking amused.

"Mhmmm," she said, nodding, resisting the urge to look away.

"Well," he said. "That's good news."

"My things," she said, "I brought things with me on the heighliner. I'd like to have them tonight if possible."

He ignored her. "How did it feel?"

"What?"

"The kill."

"Like cutting through fruit," she said. She was starting to get annoyed.

He laughed at this, and the ease of his black smile made her tense. "Like cutting through fruit," he repeated.

"I might want to rest," she said. "If you'll allow it."

"You haven't eaten."

"I'm not hungry," she replied, and it was honest. "Though I might ask for a sedative. I don't know if I'll be able to sleep. With the shakes." She swore he could tell she was lying, but maybe he'd just gotten under her skin.

"You'll join me tomorrow," he said as he turned to leave the room. It was a statement, not a question.

"Yes, my lord," she said anyway because she knew it was expected.

She was trembling in earnest now. How had she gone from feeling so big on her own to so small in his presence? She knew it was by design, but she hated that it was working. A sociopath: highly intelligent. That's what Margot had said. She wished she had her transcriber. She was beginning to think he was never going to turn it back over to her. The Reverend Mother will take care of it, she thought to herself, the transcriber and the Baron, and the thought calmed her. And in the meantime, the surgeon owes you a favor.

Breathe, she said to herself, and narrow your focus: request a visit from the surgeon.

And do your best not to get him killed.