XI: The Chains of Feyd
A while later, Feyd released me to my own doings. I was thrilled to get a chance to tend to myself. It'd been a while since I laid still in a bed to ponder my own existence before I fell into a pit of despair. Also, I needed a shower. There were bodily fluids upon my skin that I did not need permanent.
It wasn't until I undressed that I realized how stained I was. With cum. With spit. With blood.
Vishti appeared when I slipped into the mild water. They threw up their hands. "Wallah! What did you do to make the na-Baron so angry?"
Their cool touch massaged my shoulder blade. A deep purple bruise was embedded in the tissue below. Bright red scabs speckled my skin. They tore slight as Vishti rubbed on a healing balm. The fresh weeping downturned Vishti's lips.
"These are happy bites." I assured them.
"Ah." A crude smile emerged. "Because of the dance, yes?"
"Na-Baron enjoyed the performance," I said as flat as I could manage. "Thank you for preparing me. I think it went over well."
"Oh, yes! So well. The whole castle talks about it."
"I hope Aishti was pleased with the way I danced. She deserves the credit. I was a lump of loosely coordinated muscles before I met her."
"She very happy with you."
"I'd like to tell her myself," I said. "Sometime."
"She busy with the laundering but I think some day she have time."
Vishti dipped my hair into the water. Their hands massaged a lather against my scalp. Then it was rinsed free of soap, twisted and clipped away. My body then was scrubbed with a coarse stone. It scrubbed at the bottoms of my feet as well as my palms. My underarms received a fair bit of attention.
Vishti stepped out to fetch a towel when I grabbed a jar of gel. I slipped some gel down to my lower parts – just like I was told to by a servant once. She said all the girls used it to keep "free". It was not said what it was, but I trusted that I needed to be kept free in every essence.
I stood there as water dripped off my flesh, feeling the movement of every droplet.
They found a towel. I was wrapped inside of it. The old fingers again massaged the length of my body like they did after every shower. The pressure grew the longer they worked. It pushed far into my tissues, rearranging the look of my skin as they did so.
Then Vishti slid warm body oil all over. They always marveled at the plumpness of me. It was not done at places where true plumpness shaped me. But in places like along my clavicle, my neck, my wrist, my cheeks.
"So water fed."
"There must be water on Arrakis. Like out in the desert. Fremen live there. There must be a source."
"Their bodies are their water source," Vishti said.
There was a short flash of knowledge that sparked from the education that Feyd had shown me; they wore still suits.
"But something cannot come from nothing," I said. "They must have water. How do they recycle water if they have none?"
"They steals those who isn't careful with it."
"Excuse me?"
"Don't go out in the sands, my lady. Fremen do not want you there."
My eyes widened. "I do not -."
"Na-Baron is not too kind, but desert is worse."
Running out into the desert never occurred to me. I had not considered life viable out in the deadly lands outside the city walls. How could I? There was no water, sand worms that swallowed everything and Fremen who disliked the invasion of their planet.
Death laid at the end of Harkonnen blade, for me. A certainty I accepted long ago. But opportunity rested just outside the castle walls to which I was not chained.
Why had I not thought to leave?
There was a chance at life without monsters and I had not thought to take it.
The natural shift of night turned light as morning neared. Our day was almost spent. We slept during the heat of the day to avoid being roasted. Almost all the residents of the city observed this schedule as well.
I could slip out just as Arrakis day started, when everyone began to sleep, to cover the most ground before Feyd noticed my absence. Then there was no possibility any local would be slain on his quest to find me - if there was one.
I mean, who would venture a fatal desert to find a prisoner of no value? Not Feyd. It was a waste of resources he couldn't afford. There was already a shortage, if reports were to be believed.
I could do it. Escape was viable on this planet.
For the first time, escape was possible. Escaping the Harkonnen's, escaping Feyd, escaping death.
"Vishti?" I hummed from the comfort of my fluffy stuffed bed.
They stepped out of the wardrobe with dresses and undergarments and socks and shawls over their arm. "My lady?"
"How far out in the desert do the Fremen live?"
"No, my lady. No desert. No open sands."
"I was only curious…"
Damn. I need another person to milk information from.
Aishti knew locals and customs. She had to know something about the Fremen. They may be violent against outsiders, but I might have a chance to barter a way back home.
Home. Where was that? I did not know where I came from. There was no place that was a fond memory to find. No names, no places; no people I knew still drew breath.
The whole of the Imperium was a large place. None of them were a place I knew held refuge. I knew not their names, locations, their people. If Harkonnen monsters were all I knew, monsters were all I could live with.
And if there was a choice of monster, I'd choose Feyd.
Night came with the brightest rays of dawn. Vishti tucked me into the blankets before they left. The glass shuttered in total shade. Darkness came over the silence.
I fell asleep alone. The whole of the chambers was still. It crashed against me, like it used to in the Baron's castle. How small I felt in those times. When it felt like I still remained trapped in those dungeons.
It was a long while before I panicked myself to sleep.
Sometime in the night, an arm wrapped around me in a half hug. If the pressure wasn't a sign, his smell was. It was strong, like musk. It did not rattle my mind to feel his touch out of nowhere. Feyd laid atop the blankets, fully dressed. Through the darkness I saw the way he looked at me. His eyes caressed the sight gentle and slow. Not a word left his lips as he laid there, unmoving.
The down slope of his puffy lips was so sad, it was almost beautiful.
In the cover of night, I brought my touch up to them. Their moist plump flesh was swelled and pouty. It attracted attention to that twisted mouth which weaved all his schemes. They, conspirators to Feyd's ambition.
"Hey," I whispered.
"Hey," he said just as quietly.
The room was full black as if it was the peak of Arrakis day.
"What time is it?"
"Late." He laid unmoving. His head leaned against my elbow with an arm cinched around my body.
My mouth opened in a small yawn. "I missed you. Vishti had to entertain me over supper."
Feyd scoffed lightly. Our voices were too quiet to be even heard at the foot of the bed.
He kicked his boots off the edge of the bed then pulled the shirt over his head. I watched his body move through darkness like a beacon; his pale form split the shadow.
We switched positions with my body curled against his side as he held me to him. I did not ask why he held me tight at night. It felt a reason I should not know. Only that the pressure was a comfort.
On the black sun planet, our bodies would lay atop one another for the entire night. I'd sometimes wake up – after he left in the early hours – to see the bright red marks of each finger embedded in my skin. Where he held me.
My mind awakened with him against me. I let my fingers trace little trails down his barren torso.
It was unlike Feyd to be so quiet. And not be trying to illicit some lust.
I looked at his face and was struck with the haunted loneliness of the monster. It was beautiful and tragic. His eyes were distant, sullen.
A monster of making.
My fingers caressed up his neck along the height of his high cheekbones and across his lips once again.
"So sad," I murmured. "What makes you frown like that?"
"I want him dead. I want to kill him with my own hands." The lump in his throat bobbed. "It will be better with his body burned to ash. Never to come back."
The strength of his lips fell to a deeper frown.
"The castle is far from us now," I said. "So is he."
"He comes back." Feyd's voice turned hard. "He always comes."
Tension coursed the fingers that gripped me. They held me tighter as the anchor to his person should I be ripped away.
"There will be a day where he does not," I assured him. "And you will see it."
"I'll be all that he couldn't." His voice was hard as ice. Unforgiving and harsh. "He'll watch me gain the Imperium, the legacy, the respect, while he dies slowly. In every way I want. I think I'll try a poison first. Something to paralyze so he can't fight back," Feyd mused. "There are plenty on Geidi Prime who would like to tear him apart. Maybe in the arena." He chuckled. "Wouldn't that be an event to watch?"
"Would you give Glossu rule over the planet then?"
"Rabban." He laughed, although it was pained, sardonic in a way. "Neither of them will have a thing left when I am done with them. No, someone of my loins will have Arrakis. Geidi Prime. It does not matter if it is my name. Only that their bodies spawned from my flesh. My legacy beyond theirs. I will have generations from me while their lines die the second I slit their throats."
"They are old men with power. Many, surely, have been used for their pleasures. How can you be so sure their virility has not been successful?"
"I know," he said sternly.
Carthag was a huge city. I spied it out the window glass in the subtle glow of dusk. It was far bigger than Arrakeen, with houses built for what looked like miles around.
It was full of people. There were many who filtered into streets, like rivers, washing their way through the land in a path of least resistance.
My attention diverted with the subtle movement behind me.
I turned to Vishti. "I wish to go into the city. Has the na-Baron barred me to the castle?"
"No, my lady, but -."
"I'm going." I turned around.
If there was true escape out in that desert, its truth had to be revealed to me. There was mystery, an option of life on this planet. I felt it. It moved inside my chest like the quickening of breath.
Arrakis held promise. I had to find it. Maybe its promise was for me.
Vishti frowned as they pulled a dress from the wardrobe. It was a golden orange. It flowed in great length; every inch of skin was protected from view.
Reason to refuse the Harkonnen love of terrifying footwear emerged when the prospect of walking upon sand was introduced. Vishti presented a pair of simple brown sandals. There was no backstrap. The entire foot was in the open air.
"You intend to go alone, my lady?"
"There is not someone to tend to me. I cannot ask you to take me. So, I suppose I will."
"Wallah! No. No, no. You must go with someone," they said.
"It will be fine, Vishti."
"It is not safe." They shook their head. "Please, my lady. Na-Baron will be angry."
An entire city laid outside the walls that I had not been chained behind. What laid outside the walls on the monster planet, I did not care, but here - here there was life and beauty. Death was not a lust in their souls.
There was genuine joy in these people, on a planet just as harsh as the monster planet. Yet there was humanity that remained.
I had to see it. If I saw it, understood it, maybe I might have a chance.
Might be free of the monsters flesh I inhabited now.
Vishti pleaded with me to remain in the castle, but I refused. I left the front gates of the castle without resistance. Not one guard stopped me. They did not ask where I went or what I intended to do.
I was nonconsequential. Just a woman that the na-Baron paraded around.
The air was hot. So hot.
For even the blackness of air, there was a taste of warmth like the height of day. The sand. I felt its grit atop my tongue.
The castle was put apart from the city around it; gates lined the property. Only a few exits - manned with their own guards - opened up to the world outside.
Opulence died at the end of the Harkonnen reach. The city itself was not opulent nor lavish considering the amount of money that was sourced from their planet.
None lived like it.
The streets were dusty, sandy, cut through the land. It followed the lines of homes and businesses.
I walked down the sides of the road like everyone else. The people of the city were dressed in dark robes but made no look at me. I was fully covered.
Not that I was a recognizable person.
I imagined Feyd's image being posted in every city on the planet to announce his overthrow of The Beast. Barring mention of me.
The streets were busy. Little stalls of vendors speckled in between homes and businesses. They sold food that was on sticks as if its easy transport was important. I took it in with awe. The scent of the roasted spices toyed with my nostrils, my stomach.
Common tongue was common - I saw it written all around - but what was spoken was local dialect. Its sound was an enchanting strangeness that was more welcoming than frightening.
This place was all I'd wished the monster planet to be.
I turned down a short lane. There were no vendors or open stalls. The street ended in a wall.
Caught in the wind by the glow of an artificial light - full night laid upon the planet now - were pieces of paper. They fluttered and flapped, caught against the wall.
I observed the paper.
Duke Leto Atriedes.
A striking man with a dark stare and beard was pictured below the name.
Savior of Arrakis was printed.
I thought Glossu Rabban had ruled spice for the Baron, who ruled the planet forever. How was this handsome man the savior of Arrakis? My eyes scanned the paper for more. It gave little answer to what I searched.
Atriedes was the name Feyd mentioned before, to Glossu. He let the Atriedes heir escape was what Feyd accused.
A sudden surge up numbness ascended my body. Out of nowhere I was consumed by nothingness.
The paper fell from my hand back to its endless cycle of flapping into the wind.
My heart rattled at the cage clamped around it. I'd finally felt something. The taste of life outside of impenetrable walls – sweet and glorious.
I wandered the city, confused at myself. The emotion I once felt when I looked at these people was absent. It was a dejected stare, hardly one above what Feyd used before he killed someone.
How could I escape the monsters, when they are the ones that made me what I am?
There was no hope. No hope for me.
I was long lost - the human me. It was a person buried inside me never to be unearthed, breathed life, rescued. All that remained were her bones. Her blood. The deadened nerves that had me enveloped in the species of monster when I was not one.
The depth of the city was immense. I lost track of time. My return to Carthag castle was meant to be sooner than it was.
Harkonnen soldiers filled the city streets now, in some kind of curfew or search. I only saw a few city guard my entire walk, but now they were everywhere. The black helmets and thick armored suits stuck out amongst the flowy fabrics, beautiful shawls, the stone and sand.
They did not belong.
I watched as a pair of soldiers pushed through a door into a building. There were shouts from inside. They accosted the occupants for something. It was important. There was urgent demand in the soldiers voices that was not common.
But. I was naïve to Arrakis. It was possible that this was a nightly thing I had not experienced.
Maybe raids for smugglers I'd heard so much about.
Monsters on war paths - my instincts told me to avoid them. I'd learned very well what happened when a monster was interrupted in its rage by some other matter. It devoured them whole.
I slipped away from their march. I used the shadows and backways around their terror as the castle was always in view, from anywhere in the city. My feet pushed through the burning at the back of my legs to reach it. The gates were open. Guards filled the castle grounds in a number that I did not think resided outside the castle walls.
My entrance into the grounds was silent. I did not want to disturb the ambiance. A trigger finger might shoot me in surprise.
Though, that would not be too bad a death. I stopped to consider it.
"Tear down the entire city if you have to!" Rang clear through the air. The words were filled with venom. Its poison so strong through the air.
All at once, the guards stopped.
Their attention turned to me. Motionless, they stood. As if the air had been sucked out of their lungs.
One of them bowed their head. "My lady," they mumbled.
I tipped my head in acknowledgement, in hopes it would disperse the tension that suffocated them in an instant.
Did I enter a gathering that I should not have? Was my presence awkward?
The main front gates of the castle were open wide. I'd surmounted the first few stairs before my skin prickled with awareness.
My vision lifted from my feet to the gathering of soldiers and advisors packed into the grand foyer. Their faces all centered upon me. The fear of some, indifference to many, in expression.
Feyd stood at the height of the room. He paced. A sharp scowl fixed against his face.
A frigid surge shot from my elbows to the tip of each finger. I pulled the face veil away.
"Na-Baron."
Feyd suddenly stopped. "Mintha." His boots stomped toward me. "Where were you?"
I looked around the room. "Has something happened?"
"Answer me," he demanded.
"I went out while you were busy, na-Baron. To explore the city. I-." I paused. "Were you looking for me?"
Feyd turned to Captain Rurik. "Call them off. The lady has been found." His eyes drifted down my person. "Safe."
It was said as fact, but he did not seem certain of that.
The room was strange at that moment. It felt tense and relieved all at once. The dual confusion of Feyd's attitude had my jaw clicked shut.
He yelled commands as I stood there, unmoving and stoic. Numbness had consumed all of me. The dead calm stole every part of myself away, further than before, as the shell I inhabited felt less and less like home.
Feyd held his tongue as he walked me toward my chambers. The grip on my wrist was tightening as time went on.
The tendons were ready to snap when we finally neared – his – chambers. The doors were wide open, as were the ones at the end of the hall – mine.
He pulled me inside his. The doors slammed closed behind.
"It was just a walk," I reasoned flatly.
"Do you know what harm could have befallen you out there?" He yelled. "Any could have-."
He cut himself off.
"No one could tell who I was," I said.
"Exactly!" A sword pulled from his side. Its horror did not illicit any emotion from me, even as he slid it between my breasts did I refuse to flicker an ounce of fear.
The blade slit straight through my dress. The fabric slipped to the floor with nothing left to give.
"You are my lady," he snarled. His hand pulled the head covering down from my hair. "Mine."
His dark teeth bared.
He lost himself to the monster inside.
"If they can't see it, how will they know? How will they smell me on your skin if you cover it all up?"
My eyes blinked in surprise.
Feyd grasped my face. He violently collided against me. Thick lips pulled at with me such desire.
His hands roamed my body, cupping parts and toying with others until he finally hoisted me onto his waist. I was stark naked against his luxurious black suit as a piece of filth meant to stain his status. The fabric moved and slipped along the apex of my thighs.
Burning need began to build.
He knew how to bring it forth, unleash my own inner animal to his. The animal was one he knew me as. He did not recognize it as his own kind. That we were the same. Monsters made in the flesh of humans.
"You know better than to let a man touch what's mine, don't you, Mintha? You'd never have another man slip inside and make you scream. Right, my sweet?" He breathed, growled, pleaded. "I will be the only lover you have. Do you understand me?"
His fingers slipped inside me. The pressure made me groan.
They started a pace that was like a fever. Hot and steady. My thighs clamped around his waist.
"Answer me, Mintha."
How could I when every piece of me that felt something was on fire? I fought back the pleasure, even though I knew it was no use.
The grip on his fingers increased.
"Mmm. It is better this way."
He finger fucked me until I could barely hang off his body.
"Yes," I finally screamed. "There is no other."
"Will there ever be?"
I drew ragged breaths to the deep pits of my lungs. "My life is yours, na-Baron."
Feyd pulled his cock from the waist of his trousers. He shoved his entire length into me without hesitation.
I tightened my grip on his shoulder. The length of my nails bit through the fabric.
He frowned. "Harder," he urged.
The fabric was too thick. The tip of my nails could never stab through it. There was one piece of me that could.
I leaned forward and bit with all my jaw's might into his flesh. Instantly, his cock stiffened harder inside me. And his pace became urgent.
It became harder to keep latched on his shoulder as time wore on. I wanted to scream and howl and become an animal. It felt so perfect. It throttled me until I forgot all - just the makings of our two bodies.
It was us.
Our bodies under our control, with someone we chose, unable to stop.
Tang touched my tongue. It slipped against the salvia that dripped onto his black suit, toying my tongue with its taste. Blood.
Feyd's blood.
He pushed our bodies against the door of his chambers, rattling them as he thrust into me. I was overcome. The blood, the pleasure, the restraint I hid behind.
A sudden gush ruptured through me. I felt its shift of pressure.
It dripped down his length onto his pants when he withdrew.
Still, he held me against his body. Arms around my back as I dripped mine and his cum onto the dark fabric without care. He breathed into my face. Excited breaths soon slowed.
A ripple of calm grew until it enveloped him completely.
"I did not mean to worry you," I blurted, somewhere between guilt and awareness of how inconvenient it was. To stop his own operations to tend to me was not something that needed done. There was not time. "My presence does not matter that much. I thought it would go unnoticed."
"I noticed," he said sternly. "The lady of my house goes missing. It is my duty to keep my own house. It reflects poorly on me if you disappear."
"Apologies, na-Baron." My lips pressed together. The lump in the back of my throat was stressing me to say more.
He was in a full rage when I returned that day. The pacing was swift and jolted, like he could not decide what he should do: stay or go search himself. And he seemed – gulp – relieved when he heard my voice.
But this man was more than what he seemed. Whether it more human or monster, I could not say.
I knew him to boast, endlessly, about himself. He adored attention. The way he absorbed even in the dwindling of their life, his opponent's death, their defeat, their ruin, made him giddy. He honored their death, yet it filled him with pride to have been the one to conquer their life.
The birthday celebration had changed things.
He'd tried and failed to kill his uncle. His harem was slaughtered and bled dry. The assignment of Arrakis as his duty. It twisted the man I'd known so clearly into a mess of contradictions.
At the Baron's castle, he hunted for signs of emotion, of fear, of a way to conquer my life, too. He used my body as his. I was an amusement for other times. Whatever they were… Feyd's own person was hard and cruel. He mocked attachments. He despised weakness.
Yet. And yet, I know inside my head that he was attached to me in a way that differed from every other person he met. He sought emotion now, in me, because he wanted me to show it.
It was ridiculous, I know. My mind was playing tricks.
A piece of me could not let it go.
What did Feyd want?
"Do not make me feel this way again," he warned.
I slowly nodded. "Yes, na-Baron."
That was all that was said on the matter. At least I thought so.
He fled the suite so soon, I thought he had to blow off steam. Stab something to ease his anger.
He stormed back inside a short moment later with a sleek, strapless dress. It was thrust in my direction.
I took it with timid hands.
"Your body is my under protection," he said. "Show it and they will not touch you."
I gathered my breasts inside the bustier top. The back was split open still.
Feyd did not wait for me to ask. He laced the dress closed. It tightly hugged my chest as it was knotted.
A ghost of lips ran along the back edge of my shoulder.
My stomach clenched and soured to the back of my throat.
"I would not run away. From you."
His lips murmured against my flesh. "I know."
"People here are not like the ones you know," I said gently. "They would not murder me for the fun of it."
"You may trust the sentiment, my lady, and I'll trust what I know: there is nothing a man won't do when he believes it necessary. The only thing we can do is defend ourselves violently. Lest they get close enough to stab in our backs."
Feyd leaned forward and kissed my cheek.
I swallowed. "Am I chained to the castle then?"
"You are chained to me," he said.