Feyd put his arm around my back to lead me back to the dais. I was ready for food.
None of my meals stuck inside. It was as if half of my food slipped to nothingness, causing me to eat twice as much. It calmed Feyd's concern of my intake, at least.
A servant approached with my drink.
"I need something to eat. Do you have anything? No. God, no. No eyes. Something nice."
They mumbled a quiet reply that they would find some.
I would apologize for my insistence when they returned. With something to eat.
"Na-Baron! Oh, na-Baron." Voices called out. Feyd was pulled to greet his nobility as they fawned. He could not turn down the chance for their attentions. I was happy to remain apart, watching his ego grow and grow the longer they spoke.
The Bondar matron appeared at his side. She put a hand on his shoulder. His eyes snapped to it, pulling away very directly. She, however, took it in stride. Her hand gestured out to the younger of the women. The young daughter bowed and nodded along with her mother's statements.
Eager smiles showed their own set of imposing teeth. The tips of their long corner teeth were like fangs, down into their gums.
They were the type made for Feyd. He could be bitten by those fangs with great delight. Deep bruises would remain tender for weeks after being punctured by those.
My stomach soured. Maybe I was not so fit as his partner as I believed.
Maybe more monster lurked inside. A stronger demented monster that kept restrained by his own obsession.
Feyd's attention flicked up for a moment. Our eyes met. Through tables and people, we were able to see one another clearly. He did not appear the least interested. His eyes rolled before he had to turn back to his subordinates.
He explained, before, that it was imperative to retain excellent relations with his nobles. If he was to overthrow his uncle and surmount the throne, he needed their support. If we made enemies of them, it would make things difficult.
That was why I did not crumble to pieces when he accepted a dance with one of them. I watched as he kept her at arm's length as they walked to the dance floor.
Others joined in the space. Paired off as couples to dance the same beat.
My fingers stuffed small roasted beans and dried olives in my mouth. Their salt satisfied my taste buds.
"The lady stands alone."
I jolted in place. I had thought I was alone on the edge of the floor.
My fingers dusted the salt onto my dress. "Harun." It showed my surprise. I practically shouted it. "You're here."
"I was surprised to merit an invitation. It was my impression the na-Baron did not care for me much."
I blinked. I did not know what to say.
"But, here we are." He said with a smile. "Accepted once more, yes?"
The dance started.
The many couples, Feyd included, began to move. It was a fascinating watch. The dance was lively for a Harkonnen tradition. There was not much spirit inside them but for blood sport.
I questioned whether it was a true tradition of their culture, and what sort of noble people they had sprang from whom held dance in a lively air that the living Harkonnens did not.
"How goes things in the desert," I asked.
Any distraction from the tension, discomfort, awkwardness I felt at being brought so close to being reminded what being Feyd's favorite meant. I liked Harun. I did not want him punished more for being favored by me.
Or what it meant if I no longer loved Feyd.
What could come from his animal skin if he thought I no longer was the same as he was. That he'd lost my attentions to another.
I shuddered to consider such a fate.
Harun thought a moment before he answered. "Slow."
"It is difficult to convince someone to work where they will likely die."
He gave a coy smile. The lively nature of his happy eyes bounced around the dance floor with the many dancing people throughout the room. It'd grown rather crowded. The room was rather dense with all the spinning bodies.
"It is not the climate that battles us. It is the political climate we battle most."
My eyes flashed to Feyd. He was political. He was the new politics. Was he making enemies without me realizing?
Harun followed my gaze. "What do you know of your allegiance? They tell me you are not one of them."
"No. I am no Harkonnen," I answered. My attention snapped back to him. "I know little of the world. I was a prisoner of war before Feyd found me."
"You survived?" He asked with interest.
"Survived what?"
"Harkonnen invasion?"
I swallowed. "Technically."
Not all of me survived.
My body remained, still. Alive, yes.
Harun stepped closer and lowered his voice. "We only know the brutality of the desert. And it does not compare to the brutality of our Harkonnen overlords, yes?"
"The desert has worms, heat, no water."
"Do you know how your house does things, my lady? Do you know how they treated the ones before them?'
My body knew the answer. Somewhere in my mind, the name came to me without struggle.
I had not asked about them. Nor mentioned the flyer I'd seen to Feyd.
The answer was something I knew would be an ugly one.
"They destroyed an entire house. Slaughtered them and burned them in piles. The bodies soured the sweet night air," Harun explained. His eyes glanced at the guards near us. I instinctively leaned in to hear his words with ease. "A child. Not fifteen years old and his own mother. A witch, like you. Destroyed. Their entire life wiped out for this planet. This spice."
He shook his head, the distaste wiggling on his tongue. A slip of disdain showed. He viewed the movement of the dance floor as I did. The emotion slipped back away as he calmed.
"You liked this other house. House Atredies, isn't it? Leto Atredies."
He shook his head. "Do not say the name. It is a cursed thing now." He swallowed. "They cared for the people. They took spice, yes, but we were people to them. Not bodies. People."
Unlike to the Harkonnen's.
It did not need said. I knew that's what he meant.
Feyd used this man and his family's influence to throw bodies to the desert to harvest the spice.
My body plunged in a bucket of ice.
All at once, I was not a part of the world but an observer to it. Sensation, long left behind. I was ice and frost and unfeeling.
"We are all bodies to the Harkonnen's," my lips dared say. "A means to an end. Their end. Whatever they see fit."
Harun gave a sad knowing smile. His eyes downcast.
He was a handsome man. I envied how his beauty was natural, unbothered by the stain of blood and poison, as these monsters around us wore.
The blackened sun had not made them monsters. Their own bloodlust did. It rewarded their tastes with an outside that matched.
But Fremen, and the people who lived here on Arrakis, they were good. Their outsides did not show the savage nature of their planet. They remained themselves.
Harun, gifted more than most, as he felt so safe. There was little resistance in me around his calming voice. His conversations were easy. He allowed me to just listen as he carried on with thought. Zero expectation to my reply.
A sorrowful crinkle changed his eyes. "I do not envy you, my lady. Your use is the worst of all. The na-Baron has picked a lovely woman to breed, but it will not be easy on your body."
I swung my head around in shock. My eyes widened. "What did you say?"
"Is that not your position here?" His brows lowered. "He has not married you, but you are given status. It is to breed, yes?"
My mind drafted the information I knew well, as I'd been told: "Only a select few are worthy enough of carrying the na-Baron's spawn. It cannot be anyone."
No. No. Not me.
"Are there others that I have not met yet?" He asked.
My mind spun so fast that I did not bother to reply to him. I was plagued with the violent souring of my stomach. It was quite real that I would retch all over the floors of the Great Hall.
It was so hot. Sweat poured from my limbs. Beneath my dress, it was a cloud of thickening heat that I could not shake.
"My lady?" Harun's face changed to concern. "You've gone pale."
My throat gulped back rising heat. Soon. It would be soon.
"Excuse me," I bid quietly.
My feet led me away from the dance floor without causing a big stir. I became blind to my surroundings.
All I knew was that it was coming. A sudden upheaval of my stomach warned me to find a place to release it. Or that choice would be made for me.
I managed to slip inside my chambers to the bathing room before collapsing my head into the toilet. My body emptied. The wine stung as it left. My nose was burned from the fumes as they spewed out of me. It was hot and sickening.
Tears rolled down my face. It was not all just the vomit.
It cannot be. Please. Do not let it be true.
There was a sound behind my back. It shuffled in quietly. They lingered out of my sight, watching. Vishti was not so cautious when they assisted me. It had to be Nasira.
"Nasira," I groaned.
The scent almost sent me heaving back into the toilet once more.
She stepped at my side and kneeled. Her hands pushed my hair behind my shoulders.
Another wave of retch built within my throat. "Forget the hair. I need the doctor. Do you know who that is?" She nodded. "Go fetch him. Bring him here," I instructed. "Do not tell the na-Baron. He cannot know. Do you understand?"
She ran off with a haste that assured me it would be done.
Once I felt like my stomach was empty, I cleaned myself up. I washed my face. It did not lessened the redness. At least the dried tears were wiped out of sight.
My hands trembled as I waited for the doctor. I tried to count days since my last bleed, but so many ran together. I kept detached from the passing of time on the black sun planet and here, days and nights ran together. There was no point.
I only pleaded to my body that it was not capable of becoming bred.
I was not equipped to survive the process. I was not one of them. My body did not resemble a monster.
Feyd wouldn't dare…
Nasira flew into the bathing room, out of breath. She pulled down the face veil. Her hands reached out to my arms to assist me in walking to the sitting room.
A bald-headed man, big and wide, stood in the sitting room. He had a belt of many compartments wrapped round his middle.
I only half-listened. Thoughts slipped from my head. Ice in my veins battled the hot fire of my mind.
My finger was offered out when he asked. A prick to the very tip pulled a hearty droplet of blood. The doctor clasped an instrument overtop the finger with the bloody tip. A screen read back numbers. Oh so many numbers that I went blind.
Then there was nothing else. I faded to total black.
"How is she?" Demanded a strong voice. "Where is she?"
"I administered a sedative. She screamed so long that she passed out from oxygen loss. The sedative will keep her calm when she wakes next. Too much stress will disrupt the child."
"I can give her another child. There is only one of her. Is she going to be alright?"
"Yes, na-Baron. She is in good health."
"If she is in good health, why did it take so long?"
"This," the doctor replied.
There was a long silence.
I listened to their voices from the foot of my bed where I'd been carried to after I passed out. Vishti stroked my hair. They, too, listened quietly to the voices of Feyd and the doctor from outside the (open) chamber door.
The sharp smell of them near soothed the open wound inside myself, that bled and bled and bled. I could not move to see if my skin truly was split, but I felt the drain of it just the same. It pulled at the very ends of my soul. Heartbreak, deeper than I knew still possible with the atrophied muscle.
The doctor spoke once more. "Return to the party, na-Baron. She will be safe. I will keep watch over her until you return."
"No," Feyd said suddenly. "I have had my night's fill."
"She will remain sedated for a time. You need not wait, na-Baron."
"I expect to be notified the next time before she is given anything. She does not need sedatives. She only needs brought to me first."
There was – no doubt – tension in the doctor when he considered the next response.
Vishti glanced down at me. They knew I was awake but made no effort to notify the others. Their mouth frowned deeper into their wrinkles as they observed me.
The doctor cleared his throat. "There was concern of her safety."
"Safety?" Feyd repeated loudly. Almost irate at the insult.
"She tried to jump off the balcony, na-Baron. We believed her at risk of harming your child."
Feet stomped into the room.
Feyd saw my open eyes. He looked murderous when he looked at Vishti next.
"Leave," he ordered.
Vishti rose from the bed. I followed their shadow through half-lidded eyes. They walked behind my back a moment then approached the na-Baron. Their hands offered up a sheathed blade.
My hidden blade. How had they known where to find it?
Feyd's dark eyes grew angrier, if that was possible. "Leave us. Now!"
Vishti bowed and left the chambers. The doors closed behind their back. I waited until the locks latched before my attention snapped back to Feyd.
He scowled as he tossed a cylinder atop the bedspread.
"Where did you get this?" He asked.
It was the container for the under gel. I had pleaded with the doctor that it was a mistake to be with child when I used it. Of course he ratted to the na-Baron. Bastard.
"Did you have the slaves fetch it for you? Was it a noble who gave it to you? Who?"
My body weighed heavy against me. My eyelids were the only thing not excessive against my life.
"Answer me," Feyd demanded suddenly.
A small tear escaped the corner of my eye. "Did you do this on purpose?"
He stomped to the footboard of the bed. Two strong hands gripped the frame. It groaned under his touch.
The dark intensity of his eyes lined with mine. I hadn't the strength to move mine in any degree. I was forced to stare into the black monster's gaze.
"I command you answer me, Mintha. Tell me who."
My eyes lifted to his face. The emotions were all dead. All of them. I couldn't even appear tired. There was not a twinge of feeling when I looked at him. Except ice. I would remain that way forever now. Ice cold, numb. "So, this is why you needed me."
Feyd gritted his teeth. He stepped away from the bed, instead throwing a shaking fist against the wall. Pieces of the wall crumbled. Dust filled the air. It coated him in its sandy color. The fibers of his suit no longer dense black.
His large chest heaved in breaths. The motion was exaggerated. Like waves of the ocean of fury he battled to withstand.
The cylinder of gel was grabbed hastily, the door to the balcony broken from its hinges and throw out into the night.
The sedatives began to lift. My body lightened. I could move my arms.
I tried to climb to sitting but was weaker than expected. My body crumbled. I toppled over the side of the bed. Feyd stomped inside the chambers, built up with another exclamation or two, and slowed when he saw the mess of my body on the floor. My arms now refused to hold my weight.
He groaned and slipped his arms below my body. My limbs swung.
"You should have told me," he replied in anger. "He wouldn't have given you those damn seds."
"You should have told me," I murmured in weak reply.
To that, he quieted. He only placed me back into my bed. The pillows were soft and welcoming against my face as I laid there.
The silence filled the room, even as he ripped off his perfectly royal suit and climbed into the bed behind my back. His arms pulled the blankets over our bodies.
Just like that. As if not a thing had changed.
My lips frowned.
"Do your chambers no longer suit, na-Baron?"
His neck snapped. I did not need to see it to know it happened. The rushed angry motions as he rolled onto his side said as much.
The sedatives made it easier to sleep. Only a short while of his punishing silence put me to sleep.
Morning was a harsh reality. It did not greet me with softness. Rather, my stomach greeted me with a sudden wakeup call of screaming upset.
I struggled from the blankets, finally kicking them off of me to scramble to the bathing room. The pulsating headache did not ease the control of my sick. My hands held the walls to guide me.
Feyd awoke from my fast movements. He captured me at the threshold.
"No. No. Let me go."
I gagged loudly. His hands instantly dropped me. I ran for the toilet and managed to- somehow - vomit into it without missing. The pressure bottled at the back of my throat was so intense it could have lifted me off the floor. I'd never gotten sick so much as I had these past 12 hours.
Now I was a mess of tears and vomit and exhaustion. The backs of my hands wiped my tears down my face before I turned away from the toilet.
Feyd watched and said nothing. His eyes followed me to the sink where I rinsed my mouth and washed the acid from my lips.
Pregnant.
I carried a fetus inside me. Right now. My blood gave it life. Pieces of me and Feyd already taking shape.
This was my worst nightmare come true.
"You said you loved me," slipped from my lips. "How could you do this to me?"
This haunted demented life with danger at every turn. It was no space to bring a child. It was no place for pregnancy either.
Feyd firmed his expression as I brushed past, back to the bed where I planned to rot my entire being away.
Vishti had stolen the only blade I'd managed to get my hands on. Had they not stolen it, I would have used it to pierce my neck this morning. The consequences be damned. It would be a mercy to spare a child this fate, here, with us.
The next blade would be not come from Vishti. If they were willing to risk Feyd's anger by turning it in, they would not help me find another way to end my life or abort this fetus.
Nasira. She was the one who fetched it for me first. I'll ask her when Vishti is not around. Force her hand if I have to. Intimidate her.
My care was nonexistent. The only care went to the person being grown with my body without my permission.
It could not see the light of day. Not here. Not now. Not this bloodline.
Feyd recovered his disbelief. Or just absorbed it.
He walked over to the control panel in the wall. His fingertips tapped atop the buttons in a dance.
The silence cultivated the tension.
Breakfast was delivered a short while later. All the while, nothing was said. Several of the staff of his own personal attendants - adorned in leather hoods and downcast eyes - brought in plates and platters. A golden tea kettle was brought atop a tray with a single tea cup. It was the one I was always served in the mornings.
Feyd watched the last of them leave the room. He paced at the front of the bed room until they were gone before he relaxed his shoulders and stepped toward me.
"Breakfast is served," he said softly.
I uncrossed my legs and stepped down from the bed. "I need to change."
"Looks fine to me," he supplied, too hopeful that it would sate my need.
I sucked my teeth. "It's too tight."
He tilted his head. "Is it?"
"My cleavage spills out of it," fell flatly from my mouth. "You've noticed, na-Baron."
"Ah, yes. I've enjoyed it."
"Well, I don't. It pains me to breathe. I would have ripped it to shreds last night if I'd been under my own control."
Those last words stung him. He pulled the blade from his side.
"As you wish, sweetness."
The blade split the back seam. Air rushed to the sheen of my skin, instantly chilling me to the bone. The dress was cut away from my body with expert precision. He spared every inch of my skin from his blades edge.
To torture me.
I held the dress against my naked form in wait for his retreat, since he often did not watch me dress. It bored him.
I finally blared an impatient look. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, my stomach demanded food now that it'd been emptied.
Feyd simply remained, unbothered.
I spoke through gritted teeth. "Can I have a minute to dress?"
"After last nights…events," he frowned, "you'll not be out of my sight until I'm certain you will not do something stupid."
"Stupid like kill your spawn or stupid like killing myself?"
Rage bubbled below my skin. I gritted my teeth harder, nearing an explosion of screams.
Feyd stepped forth. His menacing height did not scare me. The frightening edge to his coal black eyes, too, only pissed me off more.
As if those parlor tricks worked on me!
I cut my teeth on his intimidation tactics. What was I, a greenhorn?
"Our spawn," he corrected.
"What?" I hissed.
Of all the things to say…
"You and I. It is just as much yours as it is mine."
I rolled my eyes as I stomped to my own wardrobe. There were few simple outfits that could be assembled by myself. Everything got so complicated when I came to Arrakis. Dressing became a team effort, not a solo chore as it had been all the years before.
Feyd was behind my back, probably inspecting for hidden weapons I might use to kill myself.
"Relax. There is nothing to harm your child in here." The lack of emotion in my tone was a grating difference. "I'd only ever planned on making you so angry that you just massacred me yourself."
A sudden growl erupted from his throat.
"You are baiting me," he said. "Careful."
"Why? Does it make you angry, lord na-Baron?" I feigned.
The use of his title angered him further. His nose wrinkled.
He had to look away, move away from me, with his hands running down the center of his head. They turned to fists in the air.
"Mintha, stop."
No.
No, I wouldn't stop.
Did he stop? Did he stop to ask me if I wanted a child? Did he stop to ask if I could survive a pregnancy, and all the anxieties I'd have from it?
No.
So, no. I would not stop.
My arms were tossed into a robe. The tight dress dropped at my feet as I cinched the tie around my waist.
"Imagine learning that the one person you love, the person you trusted - trusted to keep you safe only used you as a host for their offspring. A means to an end. A body thrown at a problem." My voice quivered and cracked. "A thing to be used."
Somehow. By some miracle Feyd's anger managed to lessen.
He found the courage to face me again.
It did not show me that broken man that I wished to see. I wanted anger and rage. He was full of it. Everyone knew that.
Where was it? Why did it hide when I was ready to battle it on my own?
"I have risked my position in my house, the respect of my uncle and my people, my own life, to have you here with me. Every choice I make is made for both of us. The very future we have, together. You have never been just a body," he commanded in his raspy gravely voice. "Make no mistake, if this child threatens your safety in any way, I'll cut it out of you myself."
He wordlessly stepped out into the sitting area where the small table now overflowed with the royal breakfast.
The linen robe dragged behind me as I walked. The pale pink fabric rubbed against my nakedness. The concern on whether my nipples showed or if the whole of my thigh was visible melted away.
I battled between anger, heartbreak and fear. That horrid unstoppable fear.
A child of Feyd's blood now mixed with mine. I carried the heir of the heir of house Harkonnen.
Had my restraint been bent weaker from the verbal joust, I could have sobbed.
My fingers reached for the teapot. The hot water calmed me, a routine since Vishti first started their position to care for me. They always brought tea. Now I leaned into it for comfort.
Fix these emotions, tea. I cannot withstand much more.
Feyd dined with me. We made no attempts to communicate. Other than the subtle stare, daring - perhaps begging - the other to speak their mind.
I reached out for a mango once. He took it from my hand. My lips fell to a scowl.
However, he peeled the skin from the juicy flesh before he handed it back to me – ready to eat.
"Thank you, na-Baron."
Stab at my pride by refusing me a knife, I'll stab at yours.
His eyes narrowed. "Feyd. It is Feyd to you, Mintha. It has always been Feyd."
"It is no longer."
The words left an unsavory taste atop my tongue. Even I winced at the foulness.
"You're going to hate me for gifting you -."
"Gifting?" I screeched. "This is not a gift. It is a punishment."
Feyd's face jolted back. He was rendered silent, fighting back emotions too deep for me to see.
Again. Silence fell in between us. Rather, it exploded.
The bleeding wound in my chest only consumed more of myself. The sharpening edge of betrayal sank deeper within me the longer Feyd denied me the right to be upset. If I had not been upfront about the shambles I was in mentally - emotional, unstable, insecure, distant, denial, detached - that was some excuse to his ignorance. Under any normal circumstance, a child was a gift. A blessing. I knew that.
The idea that even Feyd denied himself the horror of being made a father was not lost to me. How did he forget the horrors he endured to become the monster he was? Was that the kind of life he thought normal, that a child of mine would be given as if it was a gift?
How could he do this to my heart?
It did not matter. Truly.
I would die - and planned to - before it was given life. My body overcame the suffering of these brutal Harkonnen's, but no child of mine would know the chance to have to overcome. It was a thick deep heavy line I could not dare myself to cross.
Even my love of Feyd paled in comparison to the dedication to keeping every child away from this demented House.