XXVI: The Game of Lasting
*TRIGGER WARNING [gay slur]
My scheming was done well before Feyd returned to his quarters. I was snacking at his personal dining table when he stepped inside.
"It is done," he announced. I quirked my brow. "My guard has been changed. They are the most loyal to our safety there is. I've ensured it."
I pushed the bowl of roasted nuts away. "That's settled then."
Lord Bondar did not frighten me. His attempt to seduce Feyd only told me that he wanted more money, more riches.
A motivation like that did not give me much pause.
Feyd walked over, bent low and kissed my lips. "Will you accompany me to dinner tonight?" He asked.
His fingers danced along my collarbone.
"I did not realize you had plans this eve," I stated.
He'd not mentioned any.
A typical night was Feyd buried under his work in the office and only exiting when I announced the meal delivered. We would dine together in his own quarters with only us as company to our thoughts. It would end in a night of laying naked in each other's arms until we drifted asleep.
We seldom saw the other nobles of the castle. I'd not asked why. Feyd did not seem to miss their presence, and I did not want their invitation to be added to our docket.
"It was last minute," he said.
"Oh. Okay."
"I'd really like you there," he pressed.
I gave a soft smile. "Is that right?"
"As Lady of my house."
"So, this is an official request from the na-Baron?"
He smirked. "If that's what it takes for you to accompany me, yes."
I smiled. "I will go."
The dinner itself was a strange affair shrouded in mystery beforehand with little murmurs said just out of earshot as I was prepared. We walked out toward the barracks in our best outfits that were beyond regal. They were expensive elaborate costumes. The process of being slipped inside the leathers, the metals, was exhausting. My body was constantly slick with sweat. Nasira constantly swatted dust at me as I was slid into the leather under suit so that it would not get stuck.
Still, it was a magnificent costume I wore. He wore a full royal design of a black jutted trench coat, long buttoned shirt below and a solid vest of black leather. It did not look regal to the naked eye; the black fabrics all blended as one. But I recognized the layers. It was more than he preferred to be presented as. Typically.
More layers meant a longer delay in fucking or fighting. Either option he did not care to wait for.
Feyd was steady in his course out toward the barracks.
"I thought we were going to dinner," I ventured aloud. My confusion refused to lift. Why were we outside? Dark or not, it still radiated our bodies in the sun's wrath. The clothing we encased ourselves in were ovens with the heat of Arrakis.
"Yes," he said.
He did not elaborate more.
Tension was at the back of my throat. It tightened as we broached the air of the barracks.
Blood.
It was a constant smell out in the barracks, but this time, I felt the blood atop my taste buds.
Droplets were below my metal pointy-toed boots. I looked down as the new guard surveyed the entrance and new space we entered. The inky black stained the pointed heel. I hadn't noticed to avoid it until it was too late.
Blood, death.
My hopes bottomed out at its emergence. It never stained times of joy for me.
The reminder of blood was the reminder of the monstrous creatures all around.
We stepped through the blood droplets that turned to streams the farther we walked until we found ourselves in the main area of the barracks: the dueling arena.
In the center of the dusty plane was a regal table like the Great Halls, smaller in size, but adorned with all the delights of luxury from the castle. The arena had been transformed into a dining space despite the blood sand floor just below the expensive crafted legs of the chairs. Wine glasses glinted in the warm glow of levitating orbs of light. They hovered above on candle sticks of brass.
To my shock, Lord Bondar sat at the table. His wife and two daughters, too, shared space at the dining table amongst the splattered blood of the soldiers. He did not show a tell of confusion as Feyd brought us to the table.
I swallowed down my disappointment for this dinner - in all aspects.
My appetite diminished in the barracks. The blood. It soured my stomach. I would not withstand any food to be tainted with this taste of blood.
Why was it so strong?
It did not reek like this any other day.
Feyd held my hand up to his lips. "My lady Mintha, you remember Lord Bondar and his lady wife." His eyes glistened in the hovering orb light. Dark beautiful gems in a sea of coal.
They could not break through the walls of disappointment.
My eyes flashed to the man seated at the table just before me. "Yes."
"And his two daughters, Lady Motya and Lady Elmira."
Those were names I was not familiar with. Still, I feigned the slightest acknowledgment of the young ladies seated at the table.
The eldest, whose body I had seen in intimate nature, kept her gaze at her place setting.
Feyd's neck snapped to the lord. "Lord Bondar. You recall Lady Mintha. Royal consort and witch of House Harkonnen."
"Of course, lord na-Baron."
His head tipped with feigned respect I would have loved to shove back at him had I not been so confused and tense. The mystery of Feyd's plans had me on edge. What deep dark chasm had I unknowingly traipsed into with the blinding of his love so bright in my eyes? Was there more I would be poised to do that I did not yet know?
My stomach churned harder. Parts of me were ice mixed with fire, a battle of what I should do in the moment tainted by such uncertainty.
I was offered the seat to the left of Feyd's. Though the table was so small, that we were opposite the lord and lady, with their children on either side of the short table.
The glasses of the Bondar family were filled with their chosen drinks. Ours required being filled. A Harkonnen servant hurried to the table with two bottles. One poured into Feyd's glass - very short. Too short for his thirst of the spirits.
The other poured into mine. The color was rather muted. It did not ring true of the boldness of Harkonnen wine.
I eyed it with suspicion.
"This is a…unique setting for such an honored invitation, na-Baron." Lady Bondar gestured to the room around them. "I've never seen the barracks of the soldiers before."
"It is an impressive facility," the lord said on clipped breath.
The daughters nodded their heads in agreement. Lips sealed shut.
I wondered if the elder daughter had relayed what happened, truly, to her own sister.
"I thought no finer place for the truest of us. A battleground. It is where we are best utilized." Feyd flicked his fingers at the surroundings. My eyes followed his gestures absent mindedly, pondering yet understanding why my presence was requested, then halted when I first noticed.
A slump of a body laid in the sandy floor. Dark sand surrounded the man. It was fitted in the signature dark armor of the Harkonnens - the body.
My eyes snapped back to Feyd.
Again, I saw a disfigured body hanged from the ceiling. It only was a few meters in distance from the table. The tall ceiling, though, hid the sway of the body from eyesight of the table. Only when the eyes tilted upward was it seen.
Another solider. It was bound at the feet hung from the rafters. The arms hanged loosely. The shoulders were misshapen.
"Do you not agree, Lord Bondar?" Feyd inquired through a pair of narrowed eyes.
The lord smiled. His head tipped and his hand raised the glass in his hand. "That I do, na-Baron. It is a worthy field in which to meet you."
The elder daughter took a quick hold of her water. She sipped to cool the growing fears rising. It seemed she was the only one afflicted with such a thirst.
"Hm." Feyd hummed through pursed lips.
He toyed with the rim of his wine glass. Drinking more of the brutal red wine. It turned his lips into menacing bloody beings.
The dead bodies - of which there were more - kept my thoughts. My eyes drifted back to their sunk caved in backs, their gouged eyes, disfigured and broken, tortured in horrendous ways.
Who had done such a thing? These were once people. Harkonnen monsters, yes, but their corpses were not reminiscent of that either.
Lord Bondar spoke unbothered by the littered dead. He treated the private dinner as a special audience with the na-Baron to speak on the other advisors, past mistakes they'd made, and what he would have done better if he'd been selected for service sooner.
Each delighted chuckle of his turned my stomach.
When I finally felt an ounce of relief, I reached for my wine glass. I had yet to taste the discolored wine. It was rather transparent, not full bodied, as if it was a lesser alcohol content. Perhaps watered down? Was this Feyd's way of keeping me sober in the presence of the Lord?
I took a tender sip. The sweetness was a shock. It was so sweet. Like a juice.
My lips parted and allowed a deeper swallow.
Yes. This drink was not wine. It was a sweetened juice of some kind. There was a subtle tartness, but sweetness was the significant taste.
I'd said nothing for the conversation. Neither had the daughters of the lord. Feyd and the lord, with the lady Bondar occasionally supplying a few words, filled the dinner. Our food plates were presented to us. Their steam was a welcome relief against my face. A reprieve from the scent of sand and blood. A long inhale filled my lungs with goodness. Roasted meat, the dazzling spread of brightly colored vegetables and fruit - all difficult to ship to the planet because of the compression of space travel - and the Arrakis favorites of roasted bean mush and sun-baked crackers.
A sudden excited fluttering filled my stomach. The smell seemed to have awoken it. There was strange flipping, but not my nerves. I was unlike a thing I felt before.
My confusion wrinkled my forehead as I looked down at my stomach. Could I see the actual motion through my skin?
"Is the meal not to your taste, Lady Mintha?" The Lady Bondar asked.
The sensation of all eyes landed upon me.
"On the contrary," I replied with a sigh. "My stomach just made a growl of hunger at the mere sight of it."
"It looks delicious," the youngest daughter agreed quietly.
Feyd's hand reached over. It caressed my hand gently atop the table.
"Na-Baron?" Lady Bondar said.
His eyes dragged away from me to the woman across from us. "Yes?"
"You've not said who these men are."
She gestured toward the floor and the ceiling and wall. All where a body was held in an unnatural way in an unnatural shape.
"Traitors," Feyd stated.
"Well yes, that we know," Lady Bondar said. "Tell us how, na-Baron. I have sat on coal and glass just to hear a shred of news."
The lack of disgust at their death turned my stomach. The flutters stopped suddenly.
Quite the gossip at court, she was. She could not restrain her curiosity.
No doubt, to spread the news all around the castle the moment the dinner ended.
The eldest daughter at my left took a short inhale that caught my ear. She was tense all at once.
For once, the lord was quiet. His eyes looked on in intense indifference. The lack of expression on his face did not fool me. The fire inside his gaze was building in pressure.
He yearned to know.
Feyd straightened in his seat. "These men were of the baron's personal guard. Selected specially trained soldiers to protect the royal family. They are the most elite select individuals in our forces."
A strong sweat rose up through my palms across the back of my arms to my neck.
I suddenly understood this dinner party.
"These….rats here. They betrayed me."
The lady gasped. "Betrayed you, na-Baron? You, who has given them everything."
"This is how I treat disloyalty," Feyd said firmly. "I have no tolerance for those who go behind my back to serve themselves."
Elder daughter and I inhaled at the same time. We sat like a rod stuck through our spine.
We shared a slight glance at each other, reading the statements as what they were.
Lord Bondar kept quiet. His pace did not slow whilst he ate. The savage cutting of meat from the bone did not stop. He did not give a stray sorry glance at the ones slayed for his own ambitions.
Feyd then gripped my hand. He lifted it to his lips.
A gentle kiss touched the back of my hand.
"I'd be called to do worse if my lady had not gone unharmed," he said.
My heart fluttered.
He looked straight ahead at the couple before him. "You see, there were once a many people who failed to protect those whom they knew endured depravity in my uncle's court. They washed away the blood. Ignored the wounds. Pretended the screams were of another's voice." Lord Bondar looked up from his plate. The mouthful of food stopped moving. "I will not stand it against any of my house. And examples as these. Traitors, yes, but conspirators against those of my house. The safety of those under my protection is not the oversight I'll have like my uncle. These," he pointed to the dead bodies, "make the point clear enough."
The quiet of her husband finally captured her notice. Lady Bondar allowed the topic to die. Her discomfort moved through her face. I witnessed her stow it away in the face of Feyd. But it was there. The understanding that Lord Bondar had done something to cause their deaths.
This dinner was not the favor they thought it was.
It was the warning. A threat of Feyd's blades.
Do not touch what is his. It will not go unpunished.
The dinner ended in a stilted silence. The lord tried to make conversation. It never succeeded.
We were all trapped in its suffocating tension with Feyd as cheerful and unhinged as he was known to be. His meal was eaten in entirety while mine went untouched.
The manner of the meal - no matter how justified it was - stole away my hunger. It turned my tastes against me.
Guilt.
It seeped through me. The men slain over a bit of coin, for a harmless suggestion of fun with a playboy na-Baron known to enjoy his fun.
I was party to it.
Whether it was by my hand or his, the slaughter was of equal burden. I benefited their deaths. I may have encouraged them, since I reacted violently on my own accord.
Feyd-Rautha left the table first. He pulled me back to the castle with him.
His clip was fast. Very fast.
"Na-baron," I chastised as my feet yet again slipped through the sand as if being dragged along. It made Feyd stop. "The sun has gone down. What are we rushing for?" I asked with an exasperated breath.
Now, I felt hunger differently. It settled inside my mind. It tainted all I felt and thought.
There was the demand of more. More, more, more.
Feyd's spawn made me a hollow monster intent to swallow all on its path.
"If I am near him a moment longer, I'll cut the chords in his throat."
I blinked. The outburst was the opposite of what he'd shown at dinner.
"Okay." I petted his arm gently.
"I need space. I-i need to get away from him," he rambled. "Because I know how many steps it will take to reach him with the end of my dagger through his neck. I count them over and over, even now. His blood coating my hands. I see it. I near taste it."
The restrained rage was a new thing. I did not know he could restrain his desire when he acted out so many horrors without thought.
"I thought we need him alive," I whispered.
Feyd spoke through gritted teeth. "I do."
His eyes stared back at the barracks. Unblinking.
"Alright." I swallowed. We needed the man alive to surmount the Baron. The literal devil. One demon did not compare, no matter how much I wished to see his body drained of its life water. "Take a thopter. Go for a…a fly."
"A fly?"
"It's like a run, but without your legs."
He blinked quickly, almost surprised by my humor or struggling with the sense of my statement in his literal anger.
"I flew earlier," he snipped. His eyes turned away to the distance of the sandy dunes.
"I know. But do it again to clear your head," I said. "It will give you control, like you want."
"Come with me," he said.
The black hardness in his eyes turned molten, glinting in faded light.
He was desperate. Urgent in his voice.
The doctor had warned against too many rides in the thopter. The long trips and lack of water risked my health. The health of my womb, that is.
An infant mattered little if Feyd killed Lord Bondar and ruined all chances of Feyd's future plans.
He needed me.
"If that is what you want of me, na-Baron."
"I want you to want to."
I nodded. My fingers caressed the coat above his chest. A loan of strength was the least I could do, when he had given me his on so many occasions. "I want to be with you, Feyd. I will go anywhere if you are there."
We went to the landing yard. It was full of grounded ornithopters. The silence of the desert was eerie. The whistling of the sands was all that carried on that dense dark air.
The panic in the guards was apparent by their bulbous helmet heads turning back and forth, restrained in their tone but uncertain all the same.
The na-Baron's demanding attitude did not ease the anxieties.
Finally, Feyd chose one for himself, ignoring the attendants in the landing bay. He hoisted me inside despite my protests to do it myself. I was trusted to manage my own buckling while he went to his seat. The vibrating hum of the wings started the excited beating of my heart.
We rose up. Up and up through the darkened sky, until we were swallowed whole by the night.
It was eerie silent on the ride.
He put the controls far forward. As far as he could push them without crunching their components.
The desert was endless. Sands, for all the way to be seen. The late hour showed the slight twinkling light of sunrise as it emerged from the distant dunes. The spilling of yellow light atop the gorgeous sands. Blue black sand turned golden in the sun's light.
It was a pity that the world avoided the sun's wrath. It was a blinding beauty.
Feyd said nothing when I pressed my palm against the glass. The faintest sunrise already heated the windows. The tips of my fingers grew warm.
Anger radiated from him. It filled the space with thick tension. It took all his power to keep straight. Many times, I noticed his hands flinch and grip the controls harder.
I lost track of time. It seldom mattered in a thopter. It all ran together.
As if the sands of time trickled faster and slower with the faintest touch of wind of the dunes.
The shift in the air stream caught my notice. The thopter lowered through the air. Sandy desert floor grew closer to my feet.
I turned to ask Feyd what the hell he was doing when the large structure cut into view. Dense city walls of sandstone rounded an internal city with a crowning pyramid at its center.
Arrakeen.
We'd returned.
It was an oversized palace devoid of life. The answering silence to our footsteps felt lonely and sad.
The history carved into the very walls deserved adoration.
"I don't know," Feyd murmured finally. His strong stomping plunged deeper into the place. He turned back and forth, lost or confused. "It just came to mind to come here."
I smiled. My fingertips danced along the rocky texture of the walls. Stories lifted and rose beneath my touch.
"I like it here," I revealed.
"I know. Carthag reminds you of Geidi Prime, doesn't it?"
"Sometimes."
Our voices were small whispers to the thick silence.
The building lay dormant. I'd expected some staff to be kept here, for upkeep. But none sounded. I even searched the shadows. I caught no shifting notice of any out of focus.
Were we truly alone?
Feyd led the way. The body of our old home, when we first came to Arrakis, was barren bones unlike the majestic place I'd first seen. Thick layers of dust coated the floor. Large boot prints speckled the halls as he walked deeper into the palace. My skirts brushed them away. Erasing all evidence we were ever here.
A pair of glass doors appeared. I knew where he led, and why.
The faintest of comfort brushed upon me now. His office. We were in a space where we felt some kind of privacy. The first place I felt intimately joined with him. A stolen kiss with true emotion behind it.
Intimacy beyond what our naked bodies did. It was where our hearts began to beat together.
He took the seat at the desk. He leaned back, running a hand down his face. His long legs still stretched a great length away from him.
I frowned. He looked so tired. The faintest show of his emotion twisted the stab of his discomfort deeper into my chest.
My arms looped around his neck when I helped myself to his lap. My knees curled to my chest, as close as they could. His hands then cradled around me.
As he always did.
My protection.
"If it wouldn't cost all our family's wealth, I'd tear down that castle. Stone by stone. With my bare hands, if I had to."
I swallowed. "I cannot fathom how that place makes you feel."
"Yes." He thought a minute. "The same way you feel about it, I imagine." He sighed. "The thought of our child running those same halls…makes me, uncertain…something."
He believed a living child was possible. A future that did not leave me slain along with the son.
My cheek snuggled against his shirt. "We must reach that future first, Feyd. It is far off."
"It will happen, Mintha."
"You can't know."
His arms held me harder. "You are not going anywhere. Neither is our daughter. I will do whatever I must to keep you. No one, not even the emperor himself could hold me back. We belong to no other in the imperium. Our family will not be broken. They may break my bones, deflate my lungs, pluck my eyes one by one, I will come for you." He put his forehead against mine. "Both."
I did not want to argue my beliefs. It would only make him angry at me. The source of his true upset was Lord Bondar.
My silence baited him to calm once more. His fingers lessened their grip, like I'd threatened to run into the desert at the suggestion of my birthing a son.
"There was something you said. At dinner," I finally said in a hushed tone. "Do you guilt Lord Bondar…because he knew?"
*"It works on him," he stated. "So few it does for. But Bondar. He's always had a disgust for the same sex relations. I don't think it mattered to him that I was a child. Only that my uncle was a man, doing what he…did." He exhaled a long breath through his mouth. I felt the struggle in his chest to breathe steady. "Some of them. The nobles. They'd call me a f-g under their breath."
I went rigid. "What."
"My tutors were no better. They used it, to get me angry. It worked. I'd train until I couldn't lift my arms just to prove them wrong."
"They did not," I said.
"Oh, yes. Yes, they loved to put that splinter into my spine." He twirled an edge of my hair against my shoulder. His hot breath close to my face. "The other extended familial relations who had hopes of the crown before me, they, uh, used to use the slave boys to taunt me. There would be naked boys in my room when I returned from training or dueling." The fingers dropped my hair away. It did not alleviate his discomfort. "My chest feels rather tight. My pulse has quickened. I must be ill. Something at that dinner has my stomach twisted."
"Pain," I murmured against his shirt. It hid my silent tears for him. The black fabric never betrayed my emotion when it leeched out despite my protests. "That is pain."
"Is that right?"
I subtly brushed my face against his shirt before I raised higher in his lap. His eyes greeted me like an oasis. A shuttering of his sorrow for the enjoyment to see me look upon him without fear or disgust.
He was my broken animal, as I knew him.
"There was once a time where you were familiar with that feeling, Feyd. Do you remember it?"
"No." He shook his head. "I do not recall those days. All I know is what I am now. This."
An entire life of being devoid of a shred of humanity.
I was much the same.
Nothing but darkness inside my mind.
"Do you really trust that offspring will change that?"
"Yes," he said without a thought.
An existence of numbness did not make a happy person. What's more, a child deserved happiness.
In fact, it was entitled to it.
My doubt showed on my face.
Feyd ran his hands up my arms to grasp my shoulders. "I have not known a happiness like I have with you. A daughter will be our joy, living, breathing. We will see her have a life she deserves because of us. Trust me, Mintha. It will heal your heart as you have healed mine."
"You have my heart healed, Feyd. You are enough for me," I said. My hands held his face. "You did not need to impregnate me for that to happen."
"Before it was willed away, beyond my control, for strategy, I wanted you. You to be the one who carried my legacy into the stars. We will birth generations. Us. Both."
He kissed my forehead. I felt such genuine love pushed into my flesh from it. My lips withheld a thick hefty breath, so close to a shudder.
His throat cleared loudly. "There was no reason to give that honor to the princess of an emperor. It would not matter to her. She's meant to be bred for rulers. It would matter little if it was mine or any other man's child. Her womb is reserved for the strongest and most powerful. I am that man. But she is not for me. My power remains in who I choose. You are what I've chosen."
We stayed curled together in that office chair, breathing in total content silence. A while later, Feyd needed to return to the thopter to communicate with Carthag. He had not left orders.
I stayed inside to save myself the water of the day's heat. Instead, my feet walked in paths around the beautiful rooms of Arrakeen.
Desolate silence was a strong force. Its high ceilings and columns were imposing, as a god above my head, demanding total quiet.
I fixed my eyes high above me. At the large expanse out of reach above my head. It was bigger than my mind comprehended.
Suddenly, I felt the sensation of ice. It was not icy numbness, but actual cold. It burned the backs of my arms, the tip of my nose, my nipples. I shivered.
Pressure built inside my ears. It built higher and higher. The inside of my head became slow. I blinked away the darkening edges of my vision.
I saw wide open. Everything. An entire sky of endless black speckled with the faint makings of light, smaller than a seed.
"Mintha!"
My body relaxed. Warmth dropped its blanket all over me in that moment. It was Arrakeen as I knew it.
Where had I gone?
Feyd's steps approached.
I retracted my eyes from the ceiling. "I'm sorry. I must have got lost in thought."
His eyes narrowed. "Are you well? You did not eat much at dinner."
"It is nothing, Feyd. I'm fine."
He brushed his open hand against my stomach. "What about her? Is she hungry?"
I rolled my eyes and chuckled. "How could she be? My body gives her everything first."
Feyd grabbed ahold of my hand. "Come. I recall a way to the stores."
He did not know the way. He'd only assumed once he entered the servant's space that it would be there. The young heir had not explored his own castle. He'd not cared to know what was for others. Only what was his.
Now, he wandered around the space aimlessly, growing frustrated by the moment.
I recognized aspects of the servant's space. They were kept the same almost everywhere. For high efficiency. I only let Feyd flounder for a short while - before he worked himself into a temper - and searched deeper nearer the kitchens.
We scrounged up a few snacks to keep me sated.
He'd eaten his fill at his mental mind game supper. I had been too sick to eat a thing.
The images of what I saw replayed in my head. My eyes turned to glass, refracting the screen of total black. What could that be? And cold. Oh, so cold. I still felt the chill in my bones.
My chewing slowed when I recalled the sensation of space. When I traveled to the black sun planet and to Arrakis, I understood that space was devoid of warmth. The removal of all that made comfortable.
"Are there other ways to travel between planets besides the way we came?" I set aside my food.
Feyd tilted his head. "The heighliner, you mean."
I nodded. "Yes. Is there a way to travel that shows you, the stars? An endless stretch of night sky. Is that possible?"
He pulled a chair in front of me. His attention met my eyes. A seriousness clouded his expression now. "Why?"
I must have traipsed into a serious topic without realizing.
Fix it before he schemes, my mind screamed.
I shrugged. "Just curious if there was a prettier way to travel."
His eyes flicked down for a half a second before they met my eyes once more. "If I answer, will you tell me the truth?"
My throat clenched. I'd been caught in a lie.
Somehow he knew it was a lie. How? Nothing in my expression changed. I knew how to hold myself neutral in times of distress. It was the only reason I survived. How had he known?
My eyes narrowed.
"Fear has no place here, Mintha. There is nothing for either of us to fear. Not each other."
"How can I trust that you won't do something behind my back again? That you won't use my ignorance for some other plan?"
"Alright. I suppose that is fair." His lips sighed. He rested a hand against his knee as he leaned toward me. "I will swear, if it is what you wish, to not make plans without you."
"Any plan?"
"If that is what you wish."
"You'll answer my questions truthfully?"
"I do not lie to you, sweetness."
"Swear it then," I said. "Swear that you will include me in your hidden plots and will ask before you do something that affects me.'
He swallowed. "Ask? Every time? I am a na-Baron. I have the right to do what I wish."
"Then I have a right to not trust you."
"Fine!" He snipped. "I swear it, sweetness." He shook his head. At first, I thought he was angry, but a small trickle of amusement curled his face. "You will be a formidable Empress when I take the throne."
"I am only an empress to you, Feyd."
His dark eyes flashed to my lips. His plump pink lips were wet by his tongue as he stared. "For now."
We shared a short kiss. It was hot and fiery but only for a short while.
I wanted answers to riddle my own mind. There were so few things inside my head. The inability to understand them would drive me mad.
"There is one transport that is used, like the way we came. They do almost all the Imperium space travel within the galaxies. The only ones that are not Guild controlled - that's what they're called, the spacing guild - are those who have reason to hide. Outlaws, rebels, cowards. They use their own ships to travel, but it is dangerous. Very dangerous. The Guild is the only one to trust for space flight." He shifted in his seat. "That is why we harvest spice. It is what fuels those transports. To safety. We power the whole Imperium. The supply alone is in our control, my control."
I absorbed the information. My mind strained under the pressure to understand it.
Feyd sat in quiet wait. He watched me. But my eyes did not see him the way he was. My eyes were buried far within the deep reaches of my mind.
"I recalled something," I finally told him. "Earlier. I saw a memory, I think."
"You were in a transport," he asked.
"Yes. I saw a night sky that stretched forever outside the window." I touched my ears. "The pressure. It was loud and intense. I felt it in my head."
He leaned forward. The tips of his fingers touched the tops of my knees. "Did you know where you were?"
I shook my head. "No. No, it was new. I felt, amazed by it. Then, scared. It got so cold so fast."
Feyd settled against the back of his seat. A thin line now held his mouth.
"I don't know," I mumbled. "It was just a split second. It could have been a dream."
"It was not a dream," he said. "You were in a cargo hold. It is not made for human transport. The pressure. It can melt brains. That may be the reason you do not have memory, Mintha. That flight erased your brain."
The next day, while Feyd spoke with Captain Rurik in his office, I was left alone with the advisory committee. Lord Bondar was not absent in presence but was in mind. He was humbled in his silence. I enjoyed the Witan for once. My aura brimmed with giddiness as I stood in my realm of power over that little, pathetic, greedy man who had been put down in his place.
Soon, it would sink him lower. Lower than the others who'd think to try to cross me to get to Feyd.
Arrakis suns awoke something in me. A fire, that had long been held by the permafrost of death's pending doom. Arrakis thawed that doom to dedication.
I dedicated myself to Feyd. Not the Baron. Not the throne upon his body sat. Feyd.
If they wanted him, they'd have to endure the wrath of my fire with both our bodies being consumed together than have a hand in Feyd's downfall.
There were quiet whispers that landed in my ears from the other advisors that the grand celebration would take place in two days time. It was the length required to obtain my certain requests - fireworks and an ornate gift for Feyd. It took time to track down.
I was left with a short time to keep him distracted so that he would not realize there were plots afoot in his own house.
It was lucky that motions in the desert were far more common. Feyd's men were scouring the dunes for a sign of the rebel Fremen that kept attacking the Harkonnen's.
He had not said, but his constant diligence told me enough. The Fremen were winning. They were close, or winning, or killing too many men. Something tipped the scales of favor. Not our way.
Feyd's mood became tense. Either he did not leave his office, or he flew into the desert to head the search. It consumed his life. Constant hours.
The doctor continued to monitor the growth of the child. He told Feyd that my time in the desert had to be minimized. I was losing too much water. More was needed for the baby I carried.
That left Feyd no choice but to leave me behind in the castle as he worked. A fact he detested. He grumbled about it every morning.
"That doctor. He is new to the court, but he has taken a dislike of me." He shoved his arms into armor that no longer brought as much joy. The scowl on his face as he stared at the thick black plating said as much. "Do not see him without me. He has some grudge to settle against me. You will be his way through…no flying. What does flying do to a baby? Your body surrounds it. Nothing can harm it, there. I will be right there."
I rose from my seat. A book tossed aside.
"It is not the act of flying, Feyd," I said. My hands latched the back spinal plate over his spine. He stood still as I slipped my fingers within the vulnerabilities of the armor suit and latched it in place. "It is water loss. I cannot get too hot."
"Fine. I'll have a tub installed in there. That would suit you, yes?"
"You are here to harvest spice. To do that, it has to be safe out there. And it isn't. People of the city need their na-Baron to make it safe. We all win if you succeed in the desert, Feyd."
"The Fremen hide like rats in rock. I cannot find them," he snapped angrily.
The fief was harder to control than any expected. All his life Feyd was prepared to control a planet. But nothing prepared him for this.
"Feyd, you persist when everything tells you to cease." I raised up onto my tip toes. His face leaned close to mine. The tips of our noses brushed together. His eyes closed with a soft exhale. "You will outlast Muad'Dib."
"There is not time to outlast," he said, again with anger in his tone.
"You outlasted me." I gave a soft smile. My fingertips dragged against the height of his cheekbones. "You can outlast anything."