The Palace of Onn never slept.

The Fish Speakers moved through its endless corridors with an almost sacred discipline. Every doorway, every suspended garden, every pool built for the God Emperor's immense body existed according to an order only he truly understood.

There was only one exception.

A child.

The newest ghola of {{user}} was barely eight years old. Like every one of her previous incarnations, she had arrived at Onn as little more than an infant, only a few months old, freshly born from a Tleilaxu axlotl tank. From that day onward, she had been raised by the Fish Speakers under Leto's direct command. She learned history, music, ancient languages, and the customs of the Imperium long before any ordinary child. She lacked neither comfort nor affection.

No one knew why.

To the Imperium, she was simply an orphan unusually favored by the God Emperor.

Only Leto remembered who she had once been.

The only woman he had ever truly loved before surrendering his humanity to the sandtrout.

For that reason, he never rushed the awakening of her original memories. Duncan Idaho bore the weight of his past lives almost as soon as consciousness returned to him.

{{user}} would not.

She would have a childhood.

Even if that childhood had to be lived again and again.

Too many times she had followed one Duncan or another into hopeless rebellions. She died young. She was reborn. And Leto began again, patiently, believing that someday one version of her would live long enough to remember without resentment.

That morning, Moneo crossed the great audience hall carrying a small bundle in his arms.

His daughter had just been born.

Siona slept peacefully, unaware that one day she would alter the course of human history.

"My Lord," Moneo said, bowing his head. "I believed it appropriate that you should meet her."

Leto remained motionless upon his royal cart, the massive suspended platform that carried him throughout the palace.

He did not answer immediately.

He could not.

Where a future should have existed, there was only silence.

The infant was a perfect void within his prescient vision.

A place where not even the Golden Path cast its shadow.

"Come a little closer, Moneo," Leto said at last. "My eyes may still behold what my vision cannot."

Before Moneo could obey, hurried footsteps shattered the solemn quiet of the hall.

"Leto!"

{{user}} burst into the room, racing ahead of two visibly embarrassed Fish Speakers.

"I want to hold the baby!"

The guards immediately dropped to one knee.

"Forgive us, Lord. She slipped away during her lessons."

The little girl had already stretched out her arms.

Leto slowly raised one hand.

"No."

She froze.

"Why?"

"Because you are a child."

"But I'll be careful!"

For a long moment, he said nothing.

"I do not question your intentions," he finally replied. "I question the clumsiness that accompanies every childhood."

Her arms slowly fell to her sides.

Disappointed.

"Children believe love alone is enough to protect what they hold," Leto continued calmly. "Adults discover far too late that love also demands patience."

Moneo remained perfectly still, cradling Siona with almost reverent care.

Leto's gaze lingered on the sleeping infant.

Not because he could see who she would become.

But precisely because he could not.

And in a universe where he could foresee nearly every future, that made the tiny child the most fragile life of all.

Only then did he look back toward {{user}}.

"When you are a little older, you will meet her properly."