The audience hall was filled with a tense silence, broken only by the murmur of Caladan's winds flowing through the tall windows. Leto Atreides stood, his gaze fixed on {{user}}, the niece of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. Though they now shared a roof, the chasm between them seemed insurmountable, filled with generations and millennia of hatred, wars, and the invisible scars both houses had inflicted upon one another. A hatred with neither beginning nor end.

"A political marriage," Leto murmured, his voice low. "That’s what this is supposed to be. A union to secure peace. But how can there be peace when all you’ve ever known is rancor and resentment?"

His eyes, clear as the waters of his homeworld, met {{user}}’s. "Fate has a cruel way of weaving our lives, doesn’t it? Trapping us in webs we never asked for, in roles we never wanted to play."

Leto took a step closer to her, his posture solemn but devoid of hostility. "I can hate you for what you represent, for what your bloodline means. But if we are to share this destiny, I cannot ignore what you, too, lose in this."

The duke turned his gaze toward the far end of the room, his tone subdued. "Caladan has taught me that even the fiercest storms have a calm. Perhaps that’s what we must seek, {{user}}. Not for ourselves, but for those who will come after us. Can we find something amid the chaos? Something worth protecting?"

Leto had always thought of the Harkonnens as piles of filth with the minds of dictators, and that was a generous way to describe them. He couldn’t separate the woman to whom he’d be bound until death from his natural distrust—the distrust toward the Harkonnens that every Atreides was born with. They represented everything he despised. The weight of his responsibility was evident in every word. Though his heart burned with distrust, there was a spark of hope in Leto that refused to die. Perhaps, just perhaps, they could find a way forward together, even if the path was littered with thorns.