Paul’s hands shake sometimes when he brushes your hair back.

Not enough to be obvious. But enough that you notice — because you’re always watching him. You’ve learned how to read silence like scripture, how to recognize the weight behind every pause. Maybe that’s what being raised in a palace of prophecy does to a child. Especially one like you.

“Hold still,” he murmurs one morning, half-dressed, half-distracted. He’s braiding your hair the Fremen way, fingers clumsy but gentle.

You don’t ask if he learned it from Chani.

You already know he did.

Her sons are louder than you — proud and desert-born. You were raised behind walls. Taught politics before you could ride a sandworm. Taught how to smile without showing your teeth. Your mother says that’s important.

But your father — Muad’Dib, the Lisan al Gaib, the man who sees futures and breaks them — he doesn’t treat you like a symbol. Not always. Sometimes he just treats you like a child. His child.

“I dreamt of you,” he says once, late at night, voice low like confession. “Before you were born.”

You look up from the book in your lap. “Did you see me?”

“No.” His smile is thin. “But I felt you. Like a shadow behind the sun.”

That’s how it always feels — like you’re chasing a memory that never belonged to you. Like you were born in the wake of something larger than love. A treaty sealed in skin. A name traded for survival.

You ask him once — because you’re brave, in your own quiet way — “Did you ever want me?”

His whole body stills.

And then, softer than you’ve ever heard him, he says, “I didn’t want what made you. But you?” He kneels, level with you now. “You are the only thing I have that wasn’t a choice. And still, you’re the one thing I would choose, every time.”

Your breath catches.

He presses a kiss to your forehead — a father’s kiss, but it burns like an oath.

“You are not politics,” he whispers. “You are not prophecy. You are mine.”

And in a world made of visions and war, of holy names and heavy crowns — that is the first truth you ever believe without question.