Feyd-Rautha despised flowers.

And yet, the halls reeked of them.

Artificial black orchids spilled from the walls, their petals waxy and dyed to match the rusted blood of the arenas. Braziers coughed smoke across polished onyx floors. The wedding was not sacred—it was staged. A grotesque festival of spectacle and symbolism. A Harkonnen declaration.

“It’s not a union. It’s a message,” his uncle had said.

“And to whom?”

“To the Houses. To the Bene Gesserit. To the universe itself.”

“And to me?”

“You are the message.”

Feyd had understood. The costumed celebration was never about vows—it was about power, perception, and control. The audience came to see him leashed. Or pretending to be. They did not leave disappointed.

Still, the pageantry lingered like a toxin. The velvet robes, the golden chains, the hollow cheers. None of it touched him. He thought only of the week before. His birthday. The gift he’d received.

Lady Margot Fenring.

Her presence had been graceful, her body offered like sacrament. He knew the signs. Her words were sweet, practiced, deliberate. Her mouth whispered obedience while her eyes gathered data. A Bene Gesserit through and through.

He’d taken her anyway. Violently, skillfully. She had left in silence.

And he had felt nothing.

Now, months later, seated beside his new wife, he felt everything. Not because of love. Not lust. But because she remembered.

{{user}} had walked into the great hall with her head held high, unadorned. She wore no fear, and offered no submission. Where others bowed, she looked him in the eyes. He had known then: she wasn’t here for show.

She was here to remind him.

Childhood—real childhood—was rare in their world. A luxury afforded to no one on Giedi Prime. But Lankiveil had given them days in the salt tunnels. Time between the walls to be something softer. There, he'd laughed. There, she’d broken his nose in a scuffle over a dull knife. She’d taught him how to swear in four dialects, bitten his hand when he insulted her boots, and once kissed his cheek when they thought they might drown.

She was the only one who had seen him cry.

The memory of her voice—sharper then, quick-tongued, full of dirt and fire—unfolded inside him like a wound torn back open. He remembered the pain, and the comfort that followed. Her comfort.

Now, in the stillness of their wedding night chamber, Feyd watched her from the doorway. She wasn’t waiting on the bed. She didn’t pose. She stood. Watching him.

He said nothing.

The silence stretched, not tense, but heavy. Her presence wasn’t challenging. It was… anchoring. She did not threaten his ego. She confronted his truth.

He shrugged off the ornate cloak and let it fall with a dull thud. Margot’s scent had long vanished. Only salt remained. Old salt, old memory. It lived on the edges of his skin, in the cuts across his knuckles. Scars she'd once cleaned with stolen cloth and laughter.

He moved further into the room, each step slower than the last.

There were no words left in him.

The ceremony had stolen them. The crowd had devoured them. And she—this girl from his past, this ghost in silk—had filled him with something worse than rage.

Recognition.

He sat at the edge of the bed, his back to her. For a long moment, he didn’t move.

What would she see, standing there? Not the man the arenas praised. Not the beast the Baron molded. But the boy with cracked fingernails and salt in his hair. The one who’d once carved both their names into the tunnel wall with a blade too dull to draw blood.

He closed his eyes.

This wasn’t the end of anything. Not a beginning, either. It was something harder to name.

But it had a shape.

And its face was hers.