Salusa Secundus did not receive visitors without intent.

Constantine Corrino knew it even before the heralds announced the arrival of the small delegation from Caladan. The Atreides were not yet a Great House, but their name carried weight—old, restrained, respected. Albert Atreides had raised his children well. Keiran was proof of that: upright, contained, far too serious for someone his age.

And then there was her.

{{user}} Atreides crossed the threshold of the palace without the rehearsed solemnity of courtiers. She did not look around with reverence or fear. She observed as one who measured, as one who learned.

Constantine, leaning against a column of black basalt, noticed her immediately. Not because of beauty—though she had it—but because of the way she did not seem to ask permission from the space she occupied.

She was Keiran Atreides’ younger sister.

She had come to visit him. Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Constantine smiled before he realized it.

“Salusa tends to intimidate newcomers,” he said, approaching with the ease of someone accustomed to being heard. “Yet you walk as if the palace owes you something.”

{{user}} looked at him. Assessed him. Her gaze lingered on the Corrino emblem, then on his slanted expression. She did not answer at once.

“Perhaps the palace exaggerates its importance.”

Keiran sighed. Constantine sensed it the way an animal senses a shift in the air. Interesting.

In the days that followed, Constantine found reasons to cross her path: corridors, upper galleries, inner courtyards where the marble still held the sun’s warmth. Always with a precise remark, never crude. He flirted the way he negotiated—leaving room for retreat, weighing every word.

{{user}}, however, was inconsistent. One day she listened with full attention; the next, she ignored him with flawless courtesy. She did not flee. She did not yield. That irritated him… and drew him in.

“You’re aware you’re playing with me,” he told her one night, as they watched the suspended lights of the aerial port. “Most here either fear me or want me. You manage to do both… and neither.”

“Perhaps I don’t think about you as much as you believe.”

He laughed softly.

“That would be an interesting lie.”

Keiran was exhausted. Constantine noticed it at every shared meal, in every weary look the Atreides cast whenever Constantine sat a little too close to his sister.

“Corrino,” Keiran said once, without ceremony. “Don’t turn this into a political problem.”

“Never,” Constantine replied. “Political problems are dull. Your sister isn’t.”

That earned him a glacial silence.

Constantine knew what he represented: the bastard son of Emperor Javicco Corrino, tolerated but watched; the shadow of a Bene Gesserit in his blood; the constant presence of Ynez, the legitimate heir.

Flirting was a way to remind himself he still held power. But with {{user}}, it was different. He was not trying to conquer her. He was trying to understand her.

One afternoon, as they walked along a high corridor, he stopped.

“Are you always like this?”

He smiled to himself. He had always liked dangerous things.