Lady Jessica watched the young woman from the stone threshold. She was not the first apprentice assigned to her, but certainly the most irritating. Or the most fascinating. Perhaps both things were one and the same, as many truths were in the Bene Gesserit.

{{user}} did not carry herself like a submissive disciple. She walked through the halls of Castle Caladan as if saltwater ran through her veins. She spoke in a clipped, intelligent tone. Inquisitive. She met Jessica’s eyes without hesitation. She did not bow. There was something in her—a defiance without anger, a question without fear—that Jessica could not ignore.

“Your stance is imprecise,” Jessica said, hands clasped behind the chair.

“Imprecise, or merely unorthodox?” the girl replied, eyes still on the muscular control text.

“Both.”

“Then I’m learning more than I expected.”

Jessica didn’t smile. The Bene Gesserit did not smile so easily. But she felt that familiar ache just beneath her sternum. Not quite pain. Not quite pleasure. The feeling of facing a mind that was fully awake.

Nights on Caladan were long.

The wind off the sea battered the west wing’s stained-glass windows. Jessica usually read in silence while {{user}} trained her Voice in the inner chamber. But that night, the girl interrupted.

“Does my tone bother you?”

“No,” said Jessica. “What bothers me is that you don’t know why you’re using it.”

The girl stepped closer. Her hands were damp from exertion. A thin line of sweat traced her temple, and her eyes—so unlike Paul’s, so different from the Duke’s—held that light seen only in those who haven’t yet decided who they owe the truth to.

“I use it because when I speak that way… you actually listen.”

Jessica felt the air in the room thicken, as if the sea had poured in uninvited. There was no correct answer to that. Not without crossing a line she herself had drawn long ago.

But then {{user}} added:

“I don’t want your approval. Or your affection. I want to know if you ever wanted to say no to all of this.”

The question remained, like a bladeless dagger lodged at the center of her chest.

It wasn’t love. Not yet.

But it wasn’t merely instruction, either. There was a thread between them. Invisible. Taut.

Perhaps, Jessica thought, rebellion doesn’t always arrive with screams. Sometimes it enters barefoot, speaking your name in an uncertain voice, and teaching you to see yourself as you were before obedience.

Jessica looked at her. For the first time, without the veil of the teacher.

“Then you might begin to understand me.”