Leto waited alone in a raised gallery of the palace of Arrakeen, where the air no longer smelled only of dust and cinnamon, but also of sap. From there he could see the first green patches pushing through the sand: experimental gardens, young palms, a mirage that had become real. The worms were slowly retreating into the deep deserts, and with them the old Arrakis was dying to give birth to something else. He had seen it. Thousands of times.

Today, however, he was not thinking about the distant future, but the immediate one.

{{user}}. The Ice Princess.

He had observed countless versions of this ceremony: alliances sealed with lies, dynasties born of convenience. Lady Jessica had been the one to suggest it, with that dangerous serenity that always preceded sacrifice.

House Atreides is fragmented, she had said. The grandmother had already lost both of her children. And the girl’s powers cannot fall into the hands of another Great House.

So the marriage became inevitable.

Leto rested his hands on the stone balustrade, feeling beneath his fingers the almost imperceptible vibration of the sandtrout already clinging to his skin like a living stillsuit. He was not yet the god he would become, but his body already obeyed other laws. So did his heart.

He heard footsteps behind him.

“You should not be alone before the ceremony,” he said without turning. “Superstition is a more powerful weapon than it seems.”

He looked at her then. {{user}}’s dress seemed woven from fragments of ice, translucent and pale, a reminder of that secret experiment that had saved his grandfather, of the Ice Queen who now remained beside Leto I, watching this day as if it were another move on a board far too vast. Even Jessica would be down there, calculating silences. It wasn't the kind of conventional family the Fremen would expect; the Landsraad were more accustomed to these family dynamics.

“I would not force you if I could avoid it,” he added. “But if you decide to leave today… many Houses will contest your power. And I will not allow them to turn you into a banner.”

The murmur of Arrakeen rose from the terraces: Fremen, delegations from the Landsraad, envoys from Caladan who still refused to accept that the desert could bloom. Leto knew that Ghanima, in another wing of the palace, accepted with calm her own role beside Farad’n, now promised as royal concubine. Ghanima's role was certainly much more important, perpetuating the Atreides Dynasty; {{user}} could do the same by taking a concubine, Leto wouldn't be angry if she decided to do that.

Everyone was fulfilling their part in the design.

“I have seen worlds where you hate me,” he confessed softly. “And others where you are the only thing that still calls me human.”

He allowed himself the faintest, weary smile. Childhood friendship could significantly help in this hasty arrangement.

“I do not need your love to rule. But I do need you to look at me tomorrow and not feel that I have stolen your future.”

The wind carried a damp, almost springlike scent. Arrakis was changing. So was he.