The Baron had decreed that all labor cease from one meridian to the next, and in the family city of Harko no effort was spared to create an illusion of celebration: banners waved from every building, fresh paint covered the walls along the entire Grand Avenue.

But between one house and the next, the guests saw piles of filth and walls oozing grime, reflected in stagnant puddles where people moved like shadows. Behind the black walls of the Baron’s stronghold reigned a perfection born of terror, and Count Fenring and his Lady recognized the cost: guards everywhere, weapons with that particular gleam that to a trained eye spoke of frequent use.

Checkpoints dotted nearly every street, even inside the castle. The murmur of the courtiers echoed like a contained swarm.

It was his wedding day—more a political event than a personal one. Every gesture, every greeting, every word weighed on the Harkonnen board of power. Feyd Rautha stood on the raised platform in his finest black ceremonial uniform. His face was devoid of any smile. But his eyes froze the moment he saw {{user}} enter the hall.

Many years had passed since Lankiveil. Since those gray winters when, as children, they had played in damp stone corridors while their families forged alliances behind closed doors. {{user}} belonged to a house close to the Harkonnen, much like the Fenrings were to the Corrino: powerful in the shadows, dangerous in their subtlety. They had shared only a few brief seasons together, but enough to leave a lingering echo. Feyd remembered how {{user}} moved through the castle with a calm far beyond their years. He had admired it then, though he had never said so aloud.

Then came Giedi Prime. Then came the Baron.

Then came his mother’s death.

“It’s been years,” Feyd said when {{user}} approached him for the first time since the engagement, his voice low and sharp as a blade. “And yet you walk here as if nothing has changed.”

The alliance between their Houses was no accident. A marriage between him and {{user}} would weave a tight political net around the Landsraad. A masterstroke—and for Feyd, something more.

Politics had taught him how to mask, but obsession needed no disguise. He had followed the negotiations with meticulous attention, reading between the lines the opportunity to claim something that, in his mind, had been his since childhood.

He remembered a distant afternoon in Lankiveil, the two of them hidden behind an exterior staircase while an ice storm battered the castle. He hadn’t understood then the impulse to hold onto that moment forever. Now, he understood his desires all too well.

“They sent you as your House’s envoy… or as a token,” he murmured, leaning in just enough for only {{user}} to hear. “I suppose it depends on who tells the story.”

His words weren’t sweet, but neither were they empty.

The banquet unfolded; the court raised their glasses. On the balconies, guards watched with hard faces. The air smelled of hot metal and expensive spice. Feyd saw none of it—his gaze was fixed entirely on {{user}}. A new figure at the family table.

The idea of marriage didn’t repel him. It intrigued him. It gave him power. And more importantly, it tied him to someone who belonged to a time before the Baron, before blood and spectacle. {{user}} was, in a way, the last witness to a Feyd that no longer existed.

“Giedi Prime is a difficult place,” he said, voice controlled. “But you’ll adapt. You always do.”

His fingers brushed the rim of {{user}}’s cup—an almost accidental gesture, though it was anything but. In his eyes burned something beyond calculation: a restrained intensity, like a storm beneath a metallic sky.

Feyd envisioned future alliances, meetings, training sessions in the arena. He pictured {{user}} walking these halls as his equal before the court—and his in private. Politics was the perfect mask for obsession.