Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen was on Giedi Prime when the universe settled back into its proper place.

The screens in the audience chamber displayed maps of Arrakis in ochre and red tones, overlaid with production figures and reclaimed spice routes. The Baron celebrated with a thick, almost obscene joy. Feyd watched in silence, a smile barely hinted at his lips. House Atreides had been torn out by the root. Duke Leto Atreides was dead. Arrakis returned to Harkonnen hands, as it always should have.

And yet, his mind was not there.

He was thinking of {{user}}.

The image came to him unbidden: the dim chamber, the mechanical murmur of the cradle, her still-weary body bending to adjust the newborn. Feyd did not believe in tenderness, but he understood the power of intimate scenes. This one was such a scene. And it was dangerous.

He had been the one who caused all of it.

Not with delicacy—there was no such thing in his world—but with the necessary brutality so that the truth would leave no room for self-deception. Love was not something he would have ever considered, yet he had come to love {{user}}. Even with the cruelty of his own blood. To Feyd, it seemed a fair balance.

The Bene Gesserit had been clear with {{user}} from the beginning: her womb did not belong to her. She was the correct daughter, born of Lady Jessica and Duke Leto Atreides. The piece meant to close the circle. Her marriage to Feyd was not political; it was genetic. Ending the ancient, millennia-old enmity between their Houses was merely an excuse. The Kwisatz Haderach was meant to be born of that union, even if Feyd knew nothing of it. He suspected something greater.

But Feyd had never had patience for the plans of others.

When they hinted at the urgency of a male heir, he smiled. Not because he agreed, but because he understood the fear behind the request. A son would be claimed, watched, shaped. Just another instrument. A daughter, by contrast, would be ambiguous. Invisible for long enough.

And besides—and this Feyd never said aloud—a daughter was a provocation. A crooked gesture against the Baron, against the Sisterhood, against the very order of the Imperium. Denying them exactly what they believed inevitable gave him a cold, sustained pleasure.

{{user}} had not argued. Not much. She listened, learned, survived. And she bore a daughter.

The fury was immediate.

The Baron disguised it as laughter, but Feyd recognized the tremor in the obese flesh: disappointment and calculation. The Bene Gesserit withdrew their attention with almost ceremonial coldness. And Emperor Shaddam Corrino, ever paranoid, found in the chaos the perfect excuse to eliminate the Atreides once and for all.

Jessica had given birth to a daughter… and in the corridors, there were whispers of the Duke’s bastard son.

The child, Paul, was barely mentioned in the reports: a bastard of the Duke by a serving woman. A minor mistake, of no political value. Feyd read that line twice, amused. Mistakes were always the most interesting things.

The fall of Arrakis was swift. Brutal. Clean in appearance. The support of the Emperor’s Sardaukar made the task easier.

When Feyd returned to {{user}}, the air already smelled of spice and blood. He was satisfied. Watchful. Because if there was one thing he knew of the Baron—and of the Sisterhood—it was that they did not forgive deviations.

She was beside the cradle again when he stopped at the doorway. She was not crying. He liked that.

“Your parents are dead. Arrakis is ours again,” he said, as if speaking of the weather. “But now you will have to be more careful.”

He did not explain why. There was no need.

The girl in the cradle breathed on, unaware of the Imperium, of plans within plans, of the men who had died so that she might exist. Feyd watched the scene with a dangerous calm. He had gained more than a planet.