Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was something stupid. The greatest in the universe, and that’s saying a lot in an Empire held together by secrets, betrayals, and blood. No one saw it coming. Not the guards stationed in the corners of the hall, their eyes trained to detect the slightest threat. Not the Fedaykin, who had sworn their lives to Paul’s and moved like shadows among the guests. Not even the attackers, who had planned the strike with surgical precision, anticipating every move. And certainly not Chani, who had stood up out of sheer Fremen stubbornness, ignoring the three months of pregnancy weighing on her belly. Nor Paul, who had barely opened his mouth to speak when the weapons were drawn. And least of all, Irulan.

She didn’t expect it either. It made no sense. It wasn’t in her nature. She had never imagined throwing her body between blades. Never visualized herself doing something so reckless as to place herself between an enemy’s blade and another woman’s belly. But she did. She acted before thinking. As if a will older than her own had pushed her forward, as if a command buried deep within her Bene Gesserit training had awakened at the feel of the blade approaching Paul’s child.

Everything unfolded like a blurry stain. The hall, a diplomatic banquet brimming with false smiles and poisoned glances, became a stage of chaos. The arrogance of House Moritani hung in the air, provocation carefully sown beneath the courtesy of gestures and words. The tension was almost tangible, a knot you could feel in every held breath, in every furtive glance. And at the center of this cursed scene was Chani, weak yet standing, with the strength of the desert in her veins, defending her child with a crysknife that seemed to weigh twice as much under the adrenaline coursing through her body.

The blades rose. Too close to the belly. Time slowed; every movement, every breath, every speck of dust in the air seemed suspended, awaiting catastrophe.

And then Irulan lunged. Like a golden lightning bolt, she crossed the room with a speed that belied her status as Imperial Princess. She pushed a chair, knocked a tray flying in a deadly arc with her hip, broke through the Fedaykin’s security circle as if it had never existed, and placed herself between death and Paul’s child.

She didn’t think. She didn’t reason. She fought. Every move her Bene Gesserit training had instilled over years emerged now with brutal urgency. Every reflex, every instinct honed in concealment and absolute control of the body, unleashed like an invisible knife slicing the threat. She parried the first blade with an arm, spun on her heel to deflect the second, and thought she had succeeded… until she felt the burn.

First the cut. Then the heat rising from her neck. Red, thick, unstoppable. Blood staining her clothes, her skin, the air heavy with the metallic scent that filled the hall. Precise. Clean. Lethal.

She staggered. Felt Chani’s tension behind her, the heat of her worry like an invisible halo piercing her back. Felt the vibration of the stifled scream that had traveled across the hall, the suspended tension in every breath, and saw, in a blink that felt like an eternity, the murderous rage in Paul’s eyes. There were no words. Only movement.

The crysknife sliced across the first attacker’s chest with a cut that sounded like tearing fabric, a sound that seemed to cut the air, the calm, the safety of all present. Then, before anyone could react, the blade sank into the second enemy’s neck, while Paul grabbed him by the hair with a force that reduced him to an empty sack. The body fell at his feet, and he didn’t even blink. He turned immediately to her.

Not to Chani, who was already safe. Not to the guards, nor the diplomats fleeing in panic. Only to Irulan.

She tried to stem the bleeding with her hands, but it was useless. The blood, warm and slippery, gushed through her fingers, a red thread that seemed alive, suffocating her, preventing her from breathing normally. Every attempt to press the wound only seemed to worsen the flow. Her eyes filled with tears—not from fear, but from exertion, from helplessness. And when her knees finally gave out, Paul was already there, so close she could feel his heat and the restrained tremor in his breath.

He replaced her hands with his, larger, firmer, achingly human. He pressed the wound with force, desperation, while his entire body vibrated with the drive to save her. He shouted an order she barely understood:

"Stop the bleeding, Irulan. Get a doctor, now! NOW!"

His voice cut through the air like a sonic shot, piercing confusion, pain, and fear. Irulan felt it—not just as a command, but as a vibration in her bones, a mandate her body recognized as law. She ordered a doctor to be brought, to slow the blood flow, to reduce circulation. And her body obeyed, though wounded, though bleeding. The voice of the Kwisatz Haderach was an instrument that defied even death.

Yet everything turned black. Shadows filled her vision like spilled ink, eyelids weighed tons, gravity seemed to bend her. But she saw his face. Paul’s. The last thing she saw before plunging into unconsciousness. Not the Emperor, not the Messiah, just a man. A man with a blood-stained, pale face, mouth open as if praying, as if whispering her name, or a promise, or something only he could understand. She could see the tremor in his jaw, the fragility she had never imagined, the humanity laid bare between power and fury. She had never seen him so broken. So terrified. So… human.

Then darkness claimed her, wrapping her like a heavy, damp cloak, leaving behind only the echo of her last glimpse: Paul’s eyes, full of fear and devotion, etched into her memory.

 

---

"Usul…" Chani tried to whisper, her voice cracked, barely a thread of sound lost amid the murmur of servants and the metallic echo of candelabras. Her eyes fixed on the princess, slowly sliding toward unconsciousness, her flaccid body sinking into Paul’s arms like sand slipping through fingers.

"Not now, Chani" he replied, dry, sharp, without looking at her. Each syllable carried a weight that cut through the room. His hands pressed firmly on Irulan’s neck, struggling against the blood gushing, hot, red, relentless, soaking the silk of the dress and forming a bloody contrast against the princess’s pale skin. Paul trembled barely perceptibly, but his eyes burned with a mix of contained fury and fear that made Chani shiver. Every breath of his was frantic wingbeats, every tense muscle a reminder of what was at stake. So human. So devastatingly human.

Chani stepped back, feeling the friction of the floor beneath her feet, the rough texture of the carpet too harsh against her skin. One hand instinctively went to her belly, seeking the silent barrier protecting her child, and felt a jolt spread like lightning across her side. It wasn’t just physical pain: it was guilt, suppressed rage, terror. She had almost ruined everything, almost lost what she loved and what she protected. The guilt devoured her, along with a cold fear coiling in her chest.

She remembered Paul’s words before dinner, his warning clear as desert light: if anything happened, if tension overflowed, she must step back. Not fight. Not intervene. Not disobey.

But the warning was more than an instruction; it was a thread holding the balance of her world. Paul had already seen this moment, had foreseen every movement, every gesture, every breath. The attack was calculated, permitted, because its purpose served a greater end, a necessary sacrifice on the board he manipulated with cold precision. Every expression of House Moritani, every fake smile of their diplomats, every murmur under the golden candelabras had been anticipated. Every detail designed to culminate in this instant.

And she… she had broken the thread.

The heat of shame pierced her skin like blades, mingling with the panic that pressed against her chest. Her fierce pride, her Fremen instinct, had blinded her to everything else: the safety of her child, the strategy of her beloved, the fragility of the princess lying between them. She had raised the knife in blind rage, ignoring the entire world, ignoring the danger around her.

And she nearly lost everything.

She saw it in Paul’s gaze, torn, full of fear and desperation, striking her like lightning. She saw him understand, in an electric instant, that she had put everything at risk. Every knife advancing toward her belly was an omen of what could be lost. The air seemed to vibrate with the murderous intent filling the room, a dark pulse threatening to shatter everything.

Then, like lightning cutting through the night, a golden shadow appeared, crossing the hall. Irulan. The princess. Her figure projected between them like an unexpected shield, a barrier so fragile yet decisive, capable of stopping the balance from tipping between order and chaos.

Time seemed to stretch; the smell of sweat, blood, and fear mixed into an almost tangible knot, and Chani felt every heartbeat like a drum marking the thin line between life and death. Fury turned to alarm, pride to terror, and for an eternal moment, the entire hall seemed to hold its breath.

Irulan stepped in without hesitation, without thought. Her body moved with the lethal precision only a Bene Gesserit could achieve, as if her mind had anticipated every attack before it occurred. She pushed blades aside, deflected strikes, blocked the murderous intent vibrating through the air. She protected a belly that was not hers, a child that was not hers, risking everything with cold, sharp focus. Every movement was a poem of blood and discipline, lethal and elegant, calculated to the smallest muscle.

Then came the cut.

Chani saw it as if time had shattered, each second stretched until she could perceive everything in terrifying detail. The enemy’s knife grazed Irulan’s neck. Blood gushed, red, thick, almost luminous under the hall’s light. Chani saw the princess’s tiny hands immediately rise, by reflex, trying to contain the impossible. Her knees buckled, and her lips parted, unable to make a sound. The scene was both terrifying and beautiful: a deadly dance frozen in a moment that seemed eternal.

Then she saw Paul. His face. His transformation. First surprise, then fear, then concentrated hatred, and finally a rage that seemed to radiate from every fiber of his being. Each breath became an invisible knife, each heartbeat a hammer striking the tension-laden air.

What followed was a contained hurricane unleashed without warning. Paul advanced among the tables with steps that echoed like war drums, each one propelling him like an unstoppable force. He did not run; he surged forward, unleashing everything within him. No cries. No pleas. Only death, silent and efficient, flowing with the precision of someone without doubt. Every crysknife sank into the chests and throats of the attackers with casual detachment, tracing a line of blood and determination that seemed to erase everything else.

Then he reached Irulan.

He knelt before her, and Chani saw something in Paul she had never seen before. Not when their son had been at the brink of death. Not when he had bid farewell to Leto. True fear. True pain. A vulnerability that broke Muad’Dib’s authority and showed him, for a moment, as a common man, human, desperate.

The hall was filled with a metallic, pungent smell, a mixture of blood and broken flesh, with the faint smoke of recently extinguished candles drifting like silent witnesses. Fallen bodies and destroyed furniture marked the territory of unleashed violence. The doctors had finally arrived, moving with the urgency and calm that only trained professionals could combine. With firm hands, they lifted Irulan, still warm, onto an improvised stretcher. Her clothes were soaked, clinging to her skin. Her wet eyelashes reflected the light like tiny drops of obsidian. She did not respond, did not breathe as before, and every second of unresponsiveness made the gravity of the event weigh even more on all present.

Paul followed closely, each step rigid, each muscle tense like a bow about to snap. His face was hardened, almost stone-like, but his eyes did not lie: there was a contained fire, a whirlwind of emotions Chani could barely recognize. Every clenched fist seemed an invisible hammer striking the air, and his gaze, fixed on Irulan’s neck wound, was a beacon of concentrated pain. As if every step they took pierced him directly in the chest, as if the spilled blood resonated within him with an echo no one else could hear. He did not speak, did not breathe, only advanced, carrying the gravity of recent horror with him.

Chani remained standing among the remnants of conflict, surrounded by fallen bodies, broken furniture, and a silence that smelled of iron and fear. Her chest rose and fell with difficulty; each inhale brought the metallic taste of blood and the burning guilt in her stomach. Paul’s eyes did not leave Irulan, and she knew, with a dull pang in her heart, that he was measuring every second the princess remained alive, that every heartbeat was a reminder of what had almost been lost.

And there was Chani, the world spinning around her, unable to move her feet, unable to look away from the scene unfolding before her. Rage, guilt, gratitude, jealousy, and shame mingled in a whirlwind threatening to topple her. The princess she had so hated, the wife she had never wanted to accept, the Bene Gesserit spy… had just saved her son. She had just protected him from the death Chani herself had almost unleashed with her recklessness.

Every beat of her heart seemed like a drum echoing through her body, and her trembling legs barely held her upright. Adrenaline began to fade, giving way to a deep fatigue and a pain that was not physical but emotional: the realization of how close they had been to tragedy, the awareness of her own recklessness, and the clarity that, for the first time, Paul had been as close to the edge as she.

 

---

Paul knew the exact instant he saw Chani rise. The entire future split in two like shattered glass. One line was blood. The other, death.

"Chani…" he whispered, but his voice was lost in the silent roar of tension that filled the hall. She was already standing. The crysknife gleamed in her hand, a dark and dangerous edge embodying her indomitable will.

«I warned you,» he thought, pain stabbing his chest like an invisible dagger. «I asked you. I ordered you.»

He had known the attack would happen. He had seen the scene in advance: the attempt, the blade emerging from the shadows of the treaty dinner, the conspirators’ calculated movements. Everything had been planned as a public sacrifice, a perfect maneuver to destroy House Moritani politically. He only needed the blow to fall. Only needed a symbolic target, a minor wound, a media scandal.

Not this. Not like this. In his visions, Chani remained seated, obedient. In his visions, blood did not stain innocent skin.

But here she was, walking with a hardened face, her hand on her belly as if she already knew the danger looming over it. Every step she took vibrated in Paul’s reality, every breath of hers a reminder of how precarious everything was. A shiver ran down his spine, the cold void of the inevitable slipping beneath his skin.

Then something changed. A figure crossed his vision. A golden lightning bolt, an unexpected flash, a silhouette that should not have been there: Irulan.

For a moment he thought he imagined her, that the scene was an illusion his mind had conjured to punish him for Chani’s recklessness. But no. It was her, her ceremonial dress wrinkled and stained from sweat and motion, with the fierce concentration of a Bene Gesserit no longer afraid to be seen.

She intervened. She fought. She pushed the blades aside with precise, quick, lethal movements, as if every fiber of her body was attuned to the urgency of the moment. Paul could not move. It was as if reality had expelled him, leaving him trapped in a parallel present, only a spectator to what was happening. Everything had become alien, yet the pain was so intense it burned his senses.

Then came the cut. He heard it before seeing it: a wet, soft, sinister snap, followed by the sharp metallic scent of blood filling the air.

Irulan brought her hands to her neck. She wavered. Her lips moved as if trying to speak, as if expecting someone—him, anyone—to save her from that inevitable fate.

Something inside Paul broke, a tear he had never known, neither in the desert nor at his father’s death. Each second stretched, each breath an unbearable weight. His vision filled with red and gold flashes, with still bodies and suspended blades, while a silent roar of fury and fear filled his head.

And then he ran. He didn’t think. He didn’t meditate. He didn’t calculate. He just ran. Every step was a heartbeat of desperation, every movement a contained scream, as he closed the distance to Irulan, to the life he feared losing, to the reality threatening to collapse in an instant.

He drew his crysknife. And he killed.

The first attacker didn’t even comprehend what had happened. A line of blood crossed his neck, and he fell silently.

The second raised his blade, clumsy, desperate, and Paul deflected it with a sharp twist before driving it into his heart. The scream broke in his own throat.

The third stepped back, pleaded. Hands raised, trembling like insect wings. Paul didn’t hear. A clean slice severed him, and the warm life gushed onto his face.

It wasn’t politics, it wasn’t strategy. It was fury, a cold, absolute fury, directed at a single center: her. That foolish, that stupid, that crazy princess who, in an incomprehensible impulse, had thrown her life to save what Paul loved most in the universe.

And then he saw her fall.

Paul knelt beside Irulan, like a man finally breaking. Blood soaked his hands—hot, endless, slippery as oil. The cut was deep, jagged, cruel. The neck… so delicate, just as he had imagined it before, in dreams he should never have had. But not like this. Never like this.

He pressed hard, but the skin slipped, escaped between his fingers. His breathing faltered, broken, and a whisper escaped him:

“Don’t die…” and it was neither an order nor the tone of the Emperor, nor the Messiah. It was a prayer. A desperate whisper.

Chani approached. She said something. Perhaps a plea, perhaps a reproach. Paul didn’t hear. His entire being was focused on keeping Irulan alive, stealing seconds from the void.

Then he used the tone. He commanded her to slow the blood. His voice cut through the gloom, imperious. And she obeyed. Even on the edge of the abyss, her body responded. Paul felt it: the slight resistance, the tremor, the automatic obedience. And in that act, the paradox: even in dying, Irulan still responded to his will.

And there, in that exact second, everything changed.

He looked at her. Her face covered in sweat, eyelids heavy as lead, lips pale, trembling. There was no fear in her expression. No terror. Only surrender. Sacrifice. As if, deep down, she had always awaited this fate.

Why did she do it? For Chani? For the Empire? Or for him?

Voices erupted. Doctors. Guards. His mother. Gurney. Bodiless echoes, meaningless. The entire world was noise—except her. They lifted her onto a stretcher. Paul followed, hard steps, his gaze fixed on the cut that still bled, on the neck letting the irreplaceable escape.

“I shouldn’t have allowed this.”
“I shouldn’t have let Chani fight.”
“I shouldn’t have left Irulan by her side.”

But he had. In his arrogance, he believed he knew every line of the future. Every twist of fate. Every fork in the endless sand.

And yet, he had never seen this. Never seen her desperation, her helplessness. Never seen fear—the visceral, paralyzing fear—of losing Irulan.

And as the stretcher disappeared down the corridor, devoured by the urgency of doctors shouting for bandages, IVs, and stabilizers, Paul Atreides, Muad’Dib, Emperor of the known universe, walked after them with hard, mechanical steps, his hands still soaked in his wife’s blood.

His face was impassive. A perfect mask. No emotion traced his features, but inside… inside, his soul had torn like a silk veil ripped by the winds of Arrakis.

Because in that instant he understood what he had never wanted to admit: the power to see futures did not make him immune to the present. No vision, however vast, could anticipate the void left by this wound.

The universe could bend to his will. Twist destinies, force paths, sow and harvest death in the name of his vision. But it could not escape this truth: there are pains that cannot be predicted, only felt when they arrive.

And that pain was consuming him alive.

 

---

Paul did not leave the side of the medical stretcher. He remained there, a tense, motionless, broken shadow, tormenting himself with every image before him. Every gesture of the surgeons was a needle piercing his skin; every sound from the machines a litany he could not stop hearing. The constant beeping of the monitors drilled into his skull; the laser’s hum, tracing Irulan’s neck with surgical precision, sounded to him like a worm hissing across his consciousness.

It was his blood. His price. His guilt.

A blade he had failed to foresee, a wound she should never have received. A price he should not have paid. Paul did not look away; he punished himself with the spectacle of her blood, with the tremor of his own still-stained fingers, with the doctors’ gloves turning red as they changed instruments that screeched like miniature blades.

He, the desert messiah, the emperor, the visionary who knew everything. And yet, he could not prevent this.

The visions had not shown him the blood flowing like this. Had not shown Irulan with her neck opened by a dagger meant for another. Had not shown that woman—the enemy’s daughter, the wife he never wanted—sacrificing herself for a child that was not hers.

Irulan’s neck, so fine, so fragile, was not made to withstand that kind of wound. Her hands—hands of cups and reeds, of political calculation, not steel—were not made to receive that blood. And yet, there she was: eyelids heavy, breathing barely perceptible, skin so pale that the green of the monitor seemed tattooed into her flesh.

Paul had seen her close her eyes in his arms, not from sleep, but from loss, from pain. And something inside him broke.

His eyes burned. He could not cry; he must not. But the burn remained, as if the desert itself had taken shape in his gaze. As if Shai-Hulud punished him through that pain. He felt the urge to push the doctors aside, to take her and shield her with his own body, to turn back time: prevent dinner, prevent the dagger from rising, prevent her from stepping forward.

But he did not move. He only watched. Only breathed. Only felt the unbearable weight of guilt descend on his chest like a glowing-hot rock.

She had saved him. Not him, but the child growing in Chani’s womb.

Irulan, the manipulative, cold princess, educated by witches, did not hesitate. Did not falter. She stepped forward he had not predicted and deflected death onto herself. And he could do nothing. Only witness. Only react. Only kill.

Now, the surgeons worked in silence, exchanging brief phrases like stabbing knives. Paul heard every word. Absorbed every number, every pressure reading, every warning about arterial flow, every fear disguised as protocol. He clung to these details as if they could offer a proper punishment. As if understanding his pain in medical terms could somehow redeem her.

He did not think of the throne, did not think of Chani, thought of nothing but that thread of blood still peeking from beneath the bandages as the laser moved.

And the cold possibility, like a crysknife in the sand, that she might not wake. That she might never open her eyes to look at him with that haughty disdain that lately had begun to feel like something else. That she might never feign indifference again, though her neck would forever bear the scar of the blade.

Paul said nothing. Only breathed. Only remained.

 

---

Irulan remained on the stretcher, still unconscious, but alive. Stable. Her breathing deeper now, less fragile, and the machines no longer emitted alerts, only the steady rhythm of a life clinging to her body with invisible nails. The laser had been turned off. The doctors’ hands had withdrawn. But Paul had not.

He remained there. Standing. Back rigid as stone, fists clenched at his sides, gaze fixed on Irulan’s sleeping face. Watching every slight flutter of her eyelids, every heartbeat visible beneath the neck bandage, as if he needed endless proof that she still breathed, that she had not abandoned him.

He could not leave. Not yet. Not while guilt devoured his soul like a blind worm.

The door opened with a faint whisper, barely a touch in the air, as if death itself had slipped down the corridor.

Paul then heard light steps. Steps unafraid. Steps unhurried. Steps of someone who could walk among corpses without worrying about stepping on one.

Alia.

His sister. His little sister. Thirteen years of young flesh, but centuries of voices within. A girl with the eyes of an ancestral witch and the tongue of a serpent.

Paul did not look at her at first. He kept watching Irulan, fearing that if he took his eyes off her, even for a second, he would find her cold, empty, dead.

Only when Alia stopped beside him, silent, like a shadow shaped like a girl, did Paul speak. He did not look at her. He could not. His voice came rough, torn, more confession than word:

“I didn’t see it coming…”

The phrase hung in the air like a crack. It did not sound like an excuse. Nor a justification. It was the naked admission of an unforgivable failure.

Alia lowered her gaze to Irulan. Her eyes, impossibly blue, locked on the princess’s pale face, the bandaged neck, the stillness of her chest barely rising with each breath. She observed her with the coldness one uses to examine a specimen on a dissecting table. No compassion. No revulsion. Only calculation.

“She did,” she finally replied, her voice calm, yet carrying an echo deeper than calm itself. “She saw death coming… and stepped in.”

Paul closed his eyes. The air burned in his lungs. His lips trembled slightly, as if a torrent of words threatened to escape, but crashed against the wall of fear.

“It was beautiful, in a way,” Alia continued, tilting her head, with that poisoned sweetness that seemed lifted from an ancient theater. “Like in the tragedies those old poets loved so much. The wife who throws herself on the blade to save her husband’s lover. How romantic. How pathetic.”

“Alia…” His voice was barely a whisper, rough as stone scraping against stone.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, showing a crooked smile, barely a flash of teeth that looked like a wound on her childish face. “I just say what everyone thinks and no one dares to voice. It was a useless act. But, ah… the useless also bleed beautifully.”

Paul turned his face toward her, slowly, as if that movement weighed more than the entire Empire. His expression was hard, restrained, but his eyes… his eyes showed something worse than anger: naked fear.

“This should never have happened.”

“Oh, brother… so many things should never have happened,” Alia hummed, twirling lightly, like a child playing in a palace of bones. She stopped abruptly, her robe’s skirt still spinning around her. “And yet, here we are. With a princess bleeding for love. What a ridiculous story.”

“She didn’t have to go through this.”

“Of course not,” Alia replied, with a sweetness so false it hurt to hear. “But she did. Because you were wrong. And because she doesn’t hate as much as you thought. What a nuisance, right? Just when she was starting to fit into your little box of hatred, she ruins it… by being brave.”

Paul clenched his fists. The cracking of his knuckles sounded like bone breaking.

“This…” he whispered. “This was never part of the plan.”

“And yet, there she is,” Alia said, with cruel serenity, her eyes fixed on Irulan’s bandaged neck. “Her throat opened to save your lover.”

Paul swallowed. The metallic taste of his own blood rose in his mouth: he had bitten so hard that his lips had cracked. He looked at Irulan again. Motionless. Pale. A presence that could not be denied.

“It wasn’t her place.”

“Wasn’t it?” Alia finally looked at him, with an impossible mixture of mockery and curiosity, as if dissecting his fear word by word. “Or is it not the place of every woman who isn’t Chani?”

Paul closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he did not take his gaze off Irulan. Her chest rose and fell with difficulty, but she was there. So present. So hers now, by the mere fact that she had not fled.

“Whether you like it or not,” Alia said, in a grave voice, with a cadence that seemed to drag centuries, “she already offered herself. She already marked herself. She already bled for you.”

She then leaned toward him, rising on tiptoe, bringing her cold lips close to his ear. The whisper was a dagger that sank slowly:

“And you cannot put her back where she was. Because no one comes back from something like this.”

The air in the room thickened, almost solid, as if the walls contained an invisible judgment. Paul felt the weight of those words sink into his chest. It was a sentence. It was truth.

He had trusted. In his visions. In Chani’s obedience. In Irulan’s calculated resentment. He never believed she would intervene. Not for Chani. Not for the child.

But she did.

And now, every weak heartbeat he heard through the machines was not consolation, but condemnation.

Alia stepped back, hands clasped behind her back, humming a melody that belonged to no time. Ancient. Sinister. The echo of dead voices in the throat of a girl.

“She might not survive, you know?” she said without looking at him, in an almost distracted tone. “Maybe the wound opens tonight. Maybe she drowns in her own blood, silently. Like a song fading away.”

She smiled then. A small, almost innocent smile. And yet, perverse to its core.

“But if she lives, Paul… you’ll have to look at her every day. And remember.”

 

---

The silence Alia left behind was not relief; it was a sentence. An invisible edge that continued cutting even though the dagger was gone, an echo that did not fade but expanded through the room, filling it with unbearable weight.

Paul remained motionless by the stretcher, back rigid, fists clenched until white, not breathing forcefully, as if fearing that a single movement could tear the fragile thread of life that still kept Irulan in this world. She did not move, her eyelids did not flutter, she uttered no word, but she breathed, and that was enough to keep him standing—and at the same time, unbearably insufficient.

He looked at her as he never had before, not as an emperor or prophet, but as a man, and for the first time truly saw her.

The bandage concealed the line of the wound, but he had it burned into memory, an impossible-to-erase ache, perfect in its cruelty, and he knew it was not on her neck but within himself, because that wound was his, because he had brought it here, because he had not protected her, because in the arrogance of his power he believed what had just happened was impossible.

He closed his eyes and felt the sharp sting of guilt behind his eyelids, a pain not physical yet bleeding all the same, and a whisper escaped his lips before he could contain it: “Why?”

He spoke as if she could answer, as if the silence were not already a brutal reply, as if that weak breath did not scream a meaning too vast for any human tongue.

Paul took a step, placed his hand on the stretcher’s metal edge, and then let his trembling fingers search for Irulan’s arm. Her skin was warm, alive, present—a heat impossible to fake that pierced him to the center of his chest. He swallowed hard, feeling the clumsiness of his own body, aware that she was still breathing and that he could not understand why.

Why her? Why that woman, the calculating princess, the distant one, raised by the Sisterhood, the same who poisoned hopes and measured poisons, was the one who threw herself onto the blade? It made no sense; it was not written this way.

None of his visions had shown him this, not in the thousands of branches he traversed, not in the futures where empires fell, worlds were annihilated, or he himself died repeatedly.

He had endured the unbearable weight of seeing, again and again, the bitter certainty of Chani’s death in childbirth, but never, ever, had he seen Irulan’s death. She was always there, surviving even in ruins, persistent in every line of time, untouchable, immortal in her silent way of existing.

Until now.

Seeing her like this, on the edge, fragile, silent, was a new blow, a void beneath his feet, as if the sand that had held him all his life crumbled. The future had failed, his visions had failed, and with them, he had failed. He leaned slightly, without thinking, and his lips uttered her name in a broken whisper: “Irulan…,” not knowing whether it was a plea, an apology, or a prayer.

He no longer knew who she was. He no longer knew who he was.

 

---

An entire day had passed. Twenty-four hours locked in that room, in the same position, breathing held, back tense, muscles stiff, hands clenched until his knuckles had turned white. He had not slept, not eaten, had not spoken a single word beyond what was strictly necessary.

Every sound filtered to him with superhuman clarity: the steady beep of the monitors, the continuous hum of the respirators, the faint brushing of machines compensating for Irulan’s blood loss. Everything seemed amplified, converted into a constant heartbeat reminding him she was still there, breathing, however weakly.

He had not left the stretcher for a single moment. Not because he trusted in a miracle, but because he needed to understand. If he could not foresee this… what other gaps existed in the fabric of his visions? What other cracks opened in the web of futures he had until now considered indisputable?

Every shadow of doubt coiled in his throat, burned his chest, and chilled his spine. His gift—this abyss of intertwined futures that had once been his certainty, his map, his power—now seemed porous, leaking things he should never have let pass. Every revisited vision felt treacherous, like sand slipping through fingers.

Irulan’s wound was not just open flesh. It was an abyss in destiny itself, a warning that the world no longer obeyed his will.

During those hours, he reviewed every known future, every crossroads he had explored mentally. The moments when Chani died, the days when war razed entire cities, the scenarios in which his empire crumbled like dust blown by the wind.

In all those paths, Irulan remained intact, strong, untouchable like an icon: she never bled, never fell, never yielded. But here she was, before his eyes, vulnerable, suspended between life and death, sustained by machines that returned her breath, reminding him of human fragility.

The doctors returned to the room with a measured, precise step, as if the world existed only in their footsteps. Paul moved aside slightly, but did not leave; the air burned in his lungs, thick with antiseptics and fear. His gaze remained locked on Irulan, unable to detach even as the doctors spoke in clinical murmurs, moving bandages, pressing with firm, expert fingers, reviewing data as if life itself could be reduced to numbers and charts.

The chief doctor, thin, with an angular face and dark eyes that seemed to absorb light, approached with the gravity of one about to declare the irreparable. Each step echoed against the floor like a portent.

“Sir…” his voice cut the silence, barely audible, accompanied by a slight nod. “We have evaluated the tissues near the wound. The princess’s vocal cords… have been partially severed. The damage… is severe.”

The silence that followed hit Paul like a solid blow to the chest. “Severe.” So brief, so simple, yet loaded with a weight that crushed the air between them.

“Will she speak again?” His voice emerged broken, trembling, barely a whisper that seemed to grieve the entire world.

The doctor delayed his answer. Not out of uncertainty, but out of respect, as if uttering those words crossed a sacred line.

“It’s unlikely. If she survives… it will be without a voice.”

Paul did not nod. He did not blink. He simply turned his gaze toward Irulan, lying pale, her chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged breaths. Her face was impassive, but inside everything fell apart: a sharp, visceral shiver ran down his spine, a silent pain that could not be shown.

The princess of the Empire. Daughter of the Padishah Emperor. Disciple of the Bene Gesserit. Chronicler, weaver of words, strategist of silences and dialogues. And now, condemned to absolute silence.

The voice. On Dune, the voice was not merely sound; it was a weapon, a key, a command. It was control, it was power. And that woman, trained to wield it with lethal precision, would now be disarmed.

The air in the room seemed heavier, every breath Paul took a reminder of what had been lost and what had been saved. Because she had saved a life. Her lineage remained intact. But the cost…

“Can she hear?” His broken voice trembled, breaking his own restraint.

The doctor hesitated.

“Probably. But she does not yet respond to external stimuli. Her consciousness… remains suspended between trauma and recovery.”

Paul lowered his gaze. His fingers twitched slightly, trembling under the invisible weight of helplessness. Every fiber of his being screamed as Irulan’s silence enveloped him like an icy shroud.

For a moment, the world reduced itself to the fragility of a voice that would never speak again, and to the certainty that nothing could repair the invisible devastation of what had been lost.

Paul returned to his place beside the stretcher. Each step felt like a ton, as if the floor itself wanted to swallow him. He studied the bandage, white, stained with dark red that still seemed to pulse with the violence of the moment. He remembered the blood, the viscous heat that stained his hands, the vibration of air at the edge that Chani never reached. He remembered the scream that never came, a sound ripped away before it was born, an absence that reverberated inside his chest.

Someone had intervened. Without destiny, without reason. Because that future… that damned future… was not written. It should not have happened. And yet, it did. Every image, every vision, every thread of time he thought he controlled now writhed uselessly in his hands.

He collapsed into the chair. For the first time since the wound opened in his reality, he allowed his back to bend under the weight of the impossible. He rested his elbows on his knees, sank his gaze into the cold, shiny floor. The room seemed to sway around him; the doctors’ murmurs were a distant hum, irrelevant compared to the roar inside him.

And inside… something cracked. A fine, invisible crystal that had contained his will and hope until now shattered. Perhaps the visions had not failed. Perhaps the failure lay in him, in his flesh, in his destiny as the Kwisatz Haderach. Perhaps he was no longer enough to read the thread of time, to prevent tragedies from seeping into reality like sand through fingers.

A tremor ran through his hands. His lips tightened. And all the power of the universe he had promised himself to control seemed useless against his wife’s broken silence.

 

---

Irulan returned as one thrown— not returned— from darkness, expelled like flesh no longer belonging to the abyss.

First came the burning. Brutal. Not ordinary pain, but a living edge, a heated iron climbing from the base of her neck to pierce her palate. The sensation was so dense, so fierce, that even the impulse to scream failed. She tried to open her mouth and found a prison: her own throat sealed, her voice strangled in a silence that was not hers.

Then came the confusion. A viscous, sticky thickness of shattered reality. She was trapped inside a foreign body, a heavy body, saturated with anguish, muscles asleep like cold clay, saliva absent in a dry mouth. The constant, sharp, distant buzzing invaded her temples like an invisible swarm. And beneath it all, throbbing, vibrating, the pain. That damned pain that left no room for thought, that crushed every attempt to remember, that made every breath a lost battle.

It took time to understand where she was, what had happened. And then, in a merciless flash, she saw everything.

The knife. The hooded figure. Chani frozen, eyes wide with horror. The voiceless scream. Her body launching without plan, without calculation, only instinct. The blade slicing through the air like a metal insect. The blood, the sudden thick heat against her skin.

She intervened.

There was no time to think why. No nobility, no strategy, not even love: only a blind, brutal movement, a force older than her pride, fiercer than her resentment. And now… now she was paying the price.

She tried to breathe deeply. Mistake. The burn was immediate, tears flowing without permission, scorching her eyelids. She tried to speak: a murmur escaped, barely a whisper of dead air. She tried again and it was worse, a cold stab in her throat, her own body betraying her, as if that part of her were already dead.

A broken sound, an echo of a moan. Not even that. Panic struck her full force, raw, unfiltered, like an animal raking its claws across her chest.

What have they done to me?

She raised her hand. Or tried to. It was weak, so weak that the gesture dissolved before it was born. As if her body no longer belonged to her. As if only a residue remained, a minimal fragment, an echo of what she had been. As if the wound had drained more than her blood.

The sound of the machine beside her—beeps, artificial breaths, cold oxygen—was the only thing anchoring her to the world. She was alive. She knew it. But the word “alive” felt hollow, grotesque.

What use is being alive if I cannot speak?

She wanted to cry. She couldn’t even do that. Only that pressure in her chest, like an immense fist squeezing her from within. A mixture of rage and resignation, a metallic taste in her dry mouth. She felt stupid. Vulnerable. Ridiculous. And, for the first time in a long time, truly alone.

But then she felt him. It was not a sound, not a touch. It was a foreign heartbeat in the same room, a pulse that did not belong to her body yet pierced her. Silent, firm, contained, like prey about to break.

Paul.

She did not need to see him to know he was there. Surely he had been hours, maybe days, immersed in that silence that is not waiting but judgment, observing her, measuring her. Wondering, perhaps, why.

Why throw yourself in front of a knife for the woman you hate most?

How do you explain that to a man who learned to read thoughts in the blink of an eye?

How do you tell him that in that instant, Chani ceased to be a rival, wife, lover of another, and became simply a mother?

How do you confess that imagining the death of an unborn child hurt more than your own destruction?

How do you tell him that you love him so absurdly as to face danger with bare hands, without thinking, as a reflex?

How do you tell him all that… if you no longer have a voice?

The tremor started in her fingers, barely a spasm, but ran up her arm like a dirty lightning bolt. Her body responded with a thick, bitter pain climbing her throat like rust. And yet she felt it: his shadow, his warmth, his guilt. They were so close she could smell his skin, that dry scent of sand and spice that never left her.

Don’t look at me like that. Don’t you dare pity me. She wanted to say it, to scream it, to tear the air with her nails. But nothing came out, only a dry gasp, a broken noise like a wounded animal.

And for the first time in a long while, Irulan Corrino felt fear. Not of pain, not of death. But of her own silence, that void in her throat, as absolute as the space between two stars.

The shadow of his figure stopped beside the stretcher. For a moment there were no words, only the metallic hum of the machines and the filtered artificial air of the palace. Until his voice broke the silence. Low. Calm. But not indifferent.

“You woke up.”

His voice was not comfort. It was a blade, a sentence. There was no joy, no relief. Only that tense stillness, like a knife held too firmly, about to slip and wound.

She blinked. Once, as if each movement cost a life.

“Don’t try to speak,” he said, without raising his gaze. “You’re hurting yourself more.”

Irulan wanted to close her eyes, but couldn’t. Fear kept them open, dry, burning.

Paul leaned in, not too much. Just enough for his breath to brush her face, so she could hear him without difficulty. And then, with that voice that once carried imperial orders and now carried guilt, he said:

“They damaged your vocal cords.”

The words were not a diagnosis—they were a sentence. And in that instant, Irulan understood that it was not the wound that would kill her. It was everything she would never be able to say.

“The cut was deep. Precise. Too close. The doctors… aren’t certain. But it’s likely,” he paused, as if the words scraped against his tongue, “…that you won’t be able to speak again.”

The world stopped. The air itself thickened, as if time had swallowed all sound, all color. Only the beat of her heart resounded, a dull drum in her chest threatening to shatter it into a thousand fragments.

Not because it was a surprise. She had suspected it. But hearing it… hearing it from Paul’s lips… was like a dagger twisting inside her. Each word tore a piece from her being, leaving a damp, icy void that spread across her ribs.

The voice. Her tool. Her shield. Her power. All of that… was gone. And with it, the world seemed to lose consistency: the air smelled of iron and dust, her skin was covered in sticky cold, even the light seemed opaque, filtered through a gray veil.

Irulan felt something unravel in her chest. She did not cry. She had no strength for that. Only a shiver ran from her nape to the tips of her fingers, as if every nerve had become aware of her defeat. A crack opened inside her. Slow. Silent. Immense. Like a chasm swallowing her breath, her voice, her identity.

Paul did not come closer. He did not touch her. He offered no comfort, uttered no hollow promises. He simply stayed there, breathing deeply, in a rhythm that seemed to try to contain his own fear. He stared at the floor, shoulders tense, jaw clenched.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured.

The sincerity was brutal. Irulan felt it in every line of his face, in every fiber of his posture. It was not love or compassion that pained him; it was the truth, raw, sharp, cold, like a blade brushing against his own skin.

And she… could not respond. Could not scream, insult, or seek solace. She could only feel, with each broken breath, that her world had become a landscape of shadows where every sound multiplied into echoes and every movement was an impossible effort.

Paul sat beside her. His hands rested on his knees, rigid and tense. His lowered head cast a silent weight that pressed the air between them. He did not look at her, yet his presence was so tangible it seemed to wrap her in a heavy, damp chill.

“I didn’t see this coming,” he said, his voice barely a thread, as if speaking to himself. “Of all the things I saw… I didn’t see this.”

His eyes, red and weary—not from tears, but from insomnia and fear—seemed to pierce the dimness of the room.

“I never thought it would be you. You, Irulan. You… just you.”

And for a second, his voice cracked. Just an instant, but enough for Irulan to feel it like a tremor under her feet, as if the air had lost density and collapsed upon them. Not as emperor, not as visionary. But as a man stripped of future, facing the unbearable weight of the present.

 

---

Paul did not leave.

From the moment she opened her eyes—from the first harsh burn in her throat, from the brutal realization of what she had lost—he had been there. And he remained. He did not speak much. He touched nothing. He only observed. Always observed.

At first, Irulan could do nothing with that presence. She was too weak to resist, too wounded even to wish clearly. Pain enveloped her like a coarse blanket; the air smelled of disinfectant and dried blood; her entire body was borrowed, unresponsive. But as hours passed and the burn eased slightly, as bandages were changed and maids fed her tasteless liquids between parched lips, the sensation became unbearable.

She did not want him there. Not Paul. Not anyone. She wanted space. She wanted air. She wanted to fall apart alone. She wanted the right to collapse without a pair of eyes watching, judging each contraction of her body, each minimal spasm of her face, each attempt to maintain composure while the abyss grew inside her.

But he did not leave. He said nothing. Did nothing. He only watched.

He did so while the doctors examined the wound with meticulous movements, lifting bloodied bandages that smelled of metal and fear, whispering clinical terms that no longer made sense to her. He did so while the maids cleaned her skin, gathered wet hair clinging to her forehead, as if she were a broken figure that needed to be kept presentable.

And most of all, he did so when she tried not to cry. When she squeezed her eyes tightly, when she felt the knot in her chest grow with no outlet because the outlet was in her voice—and that voice no longer existed. Her throat was a mute cave, painful, empty.

Paul continued to watch her. Every gesture, every minute movement of her face, every tremor in her hands, every slow blink she could not suppress. It was as if he wanted to absorb her, study her, understand something escaping him, something keeping her trapped in that silence.

And that enraged her. Silently. Violently. The anger was like a hot pulse colliding with her ribs, impotent, trapped, mute. She wanted to scream at him, push him, make him leave the room and let her be alone with the weight of her silence, to have the right to break down without an audience.

But she could not.

He noticed.

He noticed the slow way Irulan averted her gaze, as if seeing his face burned her skin. He noticed the tension in her shoulders, the mute rigidity of her hands beneath the sheet, the fingers closing and opening as if seeking an escape that did not exist. He noticed the long—too long—blink hiding eyes filled not only with fatigue, but with raw, liquid rage, contained yet trembling beneath her skin.

Paul was no stranger to pain. He had seen it, caused it, felt it. That kind of anger… he knew it all too well.

Irulan did not want him there. She did not need words. He understood that with uncomfortable, almost painful clarity.

But he did not move. He remained, sitting beside her bed, elbows on his knees, body slightly leaning forward, eyes fixed on her. Not out of morbid curiosity, not out of guilt. Out of choice.

Irulan was a contained storm behind that exhausted face. Even weakened, even mute, she still challenged him by mere presence. With every attempt not to look at him, with every clench of teeth to avoid groaning from the burn in her throat, every muscle in her body trembled under the weight of rage and helplessness.

Paul lowered his gaze for just an instant.

“I know,” he said, voice low, barely a murmur, as if speaking to himself, as if the words were knives he too could feel cutting.

Irulan did not react.

“I know you don’t want me here.”

His eyes returned to hers. Cold, decisive, yet not cruel, not distant. Just… unyielding.

“I’m not leaving.”

There was no promise. No tenderness. It was a statement that echoed like a silent blow in the room. As if the entire universe had already heard it.

“Not this time.”

Irulan blinked slowly, tired, furious. Paul watched her, expectant, waiting for a sign, a change, a surrender.

Irulan could barely tolerate him.

Her life had always been under watch, observed, analyzed. Always with eyes searching for utility, beauty, strategy. Her voice was the only thing she fully owned, the only thing she could shape at will, her tool, her shield, her sword.

And now, not even that remained.

And he, the man who had everything—power, name, lineage, a growing heir in another woman—remained there, beside her bed, as if his mere presence could comfort. It did not.

Irulan slowly turned her head. She looked at him. Forced him to hold her gaze.

There was something in her eyes that cut, sharp as broken glass. A mix of rage, exhaustion, and broken dignity that only exists in someone who can no longer scream. And yet, her gaze screamed.

It screamed that she did not want compassion. It screamed that he had no right. It screamed that, if she could, she would throw him from the room with a single breath.

A tear rolled down her cheek. Only one. But it was not sadness. It was pure, burning liquid hatred, scorching her skin, scorching the air between them.

Paul did not look away. Did not blink.

Irulan raised a trembling hand with effort, just slightly. And with a finger, barely, she pointed at him, then, with slow deliberate intention, at herself. Then lowered her hand.

You. Me. This.

No more was needed. It was an accusation. A sentence. A testimony of what remained between them: an open, silent wound that would not heal with presence, or vigilance, or anything he could give now.

Paul took a deep breath, but offered no defense. He merely nodded slightly and remained seated.

Because even if she did not want him there, even if her gaze pierced him like a dagger, even if her entire body said “leave”… he would not leave.

And that, perhaps, was the cruelest thing.

 

---

Two days had passed. Two days in which doctors entered and exited with soft, measured movements, as if they feared breaking more than bandages, as if they feared breaking her as well. They changed the bloodied cloth, inspected with delicate fingers, whispered clinical terms that collided against the absence of her voice. Two days in which the pain had become a mute constant, an oppressive weight in her throat, in her chest, in every tense muscle refusing to relax, as if every cell in her body resisted remembering what had happened. And yet, she remembered. Every second. Every sensation. The decision. The moment she leapt. The cut. The darkness. The sharp awareness that she could die.

But that was not what hurt the most.

What hurt the most was him. Paul. He had not left. He would not leave. He said nothing, but neither did he allow her to be alone. He occupied the space that had once been hers, invaded her silence, weighed more than the wound itself.

Did he have nothing else to do? Was he not the Emperor? Should he not be on the throne, addressing the Moritani House’s betrayal? Should he not be miles away, in the midst of war councils, or in Chani’s arms, his Fremen wife, his true love, pregnant with the child Irulan could never give him? Why was he still here? Why didn’t he let her sink alone into this new reality, into this wounded body, into this mute throat?

Because yes, that too. No voice. Only a dry, stabbing void every time she tried to speak. Every attempt was a dull echo, a jab in the throat, a brutal reminder of what she had lost. Her voice had been the only thing she truly possessed, her power, her tool, her way to sustain herself in a world from which everything else had been taken. Now, not even that remained. Only him, with his stoic face and his silence crushing her like a physical weight, as if his presence filled every corner of the room with unbearable pressure.

And she could not bear it.

She could not bear him looking at her as if it suddenly mattered. As if her pain were his own. As if this were a penance he needed to witness. Irulan wanted to scream at him to leave, to tell him he was not welcome, that his presence repaired nothing. But she could not. She had no way. She could only turn her face to the wall, grit her teeth, swallow back her tears, and hate every second spent under that gaze that weighed more than any wound.

The door opened without ceremony, the soft yet firm sound of footsteps echoing before her visitor fully appeared. Alia. Dressed plainly, yet with that natural elegance inherited from the Bene Gesserit line, eyes alight with more than impatience. She did not greet them, did not pause. Her gaze shifted from Irulan to Paul as if she had rehearsed this conversation a thousand times in her head.

“They’re waiting for you for the sentence,” she said, voice firm, without embellishment. “The Moritani House’s betrayal cannot be postponed any longer.”

Paul did not flinch. He remained seated beside Irulan, eyes fixed on an indecipherable point in the void, as if nothing external could touch him. His voice came grave, soft, almost mechanical, resonating with a calm that contrasted brutally with Irulan’s contained pain.

“Gruney can handle it. Or you. I’m not leaving here.”

The silence thickened, almost tangible, as if the air in the room had compressed around those few words. Irulan felt a stab of surprise, a cold shock running down her back and arms. It was the first time she had heard him say it so clearly, so directly, that she heard it from him, not from another obligation, not from necessity.

Alia did not respond immediately. She walked to within half a meter of him, observing him with a mixture of annoyance and affection, then lowered her guard just slightly.

“Chani needs you,” she said—and those three words were enough to make Paul’s body tense, an invisible thread of electricity cutting through the room.

Irulan noticed it. The doubt. The conflict. The internal echo of four days of absence. Four days without seeing her. Four days without touching her, without feeling his child through the warmth of her womb. She felt him hesitate. Saw his jaw twitch slightly, pulse held tight in his neck muscles, breathing slower than usual. He did not want to leave, but he could not ignore it either.

Paul rose slowly. The black cloak brushed the stretcher with an almost inaudible whisper, a shadow sliding across the charged air of the room. Alia no longer spoke. She merely observed, expectant. Irulan barely turned her face, feigning indifference, but something in her stomach tightened, a hot knot rising to her chest, when he leaned toward her.

He said nothing. No grand gestures. He only brought his hand close, and for a moment hesitated, as if afraid to break something intangible. Then he lightly touched her forehead, a touch that seemed to want to erase thoughts, memories, pain; an intimate, silent farewell, something no one should see or understand.

Irulan did not know how to react. Her body froze, every fiber tense, chest pounding too fast, the warmth of the touch brushing her nerves and igniting a confused flame. She did not look at him, did not return anything, but felt a strange fire coursing through her chest, as confusing as it was infuriating, as warm as it was cruel.

“Don’t try to speak,” Paul whispered, not looking at anyone else, repeating the same words as before. “You’ll only hurt yourself more.”

“Curious,” murmured Alia from the door, with a half-smile and one raised eyebrow. “For someone who claims he feels nothing for her, you touch her like she’s sacred.”

Paul did not respond. He merely crossed the threshold and left, leaving a void heavier than the wound in her throat.

Alia followed, but before closing the door, she turned slightly on her heels, fixed her eyes on Irulan with that sly smile, always aware of secrets others could not see, and raised an eyebrow as if she had just witnessed something confirming an old suspicion. Then she disappeared behind the door, and silence returned to the room like a heavy tide, dragging away what remained of calm and control.

Irulan closed her eyes, and this time she could not stop the tear that ran down her temple, hot and bitter, mingling with the raw sensation of loss, with the presence that still pulsed in the room, with the certainty that nothing would ever be the same.

 

---

The corridor seemed longer than usual, a tunnel of stone and shadows stretching under the weight of silence. Each step taking him away from Irulan pushed him further into himself, as if walking toward a place without air, without return. And the farther he distanced himself from the bed where she lay—throat cut by another’s blade, life hanging by an invisible thread—the wider the gap opened inside him, a void he could not name.

The palace smelled of spice. Always spice. But now also of dried blood, of old dust, of ill-made and unatoned decisions.

Alia walked ahead, barefoot, hair loose, a light dress floating with every step like an omen. From behind, she seemed a child. Only seemed. The air around her was no child’s air.

Suddenly, she stopped, right before the carved doors of Chani’s chambers. She turned slowly, glancing at him from the side with that crooked smile that promised nothing good, like a dagger wrapped in silk.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she said, in a sing-song, childlike yet cruel tone. “Pregnant concubines don’t understand the difference between jealousy and prophecy.”

Paul held her gaze for a second. Alia, with her thirteen eternal years, seemed to enjoy the entanglement, like watching rats trapped in a box, knowing none would escape. He wanted to say something, anything to make her quiet, but only pushed the door open.

He entered.

The room was warm, seemingly calm, like a sand trap. The oil lamps cast a soft light that made shadows dance on the stone walls and on the veil covering the bed. Every shadow seemed a veiled threat.

Chani sat on the bed, her belly exposed beneath a thin veil, hands resting upon it as if guarding a secret. She did not smile. Did not gesture. She merely looked at him, with those blue eyes—the deep desert blue at noon—that once saved him and now seemed to judge him.

She said nothing. He did not either.

The silence between them was thick, an air saturated with sand and reproach, not knowing which to address first.

“Why didn’t you come?” Chani finally asked. Her voice was grave, firm, without a trace of tears or sweetness, like a sentence.

Paul took a deep breath. Felt the weight of the robe clinging to his skin, the sweat at his nape, the vibration in his temples, the certainty that everything could collapse at any second. He felt everything.

“Because I thought she would die,” he said bluntly. He did not know how to embellish it.

Chani tilted her head slightly. There was something purely desert about her: beautiful, relentless, incapable of forgiveness.

“You thought that of her?” The word “her” came sharp, impersonal, like a knife embedded in the table.

Paul nodded. That simple gesture was like swallowing a knife.

Chani looked away. Her fingers moved slowly over her abdomen, drawing almost unconscious circles, as if seeking comfort where there was none left.

“She jumped to protect you,” Paul added. “To protect the child you carry.”

“And?” Chani did not raise her voice. She did not need to. Every syllable fell like burning sand on the skin. “And does that erase everything she did before?”

Paul remained silent.

“She saved me, yes. But she also stole years from me to give you a child. She made me believe it was me who failed… while she, with her statue-like face, poisoned my body with things even you, the one who sees the future, could not foresee.”

Paul felt a strange anger rise in his chest, a rough heat igniting his throat. Hearing Chani minimize Irulan’s sacrifice, ignoring that someone had bled for love while he barely breathed, made him want to raise his voice. He wanted to shout at his pregnant beloved, defend his wife, demand justice for someone who had given everything for them.

He remembered the day Chani found out about the contraceptives. The truth hit them like a bomb, a silent roar that made them stagger. His Chani, fierce, untamable, had wanted to kill her. To kill Irulan. Literally. And he had stopped her. He held her back, restrained her, contained her with force, with fear, with the certainty that one wrong move could shatter them all.

Just as now… he would not allow anyone to approach Irulan with hatred. Not even Chani. Because, in some strange way, Irulan was also his beloved…

Yes. His beloved.

Irulan Corrino, daughter of the Lion of Salusa, the chess piece meant for political sacrifice… and who ended up bleeding for love.

“I should have protected her,” Paul said, more to himself than to Chani.

She looked at him, puzzled, not understanding what his words implied.

“Her? Irulan?”

Paul took a step forward, gaze lowered, heart heavy, throat tight.

“I am her husband. On paper, by duty, by strategy. But I exposed her anyway. And still, she chose to save what I loved most. What you love most.”

Chani studied him for a long while. There was no longer fury in her eyes, but something worse: incomprehension, cold and dry as stone.

“I don’t understand why it hurts you so much,” she said. “You saved me. You saved our child. What matters is safe.”

Paul looked at her, and for the first time felt vertigo. Because he loved Chani. But in that moment he knew she did not understand. Not like Irulan understood.

And that… broke him a little more.

Chani said nothing. She lowered her gaze to her belly, touching the tense skin, without tenderness, as if even her child were separating her from someone already lost.

Paul took another step, coming close to the bed. He did not dare touch her. Not yet. His breathing slowed, measured, containing the impulse to lean over, to hold her, to offer what he knew she needed.

“I’m going to stay with her for a while,” he said, voice soft, almost a whisper that trembled just slightly. “She’s alive, but barely. The damage was deep.”

Chani slowly lifted her head, expression neither anger nor sadness. It was something drier, harsher: cracked earth that had endured too much sun.

“And me?”

Paul pressed his lips together; the air between them grew heavy.

“You need me too. I know. I will be with you. I won’t leave you or our child.”

“But you’ll go to her first.”

It was not a question. It was a statement, a sentence falling on his shoulders like a lead weight.

Paul lowered his gaze. He could not deny it. The silence that followed was dense, almost physical, loaded with emotions too timid to speak, filling the space between the three of them with a heavy air of divided loyalties and contained pain.

And then, for the first time in this long dialogue with no room for tenderness, Chani looked away. She closed her eyes with a slow blink, as if holding back a scream, and murmured, barely audible, as if the words stuck in her throat:

“Tell me one thing.”

Paul raised his eyes to her. The silence between them pressed down, dense, weighted with years of decisions, spilled blood, and risked lives.

“Does this change anything?” Chani whispered, her voice broken yet firm, like a knife barely touching the skin but leaving a mark.

Paul did not respond. He did not know how. Because the answer was an echo that had yet to take shape in his chest, an echo that had begun as a muffled scream, with blood in the sand, with a throat wounded by a blade that was not his own. That echo resonated between his heart and mind, thrumming through every fiber of his body, reminding him of what he had lost and what he must protect.

And Chani, seeing him remain silent, nodded very slowly. She said nothing more. She merely turned her head slightly toward the wall, arranging herself in the bed carefully, as if doing so could distance herself from him more than words could. Her fingers rested on her belly, tense, reminding them both of what was at stake.

Paul stayed standing a few seconds longer, motionless, feeling every shadow, every breath, every heartbeat as if the room itself had shrunk around them. Then he left, each step echoing down the silent hallway, leaving behind the contained warmth of the room… to return to the cutting cold of the corridor, where the air smelled of stone, spice, and decisions that could not be undone.

 

---

When Paul returned to the room, the first thing he noticed was the change in the air. Something had broken in his absence. It was no longer the contained silence of someone angry, but something darker, more intimate, heavier, pressing against his chest with every step.

Irulan was curled into herself.

And she was crying.

Not with screams or sobs. She couldn’t. The tears fell heavy down her cheeks, one after another, dense and mute. They seemed to spring not only from her eyes, but from every corner of her wounded body, from every tense muscle, from every exhausted fiber. As if she were crying for everything she had lost… even for what was never given to her.

Paul lingered at the doorway for a moment. Just a moment. Then he moved forward with soft, measured steps, as if not wanting to break anything, as if walking on invisible shards of glass. Without speaking, without asking permission, he climbed onto the bed with the same delicacy someone would approach a desecrated altar.

Irulan’s back pressed against his chest. She tensed instantly, her body recoiled, wanting to pull away. He felt it. Felt her instinctive rejection, her mute resistance. But he did not let go. He wrapped her in his arms, firm and warm, enveloping her as if he could return some of what had been taken, as if his embrace could repair the part of her already broken.

He rested his forehead against her hair, closed his eyes, and whispered:

“I’m sorry…”

His voice cracked, low, grave, an echo vibrating through the silent room.

“Forgive me, Irulan. Forgive me for not seeing it coming… for not being there… for thinking I could control everything with my visions, when I didn’t even see this.”

She trembled. Not from fear. Not from anger. But because she heard him. Because she felt every word, every pause, every heartbeat that said more than any phrase. And she could not respond. Not with words.

“Forgive me for failing you as a husband. For letting this happen to you. For believing your life could wait, that your warnings were only politics.”

His arms tightened around her waist, as if fearing that any movement would push her away.

“And forgive me…” he whispered, almost inaudibly, “…for making you pay the price for my blindness. Because of me… you can no longer speak.”

Irulan closed her eyes. The tears did not stop. They only changed rhythm. No longer sharp, no longer isolated, no longer silent. Now they flowed, constant, like a river finally finding its course. As if at last there was someone close enough to cry without fear, as if someone held her pain without demanding anything in return.

Paul said nothing more. He simply stayed with her. In silence. The room seemed to hold its breath, as if the air itself waited. That stillness, once a barrier between them, was now the only bridge left.

An absent voice. An unspoken love. A shared wound, throbbing, like sand crunching beneath feet.

He felt her tremble beneath his arms, slight, as subtle as a leaf shivering in the wind. Each vibration of her body resonated against his, a silent reminder of all she had suffered. Irulan could not speak. Could not utter anything. But her silence filled everything: heavy, dense, encompassing, like a judgment falling from the depths of her chest to the floor.

“You are not alone,” he whispered, his breath brushing her ear, warm and damp. “I am here. I am with you, Irulan.”

She did not respond. She did not fully surrender, but neither did she reject him. Paul felt it: that contained tension, a thread of resistance mixed with need, trembling between their bodies. As if she did not know whether she could let herself fall or still had to hold on out of pride, fear, habit.

“I know it changes nothing,” he added, voice so low it seemed to blend with the heartbeat of the room. “I know my words cannot return to you what you have lost.”

Carefully, his hand sought hers. Irulan’s fingers, cold and trembling, yielded just slightly beneath his. They did not withdraw. Not completely. It was enough.

“I failed you,” he whispered, like a broken incantation, asking no forgiveness, only recognition.

His gaze fixed on her profile: the wet lashes catching light, the half-open mouth no longer capable of sound. That mouth that had so often held secrets, orders, and silence. Now, by fate or punishment, it was silenced, vulnerable.

Paul swallowed. The weight of his words rose through his throat, dense, viscous, as if each confession pressed on his shoulders, on his chest, on his skin.

“You leapt for Chani… for the baby… and I… I did nothing for you,” he confessed, almost a thread of voice breaking against the reality of their intertwined hands.

Irulan inhaled deeply. For a moment, Paul thought she would turn, confront him, that resistance would erupt. But she did not. Instead, her body yielded slightly, sliding against his. It was not an embrace, not a full surrender. It was a silent acknowledgment of someone exhausted from holding herself alone. A partial, minimal surrender, but enough.

Paul seized that small concession. He continued speaking to her, as if every word could reconstruct her broken pieces, as if he could weave an invisible refuge with sounds that did not exist for others.

“I swear I will not let this be in vain. I will not let them break you. Not again.”

She could not respond, but her body, that mixture of stiffness and partial surrender, began to yield slowly. Paul felt it in every fiber of his being. It was not forgiveness. Not yet. It was a minimal bridge, a thread of listening, a contact that said: I hear you, I hold you, you are not alone.

The air between them grew warm, dense, almost tangible. Their breaths mingled, their pulses drew closer, and the silence ceased to be empty. Every passing second was a brush of skin against skin, a shared heartbeat, a pain and a care that required no words.

And for now, that was enough.

 

---

Irulan slept, her body light against his, and Paul held her with extreme care, as if embracing her through a thin glass that could shatter with a harsh gesture. He felt her small, fragile, vulnerable; every muscle relaxed beneath his arms was a reminder of how much she had suffered and how easily he could still hurt her without meaning to. Her back fit perfectly against his chest, warm and delicate, and through the bandages still covering her neck he could feel the pulse of her life: subtle, insistent, stubborn. Each beat was a small miracle, reminding him that there was still time, that he could still be there for her.

Beautiful. The word appeared in his mind with a tenderness that hurt. He had never thought of her this way, as someone who could be loved for who she was, without crowns, without politics, without duty. She had always been a name on a game board, a face representing obligations. But now, broken, silent, entwined in his arms, she was simply Irulan: a woman who had risked herself, who had bled for others, who had given everything without receiving anything in return. His wife, in a sense that went beyond titles or duty. His wife, and he had failed.

He felt her light, trembling breath in moments, and leaned a little closer, letting his forehead gently brush her hair damp with sweat and tears. He wanted to say something, but there were no words that could encompass all he felt. His silence spoke for him: a commitment, a promise, an “I am here” that needed no explanation.

Paul lowered his head slightly and pressed his lips to the top of her hair, closing his eyes to absorb her presence, to feel her warmth, to remember that she was still alive. He inhaled her scent, a mix of faint perfume, skin, and freshly changed bandages, and for a moment let that closeness calm some of the guilt that burned in his chest. He held her tighter, gently, with the certainty that all he could do was hold and protect her while she rested.

He watched her sleep, her face serene under the effects of exhaustion and medicine, with those long lashes falling like still shadows over her damp cheeks. There were traces of dried tears, furrows left by crying as silent reminders of her pain. Even in dreams, her body seemed unwilling to forget. Paul felt his throat tighten. Not out of duty. Not for politics. But for her. For Irulan.

He did not know if the knot forming in his chest was gratitude, compassion, remorse for not seeing the harm coming, or something deeper, more confusing, more human. The only thing he knew for certain was that he could not stop holding her.

He thought of the exact moment he saw her fall, the instant he realized she had thrown herself to protect Chani, to protect the child she carried. That was the breaking point. Everything he thought he knew about her collapsed. Irulan was not a martyr. She was brave. Real. And that changed him completely.

His hand slid carefully along her back, as if by touching her he could erase the damage, but he could not. Something essential had been taken from her. Her voice. And he had not seen it coming.

He remembered her face when she looked at him from the floor, before closing her eyes, that attempt to speak that would never come, that mute plea that perhaps said, “don’t leave me” or maybe just, “help me.” Paul had failed as a husband, as an emperor, as a man. And the guilt burned in his chest.

He thought of Chani. Her cold gaze, her prominent belly, the lingering anger that had not yet faded. He thought of the words she had said, and the ones he had not dared to speak. Chani could not understand what he felt for Irulan. Because he barely understood it himself.

But there he was, lying next to her, feeling her breath, the slight tremor of her body beneath his own. Every heartbeat was a reminder of her vulnerability, of her silent courage, of the life still clinging within her. Without words, without grand gestures, Paul promised himself he would never fail her again. That he would protect her, even if he did not know how. Even if it meant walking an invisible line between love, duty, and guilt, risking everything else his life required.

Irulan had already bled too much for a love that was never promised. And yet, there she remained, fragile and strong at the same time, trusting, though not fully, that he would be there. Paul held her firmer, without smothering her, letting his warmth be a silent shield, a mute promise.

He closed his eyes, rested his forehead against her hair, and simply breathed. Shared his air, his closeness, his presence. Everything else could wait. Everything else could break. But not that—what existed in the subtle contact of two broken bodies finding and holding each other in stillness.

For the first time since it had all happened, he felt he could do something right. Not perfect, not complete, but something. Be. Hold. Care. Love, even if in silence.

Chapter Text

The door opened with a whisper that smelled of old leather and a sandstorm; Paul didn't need to see him to know who had come. Stilgar was there before his shadow brushed the threshold: a field of presence as hard as stone, with the desert’s dry breath and the metallic taste of knives still clinging to his skin. He did not enter like a guest. He entered like a reminder of the sand: relentless, patient, cutting.

Paul remained motionless, hearing the room’s beats as if they were small collapsing dunes. He looked at Irulan: the curve of her neck beneath the bandage, the breath rising and falling with the cadence of someone who takes refuge in sleep because waking hurts more. His hand —the one that held her— was warm and damp; the dried blood trembled under the bandage like a memory that still pulses. She was a presence he wanted to hold and at the same time something that had betrayed him.

When Stilgar’s breath became visible in the cold air, Paul rose with the slowness of someone who does not want to shatter a glass. He withdrew from Irulan like someone leaving a lamp burning before going out: carefully, fearing to extinguish it or to stoke it irreversibly. The corridor swallowed the sound of his steps; the door closing was a blunt thud, like a seal falling.

“What do you want?” Paul said without looking at him. His voice was an unpolished edge: short, rasped by the ash of fury.

“Justice,” Stilgar answered. “The Landsraad demands a stance. The Minor Houses press.”

The mention of the Houses fell into the air like a rain of stones. Paul finally turned. His eyes were two cold beacons that admitted no shadows; his pulse beat with that old music of omens that had once guided him.

“Let them wait.” The phrase did not seek counsel; it was an order that tasted of sand and iron. “Let them learn to fear. Today we do not negotiate. Today we carry out punishment.”

Stilgar did not avert his gaze, but in his silence there was a hesitation. Paul noticed it: a blink in the fremen’s mask of calm. It was not the doubt of a coward, but the measure of a man who checks the winds before launching himself.

“The House Moritani…” Stilgar murmured.

“It will be wiped out,” Paul replied in a low, cutting voice. “Let their name fall into the earth and become dust. Let their emblems shatter like glass. Executions. Exiles. Let their story serve as a lesson to those who would still lay a hand on the Empress.”

Paul had never used that word applied to Irulan. “Empress.” He said it like someone setting a cornerstone: with heat, with decree. He took a step toward Stilgar; the air between them seemed to thicken, charged with electricity and nameless promises.

“I’ll make it clear, Stilgar: I will sink them. Not for politics. Not for strategy. I’ll do it because I want to. Because they took her from me. Because for the first time I saw fear in my wife’s eyes and I will never forget that fear.”

There was a dense silence between them. The kind of silence that is born just before blood is spilled.

“Summon the Landsraad,” Paul finally ordered. “There will be no trials. Only punishment.”

The order fell like a hot slab across the corridor; the air vibrated with the energy after a detonation. Stilgar nodded, but the gesture was not the cold vassalage of before: it carried a new vein of respect, like the one offered to a wounded animal that bares its fangs. Not for the Emperor. For the man who preferred to set the universe on fire rather than allow a woman to be broken in silence.

Stilgar had seen Paul defy Shaddam, had seen him mounted on Shai-Hulud like a name taking shape. He had seen certainty transform into religion, visions set people ablaze, destiny’s weight nailed to Muad’Dib’s neck. But what burned now was neither theology nor strategy: it was something that smelled of blood and home. It was flesh.

It was personal.

Stilgar’s face became a mask in the dim light, eyes like wells measuring the depth of the oath. He understood, in that instant when the sand seems to hold its breath, that Irulan was no longer an emblem or a piece of leverage. She was a real presence in Paul’s chest: a burden both cold and warm, a broken promise stabbed against his ribs. Someone had touched her. Someone had torn her voice away. From her.

And that—Stilgar thought with the clarity of the sand before the storm—Paul would not forgive.

“I understand,” he said at last, voice low like gravel rolling. “The men we love do many things. But the men who hurt another man’s woman… those are capable of worse things.”

Paul looked at him. There was no gratitude or relief in his gaze; only a kind of dry recognition, like metal recognizing metal when they clash. It was the look of someone who has learned to read threat in people’s breathing.

“I don’t want them to understand,” Paul replied. “I want them to fear.”

The silence that followed had texture: it was thick, it filled the throat, and clung to the tongue like fine dust. Stilgar felt it like someone feeling the load before breaking into a run.

“They will,” he said finally. “When they see what you are willing to destroy for her, they will know there are no limits. Neither for you. Nor for the Empire.”

Paul barely nodded, a small movement that held back a volcano. Then he turned, his hand resting on the door that protected the room where Irulan slept. Before crossing the threshold, without turning back, he let fall one last sentence that smelled of hot iron:

“Not for the Empire. For her. Because this time… this time they took her from her.”

Stilgar closed his eyes for a moment, and in that brief blink he saw the tide to come: neither water, nor sand, nor the threads of fate—nothing—could contain the man now marching not for glory, but for vengeance.

When Paul returned to the room, it was sunk in a thick calm, as if the air itself had been congealed by the recent blood and fear. The door clicked shut behind him with a snap that resonated in the wood like a whip cracked a thousand times; the sound hung in the room, mixing with the mechanical hum of the machines as if they were insects that did not want to die. The air smelled of antiseptic and faint spice —a persistent reminder of the desert that never completely left—; it smelled of Irulan, of washed silk and a cool fragrance that once tasted of diplomacy and now only tasted of loss.

Irulan lay dozing on the cot, fragile as an unfinished crystal. The fever had sculpted her with a chisel’s eyes: her cheeks had become redder, her cheekbones pronounced as if the illness had wanted to return her face to some primordial sculpture. Her eyelids trembled in small quivers, like lanterns flickering in the fog of a painful dream. The bandage that wrapped her throat gleamed under the artificial light, clean yet marked by a reddish ink that told the story in silence; the dried blood formed lines that looked like ancient letters traced across the skin, a calligraphy of violence Paul reread and did not want to understand.

Paul let himself fall beside her with the slowness of someone who fears provoking an avalanche. Lying down next to her was like sinking into the sand: every muscle tightened the cord of his patience and, at the same time, surrendered to the gravity of pain.

He slid a hand under her nape, holding it with a delicacy that contradicted the hardness of his decisions; the other rested on her belly, barely touching, like someone measuring the line between care and imposition. He felt her weight —or her lightness— as an enigma: how something so fragile had borne so much calculation, so much imposed silence by politics, so much cold scorn from courts and Houses that play with crowns like pieces on a board. And yet, seeing her like that, reduced to shadow and bandage, he knew all of that had been in vain if he could not protect her.

Paul’s body carried a foreign wound that pulsed with its own rhythm. It did not come from battles, nor from spears or bullets; it was not a mark on his skin but the echo of the voice Irulan would no longer have. Each contained breath of hers erased a piece of the world for him; each time her chest moved, a tide of memories struck him: the image of Chani on the edge of death, that decision Irulan made, that damned interposition. His wife’s eyes showing fear for the first time, the certainty that someone had reached that place to take something that did not belong to them. This was not politics. This was a personal affront, a cut that could not be healed with decrees or alliances.

Visions rose as always, not by benevolence but as punishment: flashes of sand opening beneath feet, of Shai-Hulud standing erect like an antenna of fate, of crowds chanting the name he bears. But today, among the lights and shadows of his prescience, there was a new clarity: the image of a House erased, banners sunk in the sand and heads rolling with the gravity of ancient sacrifices.

It was not a distant plan: it was a necessity burning at the center of his chest. Rage collected in his throat, hard and metallic; tenderness clung to his skin like a second mask he didn’t know whether to keep.

He leaned toward her and watched her with an attention that bordered on devotion and obsession in care. Every line of her face spoke to him of a life unlived, of words that would no longer exist in Irulan’s mouth.

He imagined the absent sound: the voice that had been extinguished, the unsaid phrases floating in the room like luminous dust. That outrage stung him to the roots: not for honor, not for title, but for the simple and brutal fact that something that defined her had been taken from her. And in that atrocity he saw the door open to a fury that would not be contained by laws or speeches.

His hands trembled, not from age or fatigue, but from the tension between duty and vengeance. He remembered Stilgar in the corridor, the look of understanding that had taken the form of a silent oath. He felt the weight of the Empire on his nape like a long shadow, but that shadow now leaned toward the person beside the bed, not toward the throne.

The room seemed to narrow until it became a capsule where time stuck. Outside, the palace could go on with its ceremonies and its lies, but inside reality was defined by a simple, ferocious vow: there would be no negotiation, no replies. Only the cold execution of a moral temperature he himself would impose. He felt in every fiber the capacity for cruelty he had sworn to avoid; he realized that love could be turned into a weapon and that, in his hands, the Empire could be a hammer to crush anyone who dared touch what he protects.

Paul rested his forehead for a moment on Irulan’s temple, closing his eyes as if to catch the last breath that still belonged to her. He did not seek consolation: he sought fuel. Tenderness, resentment, rage, and guilt blended until they produced a flame that lit him from within.

He knew that if he left that room the talk with the Landsraad would no longer be rhetoric: it would be a declaration of war of the most intimate feelings and therefore merciless. He settled even closer to her, slowly, like someone touching a sacred relic, and swore in a low voice —not for the advisers, nor for the gods of the desert, but for the woman who slept with her voice torn away— that he would make her wordlessness be paid in broken names and consumed destinies.

So he stayed. In silence. Feeling the weight of his body against hers, and that invisible hollow in the air where Irulan’s voice had once lived.

And while she slept, he kept watch, not as emperor, nor as husband… but as a shadow.

 

---

A week has passed.

The fall of House Moritani was not merely an act of vengeance: it was a sermon written in blood and fire, a decree that resonated through the corridors of power and the deserts of every planet: no one touched what belonged to the Emperor without paying the highest price. Paul did not have to pronounce words after the massacre. The galaxy understood. The nobles fell silent, suffocated by fear and certainty. Enemies retreated, trembling before the cruel precision he had carried out. Brutal, exact, relentless: each blow left scars that would never be erased.

And still, none of it filled the void.

Irulan was no longer in the medical wing. She had returned to her quarters, though “room” was too mild a word for the capsule where she now existed. She didn’t live there; she drifted between walls that seemed to absorb her. Quieter than ever, more distant, more closed off — like a broken doll sealed behind glass. If she had once been an ice-cold princess, now she was ice itself, carved into human shape. She no longer walked: she glided. She no longer looked: she avoided. She no longer spoke, because she couldn’t. And perhaps, deep down, because she no longer wanted to.

She hid even from herself.

But Paul would not allow that. Not while his breath reminded him he was still alive.

He entered her room without announcing himself, without asking permission. His steps were soft, measured, almost ritualistic. Sometimes he would sit in silence, watching her as one contemplates something sacred and fragile. Sometimes he would take her hand with a gentleness that seemed to contradict everything he had ever done in his life: destroying systems, breaking houses, imposing terror. If she withdrew, he waited. If she cried, he didn’t leave. He had learned to read every sigh, every tremor of her fingers, every prolonged silence that had never existed between them before. He became patient to the point of pain. Insistent until resistance itself broke. Because there was something in her he could not lose, something he didn’t fully understand — but that now was his. Not as possession, but as promise.

His little wife.

That’s how he called her in the privacy of his thoughts. “Little” not because she was fragile, but because of how she fit in his arms, how she curled into herself as if the whole world had crushed her. And he… he could not allow her to disappear. Not even inside her own mind, where the laws of the Empire could not reach.

Because that would be a second death. And Paul Atreides would not let his wife die twice.

He felt her fragmented, suspended between silence and shadow, and every time his gaze rested on her, the weight of power, the fury held in check, and the promise of vengeance mingled with an obsessive care — with a brutal love capable of building or destroying universes. The war had ended outside, but in that room, between held breaths and trembling hands, was the only battle Paul was willing to fight to the very end: saving her from the death that had already claimed her, and from the one that might claim her again if he failed.

And he would not fail. Never.

“Then the palace should start learning sign language?” Alia asked, her crooked smile carved from shadow, like someone tossing a stone into water just to watch the ripples and see how far they reached. His sister was perhaps the only one capable of dragging him out of his thoughts with simple provocations, like a wind stirring the sand and revealing what had been buried too long.

Alia sat on the edge of Paul’s desk, swinging one leg with studied carelessness, with the insolent ease that only youth and familiarity allowed. Her voice carried that almost-childlike cadence she used when she wanted to prick through the skin of seriousness — not out of cruelty, but from pure cynicism, boredom, or perhaps a disquieting mix of both.

Paul didn’t lift his gaze from the documents. His eyes were fixed on the diplomatic reports, on the consequences of House Moritani’s extermination, on the tense silences already beginning to colonize the halls of the Landsraad. He needed to finish quickly. He needed time. Time to see Chani, whose skin was beginning to lose its healthy glow. Time to watch her belly with the unease of one who knows the future and fears every step of its inevitable course. She said she was fine, but Paul saw beyond that; he saw the shadow of what was coming.

He also needed to see Irulan. To make sure the servants followed his orders precisely, that her food arrived hot, that the silence ruling her chambers was not emptiness, but respect. He had to see her, even if she barely lifted her gaze, even if she seemed to shrink a little more each day, as though the room itself were compressing her into a mold that asked no permission.

“Not now, Alia,” he said curtly, without looking up.

Alia didn’t flinch. Like a mischievous specter, she slid off the desk with a fluid motion, leaving behind a trail of irony in the air.

“I thought she was your wife, brother. Doesn’t that make her… important?” she murmured softly, her tone dripping with innocence disguised as venom, a subtle edge scratching at Paul’s pride.

At last, he looked at her. And his eyes were no longer those of the young duke he had once been. No. They were the eyes of a man who had seen the abyss, who had crossed the dunes of death and betrayal, and had decided to build his throne on the very edge of nothingness.

“She is,” said Paul, his voice low and dense, an echo dragging with it the threat of an entire universe. “She is.”

Alia tilted her head, amused by the intensity emanating from her brother, as if she relished the fire he tried to contain.

“Then I hope you’re learning to read her lips. Or better yet,” she said, eyes gleaming with mischief, “to listen to her silences. Sometimes, the most important things are said without a voice.” And with a graceful motion, as if planting a seed in fertile soil, she stepped away from the desk. A seed that would grow in the most fertile ground: guilt.

She dropped into one of the seats before the desk, her posture carrying the insolent air of a child who still survived despite the darkness gathering in her eyes. She stretched as if no concern existed in the universe, legs dangling, fingers idly playing with a small training knife stolen from one of the palace apprentices.

“Does it bother you when I say that?” she asked, her crooked smile like a line breaking in the sand. “Everyone thinks it. No one says it, of course. But you — the great Kwisatz Haderach, emperor, god to some — now chasing after a woman who can’t even tell you what she feels. It’s almost… poetic.”

Paul clenched his jaw, the sound echoing through his bones. He didn’t lift his eyes from the document in his hands, though every word had turned to smoke, blurred and useless since Alia had entered. The exhaustion crushed him — not only from the weight of the Houses or his duties, but from the relentless burden of seeing the future and still being unable to escape pain. Every thought was an invisible dagger, and his sister’s words had a blade that smelled of old poison, of inherited betrayal, of memories that refused to die.

“It’s not the time, Alia,” he warned, his voice a rasp of tension — a cord ready to cut before any word could cross it.

Alia tilted her head, amused, certain she could play with fire without getting burned.

“Tell me, brother…” — her words were poisoned caresses — “which one do you love more? The mother of your child, or the wife you can’t leave alone?”

Finally, Paul looked up. Slowly. Heavily. His pupils were a contained storm, a desert ready to devour everything in its path. Alia hesitated for an instant; for a second, she saw in him something that wasn’t just anger. It was a broken universe — past and present locked in endless war.

“It’s not just about love,” Paul said, his voice low but firm, vibrating with gravity. “It’s about what’s right. About what can’t be undone. About the consequences of everything I ignored for too long.”

Alia narrowed her eyes, studying every tense muscle, every shadow devouring the light of the room. Then she smiled — a small, sharp smile, like a blade wrapped in silk.

“That sounds like guilt, not justice.”

“And what do you know of justice?” he retorted, standing fully now, the papers falling to the floor with a sharp thud. “You, who’ve never lost something you couldn’t get back. You, who only know how to watch from the shadow of blood.”

Silence fell like coarse sand over their shoulders. Alia laughed — but it wasn’t her usual mocking laughter; it hurt. It sounded like confusion, like something she couldn’t name. For a moment, Paul seemed a stranger even to her.

“She’s not going to be the same again, Paul,” she whispered softly, almost reverently. “And neither will you.”

Paul didn’t answer. He walked to the door like a man crossing an inner desert, each step resonating through skin and bone. He had to see Chani — to make sure her breathing wasn’t heavy with pain, that his child still existed in a world without invisible scars.

Then, he would go to Irulan. To his wife, his beautiful living ghost. No, she would not be the same. But he would not let her fade. Even if he had to learn to speak with his hands, with his eyes, with the silence carrying the weight of the universe.

Even if he had to relearn what it meant to be a husband.

 

---

Chani’s room was dim, steeped in a dense scent of Fremen essences: sage, crushed roots, and that faint bitterness barely masking the desert wind’s acrid sting. Sand had crept even into the carpets, crunching underfoot as a reminder that, even in a palace, they still belonged to Arrakis. Paul entered quietly, his cloak still dusty from the walk, his shoulders tense, his gaze harder than he meant it to be. Each step was careful, as if he feared breaking something invisible.

Chani sat upright on the bed despite her exhaustion. Her belly had become its own planet — a weight that made her more fragile and, at the same time, more formidable. The dignity that had survived the desert, the Empire’s intrigues, and even religion itself still held her up, but now it was a dignity made of bone and exhaustion. She looked at him without speaking. Her eyes were dark water in a cracked glass.

“Do you feel better?” Paul asked, closing the door behind him with a gesture that was almost a sigh.

“I’m fine,” she said shortly, dryly. A lie — or half of one. She was alive, yes. But every day she felt the child draining her, as if it were the inevitable price of giving a god an heir.

Paul sat beside her without touching her. The silence between them was heavier than the air thick with herbs. He watched her for a long time, as if searching in her eyes for an anchor, forgiveness, understanding. He found none of them.

“You’ve been with Irulan,” Chani said at last. She didn’t frown or look away. She only breathed deeper, and the air sounded like a string pulled taut.

“She’s alive,” Paul said, repeating it like a prayer, a spell. “But barely. She doesn’t speak. Hardly eats. Moves as if she wants to vanish.”

“And you won’t let her?” Chani asked, her voice calm but with a knife’s edge in every syllable.

“No,” he admitted. “I can’t. Not after what she’s done.”

“What she’s done?” Chani repeated, tasting the words. “Saved me? Or poisoned me for years so I couldn’t give you a child?”

Paul closed his eyes. He felt that old, sharp knot that even prescience couldn’t undo. Chani always brought it up, and he could never evade it.

“Both are true,” he said, weary not just in body but in soul. “Both live in her. And in me.”

Chani turned then, facing him fully. Her face was pale, but her gaze burned.

“And in me? Where am I in all this?” Her voice trembled — not from weakness, but from contained fury. “You look at me as if I were still the vision you saw in the cave: the messiah’s lover, the woman meant to give you an heir. But do you see me now, Paul? Do you truly see me? I’m here. Tired. Broken. And you — you’re torn between two fires you lit yourself.”

Paul reached out a hand, wanting to take hers, but Chani drew it away — slowly, like someone setting down a weapon.

"It breaks me, what they did to you," he whispered. "To you. To her. To all of you. It breaks me that I didn’t see the blow coming. It breaks me to see how every choice takes me further away from you."

"And what will you do, then?" Chani asked, her eyes fixed on his. The room seemed to shrink around them. "Will you be her comfort? My shadow? Or the emperor who watches everything from his throne and feels nothing?"

Paul didn’t answer. Because he didn’t have that answer yet. He only knew that the wound—the one of Irulan, of Chani, of himself—would never fully close. He could only decide which one would bleed more slowly.

He stayed silent beside her. He didn’t try to touch her again, as if the mere attempt had already consumed the last of his courage. But he didn’t leave either. He remained there, breathing the same heavy air of herbs and sand, his back bowed under a weight that wasn’t physical.

And Chani, though she didn’t look at him, didn’t send him away. Her hands rested over her belly like a shield, and on her eyelids trembled a fatigue that wasn’t sleep, but war. The silence between them wasn’t truce nor reconciliation: it was only the pause before another battle.

 

---

Irulan, unlike Chani, definitely wanted him out of her room. Every time Paul crossed the threshold, the tension was palpable—like a knife pressed against a throat. She would turn her face away, give him her back, or look at him with those green eyes burning with mute fury that seemed to pierce him like spears. She didn’t need to speak. Her silence was more eloquent than any insult. It made it clear—without a word—that his mere presence was another wound. One that would not heal.

Paul, however, didn’t move. Ever. He refused to yield, refused to leave her alone. His stubbornness was as unbreakable as the desert sand. Sometimes he sat nearby, elbows on his knees, gaze lowered, breathing with forced calm, as if patience could be a bridge. Other times, he simply watched her, attentive to her gestures, reading in the folds of her brow and the tension of her fingers what her wounded throat could no longer pronounce.

And though it was true that Irulan didn’t want him there, that she rejected him with every muscle, there was something almost endearing in that anger. Paul discovered it in details he had never bothered to notice before. The slight furrow of her brow, a fine but relentless line. The way she pressed her lips—now condemned to silence—into a hard, almost cruel line. That gesture reminded him of a little girl defending a sandcastle before the wave destroyed it. Once, he would have called it arrogance. Now he saw it as survival.

In his mind, Irulan was like a wounded cat: small, elegant, precious… and furious. A creature that had lost its voice but not its claws. And he knew it. She could still scratch. She always had. And still, he came back every day.

He came back because he had left her alone for too long. He came back because someone had taken not only her voice, but something more intimate: the security of existing in a place that didn’t devour her. He came back because—and this was the truth he couldn’t even admit to himself—he feared that if he didn’t, one day she would simply stop fighting. And if that happened, he would carry a guilt even more unbearable.

"Yenil told me you didn’t finish your food," Paul said at last, his voice low, almost a whisper, as if afraid to shatter the air like glass.

She didn’t look at him. She sat on the divan, her back too straight for someone bearing so much weight. Her feet rested under a light blanket, carefully arranged, as if even in fragility she refused to show weakness. In her right hand she held a quill, and on the low table before her lay several scrolls spread out in meticulous order.

Paul stopped a few steps away, watching. The lamplight slid across her bandaged neck, across the curve of her pale cheek. Every movement of her wrist was an act of resistance, a stubbornly human heartbeat against the silence forced upon her. Her handwriting was impeccable, as if each stroke were a contained scream. A way of refusing to let her voice—her most powerful weapon—disappear completely.

The scratching of the quill against parchment filled the room, a dry, steady sound that became a cruel reminder for Paul: she no longer needed to speak for him to understand what she felt. The simple act of writing was defiance—a wall raised between them.

And yet, despite that wall, despite the mute fury, he found comfort in watching her write. Because it meant she was still there. That she hadn’t given up completely. That something within her remained unbroken.

"I’m glad you’re still writing," Paul said softly, his voice carrying an echo of exhaustion. "I always liked the way you did it. How you could turn something horrible into something worth remembering."

Irulan didn’t answer. Her jaw tightened slightly—an almost invisible gesture, but clear enough for him: pride, stubbornness, pain.

"But you need to eat too," he added, forcing a smile that never reached his eyes. "I can’t take care of you if you won’t take care of yourself."

The quill fell onto the parchment with a dull click. Irulan glanced at him sideways, and those green eyes—alight with the mute fever of her rage—shouted louder than any words: leave, go away, don’t save me if you came too late.

Paul sat beside her without asking. He felt the immediate tension in the air, that invisible wall she always raised whenever he came too close. But he didn’t retreat. He brought the tray closer, brushing her hand with his fingertips—barely a touch, more a plea than a daring move.

"Just a little," he murmured, his tone more supplication than command.

He took the bowl—the warm, mild mixture the healers had prepared: simple, soft, almost tasteless. He filled the spoon, blew gently, and brought it to her lips. The gesture was ridiculous compared to the weight of the empire, the blood he had spilled in the name of his throne. And yet, his hand trembled.

Irulan held his gaze, and in those endless seconds she seemed to decide not only whether she would open her mouth, but whether she would allow Paul into that intimate space she had so fiercely defended. In the end, she did. Slowly, with the dignity of a queen who would not bargain her weakness, even when broken.

Paul watched the slight movement of her throat as she swallowed. Saw how her fingers pressed against the blanket, stifling the pain that still tore through her with each gulp. He wanted to speak, to say something to ease that burden, but the silence was too dense. The only thing that escaped was a sigh.

"One more," he said, refilling the spoon.

And so, slowly, with long pauses where she breathed and he held his breath, Irulan accepted each spoonful. The metallic sound of the spoon against the bowl became a rhythm, intimate and constant, filling the room more than any words. It was a ritual. An act of penance. A silent promise: I won’t leave you alone again.

In the end, her hand trembled. Just a faint shiver, but enough for Paul to hold it gently, without pressure, as if he feared she might break under his touch.

"You’re doing well," he murmured, his voice filled with something even he didn’t recognize: tenderness. "You’re stronger than you think."

Irulan didn’t look at him. But she didn’t pull away either. And Paul understood that, though forgiveness wasn’t in her eyes, there was something even more valuable in that moment: the will to stay alive.

And for now, that was enough.

When she finished, Irulan turned her face away immediately, with that sharp, proud gesture she had perfected over the years—as if by merely turning she could deny that Paul was still there. She didn’t want to see him. Not now. Not after swallowing spoonful after spoonful like some fragile, broken creature forced to need his help.

Paul, in turn, said nothing. He simply gathered the empty dishes with the same unshakable patience with which he had borne every silence. He set them aside, on the floor, and when he straightened, his eyes did not waver. Before Irulan could react, before she could shield herself again behind the wall of her anger, he lifted her firmly, holding her beneath the arms, as if she were still light as a child. The contact startled him—the thin bones, the tension in her muscles, the weight of a broken dignity hanging from her like an invisible cloak.

He moved her slowly, with obstinate gentleness, just enough to sit behind her on the same divan. And without asking permission, without leaving room for doubt, he drew her against his chest. Her small, rigid back fit into the circle of his arms, which closed around her like a warm, unbreakable cage.

Irulan stayed still for a few seconds, like a statue made of held breath. The space between them vibrated with tension, a silence so sharp it could cut the skin. Paul tilted his head slightly, and his lips brushed the edge of her hair, catching that faint scent of ink and sweet spices that always seemed to surround her. A delicate scent that contrasted with the rough bitterness of the Fremen herbs that still lingered in the room.

Then, with that mute fury that had become her fiercest language, Irulan dug her nails into Paul’s forearms. Not hard enough to draw blood, but sharp enough to remind him: I don’t want you here. Don’t bend me. Don’t think you’ve won. Her nails were small lances of pride clinging to what little she had left.

Paul didn’t move. He didn’t try to stop her. He only smiled faintly against her hair, closing his eyes, and in that instant, the sting of her nails felt more human, more real than everything he had carried in his visions.

Beautiful, he thought—not as mockery or empty comfort, but with deep, almost reverent tenderness, as one who recognizes fierceness in something small and precious.

Because yes—when he said Irulan was like a cat that didn’t meow but still scratched, he meant it literally. There she was: wounded and proud, fragile and fierce all at once, an elegant creature that still had claws. And Paul, deep down, preferred her scratches a thousand times over the thought of seeing her surrender.

 

---

Irulan clenched her teeth—or she would have, if her body weren’t so exhausted, if the weight of Paul at her back didn’t steal even that small act of defiance. She felt him too close, too warm, too inevitable. And she hated it. Hated everything about that closeness: the way he settled behind her so naturally, as if he owned her, as if he had the right to hold her, to lean on her wounded existence. As if this weren’t an open wound burning with every breath.

She hated her weak body, the smallness she’d been reduced to, the humiliating feeling of fitting entirely within his arms. She hated not being able to speak, not being able to shout at him to leave, to stop, that she couldn’t bear his compassion or that tenderness with which he now treated her. She hated the gentleness in his touch, the way he moved her as though afraid she might shatter, the delicacy in every gesture, in every word barely whispered. As if Paul were trying to care for a broken vase.

And she had never wanted that. Never wanted to be something fragile in anyone’s hands. Least of all his.

But the worst wasn’t the compassion. The worst was what it awakened in her.

Because that tenderness... that patience... that way Paul adjusted her arms or helped her swallow without a hint of discomfort... was the kind of care Irulan had once dreamed of. Closeness without masks. Intimacy without distance. The simple, everyday touch of a husband who was there not out of duty, but by choice.

That was what she had always wanted. What she had never had. And now that she did, she hated it with every ounce of strength left in her.

Because she didn’t want it like this.
She didn’t want it out of guilt.
She didn’t want it out of pity.
She didn’t want it now—when she had already lost so much.

And yet, she couldn’t escape. Not her broken body. Not her silence. Not him.

Her chest rose with difficulty against Paul’s back, and each breath was a cruel reminder: she was alive, yes, but at a cost. The warmth of his embrace wrapped around her—a soft prison she couldn’t reject, and which she hated to need.

It was the touch she had always longed for. And at the same time, the most unbearable prison.

So she buried her nails in his flesh with the strength she had left, her only way of screaming what her throat could no longer voice. Because if Paul thought she would fade in his arms like a grateful ghost, he was wrong. She was still there. Even if she couldn’t say it. Even if it hurt. Even if every fiber of her being wanted to push him away… and another, deeper, older one didn’t know how.

"Don’t scratch me, Irulan. It hurts," Paul said behind her, with that soft tone he used when he wanted to irritate her more.

His breath brushed the back of her neck, warm and calm, as if there were nothing to fear, as if this moment weren’t a silent battle. Irulan rolled her eyes in exasperation, not bothering to hide her annoyance. How absurd. Of course it didn’t hurt. How could it? A few nails in the skin were nothing to someone like him. Paul Atreides had survived the desert, knives, wars, visions that bled him from within. And yet here he was, whining like a wounded boy.

The heat of his arms, the weight of his body—it was all too much. Too present. Too patient. Too soft for her, who had only ever known hardness. She felt every breath of his like a slow blow against her back, every heartbeat like a reminder that she was alive but trapped. And that scent—that mix of spice, sand, and metal—seeped into her skin and filled her with fury.

He liked provoking her. That had to be it. He liked driving her mad, pulling some reaction from her, even if it was a scratch. It was the only explanation.

Because Paul wasn’t stupid. He knew perfectly well that those scratches were her way of speaking, of screaming, of saying that she was still there. That she didn’t want him so close. Or that she wanted him in a way she could no longer allow herself to feel.

And still, he always came back. As if he didn’t understand—or worse, as if he did and stayed anyway. As if her marks were something precious, as if every nail she dug into his skin were a sign of life, an “I’m still here” he cherished.

Irulan pressed her fingers harder, just to defy him. Just to make sure he knew she was still herself, even if he tried to wrap her in his tenderness as if that could heal her. Her nails trembled for a moment against his skin—not from weakness, but from anger. And Paul, instead of pulling away, breathed deeper, lowered his head, and rested his forehead on her shoulder, as if the small pain she caused him were an anchor, a bond.

The silence between them thickened, almost tangible. Irulan felt her own pulse in her nails, his pulse in his skin. She felt his warmth seeping into her cold. And she hated—more than anything—the spark of something like relief that broke through her fury.

Because he was there. Because she could still scratch. Because, in some corner of herself, she had not yet disappeared.

 

---

Irulan’s food contained mild sedatives, a dose precisely calculated by the court’s physicians. It wasn’t strong enough to make her drowsy, but enough to soothe the constant burn in her throat and allow her to swallow without the pain tearing her apart. Paul knew this, and he was not surprised when, gradually, the scratches ceased.

First her fingers loosened, then her nails withdrew from his skin as if Irulan’s fury had been carried away by a slow, sweet tide. Next came the weight.

Her body went soft, her shoulders slumped, her breathing became more regular, and the tension that defined her so strongly faded as the sedative took hold. Finally, Irulan fell asleep.

Paul felt her small frame surrender completely against him, as if she were finally allowing him to hold her without resistance. Every small curve of her back, every hunched shoulder, every measured breath was a silent confession of exhaustion. A small victory. An involuntary surrender.

The princess slept.

With her head resting on his chest, her blonde hair falling like silk over his arm, Irulan no longer seemed like an empress or the daughter of an empire. She was just a broken, exhausted, fragile woman. And, for a moment that lasted a blink of awareness, completely his.

Paul lowered his gaze, observing her relaxed face, the long lashes trembling with whatever she was dreaming. His hand moved carefully to wrap around her waist more firmly, mindful not to press too hard, not to invade more than necessary. Every muscle in his arm was tense, controlled, as if he feared breaking an invisible glass.

Her breathing mingled with his, slow, almost imperceptible, and each exhalation from Irulan was a silent affirmation: she was still alive. She was still here. Despite the poison. Despite the damage. Despite what she had lost.

Paul turned his gaze to the ceiling, though he truly saw nothing. His mind filled with images and thoughts, like sand slipping through a finger. What would become of her now? What would a Bene Gesserit do without her voice? The Voice was not just a weapon; it was an extension of her will, her seal, her strength. For a sister of that order, losing her speech was like losing her identity. Like amputating the tongue of a sacred orator, like shattering the crystal of a ceremonial dagger.

And the Bene Gesserit would know. Sooner or later, they would know everything. But Paul sensed this: it would not be her voice they mourned most. They would grieve, if at all, for the future Irulan could no longer provide. They would grieve if her womb had been damaged. If the genetic legacy she carried, woven through centuries of plans and blends, had been lost.

Paul felt the bitter irony: there she was, more alive in her fragility than in the perfection the order had planned. More real than any vision of power. More human than any political objective. And that truth struck him with a strange, silent force: his tenderness for her was heightened by her inability to speak, by the fragile dependence she had never wanted to reveal.

Irulan could be a Bene Gesserit, yes. But to them, she had been first and foremost a princess. A womb with imperial lineage. A valuable piece on the political chessboard, now fractured. But not in the place they would have feared most. Here, in the dimness of her room, there were no strategies, no calculated futures. Only her. Broken, fragile, alive. And her vulnerability was not a number or a plan: it was hers, and that was enough for Paul.

He lowered his gaze again, and without thinking, his hand caressed Irulan’s flat stomach, rising and falling with her breathing. There was no life there. There never had been. Not between them. And yet, the gesture was gentle. Unconscious. Almost a reflex of pure care, beyond politics, beyond any expectation.

He had held her for the first time the night of the attack, when Irulan writhed in pain and cried without being able to scream. In that moment, Paul had taken her without thought. Not as Emperor. Not as husband. Just as someone who could not bear to see her suffer. But in the days that followed, the act became deliberate. Necessary.

It didn’t feel strange to touch her. On the contrary. Every brush, every curve, every contained breath of her body against his was a reminder of what he must protect. It felt inevitable. Irulan, with all her pride, her mute fury, and her silence, belonged to him in a way that no decree, vision, or imperial right could challenge.

There was something profoundly human—and profoundly his—in surrounding her with his arms. In keeping her small body safe within the warmth of his chest. In refusing to let her sink into that silence, into the void that now enveloped her like a shroud. The fragility of her skin, the softness of her hair, the slight tremor of her hands were a language Paul understood without words. Every gesture of hers, even asleep, told him her story of pain and resilience.

She was his wife. His responsibility. His living ghost.

And he would not allow her to be lost. Even if he had to hold her like this every day. Even if he had to learn every line of her face instead of her words. Even if he had to learn to read her hands, her eyes, her breath. Even if he had to forget the visions. Even if it hurt. Even if every second of contact reminded him how fragile life could be and how cruel fate could be.

Paul stayed with her a while longer, in silence, simply feeling her breathing against his chest, the slight weight of Irulan asleep in his arms. Her warm breath mingled with his, and every small movement, every slight shift of shoulders or head, told him she was still alive. She seemed younger this way, lighter, as if all the layers of duty, pride, and strategy that defined her had evaporated, leaving only the woman breathing before him.

When the sun began to set behind the palace towers, painting the walls in deep metallic red, Paul knew it was time. With great care, he placed one hand under Irulan’s knees and the other on her back. He lifted her in his arms as if she were made of glass. She didn’t wake; she barely murmured something inaudible from her sleeping throat, a sigh lost in the warm afternoon air.

Every muscle in Paul’s body was tense but controlled. Every breath measured the fragility of his charge. The princess rested on him like a sacred object, a living relic on which he depended more than on his imperial duty. Her golden hair spilled over his arm like threads of light. Her delicate hands still showed the contained strength she had used to resist the whole world, but now they surrendered to his embrace without force, without struggle.

He carried her out of her room and slowly through the inner corridors to the imperial chamber. No one dared stop him, speak to him, or even look directly at him. Every step seemed to trace a secret rite in the dim light filtered by the reddish glow from the high windows. At this point, it was not unusual to see the Emperor carrying his wife as if in a sacred act. But something in his gaze that afternoon—something darker, more resolved, weighted with an undeniable gravity—made even the oldest Fremen bow their heads in respect and fear.

Upon reaching the bed, Paul gently laid her among the cool sheets. Every movement was slow, deliberate, as if he feared breaking not only her body, but the thin line between life and the memory of the woman Irulan had been before all this. He brushed a golden lock from her forehead; her skin was still slightly damp from residual fever, and his fingers lingered there longer than necessary, caressing lightly, imprinting the sensation, recording her existence in his memory.

"Rest, Irulan," he murmured, though he knew she wouldn’t hear him, that not even in dreams would she perceive his words.

He rose slowly, eyes tracing every line of her face, every curve he had never had the right to touch before. Not as Emperor. Not as husband. As something rawer, more intimate. As a man seeing a woman he had never known before, and now could not leave behind.

Exiting the room, he found a young maid waiting, hands clasped, body stiff with respect and fear.

"Have her clothes changed," Paul ordered without preamble, his voice low and firm. "Something comfortable to sleep in. Don’t wake her. Gently."

The girl nodded with a bow, understanding that any mistake could cost more than punishment.

Paul lingered a moment outside, the door closed between him and the world, breathing in the incense- and spice-laden air of the room, feeling the weight of his own decision. Then he turned, his face hardened again, the mask of Emperor ready to be put back on.

He still had to return to Chani. Make sure she didn’t feel abandoned or displaced.

But part of him… part of him would remain here. Outside that room.

With the woman who could no longer scream at him. And yet, spoke everything. Every sigh, every curve of her body, every silence. Every fragment of her still alive, despite everything.

 

---

Irulan hated waking in Paul’s chambers. That dark, vast, overly quiet bed, the walls carved with Fremen inscriptions she never fully deciphered. She hated the way the air smelled different there: dry, heavy with his presence, with a warm, lingering trace she hadn’t asked for, yet which enveloped her. Perhaps Paul did not leave her there out of pity or routine. Perhaps it was… for something she was not ready to name.

And that was what enraged her the most. Because she did not know whether she wanted to reject it… or simply fall asleep again in that bed, where no one touched her without permission, yet someone watched every breath while she floated between sleep and wakefulness. The sensation of warmth, of silent security, disturbed her almost as much as her wounded pride.

Still, it remained foolish. Irulan knew it, even if she hated to admit it, because that room was not hers. It was Paul’s room: the imperial room, a sanctuary carved with the authority and strength of his presence, where light filtered through heavy curtains like golden sand, and every shadow seemed to pay homage. Every object, every piece of furniture, every tapestry whispered Paul’s name, even when he was not there. And yet, she slept there. Inexplicably.

For years, she had watched with a coldness that bordered on marble how Paul and Chani shared a modest, simple room, devoid of excess, where desert light entered directly, where sand and dust formed an invisible mattress of memory and belonging. Chani could not tolerate opulence or the oppressive gold; she preferred austerity, the closeness of the real world, the refuge of daily life on Arrakis. There, among the simple, was her home with Paul.

Irulan, by contrast, had her own room, worthy of a princess, with high ceilings, embroidered tapestries, windows overlooking internal gardens, air perfumed with delicate scents she had never chosen. But even that magnificence could not compete with the imperial room, which had now, without permission or logic, become her habitual bed.

She woke there night after night, feeling the cold texture of the sheets mixed with Paul’s residual warmth, the dimness casting shadows on the wall, and the silent murmur of objects that spoke of him even when he was absent. Every dawn reminded her that, although she was near Paul, she remained an intruder in that world, a shadow between two loves that had never fully intertwined, a displaced figure between what she could have and what she must never touch.

 

---

“She could be born in the desert,” Chani said, still lying down, wrapped in Paul’s firm, warm arms, her fingers brushing lightly against the tense, warm skin of her belly, feeling every internal movement, every subtle contraction as a warning of the world to come.

“Why not here?” Paul asked, his voice low and measured, like someone caressing trembling glass, while his hands followed the contour of her belly, noting the firmness beneath the skin, the warmth rising and falling with each breath of Chani.

“She is a Fremen,” she replied, with absolute clarity that seemed plucked from the sun itself. “She must be born in the sand, in her true home, where the wind and heat greet her first, where the desert dust marks her skin before artificial light does.”

Paul only murmured agreement, a muffled sound hiding the weight of his thoughts. Every fiber of his being felt the cruel irony: there would be no sand, no wind, no embrace of the desert. The birth would be premature, before its time. The delivery room would greet them with cold, harsh lights bouncing off steel machines, without the whisper of the Sietch, without the warm scent of Arrakis soil.

The worst part was that he knew it. He knew Chani would not survive that moment. Every vision perched in his mind like a black bird, beating wings that crushed his chest, filling him with guilt and fear. A fire hotter than the desert sun devoured him from within.

Chani did not know. No one did. Only he bore that silent weight, that terrible premonition threatening to destroy him without the ability to share it.

Paul pressed his lips together, holding back a scream he could not voice. Instead, he bowed his head and placed a long, silent kiss on Chani’s forehead, feeling the warmth of her skin, her trembling breath, her small, fragile refuge amidst the chaos surrounding them.

“What matters,” Paul murmured, his voice rough, torn by the fear he could not allow to show, “is that they are here, with you. Here, where they can feel they are not alone. Where every breath you take reaches them as a shield, as a refuge.”

Chani closed her eyes, a moist, warm sigh escaping her lips, almost lost in the spice-laden, dusty air slipping through the cracks. She did not need to know everything. Not yet. Her hands rested on her belly, intertwined with Paul’s, sensing each heartbeat, each internal movement. Clinging to that certainty was an anchor: that, at least for now, they were together, floating above the sand and danger, sustained only by themselves.

Paul felt the weight of responsibility as if an entire world pressed upon his chest. A man who saw the future, who had contemplated wars, prophecies, and death, yet could not alter the thread of fate without sacrificing everything. He breathed deeply, noting the warmth of Chani’s skin beneath his fingers, the subtle tension in her muscles, the rhythm of the child moving within her. Each exhale was a reminder of life’s fragility, and a promise: to fight that dark future with every fiber of his being, even if the desert itself conspired to break him.

Silence stretched between them like endless sand, complicit and heavy, a reminder that in Arrakis, even love was tinged with danger, sacrifice, and blood. The air smelled of spices, of fear, of newly formed life. And amid all of this, Paul held Chani closer, as if her warmth could bend time and protect what fate had already designated.

 

---

The frustration Irulan felt at not being able to speak was an invisible prison, an opaque fabric entangling her chest and tightening her throat with every attempt to articulate a word. Each syllable that failed became a harsh, stifled moan, a thread of sound burning within, igniting a fire no medicine could soothe. Her voice was trapped, locked in invisible chains tightening with each breath, with every glance toward Paul, who watched with restrained patience.

In those moments, tears of helplessness welled in her eyes, fogging her vision with a wet, desperate shine, yet never daring to fall. Each blink was an effort to hold them back, not surrender, not allow her body to reveal the defeat her mind felt. Every second of silence was a battle, an internal struggle between the need to be heard and the absolute impossibility of expressing herself.

The room filled with a heavy silence, so thick one could hear the faint whisper of her breath and the subtle creak of sheets as she moved, attempting to adjust without drawing attention. Paul’s presence at her side only amplified that feeling: he was there, watching, but the barrier between them was not physical, but built by the impossibility of communication. Every gesture, every blink, every small movement of her hands became a language Irulan had to learn to decode, a wordless grammar that became her only salvation.

She was grateful for the servants who gradually understood her silent language, who learned to interpret her gestures, the slight tilt of her head, the trembling of her fingers, even the rhythm of her breathing. Though she would not admit it, Paul had carefully selected these women: patient, intuitive, meticulous. They filled, however faintly, the void left by her lack of voice, creating a silent bridge to the outside world.

And yet, each interaction was a reminder of what she had lost. Every gesture understood, every meal served without words, every glance translated into attention, simultaneously reminded her of her impotence, the evidence of her isolation. It was a daily, invisible punishment, consuming her slowly, trapping her in a silence more painful than any physical wound, deeper than any scar her body could display.

That silent rage grew even stronger during bath time. The same servants who attended her with patience and care inadvertently became witnesses to her vulnerability. With soft hands, they removed the bandage covering her wounded throat, revealing skin marked by pain, that dark, deep scar that reflected back a cold, accusing gaze. Irulan saw herself as someone else, a version she did not recognize, a broken princess caught between duty and a treacherous body.

Observing herself, she felt a humid warmth spread across her back and shoulders, a mixture of shame and frustration that left her rigid. Every line of her face, every shadow under her eyes, every involuntary gesture reflected the impotence of being unable to communicate, of being unable to claim what she had lost. The scar seemed to stare at her, relentless, reminding her that the sacrifice was irreversible, that she had left a piece of herself on the edge of the blade.

In those moments, in that solitude before her own reflection, emotions surged with overwhelming force. Regret struck first, cold and sharp, like an invisible whip. Then came rage, burning her chest and arms, igniting a mute fury that no words could contain. And finally, the pain, deep and constant, making her feel clumsy, insecure, a puppet of fate’s cruelty.

She blamed herself for every decision: stepping between the attacker and Chani, putting herself at risk, risking everything for an act of bravery she could not undo. She thought of a past where things would have been simpler, where losing her voice would have meant retaining control, power, identity. Each piercing thought was a thorn embedding deeper in her chest, while the scar on her neck stood as a dark banner of a sacrifice she was not even sure she had wanted to make.

The warm water of the bathtub seemed to offer temporary relief but could not erase the sense of betrayal she felt toward her own body. Each drop falling on her wounded skin was a reminder of the pain she carried within, a silent whisper that her sacrifice was not over, that the struggle was not only against those who had attacked her but also against the solitude of a body that no longer responded as it once had.

 

---

Paul paused at the threshold for a few seconds, breathing carefully, measuring the distance between them. The library was nearly silent, interrupted only by the whisper of air weaving through tall shelves and the soft brush of the servant’s sandals, moving discreetly following Irulan’s instructions. Every small sound amplified in the stillness of the room, as if the shelves themselves held their breath.

Irulan raised her hand, thin and elegant, precisely indicating a high section of the shelf. She did so firmly, despite her body still holding the tension of caution, as if afraid of breaking with a movement too abrupt. Every gesture was a choreography of contained strength and vulnerability, a silent dance Paul learned to read with each glance.

She still wore the bandage.

That simple detail—the piece of white cloth tied around her throat—struck Paul like a slow, constant dagger. The doctor had said days ago it was no longer necessary: the wound was closed, clean, the tissue firm. But Irulan had not removed it. And he understood. The bandage was her shield, her armor; a boundary between her and the world. Between her and him.

He knew the scar was there, beneath the cloth. He remembered it precisely: the rough curve, the crooked line, the relief that caught light and transformed it into living memory. It was not vanity. Not only. It was pain. A story written on the skin. Paul sensed that when she decided to remove the bandage, she would not do it for him or out of idle curiosity. She would seek something else: a handkerchief, a veil, perhaps a necklace. Something that would restore her sense of control over her body, over her own story.

Irulan did not immediately notice his presence. She was concentrated, absorbed, as if choosing a book were a surgical operation: every finger, every glance, every adjustment measured with precision. When the servant finally handed her the volume she had indicated, she took it with both hands, nodding slightly in thanks. Only then did she lift her gaze… and see him.

Their eyes met.

Paul noticed the silent startle, almost imperceptible, that passed through her gaze. It was not fear; it was discomfort, vulnerability, that sharp mixture he had learned to recognize with heart-wrenching precision. The spark of contained fragility she did not want to show, yet could not completely hide.

He took a few steps forward, measuring each movement, aware that a single sound could shatter the delicate balance floating between them. Every breath, every rustle of fabric against wood seemed amplified, laden with meaning.

“I thought you liked your desk better,” he finally whispered, his voice low and contained, as if speaking in a sacred chamber, fearful of disturbing something fragile and precious.

Irulan barely lifted her chin, and with a slow but firm gesture pointed to the book she held against her chest. Then she brought her hand to her throat, feeling the bandage, before lowering her gaze, as if measuring her limits, her secrets, her own space.

Paul understood. She wanted to read elsewhere. To distance herself. Not just from his room, but from the bed, from the mirror, from the memory.

“May I?” Paul asked, nodding toward the chair in front of her, a slight tremor in his voice betraying no insecurity.

Irulan neither nodded nor shook her head. Her bright green eyes slid to a point on the floor before returning to the closed book on her lap. Her fine, tense fingers rested on the cover, trembling slightly, as if the touch of paper reminded her of the distance he must maintain.

Paul sat in front of her. The silence around them was thick, laden with unspoken emotions. It was not uncomfortable, but dense, as if each breath became an unsaid word. Every elongated second carried meaning: posture, breathing, the slight brush of tunic fabric against wood.

And then Paul thought, "with that melancholy that had lately accompanied him," that Irulan had not only lost her voice but also her way of being in the world. And he, without fully realizing it, was learning to inhabit that new world alongside her. One where language was something else: slower, subtler, quieter… but no less intense. Every gesture, every shared breath became communication. Every pause, every glance was a dialogue.

Irulan moved slowly through the pages of the book when Paul, unable to remain too far away, stood up. His silent and obstinate presence broke the fragile space she tried to hold. When he approached, Irulan’s body tensed immediately, her jaw clenched, her shoulders rigid. She lifted her gaze with that expression that had become her only language: warning, anger, rejection.

But Paul smiled softly, as if approaching her were natural, like breathing. As if there were no barriers between his need to hold her and his right to do so.

He knew what that look meant. He could hear her in his mind, clear and firm, with the voice she could no longer use: "Don’t come closer. Don’t touch me." An echo that sank into his gut but that he chose to ignore with silent obstinacy.

He lifted her into his arms with an ease that hid his strength, settling her against his chest. His breathing mingled with hers, each inhalation a brush, each exhalation a reminder that he was there, steady, patient, constant. Irulan’s nails found his skin again, leaving brief, precise scratches, like messages written into his flesh. Paul did not move, did not complain.

He had learned to recognize those marks, to read them for days. Some had already become thin, silent scars that told the story of her resistance. Paul did not defend himself. He did not erase them. He received them calmly, with the certainty that they were her way of speaking, of asserting her existence. And he… was willing to receive it.

He could bear her rage.
He could bear her silence.
He could bear the way each of her embraces was a battlefield where she fought to remain intact but never quite managed to break away entirely.

He would not let her go. Never. Not while he breathed, not while his heart beat beneath his chest. His wife could challenge him with nails, eyes, and gestures; she could deny him a thousand times with her body, but Paul was there, firm, patient, a silent beacon that did not retreat.

Because he loved her. And in that shared silence, full of small wounds and restrained gestures, he showed it in the only way Irulan could accept: by being there. Always being there.

"Enough," he murmured, his voice barely a thread, as his fingers intertwined in Irulan’s hair with a softness that seemed to contradict the firmness with which he held her.

Irulan let her forehead fall against his chest. It was not surrender; Paul knew it. Every muscle of her body was still tense, as if resisting were an act of pride and survival. Her hatred was there, palpable, mixed with a thread of resignation she could not hide. And yet, she stayed. She did not run. She did not pull away. Perhaps because she couldn’t… or because, deep down, she didn’t want to. Perhaps both at once.

Paul lowered his gaze to his arms, where small red lines were beginning to form on his skin: fresh marks from her nails. Soon they would be scars, inscribing a silent map of resistance and defiance she left on him every day.

The irony hit him, harsh and rough like spice dust: she could not speak… and yet she marked him, claimed him, communicated with nails, eyes, and silences that resonated more than any word. Every scratch, every gesture was its own language, and he was willing to read it, to listen to it, to feel it.

And still, he held her tighter, without making his embrace oppressive. Only firm, patient, insistent.

"You can hate me, Irulan," he whispered, his voice hoarse, almost breaking. "But you’re not leaving. I won’t let you go."

The air around them thickened, heavy with tension and human heat. Their breathing intertwined, quick and shallow at first, then slower, deeper, as the contact persisted. Paul could feel how each pulse of her heart vibrated against his chest, how each slight movement of her hands tensed her muscles. A whole language of resistance and closeness at once.

The maids, discreet and accustomed, kept their distance, observing that silent ritual. They had learned not to interfere, to be shadow-witnesses to something they could not name: the Mahdi carrying his mute wife, while she protested with nails and eyes that screamed without sound.

They saw the contradiction: the softness of his hands in her hair, the firmness of his embrace; Irulan’s small body fighting to escape and, at the same time, yielding just slightly, by instinct or invisible force. Each of her gestures was a soundless word, each resistance a message that Paul read with almost religious attention.

They saw him incline his head, brush Irulan’s forehead with his lips just barely, inhaling her scent —the mix of soap, desert dust, and something else indefinable that bound him to her beyond flesh. They saw him hold her steady, without moving, feeling her resistance soften little by little, not from surrender but from the silent insistence of a man who would not let her go.

And still, there they were.

The Mahdi and the princess, trapped in an embrace that needed no words, surrounded by a silence that said everything. And the maids, motionless, without uttering a word, as if they knew that this picture of two broken people locked inside each other was something that should not be interrupted.

They only lowered their eyes. They only kept cleaning, arranging, pretending they heard nothing. As if the scratches on the Mahdi’s arms didn’t sometimes bleed in silence. As if Irulan’s trembling hands didn’t say everything her throat no longer could.

"Today I spoke with Chani about the birth of her baby," Paul said, his voice low, loaded with care, as if holding something fragile between words and air.

Irulan tensed immediately in his arms. Her body was a bowstring pulled too tight, every fiber rigid, as if the slightest pressure could break it. Her gaze fled, searching for any corner that offered shadow, an invisible refuge within the silent room. Her face slightly inclined, the fragile nape beneath the bandage, her breathing barely perceptible, almost a whisper lost against Paul’s warmth. He held her calmly, firm and watchful, like someone carrying a cracked glass: each movement measured, each touch careful, balancing tenderness and alertness.

He spoke. She listened. Nothing new, except that the words carried blades wrapped in velvet.

Irulan had saved that unborn baby. The child of another woman. The heir of another blood, another womb, another soul. She had done it knowing that perhaps her life —her body, her voice, her very essence— would break in the process. That she could die in silence, in a strange bed, invisible even to history. And still, she had done it.

Her sacrifice hung between them like a taut thread: neither merit nor recognition, only a silent truth they both knew. Irulan still didn’t know if she had done it for Paul, for the empire, for the child… or for herself, seeking in that act one last fragment of control over a destiny that seemed to devour her.

Paul did not blame her. He could not. Not for what she had done, not for what she had not. Not for the silences that burned her each night, nor for the moments when she had felt fear, frustration, defeat.

He did not blame her… because he understood her.

His fingers brushed gently over the bandage, caressing the delicate skin beneath it. It was not a gesture of comfort or reproach but of recognition. Every heartbeat of Irulan struck him as a reminder: she had survived, she had acted, she had endured pain no one else could understand. And he was there to hold her, not to judge, but to be present, in the silence that said everything.

"She says she wants to give birth in the desert," Paul said, his voice low, rough as sand rubbing against stone. He did not look directly at her, but his eyes followed the bandage that covered Irulan’s throat, as if each fiber of cloth held a secret only he could decipher. Irulan imagined Chani’s expression as she said it: rigid, firm, relentless. Like the unforgiving sand, like the burning, revealing sunlight. "Maybe I should let her," he continued, the heavy air vibrating with each word. "Let her go before. Let her give life… and be taken in the desert."

Irulan looked at him. Barely. A slight shift of her eyes, a faint flash of incredulity and fear that Paul perceived like an electric current. "Be taken." The phrase pierced her mind like a cold knife; an absolute silence filled the room, heavy, almost solid. Who? Who would take her, snatch her, devour her?

Paul inhaled slowly, as if holding both their breaths, and then spoke:

"Would you also like to give life, Irulan?"

It was not a question. It was a command. A wave that dragged and crushed, wrapped in velvet and iron. This time Irulan turned her head completely. Her green, burning eyes opened like two trapped flames, her mouth slightly parted in a gesture that was astonishment, disbelief, and defiance at once.

"Do you want me to give you a baby too?" he repeated, and his fingers descended slowly to brush her belly, warm, firm, claiming something that did not yet exist, sowing with his touch and words a future she could no longer ignore.

Irulan’s body trembled, a shudder running down her spine, from her nape to the tips of her feet. It was not desire. It was not tenderness. It was ancient humiliation, a sleeping animal awakening, naked and furious, in the midst of vulnerable skin and flesh.

She tried to speak. Tried to scream. Perhaps to strike him. But her ruined throat did not respond. Only a broken moan, a sound of fractured glass dissolving in the hot, dense air of the room. Each breath, each exhalation slipped from her like sand between fingers.

Paul barely smiled, his lips brushing her forehead. That moan, though broken, spoke to him. He understood it. Like a whisper of submission disguised as resistance, a "yes" impossible to pronounce.

"Our children will be beautiful," he whispered, leaving a warm, firm, almost possessive kiss on Irulan’s forehead.

"Will be." Not "would be." The word vibrated between them like a command, a silent decree. Paul was not dreaming. He was not imagining. He was deciding. Like an emperor. Like a god. Like someone who knows that loving also means possessing, and that in that impossible silence, he had taken what he believed was his.

Irulan looked at him, her green, liquid eyes wide, overflowing, as if he had just uttered a blasphemy. As if the words he had just spoken had broken, one by one, the few inner laws she still had intact, the last columns of her private world.

"They will be beautiful," Paul repeated, and his voice, though low, vibrated like a sentence carved in stone. His fingers remained on her belly, caressing it with a delicacy so measured it was cruel, like a caress with a blade.

Irulan shook her head. Slowly at first, as if even that gesture might hurt her, as if her bandaged neck might tear open again. Then more firmly. More vehemently. Her shoulders trembled, her breathing became a harsh gasp, and she lifted her hands, clumsy, disobedient, as if she had forgotten how to use her own body. She began to make confused, desperate signs.

No.
No.
No.

It was not a no asking permission. It was a no begging to be understood, burning in every muscle and tendon.

Paul only looked at her, motionless, as if her hands were part of a sad dance he could not —or would not— decipher. His eyes were two dark, bottomless mirrors.

She pointed to herself with two trembling fingers, then to him, then shook her head again violently. She moved her lips without sound, her mouth open in a broken gesture, her face wrinkled with frustration. She pointed at the bandage on her neck with a clenched finger, then struck her chest with her open palm, as if saying: Don’t you see? Don’t you see what has already happened?

Paul did not respond. His gaze was impenetrable, almost merciful, as if he were contemplating something beyond the present, beyond flesh and pleas. As if he already knew what would come next, and her denials were only part of the inevitable process.

"You don’t have to speak," he said softly, and in his softness there was an icy authority. "You already made bigger decisions without saying a single word."

Irulan pulled her hand back with a snap of skin, as if he had burned her. The contact left an electric tremor in her palm. Her chest rose and fell violently, her breathing broken, furious, mute. She moved her hands again, faster now, as if each gesture were a blow against the wall of air that separated her from him. She had not used sign language fluently in years, but now she needed it like air. You’re insane, her fingers said. You don’t understand me. I don’t want this. Don’t do this to me.

Paul only inclined his head, and in that gesture there was an unbearable tenderness, like a mantle heavier than hatred.

"I’m not insane," he murmured, with a tone almost tired, almost paternal. "I’m just tired of watching what I love die."

The silence that followed was so dense it seemed to have weight. Irulan felt each of her denials fall to the ground like stones, and Paul, in his stillness, seemed to pick them up one by one to build an invisible altar with them.

The world seemed foreign, dissolved, like a landscape of sand slipping through fingers. Every sound, every smell, every light felt distant, strange. She did not understand why now. She did not understand what that gesture meant, that quiet that did not ask permission, that claimed her as if he had been waiting his whole life to do so. Why, after years of indifference, of icy diplomacy, of repeated denials, he looked at her like that: as one contemplates something fragile and dangerous at once.

Paul shifted his gaze to the maid waiting at the entrance. He made a brief, precise sign with his hand. The woman nodded without a word and disappeared down the hallway. Irulan already knew what that meant. He was going to have her dinner brought. Like so many other times with breakfast or lunch, when routine mingled with the silent need to make sure she existed, that she ate, that she still breathed.

Mahdi, her husband, her silent guardian, had decided that this too was a form of care.

Paul did not look at her directly. His eyes were fixed on the void where the maid had disappeared, as if he were speaking to nothing, to the air, to time itself.

"I know I’ve denied you all this time," he said, his voice low, almost a confession, like someone observing a wound that never closed and accepting that now it was part of his skin.

Irulan did not move. Her body remained curled against him, her neck rigid under the bandages, her arms crossed over her chest as if she could still protect herself. Every fiber of her being was tense, alert, waiting for the next wave of Paul’s inevitable decisions.

He held her more firmly, unhurriedly, with a calm that was almost painful to endure, impenetrable and absolute.

"I’ve thought about it, Irulan," he continued. "I’ve searched all the paths. All the futures. I’ve seen the ones that take you from me, the ones that drag you into oblivion, the ones that leave you rotting in silence."

He paused a moment, as if measuring the gravity of each word.

"And in all of them, something breaks. Not just in me… but in what will come. In what must be born."

Irulan pressed her lips together, her jaw rigid, her throat still vulnerable under the bandages. Her eyes sought his for an instant but soon dropped. She didn’t want to look at him. She couldn’t.

"Maybe this is the true path," Paul murmured, his fingers brushing her arm with a delicacy that seemed trivial but burned like fire on her skin. "Maybe that’s why destiny has always kept you alive at my side. Because it was you. Not just the Emperor’s daughter. Not just a symbol."

He leaned in slightly, letting his face brush hers. A minimal contact, almost imperceptible, but it made Irulan feel a deep shudder, as if all the air in the room compressed between them.

"Maybe it was you from the beginning. The mother of my other children."

Irulan swallowed hard, her throat moving under the bandages as if trying to reclaim air, word, life. If she could have screamed, she would have roared with indignation, rage, fear. If she could have run, she would have vanished into the palace corridors.

But she couldn’t. And Paul spoke as if her silence were acceptance, as if the wound that had left her mute were now the perfect key to fill her emptiness with his will.

Because that was what Paul did. He transformed others’ pain into his reason, into his right, and called it love.

Irulan closed her eyes. She didn’t know if she was going to cry or fall asleep from exhaustion. Each breath was a weight on her chest, each brush of his fingers a reminder that he held her, claimed her, possessed her.

And perhaps, to Paul, it made no difference. Because the decision had already been made, and it bore her name, marked in every line of her body, in every silence that now belonged to him.

Chapter Text

A week had passed.

Seven days since that conversation in which Paul, with the cruel calm of one dictating a destiny, had offered Irulan a child.
Seven days since she, in an outburst of helplessness she couldn’t contain, had struck him.

She still remembered it clearly. Irulan’s delicate palm smashing against his cheek, the sharp sound cutting through the air like a whip, the fiery tingling that lingered on his skin long after. It was a moment suspended in time, so absolute that even the air seemed to hold its breath. The silence resonated with the slap, as if the entire palace had paused to witness that impossible moment.

Paul had felt surprise shoot through him immediately, icy and piercing, mixed with a strange warmth that ran down his spine. The surprise wasn’t only his. It was hers too. Soft and trembling, Irulan’s body tensed against him, incredulous at her own audacity.

And then their eyes met.

Irulan’s eyes, wide as embers, first overflowing with astonishment, then narrowing with a sharp edge of defiance. The same defiance she had so often hidden behind elegant words, now reduced to a fierce, bare gesture.

That was enough to shatter Paul’s disbelief. Instead of anger, instead of punishment, the only thing that sprang from him was a low, deep, almost dangerous laugh.

His wife had struck him. His delicate, silent wife had found in violence the only language she could still speak to him.

Irulan had slapped him to silence him, to make herself heard. To remind him that her silence was not submission, but repressed fire.

And in that instant, for Paul, she had never been more beautiful.

His laughter disconcerted her.

Irulan expected anything: a reproach, a punishment, a burst of fury. But not that low laugh that vibrated in his chest while the mark of her hand still lingered on his skin.

Paul tilted his head, as if offering her again the cheek she had struck, and his eyes gleamed with a strange light, somewhere between admiration and threat.

“So you found your voice,” he murmured, with that cruel irony only he could dress in tenderness.

Irulan stared at him, chest heaving, lips parted from the effort of a scream that could not be born. She did not step back. She did not apologize. She only held his gaze as if that slap had not been enough, as if her silence screamed: I could do it again.

Paul raised a hand to his face. Slowly. With the calm of a predator who does not need to run to catch its prey. His fingers brushed her cheek, soft, almost reverent. The contrast was brutal: the caress instead of violence, the warmth of his fingers where her fury had burned moments before.

“I don’t mind that you hit me,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I made you feel helpless. Let’s leave the matter of the child for later.”

His thumb slid across the delicate skin beneath the bandage, as if seeking the invisible scar her blow had left on him. And then, in a disconcerting gesture, Paul took her hand—the same hand that had marked him—and kissed her knuckles. Not as a lover, but as a king acknowledging a vow.

Irulan shut her eyes forcefully. She wanted to pull her hand away, to free herself. But he did not let go.

That kiss, like his laugh, was a reminder: he had heard her, he had felt her. And yet, he still made decisions for her.

But at least, Paul never mentioned having a child again.

Not because he had given up on the idea. But because he understood—like one understands open wounds, like one understands the sand that devours—that Irulan was still trapped in the recent trauma of her torn throat. She had lost her voice, that tool of power, and with it, a part of her identity had collapsed. It was not the moment. Not yet.

And yet, Paul could not stop watching her.

He saw her fail over and over in everyday gestures: opening her mouth to answer and discovering, too late, that no voice came out; moving her lips expecting sound and receiving only a harsh, broken moan, stuck in her throat like shards of glass. Each attempt was a fall. Each fall, a dagger driving her deeper into frustration.

Paul felt it like poison coursing through his veins, filling him with pain, with rage. Rage against the one who dared to touch his wife’s delicate neck with a blade. A memory that ignited his fury: the blood, the edge, the surprise in the attacker’s eyes. He had killed him too quickly, too easily. Sometimes Paul found himself imagining what he would have done with more time: splintered bones, severed tongue, skin ripped piece by piece. A fair price for touching what was his.

Now, in the present, he watched her from the divan. Irulan sat in front of the mirror, motionless, while the maids worked on her hair. They combed with gentle fingers, braiding blonde strands with strips of set stones that glimmered under the light like tiny embers. The reflection returned the image of an almost untouched, almost majestic woman, as if the wound in her throat did not exist. And yet, there she was, hidden beneath the white bandage that never left her.

Paul smiled. Irulan remained vain. Though mute, though marked, she cared about looking good. And that pleased him in a dark, almost childish way: beauty was still her refuge, even if it was also her sentence.

“You look radiant today, wife,” Paul said, his deep voice vibrating in the air, filling the space.

The mirror reflected Irulan rolling her eyes with almost theatrical delicacy. That was how she answered him now: a gesture, a minimal movement, carrying everything she could not say.

«Shouldn’t you be getting ready for the council?»

She asked the question in signs before the mirror, her stylized hands moving quickly, tensely. The reflection allowed her to make sure he saw it, that there was no escape.

“I’m ready. I’m waiting for you. We’ll enter together,” he replied, with the same calm with which one issues an imperial decree.

Irulan clenched her jaw. Unease escaped from every line of her face. She and Paul had never entered a meeting together. That public closeness, that display, suffocated her. And yet, there he was, imposing novelty with the same naturalness with which he imposed everything else.

The mirror reflected Irulan’s own image back at her: jaw tense, lips pressed together, and the white bandage marking the center of her reflection like a brutal reminder. And there, too, was Paul’s gaze. Not on her adorned hair, not on her dress.

But on her throat.

He looked at her as one contemplates a wound—not just to remember it, but to heal it.

That damned wound. That damned decision she still hadn’t resolved.

The loss of her voice had left her exposed. Not physically, but in the most intimate sense: disarmed, vulnerable, reduced to a beautiful body that could no longer wield words as sword or shield.

Sign language had never been foreign to her. It was just another tool in her Bene Gesserit arsenal: useful for conspiring in silence, for conversing in the shadows of councils, for spying without being discovered. She had also learned it as a princess, surrounded by diplomats who valued gestures as much as words. But she had never thought she would come to depend on it like this. Not as a weapon, but as a substitute. Not as part of her power, but as the miserable echo of what she had lost.

She was no longer the woman who chose to remain silent. She was the woman whose voice had been taken. A chasm of difference.

The Landsraad meeting would be the first since the Moritani attack. The first time she would be seen again, after the blood, after the bandages. The golden princess, transformed into shadow.

Irulan knew it: eyes would fall on her like blades. Not on Paul, not on the empire, but on her. The silent empress, the mute wife, the woman who could not defend her own throat.

She was not afraid—the fear had consumed her in those first nights of fever, of burning scars, and of memories in which she felt the blade sink into her flesh again. The fear had passed, and what remained was worse.

It was contempt.

Contempt for the whispers she could already imagine in the halls. For the polite smiles, so kind on the surface, so filthy underneath. They would smile while thinking, “She has no voice. No crown. No children. What’s left for her?” And they would say it with the gentle cruelty of nobility, the kind that wounds more than any poison.

Irulan did not despise herself. Never. But she knew others, knew how they fed on the failures of others, how they would tear her apart with words they wouldn’t dare speak in front of Paul, yet would fill the wine cups with in every Landsraad hall.

She would be the spectacle, the lesson of what happens to those who break. She knew it with the brutal clarity that only humiliation grants: if she did not defend herself, they would shred her. If she did not raise her head, they would bury her alive beneath smiles.

And no, Irulan Corrino would never allow herself to be buried.

Irulan snapped out of her thoughts when one of the maids approached with the red dress in her arms. The fabric, silky and lustrous, seemed to burn under the golden morning light filtering through the translucent curtains. Every movement of the cloth sparked like embers. The distant murmur of desert wind crept through the window, bringing with it the dry scent of sand and the echo of a silence that seemed to watch them.

The maid was just about to touch her when a firm, sharp voice broke the calm.

“Not that one. Find another.”

Paul’s tone was dry, without nuance, but enough to chill the air.
The young woman hesitated for a second, clutching the dress to her chest, before bowing and retreating quickly.
The sound of fabric brushing the floor was the only thing left between them.

Irulan raised an eyebrow with measured elegance. She turned slowly toward him, and though her voice was condemned to silence, her gaze spoke with the eloquence of an empress demanding answers.
Her fingers moved with Bene Gesserit precision, each gesture as refined as a hidden dagger.

«What’s wrong with the dress?»

Paul did not take his eyes off her.
His gaze—deep, grayish, relentless—was no longer that of the man who had made her smile just minutes ago, but that of the emperor carrying ghosts no one else could see.

“It’s red,” he said at last, resting his chin on his fist, never breaking his gaze from her neck.

But the silence that followed was a story unto itself.
Red.

The color of the blood she had once felt run through her fingers.

Paul closed his eyes for a moment, and the present dissolved like a mirage. The air in the room seemed to grow heavier, charged with the distant echo of the desert wind. The smell of rusted metal mingled with incense, and suddenly he was no longer there.

The hall enveloped him again. The crysknife weighed in his hand, and the sun fell through the windows like a sentence upon his back. In his hands, life was slipping away—warm, thick, insistent. The sticky texture of blood coated his fingers, impregnating them with a memory that would never fade.

He saw her trembling in his arms. Her breath was a fragile thread, broken by pain. Her skin, once white but sun-bronzed, now pale, almost translucent. He tried to press the wound, to contain the inevitable, but the blood continued to flow, red and bright, as if the planet itself were bleeding with her.

The choked gurgle replaced her voice for the last time. No words formed, only a silent plea in her eyes, eyes too weak to hate him.

Paul remained still, listening to the whisper of the wind and the subsequent silence, a silence so absolute it hurt. Red ceased to be a color; it became a sensation, a weight. A perpetual wound. A guilt incarnate in memory, still throbbing beneath his skin as if time had not passed.

He opened his eyes again, forcing the ghost to retreat to the deepest corners of his mind. The air in the room felt dense, almost tangible, as if the past still exhaled its last breath there. He straightened slowly in his seat, back upright, face composed, though tension betrayed him: jaw tight, fingers clenched on the armrest, neck muscles vibrating with measured restraint.

“How about a blue one?” he finally murmured, with artificial calm. “You’ll look even more beautiful in that color.”

The silence that followed stretched, sharp.

Irulan watched him through the mirror, without turning. In the reflection, the woman returning his gaze seemed made of ice and gold: neck raised, eyes sharp, lips painted with precision. The light bathed her skin with a soft glow, but there was no warmth in her eyes. The glass did not lie: it showed an empress who had learned to rule even in a cage.

Her lips curved slightly, a gesture so faint it seemed a crack in the marble. It was not a smile. It was a blade hidden beneath the veneer of courtesy.

With an elegant motion, she picked up the sapphire necklace resting on the table. The gems tinkled between her fingers, a brief, beautiful… cruel sound. Without a word, she threw it toward him.

Paul caught it midair. The metal struck his palm with a dry, metallic sound, a brief echo that resonated between them like a silent confession. The contact of cold against his skin shivered him more than he cared to admit.

Irulan lowered her gaze briefly, moving her hands again with the precision of someone mastering the art of irony even in silence. Every gesture of hers was a declaration.

«Not even dead will I wear your house colors. I want a golden one.»

Paul stared at her for a long moment. Then, a low laugh escaped from his throat. It was a strange sound, almost human, stripped of its usual hardness. There was something in her rebellion that disarmed him; a fire he could not extinguish, a challenge that kept him awake when everything else seemed asleep.

Gold. The Corrino color. The color of the lineage he had crushed with his holy war. And yet, she wore it as if she still reigned, with the same haughty majesty of the days when her surname dictated destinies.

The gleam of a crown that needed no throne to keep burning. Even in the shadows of her domain, Irulan remained light.

“Gold it shall be, my queen,” he said softly, with a tenderness that bordered on affection, and a resignation disguised as devotion.

Irulan stiffened. The title pierced her with the precision of a wrong note in a perfect symphony. Queen. Empress. Words that had once been scepters, crowns, entire galaxies orbiting her will. Now, just an empty echo. A hollow golden memory, a cage shining with the light of the past.

Paul noticed. He always did. His gaze, trained to read gestures subtler than the wind over the sand, perceived the stiffness in her shoulders, the slight tremor she repressed with an elegance almost painful. Her breath, barely a held sigh, as if at any moment she could vanish into the shadows of the room.

And yet, he persisted.
He called her queen. He called her empress.
Not out of habit, but out of faith. As if by repeating it, he could revive something dead, truly clothe the ruins of the power he himself had destroyed. Perhaps he believed—or needed to believe—that his voice, his gestures, his persistence could one day fill the void he had left between them.

The maids returned silently, moving like ghosts between them. One carried the new dress. Gold. It shone under the light with an almost unbearable intensity, as if the sun itself had surrendered to her trembling hands. The reflection set the walls ablaze, and for a moment, the air seemed to burn.

Irulan’s eyes caught the light, and in them danced fragments of brilliance that seemed like tears, but were not. They were contained fire, pride distilled in a gaze.

Paul did not look away. He still held the sapphire necklace between his fingers; he gripped it tightly, feeling its edges dig into his skin. The stones reflected his own image in fragments—a face divided, multiplied, broken between guilt and desire.

The dress was presented before her with a silent bow. The golden fabric unfurled like a wave of light, enveloping the air in its radiance. It barely touched the curve of her neck, illuminated the profile of her face, and Paul understood what he had always feared: that neither power, nor love, nor devotion could bend that dignity that survived even defeat.

The room held its breath.
The silence was a crystal on the verge of shattering.

And then Paul understood fully, with the bitter clarity of one who arrives too late: it didn’t matter how many colors he took from the world, or how many names he reinvented for her. He could never erase the red that still burned behind her eyes, nor the echo of the scream he would never hear again.

 

---

The Landsraad meeting hall was shrouded in a thick, almost reverential silence. The air smelled of incense, expensive perfume, and restrained tension. Light reflected off the metallic insignias of the Great Houses, casting glints across the motionless faces of the representatives. No one spoke. No one dared even to move a finger. All waited for the arrival of the Emperor.

Since the fall of House Moritani, caution had become a second skin for all. The story of the attack still echoed through the Landsraad halls: how a simple treaty meeting turned into an ambush, how the Moritani managed to get close enough to the Emperor to attempt his assassination, and how, in that chaos, the consort princess—Irulan Corrino—was gravely wounded. That spilled blood had sealed a new order.

No house dared defend the Moritani when the sentence was pronounced. In less than a week, the ducal family was annihilated. Their planet, once fertile and proud, became a desert prison, a perpetual reminder of what it meant to defy the Atreides throne. The message had been as clear as it was brutal: they had touched the Emperor’s wife, and for that, they would pay for generations.

The sound of the door opening broke the still air. Eyes lifted, expectant, but the murmur that followed was not of respect… but of surprise.

The figure entering was not the one they expected.

Chani.

The Fremen concubine. Sub-leader of the free people of Arrakis, companion of Muad’Dib, mother of the unborn heir. Her presence at the Landsraad was no longer scandalous—they had had nearly a decade to get used to it—but seeing her enter alone was.

Paul Atreides never arrived without her. For years, they had appeared together, always side by side. A calculated, constant display of unity, a silent declaration: the Fremen concubine was no less than the golden wife. But this time, for the first time in nearly ten years, Chani walked alone.

The echo of her steps resounded on the stone floor like a challenge. The nobles’ eyes followed her, some with curiosity, others with contained malice. There was something almost predatory in the way they observed her, as if her momentary solitude authorized them to look at her boldly. For the first time, the woman who had shared the desert throne was exposed.

Chani felt it. Each gaze was a blade on her skin. She straightened further, back erect, shoulders firm. Her walk was that of a warrior who refuses to show weakness. The Fremen robes moved with her, light but firm, and though her breathing quickened, her face remained impassive.

She reached her usual seat, to the right of Paul.
And she saw it. Empty.

 

The other seat was also empty: Irulan’s. Both absent.

A knot formed in her stomach, bitter and heavy. Certainty pierced her like a cold needle: Paul had been with her. All day he had been. She had heard the servants whisper that the Emperor had remained in the consort princess’s chambers, watching over her health, ensuring she was comfortable, calm, protected.

His “poor wife.”

Chani clenched her teeth. The word burned in her mind. The taste of the desert—dry, metallic—seemed to fill her mouth. Jealousy coursed through her veins like a stream of slow poison. She forced herself to breathe deeply, but the rage was a fire that would not obey.

Paul could be Emperor, could bear a thousand titles and a thousand justifications, but at that moment, to her, he was only a man who had chosen not to be. And the empty seat beside her felt heavier than any gaze.

The session had not yet begun, but the message was already clear to all present. The Fremen concubine had arrived alone, and in the silence that followed, the entire Landsraad understood that something in the heart of the Empire had begun to crack.

The sound of the doors opening once again cut through the still air, deep, solemn, and this time the murmur that swept the hall was one of pure disbelief. Conversations that had attempted to rise choked off instantly. All eyes turned to the entrance, holding their breath.

The Emperor had arrived.
And he was not alone.

At his side walked Princess Irulan.

The impact was immediate. Gazes collided, gestures stiffened, and for a moment the entire Landsraad seemed to forget how to breathe. The mere presence of these two filled the hall. It was an almost physical weight, a pressure felt in the chest, in the throat, in the very air. Paul Atreides and the daughter of the last Corrino. The conqueror and the heir of the fallen Empire.

It had been years since they had been seen together like this. Years since the last time the Emperor had entered a Landsraad meeting with his wife at his arm, projecting not only power but a strange, unsettling sense of unity.

Paul walked upright, the imperial tunic falling in dark, severe folds. His arm, bent, offered support to Irulan with an almost ceremonial gesture. She took it with calculated naturalness, her gloved hand resting firmly on his forearm. Together, they formed a tableau bordering on the impossible: strength and calm, fire and gold, dominion and elegance.

Irulan Corrino, with her impeccable bearing and golden-ice gaze, seemed more queenly than ever. Her hair, arranged in an intricate braid, shone under the light as if each strand were a thread of sun. There was no trace of weakness in her, not even from her recent convalescence. She walked with the same majesty that the desert grants its dunes: proud, serene, immense.

Silence became absolute as they advanced between the seats. Even breaths fell silent. It was as if time itself had stopped to watch them pass.

Paul lifted his gaze toward the back of the hall, toward the main table, and there he saw her.

Chani.

Seated in her usual place, to his right. Her posture was rigid, chin raised with the same stubbornness he had both loved and feared. Her eyes—dark, relentless—found him for only a moment, and in that instant he felt the blow of her anger. No words were necessary: the rage surrounded her like an invisible veil, a contained storm.

Paul felt it immediately, and also the sudden tension in Irulan’s body at his side, the way her breathing became shorter, more vigilant. He did not need to look at Chani to know she perceived it too. The air between the three presences grew dense, charged with electricity.

Paul acted with the coldness of a general avoiding an unnecessary battle. He turned slightly, cutting the invisible line connecting the two women’s gazes. He gave his back to Chani with a measured, almost imperceptible gesture, and focused all his attention on Irulan.

With a fluid motion, he pulled out her chair and held it, leaning slightly toward her. A courteous, old-fashioned gesture that in another context would have seemed mere protocol, but in this one felt almost intimate.

Irulan glanced at him from the corner of her eye. It was a fleeting look, charged with irony so sharp it almost made him smile. She knew she was irritating him. She knew that courtesy was a provocation disguised as affection. And yet, she could not help but enjoy the slight imbalance she caused in him.

Irulan sat with impeccable elegance. Her golden dress spread around her like a halo of light over the marble.

Paul waited a moment. Then, only once she was settled, he took his place.

The murmurs of those present died away as soon as Paul sat upon the throne. He did not need to raise his voice; his mere presence was enough to claim the attention of the entire Landsraad. The echo of his title—Emperor of the Golden Throne, Lord of the Desert, Voice of the Prophet—seemed to resonate even in the walls, though no one dared speak it aloud.

With a single gesture, he indicated the start of the meeting. The councilors straightened, the representatives of the Great Houses lowered their gaze in feigned respect, and even the Mentats seemed to hold their breath.

The figure of Irulan, seated beside him, projected solemn calm. Her pale skin contrasted with the intense gold of her dress, and in the stillness of her expression was a renewed, almost mystical dignity. But everyone knew what that serenity concealed: the recent wound on her neck, a still-fresh scar that had stolen her voice.

For the first time since the attack, the consort princess was present before the Landsraad. And, for the first time, she did not speak.

Instead of words, her hands began to move with slow, precise grace. Each gesture, each tilt of her fingers, carried calculated weight. A silent, fluid language, which the imperial servants translated with a neutral, almost ritualistic voice:

«House Atreides thanks the allied houses for their cooperation in restoring order after the Moritani incident.»

The tone was correct. But everyone felt it: beneath those words was ice. A blade. A warning.

Paul watched her as she spoke with her hands. His eyes, fixed on her, did not move for a moment. No distraction, no disdain. Only a focus so intense it seemed almost devotion. Every time Irulan paused, Paul tilted his head slightly, as if approving what she had said. And whenever one of the dukes or councilors hesitated before replying, his gaze—sharp, cutting like the crystal of Arrakis—was enough to silence any objection.

It was an unusual scene.

The Landsraad, accustomed to fearing the Emperor’s voice, now feared his silence. Because it was not Paul speaking: it was Irulan—and he, seated at her side, did not merely allow it… he protected her.

Chani watched from her seat. She did not move, but inside, something twisted. Every gesture between them—the way Paul leaned slightly to better hear Irulan’s signs, the way his hand rested on the back of her chair, discreet yet possessive—pierced her like a dagger.

It was not the first time she had seen Paul defend something with such intensity, but it was the first time it was not her.

There was a silent tenderness in his movements, an attention that had once belonged only to Chani: the constant gaze, the protective gesture, the slight change in tone when referring to the princess. All of that, now, belonged to Irulan.

Chani felt the air grow heavier. It was not just pain, not even jealousy; it was understanding. The slow, cruel certainty that the man who had once been hers was becoming something she could no longer reach.

As Irulan continued moving her hands, explaining the Empire’s decisions with serenity—the restructuring of trade routes, sanctions against rebellious planets, new security agreements—Paul remained firm, almost impenetrable. And when a representative dared raise his voice to question one of her proposals, it was enough for Paul to look at him.

Just that.

A single look, and the man fell silent. Power needed no words.

Chani understood then, a bitter knot in her chest: the desert had forged Paul as a prophet, but the throne was shaping him into something more. And alongside Irulan—that woman who spoke without a voice, who moved among gestures and silences with the precision of a true queen—he seemed more emperor than ever.

For the first time, Chani did not recognize the man before her, and in the golden reflection of the mute princess, she realized that perhaps Paul belonged to no one anymore. Neither the desert, nor her. Only to the power that claimed him.

 

---

Irulan could feel the gazes, even though the present courtiers tried to maintain a façade of respect. She sensed them as invisible needles piercing the air, as if each pair of eyes were a sharp blade seeking to rend the silence. The muffled sound of breaths, the rustle of robes against the marble, the faint clicks of quills recording names and decrees: all formed a restrained, heavy symphony, soaked with judgment.

Some of those glances fixed directly on her neck, that exact spot where the wound still lived beneath the soft fabric of her collar. The ivory, delicate, almost translucent cloth concealed the scar that had stolen her voice… but it could not hide the weight of curious eyes. She felt the warmth of the room, the vibration of the air carrying unspoken murmurs, the metallic scent of personal shields activated, the rakkan incense burning in ceremonial braziers. Everything enveloped her like an atmosphere of silent interrogation.

Yet Irulan held her head high, chin raised, back straight. Elegance was her armor; control her only voice. If she could not speak, her presence would speak for her.

It was her first meeting since the attack. The first in which she had to communicate without words, with measured gestures and calculated glances. And also—for her most intimate dismay—the first in years that Paul was so attentive to her.

She did not know what unsettled her more: her own presence there, defying expectations, or his, at her side, so protective, so deliberately present. For years, Paul’s favoritism toward Chani had been undeniable, a constant shadow accompanying every public appearance. A silence sharper than any word.

But now, something had changed.
Paul Atreides, the Emperor who made entire planets tremble with a glance, placed his attention on her. Not out of duty, but with something that seemed—or intended to seem—genuine care.

Irulan did not know whether to thank him or despise him for it.

She was accustomed to the gazes of the Landsraad. She had learned to endure them like one endures the desert wind: unmoving, resigned, not letting the pain show. Looks of pity, curiosity, disdain; all passed through her without toppling her. The consort princess, the decorative wife, the political relic. The woman who shared the crown, but not the Emperor’s heart.

It had been humiliating, yes, to see the Fremen concubine—the mother of the heirs—receive the attention, reverence, and recognition that was denied to her. Paul had never hidden it: his love was with Chani, and the Empire knew it. The story had been told a thousand times in the corridors of power, always ending the same way.

And yet, that day, something was different.
She felt other gazes.
Not of pity, but of respect.
Of caution.
Even fear.

It was not because of her. It was because of him.
Because of the Emperor’s arm holding hers, because of the way Paul escorted her with that mixture of authority and devotion. His presence was an extension of imperial power: an invisible force that reordered hierarchies simply by existing. Where there had once been compassion, now there was deference. Where there had once been disdain, now there was care.

Everything was so hypocritical…
And yet, a part of Irulan—a small, cruel, human part—rejoiced. Because for the first time, the shield was not for Chani. It was for her.

And in the faces of some, she noticed a new nuance: the same glances that had once pitied her now fell on the Fremen woman with restrained disdain, as if the scales of imperial favor had finally begun to tip.

A sudden touch brought her back to reality.
Pressure on her leg, firm, discreet, unmistakable.
Paul.

His hand rested on her knee, pressing just slightly, demanding her attention.
Irulan looked at him from the corner of her eye. He did not hide it. His eyes—blue, infinite, ruthless—were fixed on her, deliberately ignoring the dozens of gazes observing them. The entire room was a cage of political containment, and he behaved as if they were alone, as if the universe itself could not judge him.

An idiot, she thought.
An idiot who does not understand what he provokes.

After ten years of rumors, whispers about a cold, distant, empty marriage… now he presented himself like this: so attentive, so obvious, so brazenly affectionate in front of everyone. As if his devotion were natural. As if it were not a freshly opened wound.

Irulan breathed deeply, feeling the air enter her nose with a hint of spices—that dry scent that always announced Paul’s presence—and with minimal, almost invisible movements, traced a sign beneath the table.
Only he could see it.

«Pay attention to the meeting, not to me.»

Paul arched an eyebrow slightly. A glimmer of humor crossed his gaze, like a brief storm over a still desert. His response required no words; it was a thought translated into gesture, a certainty she read without difficulty.

«Impossible, not with you by my side.»

Irulan held her breath.
For a second, her heart skipped a beat, and blood rushed to her cheeks before she could stop it. She cursed her own body for betraying her, for reminding her that she was still alive.

She was not a woman given to blushing.
But the way Paul looked at her—calm, assured, as if every unspoken word weighed more than an entire speech—disarmed her.

And while the voices of the Landsraad continued debating laws and treaties, Irulan understood with unsettling clarity that this man was not merely protecting her imperial image.
He was protecting her.

Why… she did not yet know.
But the thought, like a current of spice swept along by the wind, sent shivers through her more than she wanted to admit.

 

---

Paul felt the room like a silent battlefield. Every breath, every movement, every word from the Landsraad was a piece aligning on an invisible board—one he had seen a thousand times before in the sands of his visions. The murmur of the nobles buzzed like a distant, irrelevant hum compared to the constant pulse of his own mind.

The air smelled of spice—not the kind that burns or is inhaled, but the kind released when time folds. That faint, metallic aroma, like a restrained omen, warned him that the future was shifting once more.

And in the midst of it all… she was there.

Irulan.

Motionless, impeccable, her neck hidden beneath the fabric that tried to conceal more than a wound. Her silence was a presence in itself, an echo spreading between the columns, filling the spaces where her diplomatic voice had once flowed. It was strange to see her like this: so still, so conscious of her own body.

Paul noticed how others looked at her. The feigned fear, the pity dissolving into respect, the balance of power subtly tilting in her favor, like a coin finally landing on the correct side.

And he… did not know when he decided to touch her. His hand simply moved, a minimal, instinctive action, meant to anchor her to the present. Her skin was warm, tense beneath the cloth, the muscle rigid from refusing to tremble.

Irulan had always been a perfect mask: a porcelain face sustained by centuries of Bene Gesserit training and imperial pride. But now… Paul sensed the humanity behind that mask, and that feeling unsettled him more than any vision of the future.

Because in the threads of destiny, Irulan had always been a cold constant, a shadow at his side, useful, predictably loyal. But the attack… her wound… had broken something. And in that fracture, something new breathed. Something dangerous.

When she sent him the signal—subtle, quick, imperceptible to anyone who did not know her—Paul could not help but smile.

«Pay attention to the meeting, not to me.»

A phrase so hers, so restrained. He would have loved to respond aloud, as he used to, just to annoy her, just to see the faint frown, that tiny crack in her perfect composure.

Instead, he replied with the truth that his mind could not silence but his hands could convey:
“Impossible, not with you by my side.”

He watched her contain the air, barely a blink, a slight inflection in her gaze. And in that instant, he understood something he had not wanted to admit in the past: Irulan was not a secondary piece. Her silence had shifted the balance. The attack, the injury, the loss of her voice… had awakened more respect and compassion in the Empire than any of her speeches ever could.

It was ironic: the woman whose voice had been stolen now spoke with more power than ever.

Paul knew he had to use it for Irulan’s good. Power always revolved around symbols, and she—his mutilated wife, his serene companion, his new golden shadow—was the perfect symbol for the Empire he needed to rebuild.

Yet between political calculation and the truth in her gaze, something was confused.

Because when he looked at her, he did not see merely a useful piece. He saw the imperceptible flutter of her eyelashes when someone uttered her name, the tension in her jaw as she hid her pain beneath composure, the dignity that not even the Bene Gesserit could have manufactured.

And he found himself… feeling something.

He did not know if it was love—loving Irulan was something Paul had never allowed himself to feel, and now it seemed to hit him full force without warning. But it was definitely a form of recognition, a silent reverence for what she had endured.

Fate had condemned them to coexist as symbols: he, the messiah who could not escape his own myth; she, the silenced voice that refused to vanish.

Paul turned his gaze to the Landsraad, the emblems shining on their robes, the faces of the Great Houses tense, watchful. All feared his gaze, feared the echo of the Kwisatz Haderach behind his eyes. Yet as he listened to the speeches, his thoughts were not on power or politics, but on the touch of ivory cloth against Irulan’s neck.

Fate was shifting. Paul could smell it, could feel it. And for the first time in a long while, Paul Atreides—Emperor of Humanity, heir of sand and time—felt that not everything tying him to Irulan was duty or guilt. Something else was being born in the silence between them. Something he could not control, and did not want to control.

Paul noticed the exact moment a topic arose in the discussion—one that sparked in Irulan that particular light he knew so well. Even without a voice, her gaze ignited with the same restrained passion as before, that spark that appeared whenever an idea germinated in her mind, begging to reach the world.

He remembered, with a bitter pang, how he had used to extinguish that light. How many times he had interrupted, dismissed, or ignored her, hiding behind his authority as emperor, his duty, the fidelity he imposed like a dogma. And while others now listened with respect, Paul realized it had been he—more than any decree or accident—who had condemned her to silence long before she lost her voice.

The memory of her tone, serene yet firm as she defended an idea, pierced him with heavy nostalgia. Her voice, which he had so often considered cold or calculating, now seemed warm, alive, almost sacred. What an idiot he had been, he thought, not realizing that in every word of hers lay a search for understanding, not for power.

So, without hesitation, he placed his hand on her knee again and pressed gently. A small gesture, almost imperceptible to others, yet between them it carried the weight of an ancient permission, a mute apology: “Speak.”

Although she could no longer speak a word, he knew she would find a way.

He did not say her name; it was unnecessary. He merely inclined his head slightly, a clear gesture, and the attention of the entire chamber shifted to her.

Irulan straightened in her seat, back erect, fingers extended over the polished stone table. One movement and then another—her hands began to speak.

The signs flowed with measured elegance, each articulated with near-hypnotic precision. It was no ordinary language; it was the code the Council had been forced to learn over the past months, adapted to her new way of communicating after losing her voice.

The official translators—seated at the far end of the table—took notes, interpreting quietly what her fingers conveyed:

«House Wallach reports a shortage of water along the routes to Giedi Prime. The situation is unsustainable unless transportation taxes are adjusted to the new imperial treaty.»

The words spoken by the interpreters lacked the grace her hands evoked. Seeing her do it was different: the fluidity, the calm, the way the language of her fingers seemed to float in the air like a visual song.

And the Emperor… did not take his eyes off her.

Paul did not interrupt, correct, or dictate. He merely observed, as if the entire session depended on what Irulan said—or indicated—in silence.

Each time one of the Landsraad representatives requested clarification, Paul responded with a firm voice, yet without intruding on her space.

"The Princess proposes that trade routes go through Sikun rather than Parmentier," he said, interpreting her signs before the translator even opened their mouth. "Lower risk of ambush, greater access to underground water reserves."

A murmur ran through the chamber. The Emperor not only understood her language—he mastered it. Their synchronization was perfect.

Irulan continued, her hands tracing new ideas in the air, the reflection of light on the rings of her fingers accentuating each motion. The interpreters could barely keep pace; the Houses, fascinated or intimidated, leaned slightly forward, striving not to miss a single detail.

In another time, no one would have listened to Irulan. She had been a decorative figure, a name on the records. Now, all awaited her signs with the attention given to an oracle.

When her visual discourse concluded, Paul inclined his head slightly toward her, a gesture that did not go unnoticed. Then, he addressed the council:

"My wife’s decision is sound." His tone allowed no reply. "Implement the route redistribution. Henceforth, any water treaties must be reviewed under her supervision."

A suppressed murmur swept through the room. It was a concession of power, a public declaration.

Eyes met, the Houses measured the change, and on their faces appeared something between respect and fear. No one contradicted the Emperor; no one dared.

Irulan slowly lowered her hands. She could feel the gazes upon her—not the pity she was accustomed to, but attention and calculation. She was now part of the political equation. Not a symbol of alliance… but a voiceless voice that all had to hear.

Paul rested his hand on the table near hers, without touching it. Only a centimeter apart, but the gesture sufficed to propagate its meaning across the chamber.

There was no doubt: the Princess Consort not only spoke on behalf of the Emperor. She was part of his power.

And in that instant, the Landsraad understood with absolute clarity. Whether they liked it or not, they had to listen to Irulan Corrino Atreides.

 

---

The end of the session was, for Paul, a perfect event. Everything had proceeded with near-ritual precision: the Houses had listened, the Landsraad had complied, and amid that solemn order, Irulan shone with a light that was not new, but finally acknowledged.

Deep down, he had feared the opposite. He had feared that her muteness would render her invisible, that the great dukes and ladies would see her as an ornament, a decorative figure without voice or power, or worse, a ceremonial burden to endure. But it was not so. For the first time in years, they looked at her with respect. And that recognition—so belated, so deserved—shook him more than he would admit.

Paul was not blind. He had seen, with the passive gaze of one who prefers not to look too deeply, the years of humiliation Irulan had silently endured. He had felt the pity masquerading as courtesy, landing on her like polished blades—glances he had never stopped, because he did not deem it necessary, because in his world there was only one priority.

Chani—his Sihaya, his Fremen root, his love of the deserts, the flame that had survived the winds of Arrakis.

That loyalty he had so vigorously defended before all, that love defining him as a man, now revealed itself to him as a subtle cruelty. He had been a poor husband, a man who allowed his wife to fade slowly before his eyes, who did not defend her with word or presence. And worst of all, suffocating him in silent guilt now, was understanding that many times it had been he himself who had pushed her toward that decline.

He understood why Irulan despised him—she deserved it. And he also understood why she despised Chani. The equation was simple and painfully human.

Throughout the meeting, Paul was aware of the change. There was something different in the atmosphere of the chamber, in postures, in murmurs that were no longer condescending but genuinely attentive. Where once Irulan had been a shadow, she was now the axis, the central figure, the Emperor’s wife not only by title but by presence. And that change came at a price Paul was only beginning to comprehend.

Because now it was Irulan who held his arm.
No longer Chani.

And though the gesture had been calculated by him, the impact was devastating. Not even the fact that his concubine was visibly pregnant stopped the Empire from reinterpreting the scene.

Chani, mother of the heir, the Fremen warrior who had shared his battles, had become, in the eyes of all, a secondary figure. Just another concubine.

Paul saw it. He noticed the glances sliding toward her: cold, measuring, condescending. The same looks that had been directed at Irulan for years. And a part of him—a part he did not dare recognize as his own—wondered if Irulan noticed it too. If, from her place beside him, she relished, even for a moment, the inverted balance.

Did she feel satisfaction seeing Chani occupy the vulnerable position that had been hers for so long?
Could the wound of one woman become another's balm?

The worst part was discovering that the thought did not disturb him. Thinking of Chani enduring the same gazes that Irulan had suffered for years did not provoke anger or guilt. Only silence and a strange calm, almost sorrowful.

Because he saw Irulan more composed, firmer, more alive. For the first time, she was not being devoured by judgmental eyes, and if that meant Chani had to bear that weight… Paul, unspoken, accepted it.

That was his true condemnation: realizing he remained selfish.
That he had hurt Irulan to protect Chani, and now hurt Chani to protect Irulan. The scales never balanced—they merely shifted the victim.

During the council, Chani did not speak. Her seat, only a few steps behind the throne, seemed an insignificant detail, yet every noble present understood its significance. The universe itself seemed to have displaced her from her invisible position of intimate power into a role that old protocols had always assigned her. Not as an equal, but as a concubine.

Paul, however, barely noticed. His attention was entirely on Irulan: on her gestures, her measured breaths, the almost imperceptible tremor of her fingers when she had to use her hands to express what she had once said with her voice. His mind devoted itself completely to her, ensuring she did not falter, that every gaze found her upright and serene. And in doing so, he forgot what he had mere inches away.

He forgot Chani—and she saw it all.

She saw Paul’s hand on Irulan’s knee, that contained, measured touch, yet loaded with a closeness that needed no words. She saw the discreet caress, the barely perceptible brush, almost accidental, yet far too intimate to be casual. She saw the smile that had once been hers, the one she knew by heart, born between their fingers on desert nights when only the wind and the two of them existed.

She saw the spark in Paul’s gaze, that silent glint that had once sought her among the crowd, and now, without hesitation, rested on Irulan. She saw the complicity in their gestures, the language they shared without knowing it, the harmony she had believed impossible.

And she felt her chest tighten—not with jealousy, but with a mute, brutal certainty: love does not only fade, it also divides. Sometimes it fragments into pieces one gives away unknowingly, pieces that change owners without permission. And in that instant, she understood that Paul, without intending to, had begun to love differently—perhaps not less, but in another way.

The sound of Chani’s chair scraping as she stood cracked the air. The entire Landsraad turned toward her. Even Irulan, alerted by the sound, twisted abruptly, her breath caught.

The world seemed to stop, gazes, murmurs, tension suspended. All attention focused on the pregnant Fremen, standing, breathing with difficulty, her dark robe barely disguising the tremor of her body.

Paul felt the immediate impulse to rise, to move toward her, to protect her as he had so many times before. His instinct screamed that he must, that it was his duty, his love, his oldest bond.

But then Chani’s eyes fixed on Irulan.
Not on him.
On her.

It was a precise, sharp, burning look. A gaze carrying years of resentment, of unnamed wounds. He saw how Irulan tensed, how her breath broke for a second, how her neck—so pale, covered by the soft collar—seemed to turn into a visible target.

And then Paul understood. The danger was not in words, alliances, or the political knives of the Landsraad. The true edge was in the gazes, and Chani’s was a direct strike.

His body reacted before his mind.

Instead of rising to help his pregnant beloved, he moved to protect his wife. He turned toward Irulan, instinctively, placing himself between the two women like a shield.

And in front of all, at the center of the imperial hall, Paul Atreides gently lifted Irulan’s chin, forcing her to look only at him. To disconnect from Chani’s gaze, from judgment, from pain.

His gesture was slight, yet devastating. A touch containing an entire story: regret, guilt, the tenderness he had never allowed himself to show.

The Landsraad fell into absolute silence, and in that silence, Paul understood that, without intending to, he had sealed something deeper than a political decision.

He had chosen a side—and that choice would condemn him to both worlds: love and duty.

It was Stilgar who, witnessing everything, acted with the precision and loyalty of a true devotee of his master. He rose calmly from his seat, approaching the furious Chani. Wordlessly, he positioned himself behind her, steady and silent, offering support so she could walk without stumbling, removing her from Paul and the princess, and thus avoiding a scandal that would echo through the hall.

Paul noticed Stilgar’s action from the corner of his eye, their gazes meeting in a moment charged with meaning. In that glance, he recognized a nod, a simple gesture filled with understanding and support. Stilgar more than anyone knew the weight of the change that had settled in Paul: his Mahdi now cared for his wife, and she needed that care.

Chani needed to understand, even if it hurt, that Paul was beginning to be just with both his women, that his love was not consumed by favoritism but divided, with pain and care, between them.

The Landsraad, which moments ago had been tense and expectant, began to relax with the departure of the Fremen presence and the intimate moment between Paul and Irulan. As if the chamber itself exhaled, the nobles began to withdraw one by one, murmuring agreements, interpreting gestures, but unable to fully grasp the earthquake of emotions they had just witnessed.

The meeting ended, leaving a silence heavy with meaning, an invisible coin tossed over the hearts of the Empire, now divided between appearance and feeling.

Thus, the hall remained empty for them. Irulan and Paul stayed in the center, surrounded by the shadows cast by the tall columns and the echoes of departing footsteps. Light filtered through golden windows, illuminating their faces, and for the first time, the princess could look at her husband without feeling the weight of the crowd pressing on her shoulders.

Paul, meanwhile, still held her chin gently, guiding her to look only at him. He could feel the tremor still running through her body, the accelerated heartbeat Irulan could not hide, and for the first time, he understood: this was not only physical protection; it was a silent vindication, a belated recognition needing no witnesses.

«She hates me.»
Irulan did not signal with her hands; she simply moved her lips slowly, letting Paul read every word in the room’s silence.

"She simply does not understand," Paul replied, passing his hand from Irulan’s chin to her cheek, stroking the soft, round, pink flesh. Everything about her seemed delicate and fragile, yet at the same time full of contained strength.

Irulan shook her head slightly, as if Paul could not grasp the full weight of the situation, the old wounds, and the secrets that pressed upon her.

"You bled for her, Irulan. For her child. You have paid with that any sin committed," Paul said, his voice low but firm, referring to the years when Irulan had kept Chani infertile with contraceptives, a silent sacrifice seldom recognized. Paul saw her eyes cloud with guilt, a dark veil he knew all too well.

Taking advantage of the solitude around them—only the soldiers remained as silent figures of guard—Paul acted without hesitation. He surprised Irulan, lifting her carefully from her seat and placing her on his lap. They remained there, seated on the throne, face to face, closer than ever before.

A low growl escaped Irulan, her eyes rolling with a mixture of surprise and amusement at Paul’s audacity. He smiled, amused; he had lost count of how many times he had done the same before, each gesture loaded with the need to protect her, to draw near without intermediaries.

Paul did not do such things with Chani. With Chani, his love had another form, another distance, another intensity. But with Irulan… with Irulan, he felt a different urgency. He needed her there, in his arms, atop him. Each contact was a silent declaration: here, no one can harm you. Here, you are mine, and I will be your shield against all who would hurt you.

In the hall’s silence, with light streaming through the windows, Paul felt the weight of responsibility and tenderness intertwine. Irulan settled slightly, wordlessly accepting the gesture, and in that simple act of closeness, they both understood something that needed no words: between them existed a bond independent of words or political justice, one of deep, silent, absolute care.

 

---

There was no one more mercurial than Irulan, and Paul was learning it at an accelerated pace. Only a few days had passed since that moment when Irulan had allowed herself to rest atop his chest, perched between his legs, accepting with a mixture of submission and trust that contact which, after the council, had become necessary, almost ritualistic. And now, suddenly, it seemed they were playing a new game: cat and mouse.

"It's just an ointment, my queen," Paul repeated for the fourth time, with patience and a hint of amusement in his voice. A table separated them; each remained in opposite corners, as if the distance added excitement to their little duel. Every time Paul tried to reach her, Irulan moved with feline speed, circling the table, turning the simple act of applying an ointment into an almost choreographed chase.

Who could have imagined that Irulan Corrino and Paul Atreides would spend the afternoon almost playing tag in the imperial room? And yet, there they were: every gesture charged with tension, every laugh held back between the silences of the room.

The delay in capturing his wife and applying the ointment was the same that kept him away from Chani, who was beside Jessica awaiting a medical visit for her pregnancy. Life seemed to divide him between care and duty, between tenderness and responsibility.

"Irulan, for God's sake, it's for your health," Paul complained, trying to catch her once more, only to see her switch corners quickly, mocking him with that gesture so characteristic of hers.

«Not that ointment. That one burns,» Irulan responded in furious gestures, her face a mix of determination and playful annoyance. The ointment, created by Stilgar's partner, had been given to Paul as a kind gesture to help the princess. Knowing there were Fremen looking out for her, even indirectly, reassured him.

What Paul could not deny was that, although the mixture of spices and herbs was powerful and effective, Irulan's delicate skin reacted immediately to the burn of the ointment. The first time he applied it, the progress in healing had been obvious, but the irritation on the tender skin of her throat had made Irulan almost instantly hate it. Now, every movement, every attempt at application, was a small negotiation between protection, affection, and the inevitable resistance of his wife.

And Paul, for the first time, did not want to force anything. Every stifled laugh, every dodge, every challenging look became an act of closeness. Even amid the small chaos of the ointment and the chases, he felt that Irulan allowed him to approach, that her game was also a way of letting him care for her, even if in her own way.

Paul sighed, letting patience turn into a playful smile, and took a quicker step, closing part of the distance between them. Irulan glanced at him sideways, lips pressed and eyebrow arched, ready to move again, but this time Paul didn’t let her escape. With a swift motion, he gently wrapped his arms around her and held her firmly against his chest.

"I’m done running, queen," he whispered, his voice a mix of tenderness and authority. "Now, trust me."

Irulan let out a small growl of protest, her hands trying to push him away, but not with enough force to move. Paul took advantage of the closeness, feeling the warmth of her body, the soft scent of her skin mingled with the fragrance of her clothes, and applied the ointment delicately to the wound on her throat. Each movement was slow, calculated, making sure not to provoke too much burn, although he knew even a little would be enough for Irulan to feel it.

"Take a deep breath," he whispered. "Just for a moment."

Irulan closed her eyes, biting her lower lip as the mix of spices and herbs began to burn slightly. Her body tensed, but Paul held her steady, his warm hands caressing the sensitive skin, and instead of pulling away, she gradually relaxed her shoulders against him.

"Stay still…" he said with a soft smile, sliding his fingertips along her neck to ease the discomfort. "Almost done."

When he finished, Irulan opened her eyes, looking at him with a mix of annoyance, relief, and a spark of contained amusement. Paul smiled at that look, recognizing the complexity of her character: strong, proud, impossible to tame, yet still allowing him to come close.

"See?" he repeated, playing with her hands, intertwining theirs lightly. "It wasn’t so bad."

A small breath escaped from Irulan, a sigh that said more than any word. Paul noticed how her chest rose and fell slowly against his, how her arms finally relaxed, and understood that, at that moment, there were no games or chases, only care and closeness that needed no witnesses.

Paul held her a little longer, feeling the beat of her heart under his fingers, and then, gently, set her back on her feet in front of him. Irulan looked at him, still with a glint of challenge in her eyes, but also with a gesture of silent gratitude only he could read.

"You’re impossible," Paul whispered, letting out a low laugh.

The knock on the door pulled Paul and Irulan from their bubble. Paul gestured lightly to the maids to open it, only to allow another woman in: Chani's only maid, the one who had agreed to accompany her at Paul’s insistence.

"Muad'Dib," the young Fremen greeted with reverence. "My lady sent me to fetch you; the doctor has arrived and the wait—" she paused, avoiding looking at Irulan and the attending maids. They were all Fremen, but Paul immediately noticed the difference; there were clear factions, divided loyalties. Strangely, some Fremen women were now loyal to Irulan, not Chani, even though Chani was a Fremen by birth. Paul realized that his care for Irulan had drawn that line: seeing their god protect her made any gesture of care toward her a sacred act.

"I will go immediately," Paul replied, carefully putting away the ointment and straightening his clothes, still disheveled from his wife’s chase.

"We’ll be waiting, my lord," Chani's maid said, with a final gesture of respect before leaving the room.

Paul was about to take his cloak when Irulan’s soft hand stopped him. He turned to her, attentive to every movement of her delicate figure.

"Hh… pfh," she tried to say, opening her mouth, but it ended in a broken sound, as she brought her hand to her neck irritated by the ointment.

The small sound shook Paul completely; it always did. That broken, vulnerable voice left him weak all over, defenseless.

"No, Irulan. Queen, don’t touch it, the ointment is still fresh," Paul said calmly, gently taking her hand to move it away from the irritated skin.

Instead of pulling away, Irulan leaned closer, and their eyes met. That intense green forced him to swallow; they were wet, shining, full of emotions he was only beginning to understand.

"Irulan…" Paul began, concerned, not fully understanding the nuance crossing his wife’s mood.

«With me, here,» her lips moved silently. Paul read it naturally; his experience with her mutism had trained him to perceive every intention, no matter how subtle.

She wanted him there, by her side. The bipolarity of her actions appeared again: first withdrawn, as if hating his touch, then allowing herself to fall into his arms, embracing the care and warmth Paul offered.

Paul swallowed as Irulan guided his hand to her throat, letting his fingers brush the ointment-soaked wound. The temptation was irresistible. With a confident movement, he took her by the nape and brought his lips to hers, first softly, then deepening the contact. It was an exploratory kiss, slow, first testing her lips, then the sweetness contained in her mouth.

Irulan let out a muffled, soft moan, allowing her tongue to meet Paul’s. Her lips tasted of honey, of sweet fruit, of constant care; a flavor that pervaded everything, enveloping and subduing. Paul responded with the same intensity, exploring every corner, feeling his body respond to Irulan’s warmth and the softness of her skin.

His free arm wrapped around Irulan’s waist, pulling her closer, pressing their bodies together. He felt the warmth of her skin through the thin fabric of her dress, the contour of her round, firm breasts against his chest, her shaky, labored breathing mixing with his own. Each touch was both a message of care and desire: he wanted to protect her but also feel her close, feel her fully.

Paul slid his hands delicately, caressing her back, moving slowly down to feel the curve of her hips. Irulan did not pull away; on the contrary, she leaned closer, resting her forehead against his, seeking contact, security, and closeness only he could give.

Their breaths mingled, warm and deep. Every moan, every sigh, was an invisible thread binding them tighter. Paul could not pull away, and he didn’t want to. Time seemed to stop in the imperial room; nothing existed outside that embrace, that kiss, that silent, absolute surrender.

Irulan closed her eyes, letting Paul hold her, explore, care. Her hand brushed her throat again, and Paul took it tenderly, letting his fingers caress the sensitive skin while his mouth continued on hers, slowly, savoring, claiming, enjoying the sweetness of his wife.

The whole world disappeared. There were no maids, no Landsraad, no waiting doctors. Only the two of them: Paul, protector, lover, confidant; Irulan, surrendered, vulnerable, powerful in her giving, mixing need and strength in a combination that made every touch electrifying.

When they finally separated by a few centimeters, Paul remained trapped in the wet shine of Irulan’s eyes as she breathed heavily, her skin still pink from the ointment and the closeness of her husband.

«Here,» Irulan’s now wet lips spoke without a word. Paul simply nodded, unable to look away, caught in the silent intensity she projected.

"With you," he whispered softly, moving closer again. He leaned slightly to bridge the height difference, taking her lips in his with calculated slowness, savoring every contact.

He had never kissed her before. Not even at their wedding had a kiss reached them; Paul had avoided that physical contact, leaving everything formal on paper, distant, without allowing real touch. And now, every millimeter of that mouth on his was a discovery, a redemption held for years.

Irulan’s small hands wrapped around his neck, and Paul felt the subtle effort of her body standing on tiptoe to reach him better. A faint smile drew across his face, delicate and fleeting as the brush of her breath. Her small stature contrasted with his, and every movement sent an unexpected tingle across his abdomen, awakening thoughts he knew he should restrain. Paul could not help but imagine lifting that small body and carrying her to his bed, surrendering completely to the moment. But he restrained that impulse.

Irulan offered him a gesture of power and trust; he had to respond carefully, without rushing her, like a gentle hunter with a cautious prey. Paul decided to go slow, careful not to frighten the little cat curled in his arms.

Time dissolved between kisses and sighs. They finally found themselves on the divan, Irulan seated on him, lips impossible to separate. Every brush, every inhale, was a silent conversation, a delicate tug-of-war where mutual attraction became a game.

But then, the sound of the door knocking interrupted the bubble surrounding them. Their lips, now red and swollen, separated gently as Paul turned toward the entrance, finding the maids with lowered gazes, respecting the intimacy of Muad'Dib and his wife.

Paul was about to order that whoever was behind the door be allowed in when he felt a cold, unexpected touch: Irulan’s hand sliding under his shirt.

He turned his head toward her. Irulan, unflinching, kept her gaze fixed on his partially exposed abdomen. Paul hadn’t noticed the moment she unbuttoned his shirt from the waist. The reveal was slow, subtle, provocative: a silent game of temptation that completely disarmed him.

The next knock on the door felt weak compared to the intensity of the look Irulan gave him as she softly bit her lips. There she was, over him, vulnerable, clumsy in her desire, and yet dazzling. He couldn’t help but smile tenderly, caught between fascination and the need to protect.

"You’re playing with fire, queen," he whispered, stealing a light, slow kiss, as his hands explored beneath the hem of her dress, gently touching Irulan’s thighs.

"Hghm," the broken, delicate sound, like cracked porcelain, escaped from Irulan as she felt Paul’s touch. Her soft, warm skin molded beneath his palm, provoking a contained ecstasy, fascination, and desire mixed together—each brush a small explosion of tenderness and passion.

Each touch, each gesture, was a silent pact: she drew him in, provoked him, and he fell, unable to resist the mastery of her silent manipulation.

 

---

"Why isn’t he coming? Are you sure you told him correctly?" Chani asked Rhudi, the Fremen who accompanied her as a maid, her voice trembling between surprise and anger.

She was lying in bed, her body heavy and tired from pregnancy, with the doctor seated to her left, ready for the exam, and Jessica to her right, nervous, barely biting her lower lip. Every second without Paul increased the pressure in Chani’s chest—a mixture of anxiety and fury that made her heart pound.

"I informed him correctly, ma’am," Rhudi said cautiously. "He said he would come, but the next two times I was sent to fetch him from the east he didn’t respond. It wasn’t until Yenil went to notify that Mahdi was busy at the moment, appreciating that we understood his presence wasn’t possible," she finished, her words falling like stones on Chani.

Chani’s body tensed suddenly, her fingers clutching the sheets, white from the strength with which she gripped them. "Busy? That his presence isn’t possible?" she repeated, her voice broken, as if each word were a blade cutting her throat.

She knew Yenil: formerly the wife of a Fremen warrior, now a widow, devoted to Muad’Dib, and for months one of the handmaidens chosen for Irulan. The certainty of what that meant knotted her stomach: Paul was still with Irulan. He was "busy" with her, ignoring his responsibilities as lover and future father.

Anger mingled with pain; her breathing became rapid and shallow, muscles tense and trembling. Every second without his presence felt like abandonment, a betrayal burning beneath her skin. Chani’s body vibrated with indignation: her hands shook, her heart pounded, and a hot intensity rose from her womb to her throat as she fought to hold back tears of frustration.

She couldn’t believe it. That he would stay with Irulan, leaving the medical appointment behind, leaving her and her unborn child alone. One thing was tolerating that he spent much of his time with Irulan; another entirely was this betrayal. Her mind spun with sharp thoughts: how could he prioritize her over his own family? Every heartbeat seemed to shout her outrage, a silent roar filling the room as physical and emotional tension enveloped her completely.

"Chani, let’s not wait for Paul. Allow the doctor to start," Jessica said, gently brushing her hand, trying to calm the trembling coursing through Chani’s body—a tremor born of indignation and frustration.

Chani, instead, let her body sink further among the pillows, surrendered to rage and exhaustion, lifting her nightgown without shame to expose her swollen belly. It was a gesture of silent defiance, of restrained claim: she was here, present, with her child growing inside her, and Paul was not.

Jessica sighed and shook her head. She truly couldn’t grasp all the changes that had arisen after the attack. Part of her felt pity for Irulan’s lost voice; she knew a voiceless Bene Gesserit was, in some ways, a lost cause and could sympathize with her. But at this moment she also felt compassion for Chani: vulnerable, pregnant, carrying not only her son but also Paul’s heart, offered and unprotected.

And Paul… Paul kept his gaze fixed on Irulan, as if she were a delicate porcelain doll, something to observe, care for, and admire, but never truly touch. He was being unfair, as always, incapable of seeing what was right in front of him. Jessica knew that even if Paul perceived Irulan’s suffering, he would see it through the shadow of his own obsession with her, distorted and clouded, just as before—but reversed.

It seemed everything had simply shifted: the women, the affections, the priorities. And Chani… Chani still couldn’t believe how easily Paul had allowed this to happen, leaving her heart and her child waiting while his attention remained captive to another.

The doctor began the examination with meticulous movements, palpating Chani’s belly carefully, checking for signs, measuring pressure and temperature. Each touch seemed a silent reminder of the vulnerability filling the room. Jessica watched every gesture with attentive eyes, her breath held, feeling a knot in her stomach grow with each sign the doctor noted.

Chani, however, seemed lost in a sea of thoughts, her gaze distant, as if floating outside the room. She barely registered the doctor’s words or the gentle but firm touches on her belly. Each palpation made her shiver, a subtle tremor Jessica could feel through the tense air.

When the exam concluded, the doctor glanced at Jessica, quickly, with a meaning that needed no explanation. Jessica understood instantly.

Chani’s health was not improving; it was deteriorating. Every sign, every small gesture of Chani’s body confirmed that the pregnancy remained dangerous, a constant threat to her life. The possibility of a fatal outcome hovered among them, silent but real.

Jessica felt a chill run down her spine. Every second without Paul increased the anxiety pressing her chest. His presence was indispensable: he needed to be there, attentive to every change, ready to respond to any emergency. But something inside her said that Paul already somehow knew how this would end.

The thought made her shiver completely. The room felt heavier, every breath of Chani’s a reminder of her body’s fragility, and Jessica realized that her grandson was in the hands of a fate that seemed inevitable. And worst of all: no one, not even Paul, seemed willing to alter it.

Jessica closed her eyes for a moment, letting fear and helplessness wash over her, feeling time itself halt, trapping them all in a silence heavy with tension and danger.