The Death of Duty

Chapter 5 - Feyd-Rautha

I blinked once. Twice. My eyes were dry, and my mouth was sandpaper.

A gag. There was a gag in my mouth.

Rather than panicking, I glanced around. My neck was sore, and there was a throbbing pain in my temple. Someone had hit me.

The Harkonnen soldier had knocked me out.

But why not kill me?

Ice froze my veins to a standstill, and I swore my heart stopped entirely. They knew. Our enemies, they knew of my attachment to Paul.

Fear is the mind-killer.

I took in my surroundings—the chiseled sandstone walls and ceiling, the sculpted columns. I was inside the palace.

Exactly where I was not meant to be. But it was too late now. Our enemies knew, and they had taken advantage of the opportunity to imprison me.

The expansive room was empty, and I sat alone against one of the pillars in the middle. My hands were bound behind me with a cold, dark metal.

There were no windows, so I could not be sure if the fighting was still ensuing. What if we had won already? If Paul had gained control and invaded the palace? Was he wondering where I was? Had our forces left already? Was I left behind?

I drew in a deep breath, steadying my heart rate and willing my body to calm. The Weirding Ways—as the Fremen called it—that my mother had taught me proved to be incredibly useful, no matter my distaste for the Bene Gesserit sisterhood.

"So you're the one," a low, gravelly voice drawled from somewhere within the room, echoing off the walls in every direction.

I whipped my head around, searching for the source. How had I missed another presence?

Footsteps approached from behind, slow and casual. I tensed. Black appeared in the corner of my vision, and then a pair of dark boots came into view, rounding the pillar I was seated against.

My eyes traveled up, and up, and up. A Harkonnen.

I pushed myself back against the pillar, using the force to help me stand as I slid up it. Standing fully, I barely reached this man's shoulder. He towered above me, and I had to tilt my head back to fully examine his face.

This was not just a Harkonnen. His features were elegant yet brutal. His eyes a blue so light they were chips of ice, his jaw so sharp it put my crysknife to shame. His smooth head, the signature of House Harkonnen, was the least unnerving thing about him. Perhaps it was the devastating beauty edged with violence, like a carved, poison-tipped blade, or maybe it was his full, pouting lips, or it could have been the perfect symmetry of his face, or even the paleness of his skin, so white it resembled bleached bone. But it was likely the penetrating stare of his pale blue eyes, so cold I wished for the midday heat of Arrakis that could scorch a man to death.

His eyes stripped me bare beneath his smooth brow, something cruelly seductive in the way he stared—the way he moved.

There was a sadistic desire for bloodshed and death within him.

A sharp, brutal killer stood before me.

Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen.

Unable to speak with the gag in my mouth, I braced my feet apart, should I need them to fight. With my hands bound, it rendered them useless, but that didn't mean I couldn't use the rest of my body to my advantage.