𝙈𝘼𝙍𝙏𝙔𝙍 || Feyd-Rautha

04 | A Pretender

CHAPTER FOUR
A   P R E T E N D E R

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Allya had never before witnessed the main wing of the palace until the evening the guards brought her from her chambers and dragged her there. The journey is a blur of flickering lights and elongated corridors. Shadows dance along the walls, casting eerie shapes that reach out and grasp onto her as she passes. She welcomes the patches of black as they slither over her body. Sharp and twisted, like wielded knives along her limbs.

The air feels heavy as she approaches a selected set of doors, neatly decorated in a black ceramic. The weight of its presence looms like a dark shroud, suffocating her with an oppressive intensity. The guards on each of her sides eventually come to a halt.

The doors swing open with a loud creak, revealing a grandiose room bathed in flickering candlelight. The air is thick with the scent of incense and ash, a heady mixture stuffing itself down her throat.

As she's ushered inside, she takes in the opulence of the chamber. Dark, intricately woven tapestries adorn the plain walls, depicting scenes of battles and conquests. Heavy, black curtains hang over tall windows, revealing the polluted, moon-light sky hovering above Giedi Prime.

In the centre of the room, a long table stretches out, laden with an array of plates and wines. The smell of sulphur and salt pollutes her veins– a roaming inversion inside her disarraying system.

"And then she arrives."

The voice arrives like a reiteration from the dark.

Allya turns her head to the source of the sound and rests her eyes on a familiar figure.

Feyd-Rautha looks like a ghost in the candlelight. Maybe he is.

"Sit."

She does not know why she heeds his words so easily. He has done nothing to earn her compliance.

The chair under her feels cool and stiff, made of a black oak.

A servant, silent and meek, appears at her side, pouring wine into a delicate crystal goblet. The scent of it is rich and heady, swirling around her like a temptress beckoning her to oblivion.

"You can drink."

She feels it in both hands and brings it to her lips. Without letting it show, Allya inhales the acrid scent and searches for any inclinations of stimulants swirled into the mixture of her drink. A trick she was taught as a child.

When she finds nothing, she leans the goblet against her lips and allows it to sipper down her throat. Warmth floods her stomach. The sensation of foam curling and settling once more.

Feyd looks on with heavy eyes.

He soon does the same.

It is an acquired taste which lures on her tongue. Both intrusive and estranged. A red, starchy thing, too delicate to have been cultivated on a planet like Giedi Prime.

Her father would drink wine like this.

Allya remembers his loud, barking laughter as it echoed across the great hall. People would scurry– their bright, unruly faces gleaming with surmise. The Earl of Ix would smile a detached, fatherly smile as he placed his hands upon his daughter's shoulders.

'You will make a fine bride', he had whispered to her, his breath smelling warm and tannic. 'The delight of the Landsraad.'

Allya had not thought of herself as a bride then. She was barely a woman.