Chapter Text
Irulan knew she had postponed her “duties” for far too long. Duties that were not only those of a wife, but of a daughter of the Empire, a Bene Gesserit, a key piece in the Sisterhood’s grand plan. She knew Reverend Mother Mohiam and the other sisters awaited her reports with growing unease. Twice a month, at least—that had been stipulated. Precise, detailed information about Paul Atreides.
Was he truly the Kwisatz Haderach?
How far did his visions reach?
Could he be guided… or, at best, controlled?
But Irulan had sent none of that. Not a word, not a single compromising syllable. She kept silent about everything she knew. She did it intentionally, with conviction, with something very few sisters would understand: loyalty born from affection, from shared intimacy. Because yes, Irulan was sure: Paul was not just the Kwisatz Haderach. He was more. He was something that neither the Bene Gesserit nor their centuries of genetic manipulation and planning had been able to foresee. He was... human. Completely, intensely human.
And that was why she remained silent.
She also kept silent about how her marriage had gone unconsummated for months. Information that, if it reached the wrong ears, would be used as a whip—not only against her, but against Paul. Against their union. So she guarded that secret with the same care she protected her heart. Though she knew that sooner or later, the Sisters would begin to pressure her. And they would do so with the subtlest and most effective violence she knew: silence, glances, suggestions disguised as advice.
The Bene Gesserit were not patient when it came to losing control.
And Irulan was no longer entirely her own.
That was why she was not surprised when a Bene Gesserit acolyte requested an audience in the presence of the Empress. The request was formal, delivered through channels she knew well, with the polite yet inescapable tone of an order disguised as courtesy. The Sisterhood did not ask for favors; they tested the threads they had woven for centuries... and now they tugged at one of the tensest: Irulan.
Paul immediately sensed something was different. His intuition was sharp, his visions confused but still able to detect a change in the wind. He wasted no time asking. It was Jessica who confirmed what he already feared, with a dry calm that irritated him more than he wanted to admit.
“It will be in the solar chamber. Irulan must receive her,” his mother said without fully looking at him. “It will not be Reverend Mother Mohiam, but she will come with her instructions. You know you cannot ignore them forever.”
Paul frowned, his jaw clenched like stone.
“I will not receive any Bene Gesserit in my palace,” he spat, with the tone of one who has already lost the battle but still refuses to yield ground.
“It’s necessary, Paul,” Jessica replied firmly. “If you don’t give them some control, they will take what they want by force. And you know what it means if they start to hate you more than they already do. We don’t need a silent enemy who has birthed half the empire.”
Irulan stayed silent for a moment, until she finally nodded.
“I agree with Lady Jessica. It’s better to give them a window than to let them open the door by force,” she said in a calm voice, though inside her chest beat with restrained nerves.
Paul looked at her. First with annoyance, then with something darker: resignation.
He clenched his teeth. He clenched his fists.
And he accepted.
“One meeting only. One. And if they try to touch anything beyond what we allow… they will be silenced.”
His voice was that of an emperor.
But his eyes, as they settled on Irulan, revealed the fear of a man who felt the threads of his fate tangling once more.
---
In the solar chamber, the light of Arrakis poured in strongly, filtered by translucent panels, casting golden reflections on the polished floor. The room, usually calm, had turned opaque, as if even the air knew what was about to happen. Irulan was already there, standing in perfect posture, dressed with sober imperial elegance, though inside she felt the weight of every heartbeat like a threat.
Then she entered.
The Bene Gesserit acolyte did not hold the rank of Reverend Mother, but she walked as if she did. Her face was covered by a gray veil, her steps silent, measured. Around her, the atmosphere changed. It was as if the world compressed, as if everything else became irrelevant in the face of her presence.
“Daughter of the throne. Heir to the program,” she said softly, yet the acolyte’s voice seemed to echo off the walls. She did not greet, nor did she bow. It was unnecessary.
Irulan took a deep breath.
“Sister,” she replied coldly. They did not embrace. They did not smile. Bene Gesserit courtesy was never warm.
The acolyte circled Irulan, measuring her composure.
“You are brighter than when you left Kaitain. The Arrakis sun seems to have given you… firmness.”
She stopped in front of her.
“And the Emperor? Is he soft?”
“He is alert. Observant. Not soft,” Irulan said, her voice still controlled. But that statement only caused the acolyte to tilt her head slightly.
“Lie,” she whispered. Then she did it.
The Voice.
“Sit.”
The order was like a whip wrapped in velvet. Irulan’s body responded before her mind could resist, her knees bent with an obedience that made her tremble with contained rage. She sat down.
“You are not here as empress. Not as wife. Not even as a Corrino. You are here as the product of centuries of work,” said the acolyte. “As a conduit of a hope that has been gestating for generations. We trained you, we guided you, we designed you.”
Irulan swallowed hard, jaw clenched.
“Paul Atreides is the Kwisatz Haderach,” the acolyte continued coldly. “We denied it, feared it, watched him grow beyond our control. Now he reigns, and you are at his side. Not as you should be, but you are.”
“Should I be?” asked Irulan, with just enough boldness.
“Your womb should be the cradle of the Empire’s future.”
The Voice returned, faint, a venomous whisper.
Irulan’s stomach clenched. The acolyte moved closer.
“The genes are aligned. Your Corrino blood. His Atreides lineage. The heir who can save us from the fanatic madness he has sown, the heir we could form, educate, redirect. That is your purpose.”
“He has not touched my bed.”
“Then make him. Do it for the program. For the Sisterhood. For balance. Or have you... forgotten who you are?”
Irulan wanted to scream. I am more than your tool, she wanted to say. But she knew it didn’t matter. Not here.
“An empress who bears no offspring is useless,” the acolyte finally said. “And a Bene Gesserit who forgets her sisters is a traitor.”
Silence.
And then, as if all that was said were only a prologue:
“We want a detailed report on his health, habits, dreams. The visions. Everything. And before two moons, a plan to consummate your marriage.”
Irulan clenched her nails into her palm, restraining herself.
“And if I refuse?”
The acolyte tilted her head gently.
“Then not only will you pay the consequences. But the entire delicate balance sustaining the Empire. Remember, daughter: your sisters put you there. And they can replace you as well.”
She left without waiting any longer.
Irulan did not move for minutes.
She felt nausea. She felt rage. She felt fear. But she also felt something else, like a glowing ember deep inside.
---
Paul remained motionless in his office, seated before a table that meant nothing to him, surrounded by books and unimportant objects, heart in his throat. Irulan was just a few meters away, in another wing of the palace, facing the Bene Gesserit. Alone.
Jessica had insisted he let Irulan take charge.
“You must appear strong, Paul. Not as a child protecting his wife, but as an emperor who does not need to intervene.”
But Paul could not stay still.
The idea of Irulan there, before a trained sister, subjected to pressure, subtle threats, or not so subtle, ignited his insides.
So he closed his eyes, breathed slowly… and invited his visions.
He let them flow in like a dark river, and they enveloped him violently.
The first thing he felt was the tone.
Not words. Tone.
The solar chamber had changed.
Everything was pale light and still air, a prison disguised as elegance.
And there she was… Irulan, sitting without will, lips pressed into a line of defiant pride.
Her body responded to another command, not her own.
Paul saw her from outside, as if floating over the scene, as if his own eyes had become those of the room itself.
The voice.
“Your womb should be the cradle of the Empire’s future.”
Paul felt a dull buzz rise up his spine. The Voice, that vile tool of the Bene Gesserit, had been used on his wife.
Irulan, the woman who slept on his chest, who laughed when speaking of Taleth, who blushed at her words.
That Irulan was now broken—if only for a moment—but broken nonetheless.
“An empress who bears no offspring is useless.”
“A sister who forgets her sisters is a traitor.”
Paul clenched his fists. His chest began to burn, not from Arrakis’ heat, but from something more primal. Fury.
The same fire that once made him shout at Shaddam Corrino.
The same fire that made him emperor.
Irulan said nothing in his vision. But Paul saw her resist. He felt her legs tense. He felt her swallow the rage.
She was not a child. She was not just a piece. She was his—not by possession, but by bond. By choice.
And they had dared treat her like cattle.
The acolyte left. Irulan remained alone. She stayed seated. But inside her was not a defeated woman. Paul felt it, he knew it: she was furious. Not with herself. Not with him. With them.
The vision dissolved.
Paul opened his eyes sharply. The office air tasted like dust. He wanted to run, shout, destroy.
Burn all ties with the Sisterhood.
Break every piece of that genetic board they had constructed.
Paul did not wait a second more. He rose from his seat as if an electric current had passed through him, his cloak swirling behind him like the shadow of his resolve. The guards posted outside his office tried to announce his exit, but he raised a hand and his gaze was enough to silence them.
Every step he took down the palace halls felt like a sentence. The air seemed to tremble around him, charged with the kind of fury that doesn’t shout, but burns everything. The vision was lodged in his mind like a thorn he could not pull out. The Voice. The words. The way they had made Irulan feel less than human. Irulan, his wife, his partner, reduced to a tool by women who never saw her as anything more than a vessel of power.
When he reached the solar chamber doors, they opened without need of command. Jessica was already standing, as if she had sensed it. She said nothing. Just looked at him. She knew. She knew too.
“She left minutes ago,” she said simply.
Paul did not respond. He walked straight to the north corridor, where Irulan’s private chamber was. There was a tremor in his muscles that had nothing to do with fear or exhaustion. It was contained rage, the kind of rage that only arises when what one loves is touched.
When he reached the door, he did not knock. He did not ask permission. He simply opened it.
Irulan sat on the edge of one of the chairs, her back perfectly straight, like a golden statue under the light from the window. But her hands were clenched tightly in her lap. And though her face was serene, her eyes… were not. Her eyes were charged with an emotion she couldn’t hide in time.
Paul closed the door behind him.
“What did they tell you?” he asked, his voice low but firm.
Irulan lifted her gaze. Paul had seen her so many times as diplomatic, impeccable, perfect. But now, he saw her as real. Vulnerable. Hurt.
“Nothing I didn’t already know,” she replied. Her voice was measured, but something in its tremor broke his heart.
Paul moved closer and, without asking, knelt before her.
He took her hands.
“They won’t ever touch you like that again.”
“Paul…” she began, but he shook his head.
“No. This time you won’t stop me. This time… it’s different.”
Irulan swallowed. Her fingers tightened around his.
“Why?”
He looked at her. And it was as simple, as clear, as breathing.
“Because I’m not their Kwisatz Haderach. I’m the man who loves you. And I swear on what remains of my soul… they will never treat you like something to be possessed again.”
Irulan didn’t answer. Not with words. She simply leaned toward him, rested her forehead against his. They closed their eyes.
And in that silence, in that stillness, there was no empire, no destiny, no bloodline.
Only them.
Irulan was not a weak woman. She had grown up among vipers dressed in silk, had learned to speak with diplomacy while dodging daggers in the form of words. What had happened with the Bene Gesserit was not, by far, the most painful thing she had endured. She had faced contempt, indifference, even humiliation at the hands of the Sisterhood’s training. And yet, it was that voice, that dark cadence ordering her to remember her sisters, that shook her more than she wanted to admit.
Because they were right.
A sister who forgets her sisters is a traitor.
And Jessica… Jessica was living proof of that. A traitor, yes, but also a woman who chose to love. Who broke the rules. Who gave Leto a son out of love. Who defied the logic of centuries of genetic manipulation for one human act. Was it selfish? Perhaps. Was it weak? Never. And now, Irulan walked that same path, one even steeper.
Because Paul wasn’t just a man.
He was an emperor.
He was a messiah.
He was the Kwisatz Haderach.
And to love Paul… wasn’t just a betrayal of her sisters. It was a sacrilege against the very structure that had shaped her.
But now, with him kneeling before her, holding her hands, looking at her as if she were everything that mattered in the universe, Irulan felt something in her chest that even the strictest discipline of the Sisterhood had never been able to erase: faith.
Faith in a man. Not in a cause.
And that—that—was more powerful than any Voice.
Paul didn’t speak now as the emperor, nor the prophet, nor Leto’s heir. He spoke as Paul. As the young man she had learned to listen to in the quiet nights they spent alone, sharing silences. As the man who had let her into his dreams, his fears, his guilt.
Irulan knew that if she chose him—truly chose him—she would do so with her eyes open. She knew she would burn all bridges by doing so. That she would be alone. Without the Bene Gesserit. Without Kaitain. Without Whenessia. Without Mohiam.
But not without herself.
And Paul… Paul was the right choice.
Not because he was emperor.
Not because he was chosen.
But because, in the end, he had chosen her too.
And that, to Irulan Corrino, was worth more than any lineage written in labs or plans whispered in the dark.
And yet, fear still breathed down her neck. She could love Paul, but she could also lose this war the moment the Bene Gesserit decided to act.
“We can’t consummate our marriage.”
Paul froze, as if the entire universe held its breath with him.
Irulan’s words echoed like a clean blow in the middle of silence.
Their foreheads were still touching when she said it, but he pulled away slightly, just enough to see her eyes. What he found there wasn’t rejection, nor disdain. It was fear. Deep, real fear—not born of a lack of love, but of love itself. Of protection.
“I… I can’t get pregnant, Paul,” she repeated, and her voice trembled. “If I have your child, they’ll use it. Shape it. Turn it into what they want. They’ll use it against you, like a puppet. And I… I don’t want that. I can’t.”
Every word, every pause, pierced Paul like a thorn to the soul. His expression, once serene, tightened with a fury he barely contained. Not toward Irulan. Never toward her. But toward those who believed they had the right to decide for them—for their bodies, for their future.
The Bene Gesserit.
Mohiam.
That slow poison they had fed Irulan since childhood, since training her to be useful, not free. That fear now made her renounce something she desired, simply because she believed it would be turned into another tool, another piece on their board. He had known, from the beginning, what the Bene Gesserit wanted. A child. A perfect-blooded heir. A child shaped by centuries of calculation.
“They want it, Paul,” Irulan repeated, lowering her eyes. “And I don’t want to give them that. I don’t want to give them a child of mine to exploit. I don’t want them to take it from me. I don’t want them to take it from you. I can’t…”
Paul inhaled deeply, closed his eyes for a moment, but his hand never let go of hers. In fact, he held her tighter. When he spoke, his voice was not the emperor’s, nor the messiah’s. It was the man’s voice—just the man.
“They won’t have it, Irulan.” His voice was low, sharp as a blade. “They’ll have nothing of ours, darling.”
She looked at him, her lashes trembling. Paul leaned in, his forehead touching hers again, his hand going to the nape of her neck, as if anchoring her to his truth.
“We’ll have a child,” he said firmly, as if carving it in stone. “We’ll have one when you want to. Not because they demand it, not because the Empire expects it. When you and I are ready. And that child will be ours. Not theirs. Not anyone’s.”
Irulan opened her mouth, but Paul silenced her with a kiss—gentle, slow, one that asked nothing and offered everything. It wasn’t a kiss of desire, but of hope, of comfort, of love.
When they parted, Paul stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers and added in a hoarse voice:
“You’ll never feel afraid of what they want again. Not while I live. You’re my sun, Irulan. And I won’t let anyone take what’s yours.”
Not your body.
Not your will.
Not your future.
---
“The Bene Gesserit are always a pain in the ass,” Gurney grumbled, swirling the spiced wine in his hand as the reddish liquid glimmered under the private lounge’s lamp light.
Jessica, seated near the window, let out a short nasal laugh, as if she couldn’t help but agree—at least with the wording.
“The black-veiled witches?” Stilgar asked, brow furrowed, his voice heavy with the seriousness he always used when speaking of sacred matters.
“The very same,” Gurney replied, taking a long sip.
Stilgar looked toward the closed dining room doors, fully aware that behind them, somewhere deeper in the palace, Muad’Dib and his wife hadn’t come out all day. Jessica had told them just enough: that Irulan had been visited by a Bene Gesserit, and since then, the two had locked themselves away.
“Why doesn’t Muad’Dib deal with them?” Stilgar asked at last, veiled anger in his voice.
To him, there was only one answer to offense: retribution.
Jessica turned slightly to face him.
“Because it’s not that simple, Stilgar,” she said calmly, though her gaze shone with the sharpness tempered by years. “The Bene Gesserit aren’t just any sect. They’re a web of power, a net spread in every corner of the Empire. To kill one of them…”
“…is to declare war on a Sisterhood that was here before the Empire had a name,” Gurney finished bitterly. “And Paul already has enough wars.”
Stilgar huffed but said nothing. He knew they were right.
“And besides,” Jessica added in a lower voice, “a war against the Bene Gesserit wouldn’t be fought with swords or soldiers. It would be silent. In poisons, whispers, twisted prophecies. And that is far more dangerous.”
“But Irulan is his wife,” Stilgar said at last. “They shouldn’t be allowed to touch her.”
“And yet they did,” Gurney said. “Because to them, Irulan isn’t a wife. She’s a tool. One of their own.”
Silence thickened around them for a moment.
“Then all that’s left is to trust,” Jessica murmured. “To trust that the love they’re building is stronger than the fear being imposed.”
“And hope Paul doesn’t burn them all before that happens,” Gurney added, taking another swig of his wine.
No one contradicted him.
---
“How did you join the Bene Gesserit?” Paul asked in a quiet voice, as they lay together wrapped in the heavy calm of an Arrakeen night. Irulan rested against his chest, finally more at ease, her breathing steady, her linen dress barely a barrier between her skin and the slow tracing of Paul’s fingers along her back.
“I’ve seen fragments of your past in my visions,” he continued in a meditative tone, “but never the exact moment you were given to the Sisterhood. Never that decision.”
Irulan scoffed softly, a gesture laced with discomfort and resignation. She still hadn’t grown used to how easily Paul could see her deepest memories—moments that, to her, were hers and hers alone. And yet, she had come to accept that Paul Atreides was not an ordinary man, and prescience never asked permission.
“My mother was a Bene Gesserit,” she finally replied, her voice composed, the sound filling the silence like a muted prayer. “When she died, the Sisterhood lost their only true influence over my father. They were left with a vacuum. And in the Imperium, power vacuums are never left unclaimed.”
“So they chose you,” Paul said, his fingers never stopping their gentle motion.
“They debated between Whenessia and me,” Irulan commented. “We both had the bloodline, the court training, the Corrino name. But I was the firstborn. The heir apparent. The one destined to be Empress. From their logic, I was the obvious choice. What better tool of control than to shape the future consort of the throne from the inside?”
There was a pause. A silence heavy with unspoken thoughts.
“And even so,” Irulan added with a smile that was neither fully ironic nor fully resigned, “I’m grateful they chose me. Not out of ambition… but because Whenessia wouldn’t have survived. She didn’t have… she never had the strength, the thickened skin, the silence required to wear so many masks.”
Paul lowered his gaze to her, his pale eyes filled with a fierce tenderness. Because he knew that strength. He had seen it. He loved it.
Irulan—princess by blood, Bene Gesserit by duty, Empress by destiny… and now, by her own will, by her own choice, simply Irulan. Simply herself.
“What was the harshest training they put you through?” Paul asked, his voice quiet but firm, as though he knew he was about to open an old wound.
He had witnessed fragments in his visions: echoes of the girl who would be Empress, surrounded by black-veiled shadows, by gazes demanding perfection without compassion. He had woken more than once gripped by fury, feeling the unbearable weight of everything the Bene Gesserit had demanded from her.
But he didn’t want to see more. This time, he wanted to hear it. He wanted her to tell him—not what he could guess, but what she chose to share.
Irulan took a while to answer. Her breathing grew slower, more deliberate. Her body still rested against his, but her mind had clearly traveled back to that exact moment in time.
“They made me use the Voice… on my sisters,” she said at last, almost in a whisper.
Paul felt a knot form in his stomach. He understood instantly. She didn’t need to explain further. He knew Irulan’s love for her sisters—Rugi with her hearts of color, Chalice with her curious tenderness, even Whenessia, despite the bitter distance.
To force her to bend those she loved, to turn love into a weapon… it wasn’t just cruel. It was deeply dehumanizing.
“I was fourteen,” Irulan added after a long silence. “Chalice was nine. She looked at me as if I had changed forever. And I had.”
Paul held her tighter. Because he knew no child should ever go through that. No sister should be used that way.
“That wasn’t you,” he said. “It was them. The ones who made you believe that was the only way.”
Irulan didn’t answer. But in her silence, in the way she let herself be held by him without resistance, Paul understood that even this… was an act of healing.
---
Irulan fell asleep soon after, her body finally giving in to exhaustion. Paul held her in his arms, motionless, her breath soft against his neck, the faint rhythm of her chest offering the only possible comfort amid the storm brewing inside him.
But he couldn’t sleep.
Not when the memories from his visions returned like blades.
Not when the echo of Irulan’s voice repeating “They made me use the Voice on my sisters” kept playing in his mind like a poisoned mantra.
The Bene Gesserit.
Always them.
They had manipulated empires, blackmailed kings, violated the innocence of generations with their genetic program, planted religion as a weapon, trained bodies and minds as tools, turned love into weakness and motherhood into strategy.
They had stripped Irulan of her childhood, her bonds, her will—and still expected her to respond with blind loyalty. They wanted her as a spy, as a womb, as a compliant thread in their eternal web. As if his wife, his Irulan, were nothing more than another piece on their board, another programmed uterus.
Paul didn’t just hate them.
Paul wanted their complete extinction.
It wasn’t enough to strip them of their power.
It wasn’t enough to isolate them from imperial politics.
It wasn’t enough to ignore or neutralize them.
No.
He wanted them dead.
He wanted their veils in flames, their voices silenced by fire and steel.
He wanted their libraries reduced to ash and their sacred codes buried in salt.
He wanted every sacred whisper drowned in screams of terror.
He wanted their corpses hanging from the walls of their own convents as a warning.
Paul Atreides, Muad’Dib, the Kwisatz Haderach, the god-man of the desert, wanted to massacre every one of those witches who had made the girl now sleeping in his arms cry.
And he would.
One day, when the time came.
Not for vengeance.
But for justice.
For Irulan.
For all the little girls not yet born, already marked by the Sisterhood with invisible fire.
Paul kept his eyes open in the dark, the deep blue of his gaze glowing like embers.
He let the hatred settle beside the love in his chest—like blood brothers.
Because in his world, love wasn’t enough to protect.
Sometimes, horror was necessary.
And he would be the monster the Bene Gesserit feared in their final prayers.