Chapter Text
Jillia Blight wore a modest wedding dress, aggressively modest, and she hadn’t picked it herself. It covered her collar to toe, and a long veil of lace hid her face.
Jowy Atreides wore his uniform, which had just, finally, been sized to fit. They were heavy, those uniforms, but not nearly as heavy as they should have been; they were not armor. The commanders didn’t have to wear armor.
Luca Blight wore his armor. He seemed to prefer it.
There were no clerics for the ceremony. It would be considered unofficial until after the war. An engagement, really.
Jowy grasped the hand of his trial-wife, she meekly let him have it. When he pulled the veil over her face, she nervously cast her eyes on the floor.
What was the point of the pageantry? A serious question, but he wasn’t going to look at Prince Luca with questions now. Why pretend to marry me to your sister? Why hand her to me without legal binding? Why even observe?
It was Jowy’s first kiss, unless he counted a childhood kiss from Nanami (he better remembered the punch that followed). Jillia was soft but cold. He couldn’t feel much over his nervousness and when she finally lifted her black eyes to him he didn’t know if he’d done it right.
-
They did not consummate their marriage.
If this was a trial, what constituted ‘winning?’
Jillia had removed her own veil and stood nervously in her dress. The buttons, she told him, were on the back. He didn’t catch her drift; she told him she couldn’t unbutton them herself.
“Who put it on?” asked Jowy.
“I have ladies’ maids,” she said softly. “Charity. Ruth. Maria. They’re all… very nice.”
The dress had almost fifty tiny buttons, each satin-covered, held in a cloth loop. It took him some minutes to learn how to unfasten them, then he unhooked them quickly, revealing only a cloth under-dress. He felt relieved.
“The dress was my grandmother’s, actually,” she whispered, voice strained. “She was a Queen. They had cleaned it… fixed it… had to replace most of the buttons. The girls did. My maids.”
“You should put it somewhere safe, then,” replied Jowy. “That’s a precious dress.”
She nodded, and stood up off of his lap. But she stumbled on the dress that was drooping off of her frame now; startled, Jowy caught her, and pulled her back to her feet.
“Oh—" she wavered. “Oh dear.”
Jowy laughed at her; softly, only for a second. She just seemed so… befuddled. But she made a huff, maybe an awkward giggle, in response, and bent down to gather up the layers of fabric at her feet. “Would you help me?...”
He helped her pull the dress over her head, then, his eyes on the floor, folded it into her arms. Head bowed, she clutched it. They weren’t in her bedroom, weren’t in his, but a new suite. She stood alone on the hardwood floor, white dandelion in a very dark room, turning her head back and forth to find a place to put the wedding dress down.
She had to set it down on the dressing table. She turned back around to Jowy, still sitting on the edge of the bed.
“I’m—going to change out of my uniform,” he said, hurrying to the dresser. His face was hot and he felt a little sick. This whole thing; this sham marriage; he thought he had been the most disgusted with himself he ever would be when Annabel saw he was carrying a dagger and the sadness settled into her eyes and the wrinkles deepened on her face.
Well, perhaps, he thought, as his stomach twisted, that was the most disgusted he had ever been with himself. Maybe this was the most miserable he had ever been with himself. He had spent enough time with both emotions to be able to spot the difference pretty easily. That and shame, terror, exhaustion. All of them were sisters, but you could pick them apart from each other if you knew them well enough.
He heard Jillia take her shoes and socks off behind him as he pulled off his coat, shirt, pants, and stood behind the doors of the dresser for a while, wondering what to do. He had to make a choice. He couldn’t just stand here.
He decided it was cold, so he was going to put nightclothes on. He figured he was supposed to feel like a man now, just like his father or King Agares, big, confident, king of his castle, prepared to strut around his wife in his knickers but frankly, he didn’t feel like that. He felt like he was back in a tea room sitting across from a girl who wouldn’t look at him with his mom trying viciously to matchmake the two of them.
His skin was prickling with anxiety and he felt awash in the waves when he finally walked out to see his wife on the bed, still in her underdress. She had been combing her hair with her left hand, but she started and sat up when she saw he was looking at her, as if she were a soldier springing to the attention of her commander.
It felt suspiciously like shirking his duties, but he decided, face to face with her, that tonight, he was doing exactly what Jillia wanted to do, no more, and no less. What was this marriage for? Maneuvering. Politics. Tactics. The age-old causes of noble matrimony. What did he, unlike most married noblemen, not need? An heir. Would he even live to see one? Did it even matter? What was the point?
‘Wanting’ Jillia, he couldn’t even think about it. Confronting the emotions of the situation, a situation that felt like a paper law scribbled down that had to be reluctantly put into effect by guards and iron, overwhelmed him. He didn’t know anything about how he ‘felt’ about Jillia and the enormity of even wondering about it terrified him. The shame he felt, to take a woman as wife when the woman herself was irrelevant...
The only reason he began to cross the room to the bedside was because he knew he had to do something. Approaching Jillia was only slightly less terrifying than approaching her brother, which was a thought that could be unpacked at a later time.
She tensed when he got within five feet of her, invisible except for her hands clutching each other in her lap.
Jowy turned to walk around to the other side of the bed, where an end table with a single flickering oil lamp set. “I’ll shut it off,” he said, his heart hammering louder than his words.
Jillia voiced her assent, wordlessly and almost silently.
Jowy turned out the light and laid down, stomach-up.
It took some minutes for Jillia to lie down. She settled in slowly. She didn’t touch him.
He waited for a few minutes, then turned onto his side, facing away.
He didn’t know when Jillia fell asleep. It took him hours.
-
Jowy lived only a day with Jillia after their engagement before he and Prince Luca were to depart again. Even that one day was a precious wedding gift in wartime. Frankly, Jowy was thankful.
He was exhausted.
That day with Jillia was pleasant. She said nothing about the night before, so he didn’t have to. They took a long walk and spoke about the past, their parents, their tutors, their hometowns. How much did he know about her before? So little that it was doubled, tripled now.
Jillia was educated and curious, but would never pursue a question if she didn’t get an answer. She was circumspect and modest, and it took her some time to warm up to talking about herself. She didn’t have many hobbies, and she told him she was often tired.
“How often do you mean?”
“Usually.”
She liked her garden but not digging and she liked to play a harpsichord but did not like to sing. She preferred rainy weather, she told him, when a sunshower broke out when they were wandering the berry-bushes the maids tended for her.
“So do you want to stay out in it?”
She quickly glanced behind her, as if there might be someone to stop her. “I do,” she said, as if sharing a secret.
Jowy cracked a small smile, then turned his head up to look at the rain. The sky was bright; it would only last a minute.
A raindrop landed on his eye and he flinched, bowed his head. Jillia exclaimed, and when it slipped out over his face, she had a handkerchief to hand him.
“Thank you.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Thank you anyway.”
-
Briefly, during dinner (surprisingly plain, but still good) one of Prince Luca’s attendants arrived, apologized for the intrusion. He bore the instructions for their march the next day, and wanted to deliver them before General Blight retired for the evening.
Jowy’s blood went cold.
Jillia’s family name was greater than his by an exponential degree. Of course it had seniority. Why hadn’t that occurred to him?
General Blight.
Jowy Blight.
That was his name.
He thanked the attendant for his service.
-
Luca Blight.
Prince Luca Blight. Or Commander, if you prefer. Either was considered appropriate.
The name had an undeniable ring to it, didn’t it? And the man was working to pack as much menace into it as he possibly could. You could stride into a room with nothing but his name and silence it.
What a thing to carry around with you—a wave of fear and menace, awe and control, to buoy you up, so you could crest from room to room, city to city, unopposed. It trailed before and behind him, fed and furthered by the atrocities he filled it with. Luca Blight. Luca Blight. Like the chorus of the dead. “Luca Blight is coming” could send a wave of humanity into the streets. “Luca Blight came” means that wave had crashed.
Knowing him personally did not humanize him.
He would realize much later that a part of him had always been waiting to understand Luca, to see the human inside of him. He had always been waiting for the laugh after a silly mistake. The yawn and casual admission he hadn’t slept well. The statement of preference for one kind of weather or another. Something. Anything.
Luca Blight never once picked up a dirty plate or cup for himself. Luca Blight never noticed if there was a blossoming flower or tree by the road. Luca Blight didn’t knock before entering a room. Luca Blight started the march when he woke up and when he woke up exactly.
Luca Blight cornered him to ask how he had liked his sister.
-
Jowy struggled to find something to say, because he could not possibly remain silent.
If the marriage had not been consummated—if he said something lecherous or lustful—if he said that she was good, or she was bad, or she was inexperienced—was there anything that wasn’t an insult?
They had only arrived at Muse an hour ago. They had only got the troops dispersed and themselves into what was once the Hall just a handful of minutes ago.
Luca had unstrapped his sword to observe it, turning it in the light. The midday light shining down on Jowston Hill was certainly admirable; the shimmering cleanliness of Luca’s sword was even more so. He must indeed work very hard to maintain it.
He had sheathed his sword, cocked his head to Jowy, and asked him how he had liked his sister.
Surely Luca did not want to hear that she had given him great pleasure. He was an envious man, a domineering man. Such a man didn’t want his sister—but surely he would not hear that he had not ‘liked’ her and he certainly wouldn’t want to hear that the gift of her hand had been rejected. Luca was advancing on him; it was disguised, two steps toward the window, which brought him perpendicular to Jowy, then a step closer to him so that he was facing him. It was disguised but it was an advance.
“I hope she wasn’t disappointing to you.”
Even Luca’s eyes looked wrong. A Kobold had a dog’s eyes, a Wing-person had a bird’s, an elf would have bright, odd-colored eyes, and though these things frightened and disturbed some men, none of them put a shiver down Jowy’s spine. But these did, these undefinable goat’s-stare eyes, eyes that you could never quite not notice. If he stared at you in the fullness of dark and never made a sound still you would know his eyes were on you, roaming.
Luca walked casually closer to him, it was past time for Jowy to say something and he still didn’t know what to say. If you didn’t counter Luca, he kept attacking—“You know it was her first time. That’s beyond a shadow of a doubt, of course.”
Jowy tried to look not too put off when he nodded, just a little put off. He often had to lean on propriety when speaking to Luca, the habitual prudishness could get him out of a good handful of the horrific conversation topics that he dropped like a dog dropping shit. “Of course,” he repeated.
“So?” He asked, having settled himself just a step from Jowy, one leg closer, battle-stance. Either he had been so harshly trained he couldn’t get out of it or he really preferred it that much. “Come on, there aren’t any ladies to offend.”
Got it. “I’m afraid,” he steadied his voice, “I couldn’t say.”
His head tilted just a little and his eyebrows raised dangerously.
“I don’t have much experience myself. I have to admit she might have been the one disappointed.”
To put yourself down was always the least dangerous response to Luca Blight. Gentle flattery was fine. But take great care you did not stoop to adoration or worse, to begging . He loved begging.
Luca cracked a little laugh, a few low, almost sincere chuckles as he dragged his eyes down Jowy’s face, to his neck and chest. “You are really young, aren’t you? You have such incredible composure that I forget sometimes.”
Jowy didn’t respond.
“It was really your first time?” He smiled, shit—“Oh, no .” With that, Luca placed a heavy hand, hot, on Jowy’s shoulder. No pressure. Yet. “So, not a clue what you were doing? Just fumbling in the dark with her? Sure you found the right hole? Oh, look, I’m right,” he laughed, flicking up his thumb to brush Jowy’s cheek, as if playfully. “Blushing.”
He was. He could feel his face burning. He’s so fucking disgusting —
“My sister is too good a woman to cheat on you, so you’d better learn what you’re doing. Or,” he continued, his hand returning to his shoulder, and there it was, not so much of a push yet as a grip, like a cat slowly curling their claws into you. “Or… you know, I bet you’re not the blushing little virgin you look like. Sure, you didn’t get dirty in the streets like your peasant friends; mommy kept you inside, all cleaned up to present to the ladies, right? But you didn’t think that way, did you?”
He leaned in to get close to Jowy’s face, close enough for his sour breath to ghost on his forehead. The height difference between them was extreme; it was genetics, Jowy and Jillia were of height, and she was sixteen. But Luca was of a height and breadth to block out the light behind him.
Jowy squared his back.
“You’re pretty coy. Prudish, even. But I wasn’t born yesterday. The quietest kid is the freakiest one. Every time. You didn’t get to touch, but you looked a lot, didn’t you? I know you did.” Luca applied a little pressure to his shoulder. Back square. “The quiet one is the one to look out for. Did they ever say that about you?”
They had. They had, but… “Yes—”
Luca interrupted him with a broken, mechanical cackle. “Yes, yes they did. Because you were the little pervert, weren’t you? It’s always the little angel who never says anything out of place. Watching behind walls. Stealing clothing. But the hypervigilance is how you can tell. You’re vigilant because you know what’s going on inside, and you know what everyone would say if they could see.”
His voice was snake’s venom. He jostled Jowy’s shoulder ‘playfully.’ “Come on, you don’t have to be shy with me, little brother. In fact, didn’t Jillia say she had seen you before, since she spent so much time in that lovely mansion in Kyaro? Beautiful little house. We built it there so we could sit on the porch and gloat over the losers of the war,” he said, big smile. “That’s a long con, you little pervert. You like the girl next door, so what do you do? Join the army, kill thousands, maneuver the chips and jump at the very first chance to get your hands on her? You little shit . Was it everything you dreamed of?” he growled, face still smiling but the cheer sapped out of it, a wolf’s barred-fangs grimace. “She good enough for you now that you’ve had her?”
No, no, no, no, no, he was already buried in lies he had to refute, it wasn’t true and it stopped being true to long ago, he didn’t know where to start, he had to say something, something, “Your Highness—”
Wrong, apparently. Luca decided to push him into the wall with both hands now, not shaking him, just shoving both sides, equal force, like he was trying to shove him through the stone. Boxed in, Jowy’s head went dark; switched to fight responses. First, focus on your breathing. Second, wait for an opening.
Fight.
“Oh, no, I see what you were trying to say now,” Luca continued, his voice dropping even lower in pitch, a clandestine whisper. “You got too excited and came right away. You know, you’re way too proper, I can’t hardly tell what you’re saying sometimes. I bet she was disappointed. You feel a little dirty after that?” he asked and, for the first time since he began to accuse him, waited for a response, his head tilting, the underlids of his eyes tensing up, as if he truly, truly wanted to know how dirty Jowy had felt.
The opening. “I treated her as nothing less than the Lady she is the entire time,” he asserted. “I felt there was nothing dirty about what we did.”
“Then you’re fucking lying to yourself,” said Luca, almost sweetly. “Sex is dirty. Sex is fucking disgusting. Doesn’t matter that we have titles and gold buttons. You fuck just like a pig fucks. There’s no difference between us and animals, and since you’re helping me run this slaughterhouse right now you had better get used to that notion. You’re a stud with a mare and nothing fucking more, brother, the only real difference being you got someone who will fucking murder you if you don’t treat her right.”
“I treated her,” Jowy repeated, rising incrementally from the wall, “as nothing less than the Lady she is the entire time.”
Luca snorted. “Yeah, you probably didn’t even get in her,” he said, and Jowy carefully kept from flinching, hoped he did enough. With a push on his right arm Luca leaned backward, oh, thank god, he was leaning away, he was stopping, he was stopping. Jowy could smell clean air again. “Well, you’re going to be stuck here without her for some time. And you know what? You’re keeping your hands off of yourself. You don’t get to think about my sister until you’re back with her.”
Jowy’s jaw tensed.
“If I catch you touching yourself I’ll have you flogged,” said Luca cheerfully, rocking back onto his left heel to step away. “Maybe if you stop pleasing yourself for a day you’ll appreciate what you’re got when you’re back home. Alright?”
“H—” Jowy tried to speak and couldn’t.
“Say,” said Luca, his eyes growing very tight, “’Yes, your Highness.”
“Yes, your Highness,” Jowy squeezed out.
“Louder.”
“Yes, your Highness!”
Luca’s laugh echoed harshly as he turned his back to walk away, just like that.
Jowy wished he had anything to do but follow him and get back to work.
-
He didn’t really enter the most amorous phase of his life after watching the people of Muse die in droves anyway.
He would be able to see it the rest of his life.
First they started screaming. Then they began running. When they stopped, they started shaking. And then the blood and the pus and the light starting gushing out of their mouths.
When they were wrung out like roadkill under a wheel, they dropped.
Bushels of humanity were shoved off of the streets en masse. With brooms.
Luca must have a power he could not imagine, Jowy thought numbly, as they marched swiftly through the streets of Muse, observing the silence and the blood. And it seemed many of the soldiers around him shared it. They had a power to not even see the bodies as human anymore; they said so themselves. “Seeing all of them, they don’t even look” “once they’re dead” or “once they’re all piled up” “just like rabbits” “rats” “pigs” and “what does she care, she’s dead” “what does he care, he’s dead” “look, he shit himself” “ha, she was cute”
Jowy didn’t have that power. They looked like people to him, and he was sinking in it. Every glassy eye made him more and more tired and he felt he could collapse in the street.
The afternoon sun of the plains beat down.
-
Jowy didn’t quite sleep for a while. Awake, asleep, awake. Not sure when he was going to get to sleep, not sure when he fell asleep. Sweaty and lying prone, glassy-eyed bodies, bodies stripped of their clothes, their dignity, their identity.
It was weird, because he felt it was so wrong and he wanted everyone to live so badly, and he wanted everyone to fucking die so much. All these stupid, cruel, callous, murdering assholes, if they could just die, if Luca could just die, die, die,
-
He sat across from Luca at a wooden table, stolen from a rich man’s house, on his stolen chairs, eating stolen food off of stolen plates. He kept eating the chicken and wondering if it would have kept one man in starving Greenhill alive, or two, or three.
Luca shouted commands between bites, washed them both down with wine. Jowy would have never guessed in a million years he was a wine-drinker. Sure, he had assumed from the start that the man drank. But he was an ale man, certainly; not a liquor man, not with his sharp attention. That assumption was proved wrong; he liked bitter wine, the dryer the better, and cold.
The posh taste settled badly with the coarse manner. Jowy didn’t know why he was focusing on this.
He sat across from Luca during meals very often. He was usually quiet, he was always watching. The other generals were careful not to spare him an extra glance, just as he was careful not to spare them an extra glance.
Technically, he had more important goals than making absolutely sure that Luca didn’t catch on to the plot to assassinate him before it was sprung, but he allowed himself some grace in caring about Luca being assassinated more than the rest of it right now. With every bit of blood in his body and every push of his heart he cared that Prince Luca Blight not live one more year.
He was disgusting. Disgusting. Inhuman—
-
“Aren’t you excited to see my sister again?”
He usually said ‘my sister’ to refer to Jillia, hardly ever ‘your wife.’
No one else in this room knew what he meant.
“I only hope she’ll be happy to see me.”
They laughed.
-
“And after having addressed the issue of the left flank, I think that, wisely, the best course of actg hhhhnkkk —”
Jowy had kept talking as Luca slowly circled behind him. To circle like a vulture, perch like a hawk, crouch like a lion; all were quite typical to him, and though the generals around the table could not be called ‘comfortable’ with his actions, they knew what was typical and what was not. Luca slowly striding behind Jowy while he spoke, Jowy studiously not acknowledging it and keeping his eyes ahead, Luca bearing down his gaze on the back of the young man’s neck and licking his lips while he flexed his knuckles, all of that was normal. Prince Luca seizing Jowy by his hair without warning, digging the curves of his claws into his bound tresses and slamming his head down until his forehead cracked on the table, that was not typical.
Some jumped, some just tensed. Luca typically watched to see who jumped after something like that. Atypically, this time, he was still watching Jowy, who’s face he was pressing into the table. At first, he had shoved him straight down. Then he started rolling him back and forth, very slowly, as he talked, just to put pressure on more of his skin.
“You want to repeat what you just fucking said?” asked Luca, sounding calm. He flexed his fingers on Jowy’s skull, a step away from a massage. “Oh, you fucking can’t, can you ?” Luca snapped.
Breathe, He thought to himself. Breathe, Jowy. You have access to at least one orifice to breathe through at all times. He didn’t give you brain damage if you can think this clearly. You have to do something to keep your cool. Recite a poem. ‘
They flee from me, which sometime did me seek/with gentle foot tapping in my chamber…’
“Let me tell you what you said for you,” Luca continued, still holding his head down as Jowy, struggling to not tense his muscles, not be unprepared for another attack, willed himself limp. “It SOUNDED like you just said ‘I’ve considered your plan, your Highness, and I have a better one.’ Now, if you had had a better plan, Jowy, I would have heard you out. Like Greenhill. Remember Greenhill?”
‘I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek/that now are wild and do not remember…’
“Greenhill was great. I’d like another Greenhill from you, Jowy. But unfortunately, the idea you came up with this time was dumb as shit and it offended my senses the second you shat it out. How about you fucking think before you speak, next time?” he asked, Jowy could feel him lean down and that sour breath run over his neck again, he wanted to gag, he had to ‘that sometime they put themself in danger/to take bread at my hand…’
“I want to like you, Jowy. Listen, I do like you,” he whispered, leaning almost over Jowy’s bent back. He pressed him so far forward against the edge of the table that it began to cut into his windpipe. “So step up and remind me why I like you so much when you’re not being a sniveling, paranoid, cowardly idiot. Understand?”
‘and now they range/ busily seeking with a continual change…’
“Say yes, Your Highness.”
Jowy gagged for air.
Luca wrenched his head back so that he was half-holding him up by the hair, back bent in an arc. His eyes were staring at the ceiling; he could not see every other general, lieutenant, and secretary in the room staring at his eyes water when his lungs stung. But he knew they were. “Say yes, your highness!”
“Yes—” Jowy coughed as his throat rebelled. It felt like someone had choked him—“Yes, your highness—”
“Louder!” Luca demanded.
“Yes, your Highness!” Jowy shouted, voice cracking over each word.
When Luca let him go, Jowy was barely ready to brace himself with his hands so that his skull didn’t hit the table again. His heaving breaths took a couple seconds to adjust; Luca was still standing behind him. He didn’t know what the right answer was. Everyone was staring, what do you do, there’s absolutely no fucking protocol for this. He straightened his back. Folded his hands on top of each other, shaking with exertion.
He had to look up. He looked up, caught the eyes of a man across the room.
He looked down.
Everyone did.
Luca finally started walking again.
-
Jowy volunteered to be the one who oversaw cleaning up the streets of Muse. For what was potentially the most hellish place in the world, he was reluctant to leave it. The bodies were still piled everywhere; Jowy’s skin prickled when he thought of turning his back on them.
Luca told him with no room to bargain that he would not be staying in Muse, he would be going to Matilda—that is, after their visit home.