lazarus. feyd rautha

chapter seven: investigation

KAITAIN, CORRINTH, 10,191

In the hours following the attempted poisoning, the Ferning guards secured the perimeter and found no physical breaches or signs of forced entry. Every corner of the manor was searched thoroughly, and still nothing pointed to an outside threat, which left Feyd to hold the blame until proven innocent.

She knew if he'd truly been deemed guilty they would be preparing his execution, most likely with the Royal Palace as venue. But instead Feyd remained prisoner in a lush count's guest room while the investigation persisted, and his handful of men detained in a location she was not privy to. Anastacia had already paid a visit to the corridor holding Feyd-Rautha's room, erasing the sounds of her footsteps as she followed patrolling guards, disappearing into shadows. She had scoped out the corner of the house he was kept in; grand doors blocked by two men in the Fenring standard military uniform. Men who were weak despite their training, men with minds vulnerable to persuasion. When the time came for her to enter that room, she would remove them quietly and without struggle.

But she was not yet ready to face her alleged assailant.

Farah and Jude were kept under the watchful eye of two servants, kept busy with mundane tasks and entertainment in the south wing of the house, a place she learned from silently exploring was reserved for family and not guests. Whether this task of distraction came from a protective mess of suspicion she did not know. But she couldn't dismiss the idea entirely, the two of them shared no blood with Margot and had nothing to inherit from the Count. There was a motive there: shorten the line of succession and reap the rewards when the patriarch inevitably dies.

Had Farah poisoned Bethania she would be next in the Fenring line, and if Jude was really her half-brother, he would stand to gain even more as a man. Iris was no threat to them even as a noble born girl, she was far too young to be put in any position of power, and it would be more than a decade before she came of age.

Only the girls' cups were not poisoned, only mine, she thought.

For a moment she considered the possibility of being killed at the hands of Farah and Jude, but it was nonsensical. She was a guest in their home and brought no threat to them. She had no title, no inheritance, no proximity to power other than the people she belonged to, the Sisterhood and the Harkonnens. There was no reason in it other than the satisfaction of taking a life. She considered herself a good judge of character and those two were not malicious, she'd seen maliciousness, she'd seen cunning and evil in the eyes of the Baron and his mentat. These were only teenagers, who did not bother to conceal their presence or lower their voices, whose only sins were childish gossip and pettiness. Their Count is an advisor and not a warmonger, they have not known violence.

But that only brought her back to the most likely theory: Feyd-Rautha watching her head hit the table with a clatter, free from the betrothal bound to him, suppressing a self-satisfied grin.

She gave such consideration to the possibility of other suspects because she did not want to face the dreadful and likely reality that it was in fact Feyd-Rautha, that he wanted to kill her and was committed to seeing it through rather than just fantasize about it through grit teeth.

She was so foolish, so stupid. She turned a blind eye, even if for just a moment, to what was in front of her. Danger. She mistook tolerance for acceptance and even if she did not act rashly on it, the very fact that she allowed weakness in her mind was a sign of failure.

She found herself tasked with looking in on Bethania at Margot's request.

"The girl is distraught, she's not accustomed to things like this, none of them have been threatened before," she'd said. "I'll be busy handling the matter, just keep her company, would you?"