#taleoftwo

“Bells,” Trilly whispered as quietly as she could manage. “What are you doing?”

“You’ll see.”

Trillium winced. Belladonna could not whisper as quietly as she could.  Trepidation crept up her spine. There were times when she truly had no idea how to guess the thoughts within her sister’s mind. Earlier, Bells had lured her to the library with the tantalizing prospect of studying an Antivan tome about the proper distillation of poison. But when they arrived, Dorian was waiting with a mischievous gleam in his eye.

Dorian whisked the sisters to the banister in the center of the library, the one overlooking the rotunda below. Tugging them into a crouch, he proceeded to bob his head toward the sole occupant of the space below them, toward the man who had, quite literally, invaded Trillium’s dreams.

Her heart nearly stopped. This was an impossible situation. Here she was, wedged between two people waiting to pounce on her slightest reaction. This wasn’t a study session, it was a trap. She looked right—Belladonna couldn’t keep the grin off her face. She looked left—Dorian raised an eyebrow suggestively. Somehow, she had been found out. The only escape would be to pretend total ignorance. Luckily, she had a reputation for being naïve in matters like these.

“Why are we spying on Solas?”

“Look at what he’s drawing.”

Trillium was confused. Everyone knew Solas was creating a masterwork on the walls below. He was probably sketching out the latest panel in his fresco. She followed Dorian’s instruction and gazed at the pages on Solas’s desk. She was too high above to be able to decipher the images, so she focused on Solas instead. Ordinarily so guarded and formal, his expression was soft and loving. The corners of his lips turned upward in the slightest of smiles as those elegant fingers of his traveled over the surface of the parchment in long, sensual strokes. Trillium’s breath barely managed to leave her body. Was it possible to be jealous of a piece of paper?

Entranced, she watched him draw for what seemed like a lifetime. Then, a clatter from the Great Hall broke the spell and the quiet. Looking concerned, Solas quickly gathered his papers, hid them under a book, and left to investigate. Belladonna grabbed her hand, tugged, and dragged her down the stairs.

So here they were, sneaking toward Solas’s desk when he could come back at any moment. What on earth was Belladonna thinking?

“Bells,” Trilly whispered again, slightly louder than before. “We’re going to be caught.”

“Don’t worry. Sev’s keeping him distracted.”

Panic invaded Trillium’s voice. “You brought the twins into this?” Just how elaborate was this trap?

“Oh, hush,” Bells had reached the corner of the desk, her hand about to lift the book concealing the papers Solas had hidden so hastily. “Don’t you want to see what he was drawing?”

She did, desperately, long to know what subject would prompt Solas to sketch with such pleasure, but Trilly also knew how much he respected his privacy. If she had a secret, she wouldn’t want him to sneak into her room to steal it.

“Well, I do. I did not realize our dear Solas knew how to smile.” While she had been dithering, Dorian had made his way down the stairs. With a single stroke, he plucked the papers from the desk and gazed upon the images imprinted on them. His eyes lit with unholy glee, as if he had just heard the juiciest gossip in two years’ time. “My, my, my,” Amusement laced his voice as he turned toward Trillium. “What have you been hiding?”

Belladonna rushed to his side. She took one look at Solas’s drawings and gasped, “I knew it!”

And there they were again—the two of them looking at her as if she were a dish to be devoured at a moment’s notice.

Wordlessly, Dorian stretched out his hand, offering the drawings to her. Trillium took a deep breath. She took two steps forward and plucked them from his fingers. They’d made those drawings impossible to resist. Inwardly, she cursed Dorian’s satisfied smirk as she glanced downward.

Her heart stopped. And then, it started to beat at a rate three times its usual speed.

Every single sketch was of her.

There were at least twenty. Here, she was on watch in the Hinterlands. There, she was sparring on the grounds of Skyhold, mixing poison in her lab, smiling back from atop her newly acquired hart, diligently tending to a sprout in the garden, trudging through snow, sleeping in her hammock, and in a host of other stolen moments. They were all every day, ordinary things, but somehow he had made her look extraordinary. Graceful he had called her. No, he hadn’t called her graceful—he had declared it. Here, his feelings were without doubt. The lines of her body were shapely and evocative. The expressions on her face were alight with beauty. He had made her caring, vulnerable, fierce, and most surprisingly, happy. She blushed to think of the lingering looks she had caught out of the corner of her eye. He had been caressing her with his eyes, committing each moment into memory to recreate at leisure in the secrecy of night. These were the drawings of a man in love. For surely, no one else could render her with such intimacy. She shuddered, remembering how he had stroked the pages as he drew. Her mind wandered, wondering what the touch of those fingers would feel like on her skin.

“Trilly?” Belladonna’s voice broke the spell she had been under. “Didn’t you know?”

Had she known? Unconsciously, her fingers traced the bottom of her lip. That kiss. It had made her heart flutter like a flower in the wind. Was that love?

Belladonna gasped. The sound brought Trillium to her senses. She had fallen into their trap.

“He kissed you! He kissed you and you didn’t tell me?”

Trillium blushed. She felt as if her entire face was on fire. Very carefully, she returned Solas’s drawings to their place on his desk, opened her mouth as if to answer Belladonna, and then turned on her heel and ran as fast as her feet could carry her in the opposite direction.

The sound of Dorian’s laughter chased her up the stairs as Bells cried out, “You’re not getting away that easily! I need details, Trillium!”

Trillium flew. Her feet traveled to the speed of her pounding heart. She was as light as a feather, she ran as if she had wings. Up the stairs, through the library, around the corner of the upper hall, past Vivienne, and down the other side. She ran without care, trusting her body to take her along the path she needed to travel. As she rounded a corner, her flight came to an abrupt halt when she clattered into someone, sending them both to the ground.

Strong hands clasped her shoulders, gently guiding them up from the floor of the Great Hall. “Lethallan? Are you all right?”

Sweet Sylaise. It was Solas. And there, on either side of him, were the twins. As usual, Seven was smirking about something. Soren, though, bore a slight look of disapproval. Trilly would have to worry about that later— for now, Solas dominated her view. In one movement, he rose from the jumbled position she had knocked him into. Concern wrinkled his brow as he held out his hand for Trillium to take. She blushed to see his fingers so soon after she had imagined them travelling the length of her body. She couldn’t quite meet his eye as she held onto his hand and allowed him to assist her up. His fingers tightened around hers. “Trillium?”

Oh yes. He had asked her something, hadn’t he? She had already forgotten how she was supposed to reply. She was lost in a realm of revelation. As she finally brought herself to meet his gaze, her mind swirled with one thought only. He loves me. He loves me. He loves me! Unbidden, the corners of her lips curled into a foolish grin. She couldn’t keep herself from beaming like an idiot.

“Are you well?”

Goodness, she must look like a loon. Before she could reply properly, the sound of Belladonna on the stairs behind her brought her to her senses. “I’m fine,” she rushed to say. “But I have to hide from Bells. It’s hard to explain.” With that, she released his hand and took off toward the end of the hall. If she hurried, she might trick Bells into thinking she was heading to climb her favorite tree in the garden.

As her hand reached the handle, Trillium heard a terrible racket. Belladonna had just done the exact same thing she had moments ago. She collided with Solas, sending them both sprawling. Yet this time, Solas was not the first to rise. Bella jumped straight up and pointed in his face. “You!” She exclaimed breathlessly. “You kissed my sister!”

“You kissed our sister?” The twins pounced on Bella’s words. In unison, they look on a frightening aspect. Each took one of Solas’s arms and pulled him to his feet. Creators! What were they going to do to him?

Trillium thought about trying to rescue him, but Bells was hurtling toward her. If she didn’t move now, she would be caught. Changing tactics, she sent an apologetic look his way and ran toward Josie’s office. Once there, she sped down to the vaults, confident she’d find the perfect place to hide. As she settled into the shadows, she could still hear Belladonna’s calling after her for details.

Trillium’s fingers trembled. The letter in her hand looked small, innocuous, and fragile. The slightest mishap could destroy it completely. And yet, she found she was afraid to break the seal and read the contents within.

There had been a host of letters and packages that had arrived around midday. Belladonna had been consulting with Rutherford when Josephine announced a messenger from Ostwick—a messenger bearing Trevelyan arms. Her eyes lit with excitement as she rushed to greet the man, who appeared to be a family retainer. The two spoke of matters they shared—the condition of the city, the health of his family and hers, reactions to Bella being proclaimed the Herald of Andraste. Trillium paid little heed to the words exchanged.

Her eyes had stuck to the satchel the man bore. It was brimming with papers and packages. The mystery of its contents caused her stomach to knot in several places.

Bells had told her that she had written to her family about the sequence of events leading to appearance of the Breach and the formation of the Inquisition. Bells had told her that she had written to their mother, who had not known that Trillium was alive. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Trilly must have known that those letters would have replies.

But, it was not until she saw the quantity of messages tucked away in the man’s satchel that Trillium dared to dream that at least one of them was meant for her.

Once they had been divided, Trillium was surprised to see that she had received a wide variety of messages and gifts, many from her mother, but others from people Belladonna had mentioned in stories. Trilly couldn’t dream of why they would be writing to her, a stranger. But, those were thoughts for another time. Trillium only had eyes for the letter tied to the top of the bundle Bells had handed to her.

The smell of roses was overwhelming. To another person, the scent may have been slight, but when Trill held the letter close to her nose, it was almost as if she had been transported to another time. Memories stirred deep within: the smell of roses in her hair after her mother braided it, the smell of roses on her cheek after a goodnight kiss, the smell of roses on the tattered rags she clung onto after her mother’s disappearance. It was a scent that haunted her dreams and here it was, no longer an insubstantial ghost of memory, but a real reminder of a love that had been ripped away too soon.

Trillium lived within that scent. She let the smell surround, torment, and devastate her as it forced its way to fill the vast places of emptiness where it had once lived within her heart. Trilly felt as if she were young again, a child weeping by a brook as she realized the scraps of her mother’s remaining dresses no longer smelled like roses. Now here she was, weeping again for the fact that the smell returned, but was not accompanied by her mother’s touch. Suddenly, the thing Trilly craved more than anything in the world was to fall into her mother’s embrace and feel her fingers stroke her hair.

Anger flashed through her body. Twenty five years had past- twenty five- and what does her mother send? A letter. She was tantalizingly present and frustratingly absent at the same moment. For some time, Trillium stared into space, obstinately refusing to open the missive in her hand. If her mother really loved and missed her, she would travel to Haven herself instead of sending letters and gifts through a messenger Trilly had no hope of recognizing. Not for the first time, resentment struck deep within Trilly’s heart—resentment that the open fears and wishes of one child vastly outweighed the secret desires of the other.

Belladonna feared for their mother’s safety. Any mage traveling during this war would be an instant target. A mage and the mother of the Herald of Andraste would be a prize their enemies would compete to capture. Rose was safest miles away behind strong walls within the network of protection established by Belladonna’s family. Trillium had agreed that their mother should remain in Ostwick. She knew the gut wrenching sorrow of losing a mother and had vowed to protect Bells from such devastation, no matter the personal cost. And yet at the first temptation, the arrival of a simple letter, her resolve to keep Rose far away had wavered. If she actually opened the envelope, that resolve might shatter.

 Trillium sighed. It was in Belladonna’s best interest to leave the letter sealed. "It's fine," she thought as she repeated the mantra she’d been drilling into her mind recently. “I’ve lived without her for twenty five years. I don’t need her now.” 

Tenderly, she placed the letter in its original place atop the bundle of other messages and left the room. Even if she was using Bells as an excuse to run away from facing her own conflicted feelings, Trilly knew that letter wouldn’t be safe to read until its deliverer was far from Trilly’s reach. As long as that blasted messenger was within Haven’s gates, it would be far too easy to damn Belladonna’s wishes to bits by baring vulnerabilities Trilly was not ready to share.

Squaring her shoulders, Trilly strode from her room. It was time to scare the man away. Undoubtedly, the messenger had been sent to spy on her, learn her habits, and report his findings back to her mother. Rose was a woman who inspired love and devotion in everyone she met. Trillium had no doubt that her mother's creature was as besotted as everyone else. He would never surrender his mission after a single sour encounter. Luckily, sour encounters were a specialty. If the man lasted more than three days, Trillium would be surprised. 

She found him hovering around Belladonna’s writing desk. The two were chattering away. It was immediately apparent that Bells was overjoyed to see someone from home. But, beyond that, she seemed genuinely fond of the man. If Rutherford were around, he might be nervous. Trillium had known her sister for only a short time. The whole Inquisition, such as it had been named, was new and growing and its members were still testing each other to determine the boundaries of their relationships. But between these two, Belladonna and the stranger, there was no distrust. Every movement- the angle of her chair, the lack of tension in her frame, the warmth of her voice- spoke to an intimacy that took years to forge. An intimacy Belladonna did not share with Trillium. 

Trilly scowled. Plans of terrifying the man to death would have to be placed on hold. Slowly, she backed away, retreating from the glow in her sister's eyes. Unfortunately, just as she reached the treshold of the chamber, Belladonna happened to look her way by chance. As Bella's smile brightened in recognition of her sister's presence, Trilly knew there could be no escape. Her scowl deepened.

In response, Belladonna's guard went up instantly. Gone was the happy glow in her eyes, gone was the smile that had been so free and easy. Both were replaced by the wariness needed to encounter one of Trillium's moods. Its appearance was like a slap in the face, a sharp and sudden pain that made Trilly's resentment of the messenger grow.

"Trilly." Bells spoke in greeting, trying to find the appropriate tone to prevent an unpleasant episode. It was evident that a line had been drawn indicating a battle she had not anticipated. She had enough experience with her sister to know that when storm clouds entered Trilly's eyes, trouble followed. She had to choose her next words carefully. Unfortunately, the man beside her had not sensed the danger.

He rose immediately, turning on the spot to face his quarry, his lady's long lost child. He executed a perfect bow, even adding some extra flourishes with his hands as he introduced himself.

 "My dear Mistress Lavellan, Rafael Everard Aloicious Trevelyan at your service, son of Philliam Bernard Aloicious Trevelyan (a Bard!) It is my distinct pleasure to make your acquaintance."

Trillium snorted. Her mother had sent a fool.

The sound drew Rafael's eyes to her face. In his rush to impress her with his courtly prowess, Raf had failed to actually look at the woman before him. Now, seeing her for the first time, his eyes widened in shock. His hand rested upon his heart as he drew breath to launch into poetry.

Trillium quelled his speech with a word.

“Shhhh," she crooned, her hand raised to stop his speech. "Let me guess what you were about to say."

Belladonna tensed in response. Trillium never spoke with this amount of gentleness, as if she were addressing a child or a wounded animal. She narrowed her eyes as Trill continued to address her unsuspecting cousin.

"You were about to exclaim in wonder that I look so much like my mother that you cannot believe she's not actually the one standing before you." 

Raf nodded in astonishment. "Dearest lady, truly you have stolen the words from my lips."

"Oh, please, do let me continue. I am sure I know what you will say next."

Raf straightened from his low bow. His hand swept through the air to grant her the floor, curious if she could really guess the words he was struggling to keep in.

In response, Trilly smiled, shocking Bells to her core. She had never seen Trillium act in such a way. She stood like a lady and spoke with a lilting tone she had never heard before. She glanced over to Raf, about to warn him, but Trilly drew so much of his focus, she was unable to catch his eye.

"You were about to launch into a gallant speech proclaiming my mother to be the most beautiful, gracious lady you have ever known. Even now, as I prevent your speech, you're planning how to describe the kindness of her spirit and the remarkable way she can make you feel like the most important person in the room."

At that point, Trillium extended her hand. When Rafael stepped forward to grasp her fingers, Trilly continued.

"You'll declare yourself her most loyal servant and say that as her child, your service is also mine to command. You’ll look straight into my eyes, waiting to see the smile that is always there in hers, waiting to see my eyes light with the same excitement of greeting that hers have whenever she sees you."

Suddenly, Trilly tightened her hold on his hand. She pulled him forward, forcing him to look straight into her eyes- straight into her trap. In a moment, everything changed. Her stance shifted into one ready for battle, her smile shifted into something dangerous, her voice shifted into a low hiss.

"But then you’ll notice that it isn’t there. You don’t see that smile. You don’t see that kindness. There is something wild behind my eyes. Something unsettling and strange. They hold an expression you’ve never seen in hers, a hardness, a hatred. They don’t make you feel special, they make you feel afraid. And the longer you look into them, the more afraid you become."

Belladonna stepped forward, ready to rescue her cousin from the spider web he'd stumbled into, but Trillium positioned herself between them, blocking Bella's path. She pulled Rafael even closer and whispered with such menace that he flinched.

"You realize you’ve make a terrifying error.  And that's when it happens. As your face fills with fear, your heart fills with resentment that your memory of her has been poisoned by this imposter standing before you. That's when you discover you’ve never seen anyone who looks less like the paragon of a woman you worship. I’m just some sort of cursed imitation."

Trilly reached up to stroke his cheek, her words oozing with mock pity. 

"Shhhh. Don’t worry. Don’t fret. I’ve seen it a thousand times before, if not more. You aren't the first to feel this way."

Without warning, Trillium released Raf's hand and cast him from her side. He stumbled backward, having lost the courtly grace with which he had moved with such ease. Trillium's face was unyielding as stone. Her gaze a painful stare as she finished her speech.

"I know my mother sent you here to spy on me. Give her this message from me: that being her child and bearing this face, is a burden.”

The silence that erupted from the end of Trillium's terrifying speech was palpable. It was a weapon of its own, charged and deadly. Trilly's stare was inescapable. Full of anguish and spite, the heat of her glare forced Rafael Everard Aloicious Trevelyan, a man grown and well practiced in the Grand Game of the court, to tremble. 

"Go."

At her command, Raf scuttled from the room as quickly as he could, not caring if he lost his way in the unfamiliar hallways on his quest to get as far from Trillium Lavellan as possible.

The silence remaining between the two sisters left in the room was just as sharp as it had been moments before. 

Belladonna was the first to speak.

“That was cruel, Trillium.”