Chapter Text
The Trevelyans of Ostwick were a noble family bred from consistent remarkable marriage matches and wondrous luck. When Marcus Trevelyan married the love of his life, Lady Bristol of Kirkwall, he knew that he would never be sad again. Many of the other newly wedded couples wished them the best and brightest, while being envious of what the two had.
Years passed and their bond remained strong, and the couple still deeply in love. However, an overcast started to form over their contentment. They had been trying for years for children, not only to produce an heir to the Trevelyan name, but because the two of them so dearly wanted to start a family of their own; to raise happy and beautiful children in their estate and to watch them grow and come into their own. Nearly a decade later, and Lady Bristol Trevelyan began to lose hope. She did not see her friends so often anymore, and her body seemed to weigh her down despite her loss in weight. Marcus did what he could to lift his lady’s spirit, but for a time it seemed for naught.
Then, near the end of Drakonis, the Maker shined his light upon the despairing couple – Lady Bristol became pregnant, and the Trevelyans hosted the biggest celebratory party in decades.
On Satinalia, during the festivities throughout the Ostwick streets, Bristol Trevelyan was giving birth to a son. Yet, not a few moments after the grueling and painful birth of her first child, the midwife encouraged Lady Trevelyan to continue to push as she had another child within her, later determined to be a beautiful baby girl.
Superstition lead many nobles to believe that twins were a sign of ill luck. When one lived a life where the first born is to claim the inheritance from their parents, having children born at the same time – especially when they are both male – causes a rift not only between the children, but between the later born child and their parents as well.
The Trevelyans, however, had never felt more blessed in their entire lives. They named their two children Damien and Raleigh, for the siblings their father lost in his childhood to a sickness that had swept through Ostwick like a cruel, unforgiving storm. The two children were the light of their parents’ lives; they were the saving graces in a dark time. Bristol Trevelyan wouldn’t let the wet nurse or any of the servants near her children, for she loved them and had waited long enough for them to come into the world. Marcus loved each day in renewal, for when he came home from the forum he was greeted by the sight of his beautiful wife and their two miracle children - and nothing could make his life any better.
The twins grew up as close as siblings could be. Damien and Raleigh Trevelyan were bright, curious and loved to explore the woods behind their family’s estate. They had adventures together, ate together, pranked the servants together and even slept in the same bed together after it was no longer permitted, given that the servants weren’t very keen on the idea of separating the two most darling siblings in the Free Marches. Damien would braid his sister’s long, dark hair and she would play his favorite lullaby’s on the piano in the parlor. While young Raleigh Trevelyan had a gift for musi, her brother had a gift for sneaking about and retrieving desserts from the kitchen without being caught (most of the time). They seemed to be true idols of what all noble children should be: polite, talented and adorable.
And then the damn broke a few days after their eighth name day.
“Hurry, Damien! I see some elfroot over here!” Raleigh called out to her brother as she rushed to the plant to pick it. They were gathering herbs their family’s healer needed so he wouldn’t have to spend the money in the market, and they loved to lope about the woods while doing so. They were high-energy children and loved to make-believe and run about until they were exhausted, yet tiredness never seemed to dull their endless river of questions about absolutely everything.
“Hold on! This embrium is not being very nice!”
“Maybe if you weren’t so delicate with it, we’d have made it to the river by now!”
“I’ll show you delicate, you brat!”
“Only if you can catch me!” And with that, their herb-picking turned into a game of tag. Raleigh quickly hid behind the trunk of a thick tree, dark whiskey eyes glancing about quickly to see if her brother was anywhere near. She snuck over to the elfroot plant and began to take what she needed, briefly distracted while her brother came up from behind her.
“Boo!” He shouted, lips so close to his sister’s ear as she shrieked and dropped the basket she’d been carrying.
The shriek was more from the fire that had shot from her hand than her brother trying to be a wannabe assassin.
“Raleigh!” Damien quickly took his sister by the shoulders and brought her physically against him, away from the now burning plant that smoked lightly from the flames. The twins were both shaking, not quite sure exactly what had happened. Not entirely realizing what this single incident would mean. They sat there, in the woods behind their home, the only noise coming from the faint wildlife nearby and the light hissing of the plant quickly turning to ash.
“I’m a mage,” the girl whispered minutes later, her voice aching with sadness and disbelief. Her hand didn’t burn from the flame, but she felt her face warm and the tears river down her freckled cheeks. "They’re going to take me away. The Templars will come and they’ll drag me to the Circle.” She grasped her brother’s arms that held her with shaking hands, staring absently into the tiny fire that spelled doom for her future. She could feel the tremors of her brother’s body as he tightened his grip about her, his head adamantly shaking and quiet mutters of ‘no’ escaping him.
“No no no. You’re not a mage, you’re not! This can’t be, sister. It j-just can’t.” Damien, oddly enough, was the more emotional of the two and his voice cracked with the deep sorrow he felt. They were both educated children, and they weren’t ignorant of the world around them. They knew about mages and circles and Templars, and the general disdain of those born with magic. Raleigh’s single action was enough to rip away any future she might have imagined for herself, a future her parents wanted for her. The freedom to roam, to love, to marry… the simple freedom of being able to see her family every morning when she woke.
It would be traded for cold, unforgiving walls and constant vigilance of her every moment.
She turned in her brother’s arms and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him tight and her face hidden in his mop of obsidian curls. “I have to go, brother. It’s the law.” She hugged him tighter as his crying turned to hideous sobs that wracked his thin adolescent frame, hands clutching the back of her favorite dress with white knuckles.
The two stayed like that, for a while. Damien sobbing as his heart shattered, and Raleigh holding onto her brother like she was holding both their hearts together, to keep from dropping the pieces to the ground.
A little more time passed, and slowly but surely Damien’s sobs quieted to choked sniffles, his cheeks and eyes red from the stress. Raleigh had stopped crying some time before, her head resting on her arm that was still about her brother’s neck. They were scared and tired and unsure of what to do with themselves.
Damien gently loosened the hug, taking his sister’s arms in his hands and looking into her eyes that matched his own in exact size and color. He didn’t care for the varying trails of tears and snot that smeared down his face, but he had a look of fear and distant hope raked across his features.
“You have to hide it, 'leigh. Hide your magic for as long as possible. They can’t take you away if they don’t know you have it.” He begged, hands shaking with the very thought of losing his only siblings to the Templars, losing her to the Circle where he would be forbidden from seeing her – from even writing her. He watched her blink slowly, letting the information sink before her eyebrows scrunched down in a look of confusion.
“You can’t hide it, ‘ien. And even if I could, if the Templars ever found out I’d be in even more trouble, maybe enough to get you, mother and father in trouble. You know what they do to families that hide mages… and that can’t happen to you. I won’t let that happen.”
“At least try, sister? Please? If they take you away, I’ll be alone. I can’t grow up without my sister at my side, helping me steal cakes and sweet rolls when the kitchen staff are too busy to notice. We have lots to learn and friends to make and don’t you want to get married? You can’t marry in the Circle.” Damien took in a deep breath, tears one again threatening to fall over thick lashes. “If you go, I won’t see you ever again. Please, don’t leave me alone. Please.” He let his forehead touch her shoulders as a fresh wave of sobs took him. Raleigh gently ran her fingers through her brother’s thick locks, her own tears kept at bay as best she could. She knew what it all meant, what it would entail. She wanted so much to give her brother what he wanted… but she knew in her heart it would never work. No mage born to a non-mage family ever escaped the grasp of the Templars.
But she knew she had to try – for Damien, her brother, her only sibling.
“Okay, brother. I’ll try. But, if it doesn’t work, you can’t let them know that you know. Promise me that you won’t say anything. Pinky promise.” Damien looked up with eyes still crying, lower lip trembling as he nodded. He took a small, shivering hand and held up his smallest finger, his sister taking it with her own.
“Thank you.”
Their voices were indistinguishable from one another as they sat in the forest and clung to one another, fear and hope settled deeply in their bones.
Their combined efforts bought them two years.
The siblings spent much time in the woods after the incident, which wasn’t unusual to their parents or the servants that called the estate home. They had to go further from the safety of the estate and they came back with more bruises than before, but the adults wrote it off as childhood playing and didn’t pay it much mind. In actuality, Damien had been encouraging his sister to control her magic so that she could better hide it from everyone else. They’d gone to the river almost every day for months following the realization, to easily extinguish any stray fires the young mage may have started.
It worked, for a time. Raleigh showed impeccable control over her magical abilities, and their chests seemed to breathe a little easier with each passing day. Things were going so well, until The Night.
All was quiet in the Trevelyan estate, as it was throughout the entire city. It was late and all of the inhabitants were asleep, with Raleigh having snuck into her brother’s room to sleep beside him, as was tradition. They had been forbidden from sleeping in the same bed after their seventh name day, but the servants who checked on them late at night never made them separate, and their parents knew but said nothing about it. They were still children, after all, so they let it continue unknowingly to keep up appearances of ignorance.
An odd creaking had Raleigh opening her eyes slowly as they adjusted to the darkness of the room, only illuminated by the moonlight filtering in through the double-glass doors that led out to the balcony. Her brother had hidden his face in her shoulder, so the girl moved as gently as she could as to not wake him. When her bare feet touched the floor, the door to her brother’s room slowly opened, silent. She watched as three men entered the room, stopping when they realized a young girl was staring back at them with wide, frightened eyes.
“Maker’s balls – what’s the girl doing in here?” one of the thieves whispered to his compatriots, faces hidden by their cowls. “She’s not supposed to be in here, dammit.”
“We weren’t paid to make sure she was in her room, you fucking blighter.” Paid? These men were paid to break into her family’s home? The second man made a motion, the glint of steel catching her eyes as realization dawned on her.
“Grab the girl, then, too. We can dump her in the woods and take her brother to the Boss for the exchange. She’s not the one we need.” The final man said, his words slicing into her core like hail from a storm. They were here to take her brother.
And they were going to kill her in the process.
“NO!” She suddenly shouted, fully standing to her unimpressive height, her scream waking her brother with a yell of his own, and hopefully loud enough to wake her parents and servants who were down the hall. The thieves jumped, but it only took them a split second to regroup. One stayed by the door as the other two moved in – the last man who had spoken scooping her up like a rag doll as the other man made for her brother. Damien screamed as the thief slapped a hand over his mouth to muffle his screams, and both the twins were squirming in their captor’s grips.
They were going to kill her and take her brother they were going tokillherandtakeherbrother-
She couldn’t let that happen.
Raleigh felt the familiar heat rising to her palms as she continued to struggle in the robber’s grasp. The man had only a moment to realize what was happening before Raleigh shrieked and released an outburst of flames from her palms that were as wide as she was tall. The flames were bright enough to enlighten the entire room and the young mage watched as the man’s leathers and cloth caught fire from her hands. He dropped her to the floor as his pained screams seemed to fill the entire house, his body quickly being engulfed by the fire that had been brought forth from the girl. His screams sounded of agony and pain and Raleigh couldn’t look away from what she had done, entranced by the magic as it danced about in her vision. She had set a man on fire, and it was killing him. She was killing another human being.
This was why mages were feared.
Time seemed slow as the other thief who had grabbed his brother dropped him back on the bed before darting around the enflamed man and escaping with the third thief. Fortunately, their father had been standing at the ready with their stableman and they took out the thieves before they could escape.
Raleigh sat on her hands and knees as she watched the fire progress quickly, sparing no inch of the man who had come to take her brother for some other cruel man, who would have ditched her body in an abandoned forest for the animals to pick at and consume. She didn’t feel her brother at her side, shaking her fiercely to try and bring her out of her trance. She couldn’t hear her brother’s voice, franticly calling her name with vigor and fear.
She continued to watch until the man's last guttural scream and his body collapsed to the ground in a grotesque thud. She saw the last of the flames lick at his corpse before flickering out just as soon as it had shot out of her palms.
The room was silent. All parties were quiet, trying to take in what had just occurred. Raleigh had just watched a man die. She, a young girl only just passed her tenth name day, had burned a man to death in her own home.
All she could think of was that she hated the smell of burnt flesh.
“-leigh. Raleigh. Raleigh! RALEIGH!” Damien’s panicked screams finally seemed to break through the muddied state of her mind, like coming back up from air after being underwater in the lake beside their home. Raleigh motioned her head towards her twin, their matching eyes meeting in a mix of shock and exasperation. Damien let out a choked sob as he gripped her arm tightly. All he whispered was her name, over and over again as he cried.
“I killed him.” Raleigh whispered in broken disbelief, her actions finally seeping into her mind. Her eyes started to blink rapidly as the tears started to form. She vaguely recognized other people entering the room, talking in raised voices. Voices calling Raleigh and Damien and let me see my children and someone has to tell the Templars. She couldn’t hear any of it as she started to break down. “T-they were going to take you, ‘ien. I couldn’t let them t-take you! But I didn’t mean to kill him! I promise! I d-didn’t!” she started to full-heartedly sob as she moved forward to hug her brother. Hands placed themselves gently on her back, rubbing smoothing motions as she clung to her twin. Raleigh realized her father was at her back, his own pained voice calling to her softly, her mother’s broken wails resonating out in the hall as everything started to settle.
The Templars were coming to take her to the Circle. She was going to be taken from her family.
Her father took both of his kids into his arms, taking care to place them on her brother’s bed with the utmost gentle motions. Raleigh was held between the reassuring warmth of her father and her equally shaken-up brother, their mother drawing clumsily into the room to throw herself around her children and her husband, for the last time in their lifetime. Their happy little family was broken, and they didn’t know if they would ever recover.
Time seemed to stretch for a while, until the Templars arrived at the estate. Then time apparently quickened and they were having to physically remove her shaking body from her wailing brother after stamping her a mage and commanding that she be taken to the Circle immediately for her safety and the safety of those around her. She kicked and screamed her brother’s name repeatedly, her mother sobbing in her father’s arms as an older Templar held her brother back while three other Templars subdued her with some strange liquid that smelled sweet but too sweet and suddenly she felt… disquiet. She felt cut-off from her emotions, from the very feeling in her skin. Raleigh became still, compliant to the magebane now flowing through her body so they could transport her safely to the Circle. She watched her family through dulled eyes as she was carried bridal style out of her brother’s room, the room she slept in more often than not because she couldn’t sleep when she wasn’t next to her brother, without her parents just down the hall and the dogs in their kennels and the servants in their quarters.
They had drugged a child and took her limp body from her family, out of the only home she had known and out of her family’s life forever.
She couldn’t even remember making it through the front gates as her freedom was taken from her and she passed out in a stranger’s arms.