Title: Loss of a Great Aeducan

Rating: K

Warning: This is very short.

Summary: When Kahlis Aeducan returns to Orzammar to help her brother secure the throne, she is put off by the thought of returning to the Aeducan Thaig in order to prove herself. Memories of a lost sibling still linger in the stone, but she's not surrounded by traitors this time...

A/Note: Thank you for reading. Please review.

Loss of a Great Aeducan

Kahlis stopped just short of the last blow to the hurlock, turning her back on it and slipping her fingers beneath the cool surface of her helmet. As it raged and lifted its bloodied fist to strike her down with a rusted mace, an arrow flew quick and true straight into its black heart. It fell, and she tossed her helmet to the ground in both anger and despair.

The torches were lit from Lord Dace's passing party. Blood, death, and the stink of the Deep permeated the air unpleasantly. She could taste it in her mouth. But that i\was not all she could taste. Betrayal laced the stone at her feet, whispers of bought nobles and warriors. Her father's pained voice echoed off the walls, demanding, pleading, begging: "Daughter, tell me this isn't what it looks like."

Alistair placed a hand on her shoulder, sympathetic. The dwarf shook it off. She was a princess. She did not know sympathy or pity. She knew only of honor and duty.

"This is where it happened, then?" Wynne asked kindly. Kahlis nodded vaguely, staring at the darkened stone, stained with the blood of a prince. The blood of a would-be king.

"I hated Trian when we were growing up," she smiled. "I hated him because he was always holding himself above me. He treated me as if I were casteless, a commoner. I hated him." She bended at the knees and caresses the darkened spot on the stone. "Now, all I want is to be able to yell at him one more time."

"I'm sure that he loved you," Alistair said uncertainly.

"He did," she lamented, still touching the blood stain. "But he also despised me. I was a threat to his power. None of it mattered to me, though. I would have given up any throne in the world just so we could be a family."

"Siblings always quarrel. It does not seem to me that this was your fault," Leliana murmured, sliding her bow onto her back.

"No," Kahlis said, "it was Bhelen's fault. His selfish want of the throne killed my father and brother and kicked me out of my home."

Kahlis pressed her palm to the ground, flat. She could remember holding Trian's hand, still warm as though he were only sleeping. For once in his life, a look of peace had graced his countenance. It had been as though for a moment she had her younger, less stern brother back. The one who read her stories and tossed her in the air until she laughed herself silly. The one who brought her snacks and delicious treats when she was sent to bed without supper for her rotten behavior. The one that wasn't so obsessed with the throne that he could no longer remember what was important. She sighed and wished for a moment that she could remember how to cry. Trian was a good man. Someone needed to cry for him.

"You traitorous bastard!"

"Gorim, that is enough."

Gorim...a loyal servant and maybe just a little bit more. He had suffered as well for Bhelen's greed. Banished from his own home and stripped of his knighthood. He was nothing. Castless. Because of her. Gorim had always been there for her, no matter what trouble she was in. He could have betrayed her as well, claimed innocence. He could have told King Endrin the same story concocted by Behlen's bought scouts. He hadn't. He'd stuck by her. Always.

"Why are we helping him, then? This man," Leliana said, "your brother, he sounds like an awful person."

"I love him," she whispered. A mysterious breeze swept through the cavern, toying with the lit torches and almost blowing them out. Bhelen was her baby brother. She used to take care of him when he was little. She used to lead him about by the hand. It was she who schooled him on the way of politics, told him how to get votes, how to have a lovable personality. She had taught him too well.

Some said the Stone was haunted in the Deep Roads. She was beginning to believe that. If she closed her eyes and concentrated hard enough, past the sound of the crawlers and roaring of the darkspawn, she could hear faint laughter, music. Other places, dark places where the stone was bleached with blood, she swore she could hear screams, the clashing of swords, voices. Where she was standing, the place was haunted with the murder of a prince.

"Kahlis?" Alistair asked tentatively.

"I should have protected him better," she clenched her fists and felt stinging tears enter her eyes. Trian hadn't deserved to die, especially not for something so mundane as to who would be King. Didn't Bhelen understand that? Didn't he understand that there were things more important than votes, deshyrs, and power? That family transcended all of that? That, by the Ancestors, blood was sometimes thicker than stone?

"You call this justice?" she had demanded, eyes flashing in defiance and hatred.

"For your father's sake, look me in the eye and tell me that you didn't kill Trian," Lord Harrowmont had practically begged. So weak. So pitiful. Unfit to rule.

"I had no part in Trian's death."

A lie.

It had not been her dagger in his back, of course not, but it had been her failure that killed him. Failure to identify the enemy correctly, failure that she believed in family first and foremost and thought that perhaps Bhelen really was the same innocent child he'd always been. Failure to protect what was hers from any enemy, foreign or domestic.

"Atrast vala, daughter," her father's voice ran in her head, "How lovely you look in your grandmother's armor."

The day had started out so lovely, so innocently. A casual flirt with Gorim, a day at the Proving, shopping, then a feast in her honor. Banter with the nobles, meeting Duncan of the Grey Wardens, and even visiting her brother Trian to tell him that their father had need of him. The errand had been complete with insult, of course, but that had been expected.

"Trian has started to move against you."

"Lies," she whispered aloud, and Leliana glanced over at her sharply. The dwarf stood up and a cry as though she were in pain escaped her lips. Her fist smashed into a rocky statue of a paragon, the crunch as bone was separated from bone evident. It didn't matter. The outer turmoil was nothing compared to the inner. One should not let regret ruin their lives, but she couldn't help it. There had been so many ways to prevent the Trian's death, and she had not considered even one of them. So trusting was she that she believed he wasn't in any danger. What reason did she have to believe that Bhelen was the puppeteer?

"You can do nothing for the dead, my dear," Wynne said sweetly, putting a hand on the small woman's shoulder. "It is over now. We must move on."

"My father used to say to me that we were cursed with the throne. 'It is a great thing to lead Orzammar into the future,' he said, 'but it is better done by oneself, for a man who accepts the throne condemns his whole family and tempts them with treachery.' He was a wise man, my father," she said softly, feeling a tear roll down her cheek. "They were both good men. And Harrowmont is a good man. That is why I will not condemn his family. The Aeducans have bore this curse for centuries. We will continue to bear it so that others will not have to." She turned, slipping out from beneath Wynne's grasp and picked up her helmet, the silverite flashing in the dim torchlight, and left them standing there.

She was done grieving and would look toward the future. She mourned her brother the way that a princess should, by making sure that his passing was not for nothing.

One of my 'why did I never finish this?' stories. I always felt sympathetic to Trian. It seems as though it was more a power struggle between Bhelen and my character while Trian was caught in the crossfire. I also hated that there was no way out of Trian dying. Trust me, I know. I reloaded a million times.