A/N: Fun fact - "Audens Sicarius" means "Daring Assassin" in Latin :)
26 Morning Star, 4E 195
He is standing over the bed, but they do not know he is there. A lone candle burns in the corner of the room, and it illuminates her face as she sleeps peacefully beside her husband—the man who loves her, and whom she loves. He thinks of her small son in the next room: would he condemn young Haming to growing up without a mother, to suffer as he himself had in his childhood?
But all of these reasons are moot. As soon as he saw her, the moment he met her that afternoon, he knew he would be unable to kill her.
The woman he watches in the firelight looks exactly like Siri. Well, perhaps not exactly; Runa is probably about twenty-four, and Siri is only fourteen. But her hair is the same auburn, her eyes the same blue. She has the same button nose. At dinner, when she spoke to her husband, he could see the same knowing smirk on her lips.
He blows out the candle. He knows what he must do.
Aranwen rises with the sun. She doesn't want to be asleep, lest she miss the gossip that she is sure will be reaching her ears soon. After all, word of a brutal murder is sure to spread like wildfire through the hold.
As she wanders around outside, plucking flowers and grabbing butterflies for some potions, she sees a young Nord with a scruffy auburn mane wandering up the main road. Trying not to seem to eager, she follows the little path from her house down the hill, positioning herself closer to the road in case this young man carries gossip from Helgen.
But he walks by without a word. He barely acknowledges her existence. She waits for him to make his way up the path a little farther before looking after him, but he is gone.
An hour elapses, and, slightly perplexed, she returns to her home, opening the door and stepping inside.
Her heart stops as she registers that there is someone else in her home, but her heartbeat slows once more as she realizes that it is none other than the assassin she hired to kill Torolf's wife. She smiles and steps toward him.
The next thing she knows, she is on the floor, pain lancing through her body, hands gripping the Daedric dagger buried to the hilt in her gut. The assassin looks down at his prey, eyes glittering.
"Wh—what?"
She can only manage the one word before darkness envelops her.
The sun is setting as the door to the sanctuary creaks open. Astrid looks up in time to see a disheveled, tired Beirir appear before her, his invisibility spell having worn off. She gives him a knowing smile as she sets her papers down, skirting the edge of the table, walking toward him. He tosses the gold he has been carrying onto the table.
"You've gone rogue on us," Astrid says, paying no mind to the money, her lips curled upward in a smirk. Beirir remains silent, his blue eyes holding Astrid's gaze without fear. Her smirk grows wider, her eyes narrowing. "I heard about a terrible misfortune…a poor Bosmer woman, killed in her own home by an anonymous murderer." She raises her eyebrows pointedly at him before turning back to her paperwork. "Funny, you know…that woman whose contract you were sent to fulfill…I could have sworn she was a Bosmer. Aranwen, wasn't it?"
"What do you want, Astrid?" he asks angrily, unable to suppress his emotions any longer. "An avenger, you said. That's what you said I would be. But that…wretch…she wanted me to slaughter an innocent housewife so that she could win back the man's love." He slams his fists down on the table, his eyes burning. "I am not a murderer, Astrid, and I have no sympathy for the excuse of the scorned lover. So I paid Sithis's due with that bitch's blood instead." He turns away, grasping his head in his hands, resting his forehead against the cold stone of the sanctuary wall. "I couldn't condemn their little son to grow up the way I did, without a mother. I couldn't condemn Torolf to the pain my father suffers every day—knowing his wife was stolen from him. It's wrong, Astrid. Am I to be no better than Ergnir?"
Astrid places a surprisingly gentle hand on his shoulder. She can feel Beirir's body trembling as he tries to suppress silent sobs.
"Hush, dear brother," she coos, "I take no exception to your decision. I am merely amused by your actions. It sounds as though justice triumphed today: a happy family remains intact after a brush with death, and a lonely and miserable Bosmer is freed from the burden of the mortal coil. Now go home, get some rest. I've heard rumors that some poor sod over in the Reach has performed the Black Sacrament, and I need you well-rested so that I can send you out there in a few days to do what you do best."
