Northbound Pilgrimage III

Chapter LXXVIII - With You

Author's Note:

Dear readers,

I am so excited to be sharing this chapter with you at last :) It's been a long time coming and I'm so grateful for all of you who are still reading and made it all the way here :D

Those of you who read regularly might have noticed that my posting speed slowed down a bit. I'm sorry about that – it's really a combination of me being lazy with editing and being absorbed in another writing project. The latter did lead to me not writing for the main story of NBP for a bit longer than usual and that means the reserve of my chapters is dwindling a little :D It happens, and I still have relatively a lot of them written, but I will be only posting about once a week for a while now, just to get myself back into the more comfortable pace that I'm used to. I'm planning on returning to writing for NBP very soon, but first I need to finish other stuff that won't leave my head ;) And hopefully I'll return to my old posting schedule eventually, but for now, the chapters will be a little bit sparser.

I hope you all enjoy them with the longer anticipation period nonetheless. Might make the suspense better :D

And now, let's finally celebrate this momentous cheesefest.

____________________________________

The day has come.

It was finally here. The eighteenth of Last Seed.

Aeyrin felt like she barely slept, but she also felt oddly energized.

She was instructed to stay in her room all morning while the others worked on some 'final touches', whatever that meant. The morose innkeeper only brought her breakfast and drink and then she was left alone, waiting for whatever was going to happen. She was only allowed to go to the bathing room once to wash herself, but that was all under Idesa's supervision. Not literally – she wasn't in the room with her, but she did bring her there and waited until she was done to bring her back. Apparently Aeyrin couldn't wander around. She felt even more guarded now than when she was here under Karliah's protection.

Nope! Not thinking about that!

She was beginning to get a little anxious eventually. All this waiting was not good for her. She spent her time studying all those vials on her nightstand and on the small table by the mirror in the room that Taarie set up there. The entire place still smelled intensely with her concoctions after some were spilled, but everything was cleaned up. The smell might never go away.

Well, at least the inn could boast about having fragrances from the Divine Elegance here forever.

She spent a few hours in the room with excited anxiety gnawing at her until the door finally opened.

Raven walked in with his notepad already ready with a message.

.

Bishop is in Endarie's hands. Time to get you ready.

.

"Are you getting me ready?" Aeyrin giggled at him. He was the only one who came.

Raven smirked at her and quickly scribbled another message below the first one.

.

I could. For old time's sake.

.

She chuckled at him again. Strange, back then, when they first met, he was so terrifying to her. Everything in the Guild was. But now the memory of him getting her ready for Mercer's disgusting party wasn't unpleasant. Not when she knew that this was how she found her now dear friend.