Chapter 26: Chapter 26

It took a little over a month to reach the monastery, mostly due to increasingly miserable weather, though she'd also had to avoid other travelers and once had barely managed to evade thieves lying in wait in the forest.

Thankfully, aside from the thieves, and despite the fact the weather had seemed to skip autumn and gone straight to winter, her journey since crossing the Blue Hills was largely uneventful. Difficult, exhausting, and she had never missed her bed and bath more in her life, but mostly peaceful.

But the best part was that her journey was now officially over, even if she'd rather be home than more or less alone in the middle of nowhere.

The Monastery of the Seven Bells of Auren was a handsome, bright, and sprawling structure built in a lonesome valley just a few days' travel from the mountains that formed a natural border between her kingdom and the one to which her stepfather wanted her marriage to tie them.