Gabrielle_Johnson_6482

“You must bear a child, Celia. what good is a woman who isn’t a mother? What good is an empty womb?”

“Especially when it’s a foreign womb, like yours…”

It’s not an easy life when you’re watched month after month, when all the blame is placed at your feet for your young husband having no heir. 

Celia Devon Tralhamir, Crown Princess of Havietten, waits every month with hope mingled with fear. 

A child will secure her future. But it will also bind her for life to a husband she neither loves or respects, who refuses to see her abilities. Is that what she wants?

Is she content to prioritise security over happiness, and be a wordless decorative vessel all her life?

Or is she brave enough to try to forge her own path and seize fulfilment on her own terms? Even in a society that cannot recognise individual brilliance in a mere woman.

A sequel to the WEBNOVEL book “Earning the Love of a Princess”, this novel follows another woman born into the Royal House of Devon, trying to fight the confines that threaten to stifle her happiness.

The Loneliest Ballad

It really was almost like old times again.

Sitting at the high table draped in golden cloth. Being served delicious food in the beautiful banquet hall that glowed with candlelight. Chatting and laughing with her childhood friends.

Her previous lethargy now gone, Celia felt lighter than she could remember feeling in a long time. The anxious knot that seemed to always sit like a weight across her frame, had also eased. She was able to eat more than she had in weeks, though she still avoided most of the meat.

Still though, a tiny voice gnawed at the back of her mind, urging vigilance and caution. She was back in Islia not just as a beloved daughter, but also as a princess who supposedly wielded at least some influence in her adopted homeland.

If she was going to have any success in negotiating with a strong, confident king, she needed to approach him from a place of strength herself.

Boulders and Pebbles