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

12 January, 1371. St Ivan's Palace, Havietten

So, so many candles burning. The hundreds - or was it thousands? - of flickering flames lighting her path and beckoning her forward.

Celia tried to focus on the endless sea of little flames in front of her as she moved down the chapel aisle ever so slowly.

Light streamed through the stained glass windows, marking the rich carpet before her with colourful shapes.

The heavy velvet mantle draped across her shoulders was heavy. Its great length streamed out from behind her. Her two most senior ladies-in-waiting walked behind her, having been granted the privilege of carrying its ermine trimmed edges while she made her entrance.

The young queen couldn't have moved faster even if she'd wanted to. She's felt like she was walking through water, everything around her slow and blurred.

Blindness