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

7 April, 1371. St Ivan's Palace, Havietten

Lucas wasn't at their favourite library table the next morning, even though they'd agreed to meet there when the clock struck ten. Celia waited.

She waited, drumming her fingers on the table impatiently and trying to focus on the poetry before her. The words were an illegible blur.

She heard the chapel's clock chime the quarter hour, then the half hour.

Something was wrong. Lucas was very rarely late. What could've happened?

He must be with his father, a voice rang out in her head with absolute clarity.

And I have to know what the two of them say to each other. Heaven forgive me for being so nosy, but I have to know.

Celia stood up from the table and slipped noiselessly out of the library. She mentally flicked through the various places she could go to find Lucas.

Rung By Rung