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

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

The days and weeks that followed were anxious ones for Celia. As hard as she tried, she couldn't get Viscount Nadrim's parting words out of her head.

They echoed in her mind like a wish. A hope.

How could someone have such festering hatred for children he didn't even know, she asked herself over and over? Especially when they were supposedly his little half nephews?

If Antony knew the truth, that they're actually his grandchildren, it still wouldn't matter. She knew the only change then would be how the viscount would try to use them as pawns to serve his own purpose.

Celia knew Lucas's father was back in the Tyrian court again, far away from her reality. She'd received a report from the King of Tyre confirming as much.

So why did she still feel so rattled by her thoughts? Why were her senses heightened by fear?

A Wish and a Hope