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

5 June, 1371. St Ivan's Palace, Havietten

"I'm going to assume that everything went as it should during Aron's baptism, given I haven't heard anything to the contrary?" Celia was sitting up in the bed with a portable desk resting on her lap, quill in hand. She signed her name with a flourish on the thank you note she'd just finished writing to the King of Irquis. "You know Tobin never tells me anything."

"I'd say you assumed rightly." Lucas asked, his attention on another letter. He'd stretched out in a nearby armchair so that he could use one foot to gently rock the cradle. "But given I wasn't important enough to receive an invite to said event, I guess neither of us will ever know for sure."

"I can't believe Sarai was chosen for godmother again. If Tobin had bothered asking for my input, I would've insisted my mother be given the honour. As if he'd ever ask me, though."

Prosper