Ashes of a Silent Bride

Du'a was born from a love hidden in shadows-a secret marriage between Alhaji Ahmad Sanusi and Firdausi, an Igala beauty whose life was cut short in a tragic accident when Du'a was barely two years old. With no other choice, Alhaji Ahmad brought his daughter into the grand household of his first wife, Ramatu, and his formidable mother, Hajiya Turai, whom everyone called Kaka.

But instead of a home, Du'a found herself trapped in a cage of cruelty. Ramatu and Kaka despised her very existence, and her half-sister Bilkisu, jealous of Du'a's striking beauty, bullied her at every turn. Her father, torn between duty and weakness, could not shield her from their wrath.

At fourteen, Du'a's fate took an even darker turn when Kaka reconnected with her childhood friend-Hajiya Aisha, the revered Queen Mother of the Kano Emirate. The Queen Mother, doting on her twin grandsons Ashraf and Arnaf, sought a wife for Arnaf, the troubled younger twin burdened with insomnia and mental affliction. Kaka, seizing the chance to rid herself of the girl she considered a burden, offered Du'a without hesitation.

Thrust into marriage far too young, Du'a found herself in the palace, bewildered and childlike, struggling to understand a husband who was distant, cold, and broken. In her innocence, she often mistook his twin, the warm and playful Ashraf, for the man she had been forced to marry.

Caught between palace intrigue, her husband's silent torment, and the dangerous stirrings of forbidden affection, Du'a must navigate a path where every step could either break her spirit-or awaken her destiny.