A Dowry of Broken Stars

When Liyana Nazeem discovers that her engagement is tied to a secret financial agreement transferring her trust, her sister's inheritance, and the future of Noor Observatory into the hands of a powerful family, she refuses to become the price of an alliance. Then Ilyas Rauf walks into the celebration and stops the music. A ruthless financier with secrets of his own, Ilyas has spent years tracing a hidden network of marriage settlements, missing property, sealed records, and women whose wealth was quietly transferred in the name of family harmony.
His investigation leads back to Noor Observatory-to a devastating fire fifteen years earlier, Liyana's late mother, and a damaged astronomical atlas stitched with seven broken stars. What begins as a battle over money and consent becomes a dangerous search for the truth. To protect Noor and uncover what their families have hidden, Liyana and Ilyas enter an unconventional marriage built not on romance, but on contracts, boundaries, disclosure, and the right to walk away.
Yet the deeper they investigate, the more they discover that the broken stars are not merely symbols. They are a map to missing evidence, vanished women, buried debts, and a system powerful families have protected for years. And somewhere inside that mystery is the truth about Ilyas's missing sister-and the final secret Liyana's mother died trying to preserve. A Dowry of Broken Stars is an atmospheric literary mystery about autonomy, family power, financial coercion, hidden histories, and two people learning that love has no value unless choosing it remains free.