The Daughter of the Laakam. The Heart and the Throne, #1

When Mariane is seized during a royal funeral and taken into the Laakam-the sacred place where queens are forged-her childhood ends in an instant. Cut off from her family, her freedom, and the man she loves, she is reshaped by silence, ritual, and power into something she never asked to become: a queen. Douanla, the man bound to her heart, watches from the shadows as loyalty, sacrifice, and quiet courage become his only weapons.
Meanwhile, King Sidi ascends the throne, burdened by doubt, ambition, and a growing fear of the forces gathering beyond his control. As women are turned into symbols, love becomes a liability, and virtue proves more dangerous than violence, the fragile harmony of Lassa begins to fracture. Old alliances falter. New desires awaken. And what was once deeply intimate becomes irrevocably political. The Daughter of the Laakam is a powerful, lyrical novel of love and power, rooted in African tradition and universal in its stakes-a story of a woman caught between the heart and the throne, where every choice echoes far beyond the self.