All Chapters of Kingdom of Ash and Blood : Chapter 181 - Chapter 190

LUCA You can feel betrayal in the air before you see it. It smells like iron. Sounds like silence. Moves like someone you used to love. The palace had never been this quiet. Even the marble seemed to listen. Three days had passed since the fire, and the investigation was going nowhere. Every record had been wiped, every security feed looped. Whoever The Veil had working inside— they weren’t amateurs. I stood in the surveillance room, watching the grainy footage on repeat. The screen flickered with static before showing a shadow — tall, lean — slipping through the east corridor the night before the explosion. Their face was covered. But the way they moved… confident, precise… it was someone who knew this place as home. “Freeze it,” I said. Matteo paused the frame. The figure’s outline was blurred by smoke, but I noticed something small — a scar along the wrist. My gut clenched. I’d seen that scar before. “Get me the staff logs for that night,” I ordered. Matteo

Amara Sicily had never been this quiet. The air felt too still, too obedient — as if even the sea held its breath. Palermo’s coastline shimmered in muted gold, the morning sun pressing through fog that refused to lift. For the first time in months, there were no orders to give, no blood to clean. No new names whispered in the dark. Only silence — thick and strange — hanging over the Moretti estate like smoke that had forgotten how to rise. Amara sat by the window of her private study, still in the silk robe she’d slept in, a cup of untouched espresso cooling beside her. Across the courtyard, soldiers moved like ghosts, careful not to disturb the calm their queen hadn’t yet named peace or mourning. Luca’s absence used to cut her open. Now it lived in her like a scar — healed on the surface, still tender underneath. He’d returned last night without warning. No entourage. No announcement. Just a shadow crossing the marble floors as if he had never left. When he appeared at h

Luca Palermo doesn’t sleep after blood. It watches. When a Moretti dies, the air itself seems to recoil. The city whispers, the harbor stills, and men who once bowed to me now speak in prayers. Mateo’s death was supposed to end the betrayal. Instead, it cracked open the foundation of everything I built. By dawn, the Tribunal demanded my presence. The Council Chamber in Caltabellotta had always felt like a cathedral for devils—circular, silent, its marble veins red as old wine. The five seats of the underworld—Moretti, Rossi, Bianchi, Romano, and Varela—had stood united once. Now, half those names meant ghosts. I entered with Amara at my side, the echo of our footsteps slicing through the cold. They were already waiting. Don Sergio Bianchi—grey suit, colder smile. Vittoria Romano—the widow of my late rival, eyes like sharpened amber. And Diego Varela, Amara’s blood cousin, his stare heavy with suspicion. The last chair remained empty—Mateo’s. It shouldn’t have be

AMARA The next morning, Palermo smelled like rain and rot — the kind that sinks into marble and memory. The ledger sat open before me, every signature carved like a wound. I had read it a dozen times since midnight, but the letters never changed. Diego Varela. He had been my cousin. My rival. The one who smiled like a serpent when our family fell apart. I’d let him live after the Vesper War, thinking I was sparing blood. Mercy had always been my biggest sin. “Call him,” I told Sofia. She blinked at me from behind her monitors. “Diego?” “Tell him I want to meet. Alone.” “Amara, if he’s really behind The Veil, that’s suicide.” I smiled faintly. “Then let him bring his knives.” Two hours later, I was standing in the ruins of the old Varela winery outside Monreale — the one our fathers once used for peace talks that always ended in blood. The walls were black with age, the ceiling open to gray skies. Footsteps echoed. Diego emerged from the shadows, immaculate in

AMARA The world doesn’t end with fire. It ends with reflection. I learned that the moment the screen flickered to life in the war room — the moment I saw my own face staring back at me through a thousand feeds. The footage played across every security channel, every network I controlled: me, signing executions, burning villages, commanding betrayals that never happened. Every atrocity mirrored my voice, my hand, my seal. Every camera whispered: the Queen did this. My pulse thundered as the room filled with static and gasps. Sofia’s face was white. Lorenzo stammered, “That’s impossible—these are deepfakes—” But I already knew. This wasn’t forgery. This was design. The Mirror Protocol — the failsafe Luca created years ago — meant to destroy the system from within if corrupted. It had activated. And someone had turned it against me. “Shut it down!” I barked. “We can’t,” Sofia said, panic edging her voice. “It’s not central—it’s embedded in every surveillance node