#Chapter 173 – Corroded by Betrayal

Damon The wax was already cooling when the runner reached me; it was dark red, pressed with a crest of a wolf with split horns. Asher’s mark. I cut the seal with a claw and unfolded the single scrap of thick paper. The page contained just a place and an hour, written in Asher’s even hand. The designated location was a ridge beyond the south woods where the old lightning tree had split the rock and left a bald, blasted clearing. “He expects you to go alone,” Jackson said behind me. He didn’t reach for the letter. He watched me instead, the way he had watched me learn to ride as a boy – measuring whether I’d fall and how badly. “Which is precisely why you won’t.” “I will.” My voice came out cold. “He wants me, not an audience.” “Then starve him of attention completely and don’t play into this obvious trap,” Jackson snapped. “You’re not some adolescent spoiling for a brawl behind the stables, you’re the King.” The letter crumpled in my fist. A King, yes. And a man who l