Page 36 of What Whispers in the Dark (Promises of the Marked)

T his was not right.

Alora was not supposed to be the one bedbound under his healer’s care. Not the one bleeding and clinging to life while those vile pieces of Raven filth still breathed.

If it had not been for their eyes, they all would have been dead. He preferred it that way. But even he knew their actions were not their own. Not when they were magic-washed.

Not when their very souls were bound in magic too vicious and twisted to break.

And now, staring at Alora’s chest barely rising and falling while Ozrin worked, he wanted nothing more than to storm into the prison world and seek retribution for every starsdamned injury to her body.

The only issue was—he couldn’t leave her side again. It would be unforgivable.

This is a deleted scene from Chapter Twenty-six after Garrik, Thalon, and Aiden “interrogated” the Raven prisoners, and is set before Alora woke in her tent with Garrik at her bedside.