HIS LEGS WENT GIDDY. PATEL forced his body forward while his mind struggled to make sense of the apparition before him. Alek. The boy he'd trained, the man he'd mourned. Yet there he stood beside his flame haired princess.

Tremors ran through his limbs at the sight of the two of them.

Gold and red light surrounded them, Catherine's hair twisting through the air, molten tendrils of flame. Any trace of the boy he'd trained seemed gone from the handsome stern-faced man ...