Epilogue: Ten Years Later – The Valley That Kept Its Promise

The boy runs barefoot across the meadow, chasing a butterfly the colour of fire.

He is ten years old, all knees and elbows, dark curls wild in the wind, grey eyes that can turn storm or sun in the same second.

He laughs, loud, free, the sound carrying across the valley like church bells.

Behind him, the wooden house stands unchanged: glass walls fogged from baking bread, smoke curling from the chimney, laundry flapping on the line.

I watch from the porch swing, one hand on the swell of my stomach (our fourth is due in six weeks), the other holding a mug of tea that’s gone cold because I can’t stop staring at them.

Aleksandr (no one has called him Czar in a decade) is on his knees in the grass, letting our son tackle him.

They roll, roaring, laughing, until the boy pins him and shouts, “I win, Papa!”

Aleksandr lets him believe it.

He always does.

Our daughters (seven and five, both with my mouth and his stubborn chin) come screaming around the corner, armed with wooden swords and pure chaos.

The boy abandons his father to chase them instead.

Aleksandr stays on the ground, chest heaving, watching them disappear into the wildflowers.

Then he looks up and finds me.

Even after ten years, the look still steals my breath.

He stands, walks over slowly, sits behind me on the swing, pulls me back against his chest.

His hand slides over my belly without asking.

“Active today,” he murmurs against my neck.

“She’s impatient. Like her father.”

He kisses the spot below my ear that still makes me shiver.

“You okay?” he asks quietly.

Every day he asks.

Every day I answer the same.

“Never been better.”

He hums, content.

In the distance the children scream with joy.

No guards.

No gates.

No nightmares that wake him reaching for a gun that hasn’t existed in years.

Just this.

Just us.

He still has the scars.

I still have the faint ring mark around my ankle that never quite tanned.

We never talk about Lagos, or islands, or the names we buried.

But sometimes, when the northern lights come out, he’ll stand on the porch and stare at the sky like he’s checking it still remembers how to be beautiful.

Sometimes I’ll wake to find him watching our children sleep, tears on his cheeks, whispering “thank you” to a God he never believed in until we made it out alive.

Today is one of those gentle days.

He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a small white-gold band (simple, worn soft from years of wear).

The twin of the one I wear.

He turns it over in his fingers.

“Ten years ago today,” he says, “I put this on your finger in front of a fire and promised you the rest of my life.”

I smile. “You’ve kept it.”

“I promised you something else that night.”

I know what’s coming.

He slips off the swing, kneels in the grass in front of me (same way he did the night our first son was born).

“Eden Vale,” he says, voice rough with everything we survived, “will you stay married to me for the rest of forever?”

I laugh through the tears that always come too easy now.

“I already said yes. Three times.”

“Say it a fourth. For luck.”

I take his face in my hands.

“Yes, Aleksandr Vale. A thousand times yes.”

He kisses me slow and deep, the way he’s kissed me every day since we stopped running.

The children come thundering back, collapse on us in a pile of limbs and grass stains.

“Group hug!” our oldest shouts.

We let them crush us.

Later, when the sun sets purple behind the mountains and the house is quiet (children asleep, bread cooling, one more miracle kicking inside me), he carries me to bed.

We don’t speak.

We just hold each other in the dark, listening to the soft breathing of the lives we built from ashes.

His hand finds mine, thumb tracing the ring.

“Still no regrets?” he whispers, like he still can’t believe I stayed.

I turn, press my lips to the scar on his chest (right over the place where my name is still inked).

“Never,” I whisper back. “You were my last safe word, Aleksandr. And I never needed another one.”

He pulls me closer, kisses my forehead, my eyes, my mouth.

Outside, the northern lights bloom across the sky like forgiveness.

Inside, four hearts beat under one roof.

And somewhere far away, the world still burns empires to the ground.

But not ours.

Ours is the valley that kept its promise.

Ours is the love that outlived every chain.

Ours is the story that ended with two monsters who learned how to be human.

And they lived.

Not perfectly.

Not quietly.

But fiercely, fully, forever.

The End.