Page 223 of Celestial Combat

I closed my eyes.

They’d spent fifteen years together, those years that Yui hadn’t had before. A life of skies wide and soft mornings. Aleksandr had given her that. And even if tragedy had taken her, I felt some solace now that she had walked these sands, breathed this air, smiled here.

The sea breeze carried the scent of salt and possibility. My chest ached. But in that moment, I understood something vital.

My mother had lived a beautiful life after she met Aleksandr. That mattered.

And now, with her ashes soon to join the ocean, we were finishing the story she had started.

“She used to always dream about this place.”

Aleksandr’s eyes softened at the horizon, then narrowed slightly with the shape of memory. A smile found its way to his face, not heavy with loss – just light with something softer. “I proposed to her on a cliff,” he said, nodding toward a craggy ridge where jungle met sky in the near distance. “Just that way.”

I remembered the ring.

I let out a quiet laugh, surprised by the image. “She told me it was a fake diamond from one of her girlfriends.”

That made him laugh – actually laugh. Not the gruff kind I’d heard before, not bitter or cynical. The kind that came from the ribs. He leaned back a little as if the memory gave him something.

I glanced sideways at him, and for the first time, I really looked. Not at the scars on his knuckles or the tattoos inked with promises of blood. I looked past the Bratva. Past the history.

He didn’t look broken. Not hollow from grief or rage. He looked… full. Whole. Like a man who had finally heard the answer to a question he’d been asking for years.

He didn’t know she’d kept the ring. He didn’t know she used to hum a certain tune when she cooked, or how she stood with her hands behind her back whenever she looked at the stars, like she was waiting for someone.

But now, he looked like someone who had finally found proof that he had been loved. And that it had been real.

I didn’t say anything. Just stood there with him in the quiet, letting the sunlight soak into my shoulders, letting the wind move around us.

For the first time, he sober.

He looked free. And for a man like Aleksandr Ivanova, I figured that meant more than anything.

The light over Koh Samui had softened by the time we left the restaurant – melting gold over the water, fading into a haze of rose and blue behind the palms. I still had the taste of spiced ginger and grilled mango on my tongue, the laughter from dinner ringing somewhere in the back of my mind.

We’d stood at the edge of the cliff earlier, the one Aleksandr had pointed out. It overlooked a spread of turquoise that felt more sky than sea. Kali held my hand while Aleksandr said something in Russian too quiet to hear. Then we let the wind carry Yui’s ashes into the sunlit air.

She was free now. Free in the country she always dreamed about, carried away in light.

At dinner, Aleksandr raised a glass to her memory. And then, unexpectedly, to me. “To your mother’s son,” he’d said. “May he live without fear – and with people who deserve him.”

The food was good. The company, better. And for once in my life, my birthday didn’t feel like a reminder of everything I’d lost.

Now, Kali and I were back in our villa – glass walls open to the ocean breeze, white linen curtains fluttering like breath. The bedroom was washed in twilight, every surface soft with gold. The carved teakwood bed sat low against the floor, draped in a cascade of pale sheets and mosquito netting that caught the dim light.

Kali pulled her hair loose from its tie, the curls falling over her shoulder like something out of a dream. I watched her slip out of her dress and into one of my shirts, and I couldn’t tell where the ache in my chest ended and the warmth began.

She crawled into bed beside me like she belonged there – because she did. I reached for her instinctively, my arm folding around her waist, pulling her against my side as we sank into the cotton-soft mattress.

The ceiling fan spun in slow, hypnotic circles. Crickets sang from somewhere outside. The smell of salt clung to her skin, to mine.

She nestled into me, warm and quiet. My fingers brushed along her spine. She sighed once – content – and I closed my eyes, letting the weight of the day melt off my shoulders.

For the first time in years, maybe ever… I felt safe. Not just in this place. But in her arms. In her love.

In the truth of it all.

Thequiet woke me.