Epilogue #2
After the Solstice, Milo and his brother spoke.
Their conversation began cautiously, each of them asking indirect questions about where the other had been and who had accompanied him.
Neither wanted to reveal another being’s existence without permission.
Eventually, they realized they had both attended the same gathering.
Only then did I learn that the Elias beside Boone had been Milo’s brother. Boone had entered the name Elias into the Network registry before the Solstice, but I had not connected it to him. Humans frequently shared names.
Across the gallery, Milo chuckled at something another human said.
My attention found him immediately.
Near the center of the room, the large, covered photograph remained hidden beneath white fabric while humans continued drifting closer around it in quiet anticipation.
Milo glanced once toward the gallery owner beside the display, then took a step forward.
The movement alone was enough to settle the room.
Conversations lowered. Attention gathered. Milo did not need to raise his voice.
“I know most of you already walked through the series,” he said, calm and easy. “Heart of the Forest came out of a stretch where I needed to change my focus. I had time to stay in one place longer than I ever have, and it changed how I saw certain parts of the world.”
A few humans nodded quietly.
Milo’s gaze moved briefly across the photographs lining the outer walls before returning to the crowd gathered near the center display.
“I wasn’t looking for anything specific,” Milo continued. “But the longer I stayed, the more I realized the forest doesn’t reveal itself all at once. You have to be patient with it. You have to let it decide what it shows you.”
Something low and warm settled beneath my ribs listening to him say it, because he understood that now. Not just the forest—me.
Milo stepped back then and nodded once toward the gallery owner.
The white covering fell away in one smooth motion, and the reaction moved quietly through the room.
Humans crowded closer, voices lowering as attention narrowed onto the photograph now revealed beneath the gallery lights.
From where I stood near the back of the room, I could only see fragments at first between moving bodies and shifting shoulders.
Trees.
Shadow.
Pale light filtering through a misting rain.
I moved closer, slipping between small clusters of humans until the photograph finally came fully into view.
The forest in the image was deeper than the others surrounding it–older somehow.
Mist drifted low between the trees while muted evening light filtered through wet branches in long silver streaks.
And there, set back where most humans would never stop looking long enough to notice—
I saw it.
Me.
My true form stood partially obscured between the trees, indistinct enough that most humans would mistake me for shadow if they looked too quickly.
Milo had not placed me as the focus of the photograph, but I was there all the same.
Humans continued drifting around the display after that, studying the image from different angles while conversation gradually returned beneath the gallery lights.
Some paused only briefly before moving on.
Others lingered longer.
Across the room, Milo answered questions easily while small groups continued forming and dispersing around him.
I remained near the photograph.
Watching.
Eventually, a woman standing near the center of the display leaned closer toward the image.
“There’s something back there,” she murmured quietly.
Another man narrowed his eyes slightly. “I thought it was part of the trees at first.”
Nearby, someone else stepped closer to look again.
Milo said nothing.
He let them see only what they were capable of seeing.
I stood there a moment longer, looking at the image.
He had seen me clearly enough to keep me, and somehow he had brought that moment here into the center of his world without exposing it completely to anyone else.
Across the gallery, Milo laughed at something someone said.
My attention returned to him immediately.
Milo answered a few final questions near the display before the small group surrounding him finally began to thin. And then—instead of staying where the attention still waited for him, he looked across the room.
At me.
He stepped away from the others without hesitation and crossed the gallery floor.
Everything else faded the way it always did when he moved within reach.
“You made it through the whole thing,” he muttered, coming to a stop in front of me.
“I said I would.”
A smile pulled briefly at the corner of his mouth. His gaze moved over me then, slower this time. Heat trailed behind his attention, coiling deep in my belly.
“You look unreal in white,” he said quietly.
I considered that. “I believe several humans were concerned by it.”
Milo laughed under his breath. The sound settled warmly through me.
I looked past him briefly toward the photograph again. “You have done something significant.”
Something quieter entered his expression at that. “Yeah,” he said. “I think maybe I have.”
My attention returned to him fully. “That photograph was precise.”
Milo studied me for a moment before asking, “You saw yourself?”
“Yes.”
A slow breath left him. “Good.”
His hand brushed mine lightly before our fingers settled together naturally. I closed my hand around his.
“I’m glad you came,” he said.
“There is nowhere else I would be.”
Milo held my gaze for a long moment. “Good,” he hushed.
Around us, the gallery continued moving in its quiet human rhythms—voices carrying gently, footsteps crossing polished floors, people wandering from one photograph to the other.
But none of it pulled at me now the way it had when I first arrived. Because he was here. And I was here with him.
Milo’s thumb brushed against my hand. “You know,” he began, “I used to think I had to choose what kind of life I wanted.”
I listened quietly.
“I don’t think that anymore.”
I understood what he meant.
The human who had entered my forest making terrible bird noises and somehow changed the shape of my entire existence afterward.
“I want to be where you are,” I said.
Milo’s expression softened immediately. His fingers tightened around mine. “Good,” he said quietly.
That was sufficient.
We were not choosing one world over the other.
We were choosing each other—in both.
Wait… you’re not leaving the woods already, are you?
Because there’s one more person you’ve already met whose story is just beginning.
Remember Neven, Mrs. Alvarez’s nephew?
Well, he’s about to discover that the woods around Bray Road aren’t the only place where monsters hide… and the one waiting for him has fangs.