Arkham had always believed everything that Gabriel had told him. The man had raised him after all, more or less, because no one else had been there. Now he knew there had always been other things there, unspoken things; there had been matters that had been kept from him, but the coyote still wasn't sure that he had ever been lied to. That was the tricky thing, wasn't it. If he had had the sense to ask back then, what would the answers have been? And would he have been able to comprehend them? Maybe the only faults rested with him. Except that he felt like Gabriel was lying to him now. It was too calm. There was a fire still burning and a forest full of longing and regret. Things shouldn't be so calm. And why should he be sorry anyway?
Me too,
he said, turning to his brother and pulling the hood of his cloak back from his eyes. Mostly sorry that I never knew him.
Seeing Gabriel face-to-face now, it felt like years had past. It felt like they were both much older, and that a thousand things had happened since that day in the library when he had been a shark. It had in a way, but those were always the things that were hardest to accept. Arkham wanted to ask about the war that had happened, the new scars that seemed to be present; he wanted to ask about Talitha, about Andrezej, about the family he had left behind. But most of all he wanted to ask about the fire and the betrayal and all the reasons why. He had always been articulate, even as a child, but he didn't know how to form these words. I'm sorry I've been away for so long.
It was a general statement. Maybe it applied to Inferni. Maybe it applied to his family. Except that Inferni was his family, right?