A corner of his lips hitched in a smile. Hers matched.
“Do you see why I couldn’t tell you? I couldn’t simply say,Jin, I’m a vampire, and let it be. I was going to give you the whole truth or none of it,” she said, and for a beat, there was no sound but the waves crashing against the ship.
“You could have though,” Jin finally said. “You could have toldme and I would have understood, because I knowyou. I’ve known you from the moment you took my hand in front of my parents’ burning house. Nothing would have changed that.”
If anything, Jin thought this new information helped him understand her better.
Her anger, her deeply ingrained need for vengeance, her pain that she allowed no one else to see.
“I trusted you with everything,” he continued. “I only wished for the same in return. I had no one but you.”
She said nothing.
That was that, he supposed. He inhaled deep, remembering when Matteo had alerted him to the fact that he didn’t have to anymore. Jin couldn’t see a world where he didn’t breathe—unless he was completely, utterly dead. He joined Arthie at the rail, facing the sea. After a beat, he placed his hand over hers. She glanced down and then at him, a little hopeful and a little dubious.
“We’re all right, Arthie. If I’d massacred a boatful of people myself, I wouldn’t want you knowing either,” he drawled.
Arthie rolled her eyes. There she was, that tempest in a bottle he knew so well. Shouts rose from the crew as they turned course, and Jin watched as Arthie’s gaze drifted across the deck.
“He’s not here,” Jin said.
“I wasn’t looking,” she lied.
“Sure.” Jin nodded. In the distance, he saw a tail disappear into the ocean. “So, the Wolf of White Roaring, eh?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked with a sideways glance.
Knowing that Matteo was the Wolf and knowing what Arthie had done herself… their bond made far more sense. Even if Arthie wouldn’t give into it or admit what it meant.
The hatch creaked open and Matteo climbed on deck, looking between Jin and Arthie when they fell silent.
“Talking about me?”
“No,” Arthie said at the same moment Jin said, “Maybe.”
Matteo cracked a laugh. “For two of White Roaring’s most notorious criminals, you’re terrible liars.”
“Only for you,” Jin said, and it was true.
Arthie was struggling to hide it, but she was flustered, her composure nowhere near the calm, cool, and collected mask she usually plastered on herself. It was yet another reminder of how much they’d changed. Arthie, Matteo, Flick.
Jin didn’t want to think about what lay ahead. He had his umbrella and his just-reconciled sister, but that didn’t relieve as much stress as he would have liked. He had only what the ledger said to guide them.
“We’ll find them,” Arthie said quietly.
Because that was what Arthie did: followed through, and that fact was perhaps what Jin was most concerned about. He’d spent years wanting to find his parents, and now that he was finally headed in that direction, now that they were finally attainable, he found himself wavering.
Were his parents the same people that they were a decade ago? He certainly wasn’t. He wasn’t even alive now, and that—that was the core of it, he realized. He could understand Arthie and her reluctance to tell him the truth just then. Because he was a criminal, a vampire, nowhere near the high society boy his parents had raised, and he didn’t know if they would want him anymore.
“Thank you,” he said at last. “For doing this. I know it’s not easy on you.”
Arthie pulled a face. “It’s nothing. Besides, I owe it to you.”
“No, you don’t.”
She smiled. “No, I don’t.”
13ARTHIE
