Page 50 of Venomous Heart
When she woke up alone,Ava spread her arms, her hand falling flat against Arlen’s pillow. She knew he hadn’t slept there, but touching it was strangely reassuring.
She got up and smiled as she saw her synthetic cotton uniform neatly folded on the side table. Arlen knew she wouldn’t want to wear the gowns. She felt much better—much more herself—in the simple medical uniforms.
After she was dressed, she walked to the living room, then a short burst of knocks pounded on the door. She smiled. There was only one person who knocked like that.
“Good morning.” She didn’t turn as Uril entered the room but she walked to the dining room table and started to pile food onto a plate for him. “I trust you’re hungry?”
She didn’t hear his answer. Uril was always hungry, and he ate even more now that Arlen provided them with fresh food instead of the gray rations.
When no ravenous boy answered her call or slumped down on a chair at the table, Ava turned to see Uril standing in the living room, staring at the wall with a sad, almost regretful expression on his face.
“What is it?” She put the plate down and walked over to him, stopping to see that Uril was staring at the one thing Arlen hadn’t destroyed in Knut’s old apartments.
“Do you think we’ll ever see him again?”
Ava bit the inside of her cheek at the yearning in Uril’s tone. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again, steeling herself against the brutal onslaught of anger the boy’s words brought up. It wasn’t his fault he hadn’t seen the worst side of Knut’s personality. Uril didn’t know that Knut had held the Exo-Heart over Ava’s head like a blade, forcing her to do his bidding, manipulating her at every turn. Uril had only seen what Knut wanted him to see.
“I know you think he loved us.” Ava shook her head when Uril’s face took on a stubborn expression. “But he didn’t. We were just toys for him. He cared for no one but himself.”
“I know.” Uril pursed his lips, his golden eyes filling with tears. “I would just like to know why? Why couldn’t he love us?”
“Because he was a monster.” Ava spoke softly, but she knew her words hurt. Uril bent his head, then looked back up at the painting. “He saw us as nothing more than this painting. Just possessions to either make him richer or make him more powerful. We’re finally safe from him. Nothing can get to us now, not Knut, not Prime Councilor Aav.”
“All because of Arlen.” Uril nodded, his face softening until he didn’t look like a child anymore.
Ava saw the shadow of the man he would become, and her heart lurched.
“Only we still haven’t found the Exo-Heart.” There was a sadness in his voice that sounded almost like resignation. “Maybe it doesn’t even exist. Maybe this was all part of his games. To make you care about me, give you hope that you could save me, then let me die.”
Each of Uril’s words was heavy with pain. His golden eyes hardened as he stared at the painting, and his hands curled into fists.
“I’m not some toy for him to use and throw away.” His voice shook with emotion, with a rage Ava had never suspected him capable of. “I hope he suffers, wherever he is. I hope he suffers just like I do.”
This was so unexpected, yet so honest. It was so freaking sad that it brought tears to her eyes. Uril hadn’t been nearly as blinded as she thought by Knut’s apparent care for him. And it hurt to see his pain.
“He’s going to pay,” Ava promised him with all she was worth. “Knut will pay for what he did to you, to all those humans he sold, to me. He’s never going to be powerful and rich again. He’s going to die somewhere beyond the Ring, alone.”
Uril turned to her, a savage satisfaction clear on his juvenile features. “Do you want to get rid of it?” He motioned to the painting with his hand.
Ava felt the smile spread across her lips. That painting had been the most extravagant expense in a long line of extravagances Knut had indulged in. It was his most prized piece of art, the symbol of his ultimate power over Ava. Destroying it would send all that money into smoke, literally. It was the ultimate act of freedom. “Let’s burn it.”
Uril smiled, then nodded. Neither of them spoke as Ava pulled it from the wall then set it carefully down in the large living room foyer. It took a little while, but she finally found some matches and a bit of cleaning oil under a sink. She doused the painting generously, not missing the costly wood of the frame, pouring the liquid over her face and her dress, the painting glittering with the encrusted jewels.
It was going to burn to a crisp. Nothing would remain.
Ava stood with Uril as she lit the match, then threw it on the painting. It caught fire immediately, flames dancing high, turning blue, green and orange as the chemicals burned.
She began to laugh, and the next second, Uril joined her. It was like a weight was lifted from their lives, going up in thick smoke along with Knut’s fortune.
“Look!” Uril pointed to something in the flames, his face suddenly ashen and his eyes wide. “Doesn’t that look like a letter to you?”
“You’re right!”
Ava bent down, staring at the fast-disappearing piece of paper tucked just inside the corner of the frame, in a section miraculously free of the oil she’d spilled. But that wasn’t preventing it from being consumed by the flames. A letter, or a note, written on a piece of paper, hidden in the frame just behind the painting.
Written in a cramped, pretentious hand Ava would recognize out of a million.
Fear choked her heart and she lurched forward, plunging her hand into the blazing flames. She screamed as agony licked her skin, but her fingers closed around the flimsy paper and she pulled, hard. The next instant, Uril’s hands closed around her shoulders and she was pulled back. They both fell to the floor, stunned.
