Page 63 of Venomous Heart
There’s nothing to lose by trying.
Ava lifted her hand, her fingers spread wide as she intended to try to gain access. Arlen stopped her just in time, his hand like a steel band around her wrist.
“Don’t. This is a trap.” He shook his head, then pointed to the points of tiny needles in the embedded gel. “It’s a poisoned biometric panel. Anyone other than the person programmed to open it will drop dead.”
Ava cursed loudly, pulling her hand away from the panel.
“I should have known. Knut wouldn’t let anyone else unlock his Vault. We’ll have to figure something out.”
Ava stared at the biometric reader, then at Arlen. “I don’t think so.” She shook her head. “Knut always had a plan B, he was always a step ahead. He would never secure his entire life insurance policy without having another person who could open it for him should he need it. I’m the only other person he would trust with this. At least, I was.”
Ava moved, but Arlen grabbed her wrist again before she could touch the panel.
“Absolutely not!” he growled at her. He actually growled. “Are you mad? I’m not allowing you to risk your life on a hunch!”
“There isn’t time to think of another way,” she argued as he glared at her. “I know him. I’m sure he programmed me in as well.”
Arlen shook his head. “No. There will be another way to get in.”
But there wasn’t. Or, more precisely, there wouldn’t be in time.
“I know him,” she insisted. “Knut always had a contingency plan. And I was the closest thing he ever had to a confidant. That’s why he left the coordinates in the painting, because he knew I would destroy it if I had a chance. He knew I would find them. Knut knew me, the same way I know that if you try to break into the Vault then we can be sure that everything inside it will be lost. I know he set traps to prevent anyone from breaking in. Heck, for all I know, the entire planet could explode if you try to break in. You have to let me try it.”
“Do you have any idea what you’re asking me? What your life means to me now?”
She did. She was asking him to stake his own life on her knowledge of a monster but she had no choice. Time was running out, and Uril needed her. They had lost their transport vehicle, had lost their communication device.
“It could take weeks to get back home on foot,” Ava insisted as Arlen stared at her with a closed-off expression. “We don’t have that kind of time. Uril will be dead by then.”
“I won’t trade your life for his.” Arlen shook his head once. “I want to save the boy for your sake, but I won’t lose you for him.”
Ava recoiled as though Arlen had hit her. “If you don’t let me do this, then you’ll lose me.” Her voice was heavy with emotion but she was deadly serious. Arlen meant more to her than she’d ever thought possible in such a short time. She even saw a future with him, but that was nothing compared to what she felt for Uril. “I need you to trust me, don’t you understand?”
“I understand more than you think.” There was an unbridled intensity in what Arlen was telling her. “You say you will be truly alone if Uril dies. Do you have any idea what hearing that does to me? Yet, I’m here, risking both our lives for him, so don’t tell me I don’t care.”
Ava locked gazes with him, with those pale eyes that meant so much. But no matter how much she cared for him, Uril was depending on her.
“You and I, we made a choice, but he didn’t.” At her words, Arlen flinched but he didn’t say anything. “I’m not a fool. I know I can’t force you to allow me to do this, but I can tell you one thing: if he dies, I won’t forgive you. I’ll leave you and never look back.”
Arlen stared at her a long time, his hold still like steel on her wrist. Pain spread across his features, then he opened his hand, freeing her. “I understand.”
Guilt bit into Ava. She knew the concept of Eok mating was something she didn’t truly grasp, that the moment he had bitten her, he had committed to her in a way she wasn’t prepared to reciprocate. And that her words meant she was choosing Uril over him.
But the truth was, she did. She would choose the helpless, trusting boy lying on his deathbed over Arlen.
“Thank you.”
Arlen didn’t answer, his head lifting and his face hardening as she stepped closer.
Ava raised her hand to the control panel, hesitating. She was betting her life on the fickle knowledge she had of Knut. More than that, she was betting Arlen’s life on it, too. Fear took hold of her as her palm hovered just above the poisonous bio-reading gel. If she was wrong, the gel pad would release a fast-acting toxin, which would be absorbed through her skin in a fraction of a second, and she would die.
And so would Arlen.
With a sudden surge of willpower, Ava pressed her palm into the cool the gel pad and her breath caught. Behind her, she saw Arlen flinch, his eyes on her like pale beacons.
Time felt suspended as the reader scanned her biometric signatures, from her DNA to her prints; a deceptively simple beam of light running from the tips of her fingers to the bottom of her palm. She waited as a cold sheen of sweat prickled over the skin of her back; waited for the moment when her heart would suddenly beat faster, then faster, until it exploded in her chest.
Then, from somewhere deep below ground, a creaking noise shook the forest floor at the same time as the gel pad stopped flashing. For a second, Ava didn’t know if she had been right or if the hammering of her heart meant she was about to die, then a steel box rose from the ground just to one side.
