The Emperor

10

KAISER

      A week has passed since I last saw my angel.

      A whole week since she sat on my bed, her hair messy, her eyes of my favorite color —so much I could barely see the hazel shade in them, her throat looked like a storm full of bruises but it wasn't what bothered me the most. It was the way she scratched her arm absently, like she has been doing it for days and stopped caring. Of course it had only been hours, but a few minutes in the Empire Mansion can feel like a lifetime.

       A week since my brother traumatized her.

       In a week, she texted me. Once. Telling me she wouldn't be my teacher anymore, telling me she couldn't teach me anymore. And that she is so very sorry about it. As if I'd let her go so easily.

       "Come on, rabbit, it'll be fun." I press Dawn, she sits on the kitchen island in a blue jean mini skirt and a tight black cropped tank top with stuff written on it, her blond hair pulled in a ponytail. She looks at me like I'm asking her for the moon. She has this savior complex when it comes to Adeline, she wants to protect her and yet she pushes her best friend right in the devil's arms.

       "He traumatized her, Kai, she wouldn't go out of my room for five days, she skipped her classes, barely ate, didn't sleep, didn't even talk! I am not bringing her, plus she's gonna hate it there." I focus on my eye, not letting it twitch. I know that. I've been watching the Lockwood house since that day, I've seen Adeline get in but she didn't come out. Dawn's bedroom's light didn't turn off for a second, always a bright white shining through the windows.

       I also know that she would hate a place like L'Arène, so much violence, so much blood, everything she seems to despise.

       What I don't fucking know is what happened in my bedroom, I don't know what he did to her, I don't know why she ran away, why she wouldn't eat or sleep, I don't know and that infuriates me.

       Azrel doesn't know how to act around people that aren't Alexander, Dawn, Grandma or I. He only terrifies them, he scares the shit out of them and probably scars them for life. He does it on purpose. He loves being in control of their fears, perhaps a little more than I do.

       He could care, he simply chooses not to.

       He was the one initiating the idea of keeping people a little longer than necessary in the basement to teach them a lesson. He spent weeks getting his torture room ready, placing orders on the dark web for whatever he needed, drilled holes in the walls and ground to add chains and everything he thought necessary to punish the sinners.

       I mean, it is useful when I need to lock up a piece of shit like Jay —I have to remind myself to feed him by the way— but he likes to take things far.

       Many people come to think that my little brother and I are the same, when in fact we are more different than I am to Alexander. Xan is an actor, not a better one than me but still an actor. Azrel? He cannot hide.

       I was born the way I am. Azrel was made.

       Where he could care, I cannot.
       Where he chooses to ignore morals, I don't understand them.
       Where he is hotheaded, I think of the long run.

       I have no interest in hurting my little angel, Azrel saw the vulnerable soul she is and took my opportunity to break her.

       I know the look in her eyes all too well, the tears on her face, the bruises on her jaw and throat, the mess in her hair, the eerie and empty gaze. He always does that to them.