Seven days(Resuming normal update schedule moving forward.)

Seven days(Resuming normal update schedule moving forward.)
Kaelar's POV

I’ve been stripped of my sanity, lost in the endless darkness. My bloodlust is beginning to boil over, and my body has grown weak.
Seven days. Seven long, grueling days of darkness, torture, and isolation.
How did Rhys do this without losing his damn mind?
The leather restraints binding my wrists and ankles to a large, blessed wooden chair, dig painfully into my skin.
“You should just stop fighting,” Mael’s tired voice reaches my ears in the darkness. “It’s fruitless. You know this.”
“Shut the fuck up,” a grit my teeth, feeling that familiar ache in my jaw before gripping the chair with as much strength as I can muster. Fiery pain shoots up my arm as the third fingernail this week rips clean off, clattering to the floor.
“He enjoys your suffering,” Mael sounded annoyed that I was giving Johnston the satisfaction of seeing my suffering, but he’s the reason I’m in this mess to begin with.
“Clearly,” I snarl, continuing to rip at my bindings, “You are a glutton for punishment. A masochist.”
“This is the most I’ve heard you speak,” there was a small pause, “Ever.”
That’s what this place will do to you. Between the darkness, isolation, and intermittent torture; My mind is spiraling. There is this constant lead weight in my gut, and even in the darkness, I can feel my vision burning red.
The last time I was faced with certain death, Aribella stepped in to save me, but here… I’m all alone.
I’ve tried not to think about her. I’ve tried to completely push her face from my mind, but Johnston won’t allow it. Every time he comes in here to torture us, he rubs it in my face that she’s out there… Free, and far away from me.
He taunts that Rhory is finally getting a piece of what was rightfully his, and that before long, he’ll return the help back to her farm.
I’ve taken every jab. Every taunt. Everything he’s done, I’ve grit my teeth, and taken it, but desperation is settling beneath my skin like a venomous snake, and I knew it wouldn’t take much longer before I broke entirely.
“This place,” Mael cackled, coughing at the dryness in his throat, “Is my home away from home.”
That was the understatement of the century. In all my years of being in the royal guard, I never realized how much time Mael truly spent here…. Not until we were placed in the same holding cell.
At first, that felt like a punishment in its own right, but the more Mael spoke, the more he kept me sane, as much as it pissed me off.
I’d watched him get tortured alongside me, and it was clear he was used to what was happening to him. Johnston was ruthless when it came to Mael, and a trickle of guilt began seeping between the cracks of the hatred I felt for that man.
“It’s an ugly truth,” Mael muttered. “Seeing this Kingdom for what it is.”
“I’ve always known Sacaris to be corrupt.”
“Bet you didn’t think dear old dad loved to torture his youngest son,” he tried to maintain a tone that would hide his hatred for his father, but every word was dripping with it. Mael scoffed, “I get why you fell for Aribella,” I heard the creaking of his chair before his eyes burned against my skin through the darkness. “She was the first person to see through the façade. She didn’t see my title and automatically assume I was special,” he chuckled, a soft thud echoing around us. “I was jealous,” he whispered, showing the first ounce of real vulnerability since we’d been down here.
“Of me?” That thought never even crossed my mind.
“You are the most respected Royal guard member to have ever been appointed. Your praise within this Kingdom and amongst the lower ranking officers is impressive, and then,” he laughs bitterly. “This stunning woman with a foul mouth shows up, and you know who she runs to?”
I don’t grant him a response. I know where this is going.
“A fucking vampire,” there was another pause before he began speaking again. “I’m royalty, and she can’t be bothered to spare me a second glance unless it’s with disgust in those mesmerizing viridian eyes. Do you know what that feels like?”
An image of Corabelle’s pained expression on the top of that mountain crosses my mind just before the visual shifts to her standing beside my brother as his beloved.
“You’re asking the wrong person about being looked at with disgust.”
“Ah yes,” Mael chuckled. “You are a filthy bloodsucker. Almost forgot after spending a week here with you.”
There wasn’t a single ounce of truth behind Mael’s comment, leaving me confused. I turned my head in the darkness, furrowing my brows at the dark space where I knew his chair rested.
“Seven days of torture didn’t change you.”
“Do you want to know something beautiful?” Mael chuckles, though it’s void of any real humor. “The one thing that pisses my father off more than anything is that he can’t break me,” he hummed before chuckling again. “He’s spent twenty-five years trying to mold me into his perfect disciple, but it’ll never work because I get off on watching his misery.”
“Why do you stay?” I shouldn’t bother trying to pry into his life story. For eleven years, I’ve steered clear of this man because he is a disgusting human being, and yet, seven days in this wretched cell alongside him has given me a shred of decency that I’m not so sure he deserves.
“Because I’ve still got things left to achieve before I die,” Mael whispered, his voice raw with emotion.
He didn’t have to speak the truth behind that statement, as it was clear as day to me.
Johnston would kill him if he ever tried to leave.
A blinding light disoriented me as Johnston entered our cell, “It’s your lucky day, Mr. Itsuki.”
Dread settled in the pit of my stomach as the realization smothered me.
Aribella sacrificed her life for mine.