[color=#b97703]“You and me both,”[/color] Caspian muttered with a shake of his head. He couldn’t believe that for as long as he’d been missing, the soldier on the other end of the line wouldn’t have even stopped to consider that it was really him making the call. Something was off. At least, he wanted to think so because if it wasn’t, that meant that the military wasn’t in any hurry to bring him back. He grimaced at the thought, stung by the possibility that his disappearance wasn’t as big of a deal as he’d expected it would be. [color=#b97703][i]Is my dad even looking for me?[/i][/color] He wondered dejectedly. He didn’t want to believe it, but as awful as it was, he wouldn’t have been entirely shocked if he found out that Atlas wasn’t prioritizing finding him while the war was still ongoing. It wasn’t like his father had ever shown much interest in him before.

[color=#b97703][i]Don’t go there again,[/i][/color] he exhaled slowly, reining in his spiraling thoughts. All he knew for sure was that he’d gotten through to a particularly disagreeable guard when he’d tried to call home. That didn’t necessarily have anything to do with his father. For all he knew, the king was worried sick that he still hadn’t been found. He had to assume the best because if Atlas didn’t actually care if he came back or not, there was no point in trying to go back to the capital. After all, why should he bother if his own father wouldn’t even shed a tear over the fact that he had been abducted and could have died? For his own sanity, he had to assume the monarch was doing everything he could to bring him home.

Realizing belatedly that Maisie had left the room, he finished off the rest of his tea and set the cup back down on the table. Worrying about what was going on outside of his scope of knowledge wasn’t going to do him any good, so he laid down on his right side and pulled his blanket up to his chin, closing his eyes to finally give in to his exhaustion and get some much-needed sleep.

--

[i][b][Earlier the same day][/b][/i]

Jacob stifled a yawn as he walked with the warden down a long line of cells. He and the rest of the team that had gone to Tongsen had brought Regis Nox-Fleuret back as their prisoner the night before. Since then, he hadn’t had a wink of sleep, but he couldn’t take a break until they got the information they needed from their newest POW. Surprisingly, the leader of the rebellion had a mouth on him. Not in the sense of foul language—although that was part of it—but rather because he jabbered on and on about how he’d won and how the monarchy was doomed to collapse.

It was infuriating to watch him act so high and mighty, but luckily, he wasn’t in charge of interrogating the bastard. The men who questioned Regis were better trained in that realm than he was, so he had reduced his involvement to intermittent visits when the rebel was returned to his cell between rounds of interrogations. The use of Aproveset had been discussed to speed things along, but for now, they had been following the usual protocol of demanding answers and encouraging their prisoner to talk with other creative methods of torture.

He also hadn’t told King Atlas anything yet. Technically, he was supposed to report to the monarch as soon as they had brought Nox-Fleuret in, but he was reluctant. It was seeming more and more like the gutter scum had actually killed their country’s crown prince, and he didn’t want to tell their king about that until he absolutely had to. So, he’d decided to wait until he received word that His Highness had woken up on his own before he made the visit to the palace to tell him the bad news that his son was dead.

Approaching Regis’s cell, Jacob ground his teeth, simmering with anger. King Atlas wasn’t the only one who cared about Prince Caspian’s wellbeing. It took all his willpower not to barge in and beat the living daylights out of the man who claimed to have ended his life. He managed to hold himself back though, and merely growled through the bars, “Rise and shine, Nox-Fleuret. Are you ready to talk to me or do I need to call my buddies with the fun toys over to do a little convincing?”