Jacob wrinkle his nose in disgust at the sight of his all too happy prisoner. When he’d first laid eyes on Regis, a part of him had wondered if this was just some elaborate joke. There was no way that a man with as many screws loose as Regis Nox-Fleuret could be capable of single-handedly leading a rebellion, right? If it hadn’t been for the fact that the intelligence team had gained that information through the use of their most potent truth serum, he wouldn’t have believed for one second that the madman in this cell was the one who had caused the crown so much trouble for so many years. It seemed impossible that he was even capable of holding a coherent conversation.

However, even in his lunacy, the rebel apparently had some wits left. Jacob narrowed his eyes as the other man pointed out that he sounded tired. Either Regis was just bluffing to try to act like he was stronger than him or he’d noticed the subtle cues he was giving off that he had indeed not slept for the last twenty-four hours. Either way, it irked him that his prisoner seemed to have noticed his weariness so quickly, and he folded his arms over his broad chest, holding his weight in a stern pose to tell the madman with his body language that his state of energy was inconsequential.

“You know that’s not the information I want,” he said brusquely, getting sick of repeating himself. Since Regis had woken up, he’d been all too eager to tell him and the other men what he’d done to their prince. However, they still hadn’t been able to get him to cough up the location of Caspian’s body. Objectively, he didn’t care if they found their future king’s corpse in one piece or ten. As long as they brought him back to the capital, where he could be buried alongside the rest of the deceased Maydestone family after a deserved funeral, that was all that mattered.

“I want you to tell me what you did with the goddamn body,” he reiterated harshly. Of course, there was other information the interrogators had been attempting to squeeze out of Regis as well. They wanted to know the names of the other high-up members of the Scourge as well as to find out how their enemies had been intercepting some of their shipments of supplies. Battle plans, lists of resources, base locations, anything that would help them squash what was left of the rebellion before it had a chance to recover from the loss of its leader. All of that information was vital to the military in the midst of the war, but Jacob was focused on finding out what had happened to the prince he’d been charged with protecting.

He glared at Regis poisonously. “Why even bothering hiding it from us? If he’s dead, there’s no more reason for you to hold onto him.” By the morning, they had learned by examination that the blood in the basement had belonged to Caspian, so he didn’t question the authenticity of the rebel leader’s claim. “Unless you’re so far out of your fucking mind that you want to keep a rotting corpse as a trophy, you’ll make your own life a lot easier if you just tell me where he is.”