Sometime between the end of his last nap and the time he finished looking around his cell, Caspian had completely lost track of the passage of time. He wasn’t sure if he’d been locked up for a half day or thirty-six hours or somewhere in middle. The perpetual darkness was both disorienting and anxiety-inducing. He couldn’t use his body to clue him in either, because he wasn’t given regular meals, and he slept at odd intervals. The perpetual hunger and thirst just made him more confused, and every time he woke up, he was struck with a brief flash of panic, worrying that he’d slept for too long and had run out the clock. He wished he had a way to tell how many hours he had left until the rebels decided to kill him, because as it was now, he had no idea how much more time he had to come up with a way to escape. It was by far the most stressful situation he’d ever been in.

As the day—or night—dragged on, he laid on his back with his eyes closed, trying to calm his racing heart after he’d woken up from another nap that could have lasted five minutes or five hours. His head ached relentlessly from dehydration, and he was starting to feel weaker from the lack of food even though his stomach had stopped growling a long time ago. In spite of these things, he still forced himself to sit up and feel around the corner of his cell with one hand, where he’d stashed the few things he’d managed to find in his last searches: a tiny, torn piece of paper, a dried piece of gum that had been stuck to the bottom of his shoe, and a screw. He still didn’t know if any of the trash would be helpful to him in escaping, but he held onto it anyway, just in case.

At the very least, he’d found a use for the screw. When he located it, he picked it up and maneuvered it in his hand, so the pointed end was aimed at the rope that bound his wrists. In the hours—or what he thought had been hours—since he’d found it, he’d been using the metal bit to slowly saw away at his bindings. It was slow going, but he was seeing some progress in the form of fraying strands as he worked on it, so he kept trying, hopeful that he could get out of the ties without enough time to spare to come up with a plan to get out.

It was while he was cutting the rope that the door opened, startling him out of focus. [color=#b97703]“Shit,”[/color] he hissed under his breath, fumbling to quickly hide the screw in his trouser pocket, so whoever had come by wouldn’t know what he’d been up to. Regis had already threatened to kill him sooner once, and he was pretty sure that trying to escape would earn him a one-way ticket to whatever horrible execution the rebels had come up with for him.

To his relief, it wasn’t Regis who had come to see him, but his daughter, Iris. The prince’s eyes widened at the sight of the dishes in her hands. More food and water. He swallowed hard, forcing himself to sit still while she placed the plate and cup inside his cell. Even though he was desperate for something to drink, he couldn’t just pounce on it like some kind of caged animal. He still had enough self-respect to behave with more dignity than that, so he waited for her to set the containers down before he inched closer to reach for the glass with his still-bound hands.

[color=#b97703]“Thanks,”[/color] he murmured, the word escaping his lips before he could stop it. All pretenses of remaining aloof had fled from his features as he downed the water without restraint. He still hadn’t forgiven her for lying to him and taking him away from the capital, but he could still give gratitude where gratitude was due, he supposed.