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[row][cell][sub]Location: The Jail[/sub][/cell][/row][/table]Eyes narrowed, Flynn stared back at the man behind bars—green meeting blue, oceans colliding. Neither wavering.

[color=337d71]“You speak as if you know me.”[/color] he said at last, letting the statement hang in the air for a beat. [color=337d71]“I am not so thoughtless as to never question my own family. Or the clergy.”[/color]

Annoyance burned in his throat, but he kept it buried—barely managing to keep his tone neutral. He tried to keep Amaya in mind—her way of using silence and words like precision weapons. Or keeping peace in the name of survival, when danger lurked behind every corner. Like the threat staring back at him now. 

[color=337d71]“Why do you think any of us are here?”[/color] He questioned, voice flat. [color=337d71]“If I never questioned them, this town wouldn’t exist.”[/color] 

The words were bitter on his tongue. Speaking ill of the clergy was reckless, though he assumed most already knew his stance. He’d pleaded to delay the prophecy, after all.

But the thought of speaking his true opinions—recalling the things he’d seen—coiled deep inside his chest, causing his muscles to tense.
He could've said more, but didn’t. 

[color=337d71]“If I were never to question, the Princess and I would already be dead. My child orphaned."[/color]

Frustration simmered, a dull spark lit—bleeding ever so slightly into his voice.

[color=337d71]“Do not presume to understand me. My wife. My family. Or hers.”[/color]

Carefully, Flynn chose not to speak of his own loyalties. The puppeteer had blown right past the question anyway, but Flynn wasn’t about to bare such truths to a stranger who spoke openly of regicide either. 

Truth was, he didn’t yet know where his loyalty ultimately laid. And a leader, he knew, needed to be sure of their words. 

But for now, that uncertainty didn’t matter. Peace had lasted among the two nations for fifty years. He had no intention of breaking it. The marriage between the heirs had been unifying, in a way. 

What mattered now was curing the blight. Returning the sun to her proper place in the sky. And keeping Amaya and himself among the living. 

Nonetheless, Halcyon's words gnawed at him. The man seemed determined to make Dawnhaven more significant than Flynn had ever intended it to be. An interesting thought—a [i][b]dangerous[/b][/i] one. 

Something the Aurelian Prince didn’t wish to entertain—couldn’t entertain. 

But something sharp dragged along the edges of his mind anyway. 

If they cured the blight and somehow returned the sun… what then? Where would he and Amaya go from there? Would they stay in Dawnhaven? Would Amaya’s father allow it? Would they return to Aurelia? Would she even want that?

Flynn pushed the thought away and refocused on Halcyon. He needed to stay present. Not give in to the seeds of doubt Halcyon was attempting to plant. Not let his mind spiral on the unknowable future—not when there were so many variables. 

Not when he could very well be dead within the month, and none of it would matter at all. 

The man’s talk of blight and the goddess—her physical form absorbed by a mortal?—sounded like something ripped from fiction. The ramblings of a fanatic cloaked in allegory. 

[color=337d71]“If we ‘[i]accept[/i]’ the blight and do nothing, we’ll all die,”[/color] Flynn said coldly. [color=337d71]“There is no guarantee of survival. And you’d have us welcome it with open arms? Let millions be consumed?”[/color]

His brow furrowed, disgusted by the mere thought. 

Halcyon seemed content to sacrifice so many lives across the continent… for what? So that those reborn might live on and rule over ash for a time? 

Without the sun, without human, plant or animal life—the blight-born would be just as doomed. 

This wasn't a brilliant vision for a brighter future. This was delusion.

Flynn peeled his gaze away, glancing down the empty stone hallway. His mind caught on the mention of what lay beneath the capital. The forbidden reaches below the Aurelian palace.

Had Halcyon seen it somehow—or was this another wild swing, another thing he so boldly claimed to be fact without proof?

It didn’t matter. Flynn had heard enough. His patience was thinning. His time was better spent elsewhere—not listening to the musing of a mad man.

Sighing, he returned his attention to Halcyon, staying just beyond reach of the bars. 

[color=337d71]“Why should I release you?”[/color] he asked, getting straight to the point. [color=337d71]“Why not let you rot here? Or call upon my father’s forces and let them drag you back to Aurelia—to answer for the violence you so clearly intend upon the crown?”[/color]

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