I’d Give Up The World For You - Chapter 226

Daisy continued reading her book on the other side of the couch until Rukelion finished his paper. He finished it later than he had hoped because he was having a hard time focusing but eventually they were able to watch that movie.

Her focus didn’t seem as keen as usual either. What had she been reading that her head was still there?

They sat side by side on the couch with his arm around her and she didn’t seem to be paying much more attention to the movie than he was until she suddenly screamed and jumped into his lap out of nowhere. He was immediately on alert. Why had she done that?

“What is it?” Rukelion asked urgently as he assumed a defensive stance on his feet shielding her with one arm.

“I HATE jump scares!” Daisy said wildly as she clutched her heart. “One of these days they’re going to give me a heart attack!”

What was a jump scare? Did it have something to do with the movie? He would have to look this up later. He couldn’t see anyone or anything else in the apartment. They were alone watching the movie like they had been before she screamed.

In his panic and rush to protect her it seemed he had done something not only unnecessary but unusual. Had she noticed? He didn’t want her to think he was weird. He worked very hard not to let his lack of knowledge about this world show but he still slipped up sometimes because of how much there was to learn.

Rukelion set his wife down feeling sheepish. “Right. It was just a jump scare. My bad.”

Daisy regarded him curiously once she had calmed down a little. “Why did you react like that? I wasn’t in any actual danger; I was just a little freaked out because I don’t like things popping out at me.”

Think, he had to think! What could he say that wouldn’t make him seem completely crazy here? Ah! He had it!

“You know the fight or flight response?” he asked casually.

“Yeah.”

“I’m on the ‘fight’ side of things.”

The truly ironic part of that statement was that he used to be more ‘flight.’ Running away was the only reason he was alive right now. But after getting stronger and losing his family a second time there was nothing he wouldn’t do to protect the woman he loved even if he did die in the process.

Daisy snorted. “No kidding! You looked like you were about to throw down with the monster inside the movie. What would you have done against something like that? You don’t have any weapons or monster fighting experience.”

Perhaps not but Rukelion did have experience fighting mages and his own body was a weapon. He couldn’t tell her that though. She thought he was as weak as an ordinary person.

He shrugged. “If nothing else I could have let it eat me giving you the chance to run away.”

She pouted and mock punched him on the arm. “You’re not allowed to do that!”

“Why not?”

“You shouldn’t be so willing to sacrifice yourself for other people. Your life is worth more than that, Leo. I’m not worth dying for even if it is only in a hypothetical fictional scenario.”

Now it was Rukelion’s turn to snort. His life wasn’t worth anything. He was a fictional character who had died in the original story. Daisy was absolutely worth dying for because without her he wouldn’t have a reason to live another day.

“That’s not true,” he said in a low voice. “I wouldn’t want to live in a world without you.”

She sighed. “That really isn’t a good way to think. You need to live for yourself, not for me or anyone else. Your life has value.”

It really didn’t though. Not without her.

He had the feeling that pushing the issue wouldn’t end well so he let the subject drop and sat back down on the couch to watch the movie as if nothing had happened. She let out another heavier sigh but didn’t say anything else aside from muttering “stupid” under her breath.

Rukelion didn’t care if Daisy thought he was stupid or reckless for not caring about himself more. He didn’t matter. Not after everything that had happened.

===

Daisy’s frustration with Leo was ongoing. She loved him but hated that he didn’t seem to care for himself at all unless she was the one asking him to do it. Why couldn’t he care about what happened to him on his own? She had never met anyone with a smaller sense of self-preservation!

He wouldn’t care about himself, he wouldn’t tell her anything, and he frequently got moody. Why wouldn’t he trust her? He had been through a lot; she wouldn’t judge him if he just told her the truth.

With the ongoing lack of answers, her determination to read that prequel and see if she could get a clue about what really went down between him and Juliet Gallagher strengthened tenfold. She preordered it on her Kindle so he wouldn’t see the cover at the very least.

Reading it when he was around became easier that way though she still couldn’t risk letting him see the text. He might recognize it.

Daisy hardly felt guilty at all about sneaking around behind his back doing something she knew he wouldn’t like. If Leo wasn’t going to talk to her, she had to figure things out herself. She couldn’t keep living in the dark like this.

Throne of Fire began with a young Rukelion Blaze living peacefully with his family. He was close with his siblings, particularly his second brother, and he was happy. The whole first chapter was of an ordinary day that ended as soon as alarms sounded throughout the city that they were under attack.

She didn’t know much about Leo’s family since he hardly talked about them but she did know he had at least one brother and a sister. In the book Rukelion had two. It was entirely possible that Leo did as well since Juliet knew so much about him that she didn’t.

The author changed what actually happened. Leo had seen most of his family get murdered in front of him but it obviously hadn’t been because of plant magic. The playing dead to escape part was consistent with what Daisy knew though.

Her heart ached reading this. She couldn’t even imagine what her boyfriend must have gone through but this was giving her somewhat of an idea. The character’s emotions were raw.

Daisy continued reading as Rukelion met a farmgirl named Veronica May who saved him and tended to his wounds. He didn’t trust her at first but once he accidentally revealed that he was a fire mage to her and she promised she wouldn’t tell she slowly began earning his respect, and later, his love.

It was strange reading about this character because something about her seemed eerily familiar. She had been a noble who ran away from an arranged marriage but she wasn’t afraid of hard work and loved flowers more than anything.

What were the odds that both Leo and the character who was based on him would fall in love with women obsessed with flowers? It wasn’t as if Juliet Gallagher knew about Daisy either.

Even if she did, they had met after the prequel must have been written in order for it to go through the editing process. Still, it was weird.

The Rukelion Blaze in Throne of Fire was very little like the one in Down in Flames as far as Daisy could tell so far. She wasn’t sure how he was going to go from a grieving boy with a goal of revenge to a monster who burned down the world.

She had a decent amount of time to read considering Leo’s schedule but she wasn’t the fastest reader either. She had to stop a few chapters in because he came home and wanted her attention.

The next few days she continued reading in snatches and became progressively more confused. Rukelion was much more like Leo than she originally thought.

They had the same tastes in food, the same reaction to losing at games, and the same desperate sort of clinging to the women they loved. Rukelion’s reactions to Veronica’s ongoing flower crown/necklace/bracelet making were perfectly aligned with Leo’s whenever they went to the botanical garden or the park and Daisy got overexcited.

How would Juliet know that? Even if she knew Leo well, she wouldn’t be able to predict his actions so accurately.

What was going on here? Why was this fictional character so incredibly similar to her boyfriend even if he was younger and appeared less mentally unstable? Rukelion’s inner thoughts belied what was on his face most of the time while Leo wasn’t very good at controlling that.

Daisy didn’t understand what was going on but she was beginning to suspect that her earlier crazy thought that Leo might truly be Rukelion Blaze wasn’t so crazy after all. The problem was that she had no clue how to go about proving that.. He would never talk.