I’d Give Up The World For You - Chapter 227

What if Leo’s head being on fire hadn’t been a trick of the light or a figment of Daisy’s imagination? What if he truly had fire magic like this character that was so much like him she didn’t know how to tell fiction from reality anymore?

Rukelion Blaze was a fairly miserable character. The only times he was truly happy involved Veronica. Just like how Leo was with Daisy.

In the book he frequently thought of her as his light. His lifeline. Something to live for after his revenge was complete. Though he did leave her to accomplish his goals, he never truly forgot about her.

He thought of her every day. She helped drive his determination to succeed as quickly as possible. He had promised he would come back to her using the same promise Leo did. The kind that was supposedly the most serious promise he could make.

‘I swear on the fire within me.’ In the book it was a fire mage’s oath. Her boyfriend said it was the most serious promise someone could make where he was from and that she wouldn’t understand.

He said things like that a lot. She wouldn’t understand or she wouldn’t believe him. What if it truly was because he was a fictional character? That was pretty farfetched!

Daisy wouldn’t believe something like that under normal circumstances but right now it was beginning to look like the only explanation that made sense. If Leo truly was Rukelion Blaze, he would have every reason to despise the author that made him suffer so much.

But that raised a lot of other questions. What was a book character doing here? How had any of this happened? Had he only latched onto her because she was so similar to the one he loved?

He said that she was the only one in his heart but that clearly wasn’t true if he was Rukelion Blaze. He loved Veronica as much as he was capable of with a heart so consumed by revenge. They may be eerily alike but Daisy definitely wasn’t a character in a fantasy novel. She had spent her entire life in Cincinnati.

She truly didn’t understand what was happening here. Though her suspicions about his identity got stronger after the jump scare incident when they were watching a horror movie together.

Leo only panicked because she did and immediately assumed what seemed to be a rather professional fighting stance considering he was holding her with one arm. He was ready to deal with anything that might be threatening her even if it was a monster on the TV.

Daisy had never met someone before who actually had the ‘fight’ impulse when faced with something threatening. Most of the people she knew were ‘flight’ or the lesser known ‘freeze.’

If he was Rukelion Blaze, it would make sense that he was a fight type. He had been to war not once but twice. He had spent a significant chunk of his life fighting and had been the strongest person in the room for much of that time.

Her fear that she was the only thing he was living for was confirmed during that odd exchange too. He said so himself that he didn’t want to live in a world without her in it or something to that effect.

That was worrying. No pressure!

Daisy’s mind had been wandering before due to the things she had read but it was a lot worse after that. She barely managed to make it through the rest of the movie.

Leo was pretty tired and fell asleep immediately after but she was wide awake. As soon as she was able to free herself from his grip she turned the light back on and grabbed her Kindle. She was too wired to sleep so she may as well try to get some answers.

He stirred in his sleep and reached out for her with an uneasy expression on his face. Once his head was in her lap he settled down again.

She absently stroked his hair as she read to keep him asleep. The last thing she wanted to do right now was be interrupted and have to answer questions he really didn’t want to know the answer to.

Daisy read on. Rukelion Blaze was incredibly cold and calculating about everything at this point in the story from gathering allies to getting Veronica to marry him. It made her a bit uncomfortable to read but she could kind of understand where he was coming from.

It was a self-protective mechanism. He always had to be in control so he didn’t feel as powerless as he did the day he lost everything.

If nothing else, his feelings for Veronica were true. He was willing to be clinical and scheming about winning her over because of how desperate he was to keep her in his life. He needed her to prevent him from becoming the monster he was before the beginning of Down in Flames.

Daisy had a bad feeling about this. The prequel was the story of how the villain took over the world and lost his mind in the process. She was willing to bet something happened to Veronica by the end of this and she was only ¾ of the way through right now.

She read on about how Rukelion accomplished his goal of overthrowing the king and ultimately wasn’t very happy about it. Fighting him had triggered his trauma.

Throughout the story there had been moments where he was unhinged, such as when he killed the water mages and the crown prince, but this suggested the beginning of his downfall. He finally told his wife almost everything when she returned from a trip visiting a friend but only because he had no other options.

He had been very secretive about everything throughout his revenge plan. That was familiar too. At this point Daisy was nearly positive that her boyfriend truly was this fictional villain.

What she didn’t know was how he got here or why he had gotten so attached to her if he was hopelessly in love with someone else.

She kept reading and saw that Veronica was struggling with feeling held hostage in the castle, especially now that she was pregnant and Rukelion was much more overprotective than he already was. She was also having a hard time dealing with her husband’s mood swings.

Daisy felt that same odd feeling of kinship with this woman that she did several times throughout the story but intensified somehow. This was almost exactly what she was dealing with right now.

Rukelion still managed dealing with affairs of the kingdom despite this until the day his wife went into labor and there were complications. He was able to power through things despite whatever he was feeling the same way Leo did.

But as soon as Veronica’s life was in danger he lost his rationality. When she and the child both died during a difficult delivery he broke down completely and screamed about how she couldn’t leave him with tears streaming down his face as everything around him was engulfed in flames.

The book ended with him sobbing alone in his burning castle. Everyone else had fled or been killed by the uncontrollable fire.

Geez, what a depressing ending! But it made sense that the end had to be terrible since he was a villain who had taken over the world by the start of Down in Flames. What didn’t make sense was how he had ended up here.

Daisy was willing to bet that Leo had been through most of what was in the prequel before coming here but hadn’t made it as far as the events of the main story. He was a bit unhinged but he wasn’t completely crazy and evil. He was simply suffering from PTSD, which was perfectly understandable considering what he had been through. Honestly, it was amazing he hadn’t snapped already.

But what was he doing here? Not everything from the book lined up with what she knew anyway.

He said he lost the last of his family from a bee allergy. Based on the emotion in his voice and how he had panicked in the hospital, she didn’t think that was a lie.

Why would things be different from how they were in the book? He had lost his wife in childbirth there. His wife would be his family as much as a parent or sibling would but he had never specified who he had lost. He only ever said that he lost someone very important to him and the last of his family.

If he truly was Rukelion Blaze, the person he lost most recently had to have been his wife. So then why would he fall in love with Daisy on sight?

He said she wasn’t a replacement and though they may have similar interests and personalities they looked completely different.. He wouldn’t have fallen in love with her at first sight like that even if she did give him advice about daisies.