I’d Give Up The World For You - Chapter 238

Daisy was not happy when her maternity leave ended. She didn’t want to leave Roselia but she didn’t have any other choice. Rukelion found the best-rated daycare within their budget after some intense research and with a heavy heart she saw her baby off on the first day.

It didn’t get much easier than that. Leaving her was hard, working while being exhausted was harder, and dealing with her husband’s fussing was hardest.

About to lose her mind, she began to look into work-from-home options. After three miserable months she found something that paid a bit less than her current job but that would be made up for by the lack of daycare expenses.

Working from home brought other challenges, like trying to concentrate when the baby needed to be cared for, but at least she was able to send Rukelion the updates he wanted so he didn’t freak out. She had never encountered such a concerned parent in her life!

If her own mother cared about her well-being 0.01% as much as he cared about their daughter’s, her childhood would have been very, very different. At least his heart was in the right place.

He was certainly a doting father. Every day he came home from work seeming tired and brightened the moment he saw his family. He would kiss his wife before making a beeline for the baby and lifting her up in the air to her great delight.

Roselia giggled a lot when her father played with her and it was the cutest thing Daisy had ever seen. She couldn’t keep track of how many videos she had of that giggle. Or in general.

Her phone’s camera roll was chock full of pictures and videos of the baby. It was a stark contrast to the days when she had nothing but nature shots and the extremely rare selfie. She never thought she would reach this point but here she was—a wife and mother.

Rukelion was down on the floor still in his work clothes helping the baby with her stacking toy. She was concentrating rather fiercely on it, trying to copy her father’s movements exactly.

Daisy might be biased but she thought her daughter was brilliant. She picked things up very fast. At six months she could already crawl and they had to babyproof everything.

She couldn’t help but wonder if Roselia had taken after her father. He had always been a quick study and had been able to overthrow an entire government by the time he was twenty. He had never been tested but she had her suspicions that he was a genius.

Her one hope was that her daughter wouldn’t use whatever powers she might have for evil. She should grow up safely and healthily without any major catastrophes like Rukelion went through but anything could happen.

He had been a normal child once too. A normal child whose entire world came crashing down in less than a day. Who had already been cool and calculating enough to realize that he needed to play dead to prevent himself from dying along with the rest at twelve years old after seeing everyone he loved die right in front of him.

Was Daisy going to be able to handle raising someone like her husband? Sometimes she wondered.

“Hey, Rukelion,” she said as a thought struck her.

He didn’t so much as look up from his task when he answered. “Yeah?”

“When do fire mages manifest their powers? Rosie isn’t going to randomly burst into flame one of these days, is she? Because I don’t know how to deal with that.”

“You’re safe on that front. Magic doesn’t explode out of young mages. You know you have powers because of your relatives and they’re the ones who teach you how to bring them out.”

Daisy frowned as she considered this. So her daughter would be able to live a normal life with tomato red hair if she wasn’t taught how to use her powers. She knew her husband would never stand for that though. He was proud of his culture and would want to pass it on.

She didn’t mind that. The potential problem lay in her daughter using her powers for world domination the way he had. There were certain things he had taught himself specifically to take down the king, such as being able to eliminate any threat from water. That was too dangerous for a child.

“You aren’t going to teach her everything you know, are you?”

“No,” Rukelion replied in a hard voice, immediately catching onto what she meant. “She won’t need to know everything I know. There are a lot of techniques I developed myself specifically for combat.

“She’ll never have to fight like that. I want to teach her the proper way of the fire mage…not what I had to do to survive. I crossed the line in more than a few places and you can rest assured that magic will die with me.”

Daisy was relieved. She walked over and mussed his hair. “Good. I don’t want her magic to hurt anyone.”

“It won’t.”

The confidence in his voice surprised her. “Why are you so sure?”

“Fire mages may tend toward being passionate or hotheaded but we never attack first. I’ll teach her that fire is about warmth and light rather than destruction and you’ll teach her that violence is wrong. With a mother like you, I have no doubt she’s going to be a wonderful person.”

She smiled and rolled her eyes, messing up his hair worse this time. “You have a real talent for sweettalk, you know that?”

“So you’ve told me,” Rukelion replied as he looked up to grin at her. “Really though, Daisy, it’s going to be fine. I’ll teach her the importance of keeping her magic a secret too. She’s a smart kid; she’ll know not to use it in front of anyone but us.”

“To be safe you probably shouldn’t start teaching her until she’s old enough to understand that. How old were you when you learned, anyway?”

“Seven or eight. I don’t remember exactly.”

That worked for her. By that age Roselia would understand the importance of not telling anyone about her magic. “You can teach her around then. Any younger seems too dangerous.”

Rukelion shrugged. “Fine by me. I’m excited to teach her. I’ve never had the chance to do that before. I don’t know if I’ll be any good as a teacher but I’m going to have to try. I’m the only fire mage left…for now.”

He looked down at their daughter with a proud expression on his face. Daisy knew it meant a lot to him to have another fire mage in the family. To not be alone anymore. To be able to pass on his heritage more than through fanfiction for people who thought it was fake to read.

“And you’re sure she has your powers not just your hair?” she asked hesitantly.

“Positive.”

“How do you know? Can you sense whether or not someone is a fire mage the same way you sense heat signatures of people’s souls?”

Rukelion shook his head then wouldn’t meet her eyes. “That isn’t it.”

Daisy had a bad feeling about this. She put her hands on her hips and stared her husband down. “Rukelion Blaze, what did you do to our baby?”

“Nothing! At least not on purpose. You know she likes colored lights…I was making fire flowers for her and she was so entranced she reached for one and managed to get closer than I thought she would.

“She stuck her hand directly in the flame and was fine. We are fireproof, you know. I was already 99.99% sure because of her hair but that essentially confirmed it for me. Don’t be mad! Nobody got hurt and it was an accident!”

She sighed. At least he hadn’t tested his theory on purpose. She would have been mad at him for that.

Being fireproof could be a useful quality. She never had to worry about her children getting burned. That was one less potential hazard to deal with.

“Seeing how it was an accident…but really, Rukelion! I’m surprised at you. You’re normally much more careful than this,” Daisy scolded. “How are you supposed to protect the baby if you’re literally playing with fire in front of her?”

“She’s a fire mage! If anything else in the world threatened her, I’d show it no mercy,” he said with such malice a shiver ran down her spine.

“Yeah, don’t do that. I don’t want you to go to jail.”

“I know how not to leave any evidence behind. I wouldn’t go to jail.”

“Rukelion.”

Rukelion sighed then his intensity melted away. He didn’t say anything but knew that continuing to pursue the subject would result in further chastisement and didn’t want to deal with it.

Old habits die hard.. He may not be the person he used to be but Daisy didn’t have a doubt in her mind that if it ever came down to protecting the happiness he had found for himself he would destroy anything or anyone without a second thought.