I’d Give Up The World For You - Chapter 246

Roselia Blaze had a happy childhood. She had two parents who loved her deeply, was close with her sister, and adored her brothers. She also had an insatiable desire to know everything.

She tried to ignore it when she knew it wasn’t a good idea. Sometimes she managed to pull it off. But others…

She tried so hard to do what her mom said. To let go of the fact that her dad was a villain in a book. It seemed so unbelievable since he had never been anything but kind and loving toward his family. But the older she got the more difficult it became to suppress her curiosity.

By the time she was fourteen he declared her an expert at fire magic and said there was nothing more he could teach her. She wanted to believe him but wasn’t sure she did.

The things he taught her and her siblings seemed so…basic. Not at all villain standard. Could someone truly be considered a villain if they weren’t powerful?

Roselia hadn’t read the books but she had read enough other things to know that villains in fantasy novels were usually way overpowered and it took quite a lot to defeat them. Creating shapes out of fire and being able to juggle fireballs didn’t seem all that overpowered to her.

That was what finally pushed her over the edge. That author may be wrong about her dad’s personality but there had to be more to know about fire magic. She was determined to find out that much. She could ignore the rest.

She read Down in Flames first. Her father wasn’t even mentioned for the first third of the book but she discovered something else rather surprising.

Ira Brooks, the protagonist. He was a water mage whose physical description matched the picture they had hanging in their hallway with the rest of the family photos. Not only that, he was an incredibly bright academy student who happened to be studying to become a doctor.

Her mom really got tangled up in this novel’s world, didn’t she? She married the villain and raised the hero!

But she wasn’t mentioned in the book at all. Ira grew up bouncing around from home to home after his parents died until he was taken in by a wealthy benefactor who wanted to take advantage of his brains and sent him to school. There was no mention of the Flame of Punishment having a family either.

When he finally showed up in the novel Roselia realized her mother’s assessment had been right. He had been written as a totally two-dimensional villain with almost no backstory and really lame motivations.

That made her angry. That no-good author didn’t know anything. There weren’t even any good fire magic techniques in here. The villain she wrote was overpowered (as expected) but none of the magic was ever explained. Totally disappointing.

Roselia had been about to give up until the remembered the prequel was about her father specifically. If there was going to be anything about magic it would be in there.

She was reluctant to read more lies about someone she loved but her desire to know everything won out in the end. She simply wouldn’t tell her parents she was doing this. She would act like she hadn’t done this at all.

The problem was that she wasn’t entirely sure the prequel was full of lies the way the first book was. Her first clue was reading about her aunt and uncles’ names. Those were correct, as was the way they acted based on everything her dad ever said about them.

The fall of Katalya happened too but with much more horrific detail than he had offered. He simply said that beautiful things didn’t always last and that the fire mages hadn’t been able to stop what happened.

He never said that other mages had been involved or that he had watched everyone he loved get impaled before playing dead in order to survive when he was even younger than she was. She wasn’t sure how true all of that was or if it had been embellished by the author for dramatic effect until she read more about Veronica May.

Her entire family had died of an illness and she was a warm-hearted girl who was obsessed with flowers. That sounded pretty familiar.

Roselia’s mom said she had inhabited the body of someone who died of an illness. And everything she read about Veronica sounded an awful lot like her mom. That seemed too coincidental!

Her parents never talked about how they met. They simply said it was “a very long time ago”. All she knew was that it had happened in her dad’s world and they had been married there before getting married again here.

If the prequel was to be believed, there was much more to the story than that. Her dad fell in love but set out to get revenge on those who destroyed Katalya and left her mom behind. Yet the thought of her sustained him through a lot of dark days.

Really dark days. Much darker than Roselia had thought would be possible from the man who raised her.

The Rukelion Blaze she knew lived for his family. He was involved in his kids’ lives, doted on his wife, and could be a bit overprotective at times. There was no denying he loved them all more than anything.

The one in the book lived for revenge. He thought he could have that and his wife’s love but toward the end of the book she really struggled with what he had done. Ultimately, he lost her through no fault of his own since she died in childbirth but ended up going on a grief-fueled rampage that really seemed inevitable after how many hints the book gave for him going mad.

Her dad wasn’t crazy…but there were a lot of things that didn’t add up. Roselia didn’t know what she was supposed to think.

Throne of Fire’s Rukelion Blaze had been deeply in love with a flower-obsessed former noblewoman who couldn’t be based on anyone but Daisy Blaze but how had the author known about her? Her mom said she had met the author before but never specified where or when.

The mad villain part of the book didn’t make sense but there were a lot of other things that couldn’t be coincidences. Certain personality traits…likes and dislikes…behaviors…they definitely fit the dad Roselia knew.

Her mom said that she had died from a bee sting while the book said she died in childbirth. There was no mention of Veronica being from another world, the author, or Ira.

And then there was the ending. Obviously, the real Rukelion Blaze hadn’t burned the world down. He had ended up here, settled down, and had a family. Though Roselia supposed that since it was a prequel things had to end in a way that had the beginning of Down in Flames make sense.

How much of the prequel was true? It seemed a lot more realistic than the first book had but she knew she couldn’t ask.

She had more questions now rather than the answers she sought. There had been quite a bit of fire magic in Throne of Fire that wasn’t mentioned anywhere else or taught by her dad but there weren’t any specifics about how to make it happen.

When in-book Rukelion Blaze was training himself to make his magic stronger it simply said he used a magic expanding meditation technique his brother had taught him. And practiced A LOT.

Roselia never learned any such technique. She wondered now if it was because her dad didn’t want her or her siblings to become powerful.

If anything from the prequel was true…could she really blame him for it? He had struggled to live with what he had done in the name of revenge. He wouldn’t want his children to ever be at risk of going down the same road.

Suddenly, she felt ashamed of herself. If anything from the prequel was true, she had delved far too deep into her dad’s personal affairs. If he had wanted to talk about his past, he would have. She had violated his privacy by doing this.

Confessing wasn’t an option either because that would only upset him. What was she supposed to do?

Roselia didn’t care if it all was true. Her dad was a good person now and that was what mattered. She didn’t know the full story anyway. Even if the prequel was mostly factual there were still things that happened behind the scenes both during and after the story.

But her guilt at what she had done was getting to her. Her mom, astute as ever, noticed something was off and called her out on it the next time the two of them were alone.

“Alright, Rosie, spit it out. What’s eating you?”

She sighed heavily and wouldn’t meet her mom’s eyes. “I…read the books. I wanted to see if there was more to know about fire magic because it seemed like Dad wasn’t teaching me everything and I got more than I bargained for.”