I’d Give Up The World For You - Chapter 247

Roselia waited on bated breath for her mom to scold her but that wasn’t what happened. Daisy sighed and looked at her seriously.

“I figured this sort of thing would happen someday. What is it exactly that’s bothering you?”

“The prequel. You were right about the first book but the second one seems like it might have actually happened. If it did, I seriously violated Dad’s privacy and I feel horrible about it,” she confessed.

Her mom raised her eyebrows. “That’s all?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you aren’t concerned that what you read might be true? Be honest, Rosie. Your dad never wanted any of you to read that because he was worried you would think less of him if you did. You didn’t only violate his privacy; you violated his trust.”

Roselia wanted to cry. Being talked to calmly like this was somehow worse than being yelled at. The disappointment in her mother’s voice was tangible.

The way she was talking made her think it was at least partially true. Some things must have been changed in order for the author to make it work as a proper prequel for Down in Flames but what happened had been based in truth.

“No! I don’t care what happened. All I want is answers,” she said in a tremulous voice.

Daisy’s eyes narrowed. “You shouldn’t have done this, Roselia Blaze. You may have an insatiable need to know everything but there are some things that are better left alone. I thought you understood that but I guess you lied to me.”

The full name treatment. She only got that when she was in serious trouble. She couldn’t stop the tears from spilling out of her eyes now.

“I’m sorry!”

“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to.”

Roselia knew that. She knew that saying sorry to her mom wouldn’t fix anything since her dad was the one she had wronged. But she also didn’t want to sit there saying nothing when she felt this guilty.

She couldn’t defend herself. She had done something she said she wouldn’t do and if her dad found out it was going to hurt him. She didn’t want that!

“You aren’t going to tell him, are you?” she asked with a growing sense of dread.

Daisy looked at her with piercing brown eyes that bore through to her very soul. “No. You are.”

“Me?!”

“If you want answers so badly, he’s more capable of giving them than I am. Though I’m not sure he will. He hates talking about his past and anything to do with those books. Either way you should still apologize properly.”

Roselia’s stomach dropped. She knew her mom was right but dreaded what she had to do.

When her dad came home from taking the twins to the park he seemed to be in an excellent mood and she didn’t want to be the one to ruin it but she needed to do it before she lost her nerve.

“Uh…Dad? Can I talk to you outside?”

He frowned, his face full of concern for her, and that only made her feel worse about what she did. “Sure thing, Rosie.”

They both sat on the swings to talk though he was so tall and heavy sitting was all he could do for fear of breaking it. He looked at her seriously but with so much love for her in his eyes that she burst into tears again.

“I did something terrible!” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry! I wanted to know more about fire magic because I could tell you weren’t teaching me everything so I read those books!”

Roselia was too busy crying to tell that he had stiffened but when she heard him speak again it was in a somewhat strangled voice. “Why…why would you do that? Why didn’t you talk to me first?”

“Because I didn’t think you would tell me!”

He went silent for a moment before speaking again rather fiercely. “I never will. There are some lines that shouldn’t be crossed. I taught you the right way to do fire magic. The power of ultimate destruction dies with me.”

He may as well have slapped her in the face. She had gone seeking answers and hurt him for no reason since she would never get them.

Daring to look up, Roselia saw the anguish in his eyes and felt so much shame she thought she might drown in it. She needed to explain herself better. If the prequel was true at all—and she suspected it was—he was probably worried about what her mom said.

“I don’t think any less of you!” she blurted. “If you actually did any of that stuff, I don’t care!”

Rukelion finally looked at her distrustfully. “You don’t?”

Suspicion was mingled with grief and shame. He really hadn’t wanted her to know and she did it anyway despite knowing that. His expression only made Roselia feel worse.

“I don’t. But I do want to know how much of the prequel was true so I can understand how any of this happened,” she sniffled.

“I never read it,” he replied in a hard voice. “But I did talk to the author and she said she told the truth instead of going with what she originally wrote. I assume she changed a few things so they would make more sense with what was already written but that shouldn’t be much.”

“Like Mom being a runaway noblewoman instead of from another world.”

“So you figured out that Veronica was your mom then. You always were too smart for your own good.”

That definitely wasn’t a compliment. Normally, when he said anything about her brains she felt good about it but not right now. Not in this situation.

“…I’m sorry,” Roselia said lamely.

“Sorry doesn’t cut it here.”

She had already known that but it still hurt to hear. Tears started leaking out of her eyes once more but, to her surprise, her dad continued talking. She had thought he wouldn’t give her the answers she wanted as punishment.

“Before you do something even more stupid like contact the author you should know that you won’t get anything true out of her. I’ll admit I made mistakes but I’ve done by best to make up for them. She learned that what she did was wrong and carried on in the same way she always had. If she had a shred of decency in her, she would have given up on the prequel after making it back to this world.”

“So she was in your world then,” Roselia blurted.

Rukelion sighed heavily. “Yes and she ruined everything. She didn’t realize that the character she had created had free will and set out to destroy my life. Which was exactly what she did. It was her fault your mom died and I had to follow her here.

“You would think that would be enough for her but no, she had to go and expose more of me to the world. Lies would have been less terrible than the truth getting out there. She’s always been a selfish pig.”

“I thought Mom died from a bee sting!”

“In a way she did. The almighty author got it in her head that she needed to defeat me despite the fact that I was ruling the kingdom better than the previous king and recruited most of the original protagonists and a few others to kill me.

“Ira and his friends realized that what she was doing was ridiculous and terrible as soon as they found out my relationship with your mom and switched sides but that didn’t prevent one of the other people they brought along from realizing she was my weakness and trying to take her down to get to me.

“She was poisoned and the antidote happened to have bee venom in it. She had a terrible allergic reaction and didn’t make it. I knew she had come from another world after supposedly dying in a car accident so I thought she must have gone somewhere else after dying a second time.

“I knew her heat signature like the back of my hand so I used every ounce of my magic power to trace it without previously knowing it was possible. I was that desperate. That stupid woman thought I was trying to destroy the world and knocked me off course so I ended up in her apartment instead of where your mom was. She’s selfish and delusional so if I ever find out you talked to her you WILL be punished for it. It’s bad enough that you had to read about my shame,” Rukelion finished bitterly.

If possible, Roselia felt worse. She had opened a can of worms that she shouldn’t have in her own selfish pursuit of knowledge.

Her dad had basically acknowledged the prequel was true and that meant he went through more horrors than she could fathom a single person experiencing. Yet he had given up on the revenge that was so important to him because he wanted to live in peace with the one he loved.

He had managed to pull it off too. Looking at him you would never guess he used to be a king who had committed so many atrocities in the pursuit of avenging his family and country. He was a simple family man whose greatest joy came from the mundane.

“I won’t,” Roselia whispered.

She had no desire to talk to someone who had hurt her parents so badly.. She knew her dad was telling the truth because of the emotion behind his words.