I'd Give Up The World For You

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By the time Rukelion finished his little speech, he was hysterically laughing but Juliet could detect some sobs mixed in as well. He was beginning to lose it, which could be good news for them.

She was about to whisper as much to Alec when she saw the look on Demetria's face. Oh. Right. What he said at the beginning about her cousin. 

She was normally so detached from things but right now she was burning with icy rage. Her balled fists trembled and tears sparked in the corners of her eyes but she didn't say anything. In a moment of unusual compassion, Nico laid a hand on her shoulder to try and ground her. 

Juliet couldn't focus on what Rukelion and Daisy were saying anymore because she was more preoccupied with the girl in front of her looking like she wanted to burst in there and attack. Which would not end well for any of them. 

She mouthed "don't do anything rash" and Demetria gave her a hard glare before adding a jerky nod to it. She was trying to think of something else to say when she was distracted by the sound of additional sobs coming from behind the door. That had to be Daisy. 

It was hard to make out what she said but clearly Rukelion heard her because he addressed it. "I'm not going to die. I'm probably the strongest person on this continent. Who could possibly kill me?"

His words emphasized the point Juliet had been trying to make by telling the girl not to be rash. Killing him would be all but impossible at this point since he hadn't completely snapped yet. As long as he had Daisy tethering him to his sanity they wouldn't be able to defeat him. 

The only way they would be able to stop him at this point involved using her, which Juliet had been reluctant to do. But they may not have another choice. 

She gestured for everyone to follow her and they crept into a nearby empty room to have the chance to talk. She looked at all of them very seriously before relaying her plan. "We have to kidnap the queen."

Alec looked at her in concern. "I thought you wanted to avoid involving her more than necessary." 

"Of course I do! But I'm being realistic. You saw how the two of them were earlier; he's wrapped around her little finger. Otherwise he would have fried us all without so much as a second thought. She's his voice of reason and without her he'll snap."

"Juliet, I don't—"

"Let's do it," Demetria interrupted. "Professor Gallagher is right. We need to involve the queen if we want to avoid losing our heads. We can use her as leverage."

Nico seemed unsure. "I don't know…isn't that Ira's mother? I don't want her to get hurt."

"She won't," Juliet reassured him. "All we need to do is act like we're going to hurt her and we'll have the upper hand. He won't be able to attack us if we use her as a shield. It's our only option unless we want to spend our whole lives on the run."

"So what do we do?" Alec asked. 

"We wait for her to come out and see where she goes. Then we follow and take her hostage. Rukelion Blaze will notice what we've done eventually and come looking for us. With any luck, we'll be safely out of here tonight."

Neither Alec nor Nico seemed very happy with her plan but Demetria was fully onboard. Her tears had hardened into a steely determination. 

They waited in that room with someone keeping watch on the hall through a crack in the door for quite some time before Daisy emerged. Several people began trailing after her but they wouldn't be too difficult for a couple of mages to deal with. All they had to do was wait until they were in a corridor where Rukelion wasn't likely to see before they struck. 

Which was exactly what they did. They managed to get rid of all of her servants without her realizing—she did seem pretty preoccupied with other things—and followed her into the royal library. 

She greeted Ira, Ciara, and Sarabeth cheerfully as though she hadn't been crying not long before and began asking them about what they had been reading. They were beginning to tell her when Ciara noticed who had come in behind her and immediately wrapped the four of them in shadows so they vanished. 

"Block the door!" Alec barked. "We can't see them right now but their physical presence hasn't changed. This is the only exit and they'll need to use it to get out."

Demetria did more than she was asked. She had been working on her ice barrier all semester and put it up in front of the door. No one was getting in or out of that unless they were a fire mage. 

"You can't hide forever, Ciara!" she taunted. "We're going to find you sooner or later."

Juliet was a bit worried about how she sounded there. Almost like a villain herself. Was this really going to end the way she wanted it to?

=== 

Daisy was exhausted from her conversation with her husband. Juliet's claims that he was a bloodthirsty villain weren't as far-off as she had originally thought and that broke her heart. 

It had been so easy to dismiss that—to believe she actually changed him—because of how well she knew him. How could she ever think Rukelion wanted to hurt anyone when he had always been so sweet and considerate to her?

After finding out he had taken revenge on the king she thought that was the end of it. He had been understandably upset having his PTSD triggered by seeing the magic that killed his family again. She had thought that was perfectly normal since he wasn't acting too strangely aside from that. 

But no. He had been carrying a lot more murder in his heart than she ever would have guessed. And it didn't seem like he regretted it at all. He wanted to do it again but didn't because he would lose the support from his former military allies. 

That was horrifying! He didn't care at all about continuing to hurt people or damage his own soul; he only cared about the logistics of it. 

Yet even after finding out about all of that (and Daisy was willing to bet there was a lot more than he was telling her) she couldn't leave him. She loved him. And she had nowhere else to go. 

She had already been working to accept that the morality and legality of things in this world were different than where she came from. She hated that he had done things she considered immoral but she was honestly more concerned about his mental state. 

Juliet had called him a madman, a psychopath, and other similar things and it had been so easy to dismiss back then because the Rukelion she knew was always calm and level-headed. But now she wasn't sure what she was supposed to think. 

It was easier to imagine him going down that path now that she had seen him laugh and cry hysterically about killing people. His trauma mixed with his own bad choices couldn't be taken lightly. 

Daisy didn't truly think he was a bad person. When he wasn't bent on revenge he was a kindhearted and patient soul. 

Someone who could bring her flowers every day before they could properly be considered friends solely because he thought she would like them wasn't evil. Someone so affectionate and helpful who always seemed at his happiest when she was happy wasn't a monster no matter what he or anyone else said. 

Even so, Rukelion had done a lot of bad things to get where he was. That was a hard pill to swallow since she had believed in him wholeheartedly. He had let her down like everyone else.

It had been stupid to put him on a pedestal as the One Person Who Was Different. People were all the same. Selfish to their core. They would only do what benefitted them most, regardless of how it affected others. 

Daisy had KNOWN people were like that. Why had she ever let herself think differently?

There was no going back now. She was stuck with her highly complicated husband for two reasons. 

She loved him and she knew that if she left she would never recover and neither would he. He could very well become the villain he was meant to be without her influence. She felt oddly responsible for preventing that from happening since she hadn't been enough during his earlier years to do anything for those poor people in Aveleen. 

Then there was the baby. She knew better than anyone that children needed to be raised in stable, consistent environments to turn out well and this situation wasn't ideal but it was better than the alternative. 

Daisy didn't know anything about raising a fire mage! If she had to deal with that on her own there was a very good chance that wherever she was living would get burned down by accident. She would rather not deal with that. 

And she knew that Rukelion would love their child deeply. Children needed love and with her broken childhood she didn't know if she alone would be enough. At least he knew what a happy family looked like. She was completely in the dark about how that worked. 

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