I'd Give Up The World For You

"Yes," Juliet admitted quietly. "I'm sorry. After seeing what you were doing in the capital and that the people were doing well I realize that I may have underestimated how much Daisy changed things. She wasn't supposed to be there, you know. Veronica May wasn't a real character. When Veronica died before the events of the story began I guess she took over her body."

She was expecting further anger but that wasn't what she got. Rukelion spoke in an unfathomable tone. "She never told me."

"What?"

"She never told me that wasn't her real body. I didn't know until earlier. Why wouldn't she tell me that?"

Juliet was pretty sure she knew. Daisy had been insecure. Veronica May was a beautiful woman. If he had fallen in love with her, she probably thought he wouldn't have fallen in love with the original Daisy. 

"She's probably older and looks different. Veronica was young and beautiful. Women can be sensitive about these things." 

Rukelion's tone was unmistakably sad now. "I knew she was older than me and it didn't matter. I don't care what she looks like. I care about who she is. But if that wasn't her body and less than a week has passed wouldn't that only make her twenty-four now physically?"

Juliet quickly did the mental math. "Yeah. That information ought to help you narrow things down even if you don't know what she looks like anymore."

He went silent again, clearly deep in thought. The tension in the car was so thick she thought she would choke on it before they arrived back at her apartment. But by the time they arrived he was all business again. 

"Give me the resources I need to adapt to this world," he ordered. 

She didn't even know where to start. He would need documents, as they had discussed before, but he would also need a GED, fake references for job hunting, and who knows what else. 

There wasn't much of that they could do without the documents. She pulled up an online study guide for the GED and some practice quizzes. That ought to hold him over while she tried to figure out how to break into government buildings with minimal damage caused. 

Juliet handed him her laptop and showed him how to operate the website. He picked it up in a matter of minutes then shooed her away with a glare. 

She ended up taking out her phone trying to come up with ideas to break into buildings. If anyone came looking for her as a suspect based on her search history she could claim it was because she was a writer working on a story. She had looked up all sorts of weird things over the years, such as how long it took certain poisons to kick in and the effects of stab wounds. 

Her phone was in her hand when Rachelle called. She was so startled she accidentally answered it. 

"Juliet! How's that draft coming? You've been working on it for ages."

"It's…coming," she said lamely. "I'm in the editing process right now. It might take me a couple weeks." 

"It's only a first draft! Can't you do the editing later?" Rachelle scoffed. "I need to get this approved ASAP. Minor grammatical mistakes at this stage are not a big deal."

"It's not that sort of editing." 

"Ah. You're contemplating a rewrite, aren't you? Why don't you like what you've written? Do you think the readers won't like it enough?" 

"…something like that."

Juliet couldn't possibly explain that the main character in said draft was now sitting on her couch using her laptop. Even if she wanted to she couldn't send the draft in. Did the original still exist? She hadn't checked since the changed one had been what was pulled up when she arrived back home.

"You know we don't have time for that," Rachelle said warningly. 

"I know. It won't take me more than a couple weeks, as I said. I'll talk to you later, okay? I'm kind of in the middle of something right now."

Her editor sounded affronted but let her go with another reminder to finish that draft. Would she even be able to? The last time she had touched the document she ended up in Mirea. Would the same thing happen twice, leaving Rukelion Blaze to run amok in this world and potentially destroy it in his search for Daisy?

Juliet shuddered at the very thought. She couldn't worry about that right now. At the moment her only concern was getting this nut out of her hair without hurting anyone. She was going to have to pawn him off onto Daisy; at least she knew how to handle him. 

She was hit with a stab of guilt about the other woman's death…and everyone who had been left behind. Especially Ira. How was he handling all of this? 

He wasn't just a character anymore. He was a real person with feelings who had loved Daisy very much. If Rukelion had been desperate enough to use magic tracking her down to another world when she died, what about him? 

Being back home was strange. Talking to her editor made Juliet felt like she had never left and yet there was more than a year's worth of new memories in her head. Memories of people she was never going to see again. People she might have really liked if the situation was different and she wasn't so panicked about saving the world and getting home. 

Had Alec been upset when she supposedly died? That had to be what they assumed happened since she disappeared in a torrent of flames. 

What about Mirea? Who was in charge now that Rukelion had gone? 

These were all questions she would never get answers to. She would never know what happened to the timeline of her story with everything so messed up. Out of curiosity, she checked a spare copy of Down in Flames she had lying around and flicked through it to see if the story had physically changed the way the draft of Throne of Fire had. 

Nothing. Everything she saw was exactly the same. The novel wasn't tied to the world it was set in anymore. Why was that? Did it have anything to do with Daisy leaving it?

Juliet was plagued with questions and guilt about what happened to the point that she couldn't concentrate on their heist plans. She sat in her office chair idly spinning around and hating herself for potentially ruining things for a lot of people. 

Daisy. Her unborn child. Demetria. Ira. Alec. Sarabeth. Ciara. Nico. What happened was going to weigh on all of them that remained and it was her fault. She knew it was her fault but what should she have done differently? Wasn't it natural to want to prevent bad things from happening when you knew you could stop them?

Or thought you knew anyway. It seemed that she had misjudged Rukelion Blaze. At the very least the depths of his feelings for Daisy. 

He had stopped attacking a real threat to his family in the castle garden when he could have killed them all with a snap of his fingers. All because she told him not to. If he hadn't listened to her, he wouldn't have lost her and their baby. He was probably berating himself for that now. 

It didn't look like it though. He didn't seem bothered at all. He calmly clicked around on the laptop with a small divot between his brows as he concentrated. What sort of storm was brewing inside that head?

Rukelion had lost his entire family for the second time only a few hours ago yet he hadn't cried since before the flames brought them here. He was too busy trying to do whatever it was he needed to do to get her back for that. Again, it was like Daisy hadn't died. Instead it was as if she had simply gone somewhere very far away on vacation and he was trying to join her. 

Maybe that was how he had to think in order to prevent his mind from snapping completely. Juliet almost felt sorry for him. 

He stayed up long after she fell asleep, still working on his studies. She had told him how to use the shower and gave him a spare toothbrush to use but he did that for less than five minutes before getting back to studying in his pajamas. 

When she woke up the next morning he was dead to the world—probably from staying up too late—so she took her laptop back and decided to see what was going on with her draft. She hesitantly messed with a sentence and saw that it was now editable. More surprising than that was finding her original draft that had autosaved. 

It would be so easy to edit her own draft and turn it in but she had to admit she was curious about the other one. Was it Rukelion and Daisy's entire story right up until she died and was brought here?

Juliet was curious about it but more importantly she thought it might contain some crucial clue about his personality she hadn't written in that might help prevent her from setting him off. She needed to know everything about this character come to life if she wanted to survive his mood swings. 

So she picked up reading where she had left off the night she was transported inside the world of the novel.. If nothing else, she needed to understand what made Rukelion Blaze tick if he was going to stay here with her for a while.