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Vlad.

Mir.

Vladimir.

It means the ruler of the world, your name, Grandpa told me once. Do you remember the stories I read you? Some of the greatest heroes in history bore that name.

Yes, I remember. And I also remember that there are plenty of villains throughout history among the bearers of this name as well.

That sad, broken house in Blakfait, with all the books Yara learned magic from, with the treatise on sigil scar and all the stories I was told when I was a child, belonged to my grandfather. It was the house my father grew up in, the one he despised for his childhood was nothing but poverty. The summer I first came there when I was fourteen was supposed to be my lesson--my punishment for running away from home with my dog. If you don't like living like a prince with everything I provide you with, Father told me, try misery.

And it was, indeed, a misery. Alone for three months, in a town full of strangers? I tried to run from Father again the day we came there, wanted to steal his car and drive back to the city before he left. But I climbed out of the window and broke my leg. Father called me a taxi to the local hospital and left before I returned in a cast.

Nevertheless, the misery turned out to be sugarcoated. Because in that hospital yard, I met a girl and a boy.

Vlad, I told them. My name's Vlad Voskresenyev. The part of my first name Father wouldn't call me, and Mother's maiden last name. It began as a game. A completely different person, in a completely different place. Mir Praejis, a boy who was never good enough. Vlad Voskresenyev, a fantasy that could be whoever he pleased.

I knew Yaroslava and Bogdan didn't like me that day, and that was okay, because I didn't like them, either. They were so naive, living in their little world. Yet, they never asked a single question about who I was or who I was raised to be--and I liked that. For the first time in my life, nobody cared for my mistakes. It tasted like...

Freedom.

"A villain for one is the hero for another," Yara said. She said it as though she believed everything was possible. I longed to believe that, too.

Never had I come to Blakfait the next summer, though. Father had different plans for me: a swim camp. And regardless, going back would have been dangerous, because freedom always is. Too many possibly wrong choices. I was determined never to return to that town, I knew no one would let me, then why dream? A child with childish wishes, I didn't dare to dream of a life I couldn't have.

Then I was fifteen, and I dared again. The autumn night after I almost died, carving the sigil scar in my skin, I took Father's car and drove all the way to Blakfait.

Yaroslava wanted the power to be someone of her choosing, just like I did, didn't she? She and Dan were the only ones I told about the book I found in Grandpa's house. I came to Dan first, but he told me, Go to Hell. He didn't want to be a part of it. So I went to Yara, I knocked on her window and...chickened out. What was I offering her? A scar? A potential power I only knew by tales and stories?

Dan called it a curse, but when I finally admitted to Yara what had happened to me, she smiled. And I shared the magic with her. It became our secret. Still, I couldn't afford her smile, and I disappeared again. My life had a plan, and that plan did not include little towns.

I tried--again and again--to live up to everyone's expectations. They kept saying it was who I was meant to be. Perfect, just like your father. Try harder, listen to him. He loves you, make him proud.

After all these years, with Father gone now, I'm unable to shake off his grip on me. I dyed my golden hair I inherited from him black, moved out of his penthouse, and stopped talking to my brother, yet I couldn't get rid of his disapproving voice in my head. You're not good enough, Son. He always had a plan, and I had none. I've never had a chance to choose, and I'm not sure I know how. I feel much more comfortable in jeans and hoodies, yet it's a suit I'm wearing, just like he did; it's those rehearsed speeches I was taught in law school I catch myself saying every time someone argues with me. I continued studying law, even though I was technically free to drop out after he'd died.

How do people choose to be free? If not the plan, what's the right choice?

Magic isn't the right choice. It eventually drove Bogdan mad. I refused to help him gain powers, and what did he do? He jumped into the river to turn himself into a demon before my very eyes--because of me, of my choice to tell him about magic.

Yet, I think it was all destined to go down in flames a month before Father's death and on the exact night Bogdan called me and asked to come to Blakfait, right after I watched him jumped...I felt lost. Guilty. Damned for all the years of trying so hard. I went to Grandpa's old house again, wishing nothing but to sit there alone in the dark, to think of the stories where any problem could be fixed--not cursed--with a spell.

Instead of darkness and loneliness, I found Yara. And in her eyes, I was Vlad again, the boy who could be whoever he pleased. Who was free to make mistakes, and any choice was good enough. Who wasn't guilty and ashamed of his flaws. I wished I could be the person she saw in me that night. I wished I could stay there with her. Forever.

I believed it.

And she ruined it with three simple words. I love you.

Her voice was an arrow shot through my chest. How could she do that to me? Love was a tool invented to manipulate and torture. Father said he loved me, and his love gave me nothing but scars and panic attacks.

SHE can't love me, I convinced myself. She was a poor girl from a wretched town, who lured me there to trick.

She can't LOVE me. Whatever she wanted from me wasn't love. Money, privileges, protection, more powers...no, not love.

She can't love ME. Perhaps she'd fallen for some version of Vlad I'd showed her, but not the real me. Not my real life.

Liar, Fire Girl.

At that moment, I wanted her to suffer the pain her words brought me, so I crushed her feelings like glass. I saw it in her face. I broke her heart, and I left her alone in the house where she soon burned.

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