Page 23 of Rapunzel Unchained

With the queen so close to the surface, it was easier than it should have been to reach out and light the book on fire in his hands. I couldn’t help the smirk that crept up as he gave a startled yelp and dropped the book on the ground, stomping on it with growl before glaring at me.

“What was that for?”

“I want your attention on me, not on your smutty little book.” I lowered my lashes coyly and trailed my hand over my knee, hisgaze followed the path of my hand, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.

“Alright, Eva.” Adam took his place on the edge of the desk once more, his hands laced over his lap. “You have my undivided attention.”

I wanted to come out right then and there asking him why he was still with Rebecca, but the papers on his desk pulled my attention. “Tell me about this.”

Adam’s lips ticked up in a smirk. “You came all this way to talk to me about humans?”

“Yes, the humans,” I snapped, grinding my teeth together. “I’ve only been in your time for a short while, and even I can tell that the way they are treated isn’t right. What are you going to do about it?”

Adam stared down at me with an amused grin. “You realize I’ve only been the Arch Mage for a few days now, correct? It does take time to make changes.”

“What’s the point of being the highest ranking mage if you can’t make the changes you want to implement? You have the power to create change and, so far, all I’ve seen you do is interviews. Are you even trying?”

“Eva, you don’t understand how this works. Yes, I’m the Arch Mage, and that does give me a certain amount of power, but there are council members, as well. They are there so I don’t go mad with power. So, if I want to implement changes to give the humans more rights, to fix the way they are treated, then I have to play the game.”

“Then you’re not playing the game well enough,” I snapped, getting irritated by the condescending tone in his voice.

“You met the council, Eva. You know how they feel about humans. A few of them sure, I could get them to play ball if I offer the right incentives, but the others are so set in their ways that trying to make change will take years if not decades. We aretalking about ending a practice that has been going on since the early two thousands.”

He sighed. “It’s not as simple as signing an order and changing everything overnight. If I did that, they could call for a vote of no confidence and then all the hard work I’d done to get to a place of power so I could change things would have been for nothing.”

“Change is like a noose around your neck, the more you struggle the tighter they hold on for control. You have to caress it like a lover, easing into it so they don’t even know they’ve been fucked until you’re already in there, rearranging organs.”

All his talk of doing things the polite and political way made the anger inside of me boil. The queen didn’t want to wait. She didn’t want to woo over the council. Her days of kissing ass to get what she wanted was over. And what did that get her anyway? Locked in a tower for a thousand years.

Adam seemed to think he knew what he was doing. How to get what all of us wanted, and yet I couldn’t help but feel like he was taking the safe easy way out.

“You want to play the hero too much, make sure that everyone is happy with every decision you make. When what humans need is someone willing to be the villain.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being the hero,” Adam shot back, leaning toward me across the desk. “You didn’t seem to mind when I was rescuing you from your tower.”

“And I am forever grateful to you all but,” I shot back at him with a withering smile, “sometimes you have to be the villain before they will realize you’ve been doing it all for them all along.”

“Then they’ll lock you up in a tower and throw away the key,” Adam pointed out with a knowing look.

“That was the mages, not the humans.”

“And it’s mages who I have to convince to give up their ways, not humans. If I only needed the humans, I could go in changing what I wanted without a worry, but that’s not how this world works.”

Tired of going around and round with him on this discussion, I walked my fingers across his desk and asked what I really wanted to know. “Why are you still engaged to Rebecca?”

Adam’s brows furrowed as if he wasn’t expecting me to ask that question. “What? Rebecca? She’s just–”

“Oh,” I interrupted him, sliding my feet from his desk to the floor as I stood up and rounded the desk to stand in front of him. “I know quite well who and what Rebecca is to you.”

“You do?” He arched a brow, his lips lifting on one side. “Then you know... As I said before... It was just for show. I needed to have someone of merit at my side to become Arch Mage.”

My teeth ground together. “Because nothing else matters but getting what you want. That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I see what this is.” Adam leaned toward me with a teasing smile. “You’re jealous.”

I placed my hand down next to his leg on the desk and leaned forward until our faces were inches apart, trying to reel back the queen’s desire to rip a favorite part of him off.

“No, what I am is confused. When someone kisses you and then breaks it off saying they can’t let anything get in the way of their goals, but then he turns around and gets engaged to the she-bitch without a word... Well, you can see how that could cause some confusion.”

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