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Once Adam clipped his mouth shut with a snap, he cleared his throat and straightened, shoving his hands into the pockets of his pants. “Eva, what an unexpected surprise. You could have used the front door.”

My smile sharpened. “And give you the chance to arrest me? Now, why would I do that?”

“I wouldn’t dream of having you arrested, Eva.” Adam strolled from the door to the front of his desk, the hitch of his shoulders the only sign that he was bothered by my presence. That would change soon. “You’re part of this family. We just want to help you.”

“Family.” My nose scrunched up into a snarl. “Is that what we are, Adam? Or do I call you Arch Mage now?” I swiped my skirt to the side, so the split of my dress split open.

Adam’s eyes immediately went to my exposed thighs. He licked his lips and lifted his gaze back to mine. He leaned his hip against the side of his desk, and that little book he was always reading popped out of nowhere.

I realized then that it was his shield. He used the book to keep people at a distance or to end a conversation he didn’t want to participate in.

I hated it.

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, his gaze 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 are talking 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.”

“It’s not real, Eva. What Rebecca and I have is completely for show.”

Adam placed his hand on top of mine, the heat of his hand sinking into mine. I forced myself not to revel in the feel of it, reminding myself I was mad at him. It was easy to do since the queen was always angry.

The image of Rebecca kissing Adam on the television blared in my head, rallying the rage that had consumed me when I’d seen it. My hand jerked out from beneath his and grabbed him by the face, squeezing until he winced.

“Then why was she kissing you?”

“Are you jealous?” His eyes lit with something that could only be called glee.

“I don’t like others touching what’s mine.”

“Is that what I am? Yours?”

When I didn’t answer, he wrapped his hand around my wrist, not pulling my hand away from his face but stroking the pulse that thunder beneath my skin. “We had to make it look real, Eva.”

My voice came in an angry hiss. “Stop it.”

“It could be you, you know?” Adam drew my hand away from his face. I didn’t even realize I’d stopped gripping him so hard. “Is that what you want? For it to be you at my side while I talk to the reporters? For them to all know that I’m yours?”

His mouth stopped inches from mine, his breath mingling with mine. I swallowed, tempting to close the distance but remembering what he’d told me before.

I jerked back from him, pulling his hands from me. “You won’t let anything keep you from getting what you want, remember? Not even me.”

“Eva, please don’t do that.” Adam grabbed for me.

I swatted him away. The righteous anger I’d felt before rearing back in full force. “I will give you a week.”

“A week?” Adam frowned. “To break up with Rebecca?”

“To convince your little council to come to heel.”

Adam shook his head with a scowl. “That’s impossible. I can’t do that in a week.”

“You can and you will.” I pointed a finger at him, shoving it into his chest.

He grabbed my hand and jerked me forward until I was crushed against his chest. “You can’t go around making demands like this of me. I’m not some lowly servant you can push around.”

“You’re the Arch Mage, I know.” I shoved against him, but he held me firmly.

The queen inside me seethed against my restraint at his weak words of compromise. She didn’t want to compromise. She didn’t want to yield and neither did I.

I was tired of being the damsel. Tired of being pushed around by this mage or that. The queen had the right idea all along. The only way to get them to listen, to do what we wanted, was to force them.

The queen rolled and struggled against me for control and, for the first time, I didn’t fight her. I wanted to be her. I wanted to be confident and strong in this fight. I wanted Adam and the rest of them to stop looking down on me like I was someone that they had to protect and save.

I was the fucking Evil Queen, and now it was time to act like it.

My magic purred and coalesced inside me. The blank spots in my mind filled in as if something was melting away the walls blocking them. The part that was Eva and the part that was the Evil Queen merged together until there was nothing left but me.

Magic shot out of me, shoving Adam back against the desk, the contents scattering around as a magical wind whipped up around me.

Adam stared at me in confusion and a twinge of fear.

Rolling my shoulders back, my gaze set firm, I held up a single finger. “One week, Arch Mage. That is how long you have to right the wrongs that have been done against my people, or I will fix it myself.”

Before Adam could answer, purple smoke wrapped around me, pulling me away from his home and back to Rebecca’s sitting room.

Rebecca jerked to her feet, her tea cup shattering on the floor. “My queen. I’m so sorry, I didn’t know you wanted him. I would have never—”

I cut her off with a lifted hand. “Never mind that. We have work to do.”