Page 55 of Rapunzel Unchained
Odd.
I spun around to keep my eyes on him. Another figure stepped out of the dark, his face half covered but his dark eyes narrowed on me.
Gage.
“I told you I would protect you, even from yourself,” Adam murmured, the words dejected and defeated as if he didn’t want to be there anymore than I did.
“I already told you.” I stepped forward, determined to make him understand. “You can’t protect me.”
Except when I hit the black line, I couldn’t move forward. I bounced off an invisible force. My hands went up, touching the air that thickened and refused to let me through.
“You’re right,” Gage quipped, his lips curling beneath his mask. “We can’t protect you from yourself, but we can protect everyone else from you.”
That’s when I realized that these weren't some random items in the middle of the room, a random circle on the ground.
This was a prison cell. A prison for me.
Chapter 27
Magic and rage burned in me welling up until it pressed against my skin and burned my insides. I threw a fireball at the barrier that kept me from leaving. But, unlike the barriers that Rebecca had put up before, this one absorbed my magic, sucking it into the shimmering surface.
“Let me out of here,” I screamed, slamming my hands and fists against the invisible barrier. “You can’t keep me here forever.”
“We won’t.” Adam gestured to the area. “This was the best we could do on such short notice. It’s not like we have a tower we can put you back in, now do we?”
I let out a sardonic laugh. “Oh, Snow would have been so proud of you, Arch Mage. You trapped me just as she did because you couldn’t control me. Tell me,” I purred, prowling along the edges of my cage. “Will you go mad thinking about me every day? Anxious and worried I’ll break out and get my revenge?”
Adam stepped up to the edge of the black line on the floor. His hand reached up, stretching out until he almost crossed the barrier and then stopped, dropping it to his side with a sigh.
“That’s not what this is, Eva, and you know it.”
I backed up slightly, turning around my little prison cell before whipping my head back around to smirk at them. “It’s no matter. I won’t be here long in any case.”
I strolled over to the bed and sat down, pulling the heels off that were making my feet ache.
Adam breathed out an irritated breath. “It didn’t have to be like this, you know. You could have just worked with me. In five, ten years, the humans would have been free, and you would have gotten your revenge for your mother.”
The mention of my mother sent the rage bubbling inside me into overload. I picked up my shoes and stalked across the concrete floor. “You donotget totalkabout mymother.”
I threw my shoe at the barrier, expecting it to bounce back, but it sailed through, smacking Gage in the shoulder.
The barrier could absorb my magic and keep me from leaving. Everything else was fair game.
I held onto my other shoe for the moment, the urge to lob it at Adam’s face almost too much to resist. Instead, I glowered at the two of them. “What are you going to do when the others get here? Surely, you didn’t think I was going to do this alone after you witnessed them on my side the other night.”
Gage lifted his phone out of the pocket of his pants and tapped a few buttons on it. “Don’t worry about your little boyfriends. They’re just a bit delayed.”
He turned the black box around and showed me a video on the screen. Zane, Luke, and Blake fought with the front door, unable to step a foot past the threshold. With a triumphant grin, Gage tucked the phone back in his pocket.
“So that’s it.” I shrugged my shoulders. “You’re just going to keep us all prisoners until you decide you’re ready to let us go?”
“They’re not prisoners,” Gage explained, his eyes narrowed on me. “We just needed them out of the way until we had you caught in our trap.”
I let out a dark, ugly laugh. “And trap me, you did. Such big strong men can’t take on one little girl without resorting to tricks.” I stalked up to the edge of the cell, pressing my hand against the wall as I leaned into it. “You’re cowards.”
“And you’re reckless,” Adam snapped, jerking my gaze to him. “I tried to reason with you, Eva. When the others didn’t come back right away the other day, I came looking for you to try one more time to get you to see reason. But you wouldn’t listen.You are so hell bent on revenge that you would let the whole world burn down so you can revel over the ashes.”
That fracture in my heart throbbed. His words solidified something I’d suspected all along.
