Free Restless (Element Preservers, #4) by Alycia Linwood

unforgiving.
    "I'll go talk to him when he wakes up." I closed my bag and threw it on the bed so I could easily take it with me later. "If he flirted with the girl or tried to kiss her, I wouldn't be so forgiving. We can't be together in public, but we aren't in an open relationship either." God, secret relationships were harder than I’d expected. I didn't even want to imagine seeing Adrian with another girl in his arms.
    "Maybe you should just..." Paula started to say, but I raised my finger to shush her.
    "I'm not breaking up with him." I sat down on the wooden chair, biting my lip. "I'm not sure how I'm supposed to pretend Ethan is my boyfriend. Hell, I'm not even sure how Adrian can pretend he's still single. He had a reputation of a heartbreaker at the University of Magic, so someone might get suspicious since they don't know the story about Alan."
    "Are you going to let him date other girls then?" Paula said incredulously. I got up, supporting myself on the desk. Would I be able to watch Adrian every day in the company of some girl? Rage spread through me in a second, and I smashed everything on the desk with one swipe of my hand. No, never, Adrian was mine. Only mine. "Fucking government."
    A knocked sounded on the door and Lily came in, her face serious. I was surprised to see her at the university, especially this early in the morning. Something must have happened. I sighed, ready to add another problem to my huge list of fucked up things. Lily strode over to me and handed me a pile of newspapers and magazines. A picture of Ethan and me was on every damn cover. I sat down and quickly skimmed through the newspapers. Each one of them had at least five pages about Ethan and me and our supposed romance.
    "Who the fuck are these people and why are they commenting on my relationship?" I couldn't believe they found people who were willing to answer personal questions about me. Some of them even claimed they knew me. Apparently, everyone and their mother had something to say, even though half of them had no clue what they were talking about. "Why do the reporters believe all these opinions matter?"
    "They don't," Lily said. "They need you for distraction. Look at the page 34 in The Element Daily."
    Flipping through the pages, I tried to find what Lily wanted me to see. I hoped it wasn't a comment from another woman who thought Ethan and I were meant to be, or from the old lady who said I was only fooling around with him. The tiny headline about the new law caught my eye and I quickly read the article, my disbelief increasing by each sentence. "I can't believe it! Why isn't this the breaking news?"
    "What's wrong?" Paula asked curiously.
    "The government passed their awesome law yesterday during the show." I folded the newspaper and placed it on the desk. "Apparently, all those with weak and impure elements, along with carriers and those who gave up on their element, will have to pay bigger taxes."
    "What?" Paula's eyebrows shot upward. "That can't be right. What is their justification for such a thing? It's outright discrimination!"
    "It appears we're not the only ones who think revealing international secrets is awesome. They must have been afraid I'd reveal the secret about the element collectors, so they decided to be one step ahead." I groaned, vaguely recalling I'd said something to the president's secretary about revealing the secret before someone else did. "Their justification for the law is that our energy supplies are getting low, so they'll start collecting elemental energy from those who have pure elements, so that energy will be the payment instead of money. Of course, they say we're doing this for the future and that there's no reason to get alarmed. And no one mentions the element collectors at all. They packed it up nicely so it all looks innocent, like they're building more windmills or something."
    "But people should be freaking out about this. Surely this is more important than a relationship," Paula