Page 1 of Imprisoned with the Vampire King

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OPHELIA

I blew a puff of air at the strands of brown hair that hung in my eyes while I adjusted the straps of my stupidly heavy hiking backpack.

The pottery in my bag dug into my spine as I stared at the numbers that ticked by while I leaned against the elevator's wall.

The creaky metal box slowly descended deeper underground.

-5

-6

-7

-8

There was a sad-sounding ding as it stopped, nine floors under the sprawling magical city I lived in.

The nausea in my abdomen made my lunch threaten a reappearance.

My mission was simple, but I'd never done something that could qualify as a mission before, and I was shit with every form of planning.

The doors slid open slowly.

They revealed...

A hallway.

It was narrow, and bleak. Dark magic was gathered like purplish gray paint along every wall. If I'd looked closely, I could've seen every complex detail that made up that magic, but I didn't. Looking closely would've made the magic respond to me, and other prisoners could've felt that.

There were no windows. There was no art, either. The artificial lights were uncomfortably bright, even to my non-enhanced eyes. They would've been worse for most of the other prisoners.

Shadowside Penitentiary was made for immortal beings, after all.

There were no words to describe how much I did not want to be there, but all I had to do was get two people out. It wouldn't be that hard.

That's what I was telling myself, at least.

I didn't want to acknowledge the fact that all of the information I had about the place was a century old.

The elevator dinged again. Louder, and sadder.

I sighed, but stepped out of the box.

It wouldn't go back up until I was gone. The magic didn't recognize me as a prisoner, but it was spelled not to take anyone back up. I was going to have to fuck with the power around it when it was time to leave.

My backpack weighed a ton. The pottery inside clanked with every step I took, despite the paper I'd packed it with to prevent the pieces from breaking too early.

The space buns I'd tied my collarbone-length hair up in only flopped a little, so they were doing better than the pottery or the bangs hanging in my eyes. My worn, jean overalls and neon orange sports bra were definitely in better shape than the rest of me.

The sounds at the end of the hallway grew louder as I walked in that direction. I could hear people. Prisoners. Mostly, they were immortals who were too powerful to be killed, straight-up insane, or people who had committed awful crimes for a good enough reason that our city's fae royals—who were basically the mafia—decided not to kill them for it.

Yes, the city's Cabinet technically made those calls, but we all knew the Cabinet only existed to make other types of immortals feel better about the fae being completely in charge.

One of those seats on the Cabinet was technically mine, but I threw the invitations away every time the fancy cardstock appeared at my house. Dealing with politics was the last way I wanted to spend my immortal life.

My hips and shoulders both hurt by the time I reached the end of the hallway. I'd underestimated how heavy my three pieces of pottery would be. They were necessary to getting back out of the prison, so I was just going to have to deal with it.