Page 95 of Imprisoned with the Vampire King

"Dark angels do too."

"Fallen," she corrected.

"You didn't fall. You jumped."

She gave me a look. "Calling me a dark angel still isn't accurate."

"It's the opposite of light, isn't it?"

"Technically. But it sounds... neutral. Being fallen isn't neutral."

"Then what is it?" I asked.

"I don't know. Evil, I guess."

I gave her the same look she'd given me, before refocusing on the road. "No magic is innately evil. Light isn't good. Dark isn't bad. You're making assumptions about yourself that aren't accurate, Ophelia. Am I evil because of my shadows?"

"Of course not. They're a part of you."

"Then neither are you."

"Your shadows don't hurt people," she pointed out.

"I've killed with them before, so they're just as capable of violence as your magic is."

"My magic can't do anything good. If I don't create it with some nefarious purpose, it creates its own."

"You built a prison that kept hundreds of violent, psychotic immortals away from civil society for a century. That's something good. The fae tried and failed to kill some of those immortals. Remember Redd?"

"The dragon shifter?"

"Yeah. He lost his temper and killed over a hundred immortals in a matter of minutes, because someone made his food wrong. Even Merrily's magic couldn't take his life. Without your penitentiary, a lot more people would've died. And that was only one of the prisoners."

"Well, my penitentiary also imprisoned people who didn't deserve it. Like you." She gestured toward me.

"River told us when we got there that the prison had been created by a seventeen-year-old girl who was trying to protect herself when no one else would. It was the same introduction that he gave everyone who was unfairly imprisoned. He told all of us to blame him, and whoever had thrown us in here. Not you."

Her gaze jerked to mine. "He said that?"

"He did."

"River?"

"Yeah."

"Fuck." She sat back in her seat. "I thought about going in and getting him out, a long time ago. He wasn't our dad. He didn't go through what I did. I just… couldn't."

"He understands, Angel."

"He can't."

"He can try."

She bit her lip.

I pulled into the parking lot. After the car had stopped, I brushed my hand over her knee. "Watch how the people inside respond to you. You're just as magnetic as River is. Maybe more. Some of us vastly prefer darkness to light."

She unbuckled her seatbelt. "When you're wrong about that, you're buying me ice cream."