For the Guild Read online

  J.E. Mueller

  Published 2019 by J.E. Mueller

  Cover by Ravenborn

  Book formatting by Lia at Free Your Words

  Contents

  Title Page

  Publishing Info

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  Books By J.E. Mueller

  This novel is dedicated to:

  Randall, Elly, Nichole, Kelly, and all those who helped me kick cancer’s butt. With your help, I was able to complete this book, get it edited, and finished despite all the mountains I had to climb.

  1

  I saw the screen on my phone flash with a text notification. Irritated, since it was the fifth one in the last two minutes, I paused what I was doing in my game and picked up the phone. All of the messages were from my mother, trying desperately to get my attention. She and my father wanted me to join them for dinner. Why didn’t they just come up and see what I was doing?

  Grumbling, I had a guess. They were probably busy plotting something. Oh, joy was mine. Sighing, I mentally debated whether or not I should remind them I had a clan raid soon or just join them briefly.

  Deciding I would be arguing longer than it would take to just go and grabbing a bite, I pulled off my headphones, locked my monitor, and trudged my way down the stairs and into the dining room. My character was in a safe zone, so going away from my keyboard for a bit wouldn’t be the end of the world.

  From the doorway I noticed Mom with a magic pen and paper, writing and talking as quickly and quietly as possible while she muttered to it. My dad had paper as well as a calculator. This couldn’t be good. Mother’s hair was pulled back into a messy bun with some springy curls escaping. I knew that look too well from her event planning.

  There was something going on.

  Father still was dressed up as could be, likely having sat down for dinner right after his last meeting. The conversation instantly halted as I went from standing there observing to finally grabbing my seat.

  “Am I interrupting something?” I asked as I slid into my usual chair.

  “Of course not, Reyfair!” Mother insisted, “We were just having a little conversation.”

  Oh, joy. I reached for the mashed potatoes and loaded my plate. “Dad, can you pass the roast?” I ignored my mother, knowing she’d tell me very soon exactly what she wanted to say.

  As I loaded my plate, mother hummed to herself as she grabbed hold of the pen and jotted some things down of her own accord, her own plate of food hardly touched. This was another terrible sign – for me anyway. That meant she was planning something for the family, and if she insisted I come to dinner, this plan involved me. If this plan truly involved me, it likely meant it was a public event. If it was, then it meant I couldn’t sneak out early and hang with my clan. I already hated everything about this.

  To combat the upcoming conversation, I quickly started to eat. If I finished before she started talking, she couldn’t keep me. Well, at least not as easily.

  “So, Rey… your father and I were talking…” Mother began, not yet looking up from her paper.

  “Your mother was talking, I was listening.” Father smirked her way before taking a bite of food.

  Mother glared across the table at him before turning a pleasant smile at me. “We think it’s time you found someone.”

  Well, that was surprisingly straight to the point.

  “Congrats, mom. I see you from here. One person found. Mission accomplished,” I replied, shoving another fork full of food into my mouth. I doubted that comment would stall the conversation for long.

  Father chuckled a bit harder than Mother would have liked causing him to cough and regain his composure. “Now you know that’s not the conversation here. You’re twenty-five and the country is looking at you. You haven’t so much as dated let alone bat an eye at anyone in at least six years. The people need to know that the line is secure and that all is well.”

  “I don’t think they give two cents about what I’m doing. If it’s not gossip, I’m not worth the tabloids.” I was almost done with my plate. So close to escaping!

  “Since you never so much as do more than is required of you – and never leave the palace anymore unless you have to – we’ve decided to throw you a ball to help you meet someone.” The cheer in my mother’s voice was almost painful to my ears.

  “I don’t want a ball. That’s a lame way to meet someone.” Why was everything for monarchs so archaic?

  “It’s how many people have met! Social events are a great way to broaden your horizons and meet someone you might not normally meet,” Mother assured me.

  “That’s what the internet is for,” I countered and shoveled the last bite of food into my mouth. I shoved the plate forward and made to get up when my father spoke.

  “Your mother has a point. On the internet, anyone can be pretending to be a shut-in prince, but here, in the real world, you’ll get to see what people are really like.” Father nodded reassuringly at my mother.

  I stood up and forced myself not to roll my eyes at them. “As much as that could work for some, I would rather meet someone in my own way. Anyone I were to meet at a ball would just be there because I’m a prince. They don’t care who I really am, just my title.” And on the internet I could be a half elf mage warrior with a terrible accent who’s obsessed with summoning bees. The real world wasn’t that interesting.

  “Of course, there are some of those people.” Mother relented a little.

  “See? There’s other ways.” Please let that get through to her, please let that get through…

  “But, there are mothers like me who would drag their eligible children to the ball, and those are certainly worth meeting. We don’t need too much time to plan either…” She continued on her tirade of ideas.

  I just sighed. “You haven’t heard a word I said.” With that, I left, knowing they, in fact, hadn’t even heard that much.

  ***

  Morning came with a hard knock on the door and a headache. My brain wasn’t ready to start, and a glance at the clock told me I had only been asleep for about four hours. After a moment of grumbling to myself, I yelled at the door. “What?” The kindly voice of one of the maids happily replied through the door. “Breakfast, Rey! Oh and your parents left a memo for you.” I could hear her shoving it under the door.

  With another grumble, I fumbled out of the blankets and shuffled to grab the note. In the quick moment it took me to read it, rage filled me, helping me to fully awaken. It was too early for this.

  I had been right though. They truly hadn’t listened to me. The ball would be in four weeks. F-o-u-r whole flipping weeks and I had to show. My name was all over the announcement. Whoever thought royalty was all flair with hundreds of listeners certainly knew nothing about my life.

  For. Get. This. Noise.

  I turned back to the rest of my room, grabbed a shirt off the chair that smelled clean enough, and headed downstairs, hoping my parents were eating breakfast so I could give them an earful. Of course, that would be far too easy. They likely knew I would be enraged, or at best, upset and had declined to show up. Instead, it was just Lilly standing by with a smile and coffee.

  “Are they hiding again?” I grumbled as I plopped down into my usual seat.

  “They stated they had to leave early to meet with the duke and his wife,” Lilly replied officially before dropping into her normal voice, “So yea
h, probably. How’d the raid go?”

  Lilly was one of my favorites of the house staff. Though she didn’t game much, both her kids did and she never had a negative thing to say about it.

  I sipped the coffee as I thought about the details. My guild didn’t do that great of a job and we only got some of the gear we were aiming for. As I tried to go through the jumbled details, Lilly disappeared and reappeared with pancakes and bacon. At least I felt a bit better on a fuller stomach, but my body was well aware I was only on ‘not enough sleep’. After eating, I snuck back up to bed and fell into a deep sleep.

  My guild was none too thrilled by my later than expected arrival. Getting another cup of coffee after my weird morning was worth it, though. I scrolled through the recent chat history as I tried to catch up on things before I noticed Grim was trying to get my attention.

  GrimKnight: @ReyWraith We got an extra today.

  “Joy.” I replied both aloud and in chat.

  BloodOath: Come on ReyWraith, she’s good.

  I hated new people randomly joining the clan when we were already so close to completing a mission. It felt like it threw everything off.

  ReyWraith: Fine. She know anything about the game?

  Several lolz filled the screen before a name I hadn’t seen before appeared.

  SkepticMouse: you could probably say that.

  ReyWraith: Okay, I seem to be missing something here.

  More lolz

  SkepticMouse: so I was in the beta run.

  Oh, well that did change a few things.

  ReyWraith: Any cheats for this dungeon?

  SkepticMouse: Nah, they seemed to have patched all the good things. The next one seems to be holding up with some fun things that can be cheesed. We’ll see if we can get there before that gets a suck patch too.

  Curious to see if this Mouse was all chat and no play, I decided to see how things went.

  ReyWraith: Well, let’s do this, then.

  Quickly we switched from text chat to voice and started talking about where we sucked the most the night before and what we thought we needed to do. Mouse had some solid suggestions and overall was up for whatever nonsense we could come up with.

  The hours seemed to quickly tick on by before I heard a knock on the door.

  “What?” I called trying not to take my eyes off the game.

  “Your two favorite humans are home! And I am off for the night. Good luck,” Lilly’s voice called.

  Sighing, I knew it would be better to get this over with. Tiredly I spoke into my headset. “Going Afk guys, be back in a bit.”

  “Already done, man?” NeonGoblin complained.

  “Nah, the rents and I need to have a loud disagreement. Be back after.” I summed up without giving the details. Only two of the guys knew who I actually was. The rest either didn’t seem to care or never bothered to ask me about my ‘job’.

  “Lame. Guess this is a good time to grind.” Mouse chimed in.

  “I need to get more things for potions.” GrimKnight sighed. “Anyone want to help?”

  “Sure. I’ll be right back. Need some soda,” DarknessKiss replied.

  I left my headset on the desk as I dragged myself from my room. Olmi, my oldest bullmastiff, was sitting outside the door. Excited to see me up, she followed me downstairs. Normally, she was a comforting companion but this was not a conversation I wanted to have, and the media, even more so social media, was already eating up the idea of an unwed prince having a ball to meet someone. Like they couldn’t find something real to report on.

  I knocked on the door to the study where my parents were conversing. Both had a glass of wine in hand, a magical frost on the glass keeping it chilled, and they seemed to be none the wiser of the anger and frustration I felt.

  “So did you decide you just don’t care about me anymore?” I exaggerated, grabbing their full attention in one fell swoop.

  “Why would you ever say that, Rey?” My mother protested, surprise lining her features.

  “You know your mother and I love you.” Father echoed my mother’s surprise.

  “Well, then why didn’t you listen to me? What part of ‘I don’t want to have a ball’ was hard to understand?” Busted. I crossed my arms, refusing to walk further into the room.

  “Oh, come on, now.” Mother’s expression mellowed. “You don’t know that yet. You haven’t been to one in a while, and it’ll be lovely. There will be so many wonderful people there. Gorgeous ladies! Dashing lads. Perfect individuals on all sides.”

  Father nodded his agreement. “I know the ball isn’t your thing, but it is a great way to physically meet others. There are so many people in this world you haven’t yet had a chance to encounter. You never know.”

  “I would rather meet someone my own way.” I stated firmly, and maybe a bit too loudly. Olmi plopped down at my feet, sensing we’d be here for a few.

  “And that is still possible! This is just an extra way to meet people.” Mother added happily. A little too happily. That couldn’t have been her first glass of wine.

  “Okay, fine.” I relented, a plan forming in my mind. “It’s too much of a mess to try and cancel it. So how about a deal.”

  “That could be reasonable.” Father nodded, curious to see where this was going.

  “I’ll attend the ball, and even pretend I want to be there for a bit...” I said and mother’s face lit up. “But.” I watched both their faces drop. “If I don’t meet someone, you will stop trying to set something up.”

  My mother made a string of sounds varying from disbelief to shock.

  Father nodded. “That does sound fair, as long as you are putting in the effort, I don’t see why we can’t agree to these terms.” He shot my mother a look that said she had no room to argue.

  Mother cleared her throat. “Of course. We just want you to be happy, after all.” She downed the rest of her glass.

  “Thank you. I knew we could see eye to eye on this.” I went over, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and headed back to my guild.

  2

  The next few days went fairly smoothly. I decided if I was stuck with this ball, why not make it more about me? I was one hundred percent unashamed to be a geek, and after much conversing, I convinced Mother to let it be a cosplay themed ball. Father was too amused with the idea to say no, and even said if it got me more involved and talking, then it would be well worth it.

  After that nonsense, it seemed as if I had little free time. I was busy with work and family obligations during most of the early parts of the day and spending time with the guild at night. Mother tried to make a few comments on my nightly gaming, but I kindly reminded her about the ball and doing things my own way and she would begrudgingly drop it. Father smirked at the quick commentary but didn’t say anything himself. It was hard to tell what side he was on sometimes, but overall he didn’t stop the ball so, likely that side.

  Anyone stuck in Jewelport this weekend? Specifically the downtown area? Mouse had typed into chat before we got to doing anything big.

  GrimKnight: Nah, going to be avoiding the city as much as possible this month.

  BloodOath: Saaame. That stupid ball is going to be a thing.

  ReyWraith: Fun times had by all individuals forced to attend.

  SkepticalMouse: That’ll be another complaint later. Anyone stuck around downtown this weekend? My family is catering for an event and it is going to be lame as heck.

  BloodOath: Nah, you’re on your own.

  GrimKnight: Nope. Why?

  SkepticalMouse: My ride there is with my sister, but she’s ditching right after and I just don’t want to be stuck taking the bus home. Last event someone spilled wine on me and the bus ride was miserable.

  ReyWraith: I am, but will unlikely be of help.

  GrimKnight: oh yeah, good luck.

  BloodOath: Event in 5, we ready?

  I saw a DM pop up from Mouse.

  SkepticalMouse: sure I can’t bribe you with a ten?

  ReyWraith:
Oh, that’s not the problem.

  I hesitated on how to reply and realized it didn’t actually matter if she knew or not.

  ReyWraith: It’s my mom’s event so I’ll be stuck around until the very bitter end.

  There was a long pause.

  SkepticalMouse: Oh… well that sucks. I always hate being the last person at something like that. Good luck!

  The game went as normal and I wasn’t sure if she realized I meant it when I said that. My mom was really hosting the gala thing – something for back to school or proper schooling – and I would really be expected to stay. Seeing her not act any differently towards me, I decided not to dwell on it.

  It wasn’t until the gala that I had remembered that Mouse was going to be there at all. There were a lot of people there, and all the ones in uniform seemed to blend together. There were servers dressed in black with white button-down shirts and ties. Several were handing out informational packets and school supplies and were dressed in all black, and another group, I wasn’t sure what they were doing, had the same white and black combo as the servers but instead of a black tie, they had on a blue tie.

  I gave up trying to remember the importance quickly as I was asked to take photo after photo. In between conversations and the blinding, flashing lights, I got to sample some of the food and drinks, but it wasn’t until things were winding down that I realized I hadn’t talked to any of the staff. I hadn’t paid attention to these people before and now that I vaguely knew one of them, I was much more curious about their jobs, their lives, and trying to figure out which one could be Mouse.

  Her profile picture was a cute animated style mouse with a game controller, so aside from her voice, I had no idea what she looked like or who to even begin to look for. I didn’t even know her real name. Finding her might not actually work out.

  As people started to file out, I finally realized the servers were from the catering group. That was the only clue I had, so instead of being bored with my few moments of freedom, I decided to wander back and see if I could figure out who she was.

  Once in the back, I only saw a handful of people left and several rather confused caterers wondering what I was doing back here.