Page 50 of Level Up for Love

I don’t hear from Wesley for the rest of the week.

I try not to let it bother me—after all, I was the one who got us into this mess, then swiftly shoved us out of it. Can I really blame him for silently weathering the whiplash?

I do my best not to let it distract me and throw myself into my work. During the days, I log so many hours in my day job—fixing the code for a bug in the patient chart application that is likely too minor for anyone to notice—that I earn myself Friday afternoon off to avoid going overtime. At night, I shift from one computer screen to the next, jumping right into Afterwards to try to untangle exactly why the game isn’t fun to play yet. Every morning I’m at the gym, blasting my headphones as loud as they’ll go. I see Wesley there once, taking a water break in the free weight section, but when I raise my head to say hello, he turns his back to me and resumes his rows, gaze locked on the floor.

He pretends he doesn’t see me, but I know he did. I always feel his eyes like a line of heat on the back of my neck, and even now the heat lingers.

I never get a text or an email dismissing me from the game, so I show up to Game Knight on Thursday half soaked from the rain, my bangs sticking to my forehead. I’m ten minutes early, but when I step into the room, the group is already caught in a heated discussion.

For once, Wesley isn’t the one leading it. His eyes don’t even flick up when I walk to my seat, and half of his expression is obscured behind his DM’s screen. I get a few distracted nods from the others.

I lean toward Colin, who’s on my left today. “What’s going on?”

His chin rests on his laced fingers. “We’re trying to decide what to do next. Arthur just suggested we should—”

“Storm the castle?” Mona’s voice is shrill with stress. “That’s a terrible idea. We’ll die. We’ll all die immediately.”

Arthur shakes his head. “No, we won’t,” he says calmly. “Antoni and Vera can gather the soldiers we have at the chapel, prepare an assault, rally the townsfolk—”

Mona guffaws dramatically. “The emaciated, dying townsfolk? Can they even fight?”

Shay looks a little sheepish, but she eventually nods. “She’s got a point, Dad. How long will they last?”

Colin jumps in. “What if we planned a distraction, something to draw Vadrien out of the castle?”

Arthur frowns. “Like what?”

“What if we gathered, like, a lot of blood in one place, and—and then maybe he wouldn’t be able to control himself, and then—”

It’s Shay’s turn to snort. “Like some fucking blood ritual? Whose side are you on, Colin?”

I smile, amused, and it seems to catch Wesley’s attention. His eyes dart to my face, but when I look back at him, he turns away again to listen to the others.

Fine. I’m still deciding where Sindra would be the most useful in these plans, anyway. She’s primarily built for melee attacks, so she’d be the most helpful in Arthur’s suggestion of an all-out assault, though I agree with Mona that it’s a bad idea. Perhaps—

“No, it’s got to be something else,” Mona says stubbornly, interrupting my thoughts. “What if we snuck into the castle? We could find some secret passageway and steal the crown without having to fight Vadrien. We’ve learned already we can’t beat him. Not yet.”

“I don’t think our party is really built for stealth, babe,” Shay says gently. “We’re not very good at sneaking.”

“I could shape-shift into a mouse,” Mona protests.

“And you’d be a very cute mouse, but—”

Colin speaks up again. “I think this is a trick,” he says. I almost laugh out loud at how everyone’s expressions fill with wariness again. “What if trying to go after the crown is a trap? Mortimer has been researching the necromantic magic behind Vadrien’s vampirism and the realm’s decay, and I think there’s something there. What if we tried researching that more?”

“But that could take ages, and we don’t have any obvious leads,” Mona argues. “Red herring or not, the crown is the only lead we’ve got.”

Arthur lets out a heavy sigh. “All right. So maybe we don’t launch a full-on attack, but perhaps if we gather a highly skilled strike team…”

Over the noise of this argument and the haunting melody tinkling through the room’s speakers, I hear the unmistakable sound of rolling dice. The discussion fades to buzzing in the background of my mind as my eyes narrow on Wesley.

He bends low so his face is obscured, but his shoulders shift as he continues to roll dice as quietly as possible.

In the back of my head, something clicks.

Any good DM knows that they have to give players agency to choose their own course of action.

Any better DM knows, though, that sometimes it takes a little push to help them decide.