Announcing that they were going shopping together went about as smoothly as tossing a lit match into dry grass and then politely asking everyone present to remain calm.

Aveline had nothing against shopping itself. She could not have cared less if Emmeline bought half of Empire malls because a dresses had looked lonely on the rack, nor if Park finally retired the tragic little wardrobe that made him look like a beautiful orphan sponsored by a discount clothing app.

What she cared about was everything that came afterward—the cameras, the gossip pages, the reporters who could smell political blood through concrete, the bored nobles who treated other people’s scandals as breakfast entertainment, and every ugly little consequence that landed squarely on the eldest sibling the moment two parents walked out the door and said something insane like you’re in charge.

Because the children of the Prime Minister and the Royal Chancellor could not simply wander outside like ordinary rich people.

They were celebrities without ever having done anything entertaining enough to deserve it.

Strangers knew their faces; gossip accounts tracked their cars and photographers loitered outside places they were known to like. Random citizens with cracked phone screens and too much free time filmed them eating lunch, added dramatic music, and uploaded it captioned ROYAL CHANCELLOR’S DAUGHTER LOOKS HEARTBROKEN?

Emmeline on her own could walk into a café, order an iced chocolate, and generate three relationship rumors, two fashion articles, and a national argument about whether privileged girls were permitted to look bored in public.

Now add Park to that equatio:

A stupidly handsome young man whose existence roughly eleven people outside this house were supposed to be aware of.

One photograph of Emmeline laughing beside him in a mall and the internet would decide he was her mystery boyfriend before the photographer had even finished applying filters:

Give the amateur detectives three days and they would produce his shoe size, his blood group, his childhood dentist, and one blurry image of him sneezing at twelve. Give them a week and the Bennett family’s nineteen-year secret would not leak so much as detonate across the Celestial Empire with fireworks, subtitles, and quite probably a trending dance challenge.

And if all of that happened while Alexander and the Chancellor were away, Aveline would be the one standing in front of both of them attempting to explain how the family’s hidden son became public property because Emmeline had needed new shoes.

So yes, she objected. Repeatedly, tight-faced and controlled, already reading tomorrow’s headlines behind her own eyes and quietly calculating whether prison might be more peaceful than family responsibility.

"It’ll be fine," Emmeline said, pushing her chair back as though Aveline’s concerns were an advertisement she could skip.

"We’ll be careful," Park added.

Aveline folded her arms. "That sentence has never once made anybody safer."

Park gave her an easy smile that suggested she was being dramatic and should perhaps drink some water. "You worry too much, sis."

"I worry precisely the correct amount."

"You say that now."

"I say it because it is true. And you," she said, turning on Emmeline, "are not helping."

"I’m helping myself to a shopping day."

Aveline closed her eyes for one brief second. She might have been praying, or counting backward from ten and asking her ancestors why they had not simply ended the bloodline while the opportunity was still available.

"Do not," she said at last, "be seen doing anything stupid."

Emmeline paused. "That’s a very wide category."

"It narrows considerably once you begin."

Park genuinely felt for her:

It had to be exhausting, being twenty-three and painfully competent and permanently surrounded by younger siblings who treated catastrophe as a fun weekend hobby. She carried herself like somebody who had been born holding a clipboard and had spent every year since begging the people around her to stop licking electrical sockets.

Sympathy, however, had never once stopped Park from being a problem.

He crossed behind her chair on his way out, and instead of passing it, he stopped.

She half-turned to see why—and he leaned down over her, one hand settling on the back of her chair, the other coming to rest at her waist.

His palm found the soft yielding curve of her waist through that immaculate charcoal fabric and stayed there, warm and unhurried and entirely deliberate. The warmth of his hand sank straight through the thin material, mapping the give of her body, the way her body softened under his touch like it already knew it belonged there.

Park kissed her cheek like he had a death wish.

His mouth met her cheek and stayed.

He let his warm lips part just enough to feel the heat of her skin, the faint taste and the way her face turned a fraction toward the contact without meaning to. He did not pull back but he deepened the kiss into a slow, open press, breathing her in while his hand at her waist spread wider, fingers sinking into the soft give of her side.

The charcoal fabric did nothing to hide how warm she was, how her body yielded under his palm with every quiet breath she took. His mouth slid from her cheek to the sensitive skin just beside her ear, close enough that the next breath he released washed hot against her.

His fingers pressed deeper, mapping the slow rise and fall of her ribs, the soft flesh that gave under him like it had been waiting for exactly this.

’Fuck,’ he thought, shameless and unrepentant. ’My big sister is soft. So fucking soft. I could stay like this all morning and still not get enough of how she feels under my hand.’

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