"If you don’t stop talking, ’sister’," Ji’an muttered out of the corner of her mouth, "I am going to sell you to the first goblin we see."

The infiltration had begun as the Chef and the Prince, completely stripped of their Qi and armed only with their devastating good looks and a profound mutual resentment, were marching straight into the bedchamber of a Golden Core predator.

***

Deep within the damp, oppressive shadows of the provincial borderlands, an impromptu, highly treasonous fitting session was taking place behind a thick thicket of weeping willow trees. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Lin Ji’an stood with her arms crossed, her dark eyes narrowed in intense, hyper-critical scrutiny.

She looked up and down the towering, imposing figure of the Imperial Second Prince, Xiao Yichen, who was currently radiating an aura of murder so dense it was practically altering the local weather patterns.

He was wearing the peach and gold silk dress. The rouge had been applied. The Null-Stone cuffs were locked securely around his wrists.

But to a Head Chef accustomed to absolute perfection in presentation, the disguise was failing on a fundamental, structural level.

"It’s not working," Ji’an declared flatly, tapping her chin. "The silhouette is completely wrong."

Yichen’s eyes twitched. "The silhouette," he repeated, his voice a strained, melodic whisper that promised unspeakable violence, "is wrong because I am a grown man standing six feet and two inches tall, and you have forced me into a garment designed for a petite concubine."

"No, the height isn’t the issue. Tall girls are intimidating; some guys are into that," Ji’an dismissed his logic with a wave of her hand. She stepped closer, invading his personal space with the clinical detachment of a butcher examining a side of beef. "The problem is the proportions. You have the broad shoulders of a martial artist, but the dress is tailored for someone with... significantly more buoyancy in the front and the back. Right now, you just look like a very angry, flat-chested lumberjack wrapped in expensive curtains."

Commander Mo, standing ten feet away acting as a lookout, let out a sound that was half-gasp, half-sob.

He turned entirely around, pressing his forehead against the bark of a pine tree, desperately praying to the Heavens to strike him blind and deaf before he witnessed any more high treason.

"Buoyancy," Yichen echoed, a dangerous, unhinged smile spreading across his rouged lips. "Royal Uncle, I strongly advise you to choose your next words with extreme caution."

Ji’an ignored the death threat completely. She turned to the royal luggage that the shadow guards had hastily ransacked.

"We need to do some stuffing," Ji’an muttered, rummaging through the velvet-lined trunks.

She pulled out a pair of plush, silk-embroidered travel pillows and a bundle of soft, linen undershirts.

"Lin Ji’an," Yichen hissed as she turned back toward him with the bundled fabrics. "If you attempt to—"

"Lift your arms, Your Highness," Ji’an ordered, stepping right up against his chest.

"I will have you executed," Yichen promised, though his body betrayed him, his arms subconsciously lifting a fraction of an inch under her absolute, commanding tone.

"Add it to my tab," Ji’an retorted smoothly.

Without an ounce of hesitation or reverence for the Imperial bloodline, Ji’an unceremoniously grabbed the collar of the peach silk dress and shoved two bundled linen shirts directly down the front of Yichen’s bodice.

Yichen inhaled sharply, his entire body going rigid.

Ji’an aggressively adjusted the padding, shifting the linen until it sat perfectly over his pectoral muscles, creating the distinct, unmistakable illusion of a rather generous, albeit slightly lumpy, feminine bust.

"There. That balances out the shoulders," Ji’an muttered, stepping back to admire her handiwork. "Now turn around."

"I am going to freeze your blood, shatter your bones, and scatter your ashes to the four winds," Yichen vowed, his dark eyes burning with absolute, humiliated fury.

But, shackled by the Null-Stone cuffs and bound by the terms of their infiltration pact, he gritted his teeth and slowly turned around.

Ji’an grabbed the plush travel pillows. "Hold the skirt out."

Yichen’s jaw clenched so tightly the muscles jumped. He reached down, grabbing the edges of the peach silk, and pulled it taut.

Ji’an promptly shoved the pillows down the back of the dress, adjusting them until the flat, muscular lines of the Prince’s backside were suddenly blessed with a dramatic, highly pronounced curvature.

"Perfection," Ji’an clapped her hands together, brushing off invisible dust. "You now possess the hourglass figure of a tragic, highly desirable noblewoman. Blood-Hand Tu’s sentries won’t even look at your face; they’ll be too distracted by the assets."

Commander Mo, still facing the tree, let out a muffled whimper. The elite shadow guards surrounding them looked as though they were simultaneously fighting off aneurysms.

Their majestic, terrifying Prince had been reduced to a stuffed, heavily rouged decoy, all at the whim of a teenage cook.

Yichen slowly turned back to face her. His chest, now significantly more prominent, heaved with suppressed rage.

The sheer, devastating humiliation of standing in the mud, padded with travel pillows, was absolute.

Yet, as he looked at Ji’an, who was currently admiring her own handiwork with a smug, arrogant grin, the resentment in Yichen’s chest twisted into something incredibly strange, incredibly hot, and undeniably thrilling.

She wasn’t afraid of him and didn’t care about his reputation.

She had just physically manhandled the heir to the Azure Empire, and she was entirely unapologetic about it.

’He is a monster,’ Yichen thought, a dark, breathless flush rising beneath the layer of rouge on his cheeks. ’A beautiful, terrifying, absolute monster.’

"If we survive this, Royal Uncle," Yichen whispered, leaning down so his face was mere inches from hers, the heavy peach silk rustling awkwardly, "I am going to exact a vengeance so profound, so devastating, that you will beg for mercy."

"Put it on the comment card, sister," Ji’an smirked, entirely unaffected. She turned to the disguised shadow guards. "Tie us up! Make it look rough! The meat is ready for the market!"