Page 29 of Royal Academy

Lia smiled, eyes dancing, “Maybe you need to run away from home for a bit. Take a vacation where nobody knows who you are.”

Benedict scowled, “Thanks to the newspapers and the internet I don’t think there is a place on God’s green earth that doesn’t know who I am.”

Lia pursed her lips, “Then you need to go far away like China or America.”

Benedict barked out a laugh, “They love celebs in America and China, Stinky.”

“America is a vast place, big brother. I’m sure there is some backwater town that has never heard of Prince Benedict Reginald Charles Worthington Vincenza of Hazenbak.”

He rolled his eyes, “I think my name alone would clue them in.”

Lia thought for a moment, “Not if you were Ben Worthington.”

“An assumed name?” he asked incredulously.

“It’s your name, Dummy, just shortened.”

Benedict thought on what Lia had been proposing. It was true that he had felt the heat of his relationship deteriorating and the pressure from his father to marry. What would it be like to go somewhere and not be recognized or mobbed in the street? How pleasant would it be to walk into a pub and order a pint without being expected to act like the crowned prince?

“Ah! You are thinking about it aren’t you?” Lia’s eyes sparkled.

Benedict smiled sheepishly, “You have to admit that it sounds pretty damn appealing.”

Actually, that was essentially what Nick was up to at the school. His country was nowhere near Hazenbak. Nobody at the school knew that Nick would one day be king of his own nation. Benedict started to think that maybe his little sister was on to something.

“Look, if you do something like this, you have to promise to tell me,” Lia pinched his arm to bring his attention back to her.

“Stinky! I’m offended that you would assume otherwise. I am your very best big brother in the entire world, am I not?”

Her lips tipped up, “You are also my only brother.”

“Semantics, Stinky, merely semantics.”

Lia gave him a final look of concern, “I mean it, Benny. I would worry something awful if I thought something had happened to you. I wouldn’t tell Father, I swear it.”

He felt a powerful brotherly urge to snatch her by the neck and squeeze under the guise of hugging slash head noogie.

“You are growing up on me, Stinky.”

She rolled her eyes, “I’m twenty-five, not twelve.”

“Are you really? That can’t be right,” he teased.

The bus pulled into Everette Academy and the royal siblings looked out the window to see a massive castle similar to the one they had just left. But this building was clearly a replica and not original to the area.

“It’s lovely,” Lia said absentmindedly.

“It’s horrible,” Nick said coming up behind them.

Benedict and Lia both laughed.

“Don’t tell me you are an architectural snob,” Lia grinned at him.

For a moment Nick’s heart skipped a beat. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkling.

Damn, she was beautiful.

Thankfully Benedict saved him, “Nick’s undergrad was architecture, no doubt the whole modern age offends him.”

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