Page 7 of Mane Rival in Store

His gaze swept the space. The neon. The lipstick wall. The cosplay corner. The selfie station. His expression didn’t change, which was worse than if it had, because the absence of expression on a face that severe communicated more than a speech. His eyes—pale, striking, some shade between blue and winter—landed on the villain mannequin in the window display and stayed there for a moment too long.

Then they found Lark.

The eye contact was immediate and physical. A jolt that started in her sternum and spread outward, hot and electric, as though someone had pressed a live wire to her ribs. He stared at her. She stared at him. The playlist thumped. The candle flickered. Breezy typed on her tablet, pretending not to witness the most loaded three seconds of silent eye contact in SoHo retail history.

Lark recovered first. She always recovered first. “Can I help you?”

He blinked. The tiniest recalibration behind those pale eyes—the composure clicking back into place like a lock engaging. When he spoke, his voice was deep, precise, and carried the barest trace of a Scandinavian accent that turned every consonant into a decree.

“I’m from the store next door. Sterling & Mane.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “I wanted to introduce myself and request that you moderate the audio.”

“Moderate the audio,” Lark repeated. She crossed her arms. “You mean turn down the music.”

“The sound levels are bleeding through the shared wall and disrupting the atmosphere of my retail space.” He said this the way a diplomat delivers a formal protest: calm, impersonal, and with the implication that consequences existed. “My customers expect a certain acoustic environment.”

“A certain acoustic environment.” She tilted her head. “You mean silence.”

“I mean the absence of—” His gaze snagged on the beauty bar. Tracked across the lipstick display. Lingered on the shade names. His jaw worked. “You sell cosmetics.”

“Villain-themed cosmetics. And comics. And cosplay supplies. And curated playlists, which is what you’re hearing through your very thin wall.” Lark stepped out from behind the counter and extended her hand. “Lark Coleman. Founder and CEO of Villainette. Your new neighbor.”

He looked at her hand like he’d looked at the mannequin: with the expression of someone encountering a variable his spreadsheet had not prepared him for. Then he took it.

His hand burned. Large. The grip was deliberate, holding for exactly the professional duration and not a millisecond longer. But his fingers tightened—a fraction, a pulse—before he released, and Lark cataloged it instantly because cataloging details was her profession and her personality.

“Rune Sterling.” His hand dropped to his side. “CEO of Sterling & Mane International.”

“Rune.” She let the name sit in her mouth. Norse. Sharp. Appropriate for a man who looked like Valhalla’s most overdressed resident. “Your store is very…” She tipped her head toward the shared wall, toward the hushed, gallery-lit perfection on the other side. “Curated.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“I know.” The briefest pause. His chin lifted—an increment, but on that face, it registered like a flag being planted. “I upgraded it.”

Lark’s mouth opened. Closed. Did the Viking just out-quip me?

Behind her, Breezy made a sound that might have been a cough and was definitely a laugh.

“The music,” he said, as though scoring a verbal point against a stranger was beneath his notice and not the most interesting thing that had happened to him in a week. “I’d appreciate a reduction in volume. My authentication equipment is sensitive to vibration.”

“Your authentication equipment is sensitive to vibration.” Lark leaned against the counter. “Is that a real sentence, or did you rehearse it in the mirror?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. One single, involuntary spasm that he suppressed so fast, it was almost invisible. Almost. Lark saw it. Filed it under cracks in the armor.

“It’s a factual statement, Ms. Coleman. Spectrographic analysis requires⁠—”

“Lark.”

He stopped.

“My name is Lark. Ms. Coleman is my mother, and trust me, you don’t want to confuse us.” She smiled—her best smile, the one that launched a thousand Instagram follows and made Breezy roll her eyes on a daily basis. “I’ll consider adjusting the volume. Consider. After we open. If the wall can’t handle a little bass, that’s an architectural issue, Your Majesty, not a playlist one.”

The nickname landed before she’d planned it. She watched it hit—watched his spine straighten by a millimeter, watched his nostrils flare, watched that jaw tic fire again. He stood in her doorway, six-three of tailored severity haloed in violet light, and processed being called Your Majesty by a woman he’d met ninety seconds ago.

“My name,” he said, with measured patience, as if explaining currency exchange to a tourist, “is Rune.”

“I know.” She winked. “But Your Majesty suits you better. You’ve got the posture for it.”