Page 49 of Mane Rival in Store by Milly Taiden

Lark held it up with both hands, blocking the vendor booth behind her. Her eyes were lit. Her grin was a weapon aimed directly at his remaining dignity.

“No.”

“You haven’t even tried it on.”

“I don’t need to try it on. I can reject it on principle.”

“The principle being?”

“I am a thirty-four-year-old CEO in a suit. I do not wear capes.”

“Rune.” She stepped closer. The cape billowed between them like a silk barricade. “You are at a villain cosplay event where a drag queen just called you a presiding monarch. You are ALREADY the most dramatic person in this building by sheer force of cheekbone. The cape is not a departure from your brand. It’s an extension.”

TWENTY

LARK

She draped it over his shoulders before he could formulate a rebuttal.

The satin settled across his back. The collar fanned behind his head. The weight of the fabric hung from his shoulders with the gravity of a garment designed to make the wearer feel like they were about to deliver a monologue about world domination.

He hated it.

He hated the way it moved when he turned his head. He hated the swish against his calves. He hated the collar framing his face like a portrait border. He hated all of it with a conviction that was absolute and immediate and completely undermined by the fact that his lion was preening.

Not figuratively. The strands at his temples stirred, rose, arranged themselves with the focused vanity of an animal whose display instincts had been handed a theatrical prop and decided this was the single greatest development in the history of adornment. His lion didn’t understand irony. His lion understood display, and the cape was display, and the lion was in favor.

“Oh my God.” Lark had her hand over her mouth. Her eyes were enormous. “Your HAIR.”

“We are not discussing my hair.”

“Your hair LIKES it. Your hair is doing a whole—it’s like a lion mane fan. Like a peacock thing but with your—Rune, your hair is showing off.”

“It is a draft from the ventilation system.”

“There IS no ventilation system! We’re in a warehouse! It’s eighty degrees!”

People were looking. A woman in a Catwoman suit raised her phone. A flash fired.

“She took a photo.”

“Multiple people have taken photos.” Lark’s voice was strangled with suppressed laughter. “You’re trending in the cape. I can see it happening in real time.”

He reached for the collar. The cape’s high fan framed his hand in purple satin. He caught his reflection in the prop maker’s mirror—six-three, charcoal suit, purple cape with the collar spread behind his golden hair, which was, undeniably, inexcusably, presenting—and the image was so profoundly ridiculous that a sound escaped him. Short. Involuntary. A breath that carried the ghost of a laugh.

Lark’s hand dropped from her mouth. She stared at him.

“Did you⁠—”

“No.”

“You laughed.”

“I exhaled.”

“You laughed at yourself in a cape. Rune Sterling laughed. At a costume party. In a CAPE.”

He should take it off. The evening had been—fine. Better than fine. The craft was extraordinary, the community was genuine, and the woman beside him was incandescent in this space, vivid and bright and connected to every person in the room in a way that made him ache with a hunger that had nothing to do with admiration and everything to do with the leather pants and the silver earrings and the way she’d introduced him to people like he belonged here. But the cape was a step too far. The cape was undignified. The cape needed to come off.