My Femboy System

Vincent looked younger.

Before the grey slipped into his skin. Before the smile died on his face. His hair was slightly shorter—cut just below his shoulders in lazy, aristocratic waves that still managed to look like they’d been arranged by a personal storm. His eyes, though...those were sharper. Cleaner. No smudges of guilt. No film of tired remorse. Just bright, polished steel set in a face carved by discipline and slow disdain.

I looked from him to Elias and nearly shattered again.

She was watching me.

Not just watching. Piercing through me. Her gaze, soft and liquid with the threat of tears, locked to mine like I was still someone she believed could save her. Her mouth twitched into a smile. The kind you give a scared child right before the thunder cracks. "It’s okay," she whispered. Her voice was gentle. Meant to soothe. But her lip was trembling.

I couldn’t reach her.

Gods, I tried. I tried. My arms pulled taut against the chains. My knees scraped hard against stone. But the weight of the vision was absolute. I could scream. I could cry. I could rip my voice to ribbons and still I would not breach the boundary between past and present. This was memory. This was theatre. And I was the chained audience to the worst play I’d ever survived.

Vincent turned to her like he’d been summoned by gravity. His gaze cool. Calculating. Unreadable in the way a scalpel is unreadable just before it cuts. "You’ve been quiet this morning," he said, voice smooth, emotionless, devoid of warmth. The way you’d speak to a letter you were about to burn.

Elias stiffened. "I didn’t think we had anything left to say."

He nodded once. "You’re probably right."

"Then why come?" she snapped, venom creeping beneath her grief like a second heart. "To gloat? To watch me rot a little longer? Or are you just here to make sure your pet project ends properly?"

Vincent didn’t flinch. "Your execution has been moved up."