Reincarnated as a Femboy Slave Chapter 131: Iskanda’s Ruby

I reached the second floor of the library with all the stealth and grace of a burglar who’d just realized halfway up the stairs that maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t fully thought this through.

The chaos below faded into a muffled, frenzied hum—like a hive of bees trying to file taxes—while the upper level stretched before in quiet, studious calm.

It felt like stepping from a hurricane into a museum where even the dust motes had performance anxiety. A handful of Velvets sat scattered around low study tables, speaking in hushed whispers.

None of them paid any mind, which was good, because the last thing I needed was soone asking why a half-sleep-deprived Drudgewhore was haunting the aisles like so flamboyant poltergeist.

I smirked to myself, a quiet little curl of satisfaction, before slipping between the shelves with the kind of purposeful swagger that said: yes, I belong here, absolutely, please do not verify this claim.

The shelves towered in dark polished wood, the scent of old parchnt and sothing slightly tallic hanging in the air like the ghost of ink long dried.

I trailed my hand along the spines as I walked, letting my fingers brush over embossed letters and gilded titles. Engineering. Architecture. Chemistry. Biology. I paused at that one—no thank you, I’d had enough biological upheaval in my life recently to last several reincarnations—then moved on.

A few shelves further and I found the odd ones: magical studies with nas that felt overly dramatic even for this place. Azuro’s Theories of Spirit Severance. Foundational Curses and Their Implications on Interplanar Trade. Runic Symtries and Their Chaotic Consequences. Whoever stocked this place clearly oscillated between brilliance and breakdown, maybe both at once.

What I needed was... ah. There. A plaque, hamred into a polished beam of wood with the kind of confidence only bureaucrats possessed:

"Magical runes and artifacts."

Perfect. My best bet. My only bet, really. And I was already running on borrowed ti.

I followed the row, weaving deeper into the library until the shelves abruptly stopped at a dead end. At the wall, before a tall window, sat a large desk absolutely drowning in a chaotic sprawl of papers, ink pots, quills, scattered books, torn diagrams, and at least three identical mugs of cold tea that looked like they’d given up on living soti last week.

I stared. There was a particular type of ss one only recognized after sleeping in close quarters with soone like Iskanda: a controlled, deliberate chaos, the kind that said: I know exactly where everything is and if you touch one sheet of paper I will tear out your soul through your throat.

This was absolutely one of those.

I stepped closer—hesitant at first, then unable to help myself—as the diagrams ca into view. They all showcased the sa ruby Iskanda carried, sketched with intense detail, fractal cuts and luminous shading, like the diagrams themselves had been done by soone in the midst of an existential spiral.

I sifted deeper into the ss, fingertips brushing over diagrams, annotations, arrows, crossed-out arrows, angry scribbles, entire paragraphs written sideways like she’d run out of patience with gravity.

The notes were relentless. The handwriting sharp, compressed, angry. Gods above, Iskanda wrote like she wanted to stab the paper.

And there it was again—that na. rlin. I felt my breath snag in my throat, a little jolt of recognition sparking up my spine. She had ntioned him before, once, and only once—in that offhand, ominous way she used whenever she was referencing sothing she didn’t want asking questions about.

It didn’t stop there.

There were notes about "resetting the curse," which alone made my stomach twitch, followed by more unsettling tidbits like "synchronization instability." Which, if I was understanding the tone correctly, was the magically polite way of saying explosive disaster waiting to happen.

"You’ve gotta be fucking kidding ," I whispered, the words escaping on a thin ribbon of disbelief that imdiately beca a prayer, a threat, and a resignation letter all at once.

But before I could process, panic, or enact the highly professional plan of flipping the desk, stealing each note, and vanishing into the shadows—sothing happened.

A voice slid into the room behind . It didn’t echo. It didn’t hesitate. It was simply there, coiled in the air with the patient finality of doom.

"What are you doing here?"

I spun so fast I nearly knocked over an entire stack of papers. And there she was. Iskanda. Standing right behind , hands on her hips, her face carved into a quiet expression of condemnation that said very clearly: you are dead, you are done, I hope you wrote a will because this is the end of your narrative arc.

I swear I nearly shit myself. Saints above, I hadn’t even sensed her presence. This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t natural. This was Iskanda.

My brain panicked, sprinting through excuses, lies, half-truths, full lies, bold lies, spiritual lies, anything—but all of them collided like drunkards in an alley before dissolving into one miserable attempt.

"I—I—I—was just—this isn’t—okay listen, it’s not what it looks like!" I blurted, words tripping over themselves like they were trying to escape my mouth before I could strangle them. "I wasn’t snooping, I swear, I was actually—uh—checking for... infestations! Yes! A rare species of... uh... parchnt-eating moth! Dunny ntioned them! Horrible little things, very destructive, very, very tiny, you can’t see them unless you hold the paper up to the light and squint like this—"

I demonstrated, idiotically, with a scrap of paper.

"And obviously the magical runes section is the most vulnerable because, uh, the glyph ink is like... a delicacy to them! High protein! Very sought-after! I an you wouldn’t want a bunch of cursed docunts suddenly bursting into fla, lting, or coming alive in the night just because of a moth, right?"

Iskanda stared for half a second. Then burst into laughter. Not polite laughter. Not a chuckle. A laugh. Genuine, loud, delighted. She tilted her head back, dark hair spilling down her shoulders, and bellowed like the world’s funniest joke had just been delivered directly into her veins.

I stood there uselessly.

"Well now," she said, voice a warm purr laced with amusent. "I didn’t expect you to crumble that quickly."

I glared weakly. "I panicked."

"So I observed."

I opened my mouth to defend myself. I really did. I prepared a whole speech about scholarly curiosity, the pursuit of knowledge, noble intentions, and my right as a living being to look at things. Then I closed my mouth. Opened it again. Said nothing. Closed it again. At that point, dying seed like the only respectable option left.

Finally, I managed, "How—how did you know I’d be here?"

She gave a flat expression. "Oh, sweet child," Iskanda sighed, "You disappeared before dawn without so much as a whisper. Dunny has been watching like a feral bat for weeks. And he snuck off last night without a word of explanation. It was only a matter of ti before the two of you pulled sothing like this."

I flinched. Of course she’d noticed. Dunny wasn’t subtle. I wasn’t subtle. None of this was subtle. We were idiots. Idiots guided only by desperation and dumb hope. Saints above.

"It seems," she added lightly, "you’ve taken a sudden interest in my artifact. If you wanted to see it..." She turned her hand, letting the ruby fall into view on its chain, swaying gently like a hypnotic pendulum. "You could have simply asked."

I froze.

Gods above, she’d brought it with her.

I didn’t realize I’d stopped breathing until a little gasp escaped , embarrassingly tiny, like a mouse realizing it had wandered into a dragon’s nest.

My mind snagged all at once on the sight of that ruby dangling between Iskanda’s fingers, because Saints above that thing was glowing. Actually glowing. Not just shiny. Not just polished. This was the smugly supernatural kind of glowing that scread You have no idea what I can do, mortal.

My voice squeaked out before I could stop it, sothing half-ford like, "Is that really—?" only for Iskanda to cut through my words with the gentle rcy of a guillotine.

"Yes," she said, utterly deadpan, utterly casual, utterly ruining any chance I had of maintaining the flimsy lie I’d been preparing. "This was rlin’s relic. His original ans of inciting my curse."

She said this like she was talking about a lost hairpin. Like rlin was so middle-aged uncle who misplaced his favorite fishing rod. anwhile, I was frozen with my heart in my throat, because rlin was not a na people tossed around lightly.

I could tell, rlin was one of those nas—ancient, ominous, and inevitably attached to stories involving curses, cosmic ddling, and questionable ethics.

I blinked, opened my mouth, blinked again. "You... sorry—what? You got that from where?"

"The Sea of Hollows," she said, as if that explained anything. "Picked it up on a scouting mission a couple years back."

"The sea of what now?" I blurted. The na alone sounded like an eldritch mistake.

Iskanda waved her hand dismissively, rolling her eyes. "That’s not important right now."

Which ant it was monuntally important, but she was choosing not to elaborate because my sanity was a low-priority consideration. Fine. Whatever. I could file that away for later, sowhere between "things that haunt in my sleep" and "things Quentin cries about."

I took a breath—an actual inhale this ti—and forced my tone into sothing borderline confident. "Right. So. I guess your big plan is... what? To reverse the curse?"

She didn’t answer imdiately, and that little pause told more than any speech could. Then she nodded once, firm but frustrated. "Yes, although I’ve had no luck so far," she admitted.

And Saints damn , but I smirked. I couldn’t help it. The expression rose on my face the sa way a rash does—unwanted, but unmistakably mine.

"Why would you even want to get rid of the curse in the first place?" I asked, leaning a little too smugly into the question because that curse happened to give her... well. Certain advantages. Advantages that had been repeatedly introduced to my peripheral vision in ways that were frankly unfair to my heart rate.

Her laugh burst out instantly—loud, sharp, and inappropriately delighted. "Oh please," she scoffed. "Do you have any idea how inconvenient it is to be hauling around this massive hunk of at all the ti?"

I choked. She’d said that with the casual severity of soone complaining about a broken shoelace. anwhile, my brain short-circuited into a sizzling pile of inappropriate images and overheated taphors.

"I—well—" I stamred like an idiot because this was deeply above my codic pay grade.

She raised an eyebrow. "Heavy. Always in the way. Completely unruly in the winter weather. Sotis it swings when I don’t want it to. Do you have any idea how annoying that is?"

I snorted before I could stop myself. Actually snorted. A tiny, foolish little laugh sputtered out of as I awkwardly scratched the back of my neck, trying very, very hard to downplay the sudden urge to drop dead from embarrassnt.

"Okay, fair," I conceded, shaking my head as if any amount of movent could expel that cursed ntal imagery. "I... yep. That sounds like a problem."

She gave a look—one of those smug, feline smirks that ant she knew exactly what images were clogging my thoughts. And that was precisely my cue to leave. Or flee. Or pretend I had sowhere far, far more important to be.

Which I absolutely did.

My reason for sneaking here was spiraling down the drain faster than I could blink, and if I didn’t get away now I’d forget entirely that I had another mission to fulfill.

I pivoted on my heel, laughing a little too brightly, a little too nervously. "Well! Fascinating stuff! Really illuminating, but I should probably—"

I made it exactly three steps.

Three.

And then her hand clamped onto my shoulder like the hand of so wrathful statue co to life. My soul left my body so fast it probably hit terminal velocity. I froze, one foot still mid-step, looking like a deer caught committing tax fraud.

Her voice was right at my ear, low and maddeningly amused. "Loona," she humd, "what exactly were you planning to do once you learned about the relic, hmm?"

"Oh... you know... research," I croaked, staring with intense interest at the bookshelf, the floor, the ceiling—anything except her. "Scholarly pursuits. Intellectual curiosity. Being a good student, as usual."

"Mhm." Her grip tightened. "So nothing like, say... stealing it? Gaining a little leverage against ?" Her tone curled around like a teasing whip.

"...Noooo?" I tried, with the confidence of a toddler caught wrist-deep in the cookie jar.

Her laugh was bright, cruel, and entirely delighted. "Oh Saints, your face is priceless." She stepped around so I was forced to look at her. "If you’re going to sche against , at least have the decency to be good at it."

I wanted to die. Or lt into the floor. Or burst into flas and take the whole room with . Anything to escape the molten heat flooding my veins.

Then she straightened, tilting her head in contemplation. "You know," she said, "for this kind of behavior... I really ought to punish you."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor. "Punish ?" I squeaked, because my dignity had already abandoned ship.

Her gaze raked down my body like a physical touch, lingering on my chest, my hips, the tremor in my thighs, and I swear my pulse throbbed in places I didn’t know could throb. My fingers were already moving toward the hem of my skirt before my brain caught up, desperate, shaking, aching to obey.

She stepped closer—way closer—until I could count the faint sea of freckles crossing the bridge of her nose.

"Strip yourself," she murmured, "now."