My Step-Daughters Are The Villainesses

Until then, Ulrich had kept forcing his attention outward, scanning the hall, the movement of servants, the flow of guests, the shifting positions of guards, searching for anything misplaced enough to suggest a demon hiding beneath another face.

Now his attention had changed completely.

It rested on the three sisters.

Airam, Hermione, and Esther stood apart from everyone else, isolated so plainly that it had become impossible not to notice. They already drew the eye by nature. Their beauty alone would have done that much. But now the way the crowd curved around them made them stand out even more. A clear space had formed around the three of them, a strip of floor no one crossed, as if some silent warning had been laid there. No boys approached. No young men stepped forward out of courtesy. No one even made the pretense of kindness by asking one of them for a dance.

They had been set aside.

Ulrich continued moving through the waltz with Louise, his steps never once slipping out of rhythm, his hand still firm at her waist, his posture still exact. To anyone looking from afar, he remained the same composed Count as before. But his eyes no longer belonged to the dance.

They stayed fixed on the sisters.

Louise noticed quickly.

At first it was only a small thing: the way he stopped letting the dance carry them more broadly across the floor, the way he subtly anchored their movement to one area instead of turning freely with the others. He was still leading her perfectly, but he was no longer dancing for the dance itself. He was keeping position to maintain his line of sight on something beyond her shoulder.

Following the direction of his gaze, Louise turned her head slightly during one of their side steps.

She saw them.

And for a moment, even her expression shifted.

Pity touched her face before she could hide it.

The three girls looked painfully young standing there like that. Too young to be made into a spectacle of exclusion this cruel. Louise had her own reservations about witches, of course. Those had been taught to her long before tonight, and they were not so easily stripped away. Yet what stood there now before her eyes did not resemble the hateful image she had grown up hearing about.

They looked like three teenage girls.

Beautiful, tense, and left standing alone while others made sure they remained that way.

The ugliness of it was made worse by how little effort some people made to hide their satisfaction. A few boys their own age were openly sneering. Several girls looked no better. Even some adults, old enough to know precisely what they were participating in, watched with that cool, distant contempt nobles reserved for those they wanted humiliated without ever dirtying their own hands.

Louise found it low.

Embarrassingly low.

She turned her attention back to Ulrich.

From this close, after several minutes of dancing with him, she could tell just how much his expression had changed, though to anyone else it might have seemed almost invisible. His face remained composed. His steps remained smooth. Nothing outward had broken.

But his eyes...

His deep red eyes had gone cold in a way that did not belong to simple irritation.

They were fixed on the sisters without blinking, and though Louise could not say exactly what he was thinking, she did not need to. The fact that he was looking at them like that at all said enough.

And strangely, against her own expectations, Louise found herself almost relieved by it.

Happy, perhaps, in some small and complicated way.

Because this side of Ulrich was not one most people would ever believe existed.

"You do care about those young witches, don’t you, Ulrich?" She asked softly.

Only then did Ulrich lower his gaze to her.

Louise met it with a faint smile.

Then, without warning, she stopped moving.

It was abrupt enough that Ulrich had no choice but to stop with her.

The halt was wrong for the Skargardian Waltz. Too sudden. Too cleanly broken. Anyone nearby might have assumed there had been some disagreement between them, some unpleasant word exchanged during the dance, some private discord sharp enough to cut the rhythm short.

Ulrich looked at her, questioning.

Louise only tilted her head.

"Perhaps that is enough dancing for now," she said.

Ulrich was not foolish.

He understood immediately what she was doing.

She was giving him an exit.

A graceful one.

A reason to leave the floor without drawing needless suspicion.

For a brief second he only looked at her, then gave a small nod. He released her hand, let his own fall away from her waist, and stepped past her.

"Ulrich."

He glanced back over his shoulder.

Louise had moved after him just enough to catch his arm lightly. Rising onto the tips of her shoes, she leaned closer, close enough that her voice reached only him.

"You owe me another dance," she whispered.

Then, before he could answer, she brushed the barest touch of her lips against his cheek.

It was not a proper kiss. More a fleeting claim than an affection openly given, light enough to be denied if necessary, shallow enough that it could not be mistaken for accident.

When she pulled back, she was already smiling.

Then she turned and walked away, leaving him standing there for the briefest instant before he shifted his attention fully back to the sisters.

◊◊◊

More than ten minutes had passed, and by now the center of the hall had filled with dancers.

Laughter moved through the music in bright little bursts. Soft chuckles, whispered remarks, girlish giggles, low-voiced compliments, all of it mingled beneath the melody until the whole waltz seemed to shimmer with life. Beneath the chandeliers, with silk turning in circles and shoes gliding over the floor, the scene had taken on the kind of beauty that belonged in old stories.

Men stepped forward to invite women who had been waiting with composed patience.

Boys approached girls who stood with nervous smiles, flushed cheeks, or barely hidden anticipation.

Each pair had their own exchange before taking the floor. A hand extended, a bow, a curtsy, a few careful words, sometimes awkward, sometimes smooth, sometimes plainly rehearsed by people too young to hide how much they cared. Girls accepted hands they had hoped for, or at least hands that were suitable enough not to refuse. Boys angled for dances with the girls they found beautiful, charming, useful, or all three at once.

Status, of course, always hovered in the background.

It was noble society. No one here forgot rank for long.

Even so, a Skargardian Waltz allowed room for selfishness. For preference. For the small luxuries of youth. For choosing a partner one genuinely wished to dance with instead of one merely approved by family calculations. That was part of what made the atmosphere so different from the rest of the evening. The event remained political, but the dance softened the edges of it. For a little while, people could pretend they were here for pleasure first.

That was what gave the Skargardian Waltz its strange charm.

In a grand event like this, with the most important noble houses gathered under one roof and their sons and daughters displayed at their finest, the dance became something almost magical in the eyes of those who loved such things. Every couple moving in time with the music seemed touched by it. Smiles came more easily. Eyes lingered longer. Even those who had entered the floor with stiff shoulders often loosened after one turn, one laugh, one well-guided step.

And still, amid all of that brightness, three girls remained untouched.

Boys continued to cross the floor in search of new partners once a dance ended. Men rotated with ease, approaching women before they had even spent half a minute standing idle. No lady of rank was left unattended for long. Some received one invitation after another so quickly they could scarcely finish one dance before another hand was already waiting.

Yet Airam, Hermione, and Esther stood apart.

No one approached them.

Not once.

At this point, it was impossible to deny what was happening. They were not being overlooked. They were being avoided purposefully.

Airam looked as though she did not care in the slightest. She stood with her arms crossed, face cool, eyes dark, and gave the impression that the entire hall could choke on its own courtesy for all she cared.

Hermione, however, was furious.

The longer it continued, the sharper her irritation became. She noticed every glance thrown their way, every passing sneer, every low laugh from boys too cowardly to approach and too vulgar to leave them in peace. A few women looked no better. Girls their age whispered behind fans. Young men smirked openly when they thought the sisters were not watching. Others passed by without even attempting discretion, their contempt plain in the way they curved around them as though afraid of contamination.

But the one most affected by all of it was Esther.

"Hic..."

Both Airam and Hermione turned at once.

Esther was crying.

Until now she had only looked wounded, her eyes too bright, her mouth trembling each time another couple passed them by. But now the tears had broken free for real, spilling over her cheeks in helpless drops she could no longer keep in.

"E—Esther..." Hermione said, staring at her in panic. "What are you crying for?"

Esther tried to wipe at her face quickly, but only made herself look smaller and more distressed.

"B—Because..." She managed between breaths, "n—no one wants to dance with us, big sister. Not with you... not with eldest sister..." Another hiccup caught in her throat. "Not with any of us..."

Hermione froze.

Esther crying always undid her far too quickly. Usually she could find words, some reassurance, some half-irritated comfort to patch things together. But now she stood there with nothing ready. What was she supposed to say? That these people did not matter? That their opinion meant nothing? Those words would ring hollow even to her own ears. The cruelty around them was too obvious, too public, too visible to be dismissed with shallow comfort.

"You are going to ruin your face, Esther..." Hermione said at last, reaching up to brush a strand of hair away from her face.

It was a weak thing to say. She knew it the second it left her mouth.

Esther only cried harder.

"I—I’m sorry... so sorry..."

"Why are you apologizing?" Hermione burst out, then bit the words back before the anger in them could strike the wrong target.

She was not angry with Esther.

She was angry with every person around them.

With the boys laughing.

With the girls whispering.

With the adults pretending not to notice.

With the whole beautiful, elegant hall for allowing this humiliation to unfold beneath music and candlelight as if it were simply another proper feature of noble life.

Hermione drew in a breath and forced herself to soften.

"Why are you saying sorry?" She repeated, gentler now.

Esther’s lips trembled.

"B—Because... we worked so hard..." She said, her voice breaking again. "Elana taught us so much... and she said we would do well... and she t-told us to tell her when we returned how the dance went..." She swallowed and pressed a hand shakily against her chest. "And... and eldest sister liked dancing..."

Airam’s eyes widened slightly.

That had caught her off guard more than anything else.

She stepped forward immediately, drew Esther into her arms, and held her with a care that made Esther clutch at her gown at once.

"I do not care about the dance," Airam said quietly.

Esther shook her head against her shoulder, still crying.

"I—I know eldest sister likes dancing..."

Airam’s expression hardened, though not at Esther.

"I do not like dancing with people who make you cry," she said. "I would rather not dance at all."

Her hand moved through Esther’s blonde hair, smoothing it back with a tenderness that looked almost startling on her. She brushed the strands the way Anna-Maria must once have done, with gentle motions.

"But... eldest sister..." Esther’s voice fractured halfway through the words. "We worked so hard..." Her fingers tightened in the fabric at Airam’s side. "W—What are we going to tell Elana? And... Lord Ulrich wanted us to impress everyone..." She sucked in a shaky breath. "But we only caused Lord Ulrich more trouble, didn’t we...?" She said only crying further.

Airam did not answer at once.

She only held Esther closer and continued to stroke her hair.

Because if she opened her mouth too quickly, anger would come out instead. She could already feel it gathering. Thick, bitter, and dangerous. If one more person walked past with that same mocking smile, if one more laugh reached Esther’s ears, Airam did not trust herself to remain still.

And then she felt it.

A shadow falling over them.

Her hand stopped in Esther’s hair.

Airam lifted her gaze.

Ulrich was standing there.

Esther felt his presence too. She stiffened in Airam’s arms and turned her face, still wet with tears, toward him.

Ulrich looked down at her for one long moment.

Then he held out his hand to Esther.