My Step-Daughters Are The Villainesses

When the physicians arrived, they immediately began examining both Kaliantha and Ulrich.

Kaliantha had told them, more than once, that she was unharmed and that their attention should be given to Count Rubenhart. It made no difference.

She was the Queen.

She had been at the center of a demonic assassination attempt. Five demons had crossed the floor toward her with blades in hand, and a barrier had sealed her away from her guards. No royal physician would accept her word alone after witnessing the blood on her gown and the bodies still lying across the marble.

"Your Majesty, please remain seated," one of the women said.

Kaliantha sat in a high-backed chair brought from the edge of the ballroom. Her posture remained straight, though exhaustion had begun to show in the faint paleness beneath her eyes. The physicians moved around her with care, examining her wrists, arms, throat, and the places where blood had stained her gown.

Camellia stood close beside her mother.

She had not let go of Kaliantha’s arm since reaching her after the barrier broke. Her fingers remained around her mother’s sleeve, tight enough to crease the fabric. Every time a physician moved closer with a cloth, a vial, or a glowing diagnostic rune, Camellia watched with a worried expression, as though she expected them to discover a wound Kaliantha had somehow failed to feel.

"I am all right, Camellia," Kaliantha said quietly.

Camellia did not release her.

"I know," she replied, though her voice did not sound convinced. "I only..."

She stopped.

Her eyes moved toward the dead demons again.

The bloodied floor lay only a short distance away, though the guards had formed a line to keep the nobles and royal family from approaching it. The demons’ bodies had been covered partially with dark cloth, but their boots, hands, broken masks, and the spreading stains of dark red blood remained visible beneath the harsh light spells floating above the ballroom.

Albert stood several paces from them.

He had not said much since the barrier shattered.

His face was white. His gaze remained fixed upon the dead assassins as if he could not stop looking. This was the first time he had seen demons so close. Stories made them seem monstrous, beasts with horns, claws, and faces too twisted to mistake for anything human.

The bodies on the floor did not look like that.

They looked almost human.

Their hands had five fingers. Their clothes had been cut and stitched for human bodies. One had dark hair visible beneath the broken edge of a mask. Another’s face, now partly exposed, appeared young enough that Albert might have passed him in a corridor without thinking twice.

That was what made them worse.

They had walked into Skargardian Keep disguised as musician and guests.

They had stood among the court.

They may have bowed to the Queen before trying to kill her.

Albert swallowed and looked away, but his eyes returned to the bodies after only a moment.

Across the ballroom, Commander Marx Lambert had taken control of the hall.

He had not allowed the guests to leave.

The nobles had expected to be dismissed after the barrier broke. Some had already begun gathering their children and searching for servants, desperate to escape the blood-stained ballroom and return to the safety of their home.

Marx had stopped them.

"No one leaves," he had ordered.

The command had spread across the hall with the force of a closed gate.

Several dozen knights entered through the doors in disciplined lines. Their armor reflected the floating orbs of white light. Some carried drawn swords. Others held small enchanted stones or thin silver instruments meant to expose concealed mana, disguised forms, and demonic traces.

The ballroom doors were shut.

The gathered nobles were moved toward the far end of the hall, away from the Queen and her children. Guards stood between them and the bloodied dance floor. Men and women waited in tense, offended silence while the knights formed separate lines and began inspecting each guest one by one.

No one liked it.

A lord protested that he had served Skargardia for thirty years. A noblewoman demanded to know whether Marx truly meant to search her before her peers. Another man complained that his children were frightened.

Marx did not care.

Five demons had entered the Keep.

Not merely the capital.

Not merely the palace grounds.

They had entered the royal ballroom during a gathering that included the Queen, the heir, the princess, nearly every important noble household in the kingdom, and the officers responsible for the realm’s security.

No title made a person exempt now.

The male knights inspected the men. Female knights examined the women. Every guest was required to pass beneath a hand-held mana stone, which changed color at the presence of concealed demonic energy. They checked sleeves, jewelry, shoes, hair ornaments, and the false masks some guests had worn during the celebration.

No one passed to the other side of the hall until they had been cleared.

The whispered outrage did not stop.

But it stayed quiet.

No one wanted to draw Marx Lambert’s attention while his face looked like that.

"Commander."

One of the knights approached Marx from the edge of the musicians’ platform.

He pointed toward the black instrument case still lying open on the floor.

The box had been abandoned when the masked musician rushed toward the barrier. Its dark wood had been worked to resemble an ordinary case for a stringed instrument. From a distance, it could have belonged to any performer invited for the royal celebration.

Up close, it was wrong.

Runes had been carved into the interior panels.

Some were faint and nearly invisible beneath dried lacquer. Others were darker, their lines uneven and angular in a way Marx had never seen within any human spellwork. Strange symbols had been pressed into the underside of the lid, layered over one another until they formed a dense and unsettling pattern.

The runes appeared inactive now.

That did not make them less threatening.

"Commander," the knight said again, quieter this time, "we found the source of the spell."

Marx walked toward the box.

His boots crossed the marble without hurry, though every movement in him had become stiff. He stared down into the open case, studying the runes with narrowed eyes.

He understood enough magic to recognize the scale of what had happened.

The barrier had not been summoned by an ordinary mage in the moment. It had been prepared. Hidden. Anchored somewhere within the ballroom before the celebration began. The black box had served as the trigger, or perhaps the final piece needed to activate the structure.

The thought made his stomach lurch.

The demons had entered too easily.

They had known the royal traditions.

They had known where Kaliantha would dance.

They had known where the guards would stand.

They had known that a barrier could be placed around the center of the ballroom without immediately being detected.

There were only a few possibilities.

A traitor had helped them.

Or a demon had worn a human face long enough to learn the Keep from within.

Someone close to the throne, maybe close to the Crown itself...

"Send it to the royal mages," Marx ordered. "Have every rune copied before anyone attempts to touch or dispel it. I want a full examination."

"Yes, Commander."

"And double the guards around the mages’ chambers. No one works alone with that thing."

The knight bowed and signaled to two others.

They approached the case carefully. One laid a warded cloth over the runes, while the other used a pair of silver tongs to close the lid without placing his hands directly on the wood. Together, they lifted it from the floor and carried it away.

Marx watched until it disappeared through the guarded doors.

Then he turned.

His eyes found Ulrich.

Marx remembered what Ulrich had asked earlier that evening.

Questions about security.

Questions spoken before the dance began.

Then, the moment Ulrich took Kaliantha onto the floor, the demons had struck.

It was suspicious.

It would have been impossible not to consider it.

Ulrich had seemed alert long before anyone else recognized danger. He had maneuvered the Queen away from the dais, watched the musicians, and remained positioned between Kaliantha and the attacker even before the barrier sealed them inside.

How had he known?

Yet the Commander could not allow suspicion to blind him to what he had witnessed.

Ulrich had stayed inside the barrier.

He had not fled.

He had not used the chaos to disappear or save himself.

He had held the Queen in his arms while five demons attacked them. He had taken cuts meant for her. He had stood between Kaliantha and every blade. And when the barrier broke, the Queen was uninjured.

Ulrich had been the one bleeding.

If the Count had known of the plan, then he had placed his own life on the line to stop it.

If he had not known, then he had noticed a threat that Marx Lambert, Commander of Skargardia’s royal knights, had missed.

Neither possibility made Marx feel better.

The safety of the Keep was his responsibility.

The Queen’s safety was his responsibility.

Tonight, Count Rubenhart had done what Marx and his knights had failed to do.

The shame of it sat heavily in his chest.

Marx looked once more at the five dead demons.

Then at Ulrich.

He began walking toward him.