My Step-Daughters Are The Villainesses

"Would you stop staring at my chest, Lord Rubenhart?"

Ulrich’s attention returned to Kaliantha.

She looked up at him with a frosty stare. The dance had not slowed, and she did not miss a single step, but one brow had lifted in clear disapproval.

"I was looking at the necklace," Ulrich said quickly.

He hoped she had not truly believed he had been standing there openly admiring her chest in the middle of the ballroom.

"I am aware," Kaliantha replied, as expected.

Ulrich wondered for a moment if she had just teased him or something to get a flustered reaction out of him, but he quickly discarded that idea.

"It is unusual," he said instead.

"It is a family heirloom."

"An important one, I assume."

Kaliantha’s expression altered at once.

The faint amusement in her eyes did not vanish, but caution came beneath it. Her fingers remained within his, and she followed the next rapid step without error, yet her gaze had become more guarded.

"It is," she said slowly.

Ulrich did not press her.

He could not explain why the pendant had caught his attention. He could not ask whether it truly was the Phoenix Heart without revealing knowledge no one should possess. And with the masked musician still crouched beside the black box, with danger close enough that every second mattered, he had no intention of opening another question between them.

He kept his gaze on her face.

Exactly where Kaliantha had told him to keep it.

"My apologies, Your Majesty," Ulrich said.

"Do not make me regret agreeing to this dance."

Ulrich’s eyes shifted slightly.

"Does that mean Your Majesty does not regret accepting my request so far?"

The question escaped before he could consider it.

He had assumed Kaliantha agreed to dance only because she wished to understand his intentions. She had gained very little from him. Ulrich had answered her questions with partial truths, evasions, and promises that gave her no clear reason to trust him.

He expected disappointment.

Perhaps irritation.

But Kaliantha did not look disappointed.

Instead, she pulled their joined hands outward in a broad sweep.

Ulrich followed the motion at once.

Their arms extended between them as they turned around the floor, their steps cutting through the quickened melody.

"It seems so," Kaliantha answered.

For one brief moment, Ulrich simply looked at her.

The ballroom receded.

His attention narrowed to Kaliantha’s face.

He had seen her many times.

He had watched her from a distance in court. He had stood before her throne. He had spoken with her in private corridors and shadowed chambers, had seen her carry herself with a queen’s composure beside Antonias, her expression always controlled no matter what insult or burden came before her.

But there was a softness in her now that he rarely saw.

Kaliantha looked upward as she followed him through another turn. The high white ceiling rose over them, bright with painted scenes from Skargardia’s history. Above that, chandeliers burned with mana stones, their light falling over the gathered nobles in gold and white.

"Perhaps," she said, "I should thank you for allowing me to forget the shame from earlier, if only for a moment."

Ulrich knew she spoke of Antonias.

Of his drunken return. His accusations. His shameless announcement that he had left the ballroom alone with Louise. The hand he had raised against Ulrich. The hand he had used to shove Kaliantha aside.

The King had made her daughter’s celebration into a spectacle.

And Kaliantha, despite all the control she had shown afterward, had carried the humiliation with her onto the dance floor.

"Then I assume we are not stopping anytime soon," Ulrich replied.

The words came from him unconsciously.

He had not meant to say them.

For an instant, he wondered whether he had gone too far. Kaliantha was still the Queen. She could return to the dais whenever she wished, and he had already taken enough liberties by asking her to dance in the first place.

But Kaliantha turned her mismatched eyes back to him.

The corner of her lips lifted.

"You are a strange man, Ulrich Van Rubenhart."

Ulrich said nothing.

Yet the faintest trace of a smile reached his own mouth.

It was so slight that no one beyond Kaliantha could have noticed it. The same was true of hers. Their expressions lasted only a moment, visible only because they stood close enough to see what the rest of the ballroom could not.

A quiet understanding passed between them.

They were enjoying this the slightest bit.

The dance. The distance it gave them from the court. The strange honesty that had slipped into their conversation despite everything Ulrich refused to tell her.

For a few seconds, they existed within their own small world at the center of the ballroom.

Then the chandelier above them shattered.

The sound tore through the music.

A sharp crack rang from the enchanted frame overhead. One of the mana stones burst apart, showering white sparks down from the ceiling. The musicians stopped mid-note. Gasps rose from the nobles as another stone flickered, its light turning harsh and unstable.

Ulrich’s expression changed.

His eyes narrowed.

It had begun.

He released Kaliantha’s waist for the briefest instant and lifted his right hand.

Crimson fire spread over his palm.

It did not blaze wildly. It coiled around his fingers in thin strands, red light slipping across his skin before vanishing beneath the cuff of his sleeve. The spell he had planted throughout the ballroom answered him at once.

A crackling sound raced across the ceiling.

Mana surged through the stonework like lightning beneath ice.

Then every enchanted lamp in the ballroom shattered.

The chandeliers went dark in a single, violent chain reaction. Mana stones burst one after another, their fragments scattering downward in glittering flashes before the room fell into darkness.

Screams broke from the crowd.

The sudden loss of light swallowed the ballroom so completely that several nobles stumbled where they stood.

Ulrich had expected this possibility.

A sudden darkness was the easiest way for an assassin to move.

It broke formations. It blinded guards. It made nobles panic and press together, creating confusion large enough for a blade, a spell, or a hidden enemy to disappear within.

So Ulrich had prepared for it.

Earlier that evening, when he had walked through the ballroom with Astrid, he had quietly spread thin lines of spells through the ceiling’s enchantments. The spell had been his own design, woven so carefully into the existing magical structure that even a skilled mage would struggle to notice it afterward.

It left no obvious trace.

It did not destroy the chandeliers themselves.

It only gave him control over the mana stones.

If the assassin tried to use darkness, Ulrich would make certain darkness belonged to no one.

The demons would not know whether the stones had shattered because of their own plan, because of a failure in the Keep’s enchantments, or because someone else had acted first.

The speed of the reaction stunned everyone.

Including, Ulrich hoped, the demons.

The first darkness lasted less than a breath.

It happened too soon.

Or rather, Ulrich had triggered the darkness too soon.

The chain reaction across the chandeliers had forced the demons to act before they were fully prepared. Whatever moment they had been waiting for, the perfect opening, the clean line of sight, the instant when Kaliantha stood exposed without suspicion, had been taken from them.

They could no longer wait.

Panic spread through the ballroom almost immediately.

The guests had been standing in silence only moments before, caught in the spectacle of the Queen and Count dancing at the center of the floor. Now, with the lights gone and darkness swallowing the hall, nobles reached blindly for one another. Skirts dragged across the marble. Men called for their wives and children. Servants stumbled into guests they could not see. Someone near the western wall shouted for the guards, while another voice demanded to know whether the mana stones had exploded.

Whispers rose everywhere.

"Where is the Queen?"

"Find the Prince!"

"Do not move—"

"There is something wrong with the mana—"

The darkness was not complete. The broken mana stones still gave off faint, dying sparks from the chandeliers above, and distant torchlight crept in from the open corridor doors. But it was enough to make the wide ballroom unfamiliar. Faces disappeared. Pillars became shadows. The crowded hall broke into frightened fragments of sound and movement.

For the demons, it was supposed to be an advantage.

For Ulrich, it was an opportunity.

There was still a chance that the sudden destruction of the chandeliers could cause unforeseen problems. The mana contained within the stones might react unpredictably. Some hidden enchantment within the Keep could fail. The crowd itself could become dangerous if panic grew beyond control.

But the longer the darkness lasted, the worse it became for the demons.

They had come prepared to strike from confusion.

Ulrich had given them confusion.

Now he intended to make them reveal themselves inside it.

Kaliantha felt his hold tighten around her.

The pace of their dance had slowed when the chandeliers burst. Her body had tensed at once, caught between surprise and the instinct to pull away from the sudden closeness of Ulrich’s arm around her waist.

Yet Ulrich did not stop moving.

He continued guiding her.

Not through the formal rhythm they had followed moments before, but through a smaller, controlled pattern. One step. A turn. Another step, carefully placed across the marble. His movements kept them from becoming still targets in the middle of the floor.

Kaliantha lifted her gaze.

In the darkness, she could barely make out Ulrich’s face.

But his eyes were visible.

Deep red, faintly catching what little light remained.

"Hold on and follow my rhythm, Your Majesty," Ulrich said.

His voice was small and serious.

Kaliantha did not argue.

Under other circumstances, she would have demanded an explanation. But something in his tone stopped her before the words could leave her mouth.

Ulrich did not make requests like this without reason.

He did not sound afraid either.

His voice remained controlled, but Kaliantha could feel the readiness in his body. The strong placement of his hand at her waist. The way he positioned himself slightly in front of her even as they moved. The tension held beneath the calm.

There was danger.

Kaliantha understood that much.

So she followed.

Ulrich drew her closer.

Kaliantha flinched faintly as her body came fully against his. One arm wrapped around her back, securing her against him while his other hand still held hers. The closeness was improper enough that, in any other situation, it would have given the watching court a new scandal to whisper about for weeks.

There was no court now.

Only darkness.

Ulrich turned slightly, moving Kaliantha with him.

His gaze passed over his shoulder.

Then he saw them.

The masked musician had moved.

The figure rushed through the shadows with a speed no ordinary musician should have possessed, their dark clothes blending into the dim hall. Yet their half-mask made concealment impossible. Thin lines carved across its pale surface glowed white in the darkness, casting a cold light over the lower half of their face.

Ulrich’s eyes narrowed.

’So that was why he wore the mask.’

It had never been decoration.

At first, he had assumed the light was meant to help the assassin see through the darkness. That was possible. But as he watched the glowing lines pulse more brightly, he understood that the purpose was more deliberate.

The mask was a signal.

A beacon.

The assassin did not need the light for themselves.

Other demons likely needed it.

They needed a clear marker in the darkness. A point from which to judge the Queen’s position, the distance between her and the surrounding crowd, and the direction from which they could strike without warning.

The masked musician was telling them where Kaliantha was.

Ulrich’s grip around her back tightened.

There were other assassins in the ballroom.

And they were already moving.