My Step-Daughters Are The Villainesses

Ulrich needed a reason to stand beside Kaliantha when the assassin moved.

Finding one was not easy.

The obvious answer was to approach the Queen, request a private audience, and tell her he had something important to discuss. Yet that would accomplish nothing. A sudden private conversation between Count Rubenhart and the Queen would draw attention. The guards would watch him. The musicians would notice. Any demon hidden in the ballroom would notice.

The masked violinist might abandon the plan. He might leave through the servants’ corridors, destroy the weapon in his case, or choose another opening Ulrich had not considered. The demons had already prepared more than one layer of infiltration. Once they knew their assassin was exposed, the danger would become harder to locate.

No.

The plan had to proceed.

Ulrich only needed to be present when it did.

If the attack happened at the dance, the answer was obvious enough to irritate him.

He would dance with Kaliantha.

The thought alone made him look down at the wineglass in his hand.

It was absurd.

A count did not cross the ballroom, stand before the Queen of Skargardia, and ask her for a dance. Not during her daughter’s coming-of-age celebration. Not while the King sat beside her. Not while the Crown Prince waited to accompany his mother onto the floor as part of the ceremony.

The idea would be taken as disrespect before anyone even considered the deeper problem.

Only the King had a natural right to claim Kaliantha’s hand. The Crown Prince could do so in the formal arrangement planned for the evening. Perhaps a close relative of the royal family might receive such an honor at another celebration. Ulrich was neither.

He was an invited noble with a reputation for arrogance, a tense relationship with the Crown Prince, and too much attention already fixed upon him after the dance with the three sisters.

Asking would create a scandal.

Begging would be worse.

Ulrich did not beg.

He had asked Airam, Hermione, and Esther to dance earlier, but that had been different. They were his wards. He knew them. He did not consider them women in the way the court considered Kaliantha, and asking them had served a purpose beyond the dance itself. He had wanted to see how each of them reacted under the eyes of the nobles. He had wanted them to experience the ballroom without being trapped against a wall, treated as strange girls who ought to remain quiet and grateful for an invitation.

Kaliantha was the Queen.

Even considering the request made chills run down the back of Ulrich’s neck. He disliked the feeling. Embarrassment was useless, and it was even more useless now, when someone was preparing to murder her.

Still, the truth remained.

No place in the ballroom would bring him closer to Kaliantha than the dance floor.

If the assassin rushed them with a weapon, Ulrich could move first. He could intercept the man before the guards understood what they were seeing. He could kill the attacker in front of everyone and call it self-defense.

A stranger with a weapon charging the Queen and the count beside her did not require a complicated explanation.

Zagon could complain afterward.

Ulrich would listen to whatever complaint the demon had prepared, look him in the eye, and explain that the arrangement had been poorly managed. If Zagon wanted Ulrich to stand aside during an assassination attempt, he should have informed him of the details rather than giving him a vague warning and expecting obedience.

The fault would belong to Zagon.

Ulrich was not a servant who could be handed half an order and blamed for its consequences.

That was the real problem with the demon’s plan.

Zagon had told him enough to invite suspicion but not enough to give Ulrich a choice. Kaliantha would be assassinated tonight. The event was already in motion. Ulrich had been expected to hear that and remain still.

It had been a loyalty test.

If he warned the Queen, the palace guards, or the King, the assassination would be cancelled. The demons would know immediately that Ulrich had chosen the royal family over them. Every promise he had made would become worthless.

Zagon had built the test neatly.

Too neatly.

He had assumed Ulrich would see only two choices: betray the demons openly, or permit the Queen to die.

He had underestimated him.

Ulrich’s fingers tightened around the stem of the wineglass. The glass did not crack, but the pressure left his hand sore.

Zagon had treated him like an obedient piece placed on a board by someone else.

His pride had already been irritated by the attempt to use him. Now, as he watched the masked man playing near the dais, irritation became something more personal.

Ulrich could not allow the attack to succeed.

He could not openly prevent it, either.

That left the dance.

He looked toward the royal platform again.

The King remained beside Kaliantha. Albert stood to their right, speaking with several military officers, though his attention kept straying toward the dance floor. He knew the next ceremonial dance would involve him. The Queen would likely take his hand while the King led Camellia.

A fitting arrangement for the crowd.

Parents with their children.

The royal family celebrated in full view of the court.

Ulrich needed to break that arrangement without making it look like he had planned to.

He tapped one finger against the bowl of his glass while the ballroom moved around him.

He watched nothing in particular.

He saw all of it without truly looking at any of it.

If he intended to dance with Kaliantha, the first problem was obvious.

He needed to remove the person meant to dance with her.

Albert.

Or the King.

Removing them did not mean killing them. That would create an entirely different problem, one too large to contain within a royal ballroom. It only meant preventing one of them from reaching the dance floor at the expected time. A delay. A distraction. A reason their absence seemed reasonable enough that the arrangement would be altered.

If Albert was removed, Kaliantha would have no partner.

If Antonias was removed, Camellia would have no partner. Kaliantha would almost certainly tell Albert to dance with his sister instead, leaving herself without anyone.

Either path led to the same question.

Would Kaliantha accept Ulrich’s hand?

He could imagine the moment too easily. Albert or Antonias absent for some convenient reason. The court watching. Ulrich stepping forward and offering to replace the missing partner.

It would sound polite.

Generous, even.

It might even appear natural to the guests. Count Rubenhart would save the royal family from an awkward pause at Camellia’s celebration. He would prevent gossip. He would keep the music from stopping.

Yet Kaliantha would see through him.

She had spent two years observing Ulrich, just as he had observed her. The Queen understood people better than most nobles did. She knew when a person spoke from obligation, when they wanted favor, and when they had entered a room with a purpose already decided.

If Ulrich offered his hand in that moment, she would ask why.

No, she would not ask aloud. She would look at him once, understand that he had arranged something, and refuse with enough courtesy to leave him unable to object.

Kaliantha resembled him in that way.

She did not tolerate being maneuvered.

Ulrich drank from the glass. The wine was sweeter than the previous one, with too much fruit mixed into it. He lowered it again and resumed tapping the rim with his finger.

There had to be another way.

He considered the King first.

Antonias had left the throne only twice since the celebration began: once to greet the foreign envoys near the entrance, and once to speak privately with a minister at the side of the dais. He did not move alone. A servant, guard, or official trailed near him at all times. Creating a distraction large enough to keep him from Camellia’s dance would require involving too many people.

If Ulrich antagonized him, the King would likely remain at the dais simply to avoid granting Ulrich the satisfaction of a reaction.

If Ulrich sent word of a problem in another part of the palace, Antonias might dispatch a guard or an official rather than go himself.

If he arranged for the King to become ill, the royal physician would be called, the Queen would leave with her husband, and the dance would be delayed if not cancelled entirely.

Antonias was the wrong choice.

Albert was easier.

The Crown Prince was already angry. Ulrich had seen it in the way Albert’s eyes moved toward him whenever their paths crossed. The prince had endured the humiliation of being challenged in front of the court, had watched Ulrich dance with his wards while the noble ladies discussed it behind their fans, and had received no chance to reclaim his dignity since.

Albert wanted an excuse.

Ulrich could give him one in that case.

The problem was not provoking Albert. That would take only a sentence from him to be true.

The problem was also making the result useful.

In the end, even Albert seemed difficult.

The man had a misplaced ego and pride, but he wasn’t stupid either. He wouldn’t miss the dance for anything, knowing how very badly Kaliantha would take that.

Five long minutes passed as Ulrich continued to tap his glass before his index finger stopped suddenly.

His lips imperceptibly lifted.

Then, setting the half-finished glass on the nearest tray, he walked toward Louise.