My Step-Daughters Are The Villainesses

After crossing paths with a younger version of the man who would one day become the leader of the Resistance in the novel, Ulrich did not return at once. He wandered through the capital a while longer, using the time to think, then made his way to the apothecary to collect the list he had asked for.

If the Demons truly intended to assassinate Kaliantha during the upcoming event, then they had to be planning their route in already. Security around her would be too tight for a random attempt. The checks at the palace and around the event grounds were far too thorough for that. Ulrich had considered several possibilities since learning of the threat, but the most obvious remained the same: either some of the people involved in the Queen’s protection had already been bought, or Demons had infiltrated the ranks by disguising themselves or replacing real individuals outright.

That meant one thing.

One man among the royal guards being compromised was possible.

Several were more likely.

Ulrich did not believe for a second that they would entrust a plan like this to a single assassin. Even with Zagon’s hints suggesting the number might be limited, one, perhaps two, Ulrich refused to narrow his thinking that much. Killing Kaliantha in the middle of a royal event was not a simple strike. Too many things could go wrong. Too many variables could shift in an instant. If the first attempt failed, there would have to be others placed nearby to salvage it, create confusion, block escape routes, or finish the job before the Queen could be secured.

That was why he had first focused on the guards.

If he could identify the traitors before the event, he could disrupt the attempt before it ever reached Kaliantha. A name alone, however, would not have been enough. Names were useful only if they could be tied to movement, position, and recent changes. Fortunately, the list he received included more than a registry. It also recorded recent reassignments and last-minute adjustments made over the past few days.

That, at least, made it worth something.

By the time Ulrich returned to the mansion, his attention had narrowed entirely to the paper in his hand. He walked through the corridors without lifting his eyes for long, entered his office, closed the door behind him, and crossed straight to the desk. Only after sitting down did he finally let the sheet rest flat before him.

His gaze moved slowly over the names.

Most of them meant nothing to him.

Only one stood out immediately.

Marx Lambert.

Commander of the royal guard.

The man responsible for the security of the entire event.

At first glance, Marx should have been the most suspicious name on the page. Position alone made him dangerous. If the man overseeing the Queen’s protection turned traitor, then the entire structure around her could be shaped into a trap. Yet Ulrich knew enough of the future to dismiss that possibility. Marx Lambert was loyal to the crown. More than that, he had been loyal to Kaliantha herself. After her death, the King had stripped him of his title, and later Marx joined James’s Resistance.

That memory settled the question for Ulrich.

Marx was not the problem.

The problem was everything around him.

The noble court was already rotten. Corruption had dug into it so deeply that many no longer noticed the smell. Kaliantha might already understand that much, but she still did not know how far it spread. She did not know how many hands had already been bought, how many faces smiled in her presence while working against her, or how deeply the Demons had planted themselves inside the kingdom’s structure. Worse, they were still pushing inward. Every year, every month, every small compromise gave them more ground.

Ulrich looked back down at the list.

The most suspicious entries should have been the recent replacements. Men added at the last minute always deserved attention. Yet this plan could easily have been prepared long before the event itself. The celebration had been arranged in advance; anyone with patience and access could have positioned pieces on the board weeks ago. If that were the case, then limiting suspicion to the newest names would be foolish.

Any one of them could be involved.

Every knight on the list had to be treated as a possibility.

Ulrich narrowed his eyes and read through the page again, slower this time, searching for a pattern that refused to appear. A repeated post. A rotation that made no sense. A transfer that placed the same men too close to the Queen’s route. Something. Anything.

Nothing stood out clearly enough.

The list gave him shape, but not substance.

It was not useless.

It simply was not enough on its own.

Ulrich leaned back a fraction, his fingers resting against the edge of the paper. He did not know these men personally, but Marx did. Marx knew their histories, their habits, their strengths, their weaknesses, and perhaps the small irregularities that would look meaningless to an outsider. If Ulrich could place this in front of him and force his attention in the right direction, Marx might see what he could not.

The difficulty was obvious.

To do that, Ulrich would need a reason.

He would need to speak of a possible assassination.

And if he spoke too suddenly, too directly, then Marx would not be the only one to start asking how Ulrich knew enough to suspect such a thing in the first place.

That was the danger of every move he made now.

Concern for the Queen was natural. Ulrich showing interest in her safety was expected, though also very strange. But Ulrich arriving with claims of hidden assassins inside the guard, backed by names, schedules, and private warnings, would draw exactly the sort of attention he could not afford. If he said he uncovered it through research, it would sound convenient. If he said informants told him, it would invite questions about what kind of informants he had access to. Every path toward the truth threatened to expose the web he had built around himself.

And that web remained his greatest weapon.

His double cover, one face turned toward Skargardia, another toward the Demons, was dangerous enough to get him killed the moment either side saw too much. Still, it gave him room no one else possessed. It let him stand in the narrow space between forces that believed they could use him, while he watched, listened, and waited for the chance to get what he wanted.

Until he destroyed the Demons’ plan to resurrect the Demon God, he could not afford to step away from that line.

Ulrich lowered his eyes to the list once more, read Marx Lambert’s name again.

"That old fool will never believe me..." Ulrich muttered under his breath, his voice small enough to vanish into the stillness of the office.

Even so, he could not afford to do nothing.

Relying on the novel’s original sequence of events would be stupidity. In the story, Kaliantha was not supposed to die now. Her death came later, at a point where the damage had already spread far enough to poison everything around it. That fact should have been reassuring. Instead, it only made Ulrich more cautious. Too much had already changed. He had interfered too often, moved too many pieces, and bent too many outcomes for the old script to remain trustworthy. Counting on canon now would be little different from walking blindfolded across a cliff edge and calling it strategy.

If Kaliantha died here, it would be a complete failure on his part.

She was too important to lose.

More than that, she could become even more important once the real story began. If she lived long enough to reach that point, if she remained on the board when the main cast finally stepped into motion, then the balance of the entire future could shift. Her survival was not a minor gain. It was one of the few changes that could alter the shape of the conflict itself.

Ulrich’s fingers tapped once against the arm of his chair and went still.

He had already failed once.

Anna-Maria.

The memory remained unpleasantly vivid. He had been too confident then.

He would not make that mistake again.

This time, he would be thorough.

He would prepare for what was coming before it had the chance to take form. Three years remained before the true beginning of the story. Three years to set the field properly. Three years to gather the right people, push them into the right positions, and remove what could not be allowed to survive.

He had already secured Anna-Maria’s daughters, if not entirely, then enough. They were in his reach. They trusted him to different degrees, depended on him in different ways, and that alone made them safer than they would have been otherwise. On the side of the protagonists, that was his cleanest success so far.

He still needed Kaliantha’s trust.

Ceres’ as well.

He was close there. Not close enough to relax, but close enough to see the shape of it.

Beyond them remained the others, the true main characters, the figures around whom the future would eventually turn. Princess Camellia. The rest of that group. The ones who, in the original story, would stumble into the truth half-blind, survive by luck as often as skill, and only much later become worthy of the role history forced onto them. They were meant to grow, yes. They were meant to struggle, fail, learn, and sharpen themselves against disaster. But that process took time, and time was the one thing Ulrich had no intention of wasting.

He would not let them drift into strength at the pace the original story demanded.

He would accelerate it.

He leaned back in his seat and stared at the ceiling. His thoughts had already turned elsewhere.

The sisters.

That remained one of the more delicate pieces on the board.

He intended to enroll them in Arcadia when the time came. It was the most sensible route. If things unfolded properly, the three of them could enter the same sphere as the future protagonists, fight beside them, and help bring down the Demons and whatever else rose with them. Their strength, their blood, their instincts, their potential, none of it should be wasted in obscurity. Keeping them hidden forever would only weaken his position later.

Still, there were risks.

The plan could backfire.

Bringing them into Arcadia would expose them to variables he could not fully control. New bonds. New influences. New loyalties. The sisters were attached to each other now with a strength few people would understand, but time, distance, ambition, resentment, affection, jealousy, any of those could alter the shape of that bond. Put them near the protagonists too early, and they might be drawn in directions Ulrich had not prepared for. Put them in danger too soon, and growth could turn into loss. Even success would come with complications.

Even so, he did not believe the decision itself was wrong.

At the very least, he would be there.

He had been there for the last two years, shaping them carefully, step by step, and the results were obvious. Hermione had learned to sharpen herself instead of lashing out blindly. Esther had gained confidence, education, and softness without becoming weak. Airam remained the most difficult to steer, but even she had deepened in useful ways. She watched more and thought more. Thought before acting, sometimes. For Airam, that was an improvement.

Ulrich allowed himself the smallest trace of satisfaction.

He had done well with them.

He was certain of that much.

If their mother could see them now, she would have no reason to despair. They were fed, clothed, educated, and protected. They had lived in comfort instead of fear. Whatever else might be said of Ulrich’s motives, whatever uglier calculations ran beneath them, he had not treated the girls poorly. On that point, no accusation would hold.

His gaze stayed fixed on the ceiling.

He wondered, for a moment, what Anna-Maria would think if she could see them now.

Would she be relieved?

Would she hate him for the reasons he had taken them in, then forgive him for the life he had given them after?

Or would she understand from the beginning that gratitude had never been the whole of it, but that his care had been real anyway?

"Would you not, Anna-Maria?" He mumbled.

The question had barely left his mouth when a muffled sound struck from beneath the desk.

Not loud.

Just enough.

A small bump, as if someone had shifted too quickly and knocked wood with a knee or shoulder.

Ulrich’s expression did not change at once.

Slowly, very slowly, he lowered his gaze from the ceiling to the shadowed space beneath the desk.

There, tucked back into the dark, was a small figure crouched so tightly that her skirts had bunched around her legs. Ruby red eyes stared back at him, wide with panic and humiliation both. Porcelain cheeks that usually carried themselves with far more pride had turned a furious shade of red.

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