My Step-Daughters Are The Villainesses

The dance between Ulrich and Airam continued with a smoothness that would have looked almost elegant to anyone watching from the edges of the ballroom.

Only the two of them knew how much resistance still ran beneath it.

Despite the sharpness of their earlier exchange, despite Airam telling him plainly that she would never trust him and never become as open toward him as Esther or Hermione, she still kept to her role well enough. She followed when she had to, adjusted when the steps demanded it, and hid the strain of their conversation behind a composure most adults in the room would have struggled to maintain.

Ulrich did not care much for her words.

Airam had begun with far worse.

When he first took the sisters in, she had looked at him with open hostility, and he could hardly fault her for it. He had saved them from slavery, yes, but he had also been present when her village was destroyed. He had come with the Crown Prince. His knights had ridden there. Whether he had acted under orders or not changed very little from the view of a girl watching her life burn apart around her.

It was difficult for her not to resent him when he had arrived alongside the danger itself.

The only reason her hatred had ever remained restrained was because he had tried to save them.

Not only the sisters.

Their mother as well.

That fact alone had complicated everything from the beginning.

Over the last two years, however, the hard antagonism Airam had carried toward him had become more difficult to maintain unchanged, especially after the incident with Libra. It had not turned into something akin to trust. It had not turned into affection. But it had shifted into something colder and quieter, a more neutral distance lined with doubt rather than outright rejection.

Because Ulrich remained unreadable.

She could never understand what he truly wanted.

Hermione and Esther did not understand him either, not fully, but unlike Airam, both of them had already stopped clawing after those answers. Esther had chosen trust. Hermione had chosen, against her own pride, to pay more attention to what he did than to what she feared he intended. They had started looking at the better parts of him first.

That was a kinder way to live.

Perhaps even a wiser one.

But Airam could not do it.

It went against her nature as the eldest sister, her protective and distrustful self.

Her gaze lifted to him again as they turned through the middle of the floor.

He was looking elsewhere.

Not at her.

Not at their steps.

Around them.

He had done it before. Once with Esther. Again with Hermione. And now with her. Brief glances, sliding toward the edges of the ballroom before returning as if nothing had happened. Most people would not have noticed. Airam did.

She remembered the carriage as well.

The tension in him then.

The way he had sat too still.

"Are we in danger?" She asked bluntly.

The question came out immediately, without hesitation, the moment the scattered pieces joined in her mind.

Ulrich lowered his gaze to her, and that alone was answer enough.

He looked mildly surprised.

So he had not expected her to catch on so quickly.

"We are in danger," Airam repeated, watching the slight crease that touched his brow before he smoothed it away.

Her grip tightened at once, around his hand and at his side, and when he tried to draw her through the next turn, she resisted.

Ulrich ignored it.

He pulled her forward anyway.

The force of it nearly sent her off balance. Her foot slipped half a pace wrong, and for one instant she felt herself pitching into him. But Airam recovered before anyone around them could notice and lifted a glare to his face.

"You are not in danger," Ulrich said quietly.

The answer only made her angrier.

He might have meant it as reassurance, but it sounded like dismissal.

Ulrich’s thoughts had already moved elsewhere. The strange man he had marked earlier still lingered in the back of his mind, but he did not believe that particular thread pointed toward the sisters. There was something else in motion here. The real threat tonight was still the one he had expected from the beginning.

The demons.

They would not aim for the girls.

They would aim for Kaliantha.

Collateral damage was possible, yes. A desperate assassin might strike through anyone in the way. And the lower castes of demons sent to die or be captured would not necessarily know enough about him to avoid mistakes. Even so, the purpose of the attempt would remain the same.

The sisters were not the target.

"If something is going to happen, I want to know," Airam said, pressing again.

Ulrich gave no answer.

He simply drew her into the next step.

This time, to his surprise, Airam came willingly.

Too willingly.

He felt it quickly. Instead of bracing against the pull, she let herself be guided in without resistance, only to change her footing at the last instant and step forward herself, forcing his body to shift with hers if he wanted to avoid breaking the line of the dance.

Ulrich’s eyes widened slightly.

For a brief moment, Airam had taken the lead.

Not openly enough for the room to notice.

But enough for him.

He narrowed his eyes at her.

He answered by tightening his hold and steering her sharply into the next turn. Airam resisted again, much more this time, her steps angled with clear intent. She was testing the structure of the dance itself, looking for every place where his lead depended on her cooperation.

She found one.

Then another.

Ulrich found them first and closed them before she could do much with either.

"What are you doing?" He asked with a warning tone.

Airam kept her face cold. "You are hiding things."

"I am preventing you from doing something stupid."

"I am asking to be told what concerns me."

"It does not concern you."

Her stare sharpened.

"Lies."

Ulrich guided her past another couple, his posture unchanged, his expression still calm enough that anyone looking at them would think they were merely focused on the speed of the dance. Only the pressure of his hand at her waist gave away how firm his restraint had become.

"I am not lying."

"You are deciding for me."

"Yes."

That answer made Airam’s mouth tighten.

For the next few beats she said nothing, but she changed her approach. Instead of fighting each pull, she began listening to the sequence of his movements, counting them, learning them. Once. Twice. On the third shift, she anticipated the direction before he gave it and stepped into the line first, forcing him to adjust half a beat to keep the movement clean.

Ulrich noticed immediately.

He looked down at her.

Airam met his gaze without the slightest embarrassment.

Ulrich had to give her that much.

She was stubborn, yes, but that was not the part that struck him most.

What truly caught his attention was what she had just done.

She had not merely resisted his lead out of childish rebellion. She had read the sequence of his movements, anticipated where the next step would fall, and inserted herself at exactly the right point so that he had been forced to adjust if he wanted the dance to remain clean. That was not the sort of thing a beginner stumbled into by chance. It required timing, balance, and a sharp sense for how a partner’s body moved before the step fully happened.

It was skill.

Real skill.

And Airam had displayed it more than once now.

Ulrich knew enough about dance to understand exactly how strange that was. What she was doing was not the work of someone who had spent a pleasant month learning formal steps under Elana’s guidance. It was the sort of instinct more experienced dancers spent years refining, the kind of understanding that usually came only after countless repetitions and enough mistakes to sharpen judgment into habit.

Yet Airam had done it to him.

Repeatedly.

He had already seen, during Elana’s lessons, that she stood apart from her sisters in this area. Hermione learned quickly, but she learned through observation, thought, and correction. Esther followed with softness and trust. Airam was different. She moved as if her body understood patterns before her mind bothered to name them. Her footwork had been cleaner. Her reactions faster. Her sense of balance surer.

Hermione was a genius who learned.

Airam was a genius who felt.

Unfortunately for her, Ulrich was both.

And what she had managed a few times now had not irritated him in the way it might have irritated another man. If anything, it stirred something rare in him.

A feeling of challenge.

Ulrich was a man of pride after all.

And she was trying to force him to follow.

Fine.

Then he would answer her in kind and show her the difference between reading steps and commanding them.

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