My Step-Daughters Are The Villainesses

A visibly upset Astrid led the three sisters toward the gathering of younger nobles.

Hermione glanced sideways at Airam, only to find her looking completely unbothered. It was almost irritating in itself. Should Hermione be relieved that Airam had not snapped outright and said something truly reckless? She had chosen a calmer approach, yes, but that calmness had only made her words cut deeper. There was something uniquely irritating about the way Airam dismantled people without ever raising her voice, using cold logic and plain truth as if that somehow made the insult cleaner. It seemed she had learnt from Ulrich how to respond without using violence...though she had learnt his way to be insulting as well.

"Big sister, eldest sister, you are being too mean..."

Esther’s voice came out small and unhappy beside them.

Hermione looked at her in disbelief. "W-What? I didn’t even do anything."

"You did, big sister," Esther said with a little pout, turning her face away. "Now she is going to hate us because of that. Hmph."

Hermione let out a low groan under her breath.

As annoying as it was to be lumped together with Airam, she could not fully deny Esther’s accusation. Maybe she had let herself get dragged into Airam’s pace, into that same sharp current of silent judgment and restrained contempt. But Astrid had hardly helped matters. The girl had spoken to them as though she were already doing them a favor simply by letting them breathe in the same circle as her.

Even so, the damage had been done.

By the time they reached the section of the ballroom where the younger nobles had gathered, the mood around them had already soured.

Here, the crowd was made up almost entirely of boys and girls around their own age, most of them in their mid-teens. They stood in small groups that had clearly formed long before tonight, talking with the easy familiarity of people who had seen one another for years at banquets, seasonal gatherings, hunting celebrations, and formal visits between noble houses. Some laughed quietly behind fans or gloved hands. Others traded compliments or dull pleasantries with the skill taught to children born into rank.

They already knew one another.

That alone made things difficult.

The three sisters were completely new to this world. Ulrich had delayed introducing them for two years, waiting until they were more stable, more educated, more prepared to survive among nobles without immediately being torn apart. It had been the right decision. Hermione knew that. Even so, the delay came with its own cost. They were late.

And entering late was its own form of disadvantage.

These young nobles had already formed habits, loyalties, preferences, and quiet exclusions. They knew who was popular, who was tolerated, who was ridiculous, who was dangerous, who was worth flattering, and who was beneath notice. Stepping into an established circle was difficult enough for anyone. For witches, it was worse.

Much worse.

When Astrid approached with the three sisters behind her, conversation around the cluster softened, then stopped.

Gazes turned toward them from every side.

Astrid’s status did the rest.

She was a Duke’s daughter, and that title alone carried enough weight to get attention. Even the more arrogant among the gathered youths shifted slightly at her arrival. A few inclined their heads. Others straightened their posture, careful to appear composed. Respect for Astrid came fast and naturally, born less from affection than from habit and hierarchy.

Astrid smiled and lifted one hand.

"Everyone," she said, "I believe you have all seen them already, but these three are now part of the future of this kingdom and its nobility."

A small silence followed.

It was not the gracious sort that came from thoughtful interest. It was the heavier kind, built from scrutiny.

Every eye fixed on the sisters.

The boys looked at them one way, and the girls another.

Several of the young men seemed openly struck by their beauty, too occupied by what they saw to disguise it properly. Their attention lingered on the sisters’ faces, their hair, the line of their gowns, the way they carried themselves. Some curiosity there was almost innocent. Some of it was not.

The girls were less generous.

Their expressions ranged from guarded to irritated to quietly disgusted. A few tried to hide it behind plastered smiles. Others did not bother. Hermione caught one blonde girl looking at them as though the sight of witches standing among noble daughters offended her personally. Another looked more annoyed than hostile, as if the sisters’ very presence had complicated some delicate balance she would rather have kept unchanged.

When no one spoke, Esther gathered her courage first.

"Um... I am Esther Van Rubenhart," she said, her voice small and timid. "I hope we can get along..."

Her attempt at softness only made the silence afterward feel sharper.

Hermione forced herself to step in next.

"I am Hermione Van Rubenhart. It is a pleasure to meet you."

She tried to put warmth into the words, or at least enough politeness to make them sound sincere. But under those stares, with so many of them looking at her as if she had wandered in from the wrong side of the world, it was difficult. In the end, she settled for a careful smile she did not feel.

"Airam Van Rubenhart," Airam said as dry as desert sand.

She crossed her arms almost at once, already looking as if the entire exercise had become tedious.

Unsurprisingly, that only worsened the atmosphere.

Hermione could almost feel several of the gathered nobles bristle at once. Airam had not insulted them directly, but the brevity of her introduction, the indifference in her posture, the simple refusal to perform nervous gratitude for their acceptance, it rubbed against them badly.

"Lady Astrid."

A boy stepped forward just then, breaking the stale tension before it could settle into something uglier.

He looked around their age, perhaps a little older. He had short brown hair brushed neatly back from his face, and his smile was hardly genuine.

Astrid turned slightly toward the sisters.

"This gentleman is Ethan Van Rommels," she said. "He is the only son of Marquis Rommels."

Ethan inclined his head politely, his eyes moving over the three sisters with open curiosity.

Hermione straightened a little without meaning to. Esther offered a small nod. Airam’s expression did not change in the slightest.

"As expected, Lord Rubenhart has excellent eyes," Ethan said with a pleasant smile. "He chose the best among them. And now that they have grown, they are beautiful enough to stand among us without shame."

The words sounded praising and good.

That only made them worse.

Hermione felt the insult at once. He had dressed it as praise, but there was no mistaking what lay underneath. Best among them. As if the rest had deserved whatever had been done to them. As if the three sisters had only been spared because they were rare enough to amuse noble eyes.

Around Ethan, several boys nodded eagerly.

Of course they did.

They had been raised on stories about witches as wild creatures lurking beyond the order of noble lands, uncivilized women from burned villages and dark forests, dangerous and filthy and barely human. Then tonight they had been presented with three sisters who looked nothing like that picture. Their gowns were finer than most of the girls in the room could tolerate. Their faces turned heads before they even spoke. Their presence had broken the expected shape of things, and the boys were too shallow not to mistake surprise for entitlement.

"I agree."

Another boy stepped forward, younger than Ethan by a year or two, with dirt-blond hair and the smug confidence of someone never denied anything serious in his life. He looked at the sisters openly, his gaze lingering on Hermione with enough boldness to make her skin crawl.

"My father would object," he said, smiling as if he were making a clever joke among friends. "Still, I could always keep that one near me. If not as a proper wife, then in some lesser place. Concubine, perhaps he would accept."

Hermione stared at him.

For a second, the words did not fully process in her mind. Then they did, and the shock came so fast it nearly swallowed her anger whole.

Another boy laughed.

"In that case, I’ll take the black-haired one," he said, nodding toward Airam. "I’ve never seen hair like that. Or skin like hers."

"And I prefer the blonde," said a third, pushing his glasses higher on his nose while looking straight at Esther. "She is much more to my taste."

"Eeek!"

Esther let out a small cry and darted behind Airam at once, fingers clutching the dark fabric at her sister’s back. Her face had gone pale.

Airam did not move.

She stood where she was with her arms crossed, though her fingers had sunk hard into her own sleeves now. Her stare had darkened into something cold enough to stop even a fool, had any of them been paying attention to anything but themselves.

Hermione felt her own anger rising too, but it came tangled with disbelief.

They were speaking about them as if they were livestock at market.

No, worse than that.

There was a strange excitement in it, the ugly playfulness of boys who believed themselves untouchable. They were not even arguing over real affection or interest. They were sorting. Testing how far they could go while everyone around them pretended this was merely youthful arrogance and not rot already blooming in the bones.

Were these truly the noble sons of Skargardia?

Hermione could hardly believe it.

Then again, the only nobleman of Skargardia she had truly known was Ulrich.

Perhaps that had been her mistake.

She had compared the rest of them against him without realizing it. Somewhere in her mind, she had assumed that men born into rank would at least carry some trace of the discipline he demanded, the control he imposed, the sharp standards he never allowed to slip. Even when he was stern, even when he frightened them, there had always been something hard and exact in him that made others seem small by comparison.

These boys were not small.

They were cheap.

The thought came to her immediately, and once it did, she could not unsee it. Their coats, their family names, the jewels at their cuffs, the confidence in their posture, none of it gave them any dignity. Standing there with their smirks and careless appetites, they looked like children playing with titles too heavy for them.

It was an insult to compare Ulrich to them.

She heard snickering from the other side then and turned her head.

The girls had begun whispering too.

Not softly enough to hide it. Not loudly enough to be called out for it. The exact middle ground where malice liked to live.

"They are witches after all," one said behind her fan. "That is the only use their kind has ever had."

"Concubine is still too generous," another replied with a thin smile. "A servant’s place would suit them better. Let them scrub floors and kneel where they belong."

"Indeed," said a third. "Their looks are the only thing they have."

"Being adopted by Lord Rubenhart changes nothing," another girl added. "A witch in silk is still a witch."

They made no real effort to lower their voices.

They wanted to be heard.

That, more than the words themselves, made Hermione’s stomach twist. She looked at them one by one and found herself almost as stunned by the girls as by the boys. These were supposed to be the daughters of the kingdom’s great houses. The future ladies of courts, estates, and noble families. Yet the expressions they wore were petty, spoiled, and mean in the most ordinary way.

Not grand cruelty.

Not even elegant cruelty.

Just the ugly delight of girls who saw beauty in someone they hated and could not bear it quietly.

Hermione clenched her fists slightly.

In one moment, the image Ulrich had spent two years forcing into them cracked apart.

He had chosen the finest tutors he could find. He had drilled posture, speech, conduct, restraint, reading, politics, etiquette, and presentation into them until noble life had begun to feel like a second skin forced over the first. He had corrected the smallest mistakes. He had demanded standards in everything. Again and again, he had shown them what it meant to bear a title, to speak with care, to carry themselves in a way that made lesser people fall silent.

And now these children of old blood had shattered that image without effort.

If this were Skargardian nobility without Ulrich standing over it, then much of it was nothing more than silk stretched over ugliness.

Astrid had an exasperated look meanwhile.

Whether from embarrassment, anger, or wounded pride, Hermione could not tell. Perhaps all three. The Duke’s daughter had brought them here as if presenting strange but acceptable guests to her peers. Instead, the gathering had peeled back its own face at once.

Ethan gave a short laugh, clearly mistaking the sisters’ silence for helplessness.

"Well," he said, spreading one hand lightly, "there is no need to look so offended. We are only speaking frankly."

Hermione looked at him, then at the others, then at Esther hiding behind Airam and Airam standing like black ice in the middle of them all.

When she smiled, there was nothing pleasant in it.

"Then perhaps," Hermione said, her voice light enough to pass for polite from a distance, "you should pray we decide to be just as frank."

Ethan’s smile faltered.

It did not disappear at once, but the smugness in it cracked badly enough for Hermione to see. He had opened his mouth, clearly ready to throw back some clever answer, some spoiled little retort meant to recover face in front of the others.

Then Airam stepped forward.

She moved only once, a single step placing herself in front of Hermione and Esther, yet that alone changed the shape of the entire circle. Her black hair fell over one shoulder in a dark sheet, her posture straight and still, her expression emptied of everything except that cold chilling stare she had gave Ulrich when she had straddled him at night and threatened to castrate him

Her eyes were fixed on Ethan.

He stopped immediately.

The boy stiffened so suddenly it was almost ugly to watch. Whatever he had intended to say died in his throat before it could leave his mouth. Behind him, the other boys went quiet as well. One of them swallowed. Another looked away first and then quickly pretended he had meant to do it. None of them had expected the girl they had just spoken about like merchandise to look back at them that way.

"Eldest sister..."

Behind her, Esther’s voice trembled.

Hermione looked over and saw Esther clutching at Airam’s arm with wet eyes, her fingers balled tightly in the fabric. The tears she had tried to hold back had finally gathered along her lashes. The boys had frightened her, yes, but the girls’ open contempt had struck even deeper. Esther had come here wanting, stupidly, sweetly, earnestly wanting, to try. To smile, to be polite, to make this work somehow. She had not expected to be looked at as if she were dirt wrapped in silk.

Seeing that expression on Esther’s face changed something.

Or perhaps it simply pushed Airam to the edge.

"Would you all stop these remarks?" Astrid interrupted thankfully.

Her voice came out colder than before, stripped of nearly all softness. She looked from the boys to the girls with visible upset, and this time several of them straightened immediately. Whatever they privately thought of witches, Astrid was still the daughter of a Duke. Offending her directly was another matter.

"These words are beneath what we are," she added.

No one answered her.

The boys lowered their eyes or cleared their throats. The girls went still behind their fans. A few looked annoyed at being corrected, but none of them dared challenge her openly.

Astrid turned back toward the sisters.

"I apologize on their behalf," she said.

Airam did not even look at her.

Hermione, as well, didn’t bother to reply.

Astrid had stepped in, yes, but too late. Much too late. The damage had already been done, and their silence made it clear she considered the apology worthless.

Especially, Airam gave the frightening impression that she might lunge at any moment and tear one of them open with her bare hands.

And Hermione clearly didn’t look like she would really stop her.

They had come here dressed carefully, spoken carefully, behaved carefully. They had endured Astrid’s arrogance, the boys’ filth, the girls’ hate, all because this was supposed to matter. Because Ulrich had wanted them to learn how to stand among nobles.

But this...

This was their limit.

If this was what noble children became when left to themselves, then perhaps Ulrich had lied by omission when he taught them what nobility was. Or perhaps he had not lied at all, and these spoiled heirs simply failed every standard he would have demanded of them.

"Everyone, your attention."

The voice cut cleanly through the tension.

It came at exactly the right moment, and the relief on Astrid’s face was clearly visible. Someone near the front of the hall clapped his hands once, then again, sharply enough to draw every wandering gaze back toward the great doors.

Conversation across the ballroom thinned.

Then the announcement rang out through the throne hall.

"The Royal Princess, Her Highness Camellia Van Skargardia."

At once, the doors at the far end of the hall swung open.