My Step-Daughters Are The Villainesses

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

At once, every conversation in the hall broke apart.

Voices died in the middle of sentences. Heads turned toward the great doors at the far end of the throne hall just as they swung open, revealing the figure everyone had been waiting for.

The true center of the evening had finally arrived.

Even Airam, Hermione, and Esther, still carrying the bitter taste of what had just happened, found their attention pulled toward the entrance. Curiosity slipped through the anger, whether they wanted it to or not.

A fourteen-year-old girl stepped through the doorway.

For one brief instant, even Hermione forgot the nobles around her and simply stared.

The princess was beautiful.

Not in the loud way of girls dressed by ambitious mothers to catch the most glances possible. There was something lighter in her appearance, something cleaner, though every detail on her had clearly been chosen with care. Her pale pink hair fell in long, smooth lengths, braided back from her face into a regal crown braid that framed the delicate line of her head before disappearing into the rest of her hair. Resting above it was a fine crown that did not overpower her features, only sharpened them.

Her eyes, clear and green as cut emerald, moved across the hall with calm grace.

She wore a pink gown touched with silver, the fabric layered so precisely that it caught the light differently with every step. The outer folds gave off a faint gleam under the chandeliers, not enough to dazzle, just enough to make the dress seem alive whenever she moved. The gown hugged her upper body neatly before flowing downward in long, elegant lines that trailed without dragging. Nothing in it looked excessive. Nothing looked careless. It had been made to present her as exactly what she was: a royal daughter standing before the kingdom.

A hush passed through the room.

Even those who had already known what to expect seemed struck again upon seeing her in person.

Camellia Van Skargardia had no reason to envy the three sisters, and neither did they have any reason to dismiss her. That much was obvious at once. Put beside one another, they would not diminish each other. They would only sharpen the contrast in kind.

And, as always when one looked too closely at the Skargardian royal line, there came the same reminder.

The blood of elves still lingered there.

It showed most strongly in women like Kaliantha and her daughter. In Camellia, it lived in the fine structure of her face, in the elegant height of her cheekbones, in the smoothness of her skin, in the long dark line of her lashes, and in the strange, almost unreal balance of all those features together. Nothing about her looked unfinished. She seemed to have been assembled with perfect care, down to the smallest detail.

A moment later, the silence was broken by applause.

The sound rolled through the hall as Camellia began to walk forward under everyone’s eyes.

Esther stared openly.

"She really is beautiful," she whispered, then added in a smaller voice, "She looks exactly like a princess..."

There was something faintly wounded in the way she said it, though she tried to hide it. Hermione heard it immediately.

"You have nothing to envy her for, Esther," Hermione said, turning to her with a softer expression.

She meant it.

Even so, Hermione could admit to herself that the princess carried a different sort of presence. Maybe it was the elven blood. Maybe it was the way she had been raised from birth to move beneath attention without shrinking from it. Maybe it was simply that some people entered a room already shaped for it. Whatever the reason, Camellia drew the eye in a way that felt almost unfair.

Esther looked up at Hermione and beamed a smile.

"You are the prettiest, big sister."

Hermione blinked, then flushed.

Among the three of them, all were beautiful in their own ways. Airam’s dark beauty cut cleanly and dangerously. Esther held a softer charm and grace that made people want to look twice. But Hermione, with her silver hair and ruby eyes, stood apart even from them. Anna-Maria’s beauty lived in her almost whole, vivid, and difficult to ignore.

"You silly girl," Hermione muttered, trying to sound annoyed.

But she could not hide the smile tugging at her mouth as she reached over and gently pinched Esther’s cheeks.

Esther gave a tiny laugh and batted her hand away.

Beside them, Airam remained silent.

Her eyes stayed fixed on the royal princess as Camellia advanced through the hall, accepting the applause with quiet composure.

The Royal Princess of Skargardia.

Truthfully, Airam had expected she would hate her on sight.

Just the name alone should have been enough. Camellia belonged to that cursed bloodline. She was tied by birth to the king, to the prince, to the entire rotten structure of a kingdom Airam had every reason to despise. Airam had thought the mere sight of her would make something ugly rise in her chest.

Instead, she found herself surprised.

She did not like the princess.

But neither did she feel the immediate, violent rejection she had expected.

Perhaps she had changed more than she liked to admit.

Two years in Ulrich’s house had done something to all three of them. Even Airam, who resisted everything harder than the others, could not deny it completely. Some of the rawness in her had cooled into something more controlled. Some of the blind rage had been forced into thought, into observation, into patience she had once lacked. Ulrich had not made her gentle. Far from it. But he had shaped the edges of her anger until it no longer burned in every direction at once.

For a brief moment, she let herself imagine another path.

If they had never met Ulrich...

If they had fled after their mother’s death with no one to take them in, no roof, no protection, no title shielding them from the world...

If they had been left alone with hunger, grief, and the memory of what the kingdom had done to them...

What would she have become?

Airam already knew the answer.

She would have wanted revenge.

Not survival alone. Not escape. Revenge.

She would have fed it carefully, grown it quietly, and waited for the day she could sink it into the throat of this kingdom.

That possibility still lived somewhere inside her.

She could feel it.

Even now, when she looked at the royal crest, at the nobles gathered under chandeliers and banners, at the wealth built on bones and fear, hatred still moved in her chest.

But it no longer stood first.

Now, before revenge, there was something else.

Her sisters.

Their safety came before all of it, also their future.

Revenge didn’t interest her as much as before anymore.

Meanwhile, Ulrich was also watching the royal princess.

After parting ways with Duke Markus Van Gravenberg, he remained where he was for a moment, his gaze fixed on Camellia as she made her entrance beneath the attention of the entire hall.

He had already met her two years ago.

At the time, she had still seemed younger, not exactly childish, but not yet fully shaped into the figure he remembered from the novel. Now, however, that change had started to show. It was still incomplete, still only the beginning, yet he could already see more clearly the royal girl she was meant to become three years from now.

Camellia Van Skargardia.

One of the most important characters.

Not someone who merely passed through the story to decorate it, but one whose existence carried weight in several directions at once. She would play a central role in the protagonist’s growth, and beyond that, in the future of Skargardia itself. She was not useless ornamentation from the royal family. She was intelligent, capable, and far stronger than most people around her likely understood.

That was why Ulrich wanted the sisters to get close to her if such a thing could be managed.

He let his gaze shift toward them.

He found them at once.

Hermione and Esther were watching the princess with open interest, but Airam...

Ulrich’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Airam was staring at Camellia with such dark intensity that there was no room for misreading it. Whatever possibility of quick friendship he had imagined between them died immediately.

No, that would not happen anytime soon.

Esther, on the other hand, seemed far more likely to get along with Camellia. If there was one of the three who might build a bridge first, it would be her.

Perhaps he should encourage that more directly.

Esther would accept it without resistance.

"They are beautiful, aren’t they?"

An unfamiliar voice broke through his thoughts suddenly.

Ulrich turned his head.

A man had stepped up beside him so quietly that Ulrich had not noticed his approach until he spoke. He had dark hair and wore a black coat cut with plain elegance. His hands were clasped behind his back, and his eyes were fixed not on the princess, not on the nobles nearest them, but on the three sisters.

There was something in that gaze that made Ulrich pause.

It was not lust.

Not mockery either.

The man looked at them with an expression almost fond, as if he were admiring something...

Ulrich said nothing.

He scanned the man’s face in silence, trying to place him among the noble houses, the military officers, the officials of court, the merchant elites sometimes invited to such gatherings through favor or necessity.

Nothing.

He did not know him.

And that alone was enough to sharpen his caution.

For the briefest instant, a colder possibility crossed his mind.

A demon?

His attention hardened.

Was the man trying to warn him about something?

No.

Ulrich dismissed that thought almost as soon as it came.

There had been no urgency in his voice or hidden tension. If anything, the man seemed amused by Ulrich’s caution.

Seeing Ulrich’s stare remain fixed on him, waiting for an introduction that did not come, the stranger gave a small chuckle.

Then he turned and began to walk away.

Ulrich watched his back for only a second.

A strange, unpleasant feeling crept in his chest, light at first and then sharper the more he listened to it. His instincts had kept him alive through too much for him to ignore them now. He trusted that sensation immediately.

Without wasting another moment, he started forward to catch the man.

"Ulrich Van Rubenhart."

Another voice stopped him, however.

He turned at once, annoyance already rising before he had even seen who had spoken.

A woman stood there, beautiful, around his age, with long chestnut hair falling smoothly over her shoulders and clear green eyes fixed on him with composed familiarity.

Ulrich recognized her immediately.

Louise Van Rommels.

Daughter of Marquis Rommels.