My Step-Daughters Are The Villainesses

"I am here."

Ulrich’s body tensed again as the physicians continued.

But this time, he did not fight them.

He held back the sounds of pain behind clenched teeth.

Yet his eyes remained on Ashara.

He did not look away from her.

Then something shifted in his eyes.

His gaze moved past Ashara.

His expression changed.

The room began to disappear from him.

Not completely.

He could still hear the physicians speaking. He could still feel the ache in his body. He could still sense Ashara’s hand in his hair.

But memories rose through the haze.

Not memories of Silas.

His own memories.

He saw himself as a child.

He saw the long halls of the Rubenhart Estate before they had become full of voices. He saw his mother smiling at him. He remembered the warmth of her hand in his. He remembered believing, in those brief early years, that nothing could ever take her away.

Then the memory changed.

His mother was sick, cursed to a painful, agonizing death.

She lay in bed for months, growing thinner while Ulrich watched helplessly from beside her. He remembered the sound of her breathing. He remembered the way she tried to smile when he entered the room, even when she was in pain.

He remembered the day she stopped waking.

Then came his Core reveal.

A crippled core.

He remembered his father’s face.

Not grief, not comfort, but only utter disappointment.

Ulrich had been a child, but his father had looked at him as though he had already failed.

The training began soon after.

His father forced him to run until his legs could no longer carry him. He made him hold sword forms until his arms shook. He pushed mana through Ulrich’s broken core until the pain drove him to his knees.

There was no warmth.

No praise.

Only the expectation that Ulrich would somehow become stronger than the flaw he had been born with.

His hatred grew slowly.

Day by day.

A hatred for weakness.

A hatred for himself.

A hatred for witches.

Then the demons came.

They found him at the point where he no longer cared what happened to him.

They offered him power.

A proper core.

A Demonic Core.

They promised that he would no longer be crippled. No longer powerless. No longer the disappointing son his father had shaped through pain and contempt.

In exchange, he would help them take Skargardia.

And Ulrich had accepted.

At the time, he had believed he had nothing left to lose.

But then Ashara appeared in his memories.

Ashara before the distance.

She had come to him when he had already begun to fall apart. She had told him she loved him, not because he was the heir to House Rubenhart, not because of his status, and not because of the power others expected him to hold.

She loved him for who he was.

Or, at least, for the person she believed he still could be.

But his pride had been wounded.

He had been ashamed of his crippled core.

Ashamed that she had seen the weakness he spent every day trying to hide.

And so he had driven her away.

He remembered her crying.

He remembered the look in her eyes when he said words he had never truly meant.

He remembered deciding that it no longer mattered.

His father had disapproved of Ashara.

Ulrich had sent her away.

The demons had offered power.

He had believed the life he wanted was already over.

So he abandoned himself.

Then, after his father’s death, everything changed again.

The memories of Silas came to him.

Another life.

Another world.

And the novel Faith had shown him.

A story that showed him his future.

A grim future.

A future in which he would die.

He remembered the witches who would eventually become responsible for that death. He remembered the path that would turn them against him. He remembered how the girls had been abandoned, used, and shaped by cruelty until they became the very people who would destroy him.

And Ulrich had made a decision.

He would change it.

At first, perhaps, it had been practical.

If he adopted the three sisters, sheltered them, trained them, and secured their loyalty, they could become powerful allies. Their gifts were extraordinary. Their loyalty could protect him from the fate the novel had promised.

But somewhere along the way, it had ceased to be only that.

He had given them a home.

He had protected them.

He had invested gold, time, tutors, knights, and resources into their future.

He had angered Libra.

Gathered hate from his own Kingdom.

He had drawn the attention of Valmoria.

He had put himself in the path of an Empire.

And he had gone to bring Airam back.

Even now, even while his body lay broken beneath the physicians’ hands, Ulrich knew he would make the same choice again.

He would do it again and again.

He had chosen them.

And he will protect them.

His crimson eyes moved slowly toward the foot of the bed.

Airam stood there, still and silent.

Behind her, Hermione and Esther watched from the doorway.

Hermione’s face was pale with guilt and fear.

Esther had one hand pressed over her mouth, tears gathering in her wide eyes.

Ulrich looked at them through the feverish blur.

The three witches he had taken in.

The three witches he had once believed would become the cause of his death.

The three girls he had now nearly died to protect.

And beneath the pain, beneath the haze of medicine and blood, a darker voice rose from somewhere deep inside him.

A voice shaped by old fear.

By the boy whose mother had died.

By the child whose father had called him weak.

By the man who had once believed witches could only bring ruin.

Ulrich’s lips parted.

"I..."

The room grew still.

Ulrich stared at them.

His gaze was distant.

"I should have killed you that day."

For several seconds, no one moved.

No one breathed.

Ulrich’s voice had been weak, barely more than a whisper, but it struck with more force than a shout.

A terrible silence followed.

Airam stood at the foot of the bed, staring at him.

Hermione froze.

Esther froze beside her.

The younger girls had already seen Ulrich bloodied, broken, and nearly unconscious. They had watched the physicians treat wounds that should have killed him. They had been afraid for him. Guilty because he had suffered while bringing Airam home.

Then he had looked at them and said that.

Esther’s lips parted.

For a moment, she seemed unable to understand.

Her hand loosened from Hermione’s sleeve.

Then her face crumpled.

"No..."

The word came out small.

Esther turned and ran.

She fled from the room with both hands pressed over her mouth, sobs breaking from her as she disappeared into the corridor.

"E—Esther," Hermione whispered.

But Esther did not stop.

Hermione remained where she was for one more second.

Her ruby eyes stayed fixed on Ulrich.

Tears gathered in them.

Her lips trembled.

She looked as though she wanted to speak, to ask him why, to demand an explanation, to tell him that she was sorry, but no words came.

Only pain and disbelief.

She turned and followed after Esther.

The door closed behind them.

The physicians stood in uncomfortable silence.

Ashara remained beside Ulrich.

Her hand rested near his shoulder, though she no longer touched him. Her expression was difficult to read. Shock lingered in her icy blue eyes, but she didn’t blame him in his current state.

Airam did not move on the other end.

She simply stood before the bed and stared down at him.

Ulrich’s eyes had drifted half-closed again. The medicine and exhaustion were pulling him under. His breathing came shallowly, his face still flushed with fever, his body tense even in unconsciousness.

There was no regret in Airam’s expression.

No visible hurt or anger.

If this had been the Airam of before, she might have reacted differently.

The old Airam would have heard such words and reached for a knife.

She would have drawn it from beneath her sleeve, crossed the room, and pressed it against the throat of the man who had dared to speak of killing her sisters.

She might have done it even while he lay half-dead.

But Airam did nothing.

She did not care about those words.

Because she knew Ulrich now.

Not entirely, as no one could know Ulrich perfectly. He had spent too many years burying himself beneath coldness, control, and distrust. He assessed every person around him. He expected betrayal before kindness. He concealed worry behind orders and concern behind criticism.

Paranoid was too weak a word for him.

Ulrich distrusted the world so deeply that he could barely allow himself to show affection even to those he loved. He hid his care because caring made people vulnerable. He hid his weakness because weakness had been used against him too many times.

But Airam had seen through the cracks.

On Valdris’s ship, he had briefly spoken about his mother.

Yet that single moment had revealed more than Ulrich likely intended.

Her death had wounded him in a place no sword could reach. He had watched her suffer for months. He had watched someone precious fade away while he remained powerless to stop it. Since then, he had lived with the terror of reliving that helplessness.

He feared loss.

He feared attachment.

He feared loving someone enough that their death could destroy him again.

Airam understood that fear.

She understood it better than Hermione or Esther could.

In some ways, she recognized herself in him.

They were different people. Airam was not Ulrich, and Ulrich was not Airam. But both of them had built walls around the parts of themselves that hurt. Both of them had learned early that love could be taken away. Both of them had learned that the world did not become kinder simply because someone was young, frightened, or alone.

And both of them had survived by becoming dangerous.

Airam looked at Ulrich’s fevered face.

He had said he should have killed them.

Perhaps that was what some small, wounded part of him believed.

Perhaps he was remembering the fate he had tried to avoid. The witches who would have become his enemies. The destruction that had once waited for him at the end of his path.

But Airam knew the truth.

He had not killed them.

He had adopted them.

He had brought them into his home.

He had fed them, sheltered them, trained them, protected them, and given them every resource he could provide. He had faced Libra because of them. He had made enemies because of them. He had drawn the attention of Valmoria because he refused to surrender Airam.

He had come for her.

He had stood against Valdris.

He had lost his arm.

And he had not stopped until he brought her safely back to her sisters.

Whatever Ulrich said while fevered and half-conscious did not erase any of that.

He cared for them more than he allowed anyone to see.

Airam remembered Louise speaking about Ulrich once.

At the time, she had not understood.

Louise had complained that Ulrich possessed a strange kind of charm. Not the shallow charm of a handsome nobleman or a man skilled at saying pretty words. Ulrich was not gentle in that way. He was not easy to be near. He was difficult, proud, sharp-tongued, and cold when he believed coldness was necessary.

But when someone entered the small circle of people he considered precious, Ulrich would do anything for them.

He would set aside pride, he would set aside reason, and he would set aside his own safety.

For a man as proud as Ulrich, that was more meaningful than any soft declaration.

Airam finally moved.

She walked around the bed slowly.

Ashara stood on the opposite side, watching her in silence.

Airam stopped beside Ulrich.

Her gaze rested on his face.

Somewhere along the road home, Ulrich had become precious to her too.

Not in the same way Hermione and Esther were precious.

Her sisters were part of her. They had grown up together. They had survived together. Their bond was as natural as breathing.

What Airam felt toward Ulrich was different.

It was unfamiliar.

It pulled at her chest in ways she could not name.

There was gratitude and also trust.

A deep need to keep him alive.

But there was something else as well, something darker and stranger, something that made her heart tighten whenever another woman cried over him.

Airam did not understand it.

She did not know what to call it.

She only knew that she wanted to understand it.

She wanted to stay close enough to feel it more.

Ulrich’s eyes closed completely.

The tension in his body eased slightly as the medicine finally dragged him deeper into unconsciousness.

Airam reached out.

Her fingers brushed his cheek.

"You will not be alone anymore," she said quietly.

Her dark eyes remained on him for a few moments longer.

Then she turned away.

Without another word, she left the room to find her sisters.