For some reason, that makes me want to laugh even harder, and I press a palm to my mouth to keep it in.
Nixy’s projection zips forward a couple feet, and she squares her shoulders. “The dragoness requested a proximity trigger be added to her gown. She wanted to discourage anyone she wasn’t comfortable with from getting too close. We were just arming it, and they reacted before we could set the parameters for the tech.”
“That’s the addition to her clothing that had to get approval?” Karis asks, his eyes tracking the innocent laps the butterflies are now making around me. “Proximity bugs?”
Nixy nods. “Yes.”
Karis opens his mouth like he’s going to say something else, but then he seems to think better of it and simply shakes his head.
“On a positive note, we know that everything works now,” Azo adds cheerfully as though that makes all of this better.
A guard with a good size gash on his forehead glares at the human, and I lose the battle with the giggles I’ve been trying to fight off. It’s probably some sort of stress response and a surefire sign that I’m losing it, but there’s no holding back the peals of laughter that pour out of me.
“You got your asses kicked by…butterflies,” I howl, pointing at the guards before bending at the waist to help me breathe between guffaws.
“I’d hardly call it an ass kicking,” Julian grumbles as he studies the already healing cuts on his hands.
“What would you call it then?” I titter. “A butterfly beatdown?”
An amused smile replaces Julian’s scowl. “We’re all still standing, so it falls miles short of abeatdown. And if you hadn’t gotten all possessive when Lahar started torching them, we would have had everything under control in no time. I’d say it was awing whoopin’at best.”
His brown eyes drop to my dimple when my smile grows even wider. “A wing whoopin’ it is then,” I agree brightly.
“Enough,” Farrow interrupts, a disapproving look fixed on Julian. “I want everyone cleaned up and ready to go. We move out in five.”
The order has everyone sobering and snapping to it, including me.
I look over at Nixy. “Any way you can lengthen the proximity to twenty feet instead of two?”
She huffs out a small laugh. “Afraid not, dragoness.”
I sigh. “Worth a try.” I turn to Karis. “And I definitely have to go to this? We can’t pretend I’m sick or something?”
“We move out in five,” he repeats, stone-faced and firm.
“Shit. This is actually happening,” I murmur, somehow surprised by that fact even though everything has been leading up to this since I got here.
Maybe it was all the time I was convinced someone would kill me before now, or the hours I spent just last night debating if I should try to make a run for it, but somehow, against all odds, I’m still here, and The Horde is waiting.
Azo starts packing up the table and chair into cases and loading them onto the floating rack. Nixy’s drone darts in front of me, and we stare at one another for a moment. There’s so much I want to say to her right now, but I can’t, not with everyone listening.
“Thank you, Fenox,” I offer instead.
She risked so much to let me talk to my sister, and I can’t help feeling like I squandered all of her hard work and disregarded the danger she put herself in with the way I handled that conversation with Enslee. My anger suddenly feels misplaced, and regret swarms me at how I left things.
Enslee and I don’t argue often, we never have. There’s always too much to prepare for, too much to do. It leaves no time to get tangled up in hurt feelings and ego. We both let ourselves get dragged down into the muck of stress and pressure today, and what’s worse is we did it in front of an audience.
“It was my pleasure to assist you, dragoness,” Nixy tells me, the picture of professionalism. “Azo has a clutch for you that will hold that remote. In case you want to disarm the butterflies.”
I nod and look down at the device I’m still holding.
“It’ll be okay,” she whispers. “Spark the fla—”
Nixy’s diaphanous image vanishes. I startle at the unexpected departure and look down to find Karis picking up the drone. He must have turned it off. Karis hands it to Farrow, who tucks the device under his arm.
“That was rude,” I chide.
Fast as a striking snake, Karis plucks the remote from my hands. The butterflies instantly react to his breach of the two-foot perimeter I programmed them to defend, but as soon as he backs away, they become docile once again.
