Chapter 396: Leaf’s Answer
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Bat Bat did not leave the room immediately after saying yes. That alone told Sekhmet how seriously she had taken the task.
Usually, when Bat Bat agreed to something, she agreed with her mouth first, her curiosity second, her pride third, and only after that did responsibility arrive, panting from behind and trying to catch up. This time the order had settled differently. She stood in front of him with her hands at her sides, eyes bright but steady, as if some hidden line inside her had clicked into place.
Interesting.
Sekhmet watched her for one moment longer before speaking again.
"You will not rush her."
Bat Bat nodded at once. "I know."
"You will not make it sound like a game."
That got the smallest twitch from her expression, not because she wanted to argue, but because she understood why he had said it.
"I know," she said again, quieter this time.
"You will tell me exactly what she feels. Not what you want her to feel."
Bat Bat took that one more seriously than the others. Her mouth tightened. Then she nodded once. "I know."
That was enough for now.
Sekhmet stood from the chair near the window. Dawn had climbed higher against the shutters while they spoke, and the room no longer belonged to the night. Pale morning light had begun slipping through the edges and laying thin lines across the floorboards. Outside the room, Dawn House had fully awakened. The house moved differently after battle nights. Less soft, more direct. Even the maids carried trays like women who understood the world had become sharper.
He looked at Bat Bat. "We go now."
That transformed the seriousness in her face into something brighter, but not foolishly bright.
"Now?"
"Yes."
Bat Bat nearly smiled wide enough to ruin the mood, then caught herself and turned it into something only slightly less obvious.
"Very well," she said, failing magnificently to sound solemn.
Sekhmet opened the door.
Bat Bat followed him into the corridor, and together they moved through the inner hallways toward the sealed chamber used for entering the Void Land. The house was awake enough now that two maids passed them carrying folded cloth and three message slips between them. Both bowed quickly. Neither asked questions. Good. Dawn House had grown past wasting time on curiosity when the young master walked with purpose.
At the far turn of the corridor, Vera appeared from the opposite direction, hair still slightly disordered from too little sleep and too much bloodshed. She took in Sekhmet, then Bat Bat, then the direction they were going.
"More work," she said.
"Yes."
Vera’s eyes rested on Bat Bat for a second longer. "Do not get eaten by anything small and magical."
Bat Bat lifted her chin. "I am the danger in that relationship."
Vera’s mouth moved faintly. "That is what worries me."
She continued past them.
Bat Bat watched her go and muttered, "The twins speak like threats wrapped as sisterly concern."
Sekhmet did not answer.
They reached the sealed chamber.
The stone room still held the cold stillness of places built for hidden things. One lamp burned. The air smelled faintly of dust and old rock. Bat Bat stood a little straighter as he opened the Void Land. She always did. Even now, after entering it many times, some part of her still responded to the wrongness of that hidden world with instinctive attention.
The darkness folded outward.
The gate widened.
They stepped through.
The Void Land received them in silence.
Its vast dim sky hung above like a dead memory that had refused burial. The far distances remained wrong. The air felt open in a way no real land should feel, as though too much space had been poured into too little world. But closer now, around the living patch, things had changed. The green remained small against the enormity of the Void Land, but it no longer looked fragile. It looked stubborn.
That was Leaf’s work.
The little patch of softened ground and growing life stretched around the place she favored, green enough now to insult the black stone around it. Small blades of grass, low-rooted growth, and the first young edges of something more. Auri’s little house stood not far from it, and the nearby stones had begun feeling less like dead borders and more like waiting soil.
Leaf was there.
Sekhmet saw her almost immediately.
She was perched on a broad green leaf near the center of the patch, tiny enough that the sight still made the idea of turning her into a vampire spirit feel absurd. Six inches, perhaps a little more if she stood fully. Bright. Small. Lively. Her tiny form glowed with the soft green-gold vitality of a forest spirit not yet fully grown into what she might become. She was arranging droplets of water across the leaf’s edge with solemn concentration, as if conducting some deeply important private ritual no one else was advanced enough to understand.
Bat Bat lit up. Not loudly. Not theatrically. It was something else. It was recognition and affection.
The sort of joy that belonged entirely to her and did not need audience or applause.
"Leaf," she called.
Leaf turned at once.
The whole little spirit brightened.
Then she launched herself off the leaf and flew toward Bat Bat in a blur of tiny green motion so fast that even Sekhmet lost the exact shape of it for a heartbeat. She landed against Bat Bat’s shoulder and clung there, making excited little sounds that were not words and yet clearly meant something.
Bat Bat laughed softly and lifted one hand to steady her. "Yes, yes, I came back. Of course I came back. You dramatic little branch."
Leaf made another series of sounds and tugged at a strand of Bat Bat’s dark hair.
Sekhmet watched that carefully. Interesting. More than interesting.
Leaf was not simply fond of Bat Bat. She trusted her in that complete, instinctive way tiny creatures did when they had long since decided what counted as safe.
Auri stepped out from near her house a moment later and saw them. Her gaze went first to Sekhmet, then to Bat Bat, then to Leaf on Bat Bat’s shoulder. She did not look surprised.
Of course not.
Auri had likely noticed this bond long ago and simply never considered it strange enough to explain.
Sekhmet looked at her. "You knew."
Auri came closer, one wing shifting once behind her back. "Yes."
Bat Bat, still focused on Leaf, blinked and looked between them. "Knew what."
"That she understands you," Sekhmet said.
Bat Bat looked scandalized. "Of course she understands me."
Auri’s mouth moved faintly. "I did not think that part required explanation."
That answer irritated Bat Bat and pleased her at the same time.
Sekhmet stepped onto the greener ground and crouched slightly, lowering himself enough that Leaf could see him without having to crane her tiny body upward from Bat Bat’s shoulder. Leaf watched him at once, bright and alert. She knew him too. Not the way she knew Bat Bat, perhaps, but well enough not to fear him.
Bat Bat noticed his focus and, for the first time since entering the Void Land, became properly careful.
"She knows this is serious," Bat Bat said.
Sekhmet looked at her. "Then tell her."
Bat Bat nodded once.
She lifted Leaf gently from her shoulder and held her between both hands the way someone might hold a tiny bright bird or a shard of living spring. Leaf looked at Bat Bat, not frightened, only curious. The little spirit made a questioning chirp and a soft pulse of green light moved through her.
Bat Bat inhaled.
Then she began talking to Leaf.
The sounds were strange.
Not human words.
Not exactly bat sounds either.
Clicks, soft chirrs, breath-shaped tones, little throat-notes, pauses filled with gesture, and a kind of emotional emphasis that made no sense to the ear but did something to the air around them anyway. Leaf answered almost at once in her own tiny sounds, bright and quick and full of reaction.
Sekhmet watched with total stillness.
It was not language as he knew it.
But it was language.
Auri crossed her arms and stood beside him. "I told you."
"You did not tell me."
Her expression did not change. "I knew."
Bat Bat continued speaking.
Leaf listened. Then interrupted to say something. Then listened again.
At one point Bat Bat pointed toward the wider dark of the Void Land and made a circling motion with one hand, then pointed at the green patch. Leaf looked in the direction she pointed and made a smaller, uncertain sound.
Bat Bat was explaining scale. Or possibility.
Or both.
Then Bat Bat said something else, more carefully than before, and touched two fingers lightly over her own mouth in a gesture that clearly meant blood.
Leaf froze.
That reaction sharpened the entire moment.
The little spirit drew back in Bat Bat’s hands just slightly, not enough to flee, but enough to show caution. Her green light dimmed. Then she turned and looked toward Sekhmet.
That meant she understood who the offer came from.