Sunrise

She spotted Leafpool talking to Firestar near the entrance to the thorn tunnel, and padded across to them, hovering a couple of tail-lengths away as she waited for a chance to get the medicine cat alone.

“You’ve been keeping vigil all night,” Firestar was meowing. “You’re exhausted. Why don’t you go out into the forest and get some air? Stretch your legs and maybe find a quiet spot to have a sleep, without any cat to interrupt you.”

“I shouldn’t leave the Clan…,” Leafpool protested.

“Jayfeather’s back from the Moonpool,” Firestar pointed out. “We can do without you for a little while.” He stretched forward and touched noses affectionately with Leafpool. “I could make that an order.”

Leafpool yawned. “All right, Firestar, but I’ll be back before sunhigh.”

“Take as long as you want.” Firestar dipped his head and padded away.

Hollyleaf waited until Leafpool had gone out through the thorn tunnel, then followed her into the forest. The medicine cat was out of sight, but Hollyleaf tracked her by her scent until she joined her at the top of a treeless rise overlooking the lake. Leafpool was sitting with her tail wrapped around her paws, gazing out across the water.

She sprang to her paws as Hollyleaf bounded up beside her. “Hollyleaf! Were you looking for me?”

“Yes, I—I wanted to ask you something.” Now that the moment had come, Hollyleaf didn’t feel so sure about what she was about to do. The answer would change her life forever. Was that what she wanted? I have to know the truth!

Leafpool’s eyes were wary as she mewed, “Go on, then.”

She knows we’ve found out about the lie! Hollyleaf guessed, her belly lurching. Squirrelflight must have told her what happened that day on the cliff.

“Well?” Leafpool prompted.

Hollyleaf took a deep breath. “Tell me what you know. All of it. I have to know the truth!”

Leafpool’s amber eyes brimmed with sorrow. She took a pace toward Hollyleaf, sweeping her tail around as if to lay it on the younger cat’s shoulder, but left the gesture unfinished.

“You don’t have to worry,” Leafpool meowed. “I will never tell any cat. But please tell me why you did it.”

Hollyleaf felt as if a massive piece of fresh-kill were stuck in her throat. This wasn’t how she had intended their talk to go. “Did what?” she managed to choke out.

Leafpool let out a long sigh, closing her eyes as if she had to nerve herself for what she was about to say. Then she faced Hollyleaf again.

“Why did you kill Ashfur?”

No! Hollyleaf dug her claws hard into the ground. That wasn’t what she had asked! Leafpool couldn’t know! She opened her jaws to reply, but the words of denial wouldn’t come.

“I know, Hollyleaf,” Leafpool mewed gently. “When I was preparing Ashfur’s body for his vigil, I found a tuft of your fur caught in his claws. But I hid it away where no cat would find it. I think I wanted to hide it from myself.” She paused, swallowed, and repeated, “Why?”

“He had to die!” Fury made Hollyleaf hiss through gritted teeth. “You know why!”

“No, I don’t.”

Leafpool’s eyes were genuinely mystified, and Hollyleaf realized that Squirrelflight had never told her about revealing the terrible secret to Ashfur.

“He had to die because he knew!” Hollyleaf snarled. “That night, on the cliff in the storm, Squirrelflight told him that we weren’t her kits. He was going to tell all the Clans, at the Gathering, and I couldn’t let him do that! They think we’re true Clan cats, forestborn like they are. I couldn’t let them find out the truth—that Firestar’s Clan was even less pure than they thought. Ashfur would have destroyed ThunderClan.”

As she spoke, Leafpool’s eyes had grown wider with dismay. “Oh, StarClan, no!” she whispered. “This is all my fault….”

Hollyleaf’s mind was whirling. She couldn’t think beyond this moment; she only knew that the cat who held the truth in her paws was standing in front of her. “Squirrelflight told you about us, didn’t she? You were there when we first came to the hollow. You must know who our real mother is.”

Leafpool faced her calmly now. “Yes, I know.”

“Then you have to tell me—please!”

For several heartbeats, Leafpool didn’t reply. She stood blinking, her muscles tensed as if she were about to leap over a vast chasm. Then she spoke.

“I am your mother, Hollyleaf. Squirrelflight was trying to protect me.”

For a moment that lasted a heartbeat or a maybe a moon, Hollyleaf stared at her. No, it can’t be! But she knew that Leafpool had spoken the truth.

Whipping around, she bounded away, her paws slipping on the dead leaves so that she slid to the bottom of the rise in a tangle of legs and tail. Scrambling to her paws, she pelted toward the deepest places of the forest, as far from the hollow as she could get. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she wanted to outrun the lies, and the taste of Ashfur’s blood in her mouth.