Jayfeather pushed off from the branch and sprang away from it, landing awkwardly on a pile of loose earth. Staggering to his paws, he puffed out a breath. “Made it!”

“I’m not sure this was a good idea,” Lionblaze muttered. “It’s really dark down here.”

I can’t say that bothers me, Jayfeather thought. Blind cats see just as well in the dark.

Cold, old air washed over him, carrying murmurs and half-memories from the ancient cats who had once lived here. His paws itched to head deeper into the tunnels. “Let’s go,” he meowed.

“Wait.” Jayfeather heard the scraping of rocks and realized that Lionblaze was heaving them away from the pile that blocked the way to the former entrance. “What are you doing?”

“Shifting the stones that fell last time,” Lionblaze growled. “Since we’re down here, we may as well look.”

But do you want to know what you might find? Jayfeather didn’t ask the question aloud. He knew very well that arguing with Lionblaze was useless once his brother had made up his mind. Crouching beside Lionblaze, he clawed at the barrier of earth and rocks. The hard edges hurt his paws and as the moments slipped by, his legs began to ache with exhaustion. He could hear Lionblaze panting beside him.

It’s like we’re trying to move the whole hill!

Jayfeather expected at any moment that his paws would encounter the soft pelt of Hollyleaf’s body. Memories of all the rotting crow-food he had ever scented raced through his mind, but the only scents he could pick up were of earth and water and stone. He paused in his scrabbling at the rocks, jaws parted to taste the air more carefully, but there was no trace left of his sister’s presence.

Lionblaze pushed a big rock aside and halted. “I can see something,” he mewed.

“What? Is it…?”

“No.” Lionblaze’s voice was tense. “It’s just a tuft of fur…black fur.”

“Hollyleaf’s fur…” Jayfeather breathed out.

“Then she was hit by the rockfall.”

“But she’s not here.” Jayfeather struggled to keep his voice steady. “If these are the stones that struck her, they didn’t trap her.” He turned to strain his senses farther down the tunnel. But all he could hear was the whispering, too faint to make out, of the ancient cats. If they knew what had happened to Hollyleaf, they weren’t sharing it with him.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Lionblaze spoke close to Jayfeather’s ear. “Hollyleaf is alive!”

CHAPTER 4

For a heartbeat, pure joy flooded through Jayfeather. My sister isn’t dead! It was almost like being swept back to the time when they were kits in the nursery, when they still believed that Squirrelflight was their mother and they had no idea that one day Ashfur might be a threat to their safe, peaceful lives.

But reality rushed back all too soon. “We can’t know that for certain,” he argued. “Hollyleaf might have been badly injured; she could have crawled away to die somewhere else in the tunnels. Or maybe she couldn’t find the way out.”