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.

It was all for nothing! I did it to save us all, but it was no use! Everything has been ruined….

CHAPTER 22

Jayfeather struggled through snow that reached up to his belly fur. Frozen lumps of it stuck between his pads, making every step painful. Just ahead of him was another cat; he recognized her tabby-and-white pelt, and wailed for her to come back and help him, but she never turned her head. Then the snowy ground gave way beneath his paws, and he was falling, falling….

He woke in his own nest, the bedding tossed about by his thrashing limbs. Sitting up, heart still racing from his dream, he heard Leafpool scrabbling about in the depths of the store. A throbbing tide of anguish came from her, so strong that for a heartbeat he thought she was shrieking aloud.

Jayfeather sprang to his paws and padded over to the cave entrance. A flame of desperation burned inside him, to ask the medicine cat if she really was his mother, but he couldn’t ignore such deep distress. “Leafpool?” he meowed. “What’s the matter?”

Leafpool backed out of the store. “I…I told Hollyleaf something I shouldn’t have,” she confessed.

Jayfeather understood at once; now all the secrets were gushing out like water breaking through a dam. He raised his chin in a challenge. “You told her that you’re our mother, didn’t you?”

He heard Leafpool’s gasp of shock. “How long have you known?”

“I didn’t know, until just now. But I’ve been putting things together, and last night everything fell into place. Squirrelflight’s loyalty to the cat who gave birth to us. The vague memories I have of that journey through the snow. The way you behave toward the three of us. And the fact that Mousefur remembers parsley accidentally mixed with her tansy about that time. Parsley is used to stop the milk in nursing mothers. You would have needed to take it to stop your own milk.”