Forest Of Secrets

“Not help himself—when he betrayed his Clan and the warrior code to be with Silverstream?” Bluestar’s eyes glinted, but her tone was not as angry as Fireheart would have expected. “I promise you one thing,” she added. “I’ll do nothing until the shock has died down. We need to consider the whole matter carefully.”

“You’re not really shocked, though, are you?” Fireheart dared to ask. “Had you guessed it was happening?” He half expected Bluestar not to answer. She held him motionless for several heartbeats with her penetrating blue gaze. There was wisdom in her eyes, he saw, and even pain.

“Yes, I suspected,” she mewed at last. “It’s a leader’s place to know things. And I’m not exactly blind at the Gatherings.”

“Then…then why didn’t you stop it?”

“I hoped Graystripe would remember his loyalty to the Clan on his own,” Bluestar replied. “I knew that even if he didn’t, something would happen to end it, sooner or later. I only wish it had not ended so tragically, for both of them. Though I don’t know how Graystripe would have coped with watching his own kits grow up in another Clan.”

“You understand about that, don’t you?” The words were out before Fireheart had a chance to think about what he was saying. “It happened to you.”

Bluestar stiffened and Fireheart flinched at the sudden blaze of anger in her eyes. Then she relaxed, and the anger was replaced by a distant look of memory and loss.

“You guessed,” she murmured. “I thought you might. Yes, Fireheart, Mistyfoot and Stonefur were once my kits.”

Chapter 23

“Come,” Bluestar ordered. She began to walk slowly across the camp toward her den, leaving Fireheart with no choice but to follow. Once inside, she told him to sit down, and settled herself on her bedding.

“How much do you know?” she asked Fireheart, her blue eyes searching his.

“Only that Oakheart once brought two ThunderClan kits to RiverClan,” Fireheart admitted. “He told Graypool—that’s the queen who suckled them—that he didn’t know where they had come from.”

Bluestar nodded, her gaze softening. “I knew Oakheart would stay loyal to me,” she murmured. She raised her head. “He was the kits’ father,” she added. “Did you guess that much?”

Fireheart shook his head. But it made sense, then, that Oakheart had been so desperate for Graypool to care for the helpless kits. “What exactly happened to your kits?” he demanded, curiosity making him unguarded. “Oakheart didn’t steal them, did he?”

The Clan leader’s ears flicked impatiently. “Of course not.” Her eyes met Fireheart’s, suddenly clouded with a pain he could not begin to imagine. “No, he didn’t steal them. I gave them away.”

Fireheart stared in disbelief. There was nothing he could do but wait for the she-cat to explain.

“My warrior name was Bluefur,” she began. “Like you, I wanted nothing more than to serve my Clan. Oakheart and I met at a Gathering early one leaf-bare, when we were still young and foolish. We were not mates for long. When I discovered I was to have kits, I intended to bear them for ThunderClan. No cat asked me who the father was—if a queen does not wish to tell, that is her choice.”

“But then…?” Fireheart prompted.

Bluestar’s eyes were fixed on a point far away, as if she were staring into the distant past. “Then our Clan deputy, Tawnyspots, decided to retire. I knew I had a good chance of being chosen to take his place. Our medicine cat had already told me that StarClan held a great destiny for me. But I also knew the Clan would never take a queen nursing kits as deputy.”

“So you gave them away?” Fireheart could not keep the note of disbelief out of his voice. “Couldn’t you have waited until they had left their nursery? Surely you could have been made deputy once the kits were old enough to care for themselves.”

“It wasn’t an easy decision,” Bluestar told him, her voice rough with pain. “That was a bitter leaf-bare. The Clan was half-starved and I had barely enough milk to feed my kits. I knew that in RiverClan they would be well cared for. In those days the river was full of fish, and RiverClan cats never went hungry.”

“But to lose them…” Fireheart blinked at the sharpness of pain he felt in sympathy.

“Fireheart, I don’t need you to tell me how difficult my choice was. I lay awake for many nights, deciding what to do. What was best for the kits…what was best for me…and what was best for the Clan.”

“There must have been other warriors ready to be deputy?” Fireheart was still struggling to accept that Bluestar had been so ambitious that she would have given away her own kits.