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Chapter 21

The ghost of a headache haunted Rossa when she woke, stiff from a longer sleep than she would have liked on a bed that was most certainly not her own. Heavens above, had she fallen asleep in that hole?

No, she'd been knocked out, which is why her head still hurt, she told herself, touching the amulet she wore under her clothes at all times. She must have been bleeding, which activated the amulet's healing powers while she was unconscious. It must have been bad to still hurt, even a little, after so long.

She sat up, scanning her surroundings. A fire burned to her left, and stone walls – formed, not made – curved around her. She'd fallen into a cave, then, she mused, glancing up to see how far she'd fallen. Yet the stone stretched above her, too, smooth except for the spiky teeth she'd seen hang from cave ceilings in some of Father's books.

She hadn't fallen here, she'd been carried, and someone had lit that fire.

She wasn't alone. She reached out with her magic, sensing a second heartbeat in the cave with her, hidden in the shadows, deeper inside.

"Come out," she ordered. "I know you're there. There's no point hiding."

Whoever it was had not taken her knives from her, and her bow lay on the ground within easy reach, along with her quivers. Either he was so strong he didn't fear her, weapons or no, or he was stupid.

Whoever he was, she was going to make him regret trapping her and then kidnapping her. By the time she was done with him, there would be nothing left for her father to cut off. Killing him would be a mercy.

Something moved in the dark, shuffling against the stone, but no one appeared.

"I'm going to count to three, and if you don't come out on your own, I'm going to light this cave up as bright as day, and then I'm coming in after you to drag you out." Rossa took a deep breath. "All right. One…two…"

Still he stayed in the dark. The man who'd made the path to the clearing, trudging through the snow, she decided, remembering the broken branches along the way. The size of his boot prints. He was huge, a giant even, but her magic was more than a match for any man, no matter how big.

"Three," she finished, and conjured a ball of light that she threw at him.

It splashed against the wall behind him, outlining him in blazing white for a moment before the magic sputtered out.

Rossa let out the breath she hadn't even realised she was holding. She was in a cave with…the bear.

Who was now moving toward her, stepping out of the shadows and into the flickering firelight. On two legs, like a man.

No, he was a bear, not a man.

"Where is your master? The man who brought me here?" she asked.

The bear shook his head.

"You don't know, or you can't tell me?" she pressed.

The bear stared at her, something like frustration burning in his eyes. Slowly, he brought a mighty paw up to his chest, over where his heart might be. Then he bowed, the way her father did to her mother.

"If you were a man, I'd imagine you mean to say something like, 'I am Sir Pompous Arse of Dead Deer Pond, at your service, my lady.'"

The bear made a strange sound in his throat, while his eyes appeared to crinkle.

"Yeah, I wouldn't like being called Sir Pompous Arse, either. Snow White the Bear, then, until you tell me otherwise." Rossa rose to her feet and dropped a sort of curtsy, spreading the edges of her cloak in place of a skirt. "Lady Rossa of Mirroten. But you can call me Rossa. Everyone else does. Well, if you could, I mean."

She shook her head, which gave a twinge to remind her that she'd been hurt. "Look at me, talking to a bear. The monster bear which took down my deer a week ago. I know I hit my head but…"

The bear leaned down, picked something up off the ground, and held it out to her. It was the brooch.

Rossa sighed. "Yeah, if I'm going to dream up crazy things, of course I'd include jewellery worth a king's ransom. I don't know what things are like among bears, but you can't just give something so costly to a girl you barely know. Is it even yours?"

The bear touched its head, at almost the same spot where hers hurt most. Then it held the brooch out again, insistence in its eyes.

"Fine, I'll take it. In payment for the bump on the head, and for stealing my deer. That was my kill, not yours. It was already dead when you broke its neck."

If bears had eyebrows, his would have risen. Maybe he did have eyebrows, as white as the rest of his fur, and she just couldn't see them. He pointed at the antlers lying in the corner of the cave, then at her.