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She gasped softly and took a half-step backward. “You are taller than I thought.”
“You are short for a human,” I observed. “Are you full-grown?”
Instead of acting offended and running off, the reaction I had come to expect from my other guests whenever I had spoken to them, she laughed softly. “At thirty years, I am unlikely to grow anymore. I am not familiar with your kind, sir, whatever you are, but humans usually attain their full height before they reach twenty years.”
I nodded. “Then you are full-grown.”
“And quite acclimated to it.” She flashed me a cheeky grin before turning away to move back toward the statue in the center of the space. “Who is this?”
“Why do you wish to know?”
She glanced over her shoulder. “The statue is interesting. Is he an ancient king, a war victim, or perhaps some stuffy politician?” She considered the statue with a slight frown as she tightened the belt of her robe and plunged her hands into the pockets.
“None of those, I hope,” I responded. “Are you cold?”
She shook her head. “What do you mean, you hope?”
Dropping my shadow form, I stepped into the halo of light around the statue. “Because it is me.”
She turned to confront me. “But you look nothing—”
~~~~~
Kate
My heart faltered in my chest. A shadow elf stood where the wispy creature had lingered before. A creature no more tangible than a bundle of smoke was far less intimidating than a living, breathing shadow elf straight from my childhood nightmares.
“Is it a passable likeness?” A sardonic, inky-black eyebrow arched slightly higher than the other brow as he gazed down at me.
A strange mixture of trepidation and intrigue warred within me. On one hand, he was very tall, well over six feet, and magical power radiated from him so that my skin tingled with an uneasy desire to flee. Magic meant danger. I shivered. In contrast, he struck me as amused and not cruelly so. With coppery-hued skin, ink-black hair, and striking silvery-blue eyes beneath sooty lashes, he was quite handsome as elves went. What was I saying? It wasn’t as though I had ever met an elf before, let alone a shadow elf.
“Nod if you can hear me.” Humor laced his deep voice as he regarded me with a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth.
“My ears didn’t stop working just because you scared me.”
“Neither has your mouth, it seems. All other parts of you still in working order as well?”
I nodded as I inched away from him. “All except my heart. It stuttered a bit. It isn’t every day I come face-to-face with a creature from my nightmares.”
“My apologies. I didn’t know my reputation had spread to the extent that I was terrorizing young women’s dreams.” He inclined his head to me graciously, the movement far too graceful to be human.
I decided that the more space between us, the better. However, as I attempted to inch around the statue base under the guise of continuing to study it, he followed me.
“I have always hated this statue,” he muttered as he walked behind me. He maintained the four feet required by politeness, but that didn’t ease my awareness of his presence.
“Why?” Pausing to peer up at the figure’s features, I tried to distract myself by studying them. “The statue is appealing enough.”
“Ah, but so misrepresentative.”
Curious, I turned to examine his face. Lean lines, pronounced cheekbones, arresting eyes, they were all there in the stone representation—well, all except the coloring. Some of the effect was lost without the contrast between the vibrant blue of his eyes and the darkness of his complexion. “The artist represented you fairly well, considering the constraints of his medium.”
“He said the same thing. Sounded like an excuse to me.”
“You have all four of your limbs. The face is similar, and he depicted your height well enough. What is your complaint?”
He peered at me perceptively. “Do I detect a note of defensiveness? Were you misrepresented in some point?”
Warmth flooded my face at the memory of the royal portrait painted before the coronation. The artist’s attempts to disguise my faults had resulted in a portrait of another person entirely. “You didn’t answer my question,” I pointed out, turning to face him boldly.
