Sorrows of Adoration by Kimberly Chapman Page A

our journey began. “No,” I
said. “You said it casually, as if that was his name.”
    A brief look of panic
crossed his face as he stammered, “I’m half out of my mind with
hunger and fatigue, Aenna, really—”
    “No,” I said again.
“That’s not it. Look at you, you’re like a boy with his hand caught
in the pastry cupboard.” He looked as though he was struggling to
think of something to say, and I started to feel queasy as I put
the pieces together. “He’s not the Prince, is he? I knew the plan
seemed foolish. I knew it. It made more sense for the Prince to
flee on foot and hide himself on the way home while the other would
be a decoy, but I didn’t say it because who was I to question your
plan? But you knew that. You both knew what you were doing, and
he’s the decoy, which makes you …”
    My heart felt as though
it had stopped dead in my chest. I could not catch my breath in the
moment that I realized I had not been travelling with Jarik, cousin
of the Prince, but instead with Prince Kurit himself. It all made
sense, how he spoke oddly of himself with a confused look when I
would question him—he had to think about it, for he was pretending
to be his cousin.
    I fell to my knees at
the foot of my Prince and future King, ashamed of myself for
everything that had occurred, from my open discussion of everything
we had ever talked about to allowing him to kiss me.
    He came to me
immediately and pulled me to my feet, brushing the snow from my
knees. “Don’t do that, Aenna,” he said. “You’ll freeze in the
snow!”
    I looked at him
seriously, one of his hands still on my arm from having lifted me
to my feet. “I’m right, aren’t I? You’re Prince Kurit.”
    He seemed about to deny
it, or explain it, but opted instead to simply say, “Yes.”
    A rage filled my
mind. I shook his hand from my arm and walked away from him. I
thought, How
could this be? How could I have not known, not realized the obvious
truth sooner? What a fool I am!
    “Wait, Aenna,” he
called, and I stopped but did not turn to face him. “I’m sorry. I
should have told you. But Jarik claimed to be me when you asked at
the outpost because, well, because that’s his duty. You could have
been coming in to kill me. Of course you weren’t, but had you been
then you would have gone to strike Jarik instead. That’s his role,
at the moment, to ensure that I live.
    “Then you fainted, and
on the road we decided to do as you say was wise, to have Jarik
wear my cloak and serve as a decoy while I went to fend for myself.
I would have revealed myself to you then, but Jarik had planned
that you would go with him, and if you were leading us to a trap,
knowingly or not, he would then be taken to the trap instead of me.
But you insisted on not slowing him down. He wasn’t going to drag
you along against your will, and I wasn’t going to let you go off
on your own, because truly we did believe you to be good. We just
would have been fools to not take precautions.” He approached and
tried to look at me, but I kept my face turned from him. “Aenna,
really, we didn’t think you were lying, and we didn’t mean to lie
to you—it was just prudent, given that we didn’t know you.”
    “I understand that,” I
said, shock, dismay, and fury bubbling inside me dangerously. “I
would have recommended the same course of action in his place.
But …” I had started to say there was no reason for the lie to
have continued, but I was too furious to put the words together. I
started towards Endren again, my footsteps hard and loud in the
creaking snow.
    “Aenna,” he called
after me, “please don’t be angry with me. I was going to tell you
the truth.”
    I stopped again and
spun myself back towards him. “When?” I cried, too upset by then to
keep my tongue. “When we arrived at the city and the guards
recognized you?”
    He was clearly at a
loss for further explanation and held his hands out plaintively. “I
don’t know. I