The Autumn Prince

1. Uncommon Ground

The sun rose low over blushing oaks as I stumbled forward, heart lurching, breath catching in my chest while familiar pain worked its way beneath my ribs, slowing my steps and filling me with cold dread.

I'd learned to quench those dark feelings long ago, a hard-won skill that didn't make me particularly brave, but it meant I no longer collapsed beneath its weight. It didn't come without a cost, however, and often left me paralyzed by indecision, but it was better than the alternative. Better than loosing the monsters in my brain.

That morning, the source of my anxiety wasn't an irrational flood of mis-firing neurons. It was an innocent slip of paper, the printout of an email I'd received less than an hour before, bearing a cryptic message and a seemingly impossible task.

I stopped to catch my breath and looked around. The quad at the center of Berkley-Avery University was the heart of the campus, usually full of students and noise, but for a few hours every Sunday morning, it was a ghost town. Normally I'd have preferred the solitude since over-stimulation could trigger an embarrassing episode, but I needed a guide and there were no other humans in sight.

It didn't help that the mall was enormous, hedged by an array of distinguished, though mismatched, buildings united by a network of concrete paths. I'd been attending for about eight months working on my graduate degree, but my courses were exclusively on the west end, most of them inside a single structure in the sciences block. I was unfamiliar with the rest of the campus, and I'd never even heard of the place I was looking for. At the rate I was going, I'd almost certainly miss my appointment.

I relaxed my jaw in an effort to head off a surge of wild frustration. The neurochemical disorder that had defined my life for more than a decade would often charge up my emotions or trigger intense feelings without cause. Fortunately, years of medication and therapy had become a respectable buffer against dramatic mood swings.

I was usually more prepared. I probably had a map somewhere back in my apartment, stuffed into the orientation folder I received months ago, and I certainly could have checked for one online. In my defense, I'd been caught off guard with little time to strategize.

Despite the ramblings of my disorderly brain, I knew a lost cause when I saw one and I was about to give up when my personal guardian angel rounded the Health and Human Sciences building, flanked by two of her friends. Time crawled for a moment as her golden hair caught the dawn in a saintly halo and my mood reversed its course without warning. She was breathtaking. Then again, Katherine Minett was always breathtaking.

"Kitty!"

She glared a greeting as I trotted to meet her. "Thomas, no, you know I hate that."

We'd been officially dating for months but were taking it slow, and the bulk of our relationship consisted of unwinding after classes a couple of nights each week and rounds of light banter in lieu of public displays of affection.

"That's why I do it," I said, panting as though I'd just run a marathon. Katherine was unsympathetic. She knew how sick I was but refused to treat me like I was going to break, and that meant the world to me.

"I see you're working on brownie points today," she said sarcastically. Her arms were busy holding books or she'd have had both hands on her hips or crossed in front of her.

"It's cute. You don't like Kay or Kate or Kathy. . . there aren't a ton of alternatives."

"My name is Katherine. You don't need alternatives."

"Katie. Kat. Kiki. Special K," I said, counting them off on my fingers.

I enjoyed the verbal sparring, especially when we fell into a rhythm and both of us were on point. In private, we were different. We'd still joke around, but there were also serious talks and hour-long debates over who had better taste in music. She does, in case you were wondering.