Ashley
The interview roomis on the third floor of the administrative wing.
Not Davin’s assessment chamber with its silver-lined walls and interference arrays — a standard faculty meeting room with a wooden table, two chairs, and a monitoring crystal positioned at the corner of the ceiling.
The ordinariness of it is deliberate.
Victim welfare interviews are conducted in non-threatening environments designed to encourage disclosure rather than trigger defensive responses.
I know this because Constantine briefed me through the bond at oh-six-hundred this morning. His voice carried the analytical precision of someone converting institutional knowledge into tactical advantage:
Standard victim interview protocol uses environmental comfort to reduce psychological barriers. Davin will present as supportive rather than investigative. She’ll ask open-ended questions designed to elicit emotional responses that reveal more than factual recounting. The monitoring crystal records everything — voice, energy signature fluctuations, emotional resonance patterns. Maintain your baseline throughout. Anyspike she can attribute to concealment rather than genuine distress becomes an investigative data point.
I sit in the chair facing the door.
My shadows are contracted to absolute minimum — the tightest suppression architecture I can maintain, every autonomous tendency locked down, every frequency modulated to match the baseline Davin established during my original assessment.
The claiming marks along my wrists and collarbones pulse beneath concealment with Bael’s frequency, and I’ve layered enough shadow density over them to absorb any detection equipment this room might contain.
The triple bond hums at reduced transmission — Constantine’s idea, calibrated to minimize the energy signature that sustained magical connection generates.
Even at reduced power, I can feel both of them.
Constantine’s fire essence three corridors away, burning with the specific quality of someone watching through a window he can’t open.
Bael somewhere deeper in the building, his ancient presence masked by shadow density that makes him invisible to everything except the claiming bond’s dedicated channel.
I’m monitoring,Bael sends.If something goes wrong, I can reach the administrative wing in ninety seconds.
Ninety seconds is an eternity in an interview room.
But the knowledge that he’s there — that both of them are there, present if not proximate — provides the specific emotional foundation I need. Not comfort. Grounding.
The awareness that the performance I’m about to deliver serves something real, protects something worth protecting, even as it requires me to describe what we built together as something it never was.
I rehearse the emotional calibrations one more time.
The key insight from Constantine’s briefing: Davin doesn’t just listen to answers. She reads the emotional signature behind them.
Genuine distress and performed distress produce different energy patterns — the distinction is subtle but measurable by someone trained in classification assessment.
You can’t fake the emotions. You have to find real ones and redirect them.
Real emotions, redirected.
I have plenty of raw material.
The genuine confusion of navigating a relationship with a man who just destroyed his career to protect me. The real grief of watching someone I love perform contrition for something that wasn’t wrong. The authentic anger at a system that forces every true thing between us into a framework designed to make it ugly.
All of it available, all of it useful, none of it pointing where Davin expects it to point.
Davin enters at oh-nine-hundred exactly.
She carries a notebook — the same shorthand system I’ve watched Constantine track with growing dread — and a calm expression calibrated to project trustworthiness. Professional warmth. The specific body language of someone trained in investigative interviewing presenting as supportive authority figure.
“Miss Dawn. Thank you for agreeing to this meeting.” She settles into the opposite chair with the deliberate ease of someone who wants me to feel relaxed. “I want you to know that this conversation is entirely about your welfare. Professor Constantine’s conduct is being handled through appropriate channels. My concern today is understanding how his behavior may have affected your academic experience and personal wellbeing.”
The framing. Exactly as Constantine predicted.
