The summons came on a Tuesday that tasted like metal.
Evelyn was in her office marking midterms when the department secretary knocked once and opened the door without waiting.
“Dean wants you. Now.”
The woman’s eyes flicked over the room as if already cataloguing what would be boxed up by the end of the week.
Evelyn walked the long corridor alone. Portraits of dead white men watched her pass. She felt their painted eyes on the faint bruises blooming along her collarbone, the ones Lila had sucked into her skin only twelve hours earlier.
Dean Hargrove’s office smelled of lemon polish and impending execution. Two people waited behind the desk: the dean herself, face carved from granite, and the university’s general counsel, a thin man with a tie the color of dried blood. On the polis
