Day Six-Thirty-One: Killer

I have never known Dragomir to kill anything.

We've been married for... years. Not a decade, not yet, but enough years for me to know my idiot husband. He's many things: a goofball, a lazy idiot, a workaholic (sometimes those last two things at once, to my surprise), a depressive wretch, an inspiring leader... a kind, kind man.

He is not a killer.

Yet I watched him do just that for a week straight. Over, and over, and over. And each time he pulled that lever, he got this look on his face, as though he'd just had sex with... with... well, me, I guess. Not some random floozy. That shit is not happening, even in a metaphor.

All those people. All those dead. None of them real, but... well, even that's a lie. Two of them were real.

The first was a guy named Desmond. Big, hairy man. Mostly kept to himself. He was a member of my maintenance crew. Didn't know him that well, but he was reliable. Solid. Knew what he was doing. He will be missed professionally, and he seemed cordial enough that I'll miss him personally. You look past the gruff and you see the goodness in people like Desmond.

The other... the other was Ed. Edmund the Bard.

Ten minutes after we woke up, we found Ed laying on the floor outside Bora's room.  His face was plastered in dried blood, but the look... that look in his eyes... it was terror. Torture. As though he'd experienced every second of that execution, had known what was happening, and couldn't do a damned thing to stop it. He was a decapitated man who still had his head attached to his shoulders.

Dragomir did this to him. He pulled a lever in a dream world, and somehow... somehow that switched Edmund's brain off. Permanently. Try though we might, try though Dragomir might, we couldn't get Edmund to wake up. Oh, gods, Dragomir's expression, all those tears as he pounded on Ed's chest...

Dragomir did this to him.

But Dragomir is not at fault.

My son is. May he rot in every hell waiting to drag him in. We found evidence of a camp at the base of the Dauphine this morning, long deserted. It was covered in shed werewolf hair. I'd call that damning evidence of at least the witch's presence, and I know from Plato (yes, we talk) that Grayson captured my husband before. Whether he wants me to know or not.

Grayson's done this before. For months he toyed with my brain, forcing me to shun everyone else and love only him. For at least a month I slept with him, cradling him in a magical shack, held in place by his fucking obsession with me. And when he started to do it again... when he tried to force me to leave Dragomir in Trademore... I knew it was him, I fucking knew it. Resisting him made me want to vomit.

I tried to tell Dragomir. I tried. But Grayson wouldn't let me. And now Edmund is dead.

Grayson made Dragomir a killer. Worse, he tried to trick Dragomir into killing Fynn. Grayson's brother. One of the last lights left in my life. He tried to kill my boy, and he may have succeeded in killing my husband, because, gods, oh gods, Dragomir... Dragomir's shut down... he won't talk, he won't eat, I'm afraid to leave him alone, but all he wants is to be alone...

Gods. Maybe Eve wasn't so bad after all.

Is it wrong of me to want to strangle my own flesh and blood? To wring his neck until he no longer breathes?

Or is that my duty as his mom? Do I owe the world as much for bringing him down on its head?

I wish I still lived in logging country. Shit was simpler out there.

Sincerely,

Libby the Mechanic