Year of the Boar, Third Month, Day 25.

I know not how long it has been since I was last able to lift my brush and commit my thoughts to paper... days, perhaps even weeks have passed and I find myself wondering if my mind is still sound... I lay in my bed gripped by fever, delirious, unaware of anything around me but the pain that wracked my body... I awoke once to find Lord Kenta and his mother, Lady Yuki, staring down at me as I burned with a fire so hot I thought my very being would burst into flames... moaning with a deep seated pain that would not go away and only worsened when he had the healers undress me and bathe me... They quarrelled although I could not understand over what, and after Lady Yuki had departed the room, he knelt beside me, pressed his hand to the side of my face and asked me not to make him punish me again... How I wanted to scream that I had not made him... that I had done nothing but love him... yet it was all I could do to make my eyes meet his... I know not if it was a dream... the next time I awoke it was to find the healer laying strips of something cold and soothing against my burning skin. He tells me that I had an allergic reaction to the bamboo with which Lord Kenta switched me, and that had his Lordship not brought me to the healing rooms, I could well be dead now... Perhaps it would be better if I were... I am confined now, it took me a long while to realise that I was not hallucinating and that I had been moved to other quarters.... my possessions, such as they were at the Tavern, minus my silks, were thrown into crates and in turn the crates were thrown in a corner of this room. It was a long while before I dared to investigate, before I stopped wondering whether someone would reprimand me if I opened them... and when I did, I found that my papers had been gathered together and wedged inside a cosmetics box... It seems they remain unread... I am sure if it were otherwise I would have suffered greatly by now. It was longer still before I discovered where exactly I had been moved to... I speak of this numbly, I am not sure I even believe it myself... Lord Kenta has brought me to my castle... I hesitate to say home, since it is not longer my mine... I had some vague romantic notion that his Lordship would rule from afar, stepping in from time to time to see that everything was being run to his satisfaction... and although each time something terrible happens to me, I speak of my heart being broken, this time it is the truth, I barely know that it beats within my own body... such was the ache within me that after my tears had finally dried, there was nothing left. He has brought his parents here, to the House of Silent Thunder... they and his staff have appropriated my home, everything and everyone in it... the healer (his lordship's) - told me, unknowing who I was, that my men were given a choice, join the House of White Lake or leave, many of my best soldiers chose death and many have become ronin. Worse yet, others fight for White Lake now. Many are under the impression that I am dead... rumours fly throughout the House as to what I did and some of the things people are willing to believe of me, disgust me. My House is gone. I know not what has happened to the Ladies of my House but I fear it can be nothing good... The matriarchal society into which I was born has been destroyed and Silent Thunder operates under White Lake law now... Lord Kenta has not been to see me for days and I know not what I should do... I have not eaten since I left the healing rooms and I have been able only to drink the tepid water that was left in a wash basin... my own state would bother me if I had anything left to feel... as it is, I simply wait... faintly disgusted by my own piteous state... wondering which will come first... death or Lord Kenta...