Year of the Boar, Sixth Month, Day 12.

My head is reeling, so much has happened of late... since I discovered the reason for his lordship's sojourn outside Silent Thunder I had not been able to talk to him, answering only with sullen, monosyllabic utterances when he spoke to me... I wanted so desperately to scream and cry and beg him not to forge an alliance with Yuika, but my pride would not allow it.. and I know how he detests tears...
I went about the duties he assigned dully, all but growling, sulking like a child, and while I laid out the necessary items for the Tea Ceremony, I happened to over hear more gossip from the other slaves... There is to be no alliance between Silent Thunder and Dying Crane, his lordship intended there to be one, but when he arrived at Dying Crane to formalise his Agreement with Yuika and exchange betrothal gifts, the slaves say that he found her in the arms of another... in a haze of opium, to which she is apparently addicted and in the arms, I should say bed, of another... the slaves did not say who, they speculated that he never loved her, that he saw it only as a business alliance to strengthen his standing within the Kingdom, they say he was disgusted by her lack of honour and told her to make her alliance with the fires of Hell...
No one knows who it was that his lordship found Yuika with, but knowing the recent fashions of Dying Crane and their ally Broken Sakura, I would imagine that either it was her pet, a tiny girl child she keeps dressed up as an adult and whom she trains to ..... please .... her, or someone from White Lake... However, since I do not know - please do not take this as fact...
Lord Kenta did not return for tea at the appointed hour and as I knelt waiting, listening to the other slaves gossiping and speculating, imagining how Yuika and his lordship had been ... pleasing... each other before he found her compromised...I began to feel irritated, my irritation turned to fury when, not knowing my identity of course, the gossip turned to how *I* had been ... pleasing... him before my "death"... my face began to turn slowly more scarlet as the slaves went on and on ... there is talk around the castle, according to them, that I ... offered myself to him by removing all of my clothes and waiting for him in the tea house by the lake... I....I! That I, Kaede Silent Thunder, should ever stoop to the depths of common whoredom...! So incensed did I become at their slander that I stood, my cheeks puce, about to scream at them and put them in their place, when I remembered my own place and instead, ran from the room... gathering my skirts, I pounded down the corridors of the castle, intent on finding his lordship and begging him to put an end to the gossip... as I laboured towards the stables, I heard a commotion arise towards the practice ground... my heart stopped in my throat at my first thought that Lord Kenta had been injured... I began to run again... pushing myself, my heart fit to burst, so long has it been since I took any exercise at all... as I forced myself to keep running and crested the hillock before the ground I saw them... his entire retinue standing as an honour guard, and Lord Kenta knelt under the tree upon white linen and I knew without a doubt what he intended to do... the sun glinted as he picked up the katana and I began to scream... uncaring of my station or any that might listen would find out the truth, I screamed at him to stop... and I carried on screaming... screaming that I loved him, and that I would rather spend the rest of my life as the most miserable of his slaves than spend even an instant without him... I stood on that hillock and screamed until I was literally blue in the face and until I could barely breathe and then the world turned gray and I lie here exhausted and I do not yet know whether Lord Kenta lives and I have not the strength to find out...