The roses bloomed earlier this week, as the summer sun banished those final vestiges of the spring chill Io’s flower announced this great victory with a vibrant, crimson salute. I miss watching you tend to father’s gardens, skirts muddied and nails blacked with dirt as you lovingly poured over those thorned shrubs. He used to get so mad, face as red as the petals as he bellowed all throughout the manor.

I miss the noise of the both of you. This place feels less of a home by the day, as if the site of my childhood is blooming in a perverse mockery of your lovely roses, budding, and revealing not a place of warmth and laughter but a cold coffin of stone and stout towers.

Enough sentimentality though, you will be pleased to know I have not given up in my search, Yesterday my eyes finished their scouring of father’s library, you would be less pleased to know that even in all those ponderous tomes of dusty and decaying parchment there was nothing that could aid us... I was also required to sell the collection now that it has proved its uselessness, it should serve to relegate those carrion bird-like bankers to simply circling us for the time being.

There is a boy, A slight thing of honeyed words and starry eyes who has convinced himself that I am some kind of muse, He meanders in our correspondences between extolling my beauty in rebellion to then discussing how I best embody the virginal virtue of Io’s wives. He is however the son of the Lord Marshall and so serves a purpose. I have enlisted him in my search and while he himself is an impotent investigator he has presented me with a lead most promising.

He mentioned a hunter also affected by the taint of Siam’Siak, one who retained free will and compassion for man as I know you do deep down. The man himself was tragically destroyed but after pressuring the absent-minded boy for a name I was able to locate many of the late man’s frequent companions amongst their guild of rough and unrefined men.

I have arranged to meet them as a new apprentice. I am struck as I am about to step under the arch of the great gate with the queerness of the figure I cut, dressed as I am in the riding boots and leather garb of a wanderer, and with father’s sword fastened at my hip. Imagine if either of you could see me now, breasts bound and hair shorn short and boyish with none but horse and steel as my travelling companions.

I believe he would scoff at my foolishness and you would fuss and worry over every action I made; you were always a paragon of gentleness. Maybe you would think me brave, taking the investigation into my own hands, striking out on an adventure? In truth it is nothing of the sort, I am a reprehensible coward, I leave our home in part because of this search but also because I can no longer stand the tortured howls echoing up from the cellar. Your suffering is to great for me, you were always stronger than I could ever hope to be. So I must leave and only return when the means to alleviate it are firmly within my grasp. You are to be left in the custody of Mary, the stewardess, she was always kind to us, and she has pledged to keep any and all prying eyes from the castle for as long as she can.

When I return, and laughter has once more regained its rightful place as the song of our house I hope we can read these memoirs together and I can chuckle as you chide me on my recklessness.

But until that day may come know that I remain your loyal and loving sister.

Izzy.