February 11th, 1890

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Odd how I find myself wishing for the sun just as I was cursing its presence. Days ago, the darkness returned, along with the wind and the rain. It is as if it came back with a vengeance. How dare the sun shine where darkness reigns?

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Just as I was finishing the day's chores, a violent storm rolled in without warning. Crashing waves and world-ending thunder. The pressure in the air… I have not felt anything like this since the hurricane of ‘73. In a way, it is thrilling—the raw, unrelenting power of it. But the thrill is marred by the gnawing pain in my hip. It has been creeping back ever since I took up my duties here at this keep. The endless climb of the tower’s stairs has taken its toll, each step carving a deeper ache into the old wound. A wound earned in my hazardous youth, a reminder of that damned demon horse my father was obsessed with breaking.

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It had nearly killed me, and still, he refused to put the beast down.

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That was his way, even to the day he went to his own grave. Stubborn. Domineering. Cruel. It would have been more humane to end the creature’s suffering. Instead, my father _beat us both relentlessly. He insisted that my weakness—not the horse’s rage, not his own folly—was to blame for my fall.

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That bastard of a man…

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February 14th, 1890

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The storm grows, and so does the fire in my hip. Thinking of my father, I felt rage coil around my ribs like a vice. I stood, meaning to pace—to move, to shake the feeling loose—but the moment I put weight on my leg, the pain struck so fiercely I saw stars.

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For a moment, the lighthouse faded away.

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I was there again. A boy. The ground rising to meet me, the air knocked from my lungs. The panic, the agony of my hip twisted wrong beneath me. Then his voice, sharp as the lash that followed. My father’s fury lashing my arms, my face—the sting, the heat, the smell of leather and blood.

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I came back to myself with a roar and lashed out blindly, kicking hard... wood cracked beneath my heel, a sudden shatter of glass...

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And then the pain.

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I knew before I looked. Before I felt the warmth of blood pouring down my ankle. I had put my foot straight through a supply crate, and with it, shattered my last bottle of laudanum. A foolish, childish act of temper, and now my price had come due.

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I stumbled, crashing to the floor, my vision swimming. I forced myself upright just enough to look at the wound, but the moment I did, my stomach clenched. Glass. So much glass. Small shards embedded in flesh, a deep laceration gushing more blood than I could afford to lose.

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I recognized it for what it was immediately. The artery was cut. Damnation.

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I would die here if I did not act quickly.

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With shaking hands, I tore my shirt and bound a tourniquet just above the wound, wrenching the cloth as tight as I could manage. The bleeding slowed, but I could feel my pulse still hammering against the pressure. Not enough, not enough. I gritted my teeth and looked back at the wound. The glass had to come out. The wound had to be sewn. I had done this before.

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And just like that, my father was in my head again. The night I stitched my mother’s face, my hands small and clumsy, my heart pounding in my chest as she whimpered through split lips. My father snoring in the next room, oblivious to the damage he had done, the damage I had to mend.

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My anger swelled again, but I could not afford to be reckless now. I forced myself to crawl, dragging myself across the room to my cot, fumbling with my trunk. My fingers found what I sought. A needle. A length of thread.

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I had cut my nose off to spite my face, kicking that damned crate. The laudanum was gone. The only liquor in the lighthouse was a case of rum in the storeroom. A room I could not reach, not in this condition, not with the storm raging outside.

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I swallowed, my throat dry. There would be no numbing this.

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I braced myself and reached for the first shard. The world dimmed with pain as I worked. Slow. Methodical. My hands shook, but I kept them steady enough to pull, to wipe the blood away, to thread the needle. The first stitch pulled and I clenched my jaw, breathing through my teeth.

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And in that moment, I thought of you.

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I thought of the way your hands moved as you stitched my clothes. The way you smoothed the fabric before the first careful pierce of the needle. I thought of you, and I clung to it—to anything that was not this pain, this storm, this loneliness.

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I do not know why I write this. Why I am holding this damned quill, dipped in its fine, black ink. You would have marveled at this set. I recall how your eyes sparkled at the sight of a quill like this. Seraphine’s, was it? A gift from her husband. Was it the quill that held your envy? Or did you simply long for a husband of your own, one who might give you something so precious?

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I never deserved the sparkle in your eyes when you gazed at me.

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