Miorine Rembran is familiar with the function of tools. Like the ones she'd use in her greenhouse. The trowel for the soil. The watering can for the tomatoes. The soil kit for the flowerbeds. The screwdriver for securing the planters to the wall. The thermometer for the air temperature, and the digital hygrometer for the humidity. The watering system and how it was supposed to keep her plants hydrated perfectly, even if she didn't meticulously check it every day.
They are her tools, the ones that she has used, uses, and will use – every day for the rest of her life, in an attempt to connect with something that she's not quite sure of anymore.
She is familiar with these tools, and the nature of them. Things to be used until they're broken. Until their usefulness has been fulfilled. And then they are to be disposed of. To be replaced with either new tools, or better ones. Ones that renew that usefulness, or ones that have a new usefulness to them.
She isn't as familiar with humans. With their purpose, how they're supposed to be used.
The title of "Holder" was supposed to be the way to master that exact thing. And it wasn't until she had met Suletta Mercury, did the machines of the game finally reveal themselves to her. The tools of the title, of the nature of how people are useful, how she could turn the familiar faces around her, into tools that were at her disposal.
And yet, contradicting the nature of tools; she didn't want to dispose of anyone.
Certainly not Suletta Mercury.
There has always been that latent understanding of what power she holds, but now she understands it too late. Too late for it to matter who her Holder is. She's already decided who takes that title. Who is deserving of it? That is a different question. One that she hides away in her chest, hoping to never have to find an answer for.
She understands what that power has always meant. What she has or hasn't done with it. And how now, that power is directing her away from Suletta Mercury, away from what Miorine Rembran knows, and towards a future that she controls.
Those are the rules of the duel: that if she wanted someone to be Holder bad enough, she would do everything in her power to make them win. A future that she controls, in the end.
This includes betraying the person she cares the most about.
She had wanted someone else to be her Holder. So, she helped her win, even when the odds were stacked against Suletta Mercury in her second duel against Guel.
Because she wanted Suletta to be her Holder, she had gone above and beyond what was needed, to secure that.
And when Suletta was no longer useful to her? When Guel was the far more useful person to her ends, that's when he became the Holder again, by her own doing. There was no way for him to win against the rebuilt Aerial. Suletta had him dead to rights. She knows this. She knew how it would end if she didn't will it another way.
And so, she did. She was willing to pull the rug out from under Suletta's feet.
Because she was no longer useful. There was a better tool.
Yet, that was the end of the logical train. That there was nothing else that she could realistically justify what had happened.
She hadn't lied when she asked Suletta to stay by her side. And she was confident that Suletta meant every word when she said that she wouldn't lose any duels. She had kept the rest of her promise to the letter.
She wants, more than anything, to have Suletta be free from all this. And that is why she had to dispose of Suletta and her plethora of usefulness. To keep her safe from ever being disposed of by someone who knows the nature of tools. To keep her from ever being viewed as a tool. She's more than that. More than just an item to be used and discarded. A living, breathing human. One who could tip the whole world on its head if she so decided. Of this there is no doubt in Miorine's mind.
Yet, the doubt that remains in its stead is still the same as it has always been: "Is this the right path?" Is cutting off Suletta, taking everything away from her, to leave her with nothing but Earth House, truly the right way of keeping her safe from Prospera, and the rest of the twisted game that Miorine has been forced to play since birth?
She doesn't know.
But in the aching moment inside her heart, she can't find any other answer either. Anything that tells her what the right path truly is. Whether it is this betrayal, or some other way. She cannot find it.
And so, instead, she stows it away in her heart. Somewhere that Guel will never be able to reach. A place that not even her father could wrest anything from. The same place where she hides her tools, where she hides her garden with all of its plants and all of its meaning.
She hides away this moment, the one where she stands over top of Suletta Mercury, and says good-bye. In hopes that this betrayal will mean something in the end, that she hasn't just taken everything away from the poor girl for nothing.