Curate, connect, and discover
A flower, clutched and crushing in her hands, the blue-white staining and eating her fingertips— a cyanotype. She gazes across the battlefield. She sneaks into the bedchambers of a beloved she kept too close, kept too far.
Karna stands in replaced positions. A Colin sized position. An Ariana sized position.
Her heart skips a beat as she skims over Deli’s haphazardly hidden notes. She finds motes of anger, of resentment, of despair and heartbreak at the corners of rapid heartbeats. She pulls and tugs at them, rearranging herself. Presentable. Useful. Disposable.
She slides her note underneath the pillows of Delissandro Katzon’s bed. A quiet confession. A hopeful confession. She must survive.
She is dying, she is a child, she is in love. She hopes and she fears as tears crawl down her face and the rot eats her body. She knows the ways of war and the smell of murder better than the scent of a well prepared meal in the comforts of home. She knows the quick breath of death and the slow of a pulse better than the warmth of a family and the embrace of a lover. “She died nine years ago”.
At the bottom of the earth, in the embrace of Heart of the World, her story ends in a realm unknown to the rest. All the fighting to survive, the lies and the murder, the whispering of secret secrets and the blood dripping from the end of a blade. It all comes to a rest. Karna gives in to her exhaustion with an exhale (exhale, exhale). Eyes closed and a prayer to no god. A Hunger greets this tired warrior.
Cold steel rips apart her torn body. She dies and no one will mourn her. She dies and no mother, no sister, no lover will leave flowers by her gravestone, no eulogies sung, an insignificant name.
She dies and she looks at the face of her lover. A letter remains underneath his pillows. Will he mourn for her?
“The only secret I have left, is that I love you” and in a title that was never made for her— “Signed, Sklad Karna Solara of Scoville”.
The Pawn resigns.