Chapter 32
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The truth will set you free, or something like that.
“Diamond!” I shriek, practically lunging for the shining, clear stone as it drops from an iridescent mimic. My heart rate picks up. It can’t be. It could be? It must be. It is!
A perfect diamond.
It took the rest of Summer, but I am finally holding the last piece I need to upgrade my sword into Verity’s Edge. This moment is monumental.
I am finally going to own the blade of truth.
In the game, its description is: What a shiny new weapon. It’s almost like you can see who you really are in the reflection…
Unnecessarily dramatic? Sure.
When it was just a game.
Now, as someone who has crossed from one entire world to another, still unsure of who I am, I desperately want to know the truth.
What will I see in the blade’s edge? Will it cut me to my core? Or will it confirm that I finally belong somewhere?
“What do you do now?” Samson asks, sheathing his sword and making it to my side.
Find the confidence, mostly, then figure out how to affix all the gems I hoarded from the Sky Dungeon and this diamond to the Crystal Gem Blade’s hilt, probably.
“I’m not completely sure…but I have faith I’ll figure it out.
” Upon further inspection of my sword, I locate nothing.
No missing pieces. No suspicious, gem-shaped indents.
My sparkly sword is yellow and pink and sparkly, and giving me no hints at all.
“How did it work in the game?” Samson asks.
I squint at the fuller. “Once you get everything you need on you, there’s a dialogue box that appears, saying, You feel a mysterious power… Then there’s a little cutscene where your character lifts the sword and colored lights swirl around you as it transforms.”
Samson’s hand warmly circles mine, then—together—he lifts the blade toward the stalactites of the cave.
A frisson of heat.
A static of electricity.
A blaze of color.
Tensing, I brace myself against Samson’s chest as jewels spin around us, colored lights erupting and sparking. When my eyes can’t take it anymore, I squeeze them shut and wait for the world to stop quivering with magic.
“I can’t believe that worked,” he whispers, so close.
“Neither can I.” I swallow, shaking, and lower the blade.
Samson’s hand slips from mine, up my arm, to my shoulder. “Are you okay, Lemonade?”
I soak in the support; it makes my heart shiver. Softly, I say, “Yeah,” then I dare to open my eyes and look into the blade.
Dark…hair.
Nothing like Citrus’s brilliant gold locks, which I’ve more than gotten used to over these past two seasons.
Hollow eyes, endlessly searching, endlessly wanting.
Samantha is thin, pale, empty, a pool of memories and pain I wasn’t expecting to stomach right now.
Looking in a mirror at who I once was is nothing short of looking at a corpse. And it sends a tremor down my spine when I remember that Verity’s Edge doesn’t show you the past.
It shows you the truth.
Inside, am I still this husk of a person?
My stomach knots. Trepidation takes hold.
I’d reject the very idea if it weren’t staring me in the face.
Samson’s grip on my shoulder tightens, and I wonder if he can see Samantha, too. Lifting my attention, however, I find a teenager with Samson’s own eyes gazing mournfully above my reflection. The unmistakable blue is as breathtaking as the irrevocable sadness pooling in it.
He’s just a boy. Young. Wounded. Hopeless. Alone. Already a patchwork of scars, with the reddened flesh of healing tattoos covering his arms.
My heart cracks.
A tear skates down the boy’s cheek, and I look up at Samson’s face.
His eyes startle toward me, damp, and I raise my shaking free hand to dry the trail. “Are you okay?” I ask, voice breaking.
He nods once, glancing toward the blade. “Who…” His brows knit. “Is that what you used to look like, in your old world?”
A twinge of panic twists my heart. I swallow. “Y-yes.”
“I guess I never thought that you looked any different.”
Pressure builds in my chest, unspoken words congealing. I didn’t just look different. I was different. An entirely different person. With an entirely different name. Devoid of hope. Devoid of joy. Constantly craving something I could never figure out. Constantly—
“She’s beautiful.”
My heart thuds. “What?”
Samson’s eyes meet mine, and he says, “You…are beautiful.”
I flinch, find Samantha, expect my reflection to be something different, someone whole. But nothing has changed, save a thread of surprise in those hollow, hollow eyes. “No. She’s… I was… I didn’t take care of myself. I had no one. I was no one. No one wanted me.”
Samson’s arms close around my body, holding me safe in the warmth they offer. So gently, he says, “I would have.”
And that?
That changes everything.
“We could have wanted each other,” he murmurs, taking in a tight breath that presses against my back. “You…could have been the gift I was searching for, the gift that showed me I hadn’t been abandoned.”
My muscles weaken until I can’t hold the sword up any longer. It drops, point hitting the ground before the rest clatters after. Turning, I throw my arms around Samson, crushing him as tight as I can. His arms, wrapped around me, hold together.
Somewhere, beyond us, Yami and Tsuki play in the cavern, sniffing out unusual smells, tackling unusual bugs, but for spare moments, my entire world consists of loving arms.
Samson accepts me.
Wholly.
Even my weakest, ugliest parts are beautiful to him. The parts I hate. The parts I thought I left behind.
He thinks they’re a gift.
We could have wanted each other.
“Thank you,” I whisper, and my voice cracks. “For…everything. Thank you.”
He buries my body in his, threading his fingers into my hair. Voice harsh with withheld tears, he whispers, “I love you, Citrus. No matter what you look like or who you see when you look in a mirror, I love you.”
My heart leaps, and my lungs fill with the scent of him.
Earthen. Warm. Safe. Tears bead in my eyes, and if they were open, my glasses would probably be fogged.
Hoarse, I say, “I love you, too, Samson. So much. If I— If I’d been born here, if we’d met sooner…
” I wouldn’t have talked to him. I would have been unfamiliar and afraid, just like I was in my other world.
I want to believe things would have been magically different… but I know myself better.
Inside, I’m scared and searching. We needed the separation before we could ever wind up together.
Who knows if I would have even lifted my head high enough to see his glorious shoulders if ever our paths had crossed.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I grew up guarded, too. I’m not saying we would have intrinsically known we belonged with each other had we met when we were younger.
I’m saying, knowing what I do now, I would have given anything for someone like you.
Knowing what you do now, I hope you would have wanted me, too. ”
“I would have.” I ball my fists in his clothes. “Completely.”
I don’t know how long we stay like that—soaking in one another—but I know when I come up for air, I am forever changed.
And when I bend to get my sword…I see Citrus in the blade.