Page 162 of Tracking Snow

“Do you think wanting to be whole again means we still hate ourselves?” My fingers tighten around hers. “That we aren’t accepting ourselves the way we are? The same way we were taught not to accept our magic?”

Her brows draw together, and her mouth softens. She lifts our joined hands and presses them against her chest.

“You’re allowed to want what you want,” she says. “You don’t have to prove you love yourself by staying exactly the same forever, and you don’t have to prove it by changing either.” Her thumb sweeps slowly over my knuckles. “You just have to trust yourself enough to know the difference.”

The words settle deep.

I don’t want to live life in pieces. I don’t want one of us tasting while the others watch, one of us touching while the rest hover somewhere behind him. I want to reach the whole damn world whenever I want

I want to always be able to reach Snow.

I swallow hard and grab the bottle off the coffee table. Snow sucks in a breath beside me but doesn’t stop me as I pull the cork free with a soft pop and tip the bottle back, drinking the whole thing before any of us have time to reconsider.

The petal tastes exactly like it smells. Rotting roses. Not completely terrible, but definitely not something I’d order a second round of.

By the time I set the empty bottle back on the table, the room has already begun to spin. Snow’s grip tightens around my hand as my vision fractures into overlapping pieces, the room multiplying around me like I’m trapped inside a kaleidoscope.

“One?” Snow calls, but her voice comes from somewhere impossibly far away.

Inside us, every boundary suddenly sharpens. For one terrifying second, I know exactly where each of us ends and the next begins, seven clean lines cutting through us more clearly than they ever have before.

Then the lines start slicing deeper.

Two grunts. Three cries out. Seven growls through the pain while Four swears violently, and I can’t tell which sounds escape our mouth and which exist only inside our head.

Snow squeezes my hand, and I latch onto the sensation with everything I have, her fingers, her warmth, the simple fact that she is still right there beside me. If there is anything that can pull us through this, it’s her.

The edges cut deeper, past thought and memory until pain detonates through our body. My back arches violently, my eyes clench shut and our head snaps backward as seven voices cry out at once.

Everything goes dark.

I blink, then blink again.

Snow is still sitting beside me, pitched forward with one hand wrapped around mine and the other hovering inches from my face like she wants to touch me but isn’t sure whether she should. Her blue eyes sweep over me, searching.

Wait.

I close my eyes and reach inward.

There’s noise. Thoughts, memories, contradictions, desire, all of it still moving through me, but there are no walls.

I try to call for Two, but the thought immediately tangles because I am Two. I’m One too, and Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven. Every impulse is still here, every memory, every part that once felt separate, but there is no clear place where one of us stops and another begins.

There is no one behind me and no one at the front.

Just me.

My eyes snap open. “Holy faefucks.”

Snow’s lips part as wonder slowly overtakes the worry on her face. “It worked. You’re eyes, they’re...they’re hazel.”

I stand and drag her up with me, then kiss her.

Her tongue slides against mine and there’s nowhere else for the sensation to go. No back of the mind, no distant corner, no one else holding the reins while the rest of me watches. Her mouth is on mine, her body presses against me, and every bit of it reaches me at once.

Mine.

Excitement, shock, relief and an entirely inappropriate amount of raging horniness crash through me together. I laugh into Snow’s mouth and reach down, scooping her ass into my hands until her legs wrap around my hips.