I flick my wrist up.
“Look, Sam.”
I turn, following her gaze, and in the courtyard are hundreds of Enchantress spirits.
“Why are they all still here?”My mind races but as the arrows whiz past me and steel clangs together I’m snapped out of the haze. I keep one wrist up, eyes scanning the courtyard.
“They’re stuck here,” Celia says.“Just like we are.”
Evren shouts next to me, drawing my attention. His blade is already coated in crimson.
“Use your magick, Sam.”
I duck, dodging an arrow as it flies overhead. “I don’t think speaking to a hundred spirits is going to help us win a fight!” I realize too late that I’ve yelled the words aloud. I draw another arrow from my quiver, letting it soar before it sinks into a guard a few paces away. I flick my wrists back up.
“You’re a Spiritwalker, Sam.”Elwyn’s cool fingers brush against my cheek. “So, walk with them.”She cups my face andshivers rake over my body.“Fightwith them.”She steps aside just in time for me to stop another guard with an arrow to the chest.
“Fight with them,” I repeat, breathless from another kill. I toss my bow to the ground.
“Samaria!” Jarek is sprinting toward me in my peripherals.
Fight.
“Sam!” Jarek shouts again.
Fight.
Jarek’s voice carries over the carnage and the rain, but he doesn’t make it before I flick my wrists up and open myself up to the spirits before me.
My eyes roll back for a split second before they right themselves. And when they do, gone are the screams and fighting sounds of the courtyard. Instead, my ears pop, voices and sounds muffled around me.
Jarek is at my side, his mouth moving but his words are stifled. He grips my shoulders and shakes me, but I’m unmoving.
I take a step forward, holding my hands up to my face to examine the ghost-like mist I’ve become. I glance over my shoulder to where my body still stands. Jarek is fighting around me. His axes swinging, his blue eyes wide.
Tallulah and Evren are there as well, engaged in battles of their own. And Elora— I scan the area until I see her, handling a guard of her own.
“Come,” Elwyn says, waving me forward. Before I’m halfway through the courtyard, walking clear through guards as if I’m nothing more than the wind, more Enchantresses than I can see have gathered around me.
“Spiritwalker,” they whisper. Over and over again.
“Spiritwalker.”
“Spiritwalker.”
“Mother blessed.”
“Open yourself up, Sam.” Elwyn grips my shoulders.
I don’t know how I understand what she means, I just do. A deep, primal part of my being snaps open and as it does the power of my magick unleashes.
Like a bolt of lightning, my magick spears through the courtyard, touching each and every spirit in its path. As it lands on them, color flushes their cheeks. Their eyes ignite, and they all look soalive. Then one by one, their wrists begin to swish and an endless amount of magick, kinds I could have never imagined, begins to circle in the air.
A woman with steel eyes flicks her wrists to the skies as if she’s speaking to the storm, bringing forth heavy hail that she directs toward the guards. Their screams are muffled through the portal but as they begin to fall, my lips spread into a smile.
“Hold onto your magick tightly, Samaria,” Celia says. Her eyes are alight, her red hair gleaming. “Don’t let it slip, the spirits need you in order to use their magick.”
My words are lost but I nod quickly before another Enchantress steps forth. Her silver hair is bound in a thick braid, her dark skin weathered like a decades old map. She smiles at me before facing the guards and raising her wrists.