Free Warrior Everlasting by Wendy Knight

dampening her hair. “Aarrrrggh!” she screamed, throwing herself backward.
    Too far backward.
    Just as the Taraxippus snapped in two, Scout felt herself falling. The scepter slipped from her hands as she grasped the air for anything to stop her fall.
    There was nothing.
    She tumbled through the sky, hitting the ledge they’d landed on before. The ground was padded by the thick moss that grew everywhere in this place, but pain still shot through her entire body. And then the ledge broke. She had just enough time to realize she’d been right about its instability before she was rolling, cart-wheeling Sometimes falling through nothing but air, sometimes smashing into the steep mountainside.
    She thought she might never stop falling.
    “Ashra, where are you?”
    And then she landed hard on flat ground. She was grateful for the cushion of grass, but even still, things were broken. She could tell. Groaning, she forced her eyes open.
    “ Scout, I can’t get away. It’s too strong.”
    Ashra, Torz, and Trey were at least a gazillion feet above her, still fighting the remaining soul stealer. Without Scout, Ashra wasn’t powerful enough to do the kind of damage necessary, and this one seemed to be much trickier to kill. And angrier.
    Scout rolled over and pushed herself up to her hands and knees, spitting blood. She forced herself to her feet and raised a hand to get Ashra’s attention and show her she was okay.
    The screams distracted her.
    Namely, a single scream, over and over — a horrified, helpless sound that Scout would recognize anywhere.
    “Lil Bit!”
    Without a chance for coherent, rational thought to take hold, Scout raced for the castle doors, less than a hundred feet away. Every muscle, bone, joint — everything hurt as she ran — but she didn’t care. Her sister was in there, in pain, scared. Something was very, very wrong.
    “Scout! No!” Trey bellowed from above them, and Scout could hear Ashra in her head, screaming at her, then begging, but she couldn’t stop. Lil Bit, Lil Bit, Lil Bit.
    I’m coming.
    She slid through the doors, doors that she should have realized were wide open for the sole purpose of luring her in, before Ashra or Trey could get to her. And the doors-she-should-have-realized-were-wide-open-for-the-sole-purpose-of-luring-her-in slammed shut behind her.
    Even then, she didn’t stop running. It wasn’t until Lil Bit’s voice nearly shattered her skull that she skidded to a stop, breathing hard. “Scout, stop!”
    “Lil Bit?” she whispered. She hurt. She couldn’t tell if it was sweat running down her temple or blood, but she was almost positive it was blood trickling across her chin.
    “He tricked you.” In all the time Lil Bit had been speaking to her this way, she’d never sounded so sad.
    “Well, that was much easier than I expected. I thought for one so esteemed in my brother’s eyes, you would be much harder to catch.” Ariston dissolved out of the shadows, handsome face a mask of coldness, black eyes endless pits of horror and… pain.
    Scout recognized him immediately from her nightmares. It took her hurt, battered mind several long seconds before she realized what Lil Bit had meant. He hadn’t been torturing her at all. Lil Bit was in no more danger than she had been before. Scout felt her eyes widen with realization, and with it came the pain. Crashing, horrible waves of pain that sent her to her knees and then to the ground, curling in on herself.
    “You’re broken. She’s broken. How is she supposed to do anyone any good like that?” Ariston sounded utterly confused. Like it hadn’t been part of his master plan to kill her. But she heard it all from a distance, like he was at the other end of a very long, very dark tunnel.
    “Bring me a soul,” he said, his voice grim. Before Scout could figure out what he meant, her body gave up, and she blacked out completely, falling into the same nightmare she’d had a thousand times since Lil Bit had been