Keystone by Misty Provencher

would be climbing over each other to pick you off before you even got out the door. They’d think it was an honor to annihilate the last of your family tree. One less Contego in the Ianua’s blood line.”
    Anger rolls down into my stomach. It sits there like a hunk of granite, while I stare at Garrett’s shadowed cheeks. I take a step back as my adrenaline fires up and runs the circuit of my body, looking for an escape.
    “Then I better get trained fast,” I tell him. “My mother asked me to do this and I’m going to do it, Garrett. I’m a Contego now. I’m a warrior, just like you, and I’ve got to do what I know is right. You should know that.” I gulp a breath that goes down my throat like a bag full of hair, but I don’t let his eyes get away. “Especially you,” I say.
    I expect him to yell at me or laugh in my face or tell me I’m naive. I boil, waiting for him to tell me how stupid I am to go half-baked into some quest that I’m totally unprepared for. Or to ask me what we both know that I don’t know: where am I going to look when I don’t really understand what I’m even looking for? But instead of any of this, Garrett just presses his lips together and drops his chin.
    “Alright,” he says. “Then we need to get you trained, ASAP.”
    I wish I could be some awesome warrior girl that could grab his shirt and give him a movie star kiss, but I’m just me and I’d probably break his nose trying to do it.
    Garrett takes my hands in the dark and draws himself close to me again. I can feel his chest rise and fall as we tangle ourselves together. I want him to say everything will work out, but instead, his hair dusts my face. I want him to kiss me, but Garrett takes a deep breath and straightens out his arms, holding me at the ends of them. He groans.
    “We have to get you trained. And that means that I’ll have to stay my distance.”
    It throws my brakes on. “Why?”
    “We can’t have any physical contact during training. Contact with me will drain your energy and you need to keep it at a maximum so that you can learn how to use your senses and your field.”
    He lets go of my shoulders and his heat moves away. I might as well be in a rocket, racing away from the sun.
    “I won’t be able to see you?” I ask.
    “Oh no, we can see each other all we like,” he almost laughs. But not quite. “We just can’t have any physical contact.”
    “Can’t you just teach me what I need to know now?” I say and at the same time, I focus on seeing him. Like someone’s flipped a switch, he appears only a foot away, leaning against a shelf. The way he looks at me, he’s been focused for a while. I smile at him. “See? I’m learning. You’ve already taught me to do this.”
    “This.” He waves a hand between our gaze. “Is nothing compared to what you need to know. You need to learn how to work all your senses together…how to shut them down so they don’t drive you nuts and how to ramp them up when you need to win a fight. You’ll have to learn about protecting your Cavis and how to find your opponent’s...”
    “Cavis?” I giggle.
    “Exactly,” Garrett says. “There’s so much you need to know. Cavises are weakness that show up in your field. They can be physical, mental, spiritual or emotional. Don’t worry. It sounds complicated, but you’ll learn to find them in your opponent’s field. You’re going to learn all of this, but for now, it’d be a good idea for me to practice a little more distance so we can get you up and running a lot more quickly.”
    “Just you? Or I can’t touch anybody?”
    “No,” he says with a fading grin. “Just me.”
    “That doesn’t make sense.”
    “It does if you understand how it works.” He grins sheepishly. “I deplete your energy because…because I want to be with you. In ways you can’t even imagine.”
    My insides spin like a turbo-charged merry-go-round. Garrett underestimates me. I can imagine every way that I want to be with