Thinking about kissing Rachel is doing nothing to stop the heat that is spreading through me. It pools in my stomach, spirals through my chest, and burns against my cheeks while I try not to remember the way her breath catches in between kisses. The way her fingers dig into my shoulders. The way she presses against me like she can’t stand to have a single sliver of air between us.

Frankie slaps a hand on my shoulder, and my eyes fly open.

“Feeling okay?” he asks, his thick brows furrowed.

“I’m fine.”

“If you’re going to puke, aim it over the rail. I ain’t cleaning that up.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“You sure?” He studies me. “You look flushed, and you’re out of breath all of a sudden.”

“I feel fine. Really. I was just thinking. About Rachel. I mean, not just about Rachel. About a lot of things. A lot of . . . things.” I make myself stop talking before more inane nonsense can pour out of my mouth and ignore the knowing gleam in Frankie’s eyes.

“About how kissing Rachel is eminently preferable to working through mathematical equations?” Connor asks, a sly smile on his face.

I’m silent a beat too long, and Frankie laughs, a great belly laugh that I haven’t heard from him since the day Thom died. Connor joins him. It’s nice to hear Frankie sound like he did before the people he cared about started dying, so I shrug off my embarrassment and smile for his sake.

“Chelmingford on the horizon!” the boat’s captain calls out.

I turn back to the railing and see a silver mountain that seems to rise up out of the water ahead of us. As we get closer, the mountain becomes a collection of tall, narrow buildings in silvery stone with steeply slanted roofs resting on thick, algae-covered stilts. A collection of narrow bridges in the same stone connects one building to another.

“I thought Chelmingford was an island,” Frankie says, the humor completely drained from his voice.

“It used to be.” Connor shades his eyes with his hand. “But then a dam north of here from the previous civilization broke and the land Chelming built on was completely submerged.” He gestures toward one of the thick stone stilts as we sail past it. “Thankfully, he built his city on stilts because he figured the higher off the ground they were, the less chance they’d be visited by the tanniyn.”

“The Commander said that the tanniyn don’t surface underwater,” I say as the boat slows.

“Well, I suppose Aaron didn’t figure that out until later. At any rate, his city was on stilts, so when the dam broke, most of the buildings remained intact.”

“Most of them?” I look around the city and find children sitting on the bridges, their legs dangling over the water while they stare at us.

“The dam broke to the north of them, and the power of the water swept away some of their northern buildings. That’s how Aaron died and left his daughter in charge.”

“This isn’t natural.” Frankie sounds shaken.

“Well, it’s not unheard of for a child to succeed her father in the leading of a—”

“I don’t care about who leads what. I’m talking about those.” Frankie points to the bridges above us. “One misstep and we’ll fall to our deaths.”

I squeeze his shoulder as the image of Thom facing down the Carrington army on an old, rickety bridge seconds before he triggered the explosion that killed him fills my mind.

“You can stay here if you’d like,” I say quietly while the boat approaches a wide ramp that disappears into the water. Thick metal rings are attached to the ramp every few yards. A woman stands on the ramp, her legs braced.

“I’m not staying anywhere unless it’s by your side.” Frankie jerks his head toward the Commander, who is stalking toward the bow, his eyes on the woman. “Not with that one still breathing.”

“Toss me your rope,” the woman calls out in a husky, smoky voice that makes the heat still lingering in the pit of my stomach burn a little warmer. Her dark hair is coiled around her head like a thick, braided crown, and her warm brown skin glows in the sunlight. Laugh lines bracket her eyes, and her full lips look like they’re used to smiling. She catches the rope Frankie tosses to her with a lithe strength that suddenly makes her petite, curvy frame seem incredibly intriguing.

Connor makes a small noise at the back of his throat, and I punch him in the arm. “Stop staring,” I say.

“You first.”

I am staring. I blink and look at Frankie instead. He isn’t nearly as interesting, but at least this way I don’t feel like I’m being disloyal to Rachel for finding another woman beautiful.

Especially a woman old enough to be my mother.

Now that is an uncomfortable thought.

“Requesting permission to enter your city,” the Commander says in a tone of voice that makes it clear he doesn’t feel he should have to ask permission for anything.

“Of course, Jason,” the woman says, and I catch a hint of power—not the turn-a-boy’s-stomach-warm kind, but the I’m-in-charge-and-don’t-you-forget-it kind—in her voice. Another woman joins her and lowers a ladder for us to use in climbing up to the ramp.

“We’ll need a meeting,” the Commander says, and then climbs the ladder first.

The woman watches him, her eyes narrow, and then slowly examines the rest of us while the Commander steps past her and onto the ramp. When her brown eyes land on me, I have to work to maintain eye contact. Something about her makes me feel like she’s just taken my measure and is deciding what to do with it.