Chapter 8
Verity
I looked up at the coconut tree, wondering how on Earth we were going to get those fruit down.
One had fallen down, waiting to be opened, but we couldn't wait for them all to slowly drop to the ground.
I wasn't much of a climber, and Rainse's webbed feet were not made for it either.
Maybe we could shake the tree, together. Or we could-
What was I doing? For a moment, I'd forgotten that this wasn't real. That I was trapped on this island with him, an alien, who'd chosen not to bring me to the island where his brothers were, but instead chosen to isolate us on this islet.
I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about coconuts and teamwork. I was supposed to be finding a way off this rock, not wondering how to make a tropical breakfast with my captor.
Captor. The word felt wrong every time I tried it on. He didn’t act like one. He didn’t lock me up or threaten me. He just… existed beside me. Quiet, watchful, frustratingly calm.
Rainse was crouched at the water’s edge, cleaning something in the shallows.
The sun caught the wet gleam of his greenskin, turning the fronds along his ribs and arms translucent.
I told myself I was studying him the way I’d study a new marine species—curious, detached, professional. My pulse didn’t get the memo.
He glanced back over his shoulder, eyes catching the light like sea glass. “You should stay in the shade. The sun is strong today.”
“I’m fine,” I said automatically. “I’m British. We only burn on holidays.”
He frowned slightly, probably translating that through whatever alien logic filter he had. “If you burn, I will find waterweed to cool it.”
“That’s… considerate,” I said, and then hated how uncertain it sounded.
He stood, tall and graceful, the movement too fluid to be entirely human. “You are healing. You move easier today.”
“Barely,” I muttered, rubbing at my ribs. “It still feels like I lost a fight with a steel beam.”
“That is what the ocean is,” he said. “A thousand steel beams, moving very fast.”
I smiled despite myself. “I’ll have to remember that for my next research paper.”
His head tilted slightly, a habit of his when he didn’t quite follow the joke but wanted to. “You will write again?”
The question hit harder than expected. I looked away, out toward the endless water. “If I get off this island, sure.”
“You will,” he said simply, as if it were a fact of physics.
I wanted to believe him. The problem was, I also wanted to punch him for sounding so certain.
“Maybe we should focus on coconuts first,” I said, stepping closer to the tree. “Priorities.”
He followed, watching with mild curiosity as I studied the trunk. “They are heavy,” he said. “If one falls, it could crush you.”
“Great pep talk, thanks.” I glanced up at the cluster of fruit swaying against the bright sky. “If I die, at least it’ll be ironic. Death by coconut, the marine biologist who survived both a whale and a shark attack.”
“You will not die.”
“You can’t guarantee that.”
“I can,” he said, calm as ever. “Because I will not let it happen.”
I stared at him, half irritated, half… something else. “You really don’t do half measures, do you?”
“Half measures sink ships,” he said, and that made me laugh.
The sound startled a flock of small seabirds from the rocks. They wheeled above us, shrieking against the bright blue, and for a heartbeat, everything felt almost normal.
But normal didn’t last long out here. The wind brought a hint of something sour and briny, the kind of smell that meant too many tiny lives drifting close together. Rainse’s expression changed, eyes narrowing as his greenskin rippled with movement.
“Stay here,” he said, already striding toward the shore.
I watched him go, the strange tendrils along his body flaring like warning flags, and a cold prickle of unease ran down my spine. Whatever was in the water, it wasn’t just fish.
"What are you doing?" I asked when he entered the water.
"I want to know what's going on. Something is different. I want to make sure you're safe."
I swept my arms in a wide circle, then winced at the sharp pain in my ribs. "I'm on an island. Not in the water. I'm safe. So are you. Why risk going for a swim when there is no need?"
He turned toward me, the water swirling around his legs. “Because the sea doesn’t change without reason. I can feel it.”
“Feel it?” I crossed my arms, immediately regretting the movement when my ribs protested. “What does that even mean?”
He hesitated, searching for words. “The currents. The charge beneath the surface. Something is wrong.”
I frowned. The scientist in me wanted to challenge him—currents didn’t have emotions, they had patterns. But the fronds along his shoulders were shifting restlessly, catching the light like living ribbons. They responded to things I couldn’t sense, and that unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.
“You can’t fix the ocean,” I said, trying for humour. “Maybe it’s just having a mood swing.”
His lips curved faintly. “If the sea has moods, then this one feels angry.”
That sent a small chill down my spine. “Then come back out.”
“I will,” he promised, eyes scanning the water. “Once I know why it’s angry.”
I sighed, half annoyed, half impressed by his persistence. “Fine. Just—don’t get eaten or caught in a net or electrocuted or whatever it is that happens to Finfolk who ignore common sense.”
He looked back over his shoulder, that faint, maddening smile still in place. “We don’t get electrocuted. Usually.”
“That’s comforting.”
He took another step deeper, until the water reached his waist, greenskin shifting like kelp caught in a tide. “Stay on the shore,” he said quietly. “If anything happens, go to the rocks.”
“You’re assuming I’ll listen.”
“You won’t,” he said, not unkindly. “But I had to try.”
He waded deeper until the water reached his chest, then dove elegantly beneath the surface. For a few seconds, I could still see him—just the faint shimmer of his greenskin gliding through the clear water. Then he was gone.
The sea looked harmless enough from here. Calm, even. Gentle waves lapped at the sand, innocent as anything, sparkling in the light of the sun. But every time I’d thought the ocean was harmless, it had proved me wrong.
I sat down on a flat rock, wrapping my arms around my knees. He’d said he’d be back soon. He’d also said he wouldn’t get electrocuted, and I wasn’t entirely sure I trusted either statement.
The minutes dragged. I watched the water, scanning for any sign of him. Every flicker of light beneath the surface could have been him—or just sunlight bouncing off sand.
What if he didn’t come back?
The thought settled in my gut like a stone. If something happened to him, I’d be alone here. Completely alone. No rescue, no idea which direction to swim even if I could. My ribs ached just from breathing too deeply; I wouldn’t make it halfway to anywhere.
I should have felt angry at him for leaving me like this, diving headfirst into danger because the water felt different. But anger didn’t sit right. Not when I kept replaying the way he’d said I want to make sure you’re safe as if it mattered more than his own life.
Maybe that’s why I couldn’t stop watching the water, waiting for that flash of green. I told myself it was practical—if he drowned, I’d needed to know—but that sounded hollow even inside my head.
I tried to think like a scientist. If he was injured, maybe he’d drift toward the shallows. Maybe the current would bring him back here. Maybe—
“Stop it,” I muttered. “He’s fine.”
The ocean didn’t care what I thought. It just kept breathing, slow and endless, like something alive.
The light changed, the sun dipping higher. Still no sign of him. My heart thudded painfully against my ribs, a dull echo of the pulse that had become too familiar—the one I sometimes felt in my chest when he looked at me for too long.
I pressed a hand to my sternum, as if I could quiet it. “You’re not connected,” I told myself. “You’re just losing it.”
A shadow moved beneath the water, far out by the darker reefs. Too large, too fast. I rose instinctively, scanning the waves.
“Rainse?” I called, then cursed myself for doing it. My voice carried out across the stillness and vanished into the blue.
The waves whispered back in a language I didn’t speak. Every few seconds, the surface of a patch of water maybe twenty metres from the shore flickered — tiny bursts of light like lightning trapped under glass. Bioluminescence. I’d seen it before, just never this bright.
Then the light pulsed again, stronger. And another. The whole patch of water shimmered like a living constellation.
"Rainse?"
No answer. But something was wrong with the pattern. The glow wasn't rhythmic or steady — it flared in short, violent bursts. I'd seen that once, on a research trip to Fiji, when a jellyfish bloom got tangled in a propeller. They flashed like that when disturbed or attacked.
I walked into the shallows, shielding my eyes from the sun.
The glow in front of me brightened, then fractured.
For a heartbeat, I thought it was just reflection — until I saw him.
His body twisted beneath the surface, the greenskin along his ribs thrashing with frantic light. Around him, jellyfish. So many of them.
"Rainse!"
My feet moved before my brain caught up. I took three steps into deeper water before logic slammed into me like a physical force.
Stop. Think.
Diving straight into that swarm would be suicide. I'd be stung within seconds, paralyzed, drowning beside him. And then we'd both be dead.
My hands were shaking. My ribs throbbed with every panicked breath.
Think like a scientist. Observe. Assess. Act.
The jellyfish were concentrated around him, drawn to something—the electrical pulses of his greenskin, maybe, or the thrashing of his body. They pulsed with each movement, releasing more venom with each contact.
I needed to disperse them. Get them away from him before I could pull him out.