Never (Never, #1) (55)

“Who would kill one on purpose?” I ask, horrified.

“Themselves if they’ve got nothing to live for, or someone else if they’re trying to control another fairy.”

I frown at him. “How can you control a fairy?”

“You can’t, really. That’s why you have to catch them in pairs. It’s the only way you’ll get it to do what you want.”

My brows get low, but I keep listening.

“If you have two, and you threaten to hurt one, the other will do what you want. It’s why fairies tend to spilt up and stay apart. They’re so loyal, they’re too easy to exploit.”

“So what happened here?”

Rye scratches his neck. “People kept pillaging the village to control their magic, for money, for riches, you know—the usual shit people destroy a place that isn’t theirs for.”

I shake my head at it all. “So the fairies just left?”

“They scattered.” He shrugs. “They had to. Once the people worked out if you took two fairies at once they were a lot more compliant, two or more fairies gathering became too dangerous. We tried to shelter them. It worked for a while, my grandfather said, but fairies are so obviously nonhuman, you know? They’re too beautiful. You just knew as soon as you saw one what it was, so they took them anyway.”

“So that’s why they went small?”

“Yeah. Well, that and then the humans started to rape the women fairies to try to make halflings.”

My mouth falls open in horror.

“But humans don’t get it. A fairy’s magic is so powerful and so their own. You do that to a fairy, she’s not giving you what you want. They control their magic. So they use it to control their size, stay small, stay alone, survive.”

I feel ill as I stare over at him. “People would still try to hurt them?”

“Daphne.” He gives me a look like I’m stupid. “Never mind the decade or the planet, but what won’t man do for power?”

You have a vision in your mind of other planets, that they’ll be better than ours, more advanced, more peaceful, more evolved— And maybe they would be without humans. Humans seem to be the common denominator when it comes to the downfall of others.

“We should go.” Rye nods his head. “I’ll take you back down past Cannibal Cove.”

I toss him a look. “No, thank you.”

He laughs. “It’s just a name. It’s mostly just mermaids.”

And do you know, I really do love it here. For the strangeness and the chaos and the mysteries that seem so above my head, the land is nothing short of spectacular.

Every colour that blooms here is insanely intense. You’ve never seen greens more saturated than this, and there are about a million different shades all layered on top of one another as the fallen fairy kingdom with its forest all overgrown morphs into a proper jungle that spills out onto the most unimaginably beautiful beach. Like no one’s ever stepped foot on it before.

The wind blows against me, and there’s a sweetness in the air even though there are some grains of sand blowing on my face. I turn my head to shield my eyes and spot a mermaid on the rock.

That still feels like such a ludicrous thing to say.

I recognise her. It’s the one with the auburn hair. Marin, I think her name is. Rye told me that she’s actually part siren; I don’t know what that means though.

Her tail stands out against the backdrop of it all because it’s bright and glistening shades of amber and yellow.

And then I notice underneath her a pair of legs. I stop and squint. It’s getting hard to see. The suns are all starting to set.

“Hey.” Rye grabs my arm. “We should go.”

“What?” I blink, confused.

He moves in front of me, shaking his head. “This was a stupid way to come. I don’t know what I was thinking, but we should just go back through—”

I peer around him, and that’s when my eyes come into proper focus.

The mermaid is with someone. Actually, she’s kissing someone.

A lot.

“Peter?” I say his name, but it sounds foreign as I do. It’s a funny feeling, floating but in the bad way. Like I’m at sea and I’m adrift. I think I call his name again as I walk towards him, but he doesn’t stop.

Rye grabs my arm again. “Let’s just go.” He shakes his head. “We don’t want to see this. Marin’s a piece of work. We should—”

“Peter Pan!” I yell loud enough for him to finally notice me.

He pulls back from the mermaid and looks around confused till his eyes finally land on me about ten metres away from him.

“Wendy!” He beams.

“Daphne,” I say, and Rye’s head falls as the mermaid giggles.

“Daphne.” Peter nods, smiling indifferently as he props himself up a bit. “Rye! What are you doing out on this side of the island?”

Rye just shakes his head, gives him a little shrug. “Foraging.”

I look past Peter to the mermaid leaning on his shoulder, staring up at him dreamily, before I look back at him.

“What are you doing?” I ask, sounding braver than my insides feel.

“Kissing.”

And obviously so. I just saw them doing that. I don’t know why him saying it out loud feels like somebody’s dropped a piano on me. Now that I’m closer, I can see he’s sort of shimmery—specks of scales from rubbing up against a mermaid.