Chapter 71: Borrowed Company
Danny found himself comparing them to the grey-haired man without even meaning to.
The old man had been difficult, often harsh, and impossible to read. He would criticize Danny for how he breathed, for how he stood, for how he thought. You breathe too loud. You stand like you’re waiting to be hit. You think like a town boy. He never praised, only pointed out what was wrong. Yet he had known when danger was near before Danny could feel anything. He had understood the wilderness in a way Danny couldn’t begin to imitate. He knew which berries would kill you in an hour and which would kill you in a week. He knew how to move so the forest didn’t notice you, how to step on roots instead of leaves to keep silent. He knew how to listen to the wind and tell if it had passed over water or over rot.
These survivors seemed competent, but Danny didn’t know enough about them to judge how competent they really were. Packing a pot well didn’t mean you knew how to fight a Mire Wolf. Keeping a boy close didn’t mean you knew how to survive a Fog Tide. Competence in camp was different from competence in a fight, and the wilderness punished people who confused the two. Danny had seen it happen — travelers who were perfect at making camp and terrible at staying alive when something came out of the trees.
He didn’t know their names yet. He didn’t know if those names were even real. People on the road often used false names. It was safer that way. A name was a handle someone could use to pull you into trouble.
He didn’t know what they wanted. Everyone wanted something, even if they said they didn’t. Maybe they wanted an extra body to trigger traps. Maybe they wanted someone small to send into ruins or narrow caves where adults couldn’t fit. Maybe they just wanted company because the wilderness made you lonely enough to risk it. Loneliness could make you do stupid things, Danny knew that. It made you talk when you should stay quiet.
And he didn’t know what they would do if they discovered his bloodline or learned about Fatal Rewind. If they knew he could turn back time itself, even by a few seconds. That kind of power made people greedy. Or afraid. And afraid people did terrible things. The Church would call him an abomination and try to burn it out of him. Slavers would sell him to a warlord for a fortune. Even ordinary people might think he was cursed and leave him behind — or worse, tie a stone to him and leave him in a river to make sure the curse didn’t spread.
For now, he would tell them as little as possible. He would be a quiet, injured kid they found on the road. That was safest. The grey-haired man had told him: the less people know about you, the fewer ways they have to hurt you. He had repeated it so often that Danny heard it in his sleep sometimes.
The younger boy eventually drifted closer. He had been glancing back at Danny every minute or so, and finally his curiosity won over whatever warning Mara had given him. Danny could see the internal debate on his face — the way he kept opening his mouth, then closing it, then looking ahead, then back again.
"So, Dannies," he said as he fell into step beside Danny, trying to sound casual and failing completely. He kicked a stone as he walked. "Dannies, huh? That’s what you said, right?"
Danny glanced at him sideways. He kept his hand near his bag, not threatening, just ready.
"What?"
"How old are you? You look like you’re maybe fifteen? Sixteen? You have that look. Like you’ve seen a lot."
"Why?"
"I’m curious. I’m thirteen. Well, almost fourteen. Mara says I’m fourteen next month, so basically fourteen. So if you’re fifteen, that means you’re only a year older. That’s not that much."
"Be curious quietly," Danny said.
The boy stared at him for a second, his mouth open slightly, as if he wasn’t sure if that was a joke or a warning.
Then he laughed. A short, surprised laugh that sounded genuine and a little too loud for the forest.
"You’re strange."
"So I’ve been told."
"Where did you learn to talk like that? Like you’re all... you know, old and serious? Like an old man in a kid’s body? My mom — I mean, Mara — says I talk too much, but you talk like you don’t talk at all."
Danny looked ahead at the path, at Joren’s back. The spear man’s shoulders were tense, always scanning. He didn’t like the noise.
"From people who talked too much," he said. "I learned to talk less. Talking doesn’t keep you alive."
The boy laughed again, louder this time, and the sound carried a little in the quiet forest. Mara shot him a look from ahead and he quickly hushed, but he was still grinning, his eyes bright with that kind of youthful energy that the wilderness hadn’t managed to beat out of him yet.
"I’m Finn," he said, as if Danny didn’t know. As if offering his name would make Danny offer his in return. As if names were traded like that.
Danny didn’t answer. He kept his eyes on the path, watching for tracks, for disturbed leaves, for anything that didn’t belong.
Finn didn’t seem to mind the silence. He jogged a little to catch back up to Mara, looking back at Danny once more before returning to the middle of the group. He whispered something to her, and she shook her head, but not unkindly. She said something low that Danny couldn’t hear, and Finn nodded, chastened but still light on his feet.
Danny watched him go.
A faint smile almost appeared on his face, tugging at his lips before he even realized it. It was small and involuntary, the kind that came before you could stop it. He suppressed it immediately, forcing his expression back to neutral, his mouth a flat line. He didn’t want to get used to that feeling.
He wasn’t here to make friends. Friendship was a luxury he couldn’t afford. It made you soft, it made you slow, it gave you something to lose, and loss was something he already knew too much about. Every person he had cared about was gone. Ravenfall, his mother, even the grey-haired man in his own way. Everyone he let close ended up leaving or dying, and he was tired of counting graves.
He was here to survive.
That was all. That had to be all. If he started thinking about friendship, about belonging, he would start making mistakes. He would start trusting, and trusting meant not watching your back. He couldn’t afford that, not with Fatal Rewind still unstable and his wound still open.
Still, as the group continued along the wilderness path, the afternoon light filtering through the thin canopy and making patterns on the dirt, Danny realized something he hadn’t expected, something that caught him off guard and made his chest feel strangely tight.