I stepped up to Xan's desk and found a stone, manipulated much like a TB, with a list of meetings spanning the next ten days.
“Xan’s not running this; we are. His five: Ezra, Hope, Everly—if he can keep her from her family. He’s the brains, but we’re the muscle.” Rowan ripped a box off the shelf and shoved it at me. “Lark’s. Logistics. Your job.”
I picked up the scrawls and scanned them. The first five were reports on what Lark had done. One needed Xan to sort out a disagreement between him and Hope, and two were just lists of supplies he needed to complete work on The Old Fort.
“He’s one man, Cayden. Barely keeping his head above water, sure as hell not controlling shit. Our Quinn, the girl he tethered, swore he’d give the world to, got lost in his system. Starved.”
Xan bit his lips together and looked at his desk.
“Why the fuck does this look the same to you?” Rowan slammed his fist into the shelf, baskets rattling, orange scrawl raining down. “You’re my closest friend, and I don’t get why you’re ripping us apart.”
‘Help me. Help us.’Rowan’s final four words in my mind, just for me, hit me hard.
My gut reaction was to say there was no us, but the lie stuck. The last two weeks had been hell—Quinn running with me wasn’t even a fantasy, just something to cling to because I was lost. Rowan wasn’t. He kept my broken ass afloat when I couldn’t. That’s what real friends did. I lashed out over and over. The big ox still stood by me, not pushing me away like Xan, but dragging me in, desperate for me to see what he saw.
I put the scrawls back in the basket and handed them to Rowan. “What’s the double basket at the far end?”
Xan didn’t blink an eye. “The top is our legal trade contracts. The bottom contains more questionable, but necessary dealings.”
I backed into the doorway, studying the hall I had come down from. Just a big room at the end of a corridor.
“What are the rooms on either side of you?” I asked.
Xan raised an eyebrow. “Storage. Uniforms and bedding, and overflow from Quinn’s dismantling of Professor Holiday.”
I grimaced. “Then I’ll dump your couch and set a temporary desk here. I’m wasted as one of Lark’s Logistic Lackeys. You’ll show me everything, and once I understand, we’re going to restructure.” I looked at Rowan. “Show me what you see. Make me stay.”
I swear to God, I could see Rowan’s tail wag at my words. “Done.”
Xan waved his hands in the air. “I’m sorry, done? What?”
Rowan grinned and stepped toward the exit. “I’ll pull a couple guys off The Mile and be back with breakfast. I’ll have your books put in Ezra’s war room, sir.”
“Drop the ‘sir,’” Xan snarled. “And they’re my books, not Ezra’s. They belong inmyoffice, abovemycouch.”
Rowan shut the door before Xan had even finished. His racing footsteps thundered down the hall.
Xan and I looked at each other.
“Did you plan this?” Xan asked.
I shook my head, opened my mouth, and then closed it.
Xan let out a breath. “Are you joining us to watch Quinn’s trial?”
The indecision I felt earlier vanished. “Yes. Do you arrange any of the scrawls by importance?”
“Importance is subjective,” Xan responded.
I pressed my temples. “Yes, when you have all the time in the world to ponder, but when you need to get things done, you have to prioritize and stick to it.”
Xan scowled. “I know that. I do that.”
“Do you?” I asked, looking at his baskets of scrawls organized by person—not what they did, but the individual.
“I do that most of the time,” Xan amended.
I leaned forward.
