She was partly right; I had written Thistle Grove off as definitively as I could, had even begun resigning myself to the prospect of an eventual, inevitable drifting away from Linden herself. I didn’t have any legitimate right to feel betrayed by her choice, not after the ones I’d made.

But it hurt anyway, with the visceral intensity of a full-fledged betrayal.

“We both thought it would be a good idea to keep it quiet, at least for a while,” she continued. “Just give ourselves some space. You know how the families like to talk.”

“And that way he could also continue fucking me on the side,” Talia chimed in, very helpfully. Linden fisted a hand against her belly at the phrasing, her face scrunching up. “We were keeping our thing under wraps, too, since it was mostly casual. So you can see how this was all working out swimmingly for him—until my sister saw him with Lin, on a cozy dinner date in Carbondale. Bastard’s lucky I managed to talk Isidora down, or he’d still have baby spiders hatching out of his ears.”

“Gareth Blackmoore, two-timing my best friend and Talia Avramov,” I murmured, pinching the bridge of my nose hard as I tried to wrap my head around the span of this mental abomination. “Wow, wow, wow.”

“I don’t know that I’d call it two-timing per se,” Talia said, tapping a finger to her chin.

“I would,” Linden said grimly.

“Of course you would, sunshine,” Talia replied, giving Linden’s arm a brisk rub. “He hurt you much worse than he hurt me. He and I were just having fun—though, yes, I was under the distinct impression that it was exclusive fun. Whereas you were in full-throttle love with the shithead.”

“I was not in love with him!” Linden protested.

Talia waved away the semantics with an irritable swat. “Passionate and emotionally invested lust, then. Whatever you want to call it, you can’t pretend he didn’t break your heart.”

Linden sucked in a shaky breath and pressed her lips together, then allowed herself a clipped nod. Another spike of pain lanced through me at the thought of my childhood best friend and my most detestable ex not only together, but involved enough that it had left Lin this gutted. Whatever had happened between them, it had clearly run much deeper than a fling.

“He tried to give me that ‘so sorry, it didn’t mean anything’ crap, too,” Linden added tightly. “As if that ever flies.”

“I call bullshit, too. I have it on good authority that I’m an extremely meaningful lay,” Talia quipped. But her eyes flashed with restrained anger, simmering close beneath her flippant facade; she was clearly still smarting from the heedless way Gareth had treated her.

“And then there’s me, the one who kicked off Gareth’s streak. We really are the coven of the scorned, aren’t we?” I murmured, dragging a dismal hand down my face. “Maybe a new age has dawned—and it’s terrible.”

“Or maybe it has, and it’s fucking fantastic,” Talia countered, a dangerous smile playing on her lips, “because it’s a time of comeuppance for cocky dipshits who think they’re larger than life. Starting with Gareth Blackmoore, Prince of Bastards.”