Avalina refills her teacup. “Ah yes. Well, as I said, Latham’s father was unhappy with the match, and he decided that Leiden’s Bone Charmer must have been in error. That perhaps he mixed up the bones from my kenning with the ones from my matchmaking reading. He convinced his colleagues on the Grand Council to demand a second reading from a different Bone Charmer. And once they heard that the more powerful bones were used for my matchmaking instead of my kenning, they agreed. My second reading matched me as a Bone Mixer.” Her eyes fall to her cup. “And it also declared I had no suitable partner as a bone match in the entire country.”

I pull in a sharp breath. The unfairness of it is staggering. “But I still don’t understand what happened with Latham,” I say. “If you weren’t bone matched anymore, then why was he so angry?”

“Latham believed the results of the first kenning, not the second. We both did. It was so clear that we were meant to be together. We could talk about anything. He used to laugh at my jokes before I even got to the punch line. Latham’s father tried to keep us apart, but we met in secret. And once I started training in bone magic, it was easy to be together. We fell in love despite everything—Latham’s father, the Grand Council, the second kenning—we didn’t need an official bone match to know we were fated for each other.”

My heart constricts. Her tone is full of tenderness. How can she be talking about the same man who killed my mother? Who killed Gran? She leans forward and lays a palm on my forearm, as if she can guess my thoughts. “He was different then.”

I shake my head. “No. People don’t change that much. He tricked you.”

“I know it must seem like that,” she says, “especially after all that has happened since. But I think I’m a pretty good judge of character. I let you through my door, didn’t I?”

Normally, her gentle humor would soften me, but I can’t make sense of what she’s saying. I expected her to tell me Latham was always a monster, that she ran from him—as fast and as far as she could—at the first opportunity.

“So what changed?” Bram asks.

Avalina sighs. “Latham’s father was enraged when he found out we were still seeing each other. He demanded Latham call off our pairing. Latham refused. So his father went to the Grand Council again. And this time, he accused my parents of bribing our Bone Charmer for a false reading. Latham thought it would never work, assured me everything would be fine. But he underestimated how much power his father had over his colleagues on the council.”

“The rest of the council believed him?” I ask.