Lark and the Head Man returned only a short time after they'd left, Reed trailing behind them. The Head Man nodded at Lark and said a few quiet words to her. Her face fell, and she walked quickly but dejectedly back to her family.

"She's not carrying her violin," Bran whispered to me.

I frowned. "Did he take it away? Can he even do that?"

"I-" Bran hesitated. "I don't know."

"Citizens!" boomed the Head Man. He stood proudly on the stage, Reed a few feet behind him. "I made our rules clear only a while ago, when I proclaimed them on this very dias. Blesseds are not allowed to use magic."

He turned and gestured in Lark's direction. "On this day, Lark Ellins dared to work a spell into her music. Because it is possible—and necessary—her violin has been confiscated to prevent her from using her Blessing again.

"I truly regret the difficulties this may cause. I know we have all enjoyed listening to Lark's music for a long time, and we will sorely miss the sound of her playing at our festivals—however, I'm sure we would all prefer to go without than to become cursed again."

A rumble of agreement went through the crowd.

"That's what I thought." The Head Man smiled, the expression almost smug, but just managing not to be. "From now on, any Blesseds above the age of ten whose Blessings rely on the use of a particular object will have that object taken away from them."

"Does that include Reed?" Bran wondered.

Apparently, someone else was thinking the same thing.

"What about your son?" a villager shouted. "Doesn't his Blessing depend on a pen or pencil? Are you going to take that away from him, too?"

The Head Man sighed. "Sadly, writing utensils are easy to get. There is no point in taking away Reed's pen. If I did, and he truly wanted to summon magic, he'd have no difficulty finding a new one. Plus—he's a great help to me in the office. He often needs to use a pen. If I banned him from pens altogether, where would I be?"

He shook his head. "I know this is terrifying for all of us. The very thought of the curse returning..."

He paused, as if he had lost himself in thoughts of the past—though the slight upward tilt of his mouth gave away that he was still scheming. After a moment, he shook himself.

"It's terrifying, safe to say. But, even so, we need to be smart about this, not paranoid. There are many things we could be doing that we're not. We could be exiling all the Blesseds in this town as soon as we realize what they are, but we're not. We could be instituting much worse penalties for the use of magic, but we're not." The Head Man smiled. "I hope you can see that we're doing the best we can with what we've got. The last thing we want to do during these difficult times is lose our humanity."

Beside me, Bran laughed. "Yeah. Because sending children to do their dirty work didn't count towards loss of humanity at all."

A hand grasped my arm. I looked up to see Mam standing there, a stern-yet-fearful look on her face.

"Fyra," she said, gently tugging on my arm, "we need to leave. Now."

I shook my head. "I need to see if Lark's okay."

"She's fine." Mam shot a nervous glance at the Head Man, who was now descending from the stage. "It's time to go home, Fyra." She turned to Bran. "If you want to stay safe, you need to get out of here, too."

Bran looked at her, confusion and a bit of annoyance plain on his face. "She's our friend. I'm staying to make sure the Head Man didn't hurt her in any way."

"I suppose it's your choice," said Mam with a shrug. "It seems a silly one, to me. The Head Man is our leader. He wouldn't hurt her. She's obviously fine. Plus, your friend Reed was there—do you really think he'd let anything bad happen to her?"

"I'm not sure Reed can control his father."

"Nor should he! Reed is a child, as are you. Maybe you don't understand the way of things." She turned to me and yanked me out of my chair. "Come on, Fyra. We're leaving."

Reed watched me helplessly as Mam dragged me after her. I didn't resist—after all, I had said that I would leave when she wanted me to. I could run over to check on Lark tomorrow.

When we came back to the house, Mam released me, took a few deep breaths, and turned to face me, eyes hard.

"You knew," she accused.

"What?" I asked. "What do you mean?"

"You knew Lark was going to use magic. You knew."

"No," I said, shaking my head. "I had no idea."

"Yes, you did. You wanted to come to the party. I thought..." Mam shook her head angrily. "Foolishly, I thought you'd just wanted to see your friends. I thought you were just being a normal teenager."

"I was," I protested.

"No, you weren't. I knew you were hiding something. It was obvious." She sank into a chair. "I only wish I hadn't been so naive as to believe your excuses."

"I..."

What was I supposed to say? I hadn't known Lark would use her powers tonight. If anything, I'd been worried about her sister. But could I tell that to Mam? Could I trust her?

"You're so different," said Mam. "It's been like this ever since you came back. It's- it's like I can't even trust you anymore."

Maybe...

Maybe she was right. Maybe the problem wasn't that I couldn't trust her, but that she couldn't trust me. Maybe it was all my fault.

"I'm telling the truth," I said. "I didn't expect Lark to use her powers at all. We were there, at the party, for a different reason."

Mam looked up at me, but I couldn't read the emotion in her eyes. "What? Why were you there, then?"

And I told her about Lark's sister. I told her how flowers had sprung from the ground at her hands—how Lark had told us about her after the Head Man's announcement—how Lark had begged us to come to the party so we could protect her if everything went wrong. I told her how Lark had seen the flowers and used her own magic to make them disappear.

Mam didn't say a thing while I told her all this, listening in silence, face thoughtful.

When I finished, she said, "Why didn't you tell me this to begin with?"

"I wasn't sure how you'd react," I admitted. "I didn't want you to think I was in danger. I didn't want you to worry."

"Fyra, it's my job to worry—yet you've been doing enough worrying for the both of us." She offered me a kind smile. "Besides, I think you've overthought it a little bit. You didn't need to be so worried about it at all."

"I didn't?" I asked.

She shook her head. "You didn't. The Head Man is here to protect us. All of us—Blesseds included."

"But he's said that if Blesseds use their Blessings too much, they're to be killed. He's saying it's okay to kill kids, Mam."

"Do you really think he'd go through with it?"

"Yes!" I said. "I think the villagers will throw a fit if he doesn't!"

"Oh, Fyra." Mam smiled. "I understand how you might come to think that, but trust me—the Head Man isn't going to hurt or kill anyone. He plans to protect us all, even if he has to protect some of us"—she gave me a meaningful look—"from ourselves."

"Mam, we don't need to be protected from ourselves. We're fine the way we are."

"Really?" she asked. "You're fine living in fear, the way you apparently are? You're fine using a magic that could easily turn against you?"

"It doesn't work that way."

"How do you know that? The Head Man has done much more research on magic than you ever have, Fyra. I doubt you know more than he does."

"I don't want Lark's sister to get hurt."

"She'll be fine," Mam assured me. But her next words froze my blood in my veins. "I'll tell the Head Man about her Blessing tomorrow."

"What?" I asked. Perhaps I'd misheard her. She couldn't mean-

"I'll tell the Head Man about Lark's sister's Blessing tomorrow," she repeated.

"You can't!" I burst out. "You don't understand. She can't control it. If he finds out that she's Blessed, it could be dangerous for her."

Mam raised an eyebrow. "You'd rather have everyone stay in the dark? Ignorance will be all the more dangerous—for her and others."

"Mam," I said, "please. I trusted you to keep the secret. Lark is going to kill me. You can't tell him."

Sadly, Mam smiled at me. "As you grow older, Fyra, you're going to realize that some secrets are too dangerous to be kept."

I'm liking Mam less and less as this goes on... Vote if you hope Lark's sister stays safe!