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Five, in total. Healing, strength, speed, power, and perception. The ritual wasn’t nearly as painful, but it was tradition to do it all at once.
“Will… will it always feel like this?” Willow asked. “I mean… will I always feel you all through it?”
She looked down at her mark as she said it.
“Yes,” Joy told her. “But it gets easier. You’ll learn to tune us out, for the most part.”
Willow shook her head. “I don’t think I want to. I… like feeling you all. It feels…” She swallowed. “It feels like you’re all a part of me now.”
Fey stooped down to place a quick kiss on Willow’s cheek. “We are, little sister. You’re one of us now. And you never have to be alone again.”
Willow’s answering smile was a ray of sunshine, and for the first time since that night Alice had been taken from them, since they’d felt her ripped away through that same mark, Fey felt whole.
Lilith gave Willow her sigils, just as she had done for Fey.
It required Fire, and though Joy had the power to tattoo them as well, Lilith had been made for it. She even kept her nails long, the points sharpened, to hide the metal blades she glued to the underside of both index fingers.
They wouldn’t do much in a fight, her finger blades, but they were very handy for this.
Tapping the metal tip against the bowl of ink, Lilith called a small lick of Fire, letting the flames coat down her fingers and over the blade.
“This is going to hurt,” Lilith told Willow, without preamble. From her seat in the common room armchair, Willow stiffened. Merle watched from a distance, tail twitching in irritation that his favorite spot had been usurped. “Not as much as the brand, mind you. But enough.”
Placing a hand on Willow’s forearm, Lilith held her steady as she brought the hot metal to her skin.
“We’ll start with strength,” Lilith said. Her finger descended and Willow screamed.
Fey felt her arm twitch in pain and rubbed at it absently.
“We start with strength because it’ll make the rest easier,” Joy explained as Lilith burned the intricate sigil into Willow’s flesh. She stopped frequently to dip her finger back into the bowl of ink. “She’ll do healing next, and after that, they’ll all feel easy,”
Willow nodded, swallowing. After her initial scream, Willow clenched her teeth together and refused to make another noise.
“It’s okay, you know,” Fey told her. “You can scream if you need to. It’s just us, now. And there’s no judgment here.”
But Willow shook her head quickly side to side.
“You’re lucky,” Lilith said, face drawn slightly in concentration as she worked. “Only Dameon has as many sigils as we do. It makes us practically invincible.”
“Dameon and the Queen,” Joy corrected.
“The Queen?” Willow gasped. “She… fucking hell, Lilith, ow… She has sigils?”
Joy rolled her eyes. “Oh yes. She has ten. Double each of the sigils we do.”
“How does she… keep them hidden?” Willow asked through clenched teeth. Lilith paused to dip her finger again, and Willow let out a shaky breath.
“Same way we do,” Fey shrugged.
She held her arm out for Willow to see, twisting it in the light to show off her sigils and dark Blade’s mark. Then, running a finger down her arm, Fey whispered the incantation to hide, the words flowing from her lips with ease and practice.
The skin on her arm wavered, like a heat wave, and the scars and sigils on her arms vanished. Like they were never there.
“You’ll have to practice that,” Fey told Willow. “But until you master it, we can do the incantation for you.”
“There’s one built into your uniform as well,” Joy informed her. “You don’t have to do anything to activate it, but it will hide your scent.”
“My scent?” Willow asked, raising her eyebrow and turning to look at Joy. “Are you saying I smell?”
