Siya had been falling into blackness like she’d never seen before. Cool nothingness that she was certain would have been a welcome relief. Was that death? Or was it simply the place creatures like her went after their stolen time was over. She had been cheated, first from her mortal life and now from her unnatural life. Neither of which had been long enough but for all that she had been done until Atticus had called her back into her pain, pulling her back into the agony that she had been fleeing from. His voice and nothing else had kept her from slipping away into sweet oblivion. 

She smiled up at him, his new form glorious to her ruined vision and she regretted that she would never be able to do terrible things with him in that guise. She smiled even though his gentle touch made her skin crack and split, seared flesh parting all the way to the bone. His large body, black and beautiful sheltered her but for the tips of her toes, blotting out the weak but rising sunlight. That small relief was a blessing even though the tips of her scorched toes had begun to smolder in the growing light. 
 
“Oh Atticus,” she murmured, pain in each word as she forced screaming muscles to move her jaw. As she spoke a bit of charred flesh flaked off of her jaw and fluttered to rest on his arm where it cradled her. “You are so beautiful, I am sorry we have no more time.” 

Distantly she heard his sobbing words, they echoed down to her as if from a great distance. She smiled at him, the expression ghastly though it was intended to be comforting. He wanted to fix this, how very sweet was her demon lover. She wanted to tell him it was too late, that she hurt too much and the damage to her tiny body had been too extensive. She wanted to tell him she was done, that she was too tired to continue but she couldn’t. Her cracked eyelids fluttered and her ruined body stilled just as the first drop of his potent blood hit her lips. 

Her stillness was complete for a long, terrible moment. The day-birds, crying in the dawn, singing of change seemed to hold their breath as the demon bled into the mouth of his dead lover. Her open mouth filled with blood, a thin rivulet slipping from the corner to run across the spot where the skin had flaked off, her toes continued to smolder as the growing daylight rose. 

Then without warning in some sort of concert that was undetectable, the birds began their cacophony again and the tiny ruined throat worked, the blood that had filled it vanishing but once. Though her eyes did not open and she did not swallow again, there was not the strange stillness to her ruined body that spoke of an empty void, something of Siya lingered still.