Garrett remembered Erin falling…
The gut wrenching moment when her hand slipped from his own. The high, terrified, soaring sound of her scream as she plummeted into that abyss...
His own voice would cry silently into the night for years to come as he would watch his sister fall from his grasp and into the swirling, blinding vortex below.
Over and over again in his dreams…
Her wide, wide, horrified eyes.
The way her mouth fell open around his name.
The way her hair thrashed around her head like a macabre halo.
The ways her tears fell, first in fear, streaming down her cheeks, smearing the khol she had smudged around her eyes as she looked up at Garrett, desperate.
Then, jumping from her eyes as her hand abruptly slipped from his own.
He remembered crying her name, just as she did his, breaking the silence that hung around him like a veil.
He remembered futility reaching down to her as she continued to fall away from him, as if he could somehow reach her.
He remembered the sound of splintering glass beneath his belly, the sound of shouting, an arrow soaring through the glass just beside his thigh which finally broke the rest of the skylight.
Garrett couldn't remember how his sister's Claw got into his hands, only that it did.
Garrett couldn't remember the cry of pain, of panic as he hurled the claw up, back into the roof, seeking purchase to slow his fall.
He would only learn that the purchase the claw found was an older guard's leg far later, the metal fang burrowing its way between the guard's leg bones, tearing muscle and sinew, dragging the soldier to the edge of the awning in pain and terror as blood spilled and the thief's fall finally slowed.
And then.
A sharp pain.
Followed by nothing.