Dwahvel holds the (dubious) honor of being Artemis Entreri's very first friend.

To summarize, he meets her at a prodigious low in his life, when all of his understanding of how the world works and his own role in it is in shambles, when he's having to admit to himself that his existence is empty and he has contributed nothing but further pain to the world. Woof, that's rough buddy. Dwahvel is a fellow rogue and holds no idealism about friendship, she's very practical in her dealings with him. And yet her basic kindness, offered as she would offer to anyone deserving of it really, strikes an enormous chord with Entreri at that time, and she becomes his strange little confidant for a short period.

I have no illusions about the nature of their relationship tbh. It's very one-sided. Dwahvel does develop genuine affection for him, but he's mostly just some guy to her. He even acknowledges this and apologizes for it in his own emotionally concussed way.

For Entreri though, even books and books later, even after developing more meaningful connections... He still steadfastly holds her in this place of gratitude as the first. All she did was show him the most basic of friendship at exactly the right time. But he has this rather sweet determination to honor that forever now.

She also comes to represent something Entreri spends the rest of the books striving for without really understanding what it is. At the end of the day, it really is just love. The ability to receive it but also, wistfully, the ability to actually be able to reciprocate in a way that makes a connection real. Dwahvel comes to represent a possibility that is always kind of out of Entreri's grasp, and even was out of his grasp in their actual lived friendship. But there's something lovely in how he continues to hold that so protectively, even as awful things keep happening to him and even as he fails again and again to meet this unnamed goal in himself.

Artemis Entreri: *meets Dwahvel*

Artemis Entreri: