Garrick Tavis · The full story

The loyal second who turned out to be the rarest thing in the room.

He's the biggest man at Basgiath and the last one who'd hold your mother's war against you. We notice the steady ones. We always do.

The best fighter · Who he is

The biggest man in the room. Xaden only wins on speed.

He takes up about twice the space of a normal person and he's built wider than Xaden, which is saying something. When the two of them spar, strength is a coin-flip — the only reason Xaden edges it is that he's faster. Xaden flatly calls him the best fighter of the marked ones and means it. The twin swords crossed at his back are the same carry as Xaden's, because of course they are.

The fair one · The marked-ones' meeting

He wouldn't let them make her pay for her mother.

In a room full of rebellion kids deciding what to do about the general's daughter — the general who had their parents executed — Garrick is the one who says she doesn't inherit the debt. Punishing children for their parents' crimes is the Navarrian way, he tells them, not the Tyrrish. Before Violet had earned a single ally, she had him. Nobody had to talk him into it.

The walker · The second signet

Air on the record. Something the world hasn't seen in centuries under it.

Everyone knows Garrick's an air-wielder. What Navarre doesn't know is the signet buried beneath it: distance-wielding — he can cross hundreds of miles in seconds. It runs through the bond; Chradh carried one of Garrick's own ancestors first, which is why he gets two. He keeps it off the books for three books, until Onyx Storm makes hiding it impossible.

Chradh · The rune-sniffer

A stubborn ass with a very useful nose.

His dragon is a brown scorpiontail — golden-eyed, scarred along the jaw, and unusually sensitive to runes. That's not flavour: Chradh is how the squad finds the venin's iron lure boxes at Resson and, later, around Basgiath. When Garrick gets poisoned on the quest, Chradh sets an entire forest on fire about it. The two of them are bonded to the teeth.

You don't need the recap. But since we're both rereading anyway—

The loyal second who turned out to be the rarest thing in the room.

You already know Garrick — he's the one standing just behind Xaden in every scene that matters, arms crossed, unbothered, twice the size of everyone around him. His arc isn't a transformation; it's a proof. Book by book the dependable second turns out to be the fairest voice in the rebellion, the strongest fighter in the fight, and — quietly, for three books — the holder of a signet no one's seen in centuries. The steady ones are always hiding something. His is that he can be anywhere he's needed in an instant, and he never once used it to save himself.

01
Riorson House
His father was Fen Riorson's right hand, so Garrick grew up half at Riorson House alongside Xaden. When Violet needs a shorthand for him, she lands on 'my Dain, except trustworthy.' That's the whole man in four words.
02
Marked and conscripted
The rebellion fails, his parents are gone, and he's branded with the second-largest relic at the college — only Xaden's runs bigger. Conscripted into the quadrant built to kill children like him, he survives it and climbs anyway: Flame Section Leader before he's done.
03
Resson
Past the wards, the war Navarre swears is finished turns out to be very much on. Chradh sniffs out the runed lure box the venin came for; Garrick fights four venin to hold a town that was never his to defend. Liam doesn't come home from this one. None of them are the same after.
04
The rescue
Iron Flame: he deserts with Xaden, helps drop wyvern carcasses across Navarre to crack the lie open, then walks into Varrish's chamber to pull Violet out — and complains that Xaden killed everyone and left nothing for him to do. Comic relief with a body count.
05
The walker
Onyx Storm stops letting him hide it. At Draithus he distance-wields in the open — Draithus to Basgiath and back in seconds — the rarest signet in the world, worn by the most reliable man in it. A hostile wielder spits 'walker' at him like a curse. He just keeps arriving wherever the people he loves are dying.
06
Still the second
Half the circle spends Onyx Storm quietly watching the venin-touched Xaden — Garrick included — not because the trust broke, but because he knows precisely how dangerous his best friend just became. Loyalty that can hold two true things at once. That's the rarest thing he owns, and it was never the signet.

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We're Caffeine and Curses. The Library started as my design research — I can't put Garrick on a shirt without knowing his relic stops at his shoulder — only Xaden's reaches the jaw — so we keep the notes here where everyone can use them. The pages are fan-made, not official; the licensed designs are in the shop.

Officially licensed