Oh.

Oh now that is something, isn't it?

And just as rapidly as Astarion had sunken into bitterness, he reels right out of it: red eyes gone wide, grip cinching just a little tighter— an unapologetically excitable impulse. It's like fishing for worms and landing a damned elephant.

"Really?" a near-gasp of a thing, that question. "Which friend is this, exactly?"