"Ahah." It's a throaty sort of chuckle, more reactive than anything possesed of further depth: he's still, after all, evaluating his current game. "Cheeky."

"Astarion. And I've recently kicked the habit, so you'll have to forgive me for not indulging as I once might have."

That's a joke. He's never actually done the deed, so to speak. Not with any sentient, thinking creature. Not even with Cazador's iron-bound influence now gone from all figurative pressure points, a chokehold he no longer even senses as a potentially phantom limb.

Freedom was enough of a victory in and of itself— and one does what one must to avoid being labeled a 'blood magic abomination'.