'Manufacture it?' Do you hear yourself? Do you know where we are? [Should be caring, should be sincere— is, on some deep, embedded level, buried underneath the puppish urge to bite when on his figurative heels with hackles raised. That tender, infallible sort of instinct that exists in every creature who knows what it is to hurt, whether or not they know what it means or why. Whether or not they're actually hurt, either, because gods know it's merely the suggestion that has Astarion run stiff throughout his shoulders and nearly snarling out each syllable, both to be heard over the din and just to simply be heard.]

'People like her' don't risk everything just to satisfy a whim, and if they did, Fenris, they'd be a damned idiot to think the rest of us would keep her in arms' reach—

[A beat, like a hook finding purchase in a storm; dulling the edge of his bite.]

....what do you mean people like her?