Oh. So what he's offering isn't, in fact, the necessary purification of a swift death, but...moral support?

Astarion supposes he might perform some indignation. Thank you so very much, great and mighty paladin, but I am in fact more than capable of showing my fangs and facing the consequences, I am not afraid of a lizard, a Shar-worshipping amnesiac and a man who can't even get his entire body through a portal.

But if that was true, he would have done it by now, wouldn't he? He wouldn't have affected ignorance when Lae'zel had found the husk of a boar he'd drained the previous night; he wouldn't avoid them when he hears mutterings of other such discoveries at camp. He's been letting the days roll by in the hope that, by the time they realise his ability to walk in the sun is an aberration, he's proven too valuable to dispose of.

Godfrey's no fool. He'll be as aware of that as Astarion is himself. So he really has no choice in this matter, has he?

"You do seem to have become the bar by which our choices are measured," he says, reflective. "So I can hardly deny that your endorsement would be valuable."