"I was there," he points out, something almost like frustration creeping into his words. And it's not that he blames her, either. Not really. But there's a tangled knot of anger-grief-despair-loss under that frustration, and one that's far more recent than anything that simply meeting her again had prompted. More recent, indeed, than the mere century that Ardbert would have had, though he doubts that her ability to sense such things will be that precise.

Still, the argument is Ardbert's now. He might certainly step in again if he needs to, but the fact that he has watched those he has loved grow old and die is not immediately relevant either.