Crozier, thick with fever and those awful agitating shakes, recoils from Thomas’s tending. “Don’t want your pity.”

“Tough luck, that,” Thomas chirps while smoothing hair from his patient’s running brow. “Or should I go, leave you in peace?”

“Stay!”

A clutching hand, a flash of panic in unfocused eyes, and Thomas smiles—the captain doesn’t know if he’s here or there right now, but wherever his delirium takes him, he wants Thomas by his side.