That hand presses down to keep him steady, keep him flat against the sheets as he writhes through the worst of it. "I've ended his old life...and given him a new one."

One with untold possibility. Death? Less so. He would have bled out there, ignoble and forgotten, and what a waste that would have been. In truth, he'd hoped for a companion, someone who could understand him and this age they both existed in. York could provide that.

He simply had to fight for it. For a soldier? That should be as natural an impulse as any.