(Previous Chapter)

When I woke the next morning, my mouth was so dry it felt as though I hadn’t had anything to drink in a thousand years. Surprising as it may be, given the home I was raised in, I can’t say that I’d ever drunk as much wine as I had the night before. My tongue grated like sand and my saliva dribbled thickly like a watery dough.

I crawled down through the rushes to the river and slurped greedily at the water, bent over like a dog and not bothering to pay attention to the world a...