The sounds of well-made boots on polished stone echoed through the halls of Lothian Manor as Sir Gilander escorted Owain to his father's study.
"I thought he was ill and confined to his chambers," Owain said, frowning when Gilander turned Owain away from the hallway that led to the chambers of the Lothian family and gestured toward the stairs leading to the Marquis office in one of the towers that overlooked Lothian City. "Or has he recovered enough to work again?"
The Spider Demon Venom he'd paid the Black Merchant's assassins to use on his father should have led to a slow, inevitable decline into madness and poor health, leaving its victim trapped at the edge of death's door for as much as a year if they were well cared for, but there was no recovery from the poison. Once Bors Lothian had been placed on bed rest, it should have been all but impossible for him to rise again.
