A Different Kind of Deadly Read Online Free PDF

young, naive, and dangerously ambitious." She
grimaced. "Inval left me to watch over their growth, but their
fascination with the Contracts forced me to tear Nethermount apart
before this epidemic spread even more out of hand."
    "So how did you end up in that coffin in the
attic?"
    Diana jerked a bit.
    "Mahlah placed me under a spell while I was in
shock."
    "Shock?" Leo and I asked together.
    "A Doll..." she began, with evident
difficulty, "can sense her Contractor. I sensed Inval. I felt him
die."
    I looked back on the first time I'd met Diana.
I jumped halfway across the attic when she sat up and began to look
around. Her painted mouth parted as though trying to speak, and
then she went very still.
    A Doll without a Contractor couldn't speak,
and she didn't attempt it again for many long minutes.
    Diana trembled, and I listened to
her joints rattle. In my childish naiveté, I thought that she was
broken, never realizing how right I was until now.
    "Diana..." The question came before I had the
chance to register that I was asking it. "What were the conditions
of Inval's Contract with you?"
    "There was only one."
    "What was it?"
    She looked at me like she did that first day
we met in the attic, her petal pink eyes swimming with tears of
light.
    "He'd come back."
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    9: Uhh

    I wish I could say that I registered everything Diana had told us,
but it was too much to take in all at once.
    All this time I'd been whining about being a
disappointment and a coward, while she was the one that had
suffered the most. A Doll couldn't cry, but I had a feeling that
even if she was able to, Diana wouldn't. She was brave, and strong,
and I was...
    Marvin.
    I barely touched the food Leo gave
for me to eat, so it wasn't long after Diana finished talking about
her origins that we started off into the Moor. I was tired after
the first five miles, which said a lot about my endurance. Leo,
being a member of monstrous House Soma, hummed and moved without
ever having to catch his breath. Diana didn't know the definition
of fatigue, thanks to her immortal vessel.
    She noticed when I started to fall behind
them, and without a word, picked me up so I was now riding on her
back.
    "This is so embarrassing," I muttered into her
hair.
    "You're going to have to put up with it," she
replied practically. "True necromancers need to have good stamina
to reach their full potential."
    "One little problem, Diana; I'm not cut out
for it."
    "It's because you're cut out for it that I
became your Doll, Marvin."
    I opened my mouth to say something, but closed
it after some consideration. Diana knew better than anyone how
terrible I was in this field. How could someone like me, who
couldn't look at a corpse without it being caked in cosmetics, be a
necromancer?
    At the same time, I felt a measure of
disappointment. I loosened my grip around her neck, sinking further
down Diana's back.
    "I thought you saved me because we were
friends."
    "You decided that on your own."
    Ouch.
    She may as well have kicked the air out of my
lungs.
    But... it was only natural for
Diana to think that way. After all, she was the disciple of Inval
himself. She was a match for the Crone of Astheneia, and then there
was me, a pathetic worm who spent his free time daydreaming about
gardens and pissing about because I wasn't happy with my
life.
    My face burned with shame, thinking of all the
times I'd spent talking to a Doll who was probably sick and tired
of hearing the same old story. Diana's philosophy had always been,
"if you don't like yourself, then change."
    I wished I was at a point where I could
apologize. As it stood, anything I could say now would only serve
as an insult to the both of us.
    As much as I don't like the path I'm on at
present, I know that the only way I can make it up to Diana is by
becoming a necromancer.
    "Leo," I said aside.
    "Yeah, Marvin?"
    "Do you have any bones on you? Besides Tully,
I mean."
    He scratched his matted hair.