Evelyn was again about to say something, but on second thought decided to let Sophie tell her story. The terrible woman put the gun in a holster under her own coat and took out a cloth to polish her terrible knife.

“The very first Knights we've ever known about are in the story of Merlin...I see what you're thinking—of course there were Knights before Merlin! Well there weren't—at least not our sorts of Knights." Sophie paused and cocked her head to the side, sizing her prey "Do you get it yet? Do you know what I really am?”

Evelyn realized that Sophie was waiting for a reply, so she gave her one slowly.

“You're a...witch?” Evelyn asked.

“Sh!” Sophie jumped forward so Evelyn had to lean backwards onto the table, pinned her under the knife's breath. Evelyn was sure this was the end, and tensed at the thought of a knife in the throat. Sophie whispered a hiss down her ears. “Don't let the Puritans hear that or they'll burn you alive!”

“I don't understand.” Evelyn said--or at least tried to say in between the terror shakes of being that close to a very sharp knife.

Sensing this, Sophie frankly sighed and rolled away from her position on the table, tossing her weapon in the air like as if it were a tennis racket. The witch angrily muttered "...mauviette..." under her breath before she continued.

“So, we called ourselves Knights...to keep us safe. I guess it is what we were, at least, in the beginning. Do you know who Merlin was?”

“The wizard?”

“No, who he really was at first, who he's named after?” She smiled at Evelyn so wide, that there was a glimmer from her silver tooth. “You don't know, do you? A pity. His story is incomplete, Merlin has been many things: a kind ol' chum, an evil, inhuman shape shifter. The story was written and rewritten and rewritten and Merlin was all of those things. It leaves us only one thing we do know—do you know what that is?”

“What?” Evelyn whispered, still shaking in her throat.

“That no one actually wrote about who Merlin was.” Sophie stood up and threw the knife on the table, watching where it wobbled and traced a deep line into the wood. “We did the research: We looked for the original. The one the stories were based on. We wanted him desperately, but he was fiction.

“But here’s what is true: it turned out, there was more than one Merlin. There were a few soothsayers in one town with a name kind of like it, another famous warrior in another, and when the story of Merlin was finally written down for the first time, the writer decided to mix them all into one man that never actually lived. Weird, isn't it? Do you understand why?”

“Probably made the story a lot simpler with only one character.” Evelyn suggested, wringing her hands where her engagement ring still wrapped around her finger.

“You're still being stupid! You are no Knight, that's why you can't see us! We smell the signs of our own people, and understand the name never represented one Merlin, or even several--but a madness!”

The knife plunged into the tabletop, and Evelyn vaulted up and hugged the wall. She watched the way Sophie's eyes ate up the raw gashes she made to the tabletop. Her thoughts quickly turned to Willt's eyes; eyes that were suddenly so empty and blank.

“Mad?”

“A madness so awful, the original author could never understand what he saw: Whenever anyone wrote about Merlin, dear Evelyn, they wrote about the Brim Knights.”

Evelyn tried to sink into the wall behind her as Sophie continued to trace out symbols and markings across the table she sat on. There was a mesmerizing method to her destruction.

“And you are a Brim Knight?”

“Yes, I am.” Lady Wren laughed. “Now you are getting smart!”

“All of you are Brim Knights?”

“Well...” Lady Wren paused. “One day we all will..."