"Not everyone is the same as my Emyr and I...Circles have...fallen away from the legacy.” Sophie sighed.

“But didn't Merlin—die?

The light from the window fell in a halo around Lady Wren’s impressive white hair, thick and matted into miskempt dreads, falling down her back and over her shoulders. It almost looked like a veil over a ghostly bride. Sophie snickered.

“Oh yes, he left us warnings.”

“Warnings that you'll die?

“Die of Merlin’s curse, yes. It takes courage to use the name of the lesser Merlins. Do you understand now?”

The idea didn't fully register in Evelyn's mind. She still saw her William on a horse playing polo, driving a stick shift through the coast, and picking apples in the fall. He was everything she dreamed of, and none of those dreams included any ancient secrets of any kind.

“Like...Willt? My William? He's trying to be...a Merlin?” Evelyn sputtered, and for the first time she realized she had never had a William at all.

It was the only thing she had time to realize before Sophie stood up quickly and slapped her hand over Evelyn's mouth so she could not scream.

“There has never breathed a soul that could live up to that awful name itself—the name, Merlin, that has never once truly lived but had died over a thousand times as each Brim Knight fell. Emyr Willt took one of these with no intent to ever take more—none of us do! But I see the future, little one, it's in blood, I can see it! One day he will find the Brim. Even now, as he falls closer and closer to Merlin's grave, he will take everything that never belonged to him nor to anything else.”

“To take things that never once truly lived, or for that matter, truly died.” Sophie growled. As she lifted her knife, Evelyn closed her eyes, hoping it would be quick.

“Lady Wr-ren?” Evelyn recognized the voice of the little lawyer.

Sophie let go of the girl and held on to the table behind her as she hissed at the little man.

“She knows! She knows everything, we must kill her!”

“Don't you kn-ow what Master Willt will do to you, Lady Wren!”

Strangely, Sophie shook at the knees at this suggestion, and mechanically she slowly put the knife back in it's hilt. Evelyn watched the witch walk out, and felt her own back slide down the wall in relief.

“I do suggest-t you never speak of this to anyone. Please.” said Willt's lawyer as he bowed a little and trotted away.

Evelyn slipped out of the room, her chest weak with anxiety. As the years drew on, she left it mostly behind her. Yet, occasionally, she would remember those cold, blank eyes in the dead of night, and pulled the covers over her neck and face as Evelyn worried about the fate of that strange lioness that once failed to kill her.