That night, when Hope had to leave for the lesson, it took Bishop some time to brace for aloneness again. Hope had been there since Bishop had woken, and he had not rested once despite knowing he had a night of work ahead of him. When Bishop asked how lessons were going recently, Hope said, "Empty."

Bishop supposed that, with two contenders dead and several out of commission, lessons would feel that way. He was itching to get back to them himself, irked by the knowledge that he'd missed so much in the last week. Hope promised that he'd shared with Bishop what was most important, but Bishop was unconvinced. It didn't matter how much Hope told him. He wasn't getting that week back.

One thing Bishop knew better than to ask about was what would happen to him, especially after what he'd done to the paramedics. He knew magic worked in powerful and cruel ways. Either observers would put the deaths down to a freak accident, like a building's collapse, or the Overseers would enlist powerful magicians to alter witnesses' memories of the scene. To swindle authorities. Bishop was the safest here that he'd ever be, wholly protected from the law and his own mistakes, and he hated it. He would go unpunished.

Before Hope left for his lesson, he padded into the ensuite and drew Bishop a bath. He returned as the water ran to help Bishop to his feet and assist him in waddling to the bathroom, then helped him shrug off his clothes and unwind the bandages. Discarding his white sweatsuit in the corner of the room, Bishop instinctively turned to the mirror to scrutinise his scarring face, but he was not met with a reflection. Hope had thrown a towel over the mirror so that Bishop could not see it.

Bishop turned to Hope, but Hope said nothing of this. His hands were wholly kind and cautious as they worked the bandages off Bishop's body. "You'll have to put new ones on by yourself after the bath," Hope warned. "Can you do that?"

"Obviously."

"I'll keep my phone on me tonight. Call me if you need to."

"I won't drown in the bathtub, Thirteen. And the Overseers won't be pleased if they see you with that."

"Then they won't see it." Hope gathered the fallen bandages and discarded them, then produced, from the cupboard, replacements, lining them up on the counter. "There's a number on your door for the doctors, so call them if you need, too. But I'm sure you'll be fine."

"I'll be fine," Bishop agreed gruffly. And if he wasn't, he certainly wasn't going to call a doctor. After a beat, Bishop said gingerly, "I'm not going to be in this room for good, am I?"

Hope smiled a bemused smile. "No. Just until you're no longer deemed dangerous."

Bishop clenched his jaw against a retort, because he wasn't really angry with Hope. Not angry at anybody. He had brought this upon himself. Being considered dangerous was the last of his worries – he was more concerned that he'd make a truth of this judgement. Again.

Hope helped Bishop trip into the bath, and winced when Bishop dug his fingers into Hope's arm as the heat of the water scalded his damaged flesh. It only took a moment for him to adjust, hugging his knees awkwardly in the middle of the tub like an island rather than resting against the edge. His back was still raw.

"Hope," Bishop said suddenly as Hope was turning to leave, reaching up to close his fingers around Hope's wrist. "Can you not tell the others?"

Hope understood right away. "You can't just hide away in here forever. Tomorrow the Overseers and doctors will come, and they'll know you're awake."

"I know," Bishop said. "Just for tonight. Don't tell anybody."

Really, it would make no difference whether people knew that Bishop had woken or not – he doubted anybody would come to see him. But he wanted something to hold onto, and a secret between him and Hope, however absurd, however minor, was a valuable thing to hold.

Hope agreed quietly and then left, gathering his things from the next room and leaving without looking back to check that Bishop was still alright where he'd been seconds ago. Bishop listened for the door to close behind Hope, and then sank deeper into the water, gaze sliding up to the ceiling.

Bishop had never felt more alone, more as if he were the only person in the world. He couldn't decide if he loved the feeling or resented it.

Bishop had never really been fond of baths, more drawn to the haste and cleanliness of a good shower. Since settling into the Trial, though, he'd taken a new liking to the former. Bathing was the perfect opportunity to just bask in his own thoughts and the silence of the white tiles. In his luxurious ensuite he'd lounge, petals and herbs and the fizzing colour of bath-bombs drifting along the water's surface like marble. He'd drink tea and read, never letting the water brush his pages. He'd listen to classical music and prop open the uppermost window in the room to let in the cool air and faint noises of outside. Lying there in the warm water, Bishop would watch the sun dig its way out of the night, and only when the sky was bathed in pink would his eyelids start to droop, and he'd climb out of the water to head to bed.

Bishop tried to muster some of that same enthusiasm, appreciation, for the bath he was having now. But this bathroom, while glamorous enough, felt unlike home. There were no windows but for one high along the wall, and he could hardly see a sliver of the sky through it. There was no part of his body that wasn't sore. He could not stop thinking about how a week had passed, and that he'd blinded Noah, and that he wished he could have just died that day too, so this guilt and grief could have died with him.

People were watching him.

Rotting people.

Bishop sank under the water and held his breath. He tried to count how many beats passed while he was submerged, but got carried away wishing it could be more, more. He wished he could drown here, but he'd never let himself. It would be too easy.

The floral tattoos on Bishop's collarbones wavered through the glittering water. His face was soft. He looked eternal, though he was longing for death.

The pain was really not so bad, Bishop told himself. It did not matter whether this was true because he gave himself no choice but to believe it.

Bishop stayed underwater until the ceiling started to splinter and his chest started to cleave in two and then he surfaced with a shuddering breath, and suddenly Bishop was crying.

He hung forward and sobbed, his hands gripping the slippery metallic edges of the tub, his head lowered to his knees. Tiny waves formed against his body as it shook, sobs taking hold of him. A great sense of otherness had seized him. A week was no time at all, really, but having been taken out of the group for that long gave them all time to heal without him, like skin growing back over a splinter before it could be removed. When he went back to his friends, if they were so much as that anymore, he would be different. He would be a thing they'd outgrown, moved on from, and would not ever forgive.

Bishop cried and cried and cried and wondered if he had ever, even as a little boy, been this childish. He longed for Hope, or Atticus, or Annalise. He thought about calling Hope, but didn't.

Instead Bishop called one of the doctors, though he'd sworn to Hope that he'd have no need to. When his tears had stemmed and he'd stepped out to dry himself, he picked up the phone and dialled. He could not bandage himself, despite his earlier surety. Maybe he would have been able to if he were not still shaking from the boiling water and his tears.

Only once Bishop's body was softened again with the fabric of too many bandages did he pull fresh clothes on and plod back into the bedroom.

"When the lesson is over, will the Overseers come to see me?" he asked the doctor at the door.

"I am not associated with them," she said apologetically. "But I would expect so, Pluto."

She closed the door then, leaving Bishop alone with the name of the God of the Dead.

Leaving Bishop by himself was always an ill-advised thing.

He intended to return to bed, but he could not drag himself away from the bathroom, where Hope's towel placement was protecting Bishop from the horror of himself. He had to see what he'd become.

He whipped the towel down from the mirror, grimacing as he went, and at the first glimpse of the reflection, he scoffed with bemusement: it was not him.

The thing looking back at him was not him, but it had his icy eyes and his broad shoulders and his perpetual mean pout. It was like if Bishop's reflection were to be seen in a lake, wavering with the water current and obscured with the lines of overhead twigs or pebbles beneath the water.

It was not about the scars. They were really not so gruesome. It was the grief, the lack of sense of self that disfigured him, creating a monster out of what had once been a face carved by angelic hand.

Because, of course, this was just an ordinary mirror and of course, Bishop was just looking at himself. Why was he so perverse to believing it?

His hair was not so bad, trimmed to his skull. In fact, he thought it made the scars look better, more characteristic. He was no longer the poised intellectual, but a street fighter. Just as handsome, doubly as sharp, but touched by darkness. (Forever in its hold.)

The dead's aggression along with Atticus's battle for freedom had left jagged cuts through Bishop's face, some which were knitted back together with stitches, some hidden beneath white plasters. One shot through his eyebrow, frighteningly close to his eye, but tapered before his eyelid. One corner of his lip was tugged downwards by a short and grisly red wound, hardened now. Curved welts laddered on his neck and more vanished beneath his shirt. When he turned around and peered awkwardly over his shoulder, he could almost see the scar on the back of his head that he'd sacrificed his hair for. It was a long and wicked hook-shaped token of the instant he'd cracked his head against the window, shattering the glass. He supposed he should be relieved that he remembered that moment at all.

Bishop wondered if he could still be loved, while looking like an unlovable, unloving thing. He wondered if he still deserved it.

If he ever had, really. This might have been the first time the contenders had witnessed the egregious potential of his power, but it wasn't the first time he'd unleashed it.

Bishop's scarred hands fumbled for the vanity drawers, reaching in for products he realised he didn't have in this room. He wanted something, anything, to diminish the redness, to lessen the pallor his skin. But the best he found was a plastic hairbrush which seemed, more than anything, like a cruel joke.

Bishop had half a mind to just crumple here, let the dead crowd him, comfort him in their macabre way. But he didn't want his body to be found slumped against the bathroom vanity, of all places. He would not be so pathetic.

If he were to die, it would be over his words, so that they'd be found with him. On this note, Bishop slipped out of the bathroom and set off to write poetry.

He made a beeline for the room's desk, hoping to find some scraps of paper or an unused notebook with some pens, pencils, charcoal – anything he could make a mark with. In circumstances so unique as these, the words came quickly, nonsensically, and he had to get them down before they vanished. Even if they were no good, he did not want to waste them.

When he reached the desk, though, it was not paper scraps or untouched diaries he found – it was his own notebook. Bishop snatched it up at once to flick through it, scan for words he recognised. And he was greeted by them, along with his pointed, sloping handwriting. Bishop slammed the book shut, overwhelmed by warring gratitude and rage. He didn't know where he'd left the notebook, but it certainly hadn't been in plain sight. Who had brought it for him? The Overseers? A contender? Surely Hope.

Had they read the words?

Did it matter if they had? Bishop tried to write in ways only he could understand, lest people see his pages and see, therefore, into his very soul. Not that his poetry was always private. Sometimes Bishop liked to read it to other people – often in university, he and his friends would exchange work, reading and rereading one another's secrets, dissecting and digesting them. Bishop was hit now with a throbbing sense of loneliness. He had not liked the people in his classes, his study groups, and yet he found himself thinking now that he'd sacrifice so much to be with them again. Lounging in a fire-heated room, strewn on carpet and furniture, books tented on chests, ink smudging fingers and pages, and laughter overlapping faint instrumental music from a speaker in one corner or another.

He wondered faintly if they missed him; if they had ever even known his name.

Bishop slid into the desk chair and stared at his own notebook. Rather than questioning how it had migrated here, he tried to recall when he'd last written. Bishop was always writing, on napkins and corners of books, but he didn't think he'd sat down with this notebook and dedicated himself to creating something in several weeks. Months, even. He could hardly bear that thought.

He snatched up a random pen from the corner of the table, sneering at the little flower on top. He considered snapping the decal off and was then shocked by his own destructiveness. He didn't want to destroy some precious artefact that could have belonged to one of the Overseer's little girls, or something.

The words came in a hurry. They came from his scars and the ghosts watching over his shoulder and sometimes they came from his heart but that was very rare, since he mostly didn't have one, and it wasn't very talkative. The words were angry apologies and the violent musings of a longing thing.

Bishop wanted to go home. Home to his sister, his parents. He wanted to be fourteen again, wealthy and therefore immortal; naive and therefore invincible. Bishop wanted to be a child. He wanted to fit on his father's shoulders. He wanted to miss them when they went away on business trips rather than missing them forever.

There was a kitchenette in the room, but Bishop did not get up once for food until after midnight, where he only steeped some tea and brought it back to his desk with him. He wrote and he wrote, time an intangible and insignificant thing here. He had not written like this since before the Trial, and he felt as though now he was catching up on all that he'd missed, filling all the pages he'd left empty for too long.

He remained wholly focussed on his writing until the night started to draw to a close, and Bishop started wondering when Hope would return. If he would. It was perfectly possible that Hope had had enough of Bishop, but it seemed unlike him to stay away. Not that, Bishop reminded himself, he really knew Hope well enough to make assumptions like that at all.

But at some point, the door did rattle, and Bishop started out of his haze, jumping to his feet with a grunt of pained regret. Could Hope be at the door? Tossing down his pen, Bishop started to round the desk to greet his visitor. But then the door opened and Bishop stopped dead, his eyes narrowing, his fingers chilling with the defensive presence of his magic.

The Third Overseer stepped into the room and said mildly, "You've woken. I was hoping you would have. I'd like to have a discussion with you."

Bishop straightened painfully up, poised to dodge or defend if he had to. "I can't think of anything I'd have to discuss with you."

"You do know what you're talking to your superior?"

"Out of lesson hours, you're just another stranger."

"Stranger? Pluto, we know each other well." The Overseer's hand drifted behind him, and Bishop heard a soft click as the door was locked. "In fact" – The Overseer's voice was low and contained dark amusement – "you and your friends think you know me particularly well. Did you really think I didn't know what the lot of you were up to?"

There was no point denying it, then. A smirk licked at Bishop's lips as he said, "Oh, the more you know the better, really. I love a challenge."

"Yes, well." The Overseer gave a short, think smile. "I suppose you do, considering you persevere with this little... investigation, of yours. On minimal evidence."

"Murderers have been convicted on less."

"I'll let you think so." The Overseer pretended to be interested in his surroundings for a moment, scanning them as he strode forward, hands clasped behind his back. Peering around like a curious investor, he said to the room, "The thing is, I am not the killer you are chasing. I have no proof, and so I know you will blame me still. But that's not what I'm here for, Bishop Butler. I'm here to show you something." The Overseer finally dropped his gaze to Bishop again, who resisted the urge to wither beneath it. The Overseer stopped walking and withdrew, from his coat pocket, two shining spheres.

No. Not spheres. Rings. Felix's and Daphne's rings.

"You really want me to believe you're innocent?" Bishop snarled.

"Oh, not innocent. That is, in fact, precisely what I am not; not any of us are. But I did not kill the contenders." He shut one eye and lifted a ring above his head, peering through it like a small telescope. "These rings represent the unseemly history of this game. The public brutality has worn off, but what's done in private, not so much. Did you ever question why these rings give you contenders the power that they do, Pluto?"

Bishop shook his head stiffly, even though he had.

"Well, I will tell you: it is because you wear the remnants of dead magicians. These rings may look like they are made of gold, and that is true to an extent. But there are bones in these, God of Death. Bones of magicians. Crushed to dust and stirred in. Or their blood, perhaps – maybe both. Bodily remains of magicians. That is what gives you your extra power. What fuses the ring to your body, as if it is a part of you."

Bishop's stomach turned over. "Magicians that died naturally," he said with a desperate hope lacing his raw voice.

"Sometimes," the Overseer said coolly, and shrugged. "Sometimes those that had been dead for too long have no magic left in them, so it is necessary to kill anew."

"This is why Felix and Daphne were killed?"

"Oh, no. No, this has nothing to do with whatever has been killing your friends."

"Then why share it with me at all?"

"I thought you would appreciate the story, Pluto. It thought you'd be pleased to know that this competition breeds and relies on cruelty." The Overseer's eyes darkened. "Thinking I am doing something evil is no grounds to blame me for the recent murders. If that is your one parameter, then everybody here ought to be on your list. None of us — none of us – bear hands clean of blood."

Bishop didn't know what to do with what he'd just learned. Magicians were killed for the rings he and his friends wore. Magicians were killed so that the contenders could have some extra power, play some foul game so they might come out on the other side more elite even than they were before.

"That being said." The Overseer pocketed the rings. "I know you will not relent. And so I feel it is my responsibility to give you contenders a story to chase. A villain to catch." He removed his leather gloves with care and discarded them on the edge of the bed. He picked up his stride again, approaching Bishop with long, deliberate paces, his fingers flexing by his sides.

Bishop staggered backward, jolting when his back met the corner of the desk. His fingers fumbled for any kid of weapon that wasn't his magic. If he was about to die, he did not want spirits fighting in vain for him before he went. But all his fingers closed around was the sparkly pink pen he'd been writing poetry with, and he came to the harrowing realisation that there was no way he could help himself this time.

He thought, with bitterness, that if he had just written for a little longer, honed those words a little sharper, maybe they could've been the cutting weapon he needed right now.

"You, Pluto," the Overseer said, "Will be welcomed by death, and so I implore you: accept this graciously."

Just as the Overseer raised his hands, summoning a horrific orb of roiling magic ready to strike Bishop's heart, the door slammed open.

Not just open. The door was blown apart, sending wooden daggers flying through the air. Bishop flung his arms up to protect himself and dropped into a ball. The Overseer swung around to see who had entered, and at the same time as Bishop, witnessed what might have been a miracle. A united family of gods, striding through the door as one, their magic swirling and snapping at the air around them.
"There you are," came Annalise's honey voice. "We've been looking for you."

Bishop's gaze snapped up, but Annalise's hardly ghosted over him. "Not you," she said. She took a bold step towards the Overseer. "You fled the lesson a little early today, didn't you?" She pouted, inspected her nails, tried to fight a smirk. "Hunter."

Bishop's heart leapt into his throat. Some of the contenders' heads whipped around in utter bewilderment, but others – Atticus, Maddox – remained passive. Clearly some had known about Annalise's advancements and others had not.

But the Overseer – Hunter – just laughed. A freakishly proud laugh, like a paternal appreciation for her investigative skills. "Where did you learn that?"

"Oh, I can be very charming." Her eyes glimmered with the rosy remnants of her magic. "And people hear things. Remember things. I just have to ask. So tell me, Hunter Astor: why would you kill Felix and Daphne?"

"No, Venus." Hunter slid his foot onto a slight slant, as if locking it into place, and Bishop noticed ripples start to drift through the carpet towards Annalise. He started to scramble forward, opened his mouth to warn her, but it was too late. The carpet swelled up around Annalise's feet and, without heeding her distressed hop backwards, unthreaded itself, reaching up and caught her ankles, then stitched itself together again, forming around her feet. Annalise swayed, but Atticus caught her elbow to stabilise her. "You," The Overseer went on, "will be telling me everything you've heard about me."

Annalise did not look so smug anymore, but her confidence hadn't wavered. "You were one of us," she said. "Four years ago, you were a god. You befriended the Thirteenth and got him to the end. Together, you won."

"And what did I wish for, Venus?" When Annalise was silent, Hunter asked again, more slowly, "What did I wish for?"

Annalise released a frustrated breath. "I don't know."

Hunter's grin was long and dark. "No. You wouldn't. Those things don't go in the history books." He turned his back on her then and, before Bishop could retaliate, Hunter's hand was tightening around his collar, and Bishop was being heaved back to his feet. With little care to Bishop's injuries, Hunter shoved him in the direction of the contenders. He tripped across the room and careened into Maddox, who caught him and righted him disdainfully.

Hunter clasped his hands behind his back and faced the group again. "I wished for unlimited power. As anybody would. I was young and greedy. I wished for the power of all the contenders, and then some. I wanted anything they'd give me. And they told me my wish was granted, but for months, I didn't understand. I didn't feel more powerful at all."

He started to pace. Bishop held his breath. He knew all the other contenders were thinking the same as he was – they could kill the Third right now, with all their power combined, but they would not. Not until he'd finished their story. In some darkly enthralling way, it was a tale they didn't want to miss.

If they were anything, the gods were story-hungry creatures. They were raised on words and ate them still with a constant and rabid passion.

"Then I realised I had the ability to... take power. Much in the way the rings were made" – his eyes met Bishop's – "I could claim the power of a dead magician for myself. Not just their energy, but the ability itself. Whether it was fire or wind or flora, I could claim it. And what better way to do that than to come back to where it had begun? I worked my way up to being an Overseer with every intention of picking you off, one by one, once the competition was over and you had reached your most powerful. It was my assumption that, if anybody figured me out, I'd be powerful enough by that point to... silence them quickly. I'd claim each of your powers, everybody else none the wiser."

"That man," Maddox said, stepping forward. "From the library. Who was he?"

"The Thirteenth," murmured Annalise beneath her breath.

"Right. The Thirteenth." The Overseer stopped in place, examining his hands. "Yes, that was him, who you saw me with. I knew you were watching, of course." His eyes glinted, as if with amusement. Bishop had known it was likely the Overseer had been away of him, Hope and Maddox in the library that day, but it was still disturbing to know it. "He became an detective, to help me from the outside. He felt that he was indebted to me, for having gotten him to the end of the Trial those years ago. As a detective, he could retrieve the rings of the fallen contenders and return them to me. It was the perfect system. Due to the recent panic, I've come to possess the clearance to retrieve things like that myself, now, helper or no – and so I dealt with him." A smile. "I am alone in my cause, now."

Bishop felt the bile burning in his throat.

"You betrayed him," Annalise hissed. "One vile person picking off another. Why?"

"I told you. I didn't need him anymore."

"That isn't reason to kill somebody!" She fought, to no avail, against her restraints. "Nor is wanting more power. Your wish wasn't what you hoped for. This game is fucking corrupt. Move on. Grow up. Reap the other benefits of this nightmare. Why kill our friends?"

The Overseer was finally still. "I will say it again. I did not kill Neptune, nor Ceres. I might have had plans, but I didn't have the opportunity to execute any of them."

"Then why take the rings?" Bishop demanded.

The Overseer peered down at him with some shock, like he'd forgotten Bishop was there. "Well, I couldn't pass it up when somebody had already done the work for me. But the rings were of no consequence. I couldn't claim their power. I need to take magic from its source – the magician. And both contenders were long dead by the time I reached them. So no, I didn't kill them. I have killed nobody here, and now I can see I will not get the chance." A dramatic dip of his head. "You're heroes."

Hunter fell into a deep, mocking bow, his dark hair scattering, black coat falling like lowered wings around his form.

There was peace.

Then the crowd broke apart, and lightning struck the Overseer's skull.

Everybody whirled at once. Noah.