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Kit whirled around to face another dullahan, this one armed with a chipped but deadly-looking axe. As they battled back and forth, a gap between the dullahans opened and Kit glimpsed Ty fighting his own skeletal monstrosity.

Ty’s style had changed in the past four years, but it was still clearly Ty fighting. He brought an intense hyperfocus to the battle, his movements exact and precise, a blur of calculated strikes, each one to the places where the creature’s bones joined together. One by one the bones rattled to the ground until the dullahan disintegrated; Ty was already turning away, twisting and lunging toward another of the monstrosities.

Some part of Kit just wanted to stare at Ty and watch him fight with such controlled precision that it might as well have been ballet. Even with his vision reduced to essentials, it seemed, he could still see Ty.

But he had his own monsters to deal with. He slammed his blade forward, sinking it deep into the dullahan’s spinal cord, bones cracking under the force of the blow.

The dullahan collapsed, but was quickly replaced by another, and then another. Fragments of bone had begun to litter the ground; Kit had to step carefully to avoid twisting an ankle or worse, falling. He ducked past a dullahan with a shattered cheekbone, then turned to meet its thrust with his own, using his blade to push the creature back. It staggered, and Kit took advantage of the moment. He lunged forward, knocking the dullahan off-balance and sending it crashing to the ground.

The creature scrambled to rise, but Kit stamped on its feet, the crunch of bone under his boots echoing through the cemetery. The dullahan let out a shrill, horrible cry—the first noise the creatures had made—as its feet shattered, turning to dust. But Kit wasn’t done; a hot fury drove him onward as he moved to crush its hands to powder, too, his boots grinding bone fragments into the grass.

Then he went to work on its skull. It burst under his foot like a pricked balloon.

Panting and choking on bone dust, Kit spun to see Ty locked in battle with an enormous dullahan, larger and more menacing than the others, a ragged black cloak hanging from the remains of its shoulders. Ty was moving more slowly now, his strikes less powerful, as if the fight was beginning to tire him. Kit’s stomach twisted with concern. Ty shouldn’t be weakening, not this early in the battle.

Before Kit could move toward Ty, the black-cloaked dullahan lunged fiercely, knocking Ty’s blade out of his hand. With a swift motion, it seized Ty and spun him around, trapping Ty in its bony grip, the edge of his sword against Ty’s throat.

“Stop and listen to me!” the monster roared, and the dullahans froze. Kit did too, his seraph blade burning forgotten in his hand. All he could see was Ty: blood on his face, his gray eyes wide, the blackened silver blade pressed against his neck.

“I am Gan Ceann,” said the black-cloaked dullahan, in a low, gritty male voice. “I lead the dullahans at the behest of the Four Riders. Lay your weapon down now, Christopher Herondale, or your companion dies.”

“Don’t,” Ty said, his voice firm despite the blade at his neck. “Don’t do it, Kit.”

Gan Ceann hissed. Then he spoke, and his words dripped with malice.

“Such sacrifice. So noble.” His voice was painful to hear, like nails scraping over a gravestone. “But it will avail you nothing. The Riders have told us that if we cannot bring you back alive, Herondale, we can bring you back dead.”

Kit felt no fear, which he knew was probably foolish, but there was no room inside him for anything but rage. How dare it touch Ty?

He brought his seraph blade up.

“Try,” he said.

Gan Ceann stared at him, his skull face unreadable. “Perhaps you can swing a blade, boy. But you shall never take the throne of Faerie. There is another who is more deserving.”

“I don’t want the throne of Faerie,” Kit snarled. It was taking everything he had not to lunge forward, but what if the movement spurred the dullahan to cut Ty’s throat?

“We have our orders regardless,” said Gan Ceann. “And we will carry them out.” His jaws gaped wide in a soundless laugh as the edge of his sword bit harder into Ty’s neck, blood welling up around the blade.

A familiar cold fire tore through Kit’s veins. He felt it as he had at the Imperishable Fields, the painful opening of something inside himself. His body flooded with a desperate electricity as, without thinking, he dropped his blade and raised his hands.

White fire exploded from his palms, a colorless lightning that flew toward Gan Ceann like an arrow. With a roar, the dullahan leader staggered, Ty tearing himself free as the blaze tightened around Gan Ceann like a noose. The dullahan flared up with a sound like a human scream—right before he exploded, his bones flying apart. They rattled to the ground like dropped coins.

But Kit wasn’t done. The fire rose, surrounding the rest of the dullahans in a swirling vortex of white lightning. Their bones turned to ivory powder; they screamed as they disintegrated, their bodies breaking into a flurry of bone fragments.

At last there was silence.

Kit lowered his hands slowly.

The cemetery grew still again, the echoes of battle fading as the white fire of magic faded, dissolving on the air. Ty was swaying on his feet, his throat bloody, but he remained standing. Kit felt a weight in his chest; he was still shaking from the rush of the fight.

“Ty,” Kit breathed, and the paralysis of shock vanished. He raced toward Ty, leaping the hurdles of collapsed skeletons, piles of tibias and femurs and human vertebrae. He kicked a skull away and nearly fell onto Ty, grabbing him by the arms with shaking hands.

“Ty. Are you all right? Your neck—”

Ty, looking shell-shocked, put his fingers to his throat. They came away red. “It’s just a cut. Not dangerous. I could use an iratze, though. And some Energy runes.”

Kit stroked his hands up and down Ty’s arms, unable to stop himself. “What happened?” he demanded. “To you, I mean. You were fighting, and then it was like all your energy just went—”