Excerpt from Seek the Traitor's Son by Veronica Roth, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Fear and rage war inside her at the sight of them. They're Talusar. The augurs summoned them, too.

"Did the augurs say anything else about what to expect?" she asks the Sword.

"No." The Sword sighs. "As usual, they were irritatingly vague."

"And we're sure they're trustworthy? This isn't an ambush?"

"They've never given us a reason not to trust them, in over a hundred years."

She touches the mask that covers her nose and mouth, a standard precaution for anyone confronting the Talusar. "They're Fevered. Isn't that enough of a reason?"

The Talusar empire stretches across the entire planet—the temperate regions, anyway—and what unites its people is Fever. The Fever is highly infectious, and it kills everyone who contracts it—every single person.

Half of them stay dead.

The other half come back to life, two or three days later. Their bodies regenerated. Possessing special gifts.

As a result, they've come to worship the Fever as a god, and it's hard to blame them. But Elegy's people, the people of Cedre, view the Fever as what it is: a virus that devastated their planet's population; a virus whose fifty-fifty survival rate isn't worth the risk, regardless of the power it offers. So from the start, Cedre sealed itself off from the Fever. To the Talusar, this is denial of God, the height of blasphemy. To Cedre, it's simply survival.

Shir's hand is steady between Elegy's shoulders as they walk to the Cenobium's front doors. It's larger up close than it looked from afar. The biggest part of the building, which she assumes is the sanctuary, is spool-shaped, with walls of interlocking stones and a slatted roof made of wood. Another part extends east, a line in the salt—living quarters, if she had to guess. Even augurs need sleep and food.

Waiting at the set of double doors in the sanctuary is a pale older woman with her gray hair in a tight knot. She's dressed in black robes that are stained gray at the bottom from the salt. Her feet are bare.

"Hello," she says, once they're close enough to hear her. "Welcome to the Cenobium. My name is Nerina, head attendant to the augurs."

Elegy wonders, as she often does when confronted with the Talusar, what this woman's gift is. Most of the infected have the gift of retrocognition, which means they perceive the past, not the future—as near in the past as a few seconds ago, and as distant as a millennium. Elegy's even heard talk of Fevered people who can erase memories, seal them off, or warp them. But the rarest gift of all that the Fever produces is the opposite: precognition, the ability to see the future. Only ten people alive have it, and she's about to meet them.

"This is your daughter?" Nerina asks the Sword. She's speaking Talusar. Her voice makes the language sound as delicate as a song.

"Yes," the Sword replies.

Elegy tenses at the description of herself as "daughter," but she's not petty enough to argue. Nerina looks right through Shir without greeting him. If he's bothered, he doesn't let on.

"She looks nothing like you," Nerina says, after looking Elegy over. "Her name is Elegy? Was her arrival in the world a lament?"

"Maybe," Elegy replies, also in Talusar. "I've never asked."

Nerina looks surprised, and then laughs. Elegy can feel the Sword staring at her.

"Forgive my rudeness," Nerina says. "Not many Cedrae speak Talusar. I just assumed you wouldn't."

She leads them into a dim, plain antechamber. Lanterns hang from the walls, and Elegy stares at the flame flickering behind the glass. No electricity here. The energy fields emitted by Fever-changed people tend to interfere with it.

"Wait here a moment. I'll find out if they're ready." Nerina points to a line of slippers near the door. "There are no shoes allowed in the sanctuary. Only the two of you are permitted inside."

Elegy glances at the Sword, who kneels to untie her boots. They're fine shoes, polished, not sensible for walking across salt. The Sword is from Cedre Station, so unlike Elegy, she's not used to walking on the ground.

Excerpted from Seek the Traitor's Son by Veronica Roth. Copyright © 2026 by Veronica Roth. Excerpted by permission of Tor Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.