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

"Enough," the oldest augur says. "We've decided on a course of action, and no debate will change it."

The other augurs nod, and fall silent again.

The oldest augur goes on: "Elegy Rosyk. Welcome."

"That's not my name," Elegy says, before she can stop herself. "Rosyk" is the Sword's name—Elegy goes by her father's, which is "Ahn."

"It's not your name yet," the oldest augur says. "But we can hardly be expected to keep track of 'yet.'"

"'Yet' is meaningless," one of the others says, rolling his eyes. "Everything is was."

Elegy doesn't get a chance to puzzle over this bit of nonsense. A heavy door closes somewhere deep in the building. There are voices. Scuffling. A moment later another black-robed attendant, like Nerina, comes into the room from the door behind the augurs, identical to the one Elegy used to come in. She's followed by a Talusar woman.

The woman is tall. The tallest woman Elegy has ever seen. Her feet are bare, but she wears armor in the pattern of a thousand tiny copper plates layered over each other to look like feathers. Her dirty-blond hair is braided into a crown around her pale face, which has an aristocratic look to it, her nose hooked and her mouth pinched.

"Stand beside her," the woman's attendant says to her, gesturing toward Elegy.

The woman looks Elegy over with a mixture of contempt and curiosity. She steps onto the mirror, and Elegy shifts to put more space between them.

"Rava Vidar," the oldest augur says. "Welcome."

Elegy chokes, and tries to disguise it by coughing. The Sword told her the Talusar would be here, but she didn't mention one of them would be Rava Vidar, the Butcher of Calgara.

The Talusar empire spans their planet under the headship of the emperor, Icar Talus. Rava is his grandniece. Her mother, Icar's niece, is the most famous of the family members the emperor has installed to reign over his territories, known for her exacting standards and her fatalistic acceptance of brutality.

Rava is her mother's enforcer and her right hand. It's a job she's had from a young age, young enough that all of Cedre made jokes about the child general. (What does the Talusar general say to her first in command? someone would ask. And the answer: Nothing, she just learned her first word last week! ) But Rava attained early victories against Fever-changed rebels from the north, and then—Calgara. She invaded Cedre's colony there, infected its residents with Fever, and turned the cold war between the Talusar and the Cedrae boiling hot.

The jokes about Rava Vidar's age didn't sound so funny after that.

"It's only right that you should be introduced," one of the augurs, a bearded man with round spectacles, says. "Rava Vidar, daughter of Ileth Vidar, this is Elegy Rosyk, daughter of the Sword of Cedre."

Elegy sees herself through Rava's eyes: a woman not much younger than she is, who stands a head shorter than her, in worn black pants and a rumpled shirt, her face covered to protect against Fever. Compared to this blond titan in febra armor, she's nothing and no one. Daughter of the Sword, what a joke.

"I'm sure you're both wondering why you're here," the oldest augur says. "Or perhaps … why the other is here."

Rava and Elegy don't look at each other.

"There is a prophecy," the youngest augur says, his pink cheeks even pinker than before. "It might concern you—" He gestures to Rava. "And it might concern you—" He gestures to Elegy. "It will decide the fate of one of your nations, or the other."

"It … might concern me?" Elegy says, her voice muffled by the mask.

"Show some respect," Rava says to her. "Cedre swine."

It doesn't occur to Elegy to be angry. She just looks at Rava with interest. She's never been called "swine" before.

"Some augurs deal in words, and some in images," the oldest augur says, as if neither of them spoke. "Some see few visions, and see them clearly, and some see many, and see them vaguely. We work together to arrive at the path we believe to be the most likely, but it's not an exact science. And in this situation, we have reached an impasse. That is partly because of the relationship between you."

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.