 Hey guys, this is Veronica Roth, author of the Carve the Mark duology in the Divergent series. The second and final installment in the Carve the Mark duology, The Fates Divide, is out soon, and I'm really excited for you guys to find out what happens to Cyra and Akos. Today, I've got a very special surprise for you. I'm going to be giving you a sneak peek into The Fates Divide and read you the prologue in the first chapter. This picks up right where Carve the Mark left off, so if you haven't finished Carve the Mark yet, this is your spoiler warning. Prologue. Aija. Why so afraid? We ask ourself. She's coming to kill us, we reply. We were once alarmed by this feeling of being in two bodies at once. We have grown accustomed to it in the cycle since the shift occurred, since both our current gifts dissolved into this new, strange one. We know how to pretend now that we are two people instead of one, that we prefer when we are alone, to relax into the truth. We are one person in two bodies. We are not on Udak as we were the last time we knew our location. We are adrift in space, the bend of the blushing current stream, the only interruption in the blackness. Only one of our cells has a window. It is a narrow thing with a thin mattress in it and a bottle of water. The other cell is a storage room that smells of disinfectant, harsh, and accurate. The only light comes from the vents in the door, closed now, but not fully sealed against the hallway glow. We stretch two arms. One shorter and browner, the other long and pale in unison. The former feels lighter, the latter clumsy and heavy. The drugs have faded from one body, but not the other. One heart pounds hard and the other maintains a steady rhythm, to kill us, we say to ourself. Are we sure? That's sure as the fates. She wants us dead. The fates. There is dissonance here. Just as a person can love and hate something at once, we love and hate the fates we believe and do not believe in them. What was the word our mother used? We have two mothers, two fathers, two sisters, and yet only one brother. Accept your fate, or bear it, or suffer the fate, she said. We reply, for all else is delusion. Chapter one, Syrah. Lasment Novak, my father and former tyrant of Chotet, had been presumed dead for over 10 seasons. We had held a funeral for him on the first sojourn after his passing, sent his old armor into space because there was no body. And yet my brother, Rizek, imprisoned in the belly of this transport ship, had said, Lasment Novak is alive. My mother had called my father Las sometimes. No one else would have dared but Yelera Novak. Las, she would say, let it go. And he obeyed her as long as she didn't command him too often. He respected her, though he respected no one else, not even his own friends. With her he had some softness, but with everyone else. Well, my brother, who had begun his life soft and only later hardened to someone who would torture his own sister, had learned to cut out a person's eye from Lasment and how to store it, too, in a preservative so it wouldn't rot. Before I truly understood what the jars in the weapons hall contained, I had gone there to look at them on shelves high above my head, glinting in low light, green and brown and gray irises afloat, like fish bobbing to the surface of a tank for food. My father had never carved a piece of someone with his own hands, nor had he ordered someone else to do it. He had used his current gift to control their bodies, to force them to do it to themselves. Death is not the only punishment you can give a person. You can also give them nightmares. When Akos Karaseth came to find me later, it was on the nav deck of the small transport ship that had carried us away from my home planet, where my people, the Chotet, now stood on the verge of war with Akos's home nation of Thuva. I sat in the captain's chair, swiveling back and forth to soothe myself. I meant to tell him what Rizek had told me, that my father, if he was my father, if Rizek was even my brother, was alive. Rizek seemed certain that he and I didn't actually share blood, that I was not truly a Novak. That was why he had said, I hadn't been able to open the gene lock that kept his room secure, why I hadn't been able to assassinate him the first time I tried. But I didn't know how to begin, with the death of my father, with the body we had never found, with the niggling feeling that Rizek and I were too dissimilar in features to have ever been related. Akos didn't seem to want to talk either. He spread a blanket he had found somewhere in the ship on the ground between the captain's chair and the wall, and we lay on top of it, side by side, staring out at nothingness. Current shadows, my lively, painful ability, wrapped around my arms like black string, sending a deep ache all the way down to my fingertips. I was not afraid of emptiness. It made me feel small, barely worth a first glance, let alone a second. And there was comfort in that, because so often I worried that I was capable of causing too much damage. At least if I was small and kept to myself, I wouldn't do any more harm. I wanted only what was within arm's reach. Akos' index finger hooked around my pinky. The shadows disappeared as his current gift countered mine. Yes, what was within arm's reach was definitely enough for me. Would you say something in Thuvizit? He asked. I turned my head toward him. He was still looking up at the window, a faint smile curling his lips. Freckles dotted his nose in one of his eyelids, right near the lash line. I hesitated with my hand, just lifted off the blanket, wanting to touch him, but also wanting to stay in the wanting for a moment. Then I followed the line of his eyebrow across his face with a fingertip. I'm not a pet bird, I said. I don't chirp on command. This is a request, not a command. A humble one, he said. Just say my full name, maybe? I laughed. Most of your name is Shotet, remember? Rept. He lunged at my hand with his mouth, snapping his teeth together. It startled a laugh from me. What was the hardest for you to say when you were first learning? Your city names, what a mouthful, I said, as he let go of one of my hands to catch the other, holding me by pinky and thumb with all his fingertips. He pressed a kiss to the center of my palm, where the skin was calloused from holding current blades. Strange that something so simple, given to a hardened part of me, could suffuse me so completely, bringing life to every nerve. I sighed, acquiescing. Fine, I'll say them. Hessa, Shissa, Osuk, I said. There was a chancellor who called Hessa the very heart of Thuva. Her surname was Keraseth. The only Keraseth chancellor in Thuva's late history, Akko said, bringing my palm to his cheek. I propped myself up on one elbow to lean over him, my hair slipping forward to frame both our faces, long on one side, though I was now silver-skinned on the other. I do know that much. For a long time, there were only two fated families on Thuva, I said. And yet, the leadership has only ever been with the Benizies, when the fates have named a chancellor at all. Is that not strange to you? Maybe we aren't any good at leading. Maybe fate favors you, I said. Maybe thrones are curses. Fate doesn't favor me, he said, gently. So gently, I almost didn't realize what he meant. His fate, the third child of the family Keraseth will die in service to the family Novak, was to betray his home for my family in serving us and to die. How could anyone see that as anything but a hardship? I shook my head. I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking. Saira, he said, and he paused, frowning at me. Did you just apologize? I do know the words, I replied, scowling back. I'm not completely without manners, he laughed. I know the esoteria word for garbage. That doesn't mean I sound right saying it. Fine, I revoke my apology. I flicked his nose hard. And when he cringed away, still laughing, I said, what's the esoteria word for garbage? He said it. It sounded like a word reflected in a mirror, said once forward and once backward. I found your weakness, he said. I just have to taunt you with knowledge you don't have and you're distracted immediately. I considered that. I guess you're allowed to know one of my weaknesses, considering you have so many to exploit. He raised his eyebrows in question and I attacked him with my fingers, jabbing his left side just under his elbow, his right side just above his hip, the tendon behind his right leg. I had learned these soft places when we were training, places he didn't protect well enough or that made him cringe harder than usual when struck. But I teased him now with more gentleness than I had thought myself capable of, drawing from him laughs instead of cringes. He pulled me on top of him, holding me by the hips. A few of his fingers slipped under the waistband of my pants and it was a kind of agony. I was unfamiliar with, a kind I didn't mind at all. I braced myself on the blanket on either side of his head and lowered myself slowly to kiss him. We hadn't kissed more than a few times and I had never kissed anyone but him, so each time was still a discovery. This time I found the edge of teeth skimming in the tip of a tongue. I found the slide of a knee between mine and the weight of a hand at the back of my neck urging me closer, further, faster. I didn't breathe, didn't wanna take the time and so I ended up gasping against the side of his neck before long, making him laugh. I'll take that as a good sign, he said. Don't get cocky, Karaseth. I couldn't keep myself from smiling. Lazmat and whatever questions I had about my parentage didn't feel as close to me now. I was safe here, floating on a ship in the middle of nowhere with Ako's Karaseth. And then a scream from somewhere deep in the ship. It sounded like Ako's sister. CZ. There you go, a glimpse into Aya's head and a stolen moment between Sire and Ako's, been interrupted. Those two just can't catch a break. I hope you enjoyed this sneak peek into the Fates Divide and you don't have to wait too long to find out what happens next since the book will be in stores and online on April 10th. You can check out HarperCollins children's books and hashtag the Fates Divide on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to find out more. I hope you love the book.