Defiant (Skyward, #4)

by Brandon Sanderson

“This is your only warning. Return to us the captives you’ve taken. Turn away from your path of tyranny. Or I will see each and every ship that raises arms against us burned to slag, and your ashes will be abandoned to drift in the eternal expanse of darkness. Forever frozen, without home or memorial, lamented by your kin, never again to hear the voices or feel the touch of those you have loved. I swear it by the stars, the Saints, and the souls of a thousand warriors who have come before me. I will have your blood.”

“I figure that they’re doing something terrible,” she said back to Kauri. “Upholding the Superiority. Conquering and oppressing. Even if they don’t realize it, even if they don’t accept what they’re doing is wrong, each action they take stains them. I don’t think of it as killing them so much as…preventing them from digging further into actions that will burden their souls.”