If you want to help her, you need to help yourself first. No one serves their friends by grinding themselves into dust on the altar of compassion. - Seanan McGuire

Katherine understood rules. Understood them down to the marrow of her bones. Rules were the reason the world could work at all. Following the rules didn’t make you a good person, just like breaking them didn’t make you a bad one, but it could make you an invisible person, and invisible people got to do as they liked.

The Queen of Cakes pursed her lips. “You must be from Sumi’s world,” she said primly. “You’re just as obnoxious as she was. She’s quiet now. How did you make her that way?”
“Well, she died, so that was a large part of it,” said Kade.
“Dead people normally stay in their graves, out of the way of the rest of us.”

Hope is a vicious beast. It sinks in its claws and it doesn’t let go.