Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children, #8)

by Seanan McGuire

“She wasn’t told because it changed nothing,” said Hudson miserably. “For two hundred years we’ve been here, helping the curators, making sure the Doors are cared for, making sure the wayfarers who came through them seeking what they’d already lost were seen to and seen home in short order. Two hundred years. Ten generations of magpies have lived and died and seen hundreds of curators come through here, and when Elodina demanded her promise from Eider, we were exempt. She left us out of what she asked him. We were animals to her, inconsequential, even as we brought her everything she needed, even though we had watched over the Doors for generations before she came, even though we’ll be watching them long after the last curator is gone. But he told Anya, and Anya told Basia, and on, and on, and every one of them made the same choices, made the same decisions, ran through the Doors with the careless abandon of the first curator. But you know what did change? What did become different?” He hopped down from his perch, stalking toward the counter’s edge. Antsy couldn’t take her eyes off of him. “They were guilty. They felt like they were being punished. They used the Doors anyway, but because they understood the consequences, they suffered for what they did. And they stayed, and they traveled, and they suffered, because they knew.”

What bullshit. You didn't tell Antsy because you wanted to take advantage, not because she would feel bad.