This kid again. Childermass has his own problems — a mage demanding poisonous plants and other things, the Rose Queen demanding he deal with an unknown faerie, things — and catching Allen harassing people isn't one he wants to deal with today. He should just keep walking, ignore him and the fear of exposure he's threatening some poor plant-based changeling with, but there's just something utterly frustrating about it.

Don't these people have a right to privacy? A right to tell someone to get lost, leave them be? After everything else they've been through? So Allen is about to find the older, taller Winter changeling stepping in before he has the chance to finish raising his voice to announce what they are, a hand snapping out to grab for the boy's collar and drag him roughly around to face him instead should he get it.

Of course, the other changeling — being an escapee from the Rose Queen no doubt, if the flowers sprouting from their hair tells him anything — will immediately lurch back in horror at the arrival of tall, dark, and crow-like. It's not a secret among the other changeling that he still works for the Queen, but he isn't here to drag anyone off back to her gardens. Not this time.

"What the hell do you think you're doing? This? You're still doing this? When has this ever worked for you?"

He says it in a low growl, pitched so only Allen and the poor flowery changeling nearby can hear.