Parallax 19

Cinamagic, Blood, and What's Hidden in Between

(TW: Violence in this piece, please scroll if sensitive)

The Cinamagic was everything Eidolon promised—sleek, immersive, overwhelming. Screens wrapped around the audience like a second skin. Sound that vibrated in your bones. Stories that made you forget, for a few hours, that the world outside was hungry.

Fern sat between Elara and Mira, Kaela on the end. They laughed at the jokes. Clutched each other’s arms during the tense parts. Shared a bucket of something that tasted like salt and nostalgia.

The seats were warm and lavender and faintly smelled like the people before them. It didn’t bother her.

For a moment—just a moment—Fern forgot everything going on.

Forgot the dress fitting. Forgot the brooch. Forgot the green flicker behind her eye.

She was squished in between three girls who had become her co-workers and her best friends.

Her heart still ached sometimes for the family she left behind, but on nights like this, she was joyful.

Kernels of something sweet and salty all at once, innovated by those in the mirelands (she didn’t want to think of what plant it came from, or the swamp, but oh well) and she crunched on it.

The heroine almost died. The hero saved her – of course he did.

Then the credits rolled. The lights came up. And they walked out into the Eidolon night.

They weren’t afraid. The bullet train was fifteen minutes away. An easy walk.

The shortcut was Mira’s idea. “It’s fine, I take it all the time. Saves twenty minutes.”

The alley was narrow, dark, smelled of rain and something else—but Fern had put it out of her mind.

Eidolon was filled with Night Life, wasn’t it?

No, no.

Something wrong. Fern noticed it before the others. The way her left eye throbbed. The way her feet slowed without her permission.

She looked behind her.

The city gleamed softly, like a camera smudged. Amber.

Eidolon was safe, safer than Gloamsted, which was still a good neighborhood.

Safer than Virex.

Maybe they could go out for drinks and dinner at Qamar’s?

No, no, something in her gut didn’t feel right.

“Keep walking,” she said quietly.

“What?” Elara glanced back.

“Keep walking. Don’t look around. Just—”

She was feeling it overwhelmingly. The shadows flickered. She didn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean anyone wasn’t around. Djinn were known to flicker from light to light, shadow to shadow. Eidolon was pretty safe, but anything could happen—

“Well, well.”

The voice came from ahead. Three figures, emerging from the shadows. Broad shoulders. Hard eyes. The kind of predators who knew how to spot prey.

Fuck. She had been right.

“Nice dresses, ladies. You lost?”

Mira clutched her purse. Elara grabbed Fern’s arm. Kaela went very still.

Fern stepped forward. “We’re not lost. We’re leaving. Let us pass.”

“That’s not how this works.” The figure in the middle smiled. His teeth were wrong—too sharp, too many. “Pretty things like you? You pay the toll. Or we take it ourselves.”

She knew that kind of language.

She had lived that kind of language.

They weren’t Djinn. Not exactly. Not the kind she had met anyways. They were leering, Ghoulish.

“We don’t have any cash,” Mira said, her voice trembling. “But we can—”

“Not cash.” He stepped closer. “Something else.”

Fern’s left eye flickered. Green. She clenched her fist.

The fear left her, and something else lay hidden in her belly like a snapping snake.

She stepped in front of them.

“Walk away,” she said. Her voice had changed—lower, sharper, dangerous.

Even Elara noticed. Her grip on Fern’s arm tightened.

“Or what?”

“Or you’ll regret it.”

“Fairy what’re you—” Elara started, but Fern wasn’t paying attention. Something was digging into her belly now, harder.

Snap them. End them. Pummel them. Id you don’t, Elara will snap like a twig. Mira will be dead. Kaela…

She was trying to calm that inner rage.

The figures laughed. But the one in the middle stopped. Looked at her. Really looked.

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

The alley was too narrow to be accidental.

Brick walls leaned inward like they were listening, slick with old rain that never quite dried. Somewhere above, a flickering lamp tried and failed to be brave. And then your character realized the shadows at the far end were not empty.

They were waiting.

The first shape stood nearest the mouth of the alley, as though it had stepped out of the streetlight’s hesitation. It looked almost human until it turned its head and the illusion collapsed.

Its skin was the color of cooled embers, cracked through with faint orange glow, like a hearth left burning too long. Every breath it took released a soft spill of ash that drifted upward instead of falling. Its mouth was wrong—not torn, not wounded, but eroded, as if speech itself had worn it away over centuries.

When it smiled, the ash inside its throat shifted and whispered.

It did not speak aloud at first. It only tilted its head toward your character, as though recognizing a debt long overdue. Then, in a voice like burnt parchment turning itself:

“Three wishes remain unclaimed.” He was being sarcastic, because they were trapped. Djinn didn't grant wishes anymore. Not since Solomon. Now they were just... free. Unbound. And free things could be dangerous.

It’s fingers flexed, and the air around them turned dry enough to sting the eyes.

Halfway down the alley, slumped against the wall like a drunk that had forgotten how to fall properly, was the second.

It was wrapped in chains—not metal, but something darker, like solidified smoke braided into links. Each chain pulsed faintly, as though restraining something that refused to stay in one shape for long. It was mirroring being bound, but it really wasn’t.

Its body kept changing its mind about itself. One moment it was tall and thin, stretched like a shadow pulled too far; the next it compressed into something compact and predatory, all angles and wrong joints. Its face never quite settled.

Every exhale it gave off sounded like dozens of distant conversations collapsing into one another. Not words, exactly—more like bargains being argued in languages that no longer exist.

It lifted its head slowly, chains tightening with a sound like choking silk.

“Do you know what happens,” it murmured, “when a wish is refused too many times?” His mouth leered. He meant to harm them, one way or another.

The chains tightened again. The alley seemed to grow narrower.

At the deepest end of the alley, where light stopped pretending to be useful, something crouched.

It was larger than the others, though its shape was harder to fix in the mind. It seemed to be made of layered silhouettes—each one slightly out of sync with the next, like reality had failed to choose a single version of it.

In its hands it held fragments of broken lamps: brass, glass, ceramic, all melted together into a single pulsing relic. It was slowly biting into it.

Each crunch released a dim glow that bled into its body and disappeared.

Its face was hidden behind something like a veil of drifting smoke, but from within that veil came the sound of slow chewing and occasional laughter that did not match the rhythm of anything human.

When it finally looked up, the remaining light in the alley seemed to lean away from it.

“You brought nothing,” it said softly, almost disappointed. “That is… unusual. Where are you from?” He added.

Then it stood.

And the alley behind Fern felt suddenly much, much longer than it had been a moment before.

“I’m from everywhere.” She finally said, gulping – not in fear, in rage.

“That so?” The first Djinn/Ghoul said, mouth open with ash.

“I’m from the places you people hide from. The Grunt. The Lower Streets. The parts of this city that would eat you alive.” She stepped closer. “And I survived them. Do you really want to find out how?”

Her friends balked.

For a moment—just a moment—the figure hesitated.

Then he laughed again. “Big words for a woman in a nice dress.”

He reached for her.

Fern moved.

Not fast. Fast was for amateurs. She moved wrong. The way prey moves when it’s not prey at all. The way a blade moves when it’s already inside you.

Her hand caught his wrist. Twisted. Something cracked. He screamed.

The other two lunged.

Fern didn’t think. Didn’t plan. Didn’t hesitate.

She was Ferret.

Lime jacket. Cloud sleeves. Scissors in her belt. The girl who’d rewired auro-borons and survived the Grid and cut off her pigtails in a borrowed room.

She caught the first man’s wrist, twisted, launched him into the second. They collided with a sickening crunch. The second man’s head bounced off the alley wall. He went down. Didn’t get up.

The leader—the one with the too-sharp teeth—reached for Mira.

Fern erupted.

She was on him before he could scream. Her fist connected with his jaw—once, twice, three times. Bone cracked. Teeth scattered. He tried to block, tried to run, but she grabbed his collar and slammed him against the wall. His head hit stone. His eyes rolled.

She didn’t stop.

“Fern!” Kaela’s voice. Distant.

Fern punched him again. His nose crunched. Blood sprayed—across her knuckles, across her dress, across the ivory.

“FERN!”

Another punch. His cheekbone caved.

“FERN, STOP!”

Elara was screaming. Mira was crying. Kaela grabbed her arm, tried to pull her back, but Fern was stronger. The VAD was humming. The green was everywhere.

How dare he.

How dare he.

How fucking DARE HE?

Suddenly all the rage of 22 years piled up. The rage of having to mask, the rage of having to play pretend to survive – and now? Now they thought they were going to violate them, in one clean move?

NO.

He didn’t get to do that.

They didn’t get to do that.

She felt something inside of her snap.

She felt her face moving in its own accord—smiling.

Smiling like a knife.

They would never hurt Mira, Elara, Kaela, or herself.

Ever—

“He’s not moving, Fern! He’s not—he’s not MOVING!”

Fern looked down. The man was slumped against the wall. His face was pulp. His chest was still—was he breathing? She didn’t know. She didn’t care.

She raised her fist again.

“Fern.” Kaela’s voice. Soft. Broke. “Please.”

Fern stopped.

Finally stopped.

Breathing hard.

The other two Djinn/Ghouls had limped away, terrified.

Her arm hung in the air. Her knuckles were split—bone visible, white against the red. Her dress was ruined. Ivory soaked in crimson, spreading across the silk, pooling at her feet like something from a nightmare.

She caught her reflection in the plexi-glass of the train shelter behind her. Her eyes—those gray-green eyes—looked like something feral. Burning. Rabid. The eyes of a creature that had been cornered and had decided, finally, to stop running and start tearing.

She looked at her hands.

Twenty-two years of pain. Twenty-two years of war. Of rage. Of hellfire. Of holding it in, holding it together, holding herself back because that’s what Fern did, what Fern had to do to survive in the shining city—

And now it was everywhere. On her hands. On her dress. On the wall, the ground, the man who wasn’t moving.

“Fern.” Kaela’s hand on her shoulder. Gentle. Terrified. “We need to go. Now.”

Fern nodded. Didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

Elara was already pulling Mira down the alley, her face pale, her eyes wide. Kaela tugged Fern’s arm—”Come on, come ON”—and Fern followed.

She didn’t look back. She couldn’t. Because if she looked back, she’d see what she’d done. What she’d become. The woman in the ivory dress, covered in blood, standing over a body that might be dead or might be dying.

Ferret. Not Fern. Never Fern.

The bullet train was empty.

Elara sat across the aisle, hugging her knees, not looking at anyone. Mira stared out the window, her hands shaking. Kaela sat beside Fern. Didn’t speak. Just... stayed.

Fern looked down at her dress. The ivory was ruined. Cranberry sauce. That’s what she’d tell Vincent later. A spill. An accident. A clumsy moment at the Cinamagic.

She’d lie. Because that’s what Fern did.

But Kaela knew. Elara knew. Mira knew. They’d seen her. The real her. And they’d never look at her the same way again.

When the train reached their stop, Fern didn’t move.

“Fern?” Kaela’s voice.

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?”

“I can’t—” She gestured at herself. At the dress. At the blood. “I can’t go with you. Not like this.”

“You’re not staying here alone.” Kaela’s voice was firm, but her eyes were pleading. “Fern, you’re covered in—”

“I know what I’m covered in.” She looked at her hands. The split knuckles. The crimson staining her palms. “I can’t let you see me like this.”

“We already saw—”

“I KNOW.” Her voice cracked. Broke. “I know you saw. I didn’t want you to see. Any of you. I never wanted—”

She looked at Mira. Mira, who was delicate and slender and quiet and thoughtful and funny and sweet, who didn’t have a mean bone in her body, who had squealed over veils and never once asked where Fern came from.

“He would have snapped her in half.”

Kaela went still.

“That man. The one who reached for her. He would have broken her. Like a twig. And I couldn’t—I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t.”

No one spoke.

“I’m not sorry I stopped him. I’m not sorry I hurt him. I’m sorry you saw.”

She stepped back. The train platform was behind her. “Go home. Please.”

Kaela held her gaze for a long moment. Then she nodded. Slowly. Reluctantly. “Come back to us. When you’re ready.”

Fern didn’t answer.

She watched them go. Elara first, pulling Mira gently toward the exit, then Kaela, who paused at the entrance to look back one last time. Their eyes met. Fern saw something in Kaela’s face she hadn’t seen before. Not fear. Not pity. Understanding.

Then they were gone.

~*~

Fern walked. The city blurred around her—neon signs and dark alleys, the border between Gloamsted and Virex, the place where the shining city bled into the Grunt. She knew this territory. Had run through it as a girl, had hidden in its shadows, had stolen and fought and survived here.

The hotel was small. Nondescript. The kind of place that didn’t ask questions, didn’t require identification, didn’t care about the blood on your dress as long as you paid in advance.

Fern booked a room. Took the stairs. Locked the door.

The room was sparse—a bed, a sink, a window that faced a brick wall. No cream and plum. No engineered silence. Just the distant hum of the city and the sound of her own breathing.

She sat on the edge of the bed. Stared at her hands. The VAD was already working, knitting her split knuckles back together, but the bruises remained—purple and blue and yellow, blooming across her fingers like strange flowers. She flexed them. They ached. Good. She deserved to ache.

She didn’t cry. She didn’t sleep. She just sat there. Waiting.

The knock came sometime after midnight. Three soft raps. A pause. Three more.

Fern didn’t move.

“Fern.” The voice was low. Familiar. Not Vincent. Not Nova. “It’s Zara. Open the door.”

Fern’s throat tightened. She stood. Walked to the door. Opened it.

Zara filled the frame—broad shoulders, dark skin, eyes that had seen too much and softened anyway. She looked at Fern’s dress. At the blood. At the green still flickering behind her left eye.

“You look like shit.”

“I know.”

Zara stepped inside. Closed the door. Didn’t ask permission. Didn’t need to.

“We heard what happened. The alley. The men.” A pause.

“How’d you find out?”

“How’d you think?” She tapped her head.

“Zap.” Fern breathed, shuttering.

“Kid didn’t rig his concolor implant to get the Surge (internet) for nothing, Fer.” Zara snorted, and paused. “Mira’s okay.”

“I know.”

“She’s scared. They all are. But they’re not afraid of you.”

Fern looked away. “They should be.”

“No.” Zara’s voice was firm. “You saved her. You saved all of them. That’s not something to be ashamed of.”

“I couldn’t stop.”

“You stopped.”

“Kaela had to pull me off.”

“But you stopped.”

Zara moved closer. Not threatening—grounding. The way you approach a wounded animal when you’ve already decided to help.

She pulled a cigar from her jacket—already lit, already smoldering—took a slow drag, and spat it out. The cigar hit the floor, sparks scattering across the cheap carpet. She ground it out with her boot.

“Give me your hands.”

Fern blinked. Shocked. Not just by the demand—by the certainty in Zara’s voice. This wasn’t a request. It was an order.

“What?”

“Come on. Give me your hands.”

Fern hesitated. Then, slowly, she extended her arms.

Zara took her wrists—gently, for someone so large—and turned her palms up. The VAD had done its work, but the skin was still raw. Still tender.

“You hit like a boxer,” Zara muttered. “But you don’t wrap like one.”

She pulled a roll of cloth from her pocket—clean, white, the kind of tape Fern had seen in gyms and back alleys and places where people fought because they had no other choice. Zara wrapped her hands. Methodical. Tight. The way you wrap after a boxer’s knuckles are bleeding.

Fern watched her work. The silence was heavy, but not uncomfortable. Zara didn’t ask what happened. Didn’t ask why Fern was here. Didn’t ask about the dress or the blood or the green.

She just wrapped.

“You were Iron Circuit,” Fern said quietly.

Zara didn’t look up. “Long time ago.”

“Is that where you learned to—”

“Yeah.”

Fern nodded. Didn’t push. Zara wasn’t the kind of person you pushed.

The wraps were tight. Secure. They made Fern’s hands feel safe—not vulnerable, not stained, not screaming. Just... held.

Zara finished. Examined her work. Gave a short, sharp nod.

“Don’t take them off until morning.”

“Zara—”

“I’m not telling anyone I saw you.” Fern’s throat tightened. “Not Nova. Not Zap. Not Vincent.” Zara stood. Towered over the bed like a monolith. “You came here to be alone. I can respect that.”

She moved toward the door.

“Zara.” She paused. “Thank you.”

Zara didn’t look back. Didn’t acknowledge the words. She just opened the door and walked out, leaving Fern alone in the sparse, dim room with her wrapped hands and her ruined dress and the lime green jacket folded on the bed.

~*~

Vincent was going out of his mind.

Elara had called. Mira couldn’t stop crying. Kaela made the call, her voice steady even as her hands trembled. “Vincent. There’s been an incident. Fern is—you need to come.”

They didn’t tell him everything. Just enough. The alley. The men. The way Fern had changed. The blood on her dress that wasn’t her own.

Vincent drove himself to the Gloamsted precinct, then to the hospital, then back to the penthouse, then to every hotel within walking distance of the border. He called her comm seventeen times. Sent messages that went from “Fern, where are you?” to “Please, my love, please answer” to “I’m not angry. I just need to know you’re alive.”

Corbin searched. He checked the hotels on the Gloamsted side of the border, the ones that didn’t ask questions but still answered to Eidolon. He made calls. He leaned on informants.

But when the trail led into Virex—into the narrow streets and shadowed alleys where the Rust still had eyes and teeth—he stopped.

“She’s not there,” he told Vincent. The lie sat on his tongue like ash. “I checked everywhere. She must have gone to ground somewhere we can’t reach.”

“Keep looking.”

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?”

“I mean I can’t.” Corbin’s voice was flat. “Not tonight. Not there. You want me to start a war? Because that’s what happens if I push any further. And I’m not dying for your fiancée. No offense.”

Vincent turned away. His reflection in the penthouse window was hollow, haunted. “Then I’ll go myself.”

“You won’t find her.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know Virex. You don’t.” Corbin paused. “Let her come back on her own. She’s not a prisoner. She’s a woman who can take care of herself.”

“You didn’t see the blood.”

“I’ve seen worse.”

Corbin didn’t say what he was thinking: She’s not the one you should be worried about.

~*~

The phone rang at 3:47 in the morning.

Vincent snatched it up before the second ring—hoping it was Fern, praying it was Fern, needing it to be Fern.

It wasn’t.

“You want to know about your little girlfriend.”

The voice was a rasp. Low. Scraped raw. “I can tell you more about her. But you might not like it.”

“Who is this?”

“Someone who knew her before.”

Before the penthouse. Before the cream and plum. Before the ring and the custard and the medication. Before Vincent.

“She cut off her pigtails in a borrowed room when she was thirteen. She’s been running ever since. From the Grunt. From the Grid. From herself.”

“I know about the Grid.”

“You know nothing.” The rasp sharpened. “You don’t know about the jobs she ran. The people she hurt. The ones she couldn’t save.”

“She was a child—”

“She was Ferret.”

The name landed like a blade.

Vincent’s hand trembled. “She’s not Ferret. She’s Fern—”

“She’s both. She’s always been both. You just refused to see it.” The voice softened. Not kinder—sadder. “I’m not telling you this to hurt you. I’m telling you because someone should know. Someone should see her. Before the wedding. Before the cage closes.”

“Who are you?”

The line went dead.

Vincent stared at the phone.

He thought about Fern’s nightmares. The way she called out in her sleep—not for him, never for him. The way she flinched when he touched her left cheek. The way her eye flickered green when she thought he wasn’t looking.

He’d told himself it was the VAD. A disorder. Something that could be medicated, regulated, fixed.

But the voice on the phone knew differently.

She was never yours to save.

~*~

Vincent’s hand tightened on the phone. No. No, she couldn’t be. He ran a hand through his hair—tugged at the roots, hard enough to hurt.

He’d heard of Ferret. Everyone in Eidolon had heard of her. The whispered warnings. The hushed stories. The legends that bled up from the Grunt like smoke through cracks in the pavement. A warlord. An arsonist. A crime queen.

There was no way. His Fern. His sweet, thoughtful, architecture-building Fern. The woman who picked out flowers for the dining table. The woman who laughed at his jokes and curled into his chest during thunderstorms. The woman who’d never once raised her voice.

There was no way.

But the voice on the phone knew her. Knew her before. And the way it had said Ferret—not as a question, not as a guess, but as a fact—

She cut off her pigtails in a borrowed room when she was thirteen.

Vincent had seen the scar on her cheek. Had asked about it once, early in their relationship. “An accident,” she’d said. “When I was young.”

He’d believed her. He’d always believed her.

He straightened up. The trembling stopped. The doubt stopped. The horrible, creeping certainty coiling in his chest—he shoved it down, locked it away, buried it beneath layers of Djinn composure and Jurisolvant logic.

Whoever was on that phone was lying. Or mistaken. Or trying to hurt her. Trying to hurt him.

He had resources. He had money. He had power. He would find them. And when he found them, he would either pay them off or make them disappear.

Vincent wasn’t a violent man. He’d never needed to be. His wealth was his weapon. His status was his shield. And Fern was his.

“Corbin.”

The guard appeared in the doorway. Silent. Waiting.

“I need you to trace that call.”

“Blocked?”

“Yes.”

“That’ll take time.”

“I have time.” Vincent’s voice was cold. Flat. “Find them. I don’t care what it costs.”

Corbin studied him for a moment. Then nodded. Disappeared into the night.

~*~

The sun was rising over Eidolon—pale gold and soft violet, bleeding through the glass walls of Nytralis. Fern stood in the doorway of the penthouse. The lime green jacket was still on her shoulders. The wrap was still on her hands. Her hair was damp from the shower she’d taken at a public bathhouse near the border.

She looked like hell. She felt like hell.

But she was home.

The penthouse was quiet. Not the engineered silence of privilege—the real silence of a man who’d been waiting all night and had finally given in to exhaustion.

Vincent was on the settee. Still in his clothes from yesterday. His hair was disheveled. His face was slack with sleep. One hand was draped over the armrest, still clutching his comm.

Fern walked toward him—slowly, quietly, the way Ferret used to move through the Grunt. Her bare feet made no sound on the marble floor.

She knelt in front of him. Reached out. Touched his hand.

He stirred. “Fern?”

“I’m here.”

His eyes opened. Red. Puffy. Broken. “Fern.” He said her name like a prayer.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry—”

“Don’t.” He sat up, pulled her into his arms, held her like she might disappear. “Don’t be sorry. Just... stay. Please. Just stay.”

She stayed.

The jacket was rough against his cheek. The wraps pressed into his chest. The green flickered behind her eye, close enough to touch.

He didn’t flinch. He held her.

And Fern—Fern let him.

~*~

The sun was higher now, spilling across the penthouse floor in pale gold ribbons. Fern sat on the settee beside Vincent, still in the lime green jacket, her wrapped hands resting in her lap. He hadn’t let go of her since she’d knelt in front of him—one hand holding hers, the other tracing small, absent circles on her back.

“I thought I lost you,” he said. His voice was raw.

“I’m here.”

“When Elara called... when she said there was blood... I thought you were dead.”

“I’m not dead.”

He pulled her closer. “I know.”

They sat like that for a long time. The city hummed below them, indifferent.

“I need to tell you something,” she said.

Vincent tensed. “You don’t have to—”

“I want to.”

She took a breath. The green flickered. She didn’t try to hide it.

“I grew up in the Grunt. You knew that. But you didn’t know... you didn’t know how hard it was. How hard I had to fight. I’m not proud of everything I did to survive.”

Vincent didn’t speak.

“I stole. I fought. I hurt people. Not because I wanted to—because I had to. Because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

“I don’t care.”

“Vincent—”

“I don’t care, Fern. I don’t care about the Grunt. I don’t care about the things you did to survive.” He cupped her face in his hands. “I care about you.”

“You don’t know who I am.”

“Then show me.” His voice was soft. “Show me, and let me decide. Don’t decide for me. Don’t push me away because you’re afraid of what I’ll see.”

She looked at him. At his red-rimmed eyes. At his rumpled shirt. At the man who had waited for her all night.

“I don’t know how,” she whispered.

“Then we’ll figure it out together.”

He kissed her forehead. “I’m not going anywhere, Fern. I love you. And I’m not going to stop loving you just because you have a past.”

Fern almost laughed. She’d been lying to him for years. But he didn’t know that. And maybe—maybe he didn’t need to.

“I want to take a few days off work,” she said. “Just... to rest.”

Vincent nodded. “I’ll call the firm. Tell them you’re sick.”

He pulled her back into his arms. “You’re here. That’s all that matters. Everything else—we can figure out.”

Fern closed her eyes. The green was still there. The guilt was still there. The memory of the alley, the blood, the way she couldn’t stop—all of it was still there.

But Vincent was holding her.

And for now—for this one moment—that was enough.