The moonlight was cut into diamond-shaped wounds by the bulletproof glass.
Amelia knelt on the carpet in the dressing room, watching Noah wipe his gold-rimmed glasses with a silk handkerchief. When he bent his knees, the creases of his suit pants were taut, and there were still red wine stains that she had kicked over when she struggled just now.
"Look up."
The mirrored ceiling reflected his fingers holding her chin - cold as surgical forceps, but trembling slightly when touching her hot tears. When he pressed the wedding ring under her collarbone, Amelia suddenly found that the inside of the eagle-head ring was engraved with small numbers: 03.14.2003.
Her date of birth.
"People of the Sterling family," he pressed his thumb into the rose birthmark, "the contract must be nailed here." The moment the edge of the ring popped out the sharp blade, Amelia heard her voice at the age of fourteen screaming in her mind. That winter night when her father mortgaged the gallery, the attic mice also gnawed the edge of the canvas in this way.
The pain was gentler than expected. The wound Noah cut accurately avoided the aorta. When the blood beads slid down the sternum, he suddenly used the tip of his tongue to wipe away the scarlet. Amelia saw her own reflection in his iris in a trembling state: the messy hair, the bitten corners of the mouth, and the eagle head totem gradually taking shape on the collarbone.
"Breathe." He suddenly pinched her waist, "I want to hear the sound of alveolar expansion."
There were footsteps in the corridor. Amelia heard her brother Edmund's roar through the oak door: "That little bastard must be..." Before he finished speaking, Noah had already torn open his shirt and wrapped her in his arms. Three scars ran across his heart, and the newest one was still oozing blood.
"Hold tight."
This was not an order but a trap. When Edmund kicked the door open, Amelia's nails were digging into the old scabs on Noah's back. When the smell of blood spread between her teeth, she was horrified to find that she was licking his wound.
"Excuse me?" Edmund's shotgun was still smoking. "Father wants to see his little bride."
Noah's palm suddenly touched the back of her neck, where there was a coin-sized burn - burned by the flying solder in the gallery this morning. When his fingertips touched the wound, Edmund suddenly screamed and knelt down, and a charred wound appeared in the same place out of thin air.
"Tell old Sterling," Noah tied Amelia's wrist with a bloody tie, "his bride is learning how to be a widow."
During the thirty-seven seconds of the elevator's descent, Amelia counted the shadows cast by his eyelashes. When the cold air of the morgue on the negative third floor penetrated into her bones, he suddenly stuffed a handkerchief into her palm. The jasmine scent of twenty years ago came to her face, and the "A.S" embroidered on the corner of the handkerchief was stained dark brown by the blood stains.
The moment the freezer slid out, Amelia saw another self lying in the ice coffin. The pearl crown was stuck in the dry hair, and the rose birthmark on the collarbone was shattered into purple-black petals by the bullet.
"My mother, Adelaide Stirling." Noah's breathing became disordered for the first time. "On March 14, 1993, she shot herself due to postpartum depression."
Amelia's birthmark suddenly burned. The scratches on the inside of the ice coffin formed countless "SOS", and the dead woman's right hand was tightly holding a pocket watch with her childhood photo printed on it.