Troilo is a dragon trapped in a mortal coil, whose wife died in 1433. Philippa is a Habsburg archduchess suffering from hysteria in the summer of 1900.

She is his reincarnated wife. He is her new doctor.

Troilo Visconti, a poetic doctor from Zürich, travels to the Austrian springs of Bad Ischl to observe a Habsburg archduchess suffering from a case of hysteria. There, on the edge of a pond nestled firmly within the Salzkammergut mountains, he meets Philippa, a tantalizing young woman who bears a striking resemblance to his late wife.The serpent-infested grounds and wallpapered ruby halls of the empress' tea house breed desire and secrecy, but the closer he grows to Philippa, the more Troilo is confronted by the ghost of his memory and the ethics of his treatment. Because he, too, is harboring a secret. He has waited 500 years to find her again.