Delphinia moved past them, her fingers clutching the handle of her cane with deep consternation. She felt herself adrift as before, the night in transit with Adelia, when she had sought the peace of nature and dreamed fervently, and wakened to find her friend abdicated. She threw herself near the river, on soft green grass amid snowy drifts of edelweiss.
"There is no one," she whispered, behind her closed eyes reflecting on the self-serving expression of Oskar, the cold looks of Gauvain, Adelia's crafty smile, and Beatrice's condemnation.
She turned in a fever with her face to the grass, inhaling soil, tasting dew. A fragrance rose in her nostrils: a soft crush of sound on the grass reached her. Through bleary eyes Delphinia saw a wavering shape blotting out the sun. She blinked away her fevered tears. The shape knelt.
"Be still, my sister, my luckless other self. You are not alone." A fairy-like touch alighted on her shoulder.
"I love him," Delphinia whispered in fever, "and it is hopeless."
A cold hand slipped under her own in the grass. Delphinia felt herself urged to her feet. She stood and walked beside the shade as bid. Together they looked over the Rhine, glimmering in impossible silvered beauty beneath black cliffs.
Her heart thudded dully in her chest. She dared not glance at the being next to her. She knew her voice, her scent, as though they had been united every day of their lives. Whatever spectral gift lie between them, Delphinia feared to disintegrate by searching for more of Oriente that she now sensed.
"My dear," Oriente whispered in a soft, musical voice. It was then Delphinia realized the dumb girl spoke in death, restored to perfection by Heaven, perhaps. But it was no human voice in the air between them. It resounded in Delphinia's mind, "you long for the restoration of the past days you have shared with your love. I can help you, but I must gain human form. In this castle lies the ingredients to my reanimation. In the library, a book."
Oriente then imparted a plan to Delphinia that was complicated, dark and even horrible. Portions terrified her.
"Why do you come to me, ask this of me? There is one who would give his life to resurrect your living breath, who would not shirk the terrible duties you require."
Oriente faced her with a cold eye. Delphinia stared at her, witnessed her powerful beauty, her straight form. The hint of wickedness about her was an additional opiate to the rapture her presence stirred. "Are you the self-same girl?" Delphinia asked. "How can this be?"