I was as you are now, once: a poor girl. Nothing more than a little speck of cinder-maid to the desecrated duchess who brought us all ruin and disrepair in the wake of my father's death. And it wasn't a godmother who gave me my flame or bought my freedom with a ball — it was the Firebird, and with its re-emergence came my own quest to make out my own fortune.
Whatever did it matter that I was a maid? Palaces need maids. They need them to not tell when they catch the king in bed with the comtesse of half a world away. They need them to console their children. Children who grew to be princes; just a boy wandering the ways of what it means to grow into a man. Men know to speak, and maids know to listen to the secrets that they keep. So, listen I did. ...But therein lied my mistep.
And it was quite a tumble I took.
And now I am here, not as I was but as you all are. My eyes are the only embers that remain. And this feather, here, is the last of my treasures. I have lost my birch trees. I have left my twelve twirling daughters to the curse of their father-king Ivan. I have damned my own fortune and their future and all has been folly. All I am now is an echo.
огонь ада — hellfire ...I am dormant.