Andromeda Lirael

They would one day speak her name in lowered voices.**Andromeda Lirael.**But when this story begins, she is not legend.She is a girl running. The forest is thick with shadow, branches catching at her dark sleeves as though even the trees would hold her still.Her breath burns, sharp and uneven, but she does not slow.Somewhere behind her, something lingers.Not chasing.Waiting.The Hand does not rush.It never needs to. Once, she had lived in light.In candlelit halls where music softened the weight of power, where her fingers danced across strings and drew silence from even the most restless court.She had been seen there—lifted into something bright and delicate.And loved.Or so she believed.He had watched her with a quiet intensity she did not understand then.There had been warmth in it… but something else too.Something that felt, now, like being chosen rather than cherished.She had not known the difference. A sound breaks the night behind her—soft, deliberate.Too careful to be anything but intent.Andromeda slows, just slightly, forcing her breath to quiet.Panic would kill her faster than any blade.She learned that the night everything changed—the flash of steel, the wrongness in a place once safe, the realization that she had been marked not for who she was… but for what she meant to someone else. “They said you would be easy.”The assassin’s voice had been uncertain.New.And he had hesitated.Just long enough. She reaches the edge of a narrow river, moonlight spilling silver across its surface.Without pause, she steps into it, letting the current steal her trail, her presence, her past—if only for a moment.That is all she has now.Moments. She does not belong to the court anymore.Not to the music.Not to the girl she was before death reached for her—and failed. Somewhere behind her, unseen but certain, the Hand is still learning her shape.Still waiting. Andromeda Lirael keeps moving.Because she survived.And the world will not forgive her for it.