Arthur’s POV
The city forgets us faster than I expected.
Not in a cruel way. Not with erasure or disdain. Just… gently. Like a scar fading into skin that has better things to do than remember how it was cut.
I notice it first when a guard I don’t recognize asks me to step aside so a cart can pass.
He’s polite. Apologetic, even.
He has no idea who I am.
I step aside.
The cart rattles past, piled with timber and laughter, and something in my chest loosens that I didn’t realize was still knotted.
There is a meeting that week I am not invited to.
Not excluded—simply unconsidered.
A scheduling dispute between river wards escalates into shouting, then stalls, then resolves itself through a compromise that makes no one entirely happy and therefore, somehow, satisfies everyone enough to
