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Title: The Shining Ones (Dungeon Guards: The Awakening #1).
Author: Dusk Peterson.
Where to find me: Website, e-mail list, DW, AO3, Patreon, Goodreads.
Fandom: Original slash.
Setting: An alternative version of the nineteenth century. Luray, Virginia, if you want to be precise.
Categories: Alternate universe / alternate history, romantic friendship, grey-asexual protagonist, cognitively disabled protagonist (traumatic brain injury).
Series: Dungeon Guards, an alternate history series about nineteenth-century prison workers who seek love and companionship as they fight together against danger.
Length: Novelette.
Status: Completed.
Feedback: Yes, please.
Rating: T.
Warnings: Boilerplate warning for all my stories + my rating system. ( Detailed warnings and #ownvoice labels )

The Eternal Dungeon is filled with prisoners who shine like the sun.

No one knows this except Barrett Boyd, a guard notorious for having survived a disciplinary punishment that should have killed him. He is also notorious for his rebellion against the authorities of the royal prison. At a pivotal time in the Eternal Dungeon's history, when abusive practices of the past may finally be abolished, Barrett finds himself drawn to the mystery of a younger guard, Clifford Crofford, who claims that he and Barrett are love-mates.

Barrett has no memory of this. He has no memory of anything before his punishment. What does the past matter, compared to Barrett's determination to protect the prisoners? But Barrett cannot ignore his bond with Clifford, and the closer that Barrett comes to Clifford, the more the danger arises that Clifford will question Barrett's sanity. . . .

He was skilled by now at making innocuous remarks in the presence of the Shining Ones. Nobody had even guessed that he knew what they were.