Unmarked (original slash)

[duskpeterson]

Title: Unmarked (Master and Servant #3).
Author: Dusk Peterson.
Where to find me: Website, e-mail list, DW, AO3, Patreon, Goodreads.
Fandom: Original slash, with gen subplots.
Setting: A Hoopers Island boarding school, next to the Chesapeake Bay in the 1910s, with a touch of retrofuture 1960s over the border. Includes a historical note.
Categories: Alternate universe / alternate history, student/student, liege-master & liegeman, master/servant (with echoes of master/slave),  school sports (this universe's version of rugby), Age of Sail, fishermen, lighthouse, general store, family, war, politics, spirituality, ethical issues.
Series: Waterman, an award-winning speculative fiction series in an alternative version of the Chesapeake Bay region. You don't need to have read the previous stories in this series to understand this one.
Length: Novel.
Status: Writing completed; currently being serialized weekly at AO3.
Feedback: Yes, please.
Rating: M.
Warnings: Boilerplate warning for all my stories + my rating system.
Note: Interestingly, the first time I serialized this story, back in 2010, I was severely ill and wasn't sure whether I would live out the year. Editing and posting "Unmarked" was my act of defiance against death. Plus, it was a comfort to spend time with a character who was surviving his own dark trials.

I hope you feel the same. Stay safe.

Story summary:

He needs a guard.

In his final terms of school before his university years, Meredith is faced with a host of problems: A prefect who abuses his power. A games captain who is supposed to protect Meredith but has befriended the prefect. And a legal status that makes everyone in the school question whether Meredith belongs there, among the elite.

Unexpectedly, rescue arrives, in the shape of a fellow student who seems determined to right wrongs. There's only one problem. . . .

"Fair play" is the motto of the Third House, but that motto takes on a different meaning when Meredith is secretly wooed by a young man from a rival House.

Master Meredith, whose entitlement to a last name had not yet been determined by the courts, was sitting in a window-seat overlooking the playing fields of Narrows School when the Third House bullies found him.