𝙻𝙸𝚃𝚃𝙻𝙴 𝙶𝙷𝙾𝚂𝚃.

i've blamed it on misfortune, and an ever changing tide ── what i've learned is love's a lesson.

[crucefix]

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ~ JK Rowling

[hedonist--poet-deactivated20240]

Why is it that loneliness and sadness is addictive, but happiness is not?

Hira (via hedonistpoet)

[shareaquote]

Sadness looks poetic on you.

misanthrofray (via wnq-writers)

[thatblackcanary]

Art.

[isoltsayre]

[clarebarlow-blog]

baronofcamoys:

Keep reading

     the pain forced itself through her, ripping over every inch of flesh. her yelp couldn’t be helped, her body instinctively recoiling from the pain. it was not what she was expecting but she should have seen it coming from a mile away.”you are.” she managed but just barely, her teeth digging into her bottom lips, as if the pain she inflicted on herself would draw from what he inflicted upon her. 

[clarebarlow-blog]

baronofcamoys:

His eyes burned in the light of fire, but they were also lit from within with his own agony, the burden of caring for an indifferent wife and a bastard child. He paid no attention to the servant girl as she divested herself of her dress, and when he did look at her his gaze was not lustful. It was assessing: he took in the delicate curve of her spine, the pertness of her bosoms and the pale curve of her buttocks. Pale they would be no longer when he was finished with her.

“Lean over the bed,” he ordered, stepping away from her to retrieve something from a chest.

He had no intention of dishonoring the maiden, but he was going to leave a mark on her regardless.

     the uncertainty was written on her face and perhaps he would have seen it had he pulled his gaze from her body. regardless, she did as she was told, leaning her bare body over the edge of his bed, her rear taut for him. clare readied herself for him, grasped the sheets of the bed in preparation, anticipation fathering an anxiety in her she hadn’t known herself possible of. 

     “i only wish to please you, my lord.” she spoke after a moment, her voice shaken with uncertainty. . . with fear. her father had beaten her, had taken both palm and fist to her being but he had never tainted her chastity. this would be a new sort of submission for the raven haired girl. 

[plsingly-deactivated20251210]

[clarebarlow-blog]

baronofcamoys:

“Enter!” he called some hours later when he heard a timid knock on his bedchamber door. The door opened slowly and he saw the huddled figure of the servant girl from where he had been stretched out on the bed, book in hand. He closed the book–Machiavelli’s The Prince–and set it aside on a nearby table. He stood leisurely and approached the girl, reaching out to close the door behind her.

“Get undressed,” he commanded, turning his back to give her some privacy. He stood by the fireplace and stared down into the flickering flames, reflected back in his dark eyes.

     it would have been crazy to say she wasn’t scared, she was. he hadn’t the reputation of being gentle and she doubted taking her to bed would be any different. he would take her maiden head with little care for her being and that, sadly, was the reality of many servant women throughout the kingdom. 

     she did as she was told,  first untying the string at the chest of her dress, her fingers trembling with nerves though she did succeed. slowly, she pushed the fabric from her shoulder, giving it the force it needed to drop from her frame and pool on the floor around her feet. 

[deniablyobvious]

[wearmoonlight]

Some girls are full of heartache and poetry and those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves instead of running from them.

Nikita Gill (via thewildestwallflower)

[clarebarlow-blog]

baronofcamoys:

They were not equals in rank, social status, or even gender, but they were equals in this–that gnawing desire for more.

Edward patted her cheek, and then caressed it, feeling out the curves of a face that he could bruise so easily, if she gave him reason to do so. So far she had not. He wondered what stories she had heard of him, to fear him and pledge her loyalty so readily. 

“You will attend your mistress tonight, and then you will attend to me,” he decided, all of that angry fire gone from his eyes. Now he was simply a man giving orders, oddly passionless. His hand skimmed aimlessly across her jaw and down to her throat. In a flash he had her gripped by the neck, his thumb digging into the tender flesh under her jaw.

“Do I make myself clear?”

     she would chip away at this hardened exterior, for the time being it was her only hope. clare could only assume he would often waver from softness to hard, testing a limit of what? she was unsure. “yes, my lord.” she whispered, his hand around her neck making it hard to speak, never mind breath. 

     taking the bed of a married man had never been something she intended, had never seemed like the brightest idea. but landing in his good graces would be a feat that would surely reap benefits and if it was a bed fellow he wanted it was one she would give him, despite her inexperience. 

[clarebarlow-blog]

baronofcamoys:

The servant that he had dismissed as hopelessly obedient and lacking in any real personality surprised him by speaking out of turn, asking that all-important question of what he wanted. He wanted a loyal wife, a child that bore his name and his dark features, and a fortune that was his. Instead he was serving as guardian to a four-year-old brat who was some other man’s child. He wanted his name to be spoken of with envy and admiration, and he wanted to be the pride of his wife and son. He wanted so much.

“Child, I seek all,” he told her darkly, reaching out to grasp her chin and force her head up to look at him. She had fine features, he noticed, not at all like the plain girls who usually served him. She would look pretty in his bed, and he half-wondered if that was what she was getting at.

“But you, Clare Nobody–what do you seek?”

     she supposed that was the safest answer but it was the answer of a coward. a coward who feared vulnerability more than anything. clare couldn’t blame him for that, she was a servant, a nobody, as he so graciously pointed out. who was she to ask for his secrets? his desires out side of those that laid on the surface. 

    his rebuttal had not been expected, nor his touch. they were softer than she had expected, not the blind whip of a grasp that would have her neck sore come morning. her answer was not a simple one. she craved a husband, a child, happiness, safety. . . anything a woman could seek. but to say such would show a side of her to him she wished to keep to herself. 

     “i too desire it all, my lord.” her voice was soft, meek, a display of her submissive nature to a man who held her very fate in his hands. 

[clarebarlow-blog]

eloisecamoys:

Eloise turned so that she could undo the laces, pulling her hair forward and running her fingers through it absently, detangling it as she went. “Fairly well,” She answered with a nod at the girl’s question, though she didn’t know how much of it was truth and how much of it was false. “And yourself? Did you find any enjoyment tonight?” She didn’t know what Clare got up to when she didn’t have Robert to look after - as Eloise had toted him around for the day, showing him the tournaments and other festivities. “I know that Robert was in bed early, did you have anything else to attend to?”

clare was soft on eloise. she had a fire in her that one could appreciate. it wouldn’t have worn well on her but eloise wore it was a pride that clare herself had only ever seen in the sort of women she admired as a child. the sort of lady she had once wanted to be. “i readied my lord’s dinner, my lady.” and that answered both her questions at once, surely. 

[clarebarlow-blog]

baronofcamoys:

“Good girl,” he told her in a low voice, and then snarled, turning away from her suddenly. 

“You may go,” he told her, waving a hand negligently. 

“Leave me to my wine and my misery. Lady Vino is the only mistress I can trust.”

He fell into his chair, kicking his feet up on the table in front of him, not bothering to look to see if the servant left after he dismissed her. She was only a small thing, fragile, hardly worth the breaking.

     it was only now that she saw any trace of man in him, the monster he wore so well seemingly disappearing for a moment. clare imagined his life had been filled with hardships as well; he had been given a wife who did not love him, a child that was not his and a temper that kept him from finding rational ways to deal with those. her father had been the same. . . there hadn’t been anyone to save him from himself. the man he had been prior to his fall was long gone by the time clare was old enough to try to remedy his pain. this man though, seemed worth saving. 

     hesitantly, she stepped forward, defying his dismissal, something she was sure at some point she would pay for. “my lord, is it love or lust you so seek?” brazen in her actions, she took yet another step, lowering her body so she may kneel before him, making sure he was always above her as to not drastically disturb their status or his power. 

[clarebarlow-blog]

eloisecamoys:

Eloise trusted her son to few people, Edward being far from the list, but Clare was rather high upon it. While she preferred to spend her time with her son, caring for the boy herself, there were times where she was not able and she could trust him to the girl. Her lips curved into a smile at the thought of the boy sleeping comfortably, for the discomfort she endured to make sure he remained so. 

“Good,” She said, her eyes flickering up to land on her again in the mirror. She stood, walking barefoot towards her, only to come to a stop in front of Clare. She wondered, briefly, if her husband had already moved on the girl but wouldn’t dare humiliate Clare like that, by asking it so openly. “I can’t reach the laces,” She said, gesturing to her dress. “Before you go, would you mind?” She didn’t want to keep the girl too long, and she could do most of her readying by herself. 

     “yes, my lady.” clare was quick to answer, finger’s pulling at gently as to not put the mistress of her house in any sort of discomfort. .  surely, she found plenty of that in her husband’s presence. it was in moments like this when clare thought upon vague memories, phantom’s nearly two decades old. she too had once had servants to undress her, women who existed in her home only to serve her. oh, how she had fallen from grace. “did my lady enjoy herself, tonight?” she dared to speak, longing herself for a life that had been snatched from her. 

[clarebarlow-blog]

baronofcamoys:

Her words were like a song to him, a melody he had longed to hear and he found himself entranced by. This girl promised absolute obedience to the man she would call her husband, and Edward cursed the fates for providing him with an obstinate, hard-headed girl to be his wife instead.

“And are you obedient to your master?” he asked, reaching up a hand to settle in her loose strands of brown hair. He was watching her like she was a puzzle he couldn’t solve, the mystery of female subjugation.

“Do you swear your life to me, do you live for my pleasure? Say it.”

     deny him and face his wrath, agree and be the very thing she had damned moments prior. logic had no place in this home, she had learned that. bending one’s self to their master’s desires seemed to be the only means of protection and god, did clare crave protection. “my lord,” she spoke, making sure her inflection portrayed something bashful, as if his request were something she was meant to find pride in, as if she were meant to feel special for drawing his attention to her. 

     her gaze averted to his fingertips grasping a single strand of waved brown hair before once more taking in his face, making a show of how taken she was by his beauty. “i live to serve thee, i do so swear by it.”