A Court of Fire and Starlight (ACOTAR Fan Fiction)

The Delinquent Desk

ASTRA

The first birds of early spring were singing their melodies outside. Astra could hear them from where she was seated at a desk in one of the sitting areas on the main floor of her father's ornate study. Soaring birds would be much more entertaining to look at than the worn pages of the book in her hand. She silently angled her body to face the large window over her left shoulder to see if she could get a glance at them, praying that shadows given off from the glass lamps lining the walls wouldn't give away her movement.

The sound of a pen scraping on paper halted from the main desk in the room. Not good. He had been scribbling away for the entire day without stopping.

Astra grimaced as she heard her father's cool voice float over to her compromised position. "Is there something out there more interesting than the book in front of you?"

"Just about everything is more interesting than this wretched book. Even the knots in the blue carpet have more appeal," she retorted in a mockery of his cool tone.

She could feel a bit of that dark power slip out with his next words. "Care to remind me why you are meant to be reading, rather than enjoying the thawing temperature outside?"

Astra pursed her lips. She supposed it was deserved. Stealing, though she liked to think of it more as borrowing, one of her father's round shields hadn't been one of her better ideas. But at the time, she was in a bind to find an item large enough for her to crouch down in comfortably. The shield made a perfect improvised sled. Plus, she had thought that showing up at the top of one of the snow-capped barrier mountains surrounding Velaris with a shield that was used in battles against Hybern was the perfect way to make an impression. It had thoroughly shocked the young male who had challenged her to the sled race.

She might have even gotten away with it, except for her one tiny miscalculation.

She had let it slip her mind that if they continued far enough down the mountain, the snow would turn to slush and mud since Spring was about to be upon the city. She might have remembered if she hadn't been so keen on maintaining her healthy lead halfway down the mountainside. Instead, she had been distracted by looking back to see if the handsome Fae was gaining on her.

Right as she looked back for what must have been the tenth time, she slid past the last of the nicely packed snow and found herself losing control of the makeshift sled in the slushy snow. She could have used a bit of magic to get back on track, but that had been part of the bet. No assistance of the magical variety.

As she whipped her head back in line with her shoulders while veering off course, she found herself perfectly aligned with the trunk of a massive pine tree. The resounding crack of the old shield smacking against the tree likely reverberated throughout the city below. Her face wasn't spared from the impact either.

She must have blacked out from the pain for a brief second. Before she could even fully peel her eyes open and grab the shield to winnow away, she had found herself in the tall shadow of her father, who was standing over her with a frown marring his pristine features. He shifted his hard violet gaze between the blood pouring out of her nose, the crumpled steel shield, and the frantic young male running over to them. She didn't even manage to get a single word of defense in before he had winnowed all three of them away.

They had dropped the male off somewhere in the city below, her father likely having scared him off forever with a few threats in his mind. She then had to endure another scathing lecture on responsibility from her parents and had been sent to her room for the remainder of the evening.

When she awoke, her bruised shoulder and black eyes weren't punishment enough though. Not for the High Lord that ruled this city and the territory beyond. He had more creative and utterly boring ways of keeping his only daughter in line. One of which was having her sit silently while he worked through his endless amount of paperwork at the "Delinquent Desk," which her brother had named years ago. She had been forced to sit at the dark wooden desk numerous times throughout her nineteen years of life. Far more times than her brother ever had.

When her father had pointed her toward the desk early this morning, there had been a special little surprise waiting on the ebony surface - an ancient-looking book titled The Divisive Rule of the Fourth High Lord of Night. It must have been quite problematic to fill more than two thousand ratty, yellow pages.

She had been sitting quietly in the same spot for more than nine hours. He wouldn't even let her escape for lunch. Semi-stale bread and cheese had simply appeared around midday in front of her. A prison meal.

She didn't know how he could manage so much silence. He loved to hear himself speak most of the time. He had probably been silently chatting with her mother all day using his Daemati abilities.

Her attention was brought back to the question at hand when she heard the tap of the pen on his desk again. A subtle reminder that his question was not rhetorical. Rather than give him the satisfaction of hearing her admit that what she had done was stupid, she diverted to her issue with the shield.

"Perhaps if your archaic shield had been in a museum where it belongs, rather than displayed in the training area, I wouldn't have been so tempted to borrow it," she drawled.

"Perhaps I should have left a dictionary for you, rather than that history book, so you could spend the day familiarizing yourself with the difference between the definitions of borrowing and stealing."

As she narrowed her eyes and readied herself for a retort that would likely earn her another day as a prisoner of the Delinquent Desk, she was pardoned her mother by striding into the study with a smile on her paint speckled face.

Astra's mother stopped beside her chair and glanced down at the book she had been assigned to read. Her eyebrows shot up in amusement as her blue-gray eyes glanced towards her mate. No doubt a silent conversation taking place.

He must have given in. She could see it when his violet gaze softened by a fraction. He was a complete push-over when it came to his mate.

"Astra, you are free to go get ready for family dinner. Be ready in one hour. Your father and I have matters to discuss," her mother sweetly said.

She wasn't sure if it was the sweet tone that meant her father was going to spend the next hour being scolded or spend it tangled in her mother's embrace on one of the couches at the far end of the room.

Rather than wait for another second to find out, she bolted like an escaping prisoner out of the desk chair. As she was halfway out the door, she heard her father ask, "Did you learn anything today from your riveting reading assignment?"

A chiding, "Rhys," followed in the sound of her mother's voice.

Glancing behind her she added, "I skimmed the middle fifteen-hundred pages of details and peeked at the end three hours ago. Apparently, a member of a rival court slit his throat with an ash dagger so that next in line to the throne could attempt to fix the mess he made."

She was out the door and running up the massive staircase toward her room before he could respond.