Astrid is the crown princess of Atlantis, but she barely has time to worry about the kingdom with six younger sisters to watch over, especially with the youngest coming into her powers as a daughter of the sea to navigate time. When Astrid fears tha...
"It's Lena," she gasps, her gills expanding and contracting erratically. "She's gone!"
I drop my hands and my crown goes crooked. "What?"
Priscilla grabs at her neck nervously. "You know how she's so excited to explore her abilities now."
"I told her I would help her after attending at the council-"
"Well, she has been complaining about not being allowed to do enough for herself." She rubs her face wearily.
The height of the stakes here hit me in the face. My twelve year-old sister is not only somewhere outside the palace and certainly without any guards or chaperons, trying to harness her ability to travel the waves to any time era.
She could be anywhere, any when, by now.
Panic begins to swim in my mind, but I clench my fists and banish it to the darkest reaches of my brain. I am firstborn, it is my responsibility to remain calm and come up with the plan for rescuing Lena.
"We should tell Father," Priscilla says, already wincing at the thought.
I shake my head. "He's called a Council right now. To disrupt it for a wayward daughter would look bad on the whole family. And if she's already hit a time-stream, he won't be able to go after her anyway."
Indeed, of all of us royal females whose blood harnesses this ability, including only myself and my six younger sisters, I hold the best grasp over it.
"What do I do?" Lena asks, wringing her hands desperately.
"Elspeth, Anastasia, and Lian are in the tower. Fetch them, try to lose Earnan on the way to meet me at the hole in the wall."
Priscilla nods way more than she needs to and swims off, leaving a trail of bubbles in her wake.
Taking a deep breath to compose myself, I swim out the window to find the last sister whose location I know of. The one who used to put us through the same stunts when she was little.
Not that she ever stopped doing them. But since she was only interested in geographic exploration and not time travel, I let her keep swimming under the radar.
Swimming down myself, I try to remember where I heard her tell her little friend she wanted to explore today.
With all the stress, first from the meeting, and now from Lena disappearing is making it hard for me to think.
Maybe, just maybe, they haven't departed from their meeting place yet.
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