The Guardian Mist

by Susan Stoker

But apparently ancient curses didn’t care about rules…because she’d been knocked up again. This time by a one-night stand. With twins. Twin girls.

  Karma was a bitch.

  Cassia wasn’t the smartest woman in the world, but when the dreams increased in intensity and she saw the ring in every single one, even she knew she was getting a second chance, whether she wanted it or not.

  A second chance to help her new eldest daughter find love and free them all from the curse.

  “One more push and your first daughter will be here!” the nurse enthused.

  Easy for her to say. She wasn’t lying on an uncomfortable bed with her legs strapped into stirrups and her cooter on display to any doctor, intern, and orderly who happened to walk into the room.

  Cassia pushed thoughts of the ring and the curse out of her mind, and concentrated on the nurse’s directions to push.

  Ten minutes later, Cassia watched as the nurses wiped, dried, soothed, and sucked icky fluids from the mouths and bodies of her two healthy daughters.

  “Make sure you mark the oldest,” she told one of the nurses.

  “What?”

  “Mark the oldest. I have to make sure I know which came first.”

  “Of course,” the nurse said as she weighed one of the newborns. “We’d do that anyway. We’ll note it on her bracelet.”

  Cassia didn’t know why, but she felt the need to explain herself to the nurses. “I need to make sure the oldest is differentiable from the younger one. It’s a long story, but there’s a lot of family history, involving inheritances, and they’ll both lose out if we don’t know which was first.”

  “You don’t have to explain. It’s hospital policy to make note of birth order,” the nurse at her feet explained in a brusque tone.

  Cassia sighed in relief. It might be hospital policy, but the nurses had no idea how important it was. They were free to find love in their own time and in their own way. This new baby, the oldest, had only twenty-five years, otherwise she was doomed to be alone and miserable forever.

  The other nurse smiled at Cassia. “Congratulations, they’re both healthy and happy and look amazingly alike, even down to their red hair. You’re a very blessed woman.”

  Cassia heard her mom snort but ignored it, exhausted. Tired of her life, tired of being unhappy, tired of the curse hanging over her head. She wasn’t sure exactly how curses worked, but there was obviously an ancient god out there somewhere who was displeased with the trick she’d tried to pull by giving up her firstborn, and was getting back at her.

  How did she know?

  She’d dreamed it.

  A beautiful woman had come to Cassia in a dream.

  She’d had weird dreams all her life, but this one was different. It had seemed so real. The woman had been wearing a damn toga and sat on some uncomfortable-looking stone bench thing. A man was standing next to her. He was good looking, even if he looked funny in his matching toga with leaves in his dark hair, which was too long and curling around his neck. His hazel eyes were piercing and Cassia somehow knew he could kill a man without a second thought. But when he’d looked down at the woman at his side, his eyes lost that lethal glow and softened.

  The woman was tall and slender and had beautiful dark auburn hair, unlike Cassia’s own pale red frizzy mop that she’d loathed her entire life. In the dream, the woman had reached up and taken the man’s hand, and Cassia saw the reason her life was miserable on the woman’s finger. The ring. It shone crimson, so bright that it made Cassia’s heart hurt at the sight she’d never gotten a glimpse of in her entire life. Nor had any of the women in the three generations before her.

  The woman’s voice was soft and melodic and made Cassia want to weep, it was so sad and beautiful at the same time. “You have been given another opportunity to make things right. Your firstborn will find her true love. She will live a long and happy life, as will her daughters—but that happiness will not trickle down to you. The ring must be returned to your family and you will be granted another eldest daughter.”

  Cassia had always been defiant and even in her dreams was no different. “How can I have another oldest daughter? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “You are pregnant with a girl. This is another man’s child and she is the oldest of that man’s loins. You have another chance to make this right. For your future, for her future, and the future of your granddaughters twenty times over. It’s up to you. This is your absolute last opportunity. The ring has been dark for too long. This is the last chance for you, for the ring, and for your ancestors.”

  “Damn it all to hell!” Cassia had spat in her dream. “It’s not that easy to find true love in this century! Not like it was for you.”

  “Lucius and I have discussed this. You’re right. Times were already very different even one hundred years before you were born. Your ancestors all had difficulties finding their loves, but not like Marcellina, Maxima, and Juno.”

  Cassia had thought the woman in her dream might be Theodosia, the woman who had started the legend, but referring to the man by her side as Lucius confirmed it. How she knew the names of her great-grandma, grandma, and mother was beyond Cassia, but it was a dream, so she guessed anything was possible.

  “Your daughter will experience signs throughout her life, hinting at her soulmate, so when they cross paths, she’ll recognize him immediately. The man meant to be hers will also have some unusual experiences and there will be no doubt in his mind that she belongs to him. They’ll have an instant connection, which will be tested in the worst way. But, heed my words, Cassia, no more trickery. The legend will not be denied.”

  Cassia had sighed in the dream and said in a sad voice, “I can’t go through the rest of my life as miserable as I’ve been since I turned twenty-five. And I’m afraid to tell my daughter that if she doesn’t find her true love by the time she’s twenty-five, she’ll be an old, unhappy spinster like her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.”

  Lucius had nodded at her then and said in a deep, soothing voice that seemed to surround her in the large dream chamber she was standing in, “That’s the same thing Theodosia said to my mother when she gave her the ring.”

  “And what did your mom say?” Cassia asked, hopefully.

  “Any daughter you will have will surely be beautiful and know love.”

  Cassia had woken up abruptly after that, his words ringing in her ears, and put a hand to her slightly rounded belly. She had another chance to be happy. A daughter who would be beautiful? Sounded good to her.

  It was not even a month later Cassia found out she was having twins.

  Twin girls.

  Damn the gods for having a wicked sense of humor.

  Hands at her thighs brought her back to the present with a jolt. Cassia closed her eyes, ignoring the antiseptic smell of the air around her in the hospital, the low murmur of the nurses, even her afterbirth being delivered and her nether region being cleaned up, and, instead, dreamed of a day in the future when her daughter would find a man to love and thus break the curse of her family.

  Maybe, just maybe, she herself would finally have a chance to find a man who wouldn’t cheat, hit, or otherwise treat her like crap. It wouldn’t matter if she was in her sixties when it happened, Cassia would take happiness any way she could get it.

  She’d done the obligatory “hold your new daughters and look happy” thing when the nurses had shoved the babies into her arms, but had handed them over to Juno as quickly as she could. She just wasn’t cut out to be a mother, but it looked like she had no choice. It wasn’t that she didn’t want her daughters to be healthy, but her mind was whirling with all that needed to happen in only twenty-five years. It might seem like a lifetime to some, but Cassia knew better. The years would go by way too fast, and along with them, her own chance at happiness and love.

  “We’ll just take these precious girls to the nursery and get them settled in,” the blonde nurse told Cassia and Juno. “The doctor will be in to check you over s
oon and we’ll bring your daughters back later so you can nurse.”

  “Thank you,” Cassia said tiredly.

  The blonde nurse nodded and gathered one of the babies into her arms. The dark-haired nurse next to her did the same with the other child.

  “She did a good job; she deserves a rest. She can get to know her daughters and fill out the birth certificates afterward,” the first nurse said to Cassia’s mom.

  Juno grunted in response.

  The nurses headed out of the room and down the hall to the nursery.

  “God, that is one stone-cold bitch,” Roberta, the blonde nurse, exclaimed as she soothed a hand over the head of the precious baby in her arms.

  “I feel bad for these two. It’s obvious there isn’t a lot of love in that family. Any sign of the father?” the dark-haired nurse, Susie, asked.

  “Nope. I heard the mom harping on her daughter, something about a curse and she should’ve known he wouldn’t want more than one night with her, or something.”

  “God, I hate people sometimes.” Susie sighed then looked over at Roberta. “Do you know which of these two angels was first?”

  The other nurse laughed uncomfortably. “Crap, no. I was hoping you did. I wasn’t watching when mom was holding them and they look exactly alike, so I wasn’t sure which was which when they were handed back.”

  “If anyone finds out we weren’t doing our job, we could get fired. But I’m sure it doesn’t really matter. Just pick one and I’ll mark it on her armband. No one will ever know the difference,” Susie stated decisively. “There’s no way I’m going back and telling them I have no idea which was the firstborn. They’d lose it.”

  “Good idea.”

  The nurses disappeared into the nursery and got the two newest babies settled in a single crib. They snuggled together, as if they were still in their mother’s womb, their arms intertwining and their foreheads resting against each other. They looked exactly the same, weighed exactly the same, and had identical cute pert noses and tufts of red hair on their small heads. The only difference at the moment was a notation on one of the armbands, indicating who was born first.

  As the twins took their first nap outside of the warm womb they’d spent the last nine months in, one daughter slept the sleep of the dead, dreamless and devoid of any kind of feeling, good or bad.

  The other daughter, the one who had been designated as the younger twin, dreamed of being held close in someone’s arms…the smell of something the baby had no intellectual capacity to understand, much less name in her hours-old brain, but something comforting. It came in the form of a mist that covered her and her sister as they slept. She snuggled into the body at her side, feeling safe and wanted.

  2

  Present Day

  Varinia Velt’s fingers flew over the keyboard in front of her.

  She’d found her sister.

  Well, half-sister.

  Rin had known her entire life that she had a half-sister out there somewhere. From the time she was very young, her mom had told her and Augustina about her. Built her up in their young minds. She was given up for adoption at birth, because of some awful circumstance their mom had never been that clear about. Cassia had told them she’d always regretted giving up her baby and wanted to find her. Was desperate to find her.

  Reading the email MacKenzie Reign had sent her had cleared up a lot of things.

  A lot.

  Like, a lot a lot.

  Rin had known her entire life that their mom liked her twin sister, Tina, better than her. In some ways, that was an advantage. After all, when they were young, Rin was allowed to stay up later, could play outside in the dirt, could choose her own friends, and was free to major in whatever she wanted when she got to college. In Rin’s mind, Tina had the tougher life. As their mom’s favorite, she had to be perfect and was under scrutiny all the time. Her hair had to be flawless. Clothes pressed and clean. No dirt under her nails, friends chosen carefully. She’d attended the nearby private school, while Rin went to public schools.

  Still, Rin had grown up in Tina’s shadow. It had been hard not to be at least a little bitter growing up. There were even years where Rin had hated her mother. But once she’d made friends in middle and high school, and had realized what her sister had to go through, she’d slowly come to terms with their wildly different lives.

  They were twins, but even more different now that they were adults. Oh sure, they were both five feet six inches tall. Both had red hair and curves that women all over the world would kill for. Rin and Tina even had the same freckles that would pop out on their bodies wherever the sun kissed their flesh. But they weren’t equals. At least not in Cassia Velt’s eyes.

  Tina had long, beautiful auburn hair, but their mom had kept Rin’s short when they were growing up; a pixie cut that curled around her neck and face, especially when it got just a tad too long. Rin had gotten used to it, and now actually preferred the shorter cut, never bothering to grow it out.

  Tina wore beautiful dresses and designer clothes. Rin wore clothes from thrift shops.

  Tina had pedicures and manicures. Rin wasn’t ever invited to come along.

  Tina still got a healthy allowance to do with what she wanted. Rin had gotten her first job at the age of thirteen, bagging food at the local mom-and-pop grocery story, and wasn’t given any money from her mom for extras.

  Tina had been the most popular girl in her prestigious high school, even elected prom queen her senior year. Rin had been just one of thousands in her class, and while the other members of the computer club thought she was awesome, no one else had even remembered who she was when asked at their five-year reunion.

  And all the twins had heard growing up was how sad their mom was for having to give up their sister. When Juno, their grandmother, was alive, she’d told them a story about a woman who’d tragically had to put her baby girl up for adoption. Mom was young, mom was poor, mom was heartbroken at having to give away her beautiful baby daughter, but she wanted the best for her, wanted her to be able to have food on the table every night. And the only way to accomplish that was to give her to a loving family who could provide everything Cassia Velt could not. The only thing she’d left with the baby was a ring that had been in their family forever, so she’d know she was loved by her biological mother.

  But the email Rin was reading from MacKenzie gave lie to her mom and grandmother’s bullshit.

  And it was all bullshit.

  Rin shouldn’t be surprised—she knew her mom, had grown up knowing exactly what her strengths and weaknesses were—but she somehow still was.

  She’d used her computer skills and some of her nerdy friends to track down the missing sister. Social media blasts, help from sympathetic county workers who’d dug up ancient paperwork, dogged determination, and some threats from her mother lighting a fire under Rin’s butt had finally coughed up the name, MacKenzie O’Neil Reign née Velt, which had led to the surprising fact that the woman now lived in England with her husband…who just happened to be loaded, friends with the Prince William, was a viscount, and went by the name of “Lord Reign.”

  Rin hadn’t told her mother yet. She wanted more information on the ring that she’d heard about her entire life before she spilled the beans about the long-lost daughter—and the ring—being found. Both Juno and Cassia had told the twins about the family curse so many times, Rin had it memorized by the time she was three.

  If Tina, as the oldest twin, didn’t find her one true love by the time she was twenty-five, they’d all end up miserable and unhappy the rest of their lives.

  Tina had bought into it, and had gotten more and more desperate as the years creeped closer to their magical twenty-fifth birthday. Rin, frankly, couldn’t drum up the angst about the legend or the ring that her sister had. She was perfectly happy without a man in her life, thank you very much, and didn’t much care about the ring business one way or the other.

  As differently as they were raised, it was no wonder she an
d Tina had such different thoughts about the curse. Men were meh in Rin’s mind. She’d had boyfriends and male friends, she certainly wasn’t a virgin, but because of the way she was raised, in a matriarchal family with a lack of males, she’d learned to do almost everything she needed done by herself. When she’d gone away to college, she’d learned even more about unclogging toilets, resetting circuits, changing tires, and basic plumbing the hard way.

  However, D-day was almost here, their twenty-fifth birthday. Thirty-one days and counting, to be exact, before they were cursed for all eternity, yet Rin didn’t feel any sense of pressure about their situation.

  But Rin did feel the want to find her half-sister and it wasn’t just because her mom had become increasingly desperate in the last year. It was probably too late in life for her and the unknown half-sister to ever be close, but this MacKenzie person was someone who had the same blood flowing in her veins.

  The second she’d read the email from her half-sister, Rin had known everything was different. The reunion she might’ve had in her mind—where MacKenzie would be overjoyed to find her mom and the sisters she hadn’t known existed—wouldn’t ever happen. Her life had spun on its axis and Rin was still reeling from the information MacKenzie had shared.

  Dear Varinia,

  I have no idea how you found me, but I’m mostly pleased you have. I’ve thought I was alone my entire life, an orphan, and I am cautiously pleased that I have not only one, but two sisters.

  With that being said, as much as I once dreamed my mother and father would realize the mistake they made and come back and find me and love me, I’ve learned what true love is, and have no desire to ever set foot in my birth mother’s presence. I’m sorry to be so blunt, you must love her, but it’s true.

  I can only imagine that she told you a fairytale of how she had to give me up and a nice family adopted me. The truth is that I was abandoned outside a fire station, because she knew they’d have to take me in and do something with me. I was in foster homes until I was six years old and was finally adopted by a wonderful woman named Isobel, who was my mother in every sense of the word.