The Soothing Scent Of Earth (Elemental Awakening, Book 2) by Nicola Claire Read Free Book Online Page B

physically and elementally. Could they feel the Earth's cries of pain when swathes of the forest were culled? Did it make them as sick as the thought alone was making me?
    "You understand," Noah murmured, bringing the fish out of the fire and beginning to break off the cooked flesh for us to eat. "Deforestation has been going on since the Gi moved here from Greece in the 16th Century," he added, while he distributed the pieces of food onto two large sized leaves. "In the past forty or so years it has increased exponentially. To the point where hundreds of thousands of square kilometres have been destroyed. The effect on the Gi has been devastating."
    I suddenly didn't feel hungry for the fish.
    "They first noticed that their Stoicheio was not as efficient as it had been before," he continued to say, while he handed me my 'plate' of dinner. I picked at the fish, its smell succulent and flavourful, but nausea making it impossible to eat. "Then they realised their connection to Earth was spasmodic. At times it would refuse commands from the strongest of the Gi."
    "The Rigas?" I asked, managing to swallow a piece of fish out of necessity. We'd have to move on tomorrow, I needed all the strength I could get.
    "Yes, and the Basilissa . Both have had their command of the Earth tested over the past few decades."
    "I hadn't noticed," I murmured, remembering how powerful the Rigas had appeared in Auckland. How inconsequential I felt when he overrode my commands to the Earth and listened in on my conversation with it too. He'd seemed omnipotent.
    "Yes, even so, they mask it well." Noah ate a few mouthfuls of fish before going on. "But the real problem began thirty years ago. They stopped procreating."
    A chill of foreboding washed down my spine.
    "What?" I whispered. "None of you have had children in all that time?"
    "Not one," the doctor confirmed.
    Oh freaking hell, it was all starting to make morbid sense.
    "So," he said, finishing off his meal and wiping his hands on his trouser legs. "You can see the Gi's interest in you, when they found out a young female Gi had been discovered in New Zealand, consorting with Pyrkagia. The idea that one of their own had produced a child and handed that child over to an enemy, destroying a chance to further Gi , cut deep."
    In times past the Ekmetalleftis had married between branches. Gi and Pyrkagia couplings were not unusual. If they produced offspring, the child would follow the father's Stoicheio , becoming his branch of Elemental. But when the branches broke apart, interracial - for want of a better word - marriages were banned. That's why Theo and I were considered enemies.
    And that's why the Gi would believe their chances to further their race were lost, because Theo and I would always have Pyrkagia children. Not Gi.
    I pushed the last of my meal away and stared at the doctor across the dimly lit space. He was watching me closely again, like he'd done back at the compound. I'm not sure what he was looking for, I couldn't see past the blank, neutral look on his immortal face.
    "So," I said, trying to ignore the uncomfortable feeling I had when he stared at me like that. "If they thought I was a Gi child, why have they treated me so poorly?"
    "There is a finite number of Gi left in the world," he explained. "It didn't take long, after word of your existence reached the Gi, to determine that none claimed parenting a child in the last three decades. And once they brought you here, blood tests revealed the rest. You are not Gi even though you appear to be."
    I wrapped my arms around my torso feeling violated all over again. I'd been out of it on several occasions since arriving, courtesy of Anaisthetikos . Blood could have been taken at any of those times. Hell, almost anything could have been done to me when my sentience was stolen.
    The fish decided it wanted to come back up. I gagged through the onslaught of bile in my mouth and crawled over to the stream to wash the taste of it away. It