Chapter 35: Adoptive Father
She straightened slightly in her seat, momentarily forgetting the fatigue and the thoughts weighing her down. Her heart quickened. Every new revelation about him seemed to push the limits of what she thought possible even further.
He bit his lip, holding back a laugh, and glanced at her sideways from behind the arm he had stretched over the steering wheel.
There was something amused in that look… and resigned. As if he knew he had just opened a door he would never be able to close again.
“It’s strange: ever since I found out who you are, and that I have nothing to fear from revealing certain things to you, I do it without even realizing,” he explained in a soft, slightly distant voice. “I’m over four millennia old, you know…”
Blanche let out a stunned whistle.
Four millennia?!
The number was so immense it became almost abstract. She tried to imagine him across the centuries, witnessing the birth and fall of civilizations, living through entire eras while generations of humans were born and vanished.
She was nothing but a drop in the ocean of time compared to the mere seventeen years she had lived.
A cold shower.
They were already almost incompatible in every way; the more she learned about him, the more she saw the chasm separating them. She understood his conversation with Sean better now…
That discussion, which had left her perplexed, suddenly took on a brutal meaning.
She turned her head toward the window, her throat tight.
Outside, the night stretched endlessly, dotted with rare distant lights. Her reflection in the glass showed her a blurred, trembling image—almost foreign.
Tears fell before she could stop them.
They slid silently down her cheeks, warm, uncontrollable. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, annoyed with herself, but more replaced them.
She loved him so much that knowing he was so unreachable was tearing her apart…
Was she doomed to stay by his side knowing she could never hope for more?
Kiyan, who didn’t seem to notice her state—or chose to ignore it so as not to hurt her—started his playlist.
Maybe he had seen. Maybe he had simply chosen not to say anything.
A soft voice, with crystalline purity despite its masculine tone, filled the car.
The music settled like a caress. Each note seemed to vibrate in the air, resonate in her chest, slowly soothing the turmoil within her. There was a deep, almost timeless melancholy in that voice.
And little by little, her tears dried.
“Who is it?” she finally asked, not recognizing the melody.
Her voice was still fragile, but steadier.
He took his time answering.
A long time.
So long she thought he wouldn’t answer at all.
His aura trembled, wavering between shadow and light, as if something within him hesitated to surface. Then it returned to its warm sandy hue, glowing like golden dust.
“A brother-in-arms,” he murmured. “He gave it to me when I had Eva.”
Surprised, Blanche looked at him.
He had never mentioned that before.
She sensed the ground was becoming fragile, almost dangerous, but curiosity—and a desire to understand him—won out.
“He has a sublime voice… You must have really loved Eva’s mother, I mean.”
Kiyan’s jaw tightened.
His hands clenched on the steering wheel, fingers gripping the leather until they turned white.
“I didn’t love her,” he said. “In fact… I didn’t even know her.”
“What?”
The word escaped her in a breath.
“I’m not Eva’s biological father. I’m just a friend of her father.”
Blanche was left speechless, unable to speak.
The pieces of the puzzle she thought she had begun to assemble had just shattered.
Kiyan shot her a glance that lasted far too long for someone driving.
She quickly looked away, fixing her gaze on the road—still shaken by the accident.
The memory of the impact, the metal, the noise, briefly resurfaced, twisting her stomach.
He eventually pulled over onto the shoulder.
The engine hummed softly as the car came to a stop. The hazard lights blinked, casting orange flashes over the damp asphalt.
Then he turned toward her.
“Oh fucking hell…” was all she managed to say, eyes fixed ahead. “I… I don’t understand anything anymore. If you’re not her father, why raise her? Who’s the real father? Is that another secret Eva doesn’t know—or just me? And your ring? Are you actually married?”
Too many emotions. Too many questions.
They came out in a rush, disordered, raw, uncontrollable.
“You sure about this?”
Blanche jumped.
The voice came from neither Kiyan… nor herself.
An old man had just appeared on the back seat.
As if he had always been there.
A white dress stitched with gold, a matching turban set with an emerald, a beard several months long, skin as dark as Kiyan’s but lined with wrinkles. His eyes, however, shone with an almost insolent liveliness.
“Not really,” the driver replied.
Blanche looked from one to the other.
Her heart was pounding.
“Who the hell are you?!”
Kiyan sighed.
At length.
“That’s my familiar. A djinn. Blanche, meet Alacazar… Eva’s real father.”
The silence that followed was deafening.
“Huh? Wait, stop. How can a djinn possess another djinn?”