“Ellie?” he asked. Their eyes locked for what seemed like minutes. Henry could see the profile of her breast and the stiffness of a pink nipple. It was like she was letting him drink her in, drop by drop.
Damn. When did Ellie get so beautiful?
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Reign
Roxie Noir
Chapter One
Hazel
Something clangs right above my head, and I wake up with a snort.
“Passport!” the uniformed man says.
He’s very loud, very gruff, and staring down at me with the sort of flat, serious irritation only an Eastern European can muster. His accent is so thick that it takes me a moment to figure out what he’s saying, and I just stare up at him, mouth partly open.
The customs officer puts his hand on the luggage rack above my head and leans in, just a little.
“Passport,” he says, very slowly.
“Right,” I say. “Yes. Of course. Da.”
He steps back, I stand, and the papers that were on my lap slide to the floor.
“Shit,” I mutter, but everyone else in the compartment is totally silent. “Sorry. Sorry. Prosti.”
The uniformed man takes another step back, this time to the door of the train compartment, and just stares at me. Totally stone-faced. The compartment is full, but no one moves to pick anything up.
Thanks, guys, I think. I’m starting to sweat.
First things first. I need my damn passport so Mr. Ice Carving over here can move on with his rounds, then I can pick up my shit.
I grab my frame pack, sling it onto the seat, open the main compartment and slide my hand into the slim inner pocket. Then I fish around, feeling for the skinny booklet.
It’s not there. I shove my hand in further. Nothing. I push my entire arm into my backpack, my hair falling in front of my eyes, sticking in the velcro fasteners.
“Sorry,” I say. “Prosti, prosti...”
Still nothing. My heart is doing flips, and I’m frantically trying to remember the last time I saw my passport.
I had it when I got to the Ukraine four days ago, I think. I had it when I checked into the hostel in Kiev.
Jesus, did I leave it there?
Now I’m pulling dirty clothes out of my backpack and piling them onto my seat. The woman sitting next to me, who somehow still looks just as fresh and put together in hour thirteen of this train ride as she did at hour one, glares.
Everyone’s glaring, but I don’t care, because I need my passport.
Finally the bag is empty, and I peer into the entrance. My heart’s hammering, because not only is it very bad form to leave your passport god-knows-where, my mom might actually kill me if she has to bail me out of this.
She’d be justified, though.
“No passport?” the man says. His facial expression doesn’t change at all, but I smile at him desperately, my best I’m irresponsible, not a terrorist smile.
“It’s here somewhere!” I say brightly.
My fingertips brush over a small cylinder at the bottom of the bag, and my smile gets even tighter. I look in the bag, praying that it’s a cigarette that wandered in there somehow.
Nope. That’s a joint.
I guess I did lose that one in Amsterdam, I think as my fingers go cold with fear.
I have no idea what the drug laws are like in Sveloria. Lax, I hope.
The man waiting at the door shifts, crossing his arms in front of him, and I pretty much stick my entire head into my bag.
At last, I see a corner of something that looks very passport-like poking out of a hole. I jam my hand into it and pull out the little blue book, nearly collapsing to the floor with relief.
I turn around, holding it out, but the guy is crouching on the floor, looking at the papers I spilled everywhere. Very carefully, he picks up a photo of Sveloria’s royal family — king, queen, and crown prince — by the edges.
Then he picks up a stack of papers, thumbing through them slowly. Finally, he turns over the folder with the seal embossed on the front.
“What’s this?” he says without looking at me.
The train rolls from side to side just a little. I grab onto the luggage rack to keep my balance while I try to think of the simplest explanation for this very official-looking file with photos of the royal family and a surprising number of charts.
“I’m visiting Sveloria for the first time, so I was reading a brief on the country,” I say. “I like to be prepared.”
A couple people in the compartment glance at me then, and it’s dead obvious no one believes that.
The man starts gathering my documents back into the folder, and I kneel on the floor, trying to help, but he cuts me off.
“No,” he says, holding up one hand. “Put your laundry back in your bag.”
It’s not really laundry, it’s my clothes, I think, but that doesn’t seem like a good point to make right now. I stuff all my things back into my backpack and cinch it shut.
The customs officer is standing now, my briefing in his hand.
“Passport,” he says, and I finally hand it over.
He glances at it briefly, his eyes flicking from the photo to my face, and flips through the pages, looking at the stamps. Finally he closes it. I hold my hand out, but he doesn’t give it back.
“Come with me,” he says, and steps out of the train compartment.
I take a deep breath. Everyone else in here is still looking at me in total, stony silence as I hoist my backpack onto my back. For a moment I have the stupid urge to give them all a thumbs up as I leave, but instead I take a deep breath and follow the agent through the train.
Get a grip, I tell myself. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching my mom, it’s that cool, calm, and collected gets the best results.
We walk through four more cars, heading for the back. Through the windows to the left I can see the Black Sea, cliffs plunging down toward deep blue water, forested rolling hills to the right.
I definitely understand why the Svelorian royal family has their summer palace near here, because it’s gorgeous.
The officer keeps looking back at me, like he’s making sure I haven’t tried to escape or something. I want to point out that we are on a train, but I keep my mouth shut.
Once the initial panic wears off, I’m not actually all that worried. Not only am I an American citizen, my mom’s the American Ambassador to Sveloria.
So it’s not ideal that I’m about to be questioned by Svelorian customs, but I’m pretty sure it’s gonna turn out okay. As long as they don’t find the joint at the bottom of my bag.