The Louvre Paris, France

There were few times in a night or day when it could safely be said that Paris was asleep. This was one of them - the cold, crisp hours just before dawn, when the traffic slowed, and most people were in bed, preparing in slumber for the next day of their lives. And those who were awake, the guards and night workers scattered across the city, were at their least alert, their most susceptible to the creeping temptation of sleep. That was why Natalya loved this time of night. She could go about her shady business with little fear of capture.

The day had been spent in bed, dozing, making love, sleeping, talking about nothing and nonsense, anything not to consider what it was they were about to attempt. As the night wore on toward midnight, she had risen and dressed, her newly bought clothing as dark, slender-fitted, and disrupted in outline as the clothes she had bought for Rhys what seemed an age ago. The pack she slung about her hips had been enchanted as a bag of holding, filled with everything she expected to need and a few things she hoped she wouldn't have to make use of.

They had left the hotel by the means of the balcony, Natalya leading the way over the dimly lit rooftops with the assuredness of one who had made this nerve-wracking climb before. From the rooftops, she had led him down onto street level, over one of the walls that surrounded the Louvre, and finally up onto the rooftop of the palace itself, creeping between chimney stacks and reinforced glass skylights until they crouched in the shadows above the Galerie du Moyen "ge. Gloved, with a hat over her hair, and her hands rummaging inside her pack in search of the equipment she needed, Natalya looked over at Rhys, hoping his nerve was holding. "You do not have to do this if you are uncertain, Rhys," she whispered, her voice almost swept away by the biting wind that whistled around them.

Rhys had dreaded this night almost since the first moment he'd told her - promised her - he'd accompany her. Rivals at first, both after the same thing, they had quickly become allies, more than allies - lovers, both having good reasons for wanting to steal the sword. Things seemed simpler then, before he'd really known her, before he'd fallen in love with her. Now, he almost wished it was just him again, risking his life alone, not risking hers, but she was the expert - the master thief. He was a hunter, which involved a much different skill set.

He'd gone over the plan in his head umpteen times. He knew it was risky, but she knew what she was doing better than him, and he trusted her. It was odd, that - to actually trust someone again, to literally put his life in her hands. Despite his dreading what they were about to do, he surprisingly hadn't grumbled or made any complaints, and once they were dressed and ready to go, his entire demeanor had seemed to shift, growing deadly serious. Uncharacteristically quiet while he dressed in the clothes she'd picked out for him, looking the part of a master thief, though he was nothing of the sort. He didn't mind letting her lead the way, and his ego wasn't so fragile that he couldn't take direction from a woman. This was, after all, her gig, so to speak, and he was just along for the ride.

He'd followed along behind her, not quite as nimble, but handling things well enough. He'd slipped once on the roof, but had quickly regained his footing. He had pushed aside the fear and the doubt, like a soldier does when going into battle, entirely focused on what needed to be done. The biting wind howled over her words, but he heard her, a look of determination on his face in the darkness of night. "I've come this far. I'm not turning back now."

"And you are sure you're comfortable with using the spells?" she asked him again, withdrawing a pair of handled suction cups from her hip pack. These she laid down beside the skylight, together with a small, heavy-duty winch and a length of cable. "Technology will only take us so far."

They'd gone over the plan umpteen times and there was nothing she'd told him he'd have to do that bothered him, so far. He nodded his head. It wasn't the first or probably the last time he'd have to work a spell or two. Besides, it was a means to an end. he nodded his head. "I'll be fine, Nat. Stop worrying." Anyway, it was too late for that now. He'd come too far to burn back.

"Very well." With a delicacy at odds with the unwieldy equipment she was using, Natalya carefully placed the suction cups upon the smooth glass of one panel of the skylight, sealing them tight. "Come here, hold one of these," she told him. "Brace yourself, it'll be heavy when it comes free." From her pack, she produced a diamond cutter, rising to her feet. Her hand wrapped about one of the handles, her feet braced on the rough shingle and the frame of the panel they were working on. The other hand lowered, and slowly, she began to cut the panel free.

He did as he was told, carefully moving over toward her, bracing himself on the roof, feet apart, and taking hold of one of the suction cups that would hold the glass panel once she had cut her way through. He wasn't sure what to expect so he braced himself for the worst.

It was painstaking work, but when the glass came free, it hung as a dead weight from the handled cups they held. Nat grunted as her arm twanged with the considerable weight, grimacing even as she gestured for Rhys to help her lift it higher and set it to one side, as quietly as they could. "Light the smudge stick and drop it through to the gallery," she told him, pulling yet more things from her pack to prepare the next stage of the theft.

The glass was heavy enough to make even his muscles want to rebel, but he held tight against the weight of it, helping her to move the glass aside. The first step had been taken, and there was no turning back now. He pulled out a lighter to set the smudge stick aflame and leaned over the hole she'd cut in the glass to drop in down into the gallery.

As it fell, it fizzed, filling the room with blue smoke - easy for the human eye to see through, but somehow impossible for any kind of surveillance camera to penetrate. Not only that, but it confined itself to only that room, refusing to dissipate as Nat and Rhys peered down. Natalya's lips quirked, pleased with the smokescreen, her hands busily attaching the winch to a cross bar over the wide hole in the skylight. "I know you're not great with heights, but we're going to have to go down there," she warned Rhys quietly. From her pack, she took a laser pointer, something she had been fiddling with for the last three days intently. As she attached it to the cross bar as well, she pointed it down into the gallery, and switched it on, murmuring a quiet cantrip against attack as she did so. The green light lanced through the smoke, forming an intricate circle of protection and power around the glass case in which the sword, Joyeuse, was kept.

A jaw muscle twitched, the only visible sign of nervousness, but he had made a commitment to this and he intended to see it through. He hadn't freaked out on the roof, and he wasn't going to freak out now. "I'll be fine," he insisted again. If he thought he couldn't handle it, he wouldn't have insisted on coming along. The fact was he'd originally insisted on accompanying her because he hadn't trusted her and was worried she'd steal the thing right out from under him, but his concerns had shifted. Now it was about going along because he was worried about her safety, which was paramount in importance. He watched as she readied things for their descent, shoving aside the butterflies that were flitting about his stomach by sheer force of will.

With the speed and silence of someone who had done this far too many times before, Nat hooked the cable securely into the winch, testing its strength before attaching the other end to her own belt. She gestured for Rhys to come closer as she lowered herself to hang in the opening. "Lower yourself onto me," she told him quietly. "I won't let you fall."

They'd been over this part of the plan earlier and it was the one part that had never sat well with him. He'd thought he should just winch himself and go in after her, but she'd insisted on doing it this way. He wasn't afraid of her dropping him exactly. He was more afraid of freaking out and letting go. He hesitated for a moment, looking down into the dark depths below them. He knew he didn't have time now to back out or to dilly dally. They had a small frame of time in which to work and any glitch, however small, could screw up the entire plan. This was the crucial moment, the point of no return. His face turned just a little bit pale, but he set his jaw and stepped carefully forward, slowly lowering himself through the opening in the glass to grab hold of her and hang precariously in the opening. "Jesus, it's high," he muttered quietly, heart pounding but not freaking out.

He handed her back the sword, leaning close to the case to take a harder look at the scabbard. It definitely looked different than before, and he noticed the strange sigils etched into the bronze. "It's Latin, I think....an ancient dialect. It will take time to translate. I can't do it here."

Natalya's jaw dropped in astonishment. "You can read that?" she asked, amazed, staring at him as though he had grown a second head. But they didn't have the time for her to disbelieve him here and now. "Alright. It was glamored, but I don't see any more spells or curses. Are you ready to run to the cable the second the sphere comes down?"

"Yes....No....Sort of. I mean, it looks....familiar." He furrowed his brows as he studied the thing. He felt drawn to it for some reason, wanted to reach out and touch it. He hadn't felt anything with the sword, but the scabbard was definitely something. He seemed distracted a moment, hearing her question, but not answering right away.

She drew the athame once again, holding it ready at the curve of the protective sphere. His absent-mindedness brought a frown to her brow. "Rhys ....Rhys! Focus!"

He blinked out of his daze, his mind having wandered somewhere. He wasn't sure where. "Huh?" he asked, snapping out of it. He straightened, forcing his eyes away from the scabbard to meet her gaze. Once they had made their escape, there would be plenty of time to mull over the scabbard. "Yeah, I'm ready."

"Take my hand," she told him, not entirely sure she was happy with his mind wandering while they were in such a dangerous arena. "You're going to grab the scabbard while I split the circle, and then we're out of here. Yes?"

"Nat....this is the real thing," he told her, somewhat in awe of it, getting a gut feeling about it. He felt a mix of awe and excitement, and more than a little nervousness.

She sighed softly, turning to look him full in the eye. "I know," she told him in a low whisper. "But save the excitement for when we're safe, yes" The police can still lock us up if we're caught in here." Her hand slid into his. "Ready?"

He nodded his head, pushing down his excitement for later. He understood and once again, forced himself to focus on the task ahead of them. They weren't out of the clear just yet. "I'm ready," he assured her as she took his hand.

"Alright ....now." As she hissed that instruction, the blade in her hand split through the sphere's edge, the magical energy peeling away to collapse around them. She didn't even look back, trusting him to have taken the scabbard from its mount as she surged forward, pulling him back to the cable. The smoke outside the collapsing sphere was beginning to dissipate finally - they had only a few minutes to get clear of the room itself.

Oh, he wasn't going to miss that scabbard. It was the one thing he knew he had to do right and it had to be done perfectly. She trusted him to do it and he wouldn't let her down. His hand closed on the scabbard and he snatched it from the case, turning to run after her for the cable so they could make their escape. So far, so good, but they weren't clear yet.

An alarm broke out around them as the scabbard came free, covering Nat's quiet curses in Russian and English as she hooked them both hurriedly to the cable once more. A single tug on the cable itself reinitialised the winch above them, and slowly - too slowly for her tension - they rose toward the skylight.

He pulled the scabbard close, holding it against his chest, while she hooked them back up to the cable and they started their ascent to the ceiling. Down below them, there was a sudden flurry of activity as the alarms drew the attention of the night guards. Shouts went up as they came rushing in, quickly assessing the damage, and looking up just in time to see the thieves getting away, a few shots were fired in hopes of slowing them down or stopping them.

"Don't look down," Nat hissed to Rhys as the guards came into the room below them, yelping a little as the back of her head impacted with the edge of the hole they were winching to. "Put the scabbard on the roof, you need both hands to pull yourself up." Her fingers scrabbled at their belts as she flinched away from the shots fired at them, moving to unhook Rhys from the cable first.

He wasn't looking down, had no intentions of looking down. He was too busy concentrating on keeping a firm hold on both her and the scabbard. His heart was pounding, adrenalin flowing, as they attempted to make their escape. He would have insisted that she go first, but he had no choice. She couldn't get unhooked until he did. He reached upwards to put the scabbard on the roof when he felt white hot heat sear his leg, and he hissed in pain, but had no time to react other than to reach for the opening and haul himself up. It seemed to take forever - a lot longer than necessary - though it had only been a few seconds, and he once out, he turned to haul her up behind him. There was no time to shoot back, and even if there was, he didn't want to kill anyone. The guards were just doing their job, after all.

The graze of bullet to his leg went almost unnoticed in the scramble to get out through the skylight. For once, Nat didn't object at all as she was hauled bodily out of danger, unhooking herself from the cable and dropping her pack to the roof. "Can you run?" she asked Rhys breathlessly, her eyes lowering to his leg. "It's not far, but -" A bullet thumped into the brickwork beside her, making her jump violently. "We have to go!"

"Yeah, just go!" He didn't bother to look at the leg. He'd been shot at enough times to know he'd been grazed by a bullet. It was painful, but he'd live. The important thing now was getting her out of there safely. He leaned over to sweep the scabbard up off the roof and hold it out for her bag.

"No, leave the bag," she told him, taking the scabbard and shoving it down one leg of her pants. She grabbed his hand and took off at a run between the chimney stacks, catching from the corner of her eye the approach of a pair of helicopters. All they had to do, she kept reminding herself, was get to street level, to a nearby alleyway; get to the car she had left there hours earlier. A charm on it had kept people away with the impression of lovers inside it - once they got inside, they could take over and be above suspicion.

He dropped the bag without a second thought, trusting her implicitly once again. She knew what she was doing and there was no time to argue. They'd been over the plan and had gone over what to do if something like this was to happen. There was no time to think or discuss what to do, only time to react if they wanted to escape capture. He took hold of her hand and followed after her, shoving aside the throbbing pain in his leg, refusing to give in to the pain, refusing even to limp. He worried that he'd leave a trail of blood, but it didn't feel like a serious wound and his clothing should staunch the blood, for now. "Sh*t," he muttered, hearing the helicopters before he saw them.

Thankfully, the roof of the palace provided them with a certain amount of cover, and the wall she chose to clamber down put them beneath the cover of trees and into the shadow of the alleyway she sought. Natalya paused only just long enough to catch Rhys' hand before resuming her breathless run toward the car where it sat in the deep shadows. It unlocked at her touch, and she dragged the back door open. "Get inside, get those clothes off," she told him urgently, pulling the scabbard from her pants to crouch and slide it into a sheath that had been prepared for the sword, underneath the chassis of the car itself. She slid onto the back seat behind Rhys, already tugging at her gloves and shirt, tossing her hat onto the driver's seat before she lunged to him, capturing his lips with hers, relieved to be out of immediate danger.

He followed her lead, running along behind her, ducking behind chimney stacks when he was able, clambering down the wall and grunting a little when he dropped a few feet to the ground, limping a little as they rushed toward the car. He slid inside, relieved to be out of the open and in relative safety, but they weren't out of danger yet. He paused a moment to take a look at his leg, his pants wet and sticky with blood, but it didn't seem serious, and he was stripping down as quickly as possible. "It'll give us away, Nat." He frowned, realizing that if anyone were to question them, they might question that fresh wound on his calf. "What they hell were they shooting at us for? We didn't shoot at them!"

"No, it won't," she promised him. "Trust me." Her lips brushed his cheek as she leant down, fishing a small box from beneath the driver's seat. From inside, she brought out a small packet, from which she withdrew a strip of cloth. This, she laid over his bleeding calf for barely three seconds, before ripping it off once again. "If that has worked, the wound will look half-healed in moments," she assured him, even as the cloth burst into consuming flame in her fingertips. "The surveillance cameras will tell them we have been here since midnight. Trust me, dusha moya, I know how this works."

Natalya's arms looped warmly about Rhys' shoulders as she leaned against him, her smile still shameless at having been caught by the police. "We're at the Warwick," she told the cop at Rhys' prompting. "Name's Beaumont, the Montaigne Suite. That's right, isn't it, sexy?" Her lips brushed Rhys' ear, her show of affection intended to embarrass the policeman once again as he tore his gaze away from the scantily-clad pair.

"Whatever you say, hotcakes," he agreed, turning his attention back to Natalya, only partly having to fake his desire to get her alone and have his way with her. He still hadn't given the man his last name, pretending to be distracted by her kiss, which was not much of a stretch really. If nothing else, she certainly was distracting.

Relieved to have something, at least, the policeman wrote this down, tucking his notepad back into his pocket. "Thank you, Madame Beaumont," he nodded to Natalya, still trying not to actually look at the pair of them as Nat took full advantage of Rhys' distraction to press her lips to his once again. The policeman cleared his throat loudly to get their attention. "Please return to your 'otel. An officer will visit you in ze morning. I would recommend zat you be dressed when zey arrive."

Rhys moaned against her lips, having to pull himself away for a moment in order to reply to the officer, seemingly extremely distracted. "Yes, sir. Thank you, officer." And he went back to kissing Natalya and making it look like he was thoroughly enjoying himself and in no big hurry to stop.

The policeman lingered for a moment longer, debating whether or not to stay there until the American pair left, before deciding he didn't want to watch them together any longer.

As he walked away, Nat drew her lips from Rhys' with a wide grin, and burst out laughing, the sound following the unfortunate lawman as he walked away.

He smiled at her laughter and laid a finger against her lips. "Shh, we don't want him thinking we just made a fool of him and coming back here." Now that the officer was almost gone, he let his eyes wander over her, feeling relieved, but not safe yet. If an officer was going to visit them in the morning, they were going to have to continue this ruse a little longer or leave Paris. "I think you're enjoying this just a little too much."

"I told you it was all part of the fun," she grinned in return, kissing his finger where it lay against her lips. "We need to stay in Paris a few more days, but I will get Vadim to backdate a booking for us in one of the hotels in Rouen for the end of the week. The police don't have anything on us. Unless we get carried away in here." Her eyes sparkled, daring him to get them arrested.

He smirked. "Not going to finish what you started?" What she had clearly started was his evident and obvious arousal. One way or another, it was going to have to be taken care of and he wasn't really looking forward to a cold shower. "You definitely enjoy this too much." He reached for an article of clothing that she'd strewn all over the front and back seats.

A groping hand found a skirt as Nat smiled at him cheerfully, sliding her feet into the soft material to wriggle it up and over her legs to settle at her hips. "Well, it is a lot more fun when I have someone as good as you to play this game with," she admitted playfully, leaning over to the front seat to snag the pair of his jeans she had throw there only a few minutes before.

"Who'd you used to do this with' Vadim?" He wasn't sure why, but he felt that familiar wave of jealousy wash over him, even though she'd assured him Vadim was nothing more than a friend. Despite that, he tilted his head to admire the view as she leaned over the front seat. That was doing nothing to calm his arousal.

"No!" His question had set her to laughing again as she thumped down beside him once more, handing over his jeans. "I used to do it with father, of course, but I have only worked with one other person, once. She double-crossed me, too." She grinned, dragging a sweater over her head. "The one and only time I was arrested. And how I met Vadim."

"No, I meant..." He sighed as she sort of misunderstood him. He took the jeans from her and lifted his rear from the seat in order to pull them on. It wasn't an easy feat for someone over six feet in height. "Did you kill her?" The question just slipped from his lips, curious about her past and about how she'd handled being double-crossed.

The look he got for that question was bemused. She felt no hurt at the implication, only confusion that he would think her that callous. "No, I didn't," she assured him, leaning back herself to begin the task of putting her boots on in the cramped confines of the back seat of the car. "I haven't seen her since, or heard anything about her. I can only assume she either gave up, or something else got her."

He snorted. "I would have hunted her down and..." He broke off, as something from his past came to mind. Okay, maybe he wouldn't. He changed his tact. Now that she'd started the story, he wanted to hear the rest of it. "What did she do?" He searched the seats for his shirt, finding a sweater she'd packed for him, which made him look a little touristy.

Natalya chuckled softly, one foot high in the air as she struggled with the zipper on her boot. "She helped me steal the Romanov crown, then waited until I had it in my car, ready to go to England, and shopped me to the authorities," she explained lightly, one shoulder rising and falling in a shrug that dismissed this disaster of her past. "I couldn't blame her; she was so desperate to please our father, she thought that getting me out of the way was her only choice."

He noticed her struggling as he pulled the sweater over his head and leaned over to help her with the boot, one hand resting against her knee while he zipped the boot up with his free hand. He tilted his gaze toward her, arching a brow. "You have a sister?"

Her skin warmed under his hand as she leaned back, allowing him to close her boot without interference. "I did," was her quietly thoughtful answer, a small frown on her face as she looked into his eyes. "I do not know if she still lives. As I said, she disappeared before I was released, and I have not seen her since."

This bit of information surprised him for some reason. He'd assumed she was an only child, like himself, or like he assumed himself to be. "What about your mother?" He'd never asked about her mother before, but he had to assume that she'd had one. She hadn't been hatched, after all.

Her eyes clouded over, her face turning away, hiding the pain on her face behind the fall of her curling hair. "I do not remember her," she said, her voice dull, detached from the sharp agony that came with memories to do with her mother. "I do not really know what happened to her. I only ever saw her heart once - still alive, still beating, but only a heart." She shook her head. "Please, I do not like to think of it."

He felt a pang of guilt at having asked about her mother, at having brought that subject back to the surface of her thoughts. It didn't make sense to him that her father would keep her mother's heart, still beating, secreted away somewhere. There was a puzzle there somewhere, a mystery to solve, but he wasn't sure she was yet ready to know the answers. He frowned, remembering the little she'd told him about her mother and realizing she felt as much pain about her mother, a mother she'd never known, as he felt about his. He touched her cheek, turning her to face him, regret obvious on his face, his eyes full of sympathy. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked." He leaned in to kiss her, gently, tenderly, a kiss that was meant to reassure and comfort, soothe the pain away.