As Celinny hurried out of the prison cell to handle the guard at the base of the stairs, Jax was suddenly overwhelmed with the reality of what he was doing - breaking out of jail. Breaking the law. Turning against his own men. Turning against the will of his entire kingdom. Breaking form with the dictates of his own conscience, his own soul. 

Becoming a criminal.

How could he do this? He had been born in the upper echelons of Nahlrelian society to a father who had been in the Queen’s guard and a mother who had been an attendant to the Queen. He wasn’t royalty, but faithfulness to country and Queen had been inculcated at his mother’s knee, drilled by his father’s disciplined hand. His entire world had been a study of the all-important hallmarks of proper character as displayed by the royal court and the systems of law and order which the Queen oversaw and administered. He wasn’t naive; of course life in the courts held its share of corruption, backbiting, and conspiracy. In fact, everything happened on a larger scale in the world of royalty. The petty theft, the adultery, even the occasional murder that happened among the populace of the kingdom happened in larger terms among the royalty, with greater negative implications for more people, ripple effects that reached farther and lasted longer. Indeed, Jax believed as his father had, that the moral nature of the kingdom was a reflection of the moral nature of the court.

But law, order, and moral straightness was still the overwhelming majority among both the royalty and the people - and for the most part always had been, as long as Nahlreli had been a kingdom since The Sleeping. Jax had made it his personal agenda to exemplify what was right in the kingdom, and he saw his duties as Captain of the Queen’s Guard as both a manifestation and a tool of that agenda. He took great pride in bringing or even seeing any criminal element brought to justice, and he especially took pride in his role as chief protector of the embodiment and symbol of the Kingdom’s goodness, Queen Ismari. 

Jax could not do this.

He should never have even begun to conspire with this thief, and he certainly should never have smiled at her. He stepped toward the door to his prison with the intent of taking her from behind, choking her unconscious and tying her up for the guards to find. Then he would come back to his cell and abide by the laws of his Queen and his kingdom. He would do his best to convince his men of his innocence. His face took on a steel-edged hardness as he pushed open the door and resolutely moved down the hall. That dark woman was about to feel the quick and efficient wrath of the Captain of the Queen’s Guard.

Just as he was about to round the corner he heard her open the door at the bottom of the stairs and give a whistle. He turned the corner, came face to face with Celinny, and… stopped. 

She was so light, so youthful, so cheerful, so friendly, so… not innocent, but neither was she dark. She was nothing he was working himself up to believe. Jax knew what dark people felt like, and this was not it. He realized that from the moment she rolled in front of his little prison window, she had felt like… a natively good person. How was that even possible? Could such a well-practiced thief really just be a misguided, unfortunate result of difficult circumstances? What else could explain the good feeling about her in the face of what she was and what she represented?

The stark contrast of her present reality and what he had convinced himself she must be came crashing together, and for the second time in her company, he was completely unused to what he was feeling. He was hesitant, unsure, unconfident. 

And then his father’s words echoed in his mind, an old lesson in combat: “It is always honorable and right to be clear about your intentions Jax, “came the grizzled but warm old voice, “but when it comes to fighting, you must understand that deception is often a necessary tool. If your opponent - whether an individual or an army - has taken it upon themselves to gain control by violence, they forfeit their right to receive honor from you, or to expect you to follow honorable rules. Fighting is brutal in its very nature. So long as you stand in opposition to darkness, there will be times when you will be forced to break from otherwise honorable actions. If it were not so, you would not be excusable in learning combat in the first place.”

Jax was processing his thoughts faster than rationality usually allowed - his gut was taking him from point 1 to point 10 and skipping all the points in between, and a soldier learned to always trust his gut. Queen Ismari was dead. Whoever had murdered her was his opponent - not those who imprisoned him, and not this unusual thief - and if his opponent knew him at all, they expected him to play by the rules, sit in his cell, not discover anything, be executed and go away nicely. But fate had handed him a thief that he somehow found himself trusting and a way to continue this fight.

It was time to break from otherwise honorable actions.

Suddenly he realized he was still staring at Celinny. “Hi” he said quickly. Hi? What was wrong with him? By the Queen, was he blushing? “I just…” he sighed, relaxing his shoulders and standing up straight, closing his eyes as he tilted his head back for one last meditative breath before the night continued on in its unprecedented departure from Jax’s typical evening. If he was going to do something, he was going to do it right. “I’m ready” he finally said, looking back down at Celinny. 

What a night this was turning out to be. What a crazy, moonlit night.