The empress was right, people were swarming the gates of the castle on the day the auditions were taking place. The guards made sure to keep everyone out of the property and only let one in at a time. Eight people had already auditioned to be entertainers. Lisa had stood behind Jennie watching every move of every man that entered with great caution. She also watched the woman's reaction to the entertainers.
Two of them had made her laugh, The younger woman had never seen the empress laugh like that so it seemed like they were doing a good job, a couple of people had a puppet play while one of them had made a poem about a subject Jennie chose, they were very creative with what they were showing off. Some of them were entertaining to watch Lisa could not lie about that. She now understood what an entertainer was too.
The two last did their numbers and left right after. Jennie was satisfied with what she had gotten, but in the end, chose the fifth man that had auditioned, he had made a poem and he had many other talents as well.
A Guard came running up to Jennie and bowed at her. He sounded breathless and in distress. "Your highness, some of them have infiltrated the property. What do you wish us to do?" Jennie looked at Lisa afraid that any of the members of the resistance had entered the property.
"You kill everyone who is standing at our property right now!" All of their heads turned to the emperor, he had just entered the room.
The guard looked at the empress checking if she would protest, of course out of shock she had nothing to say so the guard took it as an order. "Why would you order him to kill them?" She asked. He had done something similar before. A big group of people would surely cause a little bit of chaos sometimes, it was bound to happen but murdering them was unnecessary and vile.
Their screams could be heard from inside the room. "I will not be taking any chances these days... plus they are just commoners." Nothing made Jennie angrier than how Jong-in treated their people. She would try to do something nice or good for them, but he always seemed to end up doing something horrible and destroying the good reputation she had so desperately tried to make of them.
Now he was letting the guards kill their people simply for stepping onto their property. It could have been handled better, there was no need for violence let alone killing.
"You know this could have been handled better, why are you doing this? This is the reason why the resistance is after us in the first place!" She spat, she was close to raising her voice but that only made things worse.
"Jennie, with all due respect I do not care about your opinion, a woman should not be talking back to her husband in the first place, you are lucky I treat you the way I do." The empress was speechless, he had never in their 20 years of marriage said something like that to his wife. He had never talked to her like she was worth less than him. He had become bitter and she figured why that might be.
"This is all because of two days ago is not?" She asked, she could feel her body temperature rising that is how angry she was with him.
"Let us discuss that in private Jennie." He walked over to the window and watched what had happened. "Only three people are dead, that is not a lot of people. Hopefully, they will learn to obey the rules now and scare the resistance a little." The woman looked out the same window as well, The snow-covered gravel was painted with red warm blood. And he was right, three people laid lifeless inside the property while most of the other people had run away, other ones were brave enough to watch the guards remove the bodies from the property.
"You come with me right now." She told her husband.
"And you stay here." She said to Lisa in a softer tone. The young woman looked outside where blood had painted the snow. It seemed like she had mistaken Jong-in for a good man, it was obvious he was not. He had no remorse for the people that had been killed, which he was responsible for. The empress seemed furious when she spoke to her husband after what he ordered the soldiers to do, Lisa could see why. There was no reason they had to murder innocent civilians like that, they could have backed them away or given them a warning.
