Rhiane raised a brow as Luke alleged that she was no longer poor. A refutation was already dancing on her tongue but it was his leaning forward, proclaiming that she had [i]him[/i], that made her slightly sour disposition tucked away under the mask evaporate briefly. The farmer laughed honestly without care of how this turn of events might appear to spectators. After eating the caprese appetizer she had only taken a few bites of her pizza before setting it down. Much as she'd like to blame her lack of appetite on Luke's arrogant ordering without knowing her preferences it was to her taste. Her father in particular would consume everything in sight when stressed but she was the opposite, wolfing down larger meals when content, and barely able to eat a few forkfuls of salad when there were issues weighing down heavily on her mind. The princess elect was relatively certain the small battalion of women tasked to make her a paragon of beauty would be all too glad to have this revelation relayed to them.

"Your highness," she started, clearing her throat to try to smother the last of the fit of giggles, "you are correct my family is well compensated. But I don't have any illusions. The suite in which I reside is owned by the crown and I am no more than a tenant. My maids serve not me but the monarch, and it is because it her decree that I ought to be attended that they are lent to me. I am more like a pet, am I not? I am kept for a purpose, provided for, cleaned up after, but ultimately decisions and wealth are out of my control." It was an apt allusion but not one she'd admit to anyone other than Luke. Despite his other failings he seemed to be a surprisingly honest person and deserving of the knowledge that she knew [i]precisely[/i] where she stood. The princess elect was not a candidate with stars in her eyes that would mistake a gilded cage for utopia. In a sense she was glad they were spared from the realization how they would not be living the dream they had been insistent was just outside their grasp. Rhiane had saved some of them from a fate they could not bear to imagine much less endure.

"And we both know I do not have you. The lady in your bed this morning perhaps has you, or your family, or people that I do not know, but I do not have an ounce of you, do I?" Her probing gaze met his and directly unflinching as they sought an answer that she knew she already possessed. "I've seen people who truly owned one another and death could not wholly separate. I won't shame them, nor you, by trying to say that this arrangement even in part equates to having anything except a contract." There would be a future meeting of the flesh she knew but that was no different than her purely physical dalliances of the past. She would not [i]have[/i] Luke. It would be legitimately shocking if, given his flight from the engagement ball already, there were not multiple affair partners that would have more of Luke's evenings than she as his wife. A pregnancy would allow the perfect pretense for his needs to be satisfied by a not-so-secret lover.

Leaning back she tried to clear memories of her parents from her mind. Her mother would hum to herself in the kitchen as she was slicing vegetables and her father would, horribly off-key and with no sense of rhythm, join in as if he knew the tune. It was one of her most fond recollections though she was certain it was something nobility and commoners alike would mock. A cacophony of antiquated songs being mangled by a duo hopelessly in love was not a portrait of romantic bliss. At the time she had been embarrassed by their displays of affection, their sweet names for one another, their silliness, the way they always hugged and kissed after a divisive argument, by how every man in town chuckled when Hubert Black went to the florist for the best blooms to beg for forgiveness. Now she knew how precious these interactions had been even if her adolescent self was humiliated by their 'lovey dovey' antics.

"But, for the sake of clarity, I will be more precise. I do concede I have some things it is possible to lose, but for it to really matter it must be something you care about, that you need, that you would be lost without. I've exchanged my conventional poverty for another kind entirely," she said more softly. Rhiane did not believe herself to have freedom and so even the implant had not robbed her of as much as it had Luke. The splendor of the castle was not something she was reliant upon nor enthralled by. Even her future, and the children in it, were forfeit as she would perish and they would be raised by either nannies or a stepmother that tolerated their existence but did little more. All of her hard work to keep push the farm from the brink of bankruptcy to becoming profitable was moot now that it was bankrolled by becoming a breeding mare for the crown prince.

"I dread the day that anything I covet is actually given to me," she added with a sigh. "We can go whenever you are ready, your highness."