Prompting Fate (a contest)

Contest time at The Merry Sisters of Fate. Randomly-chosen winners are trying for a signed advance reader’s copy of THE SCORPIO RACES by Maggie Stiefvater, a signed advance reader’s copy of THE SPACE BETWEEN by Brenna Yovanoff or a signed hardback of BLOOD MAGIC by Tessa Gratton. The authors are the sisters of fate, if you didn’t know.
The picture prompt for this contest is “The Turret Stairs” by Frederic Burton, and here’s my entry, a flash fiction:

He has no choice. Those are his words, not mine. I feel them like a shard of glass, a needle of ice through my heart.

This is the last time—I have no doubt of this—he will press his body to mine, the final touch of soft lips, hot breath upon my neck.

I cannot look at him.

“I am the kingdom,” he says, as though I need convincing. “What I desire, what I prefer, must always be for the good of all.”

Am I not part of all? But I do not speak those words or any other.

My hand rests on stone, cold as a tomb, centuries of terror held captive in these walls. I must climb into the darkness alone while he will step into the light of ten thousand candles and as many dawns.

“It was your hair, they say, that made them so sure.” He loops the end of my braid around his finger—a red-copper ring. A moan escapes him. He pulls his dagger free and cuts the lock, holding it first to his nose and then tucking it within his shirt. “I will mourn you always.”

I face him finally. “You will mourn, and you will suffer every moment of my eternal imprisonment. I would rather they’d sewn a hundred river stones in my hem or made me run in iron boots fresh from the fire than the end you chose. For you did have a choice, you see.”

“I could not sentence you to such a death!”

“But you have, my love, you have.”