When Kate Beckett was five, she believed wholeheartedly in fairytales. In kissing frogs and finding princes, in snow-white horses to carry her into the sunset and happily ever afters.
There was a leather-bound book of fairy tales in the bottom of her bookshelf that her mother would pull out every night, and she would whisper the pretty stories as Kate drifted off to sleep, princesses and enchanted mirrors and castles made of diamonds flickering in the back of her mind.
She knew, as sure as anything, that one day she would have a prince who would stand outside her tower and wait for her, and he would bring her glass slipper back to her and it would fit her perfectly.
When Kate Beckett was fifteen, she wasn't so sure about fairytales. She knew that kissing frogs wouldn't get you a prince, and she would probably never ride into the sunset on the back of a white stallion. She'd had enough break ups and seen enough wrecked hearts to understand that not everyone ended up with a happily ever after.
She had all but forgotten about the book of stories, which lay in the same old place, covered in a silver layer of dust and a pile of glossy fashion magazines. Her mom had stopped reading to her - Kate was too old for that, she had decided - but every night as she kissed her forehead, she would whisper, "The end,", softly into the dark.
None of the fleeting relationships her friends had nudged her into had found her a handsome prince and somehow she was beginning to doubt that they ever would.
When Kate Beckett was twenty five, she knew fairytales didn't exist at all. She had kissed a lot of frogs, but never found a single prince, and the only horses she had ridden on were the sturdy police horses that were bay and black and brown, not snow white.
Her mom's book of fairytales was gathering dust underneath her bed, where it had become not a realm of childhood memories, but a painful reminder of what she could never have again. One night, she had pulled it out for one last read, only to throw it back because of the sheer, cruel irony.
Her mother, who had believed in happily-ever-afters until the very end, stabbed to death in an alley where no princes - hell, not even the best paramedics the city could offer - could kiss her back to life.
Kate had been pursued by a few lowly peasants, and many, many frogs, but she firmly believed there was no one out there for her, and she had stopped looking.
When Kate Beckett was thirty one , she told herself that it was silly for a grown woman to believe in fairytales. She had kissed a man who had made her doubt whether he was a frog like she'd thought (the word prince had echoed in the back of her mind as they pulled away from each other and gulped in the night air) but she still doubted that there was a metaphorical sunset for her with him.
In a moment of respect for the book - it was her mom's, after all - she had slid it into place on her bookshelf. Although she hadn't noticed it at the time, she had placed it right next to Heat Wave, the soft faded leather and shiny hardback a stark - but welcome - contrast.
She'd thought she had a prince, a prince who saved the world in his spare time, but something had made her realise that maybe he wasn't quite the man she was searching for. The glass slipper hadn't quite fit her.
When Katherine Castle was thirty five, she'd changed her mind about fairytales. She realised that the frog in her life had been a prince all along - she had just been too blind to notice. And maybe it didn't have to be a sunset, it could be the slow pace they set down the aisle, or the quicker pace as they had raced each other down the hallway to the privacy of his bedroom.
The book of happy endings resided in their shared bedroom, tucked neatly between the side of the bed and the bedside table. Once time after a particularly trying case, when she hadn't been able to sleep, he had picked up the book, following some strange instinct.
As the words slipped from his lips, she softly crawled closer to his warm body, slipping an arm around his waist, a hand over his stomach, her head drooping down to rest on the broad curve of his shoulder.
She drifted off to sleep just as he finished the story, and Richard Castle dropped a kiss in his wife's long, curly hair.
"And they all lived happily ever after... the end."