Chapter 11 is finally here! Sorry for the long wait, my awesome lovely readers. Great news: This story has had over 2,300 views and over 30 reviews! {Though it'd be nice to get it to 40 reviews or more ;) ;)} I mainly was having trouble figuring out exactly what I wanted to happen in this chapter and where I wanted it to go. I finally got a decent chunk going, so I felt I had enough to appease you all. This chapter doesn't have much of Keith but another prince is going to make a special appearance. I enjoyed writing this one, though there were some writer blocks to overcome, and I hope you like it!

So please read and review. Hope you enjoy it!


"Princess, it's time to wake up." I could hear a male voice say while being shaken into consciousness.

"Huh? Ow." I say as I feel pain in my hand. I open my eyes and scream. "AHHHH!"

"Princess, it's me. Tarmo." Tarmo says as he removes his face guard. He was dressed in the uniform of a baseball catcher.

"Tarmo? Why are you wearing that? And why does my hand hurt?" I ask.

"Well, I wasn't going to come wake you up unprepared and unprotected from your sleepful vengeance; which is why your hand hurts. It hit my face mask." Tarmo explains.

"I'm sorry." I say as I rub my hand, and notice its a little red along my thumb.

"I'll call the doctor to come look at your hand before you leave for your flight." Tarmo says as he exits.

I sigh, get out of bed, then go into my closet to change into some casual clothes to travel in. "What are you doing in here?" I'm surprised to see my red leather jacket hanging in the closet. I smile as I take it, a simple white shirt, dark wash skinny jeans, and tall brown boots.

As I zip up my other boot, there's a knock at the door. "Come in." I answer, and stand from my bed.

"Hello, Your Highness. I'm the doctor of the castle, Dr. Northerson. I was told your hand hurts. May I see it?" The doctor enters. He's an older looking man, who's probably been here for a decade or two.

"Of course. Is it okay if I just call you Dr. N?" I ask as I hold out the hurting hand.

"That is fine, Your Highness." Dr. N smiles and looks like he wants to laugh.

"Is something funny?" I ask.

"It's just that, that was what His Majesty called me when he was younger, and at that time, I was just starting here at the castle." Dr. N answers.

"Really? That is funny." I say as he starts inspecting my hand.

"Does this hurt?" He asks as he tenderly rubs the spot.

"A little, but its not too bad. I've definitely had worse." I say.

"Yes, it's not broken, but it's going to bruise. What did you do, Your Highness?" Dr. N asks.

"I've hit one too many people in my sleep." I answer seriously.

"What?" Dr. N looks completely surprised.

"It's nothing to worry about." I say nonchalantly.

"Have you always been an aggressive waker?" Dr. N asks.

"No. I never had a reason to, until college. My roommates would wake me up a couple of times, and the few times they did, they did it in some not so nice of ways. I'm not going to go into detail there, but it became a necessity to fight back. Though, I would have done the same thing to them had I not been such night owl." I answer.

"I see. So since you started college, you've attacked anyone who tries to wake you up?" Dr. N asks.

"Are you also a psychologist?" I ask, wondering.

"Yes, and I feel you're trying to deflect from the question at hand." He answers.

"The answer to your question is yes, though I don't always do it, and I wasn't deflecting; I honestly wanted to know. Also, the only occurrences are when I'm being woken having gotten very little sleep." I answer.

"Alright, that's understandable." Dr. N answers.

"So, about my hand? Anything else I should be aware of?" I ask.

"Just ice it on the flight home, and be careful of your hand." Dr. N smiles, and gently pats my wrist in a fatherly way.

"Okay. Thank you. And it was nice to meet you, Dr. N." I smile back.

"And it was a pleasure to finally meet you, Your Highness." Dr. N says as he bows.

"Could you just call me Phoenix? Since I am calling you Dr. N." I ask.

"I'll call you Princess Phoenix, if it makes you feel better. I know this must be a lot to take in, but I have faith that you'll be as wonderful of a ruler as your Uncle and ancestors before you." And with that said, Dr. N left my room.

I smile to myself at what he said, and sit on my bed.

~)~~~~

"I'm home!" I call into my empty apartment. I automatically go to the window where my three plants are. "Did you girls miss me?" I ask as I inspect them, "Well, it looks like Onni and Tarmo did a good job of watering you girls while I was gone." I smile as I run my fingers down some of Sunny's, my sunflower, petals. I do the same to Lily and Cher; though, I have to be careful with Cher, since she's a cactus.

"Of course. They're important to you, so they're important to us." Tarmo says from the door.

I jump, and turn to look at him. "I thought I told you I was fine. Go home." I say dismissively.

"You forgot something, Princess." Tarmo says showing me my phone in his hand.

"I could have sworn that was in my pocket." I say patting my front pockets. I felt something there, and pulled it out. It was a phone. The phone Prince Keith gave me to know where I was. "That's embarrassing." I say setting it on my bedside table, and retrieved my actual phone from Tarmo. "Thanks."

"You have two phones now, Princess?" Tarmo asks.

"Yeah. His Highness, Prince Keith, had it given to me, because there's a tracker in it and that way he would know where I was and could get a hold of me at any time." I answer.

"Why didn't you give it back to him?" Tarmo questions.

"I completely forgot about it and just packed it with my stuff. With everything going on there, I think it slipped both his and Luke's minds to get it back from me." I say. "Should I try to get it back to him?" I ask.

"You should call him soon and see how important it is to get it back. Once you know, then we can take the actions to return it, if necessary." Tarmo answers.

"Okay. I just don't know when I should call him. He seemed to be really busy and looked like it was going to get worse." I say unsure.

"Alright. I'll call Luke and let you know what he says we should do." Tarmo says with a gentle smile. "You should rest, because all your homework is on the table over there." Tarmo pointed towards the kitchen table and I saw a small pile of papers. "I attended all your classes to retrieve your homework and take notes for you. You know, that Dr. Dave, is extremely boring." Tarmo adds seriously.

"Tarmo, I didn't know you did that for me. Thank you." I give him a little hug, then as I pull away, I smack his arm. "And Dr. Dave is boring, but it's rude to say that like it was complete torture." I say sternly.

"Ow, Princess. Have you gotten stronger while you were away? Because that actually hurt a little." Tarmo whines. "And it was torture, that class. So I now have a new found appreciation for you and all other college students who have professors like him."

I sigh. "Good. Now go home. I'll call you and Onni if I intend on leaving here at all tomorrow. Otherwise, I'll see you on Monday." I push him out the door and shut it behind him.

"Alright. Bye, Phoenix." Tarmo calls, and I hear him leave.

I sigh as I look through my papers on the table. Most were notes, and others were descriptions of all the projects that needed to be done by the end of the week. I sigh. Looks like I'm going to be cramming to get all these projects done. No free time this week. Luckily, all of these are started, there's just a week's worth of progress and improvement missing. But if everything is due this weekend, then I should be fine to go to the ball without any major homework.

I get up from the table, and slowly make my way to bed, and fall asleep almost immediately. My last thoughts being: I hate jet lag.

~)~~~~

So for the next week I went to class and spent all my free time being completely absorbed in finishing three art projects that all had due dates on Friday. The only breaks I took were to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, shower, and talk to Mom, Uncle, and Cathy each once throughout the day when I needed to let my hand rest.

Friday morning, 3: 57, I finally finished my last project. "Done." I move away from my projects to let them dry. "Well, the first one needs to be turned in between 9 and 10, so I can get a solid four hours of sleep." I say as I let myself fall out of the chair, crawl to my bed, climb in, and pass out almost automatically from exhaustion.

~)~~~~

All too soon my annoying alarm goes off. Hmm. I'm not ready to get up yet! I whine to myself, but force myself to roll off my bed to help wake me up. I stumble into my bathroom, ran some cold water, and splashed it on my face. The shock of the cold was just what I needed to be alert.

After drying my face, I quickly go back into my room, straight to my closet, and pull out the first pair of jeans and top I got my hands on. I stripped out of my sweatpants and tee, then put on the jeans and shirt. With clothes on, I quickly grabbed my hair brush, ran it through the rat's nest that was my hair, and put it into a messy ponytail. Then I grabbed a pair of socks and my sneakers. After they were laced, I grabbed some perfume, and gave it a couple of spritzes; I hadn't showered since yesterday morning, my plan was to shower when I got back.

Last I grabbed, my crossover purse with all my stuff in it and my portfolio with my quickly stashed in projects, before running out the door toward the Art Department building; which was 15 minutes away from my apartment when I moved at a somewhat fast walk, so an outright sprint should be under 10 minutes. I checked the clock by the door as I was going out, 9:24 was what I saw, before flipping the lock on the door and pulling it shut tightly behind me.

I was already on campus when the half hour chime of the bell tower tolled. I was a woman on a mission and noticed nothing outside of my intended path. Until someone suddenly cut into it, leaving me no time to get out of the way. Resulting in a collision.

I fell flat on my butt, and lost my hold on my portfolio from the impact. The top project picture coming out a little, showing a corner of the garden scene I had chosen for its assignment.

"I'm so sorry, miss... Phoenix?" A familiar male voice said, as a hand entered my line of vision.

I look up at the offered hand's owner and my eyes widen. "Prince Edward?!" He raised his other hand up to his mouth in a quieting signal. "What are you doing here?" I ask quieter voice and take his offered hand to get to my feet.

"Well, I could ask you the same thing, Miss Phoenix. Though, I'd assume from your appearance and being here, you're a student here at the university. I honestly didn't expect to see you again so soon and here of all places." Prince Edward beams one of his charming smiles at me. Looking at that smile, I almost forgot about my hand-in time that was slowly dwindling away. "Oh, you dropped this." Prince Edward picks up my portfolio and hands it to me, reminding me of why I was on campus in the first place.

"Thank you. I really would love to stay and chat, but I really need to be going to turn this in." I say, motioning my portfolio, and bow my head a little to Prince Edward.

"Always running off on me, like a beautiful wood nymph. Will I be seeing you again next weekend?" He asks as I back away.

"Most definitely." I smile and nod, then turn and run towards the Art building. I get inside to my classroom to see Professor V, looking through everyone else's projects.

"Am I late?" I ask gasping.

"Not yet, Phoenix. You still have five minutes. Though, I was wondering if you'd get finished. Let's see it." Prof. V holds out her hand to take my project. I pull out the first one and hand it over. "Hmm. Interesting concept." She says looking at the garden scene. The assignment was to create am image from a well known work, only making changes to it in some way. I had chosen to draw the croquet scene from Alice in Wonderland. Only I had changed it by portraying myself as Alice and I had done Prince Keith as the Queen of Hearts, only he would be the King. Though, it was pretty tempting to draw him in a dress. "This is a very good portrayal of the prince of Liberty, Phoenix. Good work." Prof. V smiles.

"Thanks. I'm pretty proud of it." I answer.

"I was concerned, since you missed a whole week of working on it. Didn't you have a completely different concept before you got sick for that week?" Prof. V asks. All the teachers were told I was sick, but the Dean knew the truth. He was kind enough to give me a free pass for however long it would take, and told all my teacher's I had come down with a really bad flu.

"Yeah. All I had done was the garden, so I just let myself work, got lost in it, and this was the result." I tell her.

"It's always the ones you get lost in that become amazing. Though, sometimes when you get lost in it, people tend put too much that they can't finish. So I'm pleased, Phoenix." Prof. V tells me.

"Thank you. It means a lot coming from you." I tell her. She's been my favorite professor so far, because she knows what she's doing, is really helpful, and doesn't give out praise lightly. She's like the older sister I would have always wanted because she's pretty, cool, caring, smart, and talented. She was late twenties, maybe 30 or 31. I don't know why she wasn't married yet, because she's so cool.

"Though, if you got lost in it..." She says thoughtfully. "Should I take it to mean, this prince is the King of your heart?" Prof. V's smile gets bigger and a teasing light shines in her eyes.

"P-p-p-professor V! NO!" I automatically deny and get nervous at the idea. As if! Only in his dreams would that be the case. Please! Keith the king of my heart? Hahaha, yeah right!

"Hmmmm. Were you really sick? Because I was at a party in Liberty last weekend, and I could have sworn I saw you, or someone who looks a lot like you, there with the prince." Prof. V says.

"What was I wearing?" I ask jokingly trying to keep from panic sweating and acting obvious.

"A Catwoman suit." She says.

"Pfft. Me, Catwoman? Never. I wouldn't be caught dead in something like that." I say making my way to the door. "I better get going V, I got some other projects to turn in." I say almost at the door.

"Well, whoever she was, she sure pulled it off." Prof. V said thoughtfully out loud.

"Thanks." I say automatically at the compliment, halfway out the door.

"AHA! It WAS you!" She cries out.

"!" My eyes widen at the realization I gave myself away. I quickly make my way up the stairs to the next floor where my other projects are due.


So what did you think? Let me know in a review.

I thought it would be fun to see a little more of Phoenix's serious side, and some of her school side. Did you like Ed's special appearance? And would you like them to see each other again, in the next chapter?

*SPOILER FOR NEXT CHAPTER*(Next chapter: Phoenix will end up in Liberty before going to the ball, and I'm not sure how much of the ball I'll include in it. So I don't know if you'll get to see the other princes much or at all.)