All Chapters of The Academy’s Most Underestimated Student: Chapter 21

"Settle down," she said, in a voice that suggested she'd already said it a hundred times that morning and expected to be ignored regardless.Nobody settled down."I said settle down." She dropped a stack of papers onto the podium hard enough that it should have gotten some attention. It didn't.A boy near the front laughed, loud enough to carry, saying something to his friend about "the tiny one," and a ripple of quiet snickering spread outward from him, the kind of low-grade disrespect that clearly happened whenever a small, unassuming person tried to command a room full of teenagers who'd been raised on legendary bloodlines and inflated self-importance.The woman's expression changed, tired giving way to a flatter, more dangerous look."Fine," she said, almost to herself. "We'll do it the other way."The pressure hit before I even registered her moving.It slammed down across the entire room at once, an invisible weight pressing every single body flat against their seats, and I felt