To continue the royal bloodline, the Fae King that rules over the City in the Clouds must pick a consort.
Human, pixie, hell-sprite, seventeen-year-old Jewel assumes the king will pick the prettiest, shallowest, one of the lot, but the longer she stays in the competition to find the Culled Queen, the closer she comes to working off the debts of her family. The debts that keep them enslaved and improvised, the debts that lead to her mother's death, and her brutally failed romance.
Jewel doesn't think she's still capable of believing in love, but she knows hunger and darkness firsthand, so when the king's attention turns her direction, she toys with the idea of keeping it until the moment it slips from her fingers.