Step 1: Secure an advantageous match. Step 2: Save your family from financial ruin. Step 3: Definitely don't antagonize the most powerful fae lord in the land.

Iris Starspun has failed spectacularly at all three, and the Bloom Season has barely begun. Born half-human, half-fae, and scandalously magicless, Iris has long accepted her place at the bottom of glittering fae society.

But when her magical gift finally manifests—a frivolous knack for folding paper into enchanted shapes—her parents are determined she use it to snare a wealthy husband and save her family from ruin. Iris, however, would sooner fold herself into a paper bird and fly far away.

Enter Lord Brooding. Ahem, that is, Lord Jasvian Rowanwood. Heir to the Isles' most powerful fae family, and the very definition of insufferably serious, he has no patience for sharp-tongued debutantes with parlor-trick magic. Unfortunately for him, his formidable grandmother does.

When Iris is chosen as apprentice at the prestigious Charmed Leaf Tea House, she and Jasvian are forced into dangerously close quarters. Sparks fly, tempers flare—and Iris soon finds herself alarmingly close to enjoying their heated interactions.

But the opinionated Lord Rowanwood would never fall for someone with a diluted bloodline and magic as useless as hers.

Would he?