Powerless

Book one of Lauren Roberts's viral BookTok romantasy trilogy. In a kingdom where magic-wielding Elites rule over powerless Ordinaries, Paedyn Gray survives by hiding her true, dangerous identity, until she's forced to compete in the Purging Trials, a brutal tournament designed to weed out the weak. There she meets Kai Azer, an Elite hiding secrets of his own, and the two form an alliance that quickly becomes something far more complicated. Fast-paced and full of slow-burn tension between hidden identities, this dystopian romantasy launched Roberts as one of the breakout self-published-to-traditional success stories of the genre.