YA Fantasy where the Faeries are murderous and there's a Queen to keep them in line.

[Kathryn]

The book starts when the one character is a child and faeries attack her village she somehow commands the faerie attacking her family to stop and saves their lives, except the rest of the village is destroyed. Flash forward a few years and she's in some training program for people who can command the faeries to maybe eventually become the queen. The main character struggles with controlling some if the faeries but is eventually chosen as a sort of squire to a disgraced knight who was a former lover of the queen. The main character falls in love with the knight's healer companion as she trains to fight the faeries. She goes to the queen trials with some of her friends and when her knight master confronts the queen he learns she's been letting the faeries attack and destroy villages in exchange for more power. The main character ends up facing the queen trial and defeating the faeries that attack but the rest of the contenders of the queen trial die and maybe the queen?

I think this is the 1st book in a series maybe? I'm also pretty sure the main character goes blind at some point in time and that everyone lives in trees.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!

[Jamie]

This is The Queen of Blood, by Sarah Beth Durst.

You may have had trouble finding it because they're actually called "spirits", not faeries, so searching for the latter would have pulled up a zillion other books.

THIS one is the first in the Queens of Renthia trilogy, which I definitely recommend if you like fantasy!