Check out our episode here! (featuring Burned, Awakened and Destined) Awakened by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
Neferet awakens after having spent the night with a random Son of Erebus warrior. Kalona is still in a soulless heap on the floor, doing his duty to her in the Otherworld, or so she believes. Kalona’s soul returns and he tells Neferet that Nyx intervened and that Zoey is still alive. She calls upon the Darkness that always surrounds her to lash Kalona 100 times and reports to the Vampyre Council that he killed Heath and has been banished from her side for a century. Yeah, and we all believe that.
On the Isle of Skye, Queen Sgiach invites Zoey to stay as long as she needs to and offers to teach her about the ancient fey magick that she can wield. Zoey tells Stark that she wants them to stay (because she’s not a good person and wants to avoid all the terrible things happening in Tulsa. She’s not good.) so he can heal and then she and Stark have sex a lot. Which helps to heal him. Right? Sure.
Back in Tulsa, Stevie Rae gets another poem from Kramisha and struggles to deal with what it implies, it is full of beasts and trust and monsters and courage after all. Dragon Lankford is also around and tells Stevie Rae that she has to deal with the poem because she’s a High Priestess. Then they hear that Zoey’s not coming back just yet. Jack is pretty upset about this because he’s been planning a celebration for their return that involves singing songs from Glee and talking way too much about Glee and hanging origami swords from a tree modeled after the one he borrowed from Dragon and placed point side up nearby to look at. As a sacrifice to the Darkness that surrounds her, Neferet causes Jack to fall from the ladder onto the waiting sword. It’s a sad death, but seriously, the dumbest death of all time. Ever. EVER.
Rephaim and Kalona talk about what happened in the Otherworld and Zoey and Stevie Rae and being in Neferet’s service. Rephaim tries to convince Kalona to leave Tulsa, (to keep Stevie Rae safe, secretly), but Kalona can’t leave because he’s still bound to Neferet and has to do her bidding and they have to go to her penthouse at the Mayo Hotel. Meanwhile, at a school vampyre council meeting, Neferet convinces Dragon and most of the other professors, minus Lenobia, that she’s made mistakes and should be forgiven. During this meeting is when Jack actually dies, so Neferet definitely didn’t have anything to do with it. She was nowhere near and it was a freak accident! Really!
Zoey and Stark are at it again and at this time, Kalona finds out that he can enter Stark's mind, which is especially great in the throes of passion, because of the immortality he had to give him on Nyx’s orders. Neferet arrives as he’s realizing this and, well, he takes that energy and...uses it on Neferet. While all this is happening, Jack’s body is discovered and that is terrible. They tell Zoey and she decides to come home. Later Kalona realizes, with the help of Rephaim, that because he gave part of his immortality to Stark that he’s no longer bound by the oath he made to Neferet. So that’s good.
Neferet is still keeping up her I’m-not-terrible charade and is treating all the students really well. She’s attempting to make Zoey seem crazy when she inevitably goes off on her in public. She allows Zoey to light Jack's funeral pyre and during the ceremony, Neferet asks Zoey for forgiveness. Zoey accepts the obviously fake apology and then Neferet uses Darkness to draw Rephaim to the funeral and then accuses him and Stevie Rae of being allied with Darkness and orders the Sons of Erebus warriors to kill them. Yeah, she’s totally not a bad guy.
Kalona shows up and fights the Sons of Erebus while Rephaim defends. Zoey casts a circle to stop the fighting and Stevie Rae asks Kalona to release Rephaim from his service. Dragon charges in to kill Rephaim but Zoey stops him, saying that she believes that Rephaim is on the side of light and has chosen to follow the path of Nyx. And speaking of… Nyx shows up then and forgives Rephaim, giving him a human form at night, but forcing him to become a raven during the daytime as payment for killing Anastasia. Rephaim offers an oath to Dragon but Dragon rejects him and Neferet says she can’t allow him to remain at the House of Night. Nyx tells Neferet that forgiveness must be earned, meaning that, you know, she doesn't forgive her, but that she will when she earns it. She also tells Dragon and Damien that their lost loves are safe in the Otherworld and that it’s okay that they’re still sad, but that they can’t let it take over their lives.
Since Neferet and Dragon don’t accept Rephaim at the House of Night, Zoey, Stevie Rae, the nerd herd and the rest of the red fledglings decide to start a new House of Night in the tunnels under the city with Zoey as a vampyre queen, kind of like Sgiach, and Stevie Rae as High Priestess. Neferet is disgusted by this and assures Zoey that she’s going to tell the High Council all about it. Lenobia asks why they can’t also forgive Rephaim, which does not go over well. Neferet claims that Nyx spoke to her heart and forgave her, but we all know that’s not true.
On her way back to her hotel, Neferet encounters the White Bull. The White Bull offers to make a vessel to be used against Zoey and to take the place of Kalona. To make the vessel, a great sacrifice of a human woman with ties to the earth should be made. Neferet knows the perfect Cherokee wise woman to sacrifice and nakedly mounts the white bull and together they go to Grandma Redbird’s farm. Instead of finding Grandma, Neferet finds Zoey’s mother, Linda Heffer, instead. Linda has just realized that her husband, the step loser as Zoey calls him, was cheating on her and was terrible, so she left him and returned to her mother’s house. That’s just bad luck because of course, Neferet murders her in sacrifice. The White Bull feeds on her blood and then… Neferet gives herself to the bull, utterly and completely. Ahem. yep.
Because the sacrifice was not as perfect as it could have been, the vessel will not be as perfect as it could have been, Nyx takes this opportunity to offer Heath the chance to return to earth now and be the soul inside the vessel. He accepts and is reborn as Aurox, a human boy that can take the shape of a bull. Zoey awakens from a dream where she sees her mother being welcomed into the Otherworld and knows that she’s dead.