Check out our episode here! (Featuring Marked, Betrayed and Chosen) Betrayed by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
Zoey has been a vampyre fledgling for all of a month and she’s already the leader of the Dark Daughters and High Priestess in training. She’s got her cat and her friends and maybe a fledgling boyfriend and a human kind-of boyfriend. Her Mark is filled in and is spreading. Everything is normal for like, three days, then people that Zoey used to know are getting murdered. Yikes. And it looks like vampyres are doing it. Yikes again!
Her mom, step-father and grandma come to visitation day and her parents are complete garbage people. The step-father is leader of the People of Faith and he’s definitely brainwashed her mom, so they treat her like crap and Neferet forces them to leave. Not Grandma, though… we love Grandma Redbird. After that, Zoey sees Aphrodite also being treated like crap by her garbage-parents and she feels sorry for her. Maybe Aphrodite is not so terrible on purpose and we should love her (because we do!), even though she’s fallen out of favor with Neferet and apparently Nyx? Neferet says Aphrodite is no longer blessed by the goddess and you can’t trust her visions. (I wonder if this has anything to do with that vision that she had in the first book that Neferet said didn’t make any sense… Hmmmmmmm!)
Since Zoey is the new leader of the Dark Daughters, she wants to make some changes to make things better, so she spends a lot of time away from her friends, trying to figure stuff out. One day while in the library, the super-hot vampyre poet laureate and teacher Loren Blake comes by and flirts with Zoey and it’s really gross, except Zoey is taken in by it because hey, he’s super-hot and she’s special. She’s also still got her thing with Erik going on, oh and Heath, too… Anyway, she makes plans for the Dark Daughters and Sons and they’re pretty good so she tells Neferet about them and they plan to share them at their next ritual.
Later Zoey sees that a football player she used to know was murdered, so she goes on a walk to think about things. She runs into Aphrodite who has had another vision, this time of Grandma Redbird dying in a car crash when a bridge collapses. But we shouldn’t believe her because Neferet said her visions were fake. But… it’s Grandma Redbird, so she can’t risk it. She and the Nerd Herd fake a bomb threat and Grandma, and a lot of other people, are saved. So… Aphrodite's vision WAS true, which makes Zoey begin to question Neferet. (Only now?!) She also has a dream about the two dead kids from book one and Neferet having menacing conversations, but that can’t be real because she doesn’t have visions… right? Oh wait, she totally does if we’re counting the time she was Marked by Nyx as her eyes and ears. So what’s going on?
Another football player is found dead and Zoey begins to suspect that Neferet has something to do with it based on that weird vision she had. Are those kids really still around? Can’t be. None of this can be happening because Neferet is definitely a good person and not the villain of the entire series. At Zoey’s first Dark Daughters ritual, Neferet takes credit for all of Zoey’s brilliant ideas. So maybe she is terrible after all. Her ritual goes well, except that Stevie Ray has been coughing throughout it. But she’s just tired. She’s definitely not dying.
Oh wait. Yes she is. Right after the ritual, Stevie Ray’s body rejects the change and she dies. And it’s pretty awful. Neferet tried to give Stevie Ray something to help her die peacefully, but she turns it away, not needing anything since her element was still with her. Then Neferet gives something to Zoey to drink to make her feel better, but Aphrodite sneakily tells her not to drink it saying Neferet lies. Erin, Shaunee and Damien come to spend the night with Zoey to keep her company and, because she’s so wonderful and she knew something terrible happened, Grandma Redbird calls. Zoey’s finally able to go to sleep, but she has another dream-vision of the creepy dead kids lurking around campus, but this time, they’re being led by Stevie Ray.
To make matters worse, Heath has gone missing, but police haven’t found his body yet. Aphrodite tells Zoey to use their imprint bond to call out to his blood to see if she can sense him, which she can. Aphrodite also told her about telling Neferet about the creepy undead kids, which is the vision from book one where Neferet said not to trust Aphrodite anymore. Uh oh. That’s not right. None of this is good. Following Aphrodite’s suggestion, Zoey finds Heath under Tulsa in the tunnels that have been around since prohibition. He’s not alone though. The creepy undead dead kids are holding him captive and, like in her dream, they’re led by Stevie Ray. And nothing is right about this Stevie Ray. She’s feral.
Zoey refuses to believe that her Stevie Ray is gone, so she uses her elemental affinities to keep the other undead kids away and try to convince Stevie Ray to come back to the House of Night. She also has a weird conversation with Heath at the same time, which makes the dead kids hiss and flinch away. Apparently, these kids and Stevie Ray have lost their humanity and they hate that Zoey and Heath have so much of it. Stevie Ray begs for Zoey to kill her which she refuses to do, then Stevie Ray tells Zoey to run because Neferet is coming and she’s the one that made them all come back to life. Zoey pretends that she and Heath have run away terrified of the undead dead kids and that she desperately needs Neferet’s help. Neferet also pretends that everything is okay while she secretly attempts to erase Zoey and Heath's memories, but Zoey has been Marked by Nyx, remember, and she is able to use her elemental affinities to regain her memory. In addition to her memories, Zoey has also earned some new Marks down her back. She shows Neferet and then menacingly tells her that even if no one else believes that she is bad, she does, and more importantly, Nyx does, so none of this is over. Great plan, Zo, threatening Neferet. Now that she’s finished with her threats, she begins to create a plan to get Stevie Ray back.