Betrayed

"Betrayed" is the second novel in the House of Night young-adult vampyre series by the mother-daughter writing team P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast, published by St. Martin's Press in October 2007. Now settled at the House of Night boarding school and leading the Dark Daughters, teenage fledgling Zoey Redbird finds her new life upended when human teenagers from her old town start turning up dead and the evidence points back toward the vampyres. As she investigates, Zoey is pulled between the humans she left behind and the powers that increasingly set her apart.

Like the rest of the series, the book blends supernatural coming-of-age with the ordinary anxieties of high school: friendship, first romances, loyalty, and figuring out where you belong. Zoey juggles tangled feelings among the human Heath, fellow fledgling Erik Night, and an older figure at the school, all while the trust she places in her mentor, the High Priestess Neferet, begins to look dangerously misplaced. The title points to the book's central concern with deception and divided allegiances.

The House of Night series became a major commercial success, spending time on best-seller lists and building a large teen readership during the late-2000s paranormal-romance boom. "Betrayed" continues the arc begun in "Marked," deepening the mythology of the goddess Nyx and setting up the conflicts carried through the rest of the multi-book saga.