We're back with our fourth and last book in this Month of House of Night, Burned. Praise Jesus and high-five Jenova you guys, this is it! One more review and we're done for as long as I can keep putting a return to this series off. Let's get this shit over with! 
 So when we last left Zoey, her soul had been inexplicably "shattered" upon witnessing the death of her childhood boytoy, Heath. In a refreshing change of pace, Burned picks up not moments after the end of Tempted, but moments before! Woo, shaking up the formula! 
 We open on Kalona, giving a boring mental monologue as he prepares to snap Heath's neck. 
 [Kalona] would not allow anything or anyone to get in his way, and this human boy was standing between him and what he desired. He didn't particularly want to kill the boy; he didn't particularly want the boy alive, either. It was a simple necessity. He didn't feel remorse or regret. As had been the norm during the centuries since he'd fallen, Kalona felt very little. 
 Craaaaaaaaaaaawling in my skiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin. 
 Christ, Kalona, get a LiveJournal. 
 I'm also side-eying that "didn't particularly want to kill the boy" line - I feel like it's meant to soften the blow of what he's doing, as though a supposed lack of active malice on Kalona's part somehow makes killing the target of your sexual aggression's boyfriend less terrible. 
 Anyway, he means to murder Heath on the dl, but as we already know, Zoey shows up. She knocks him off the wall into the ocean with her big ball o'spirit, and for a moment, Kalona considers letting himself drown and bringing this terrible series to an end, because oh no, Zoey knows he killed her boyfriend and really for real hates him now, what a completely unforseeable consequence of his actions! 
 But of course, we've still got like six books to go, so before he can do us all a favor, he feels Zoey's soul shatter, and- 
 Not Zoey! He'd never meant to cause her harm. Even through all of Neferet's machinations, through all of the Tsi Sgili's manipulations and plans, he'd held tight to the knowledge that, in spite of everything, he would use his vast immortal powers to keep Zoey safe because ultimately she was the closest he could come to Nyx in this realm -- and this was the only realm left to him. 
 And this is where even Kalona starts actively participating in the "let's blame Neferet for everything" sham Cast is trying to shape this into. In fact, if this chapter had a subtitle, it would be: No Really Guys, Even Kalona Thinks This is All Neferet's Fault, and Also She is the Worst. 
 It's all about attempting to illustrate the dynamic between Neferet and Kalona - that Kalona is a sad, wounded woobie who's making bad choices out of the completely sympathetic motivators of defiance, bitterness, and frustrated sexual longing, while Neferet is the root of all bitchy-bitch evil who's scheming and machinating and in league with the devil and in over her head. 
 "No, I don't imagine any of them felt it," Neferet continued, in her coldest, most calculating voice. "None of them are connected to Darkness, to you, as I am. Is that not so, my love?" 
 "We are uniquely connected," Kalona managed, though he suddenly wished the words were not true. 
 That's the dynamic in a nutshell: Neferet, so ~cold~ and ~calculating~, plying Kalona with her ~love talk~ and Kalona squishing himself up against the door on the opposite side of the car like "I AM REGRETTING MY DECISION TO RIDE WITH YOU SO HARD RIGHT NOW." 
 It's meant to make us more sympathetic to Kalona, I guess, because he's just an angry child going along with Neferet's plan, but really it just makes him a less respectable villain. 
 On the flip side, this chapter got damn close to making me Team Neferet. Seriously, I could get down with Neferet as a villain, for the exact traits that Cast is using to try and demonize her: she's aggressive, she's calculating, she's power-hungry and sexual, and she has no problem using the narrative's precious woobie as a tool to further her ambitions. She's everything that House of Night tells us a 'good woman' shouldn't be, and you know your series morality is fucked when the much-maligned epitome of evil is easier to root for than your goddess-blessed protagonist. 
 Clearly Neferet has just recently recognized how utterly fucked this world is. I'm sure if I had to spend centuries among these idiotic characters, serving this terrible goddess, I'd want to burn it all down, too. 
 That said, even putting aside all of Cast's awful evil-woman coding, I still can't bring myself to completely get on board with Neferet as a character, mostly because of her romantic rivalry with Zoey. Fighting with a teenager over who draws the biggest boner out of some piece of shit immortal rapist? You can keep it. That's one misogynistic trope too many. 
 Anyway, Kalona explains that Zoey's spirit is shattered and she's basically dead, forget about her, baby, but Neferet isn't buying it. 
 "One would think it would be a death sentence," Neferet spoke calmly as she drew more and more of the inky threads to her, "but Zoey has a terribly inconvenient habit of surviving. This time I am going to ensure she dies." 
 "Zoey's soul also has a habit of reincarnating," he said, purposefully baiting Neferet to try to throw off her focus. 
 I mean, once, it's done that once, and it took thousands of years. I wouldn't call that a 'habit'. 
 Neferet wants to make sure Kalona finishes the job, so she takes advantage of his weakened state and uses ~the power of Darkness~ to send his spirit into the Otherworld to end Zoey once and for all. 
 See what I mean? Relatable motivations and goals, man. 
 Kalona's not super thrilled, because being in the ~spirit realm~ too long could damage his body or some shit, but Neferet has zero fucks to give. 
 "Then you will have to be sure you finish your task soon, so that you may return to your lovely immortal body before it is irreparably damaged." [Neferet] smiled seductively at him. "I would very much dislike it if anything happened to your body, my love." 
 "Neferet, don't do this. You are putting into motion things that will require payment, the consequences of which even you will not want to face." 
 Yeah, that's the other thing. They're bringing up this idea that Neferet has bitten off more than she can chew, and that it's going to come back and bite her in the ass in the end, because god forbid we have a female villain who's competent and in control and at the top of the food chain. Nah, she's gotta be a naive little girl who's ~playing with forces she doesn't understand~. Ugh, you can keep that, too. 
 Kalona stared at her, understanding that Neferet was utterly, truly mad, and wondering why that madness only served to feed her power and intensify her beauty. 
 Okay 1) gross, and 2) do you get it yet, guys? Neferet is so evil that even KALONA thinks she's lost her shit! I hope you understand now who the TRUE VILLAIN of this series is, because it's definitely not the immortal rapist, nope! It's the nasty lady who uses her vagina for sex! 
 Moving on, we get this awkward-as-fuck motivation dump from Kalona, while somewhere in Hell, the Robot Devil sobs. 
 Kalona knew she was playing on his weaknesses. Silently, he cursed himself for allowing her to have learned too much about his deepest desires. He'd trusted her, so Neferet knew that because he wasn't Erebus he could never truly rule beside Nyx in the Otherworld, and he was driven to re-create as much of what he'd lost here in this modern world. 
 Neferet uses it to prod Kalona into action, evoking his one respectable line in the entire chapter: 
 "I choose to rule. I will always choose to rule," he said without hesitation. 
 Seriously, I'll take ambitious, remorselessly evil shithead villains over pity-me woobies any goddamn day of the week. 
 Finally, he and Neferet make the poorly-worded contract that will undoubtedly factor in to his redemption endgame. 
 When Neferet continued, her voice was magnified, swollen with power. "It is your own choice that I have sealed this oath by blood with Darkness, but should you fail me and break it--" 
 "I will not fail." 
 Her smile was unworldly in its beauty; her eyes roiled with blood. "If you, Kalona, Fallen Warrior of Nyx, break this oath and fail in my sworn quest to destroy Zoey Redbird, fledgling High Priestess of Nyx, I shall hold dominion over your spirit for as long as you are an immortal." 
 Loop, meet hole. 
 I think we can all see where this is going. 
 Thus concludes our time with the villains, catapulting Kalona out of the story until literally the last couple of chapters. Yeah,despite what the set-up would have you believing, Burned isn't so much about Zoey re-assembling the shattered fragments of her soul in the Otherworld as it is giving Cast the opportunity to retcon a bunch of bastardized Celtic and vaguely Taoist concepts into this already mythologically confused world, via dual plotlines that follow Stevie Rae&Co in Oklahoma, and Stark et al. in Italy and Scotland. 
 We kick off the story proper in Oklahoma, where Stevie Rae is roused from sleeping off the rooftop deep-fry she got at the end of Tempted to hear the "bad" news about Zoey. 
 "Zoey's not dead, but she saw Kalona kill Heath. She tried to stop him and couldn't. It shattered her, Stevie Rae." Tears had started to leak down Lenobia's porcelain cheeks. 
 "Shattered her? What does that mean?" 
 "It means her body still breathes, but her soul is gone. When a High Priestess's soul is shattered, it is only a matter of time before her body fades from this world, too." 
 Okay, I know House of Night is a series of ass-pulls and hand-waving when it comes to why and how things happen, but seriously, did we get ANY foreshadowing or background whatsoever on this whole "shattering" thing before it happened to Zoey? All I remember was that one line from the poem about being shattered and believing or some shit, so I feel like I'm pretty justified in feeling like this phenomenon came out of nowhere. 
 Yet according to all the good vampires of House of Night volume seven, this is a relatively normal occurrence. It happens often enough that everyone knows what it is and what it means, and there's an established history with several case studies to refer to. People's souls just rip themselves from their bodies on a regular basis, price of being a vampire, right? 
 Dragon Lankford spoke from the open doorway to the infirmary room. His strong face was drawn and haggard with the newness of the loss of his mate, but his voice was calm and sure. "It's about the fact that Zoey faced a grief she could not bear. And I do understand something about grief. When it shatters a soul, the path to return to the body is broken, and without the infilling of spirit, our bodies die." 
 Also, can we just all take a moment to appreciate that Dragon Lankford saw his wife of literal centuries murdered in front of him and didn't explode into a million pieces, but Zoey saw her high school boyfriend killed and hit the eject button immediately? 
 At any rate, Stevie Rae decides that her first course of action is to talk to Rephaim, because when she was super-sadfaced and crying over Zoey's situation earlier, he used his vaguely-defined immortal birdman powers to comfort her and call her to him. Plus, as Kalona's right hand man and a former spirit himself, she figures he's her best source for gathering some useful spirit-world-and-Darkness-related information. 
 This is the Default Excuse that the book gives Stevie Rae so that she can continue her relationship with Rephaim, which plays out almost exactly the same way every time she gets a chapter. She sneaks away from House of Night against someone's wishes, and meets up with Rephaim to pump him for "information". They get a few lovey-dovey scenes, fight over something or another, and then one or both leave in a huff, acting like they've broken up forever. Wash, rinse, repeat every three chapters. 
 But for this particular meeting, Stevie Rae is content nursing her horrifying birdman fetish. 
 Rephaim continued to stare at her until it felt to Stevie Rae as if he was looking through her body and directly into her soul. She couldn't look away, though, and the longer their gazes met, the harder it was for her to hold on to her anger. His eyes were just so human. 
 BUT HIS BODY IS JUST SO BIRD! 
 I love love love how the book very pointedly avoids mentioning Rephaim's bird torso. They talk about his eyes, his human arms and legs, even his wings sometimes, but there's jack shit about the beak, the creepy bird tongue, or his horizontally-oriented, bird-shaped body. Nada. Because then we would realize even more clearly that this is fuckin' weird. 
 Anyway, they get to chit-chatting, and Rephaim jumps hard on the "blame Neferet" train. 
 "Neferet seduces my father and pretends to be his mate, but the only thing she really cares for is herself. Where he is filled with anger, she is filled with hatred. Hatred is a more dangerous ally." 
 Christ, what a meaningless differentiation to toss in there. "Oh, sure, Kalona's angry and a rapist, but That Bitch Neferet hates people, that's super dangerous." WE GET IT, NEFERET IS WORSE THAN KALONA, YOU CAN STOP MAKING UP BULLSHIT JUSTIFICATIONS FOR THAT NOW, THANKS. 
 Together, they suss out what Neferet's done with her poorly-worded genie contract, Rephaim just happening to have all of the relevant information to lead him to the correct explanation, because fuck it. 
 Rephaim shook his head. "Father will never believe Zoey won't eventually choose him. A-ya did, and part of the maiden still lives within Zoey's soul." He paused, and before Stevie Rae could ask her next question, added, "But I know how you can be certain. If Neferet is using him, she will have Father's body bound by Darkness." 
 And then, and then you guys, Stevie Rae has what is quite possibly the dumbest line in this entire fucking series. 
 Are you ready for it? 
 Rephaim shook his head. "Father will never believe Zoey won't eventually choose him. A-ya did, and part of the maiden still lives within Zoey's soul." He paused, and before Stevie Rae could ask her next question, added, "But I know how you can be certain. If Neferet is using him, she will have Father's body bound by Darkness." 
 "Darkness? You mean like the opposite of light?" 
 Darkness, you mean like the opposite of light? 
 Darkness, you mean like the opposite of light? 
 Darkness, you mean like the opposite of light? 
 I'm dead. I'm dead, my brain has shattered, and I've gone to the Otherworld, a magical land where things are heavenly and perfect and House of Night doesn't exist, and people don't say such extraordinarily dumb things, and I can die in peace don't come for me. 
 My resentful resurrection + more words + at You're Killing.Us