POV RUBY
The Mediterranean was not the shimmering turquoise ofthe postcards. At three hundred feet below the surface, itwas a world of crushing indigo and suffocating silence.
We were cramped inside a "Mantis" submersible, a pressurized glass sphere barely large enough for twopeople. Nevan sat behind me, his knees tucked against myback, his hands resting on the manual override controls. The only light came from the violet-hued glow of the sub’sdashboard and the faint, rhythmic pulse of the scarab key, which I had slotted into the vessel’s navigation port.
"Tell me again why we’re diving into a graveyard," Nevan’s voice crackled through the internal comms. Evenat the bottom of the ocean, his voice was a grounded, masculine comfort.
"The Library of Alexandria didn't burn to the ground, N
